Ramblings from another nerd on the grid
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/presskits/bing/2012Searches.aspx
If someone is going to the 2012 LA Auto Show, pick me up one of these.
A couple of weeks ago I purchased the Samsung Series 9 NP900X3D-A02US notebook. It came with Windows 8 Professional pre-loaded. I’ve been wanting a Series 9 machine for quite some time, but I waited until the Ivy Bridge based silver model landed on USA shores. When I saw that mwave.com had them in stock, I purchased one. This particular model has a TPM chip and a three year warranty.
When I received the notebook and fired it up, I was a little dismayed at the bloated Windows 8 installation. Not only that, the 128GB mSATA SSD was half consumed already. Not a very good start. Since my family already owns the Sandy Bridge model, I knew it would run Windows 7 well and with a pending trip fast approaching, I wiped the drive and installed Windows 7 Ultimate x64.
Prior to doing the wipe, I did attempt to create the factory DVD disk set with Samsung’s built-in recovery solution. I could never get that program to create the boot media. After looking at the user guide, I noticed they no longer create DVD disk sets and expect you to store the image on an external hard drive. That appeared to work though I am unsure how to do a successful restore without the boot media.
Windows 8 to the Rescue
The machine has been running great. But the entire time the whole Windows 8 question has been nagging at me. I ordered a Crucial M4 mSATA 256GB SSD and waited. I also picked up a retail copy of Windows 8 Pro at the Microsoft employee store. When the Crucial drive arrived, it was time to test some new Windows 8 features.
Now maybe I haven’t been paying attention, but in addition to secure boot and all of the other work in the BIOS and UEFI area, we have also worked with OEM’s on a new licensing model. If you look at the bottom of my machine, you’ll notice there is no Windows 8 Certificate of Authenticity (COA). There is an official Windows 8 logo sticker, but no product key.
The good news is that you no longer have to worry about it fading or getting scratched. The 5x5 key is embedded in the BIOS. Therefore all I had to do in order to install a fresh clean copy of Windows 8 was attach an external DVD drive, boot from the retail DVD, and run setup. As soon as I connected to the internet, the machine activated. It never asked me for a key. No fuss!!!
And in case you are wondering, all but three of the device drivers for this machine came right off the Windows 8 Pro DVD. Two were resolved by running Windows Update and installing from the WU servers. The remaining device it probably an Intel management driver or something. I’ll look into it later.
I really dig this feature. I don’t have to worry about the key and I know I can re-install whenever I want. Pretty freaking cool. Enjoy!
Lenovo continues to make perplexing choices with some of their machines. One such choice is the change to how Optimus operates on the ThinkPad T430s notebook computer. The T430s Optimus implementation with the Ivy Bridge chipset is very different from the implementation in the ThinkPad T420s.
Lets review some of the evolution of Optimus. Way back towards the tail end of the ThinkPad T410s sales cycle, Lenovo introduced a dual GPU implementation branded Optimus which is a NVIDIA trademark. I blogged about the T410s at http://blogs.technet.com/b/keithcombs/archive/2010/11/14/driving-four-dell-lcd-panels-with-a-single-lenovo-thinkpad-t410s-optimus-laptop-and-dock.aspx. As you can see in the picture, I am driving three external LCD panels. There is actually a fourth LCD connected sitting on the floor out of the field of view.
When the T420s came out, obviously this was tested right away and it passed with flying colors. Three of the LCD panels are connected to ports on the Series 3 docking station and the fourth is connected to a port on the notebook itself.
Last week my wife’s ThinkPad T430s arrived and like any good geek I started testing it to make sure it is a keeper. One of the first tests I did was to test multimon. I dropped the T430s into my dock and… uh oh. It would only drive two LCD panels. Now to be perfectly honest, I had already read this was an issue with the T430s but didn’t believe it. Why on earth would Lenovo cut a feature like that? I know MANY people that use more than two displays at a time. Probably everyone in Microsoft Support does.
I tested this several different ways using the connections on the 135W Series 3 dock I have. It simply wouldn’t work. I shot a message off to our internal Lenovo discussion list and Michael Jeremica looked into it. As it so happens, there is a Lenovo KB making the rounds at http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/downloads/detail.page?DocID=HT074304. There is a key hint in the Solutons section of that document. In order to get a third LCD panel to display, you much use a connection from the laptop itself. After connecting my StarTech mini DisplayPort -> VGA adapter into the mini DP port on the T430s, the LCD panel lit up.
This is not ideal, but three external panels is better than two.
