Category: Computers and Internet

Well, I thought at first that the new release of the Xbox Music App for Windows 8 was promising. That is, until my recent bad experience, and now something else has crept out of the woodwork.

The App is working as expected on my Desktop PC, but on my Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet 2, when I start playing an album, the first track will play, but all the rest start showing an error symbol (an exclamation mark) by them:

If I click on the symbol, then I get this:

It says:

Can’t play.

Please try again. If the problem continues, visit www.xbox.com/support to check for guidance.

more info

Tell Microsoft more about this problem

0xc00d11cd (0x8000ffff)

Once again, of course, the links provided in the error message don’t provide any guidance whatsoever.

If I let the playback continue, it will stop at the end of the currently playing track, because all the rest of the tracks are showing errors. However, I can manually advance to the next track, and it will start playing (with all the following tracks continuing to show errors):

Interestingly, I’m not the only one with this issue. And what I seem to have in common with the others is that we are using tablets built with the Intel Clover Trail chipset. This issue may well have been there for some time; it’s only with the latest release of the Xbox Music App (1.2.150.0) last week that I’ve really been using the App – it was so absymal before. It appears that it’s still dreadful.

All my music (which is DRM-free) is stored on my Windows Home Server 2011 system. As I say, the Xbox Music App works fine on my Desktop PC, which, like my Tablet, is also running Windows 8 Pro. Other music applications, both traditional Desktop Apps (e.g. Windows Media Player, Zune and Media Monkey), and Modern UI Apps (e.g. Media Monkey for Windows 8) work fine on both the Desktop PC and my Tablet.

But the Xbox Music App on the Tablet continues to be absolutely abysmal.

I’ve written about Microsoft Windows and its “Play to” feature before. Back in the days of Windows 7, it caused a number of headaches, but the problems got resolved over time. Then with the introduction of Windows 8, it seemed that we all took a step back, and a new issue appeared.

In Windows 8, it is not enough to have a piece of equipment (e.g. an amplifier or a TV) that is DLNA-certified for “Play to”, oh no; it also has to be Microsoft-certified before you can use it with a Modern UI (Metro) App in Windows 8. That means that although I can use the desktop Windows Media Player to “Play to” my trusty Denon AVR-3808 receiver (as I could under Windows 7), the new Xbox Music App in Windows 8 doesn’t even recognise the Denon as a “Play to” device.

In a post on the Building Windows 8 blog, Microsoft states:

Metro style apps work only with Windows certified Play To receivers [my emphasis]. These devices are validated to support modern media formats, are DLNA standards-compliant, and have great performance (including the updated Xbox 360 available later this year). The desktop experience first introduced in Windows 7 has been added to the Explorer Ribbon and will continue to support all DLNA DMR devices.

Windows 8 bleats that my Denon is not Microsoft-certified, so it can’t be used by any Modern UI App. Gabe Frost, a Microsoft employee, gives these reasons for introducing this Microsoft certification:

Since Windows 7, we have been certifying Play To devices (DMRs) for Windows. This certification program doesn’t invent any new standards or use any Microsoft proprietary technologies. Here is what our certification program does:

1. DLNA guidelines have a bunch of optional requirements. An example is for a device to support volume control. These things that are optional in the guidelines have an impact on the user interface both within new Store apps and in Windows UI (such as providing a user the ability to control device volume using the app volume slider, or seek into a video, or update the state of transport control buttons (play/pause/etc.) in the app UI when a user uses the TV remote control). We think this stuff is important, so Windows certification makes mandatory a specific few requirements that are optional in DLNA.

2. DLNA guidelines have mandatory requirements that they themselves don’t test. I won’t get into the details here, but the absence of a test for mandatory guidelines means that some devices implement things wrong, or don’t implement them at all, which causes weird behaviors that are hard to work around. No doubt, this isn’t on purpose (the device manufacturers always fix the issues when we bring them to their attention). Because the user experience can break because of this, we think it’s important and Windows certification actually tests the few specific requirements that are also mandatory in DLNA.

3. Expanding on #1, DLNA makes optional certain media formats that are very popular today and expected by users. The primary example is MP4 video (M4V) and audio (M4A), or more specifically  H.264 (AVC) and AAC respectively. Windows 8 has a strong focus on HTML5 for sites and apps, which depends on MP4. If DMRs don’t support MP4, we wouldn’t be able to deliver on the promise of streaming HTML5-based audio and video from apps and sites to your TV or speakers. You might think transcoding to MPEG-2 is the answer, but Surface and other Windows RT tablets don’t have MPEG-2 encoder hardware in them (and even if we did decide to do this in software, the experience would be terrible and drain your battery).

