Smarter Geek

A lot of detail has now been released about Windows on Arm (a.k.a. WOA) by the massive post from Steven Sinofsky (see http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/02/09/building-windows-for-the-arm-processor-architecture.aspx). Therefore I thought I would do a little comparison of the features of Windows 8, OSX and the iPad.

Today there was a huge blog post by Steven Sinofsky talking about the development of Windows 8 running on ARM http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/02/09/building-windows-for-the-arm-processor-architecture.aspx?CommentPosted=true#commentmessage. But the blog post also goes on to say that it will avoid constructs such as “add-ins” to deliver on battery life and other promises of what WOA can do. What is strange about this is that Windows 8 on ARM has been previously demoed running flash in Internet Explorer… SO… Confused… I am… Will Windows 8 on ARM support browser plug-ins? I don’t know… but somewhere the code does exist.

Jump to about 2m20s to check out the part about Flash.

With the pending release of Windows 8 beta (a.k.a. Consumer Preview) it seems that all sorts of people are publishing their positive and negative blog posts (see Windows 8 – to be or not to be? and Why Windows 8 Will be A Flop!! and Five Reasons why Windows 8 will be dead on arrival )Windows 8 will be a failure. What is totally perplexing to me is that people seem to have made up their minds about the new OS before they have even used the final product. I have no doubt that there is much more to be announced by Microsoft this month regarding the OS which may or may not change peoples minds but this is a post to talk about the what is known today and why this is NOT going to be another Windows Vista like many people claim it will be…

Great Fundamentals

This is a topic which I have never seen when people talk about Windows 8. Steven Sinofsky during BUILD Keynote showed that the developer preview consumes less system resources than Windows 7. He even when on to say that this will improved even more over the Windows 8 development lifecycle. But even at the early stage of the development it uses less CPU and RAM which directly translates to better performance and improved battery life. Microsoft have also stated that every single computer that runs Windows 7 today can run Windows 8. Meaning that Windows 8 will be able to run on pretty much any computer that has been made since Windows Vista.

If you remember  Windows Vista had hardware specs that more than doubled from Windows XP. This was made very evident to me when I loaded Vista that my father’s desktop computer with 512mb RAM. The system certainly meet the minimum specs for Vista but it was OMG slow….(Stay with me here) I then upgrade the same system to 1gb RAM and the performance improved greatly with Vista. Much later I again upgrade the computer to Windows 7 and again the performance was much improved… Now with the upcoming Windows 8 his computer will again use less RAM and CPU and thus again get another  performance improvement.  

(My Point)

This means that every single computer sold since Vista (and some before) will be able to run Windows 8 better than Vista or 7 almost without exception. Meaning there will be a MASSIVE base of computers today that will be able to run Windows 8 better than the current OS. This is a VASTLY different story to than when Windows Vista as it only ran well on all but the newest computers (and even then some did not work well)…

Excellent AppCompat

Again Windows 8 will be able to run any application that work in Windows 7, this was a vastly different to the story with AppCompat when Vista can out and I know first hand was one of the big reasons why enterprise were slow (or did not) adopt Vista… Not having this barrier will mean that any company that has made the jump to Windows 7 will have a much smaller effort to run Windows 8. Couple this with all organisations  that have Enterprise Agreement licences will already own Windows 8 not to mention the similar deployment method (as they are now) it all but eliminates the technical or financial barriers to adoption in the Enterprise… (Not i say technical and financial… More on this later).

No Compromise Tablets

Clearly the market for Tablet computing is currently booming and Windows 8 UI is optimised for the touch UI. Having used Windows 8 on a tablet device for the past 3 months I have no doubt that its new UI is great for touch device. Even some of the optimisation for the Desktop such as the improved touch keyboard make it a much better to use… But its not all about the UI. The fact that the Windows 8 will support ARM processors means that we will see computers running Windows 8 with 10+ hours battery life and instant on/off. These are clearly some key features that are needed for Microsoft to compete against the the iPad and other slate devices…

I would also point out that browsing the web using IE (not metro) will allow users to have a truly no compromise web experience touch experience by allowing browser add-on’s such as flash and Silverlight or even the new ability to make Facebook to Skype calls from within the web page. This is something that the iPad can certainly not claim and one that android devices only partly support on a few slate devices.