In Windows 8, we reimagined the browser with IE10. We designed and built IE10 to be the best way to experience the Web on Windows. With the IE10 Release Preview for Windows 7 consumers can now enjoy a fast and fluid Web with the updated IE10 engine on their Windows 7 devices. The release preview of IE10 on Windows 7 is available for download today.
IE10 on Windows 8 brings an entirely new browsing experience and set of capabilities to the Web, such as a new touch first browsing experience and full screen UI for your sites, security improvements that offer the best protection against the most common threats on the Web, improved performance, and support for the HTML5 and CSS3 standards developers need.
See the full post at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2012/11/13/ie10-fast-fluid-perfect-for-touch-and-available-now-for-windows-7.aspx.
Hold on to your butts. See http://confederate.com/hellcat/benchmarks for a bonafied record holder.
I recently caved and bought the Star Wars movies on blu-ray. I got them on sale and although I didn’t think I would be that thrilled with the purchase, I was dead wrong. I have been watching the standard def 4:3 ratios for so long, that it was like watching them in the theatre all over again.
Needless to say the news of Disney purchasing the Star Wars franchise from George Lucas was more than fascinating. Rumors of a new movie cropped up immediately and they have now been confirmed at http://starwars.com/news/michael-arndt-to-write-screenplay-for-star-wars-episode-vii.html.
I’m sure all eyes and ears are now on the casting for the movie. This is going to get interesting.
Wow. New York Magazine has a fantastic cover photo (pictured below) of New York City at http://nymag.com/nymag/letters/hurricane-sandy-editors-letter-2012-11/ shot by Iwan Baan. Amazing. See the backstory for the shot at http://nymag.com/thecut/2012/11/more-images-from-new-yorks-sandy-cover.html.
Wired has a really cool article with pictures of the oldest and biggest trees on our planet. See http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/03/old-tree-gallery/all/ for the full gallery and a short write-up on each. General Sherman is pictured below. If you are ever in California, give him a hug.
Three weeks ago the Exchange Server team announced the RTM of Exchange Server 2013 on their team blog. Since that time the team has been working diligently to get the product ready for general availability via the various channels. We’re happy to say Exchange Server 2013 is now generally available.
Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 enables you to maintain control, increase user productivity, and keep your organization safe:
You can go get the download off the evaluation center at http://technet.microsoft.com/hh973395. See the product information at http://microsoft.com/exchange.
Technical information for all of the Exchange Server products can be found at http://technet.microsoft.com/exchange. For those of you with TechNet or MSDN subscriptions, head on over to the subscriber download center and grab the DVD .ISO file.
The average gamer probably doesn’t think about the virtual machines, cloud services and other technologies that power their fun – at least not as long as everything runs smoothly. When “Halo 4” launches Nov. 6, millions of fans around the world will simultaneously push the game’s back-end scaffolding to the limit. Any glitch, any hang-up, and the engineering team gets thrust into the spotlight.
See more details on the guys making this happen at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/features/2012/oct12/10-31halo4.aspx.
See the story behind the “epic transformation in the Principality of Liechtenstein” at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/features/2012/nov12/11-01HaloLiechtenstein.aspx.
For more information on Windows Azure, be sure to checkout the Windows Azure Blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/.
Go to http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/presskits/windowsphone/ at 10am PST. That’s high noon in the central US.
For those of you anxious to try Office 2013, it’s now available on the download center for MSDN and TechNet subscribers. I must admit I really like Outlook 2013. The Office team did an excellent job. Enjoy!
Want to learn more about the product? Check out http://office.microsoft.com for the product area. There is of course http://technet.microsoft.com/office and http://blogs.office.com.
Man, Lenovo is really proud of the ThinkPad X1 Carbon. But look at it this way, if you have the money for a million dollar ThinkPad, you get to go back in time. Think of all the money you can make going back in time ten weeks.
This young man is obviously an advanced Windows 8 user. Brilliant video. What a cute kid. Heard on the internet at http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57536828-71/windows-8-is-easy-ask-this-3-year-old/. Next up, Windows 8 and Office 2013 automated deployment by a 2 year old?
Time to get your grape on. Grin. See the Nokia and HTC phone now available for pre-order.
If you haven’t read the books you might not get what is really going on, but this is still an interesting trailer. Crank up the volume and go full screen, sissies.
Looking forward to the launch this month!
I can see it now. Suddenly NASA gets new funding to send probes to the recently discovered diamond planet called “55 Cancri e”. Here’s an excerpt from the story in Yale News:
“New research led by Yale University scientists suggests that a rocky planet twice Earth's size orbiting a nearby star is a diamond planet. “This is our first glimpse of a rocky world with a fundamentally different chemistry from Earth,” said lead researcher Nikku Madhusudhan, a Yale postdoctoral researcher in physics and astronomy. “The surface of this planet is likely covered in graphite and diamond rather than water and granite.”