4.  Playback latency. To be competitive and to deliver a great user experience, we think a TV should start playing a video within 6 seconds and audio within 3 seconds when connected via wired Ethernet. I’d be surprised if anyone thought this was controversial.

That’s it. UPnP/DLNA is our foundation technology. Remember though, DLNA means lots of things. A TV that only implements a media player (DMP) and a TV that implements a media renderer (DMR) both have the same DLNA logo, but only one of them is even capable of working with Play To (the DMR).

While new apps from the Store won’t work with un-certified devices for reliability, performance, and other reasons, all your devices continue to work the same way they did in Windows 7. From File Explorer or Windows Media Player, these certified and un-certified devices will be shown in the context menu. We also added a button to the Ribbon to make it more friendly on touch screens. Try it on Surface or other Windows RT devices for example.

However, despite all these fine words attempting to justify this new hurdle that Microsoft has placed in our way, it all boils down to:

…new apps from the Store won’t work with un-certified devices…

And if your device has not been put through the certification process, then, tough. My Denon receiver is positively ancient – five years old – and now discontinued, so absolutely no chance of getting it certified.

However, help is at hand. Barb Bowman has been doing some detective work in the innards of the Windows Registry. She has discovered where the keys are stored that specify whether a DLNA device is Microsoft-certified. Better than that, she describes how to define your own key to “certify” your DLNA device so that it can work with Modern UI Apps.

As she points out, there are precious few vendors (only five) currently certifying their devices, and Denon isn’t one of them.

However, I followed her directions, and have now successfully created a key that enables my Denon receiver to work as a Microsoft-certified device with Modern UI Apps.

My thanks to Barb and her detective work. No thanks to Microsoft for what I feel was an unnecessary hurdle.

Update 16 July 2013: Barb has a new post up on her blog. Microsoft’s Gabe Frost has revealed that there is a simpler way of getting non-certified devices to work with Apps. Barb gives the details in her post.

Update 21 October 2013: Well, now that the final release of Windows 8.1 is available, the Play to experience seems to be broken again. I applied the registry fix given by Barb Bowman (and which came originally from Microsoft’s Gabe Frost), and that no longer seems to work for me. One step forward, two steps back yet again. Thank you Microsoft.

Update 24 October 2013: I posted the Windows 8.1 issue in a Microsoft forum, and got some useful feedback from Gabe Frost. The issue is not resolved, but at least we now know what’s going on. See https://gcoupe.wordpress.com/2013/10/23/play-to-and-windows-8-1/

Update 8 April 2014: As of today, Microsoft has released an Update to Windows 8.1 that makes it unnecessary to perform any registry edits to enable a DLNA Digital Media Renderer (DMR) to work with Modern Apps on the Start Screen. Devices will no longer appear as “uncertified” when Play is selected within an individual app (but if not certified will appear as such in the PC and Devices menu).

As I wrote here, Microsoft has recently updated the Xbox Music App for Windows 8. The update improved the navigation of the music library to the extent where I thought I could start using the App (it was absymal on first release).

So I’ve been using the Music App to play music stored in my Library, and I’ve got good news and bad news.

The good news is that navigation is much improved (although more improvement would be welcome). You can also use the Music App to purchase additional Albums. For example, as an experiment, I used the App to purchase a Cecilia Bartoli album: Sacrificium. I was pleased to see that on completion of the purchase, the Music App automatically downloaded the album tracks to a folder that it created in my Music Library, held on my Windows Home Server 2011 system. So the tracks were located in \\DEGAS\Music\Xbox Music\Purchases\Cecilia Bartoli\Sacrificium (DEGAS is the name of my WHS 2011 server). Even better, the tracks were DRM-free MP3 files recorded at 320 kbps, and contained metadata (track title, album title, artist, album art, etc.).

So far, so good. Buoyed up by that, I bought another album, this time Andreas Vollenweider’s Book of Roses. Same thing, on completion of the purchase, the Music App automatically created a folder in my Music Library (\\DEGAS\Music\Xbox Music\Purchases\Andreas Vollenweider\Book Of Roses) and downloaded the MP3 tracks to it.

Flushed with success, I bought a second Andreas Vollenweider album: Air – and that’s when things went horribly wrong.

The Music App allowed me to buy the album, but as soon as the purchase was completed, up popped this unwelcome message over the purchase confirmed screen:

It says:

There’s a problem.

Sorry, this item is no longer available from Xbox. Try searching for it – a newer version might be available.

more info

Tell Microsoft more about this problem

0xc00d133c (0×80190194)

Lovely, so Microsoft has taken my money, but failed to deliver the goods. Trying to follow the links to get more information failed miserably to resolve it. I took a gamble that this might have been a one-off glitch, and tried again. Same result, so I have now paid twice for an album that Microsoft will happily sell to me, but without ever providing the goods:

Sigh. Fortunately, these purchases were made using PayPal, so I’ve opened two dispute cases, and these have now been escalated to claims. So with luck, I’ll get my money back.

