Microsoft Surface

How Windows 8 change my view on Microsoft

I have always loved the Windows Operating System, but their phones were a joke back it the day, and their in-house hardware was just accessories and a game console. I have come to the conclusion that Windows 8 isn’t designed to just be an Operating System, it is designed to increase the Microsoft Market Share across all of their devices. I used Windows 8 off and on throughout the previews and it was good but nothing super spectacular. However once it was finally released I decided I was making the leap at home.

Telling Friends/Family/Co-workers about Products

In March 2012 I gave a presentation at work about Windows 8 on Desktop and Tablet and I enjoyed it quite a bit, I had many people asking me questions. After all my research was complete I was starting to tell friends to hold off on buying tablets till the end of the year. Once the Surface came out I made sure I had it on day of release, I took it into the office and I was demonstrating it pretty much all day telling people my impressions on the device and how nice the TouchCover was.

Since then I have had my brother question me about it and I believe the Surface might become his only computer in the near future, honestly it would be my only computer if I were not in the IT Field and some of the Software I use requires the x86 chip architecture. It has even got to the point where my mother is telling her friends about the Surface being such a fantastic device.

Increased Xbox 360 Usage

I think the my Xbox 360 usage has really increased the most. I’ve owned it for many years and I am actually more of a PS3 player than I ever was invested in Xbox. In-fact I own www.playstationeuphoria.com and it started with PSN@Home 5-6 years ago and I was the main one blogging. Once I received my Microsoft Surface I decided to finally try out Xbox SmartGlass and it was amazing, I began buying games for the Xbox and seems like I play it every other day at a minimum.

Purchasing Windows Phone 8

After adjusting to Windows 8, after owning a Surface, and admittedly also playing with the Lumia 900 running Windows Phone 7 at TechEd 2012,  I was impressed. I knew that I was interested in switching from my iPhone since I had owned it for 3 years and no matter how many new devices came out the changes were minimal at best. I decided since Microsoft was knocking everything out of the park I would go ahead and purchase the Lumia 920 once it was available, day it came out I went to the AT&T Store and picked up a Red Lumia 920. I’ve had minimal issues with the phone but overall love it.

Conclusion

Overall I have to say not only did Microsoft do fantastic on Windows 8, and the Surface and on Windows Phone 8 but the integration of all the devices, using SkyDrive has been unbelievable. I’ve got my phone syncing my picture to SkyDrive, and I can pull out my Surface to write a blog and use those exact photos with no effort on my part.

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Configure Surface to use MicroSD as Primary Storage

After about a week of excitement and playing around with features, I decided it was time to start optimizing and making this thing run the way I wanted. The first thing I noticed was that I could not use my SD card with my Libraries, so all my apps are going to by default save to the local SSD, which is far from what I want. I knew there had to be a way around this, so I started digging in. I feel I finally have it to the point where others should be doing the same thing, and once done, you can forget about it.

  • Create a VHDX and save it on the SD card
  • Create directories on this VHD for your specific libraries
    • Documents
    • Music
    • Video
    • Pictures
  • Configure the libraries
  • Enable Indexing on the VHDX – This is important because the Photos app doesn’t work right without it.
  • Have a script automatically Attach the VHD on Boot

If you would like to know the exact steps to take, please continue reading.

Creating a VHD

  1. Open Charms Menu (Swipe in from the right side of the screen)
  2. Click Settings
  3. Click Tiles
  4. Change “Show administrative tools” to Yes
  5. Swipe from the bottom of the screen
  6. Click All apps
  7. Under “Administrative Tools” click Computer Management
  8. Click “Disk Management”
  9. Click “Action”
  10. Click “Create VHD”
  11. Browse to the SD Card’s storage and name the VHD whatever you want
  12. Allocate as much of the SD’s storage you want to this VHD,
  13. You can decide between Fixed or Dynamically expanding. I went with Dynamically expanding.
  14. Find the newly created disk in the lower panel, which should be “Disk 2”
  15. Right-click where it says “Disk 2”
  16. Click “Initialize Disk”
  17. Click OK
  18. Right-click “Unallocated”
  19. Click “New Simple Volume…”
  20. Click “Next >”
  21. Click “Next >”
  22. Select the Drive letter you want (can be anything)
  23. Click “Next >”
  24. Name the Volume whatever you want
  25. Click “Next >”
  26. Click “Finish”

Create/Configure Library Directories on VHD

  1. Click the “Libraries” icon from the “Task Bar”
  2. Single click “Documents”
  3. Click “Manage under “Library Tools” from the ribbon
  4. Click “Manage library”
  5. Click “Add”
  6. Browse to the newly Attached VHD you just created
  7. Click “New Folder”
  8. Name it whatever you want (Eg: Documents)
  9. DO NOT OPEN THE FOLDER, select the folder and click “Include folder”
  10. Remove the Default Personal folder
  11. Click OK
  12. Click “Set save location”
  13. Select the newly created folder
  14. Repeat steps 1-13 for the following
    1. Music
    2. Pictures
    3. Videos

Enable Indexing on VHD – Very Important

  1. Open the “Charms Menu”
  2. Click “Search”
  3. Type “Indexing Options”
  4. Click Settings
  5. Open “Indexing Options”
  6. Click “Modify”
  7. Select the newly Attached VHD
  8. Click OK
  9. Click Close