So when you combine a rich table/touch experience with the full desktop experience and the ability to easily use a keyboard and mouse it makes a 100% no compromise consumption and creation computing OS… Something I am sure that Apple and Google would love to be able to claim with their respective OS’s.

Marketplace Appeal

The Windows 8 Marketplace is going to be huge… Even if in worst case only half the number of Windows 8 licences are sold as Windows 7 there are still going to be hundreds of millions of installed of Windows 8 users for developer to sell their apps. I believe this above all other efforts is what is going to attract developers to the market place… not WinRT, not the ability to use the language of choice… not the familiar developer tools… but users. When you have a big audience you can sell your apps to then the developers will come running because more users = more sales and more sales = more money and more money = more developers…

Desktop + Metro UI

   I would expect that someone looking at the Windows 8 UI for the first time their initial response will be something like… Whoa that is different!!! and of course they would be right. A lot of seasoned Windows users might even feel put off by the new menu… but that is all it is… a start menu. While the start menu is certainly an important part of Windows for over 15 years something that has become really obvious with using Windows 8 a lot is that its not something that is actually used all that often… Certainly the Metro Start menu in Windows 8 will probably be user more often when there are more useful Metro Apps available however for now the desktop is certainly where i still expect to spend most of my time using Windows 8.

My biggest concern is if the UI is going to be great on devices that do not have touch? That I am not sure. I have certainly posted before about this Better Together: Windows 8 + Microsoft Touch Mouse and some of the recent video’s form CES (see Video: Windows 8 build 8175 hands-on (via TheVerge) has show better keyboard/mouse integration with the Metro UI however will this be enough? I don’t know… But i would point out that start screen on the iPad is only a grid of almost completely static icons while the Metro start menu is a grid live tiles. One is small and static and the other is large and dynamic… A difference yes, but in practical terms how much different is this to task launcher of other products…

Personally I have not spent much time in the start menu as the list of applications are limited and all the programs I use often are pinned to the task bar. So I really have not immersed myself in the new UI… I do think that some of the new ways to use the Metro UI are very nice but are not all that discoverable so i wounder how a person with no knowledge of the new Windows 8 interface will discover the new feature.

My only concern right now with the Metro UI is the lack of discoverability of the charms, and task switcher when you swipe from the edges of the screen… I can only assume that Microsoft will have do something to make this more discoverable. We will see..

(There is the obvious solution as a first run video intro for new users but this could get very old very quick somewhat like the Windows XP video that plays for the first time you install the OS. If it were up to me then I would probably add the pop-up tool tips but make sure that they only run for a user that is starting with the OS, not a seasoned using an existing profile… )

In closing…

It is clear that Windows 8 is going to have a far more features (Just see my other post  What is new in Windows 8 ) than what I just mentioned above… Some of these feature are pretty amazing and some are not so impressive, but the list of improvements are long and is as of now still not complete. We are certainly going to learn a lot more about Windows 8 later this month when the consumer preview is released and it is already clear that Microsoft are definitely taking some risks with the new UI. Weather these risks will pay off of not nobody know but what Microsoft are certainly not doing is making that same mistakes of Windows Vista that much is sure…

The web site TheVerge has published a video that shows some of the navigation and UI changes in Windows 8 since the developer preview. The video shows the follow changes since the developer preview:

1. Pull down gesture from the top of the screen down will close a metro app
2. You can customise the colour of the background and UI
3. The mouse wheel will scroll the start menu horizontally
4. Holding the CTRL-and Mouse wheel will zoom out the start screen

This certainly shows that Microsoft are starting to address some of the navigation issues that the Developer preview had using a non-touch device.

Source: http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/10/2698435/windows-8-build-8175-pictures-video

I have been waiting for Samsung to release their Windows Slate device ever since BUILD this year when all the delegates. After checking the Samsung web site i noticed they had a new listing under the “Thin and Light” category for the Series 7 Slate.