As a result of this experience, I’m somewhat leery of trying to purchase music via the Music App. I think I’ll stick to purchasing CDs.

Update: 2nd April 2013

It’s now three days later since I tried, unsuccessfully, to purchase Air. Today, I noticed that the Xbox Music App’s Home page was still listing the album as being in my collection:

So I clicked it. The album details page then showed up, with the “streaming” symbol showing by the individual tracks. The last time I was at this point, trying to play a track resulted in an error message, but I thought, what the hell… and clicked the first track.

To my surprise, it started playing, and then to my even greater surprise, the “download track” symbol started appearing by the tracks. I clicked on one, and got a message that all 13 tracks were being downloaded. So it would appear that Microsoft has fixed the purchasing issue. Now I’ve just got to persuade PayPal to authorise just one of the two payments…

Update 10th April 2013

Sigh. Today I received a couple of messages from PayPal that said:

Dear Geoff Coupe,
We’ve completed our investigation for the following claim:
Case ID:  PP-002-273-252-851
Transaction Date:  29 Mar 2013
Transaction Amount:  -7,99 EUR
Seller’s Email:  MicrosoftBilling_donotreply.eu@microsoft.com
Seller’s Name:  Microsoft Luxembourg S.a.r.l
These items are not covered by PayPal Seller Protection. Only physical
items that have been sent and can be traced online can be covered.
We advise you to contact the seller directly and to solve the problem. You
can find the contact details of the seller on the page ‘Transaction
details’.
Sincerely,
PayPal team

So. not our problem, please look elsewhere. I love that “only physical items can be covered” spiel. As we advance further into the 21st century, bits are becoming ever more financially important than atoms. It’s a pity that more services aren’t aware of this fact, or are they just in denial?

Update 11th April 2013

Sigh. I really don’t learn, do I? I thought I’d have another go at buying an album. This time, it was the Simon Rattle version of Elgar’s “The Dream of Gerontius” coupled with the “Enigma Variations”.

And this time, I thought that I’d check that I could first stream a couple of the tracks – just to make sure that the album was in fact available before I purchased it. And, yes, the tracks were available, and streaming. So I went and shelled out 8.99 Euros for the album.

Bang – Microsoft took my money. And Bang! – Microsoft refused to give me my album.

I’m sorry, but this is getting beyond a joke.

Update 13th April 2013

Well, I’m still getting the “can’t connect” error, but I seemed to have found a way to force the Xbox Music service to give me the album that I have bought. I located it online once more, and this time, I clicked the “Add to” button, and discovered that I could add it to my music library. Once I did that, the “Buy Album” button disappeared, and then the album showed up in my Library, with the “streaming” symbol beside it. More importantly, I then discovered that I could manually download the album to my server. So now I’ve got the album downloaded. It all seems quite a palaver…

Microsoft released new versions of some of their Windows 8 Apps today. The ones that I’ve seen so far are the Mail, Calendar, People and Messaging Apps, together with a new version of the Xbox Music App.

I’ve updated my post on the Xbox Music App here. In summary, whilst navigation has taken a step forward, there are many issues with this App that have not been addressed.

The Mail App has got some improvements. I like the fact that I can at last create my own Folders and view them in the Mail App, and also that I can search both locally and in my online IMAP folders automatically. I see that the Mail App still cannot handle POP accounts. Yes, it’s legacy, but it is still in widespread use by many service providers who don’t yet support IMAP.

In addition, the Mail App still hasn’t got a clue when it comes to printing out a message. It is still not possible to print just a range of pages – you can only print out every page in a message. It’s the same with the Modern UI version of Internet Explorer 10; it’s all or nothing. Clearly the Mail and IE 10 teams don’t understand how to use the new print subsystem of Windows 8 properly. They really should talk to their colleagues in the Microsoft Reader App team. Here’s an example of the print controls using the Reader App.

Note that you’ve got a “Pages” setting, where you can select to print “All pages”, “Current page” or a “Custom” selection of pages from the document.

Now here’s what you see (using the same printer device) when you want to print out a mail message from the Mail App (you’ll also see the same settings when you print out a web site in the IE10 App):

Whoops, no “Pages” option to print out a range of pages. And it’s not lurking under the “More settings” link, either:

I find it ironic that the Windows 8 Engineering Team posted an entry last year on the Building Windows 8 blog entitled: Simplifying Printing In Windows 8. It seems to me that when Microsoft’s own teams come up with inconsistent and poor user experiences for the task of printing out documents, then something is wrong somewhere. And talking of simplifying printing, I notice that the Mail App now sports a “Print” icon on the pop-up task bar at the bottom of the App. I suspect that many people are finding it confusing to print by going to the Charms bar, and choosing the “Devices” Charm…

The new version of the Calendar App offers a few extra views, but personally, I don’t find it a great leap forward.