“New research led by Yale University scientists suggests that a rocky planet twice Earth's size orbiting a nearby star is a diamond planet.
“This is our first glimpse of a rocky world with a fundamentally different chemistry from Earth,” said lead researcher Nikku Madhusudhan, a Yale postdoctoral researcher in physics and astronomy. “The surface of this planet is likely covered in graphite and diamond rather than water and granite.”
See the full story at http://news.yale.edu/2012/10/11/nearby-super-earth-likely-diamond-planet.
Over the last two years, we have worked with our MVPs to create and deliver real world training all across the globe via a Roadshow on Windows Server 2012 and supporting products like Windows Small Business Server 2011, Windows Small Business Server Essentials 2011, and Windows MultiPoint Server 2011. From May, 2011 through January 2012, The SMB MVP Community Roadshow hit over 60 cities worldwide and reached more than 3,000 partners and customers. Then, over the spring, we had the first leg of the The Windows Server 2012 Community Roadshow where we reached 18 countries, 55 cities and more than 4,000 customers and partners.
Now, we are beginning the second and more in-depth leg of the Windows Server 2012 Community Roadshow. We already have more than 36 MVPs from 17 countries lined up and on point to deliver in depth real world training on Windows Server 2012.
Want more information? Head on over to the Windows Server Blog and checkout their post on this.
Lenovo announced several devices including the S230 pictured above. See the full press release with information and prices at http://news.lenovo.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=1637. Now things will start to get interesting.
I have never used a fingerprint login. I was always afraid someone would chop off my finger and use it. They do that in the movies so it must be true. Well, a story surfaced today and I am providing a heads up. I have not verified any portion of the information.
“The UPEK software has long been marketed as a secure means for logging into Windows computers using an owner's unique fingerprint, instead of a user-memorized password. Last month, Elcomsoft, a Russia-based developer of password-cracking software, warned that the software makes users less secure than they otherwise would be because it stores Windows account passwords to the registry and encrypts them with a key that is easy for hackers to retrieve. It takes only seconds for people with the key to extract a password, company officials said. They withheld technical details to prevent the vulnerability from being widely exploited.”
See the full story at http://arstechnica.com/security/2012/10/confirmed-fingerprint-reader-owned-by-apple-exposes-windows-passwords/.
Electric motorcycles are starting to get my interest now. See http://www.zeromotorcycles.com/2013/.
When did America’s Cup change to catamarans? Obviously I haven’t been paying attention but when twitter lit up on this video, I had to check this out. Reminds me of some motocross endos I’ve done.
For the uninitiated, endo is short for end-over-end.
Windows Azure AD Rights Management provides the ability to enable the use of digital rights management technology in organizations that subscribe to the Office 365 preview services. Office 365 Preview customers can enable rights management capabilities within the Preview versions of Exchange Online, SharePoint and Office. These downloads enable an administrator to manage Windows Azure AD rights management features and configure Office 2010 for the Windows Azure AD Rights Management service.
Go get it @ http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30339.
iSCSI Target Storage Provider enables applications on a server that is connected to an iSCSI target to perform volume shadow copies of data on iSCSI virtual disks. It also enables you to manage iSCSI virtual disks by using older applications that require a Virtual Disk Service (VDS) hardware provider, such as the Diskraid command.
This download package must be installed on any application server running a Windows Server release prior to Windows Server 2012 that plans to use iSCSI Target Server in Windows Server 2012. This is required in order for VDS/VSS hardware providers to communicate with iSCSI Target Server in Windows Server 2012.
System requirements - Supported operating systems: Windows Server 2008 with latest service pack, Windows Server 2008 R2 with latest service pack.
Go get it @ http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=34759.
By default, Office 2013 installations that use Click-to-Run will download the Office product from the Internet, with full UI, and with automatic updates enabled. Some administrators will need more control beyond the default Click-to-Run installation behavior in order to work best in their environments.
Using the Office Deployment Tool, an administrator may:
• Download an Office installation source to a network share location • Configure an installation to use a network share as the installation source instead of the Internet • Configure an installation to suppress all UI • Configure the logging for an installations • Configure whether Office will automatically update or not • Configure which products and languages to install • Remove Office Click-to-Run products
Sound interesting? Go get the Preview @ http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30344.
Raise your hand if you are getting a little sick of the phrase “consumerization of IT”. I know I am. But the concepts around it are interesting and they pose some interesting challenges for IT organizations as they are increasingly forced to support connections to the corporate network from a wide variety of devices that aren’t corporate assets.