Create Script to Auto Attach on Startup

  1. Open PowerShell as an Administrator
  2. Type “Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned”
  3. Press Enter
  4. Type “y”
  5. Press Enter
  6. Click Computer from the navigation bar on the left of the Libraries folder
  7. Open the C: Drive
  8. Create a new folder named “PoSH”
  9. Double click the new folder
  10. Right-click in the white area and navigate to “New > Text Document”
  11. Name it Auto-Mount.ps1
  12. Open the new file with Notepad
  13. Paste the below code in, don’t forget to modify the red text to the path you saved the VHDX file at
    1. “Mount-DiskImage D:\YourVHD.vhdx”
  14. Open the “Charms Menu”
  15. Click “Search”
  16. Type “Task Scheduler” and open it
  17. Click “Task Scheduler Library”
  18. Click “Action”
  19. Click “Create Task…”
  20. General Tab
    1. Name: Attach SD VHD
    2. Location: \
    3. Description: This is the Task that automatically attaches the VHD file on the SD card on system boot.
    4. “Click Change User or Group…” type in SYSTEM
    5. Check “Run with highest privileges”
  21. Triggers Tab
    1. Click “New…”
    2. Begin the task: At startup
    3. Click OK
  22. Action Tab
    1. Action: Start a program
    2. Program/script: C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe
    3. Add arguments: C:\PoSH\Auto-Mount.ps1
    4. Click “OK”
  23. Conditions Tab
    1. Under Power uncheck “Start the task only if the computer is on AC power
    2. Click “OK”
  24. Have fun testing. I recommend opening the Camera app and taking some pictures, making sure it index the new ones, try adding music to the folder make sure it shows up in the music app, the same thing for the Video app.

Update 12-30-2012: Thank you, Don, for reminding me you need to set the execution policy on the machine first.

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Is the Microsoft Surface for Me?

In the last 2 days the biggest question I’ve heard is what makes this device good for me? The best response I’ve had for that is if you are a standard user, the Surface can be your only computer and you will not skip a beat with your day to day life.

Microsoft Surface with Cyan Touch Cover

First I would like to start out by defining what I consider a “Standard User”. A standard user is someone who uses a computer for email, social media, blogging, consuming media (Music/Video) and casual gaming. This user can potentially be on the go and doing all of these things but this is not a requirement nor does it hurt if they are. …

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Windows 8 is here and so is the Surface

Today was a big day for Microsoft. Today was the release of Windows 8 and of the Surface RT. I have been using Windows 8 quite a bit already and so I wasn’t expecting much aside from my excitement for the Surface RT to show up.

My day started by as soon as I woke up I grabbed my phone and tracked the delivery of my Surface RT. I saw that it was on the truck for delivery so I decided for sure I was working from home in the morning. I had completed quite a bit of work and just finished up with a conference call when I heard a knock at the door. I rushed into the living room to find my Surface RT with Cyan Touch Cover waiting for me.

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Windows 8 is Nearly Here!

I personally have been using Windows 8 off and on since the Developer Preview was released over a year ago, more frequently after I received a Samsung Series 7 Slate in February to start working on it for work. I’ve been following all of the news articles about how this is going to change everything or how it is going to completely bomb. I’ve been in multiple conversations with co-workers, and friends from previous jobs about what will be changing and if it is an improvement or degrading and I’ve decided that I will share my point of view publicly.

The Good:

  • Word Processing on the Go
    • Windows RT (ARM Processor Devices) has Office 2013 built in.
    • Windows 8 (Intel/AMD Devices) can have any version of Microsoft Office Installed.
    • I’ve heard multiple coorporations wanting to implement Tablets, however the most frequent request is word processing.
  • Build in Hyper visor
    • I was thrilled to see that they included Hyper-V into Windows 8.
    • Gives me the ability to stay away from VMWare Player/Workstation.
  • Unified System
    • Home desktops, corporate desktops and tablets you can carry around with you all being the same.
    • Can also use cloud services to share files across all these devices.
  • Touch and Keyboard/Mouse Friendly
    • Throughout the preview the mouse/keyboard usage has improved. Overall I think they have made it seem less when using either touch or keyboard/mouse combo.
  • Better Performance
    • As hardware improves so does software, even running the same hardware I ran with Windows 7 I have a faster boot time, and I am seeing better overall performance.
  • Windows Live Login
    • Manage a single login across all of your Windows 8 devices
    • Manage basic settings and Metro apps across all Windows 8 devices
  • Improved Interface
    • My personal feeling is that the interface is aesthetically more appealing.

The Bad:

  • Harder learning curve
    • With the modified interface it will be much more challenging for people to learn the interface.
  • Limited Applications at Launch
    • Currently the amount of apps in the Windows Store is limited but growing.
  • Price
    • Some of the hardware I believe could be priced a little bit lower.
    • I do want to clarify the Microsoft Surface is competitively priced when comparing to an iPad.

Will it Succeed:

Overall with the amount of experience I have with Windows 8 I strongly believe that this operating system and tablet devices have the ability to succeed. I do see this being highly usable in enterprise environments using tablet devices. I’ve spent a couple days working purely using a tablet device and docking it at work. My main concern on if this will succeed or not will come down to the ability to properly train everyone on the new operating system and how to use it.

Some final notes I have on the up coming operating system and hardware that is coming out is to keep an open mind to using an entirely new interface, make sure you dedicate time into learning it and you will realize that it is a move in the proper direction.

Windows 8 is Nearly Here! Read More »