After waiting forever on the phone to JB HIFI I was told they were only in limited stores so I ran (in the car) to the Carindale store to pick one up. When I got there the help full sales assistant said they have been in stock since Monday (It took me 4 whole days to find they were out in Australia… I am getting slack). He seemed to really like the device and said it was selling well but people thought it was to expensive compared to the iPad. We then both agreed that yes it was expensive but it was a full computer and well worth the extra cost…

The hardware specs on this device are pretty good. The Second Generation Core i5 mobile part give it a lot of power yet still with useful batter life (4+ hours). 4gb ram is more than enough to run pretty much any application I need and the 64gb SSD is enough so long as I don’t load it up with heaps of media. The model that I got did not have 3G but it is an option so we may see another versions come out at a later stage sporting this mobile connectivity. What I did not realise at the time is that the screen  Gorilla Glass which makes it scratch resistant and almost unbreakable.

The obvious comparison is with the iPad which does have a solid one piece metal body. The Series 7 has a back is a brushed metal but does have some give when you try to warp the device. I also noticed tha the touch screen goes crazy when you grab the screen with you hand due to the pressure put on the screen. The device also has a fan which the iPad does not so when you star cranking the CPU it does generate a bit of heat (it is a Intel CPU after all). Battery life is a lot shorter than the iPad at about (4+ hours) but this is still fairly decent when compared to other laptops.

Update: Another thing I like about the device is that it also come with a dock Bluetooth keyboard and stylus (that I have not used yet).

The device is not an exact replica of the Windows 8 device that Microsoft gave away but it is pretty close. I bought this device primarily to load Windows 8 Developer Preview. However while I was making my Windows 8 Developer Preview USB key I gave the factory fitted Windows 7 a good run for its money…

Windows 7 on this device runs fantastic… The device is smooth and responsive to the touch unlike many of the atom based slates I have used. This has confirmed in mind that many of the issues Windows 7 on previous slate device has a lot to do with the slow hardware and not the OS itself. The Windows 7 OS does have a Samsung "Touch” skin loaded (see image below) however I found this very cumbersome and I removed it almost straight away.

After my short stint on Windows 7 I quickly loaded Windows 8 on the device with no issues using the USB install drive I just made. There are a couple of device drivers missing but this is only a developer preview so I was not expecting complete drive support. I am not too worried about the computer eventually getting full driver support as it is listed as one of the device they are using in the Windows 8 hardware test lab. Of course knowing that Microsoft is actively testing this device also made my decision to buy this table a lot easier one to make…

So with the OS loaded I logged on with my live ID account I was pleased to find that it had kept all must customisations I made using Windows 8 on my other test virtual computer. This is good example of how the cloud can make a users life much easier. It just works…

Windows 8 on this device is simply awesome. I must admit I was struggling to understand how the new UI would work and if the new start screen would be that useful… But having used Windows 8 on this for a few days now i get it, I really get. It was almost like I had an epiphany when watching a YouTube video snapped to the screen while using the full desktop browser on the other side. While this might seem trivial and something you can already do with any laptop the key here is that I was doing it using touch and that I could have a full multi-tasking and Windows desktop experience using nothing but a touch enabled device…

Update: I am also finding the ability to have the true “full web” experience in a touch screen slate device to be amazing. I have Flash and Silverlight installed and the performance and battery life is still excellent….

Samsung is in a rather unique position here with many Android and now Window device on the market. This makes me wounder if their biggest competition with the device is not Apple but it is in fact themself. Overall this device is excellent and even if you have no interest in running Windows 8 on this device it would be an excellent alternative as your next laptop purchase…

Update 1: It would seem I am having the separation issues as reported here http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/samsung/45808-you-having-screen-bezel-problem.html

Update 2: This issues is almost definitely cause by the pressure put on the edge of the screen when in the dock. The separation ONLY happens when left in dock for a period of time… I think this could be easily fixed by a different do design that does not lean the entire weight of the device on its bezel.