As I was perusing the new downloads on the microsoft.com download center, I stumbled across an interesting guide called, “Consumerization of IT Test Lab Guide: Hyper-V Windows 8 corporate virtual machine on personal computer”. This is an interesting guide. In essence it describes a design where you could deploy and manage a virtual machine that is part of the corporate managed infrastructure, but it is running from a non managed consumer PC running Windows 8. There are of course some interesting requirements to allow for such a design.
I’m not sure how mainstream a design like this will become, but nevertheless, this is probably worth a read and your consideration. If nothing else, it will be good training to walk through the guide and design principles. Here’s the abstract:
“Thinking about Consumerization of IT (CoIT) necessarily leads to some security and management challenges. Microsoft has enabled CoIT through many technologies for many years and now helps IT managers face security, compliance and compatibility issues they might deal with and give users access to corporate intellectual property from ubiquitous devices, both managed and unmanaged. More specifically, this document deals with the situation where a company would like to put in place a “Bring You Own Device” (BYOD) environment. For that purpose, the document demonstrates how Microsoft technologies such as Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8 can allow to work anywhere with an employee's Windows 8 computer hosting a corporate virtual machine (VM) protected by BitLocker, while enjoying connectivity to his workplace. In such a context, the Windows 8 Client Hyper-V technology and DirectAccess technologies are used to implement this CoIT scenario. This document is part of a series of documents on Consumerization of IT, and more especially aims at demonstrating the Hyper-V Windows 8 Enterprise Virtual Machine on personal computer scenario in a logical progression.”
“Thinking about Consumerization of IT (CoIT) necessarily leads to some security and management challenges.
Microsoft has enabled CoIT through many technologies for many years and now helps IT managers face security, compliance and compatibility issues they might deal with and give users access to corporate intellectual property from ubiquitous devices, both managed and unmanaged.
More specifically, this document deals with the situation where a company would like to put in place a “Bring You Own Device” (BYOD) environment. For that purpose, the document demonstrates how Microsoft technologies such as Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8 can allow to work anywhere with an employee's Windows 8 computer hosting a corporate virtual machine (VM) protected by BitLocker, while enjoying connectivity to his workplace. In such a context, the Windows 8 Client Hyper-V technology and DirectAccess technologies are used to implement this CoIT scenario.
This document is part of a series of documents on Consumerization of IT, and more especially aims at demonstrating the Hyper-V Windows 8 Enterprise Virtual Machine on personal computer scenario in a logical progression.”
Go get it @ http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=34776.
Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 introduce the latest operating system technology and software development platforms for use by app developers and enterprises worldwide. As part of further enhancing the security, reliability, performance, and user experience of Windows, Microsoft has introduced many new features, improved existing features, and removed others.
While the goal of Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 is to stay highly compatible with most of their respective apps written for previously released operating systems, some compatibility breaks are inevitable due to innovations, tightened security, and increased reliability. Overall, the compatibility of Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 with existing apps is high.
See the rest of the information in the cookbook download @ http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=27416.
http://www.mclarenautomotive.com/uk/default.aspx
Here’s a great video from Microsoft Windows Phone spokesperson Ben Rudolph.
Here’s the infomercial. It has some pretty good views of the device.
See the Windows Phone 8X specifications at http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-wp-8x/#specs.
See the Windows Phone 8S specifications at http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-wp-8s/#specs.
This is going to be a tough decision.
Windows Server 2012 is generally available for evaluation and purchase by all customers around the world. Additionally, there is great news for organizations that are looking for a way to migrate virtual machines hosted on VMware vSphere to the Hyper-V host in Windows Server 2012. The production (RTW) version of the Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter (MVMC) and the Beta version of the VMware console plugin version are both available to download. We extend a huge thank you to our beta participants who have taken the time to evaluate the pre-release versions of the tools and provided us with extremely valuable feedback. MVMC is one resource available as part of the Switch to Hyper-V program announced at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference earlier this year. The Switch to Hyper-V program helps partners and customers go beyond virtualization to true cloud computing by providing guidance, resources, and tools that take the risk out of virtual migrations, reduce the time and effort required, and define best practices.
See the full post @ http://blogs.technet.com/b/virtualization/archive/2012/09/18/migrate-virtual-machines-from-a-vmware-environment-to-hyper-v-in-windows-server-2012-using-a-free-simple-standalone-tool.aspx.
With a single subscription, you can use Office across a wide variety of devices - everything from PCs and tablets to Macs. You can easily save to and access your documents from the cloud and personalize your experience with Office. We will update Office more frequently to support new scenarios, and subscribers will always be current with the latest innovations. Subscriptions also open new possibilities like integrating web services into Office in ways never before possible; in this release, we've added Skype calling minutes and SkyDrive storage, and in the future, we'll do more.
In this post, you'll find details on how to get the new Office 365 subscriptions for consumers and small businesses when available.
Get the full details @ http://blogs.office.com/b/office-news/archive/2012/09/17/the-new-office-365-subscriptions-for-consumers-and-small-businesses.aspx.
The Beta of System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 (“SP1”) enables System Center customers to jointly evaluate System Center 2012 with Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8. The Beta is for evaluation purposes only and not to be used in production as described in the EULAs associated with the product. No license keys are required to do this evaluation. The Beta includes updates and enhancements to the following System Center 2012 components:
Go get the SP1 Beta @ http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=34607.
Microsoft DirectAccess Connectivity Assistant (DCA) 2.0 can be used by computers running Windows 7 when connecting to internal corporate networks with DirectAccess in Windows Server 2012. It improves the DirectAccess connection experience, supports one-time password (OTP) authentication for DirectAccess users and helps organizations reduce the cost of supporting DirectAccess users.
Microsoft DirectAccess Connectivity Assistant (DCA) 2.0 provides the following functionality:
Note: DCA 2.0 can be installed on Windows 7 computers that connect to the corporate network using DirectAccess running on a Windows Server 2012 computer. It can be installed on Windows 7 computers that do not have DCA installed, or on computers running DCA 1.0 or DCA 1.5. DCA 2.0 should not be installed on computers running Windows 8 Consumer Preview. It should also not be installed on Windows 7 computers that connect to the corporate network using DirectAccess running on a Windows Server 2008 R2 computer or on a Forefront UAG server.
Go get it @ http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29039.
These spreadsheets list the policy settings for computer and user configurations that are included in the Administrative template files delivered with the Windows operating systems specified. You can configure these policy settings when you edit Group Policy Objects.
You can use the filtering capabilities that are included in this spreadsheet to view a specific subset of data, based on one value or a combination of values that are available in one or more of the columns. In addition, you can click Custom in the drop-down list of any of the column headings to add additional filtering criteria within that column.
To view a specific subset of data, click the drop-down arrow in the column heading of cells that contain the value or combination of values on which you want to filter, and then click the desired value in the drop-down list. For example, to view policy settings that are available for Windows Server 2012 or Windows 8, in the Administrative Template worksheet, click the drop-down arrow next to Supported On, and then click At least Microsoft Windows Server 2012 or Windows 8.
What's New?
The Administrative Template spreadsheet contains three columns that provide more information about each policy setting's behavior related to reboots, logoffs, and schema extensions. These columns are the following:
Go get the download @ http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=25250.
Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 8 includes Server Manager, Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-ins, consoles, Windows PowerShell cmdlets and providers, and command-line tools for managing roles and features that run on Windows Server 2012. In limited cases, the tools can be used to manage roles and features that are running on Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows Server 2008. Some of the tools work for managing roles and features on Windows Server 2003.
Got get em @ http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=28972
I know I did a blog post about the IFA announcement not long ago, but I wanted to bring the Samsung ATIV S website to your attention with all of the specific features and specifications. It is the global site so I don’t know what we’ll get here in the USA. Looks like a really nice handset. Click the pic or the link below it. There are some other cool devices at the site, too. Hint hint. Grin.
http://www.samsung.com/global/ativ/ativ_s.html
Microsoft’s Private Cloud is built on the industry leading foundation of Windows Server and System Center. The System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 (SP1) update enables System Center to run on and manage the final version of Windows Server 2012, released earlier this week. System Center 2012 SP1 brings System Center manageability to many new capabilities in Windows Server 2012 as well as a range of other improvements. You can read about the System Center 2012 SP1 on the product overview page.
The beta of System Center 2012 (SP1) is now available for download on the Microsoft Download Center. This blog post focuses on some of the new capabilities for Datacenter and Cloud in System Center 2012 SP1. For information about the Configuration Manager capabilities of System Center 2012 SP1 and Windows InTune, read the client management blog post.
There are many other capabilities in the System Center 2012 SP1 Beta. Read the full blog post at http://blogs.technet.com/b/server-cloud/archive/2012/09/10/system-center-2012-sp1-beta-available-evaluate-with-windows-server-2012.aspx.
Today Amazon announced several Kindles. I have been using their eBook readers for quite a long time now and was very intrigued by the new Kindle Paperwhite. I have one on order. Looks like I’ll receive it around the middle of October. I can’t wait to try it out with some books this winter.