Clearly, Microsoft expect all their customers to have Smartphones or Tablets – there’s no way to print out anything from the Calendar App. Some of us do still occasionally like to have bits of paper handy…

The People App remains very plain for me; most entries have simply the generic person icon. That’s because, by choice, I am not a Facebook or Twitter user. I communicate mostly by email.

For the same reason, I’ve never had occasion to use the Messaging App, so I have no opinion on whether it’s any better in the new version.

To sum up, despite these new versions of the Mail, Calendar and People Apps, I don’t see myself using them as my primary communication applications. I still find that job is better done using Windows Live Mail, which combines all these functions into one application that I prefer to use. Having said that, I do find myself occasionally using the Mail App on my ThinkPad Tablet to check email when I’m not at my Desktop PC. So it may grow on me, but I think further improvements will be needed first.

I’ve written before about the issues I’ve had with the “Play to” function in Windows 8. Paul Thurrott wrote an article yesterday: The Sad Tale of Play To and Windows 8, with much the same conclusions. It is worth reading the comment by John Galt after the Thurrott article. He lists a number of shortcomings in the media “features” that Microsoft have implemented in Windows 8, any one of which has me tearing my hair out.

For example, the Music App

1. has a tendency to play advertisements even when you’re playing your own music.
2. has no support for open audio codecs such as FLAC, and no apparent way to add such support
3. constantly forgets the contents of my music library, and has to rebuild the index from scratch practically every time I fire it up.
4. has no support for accessing media stored on NAS devices
5. has no support for Microsoft’s own eHome remote control standard (used by Windows Media Center since 2001)
6. has no support for acting as a “Play to” target, i.e. as a Digital Media Renderer.

Issues 4, 5, and 6 are also common to the other Microsoft-supplied Media Apps, i.e. the Video App and the Photos App.

One wonders how Microsoft can be so dismal in delivering products that should delight, and not disappoint in so many ways.

Addendum: here’s a secondary rant about the Music App, triggered by a comment below.

Navigation in the Music App is really badly thought out.

Take the Album view, for example. Choose it, and you’ll see a list of your albums.

The question is, how do you rapidly navigate through the list? The answer is: you can’t. You have to manually scroll up and down, using either your mouse or your finger. Since I have over 1,000 albums in my library, this gets very tiresome, very quickly.

The answer that Windows Media Center came up with in 2001 is that pressing a character on your keyboard will cause the display to jump to that position in the list. So pressing “m” for example, will immediately skip the display to the start of the list of albums beginning with “m”.

But the keyboard is dead in the Music App’s list displays… You can only scroll up or down.

What I find really irritating is that the developers of this App have also learned nothing from Apps built for Windows Phone. Here, there is support in the operating system itself for viewing lists at two levels of zoom. You can see a view at the level of the alphabet (a,b,c, etc.), and by touching a letter, you instantly zoom into the detailed list at that level.

This can be done for Windows 8 applications as well. Here for example, is the Media Center Remote app built by Brad Mauk, and available for both Windows Phone and Windows 8. These are screenshots taken from the Windows 8 App. On entering the Albums view, you are presented with the zoomed-out view of your library:

Notice that “x” is dimmed – this immediately tells me that I have no albums with titles beginning with “X” in my library. Now, it is true that in this App, in this view, the keyboard is also not active. So I can’t type a character on my keyboard and jump to that part of my library. However, and crucially, I can use either my mouse or Touch to choose one of the characters on this screen to jump into my library. Let’s click (or Touch) “l”:

Instantly, I’m there. If I want to return to the high-level view, I can either click the “-“ icon that appears with the horizontal scrollbar when I mouse down:

…or, if I’m using Touch, I simply use the “pinch” gesture on the screen to return to the alphabetic list of the high-level view:

Navigation within my library is easy with this App, and I happily use it to control my Windows Media Center.

The developers of Microsoft’s Music App should take note. What they have produced thus far is abysmal.

Update 26th March 2013

Today, the Music App has received an update. I’m very pleased to see that Microsoft has at last incorporated a “zoom” function to make navigation in a large library more practical. It’s implemented slightly differently from the “Windows Phone” approach taken by the Media Center Remote App described above.

In the new version of Music App, the contents of the various views (Albums, Artists, Songs, Playlists etc.) are separated alphabet headings, when listed in alphabetical order. Here you can see the start of the list of my albums:

Note the icons that I’ve circled in red. When clicked (or touched), the view zooms out to the alphabetic sections only:

One rather nice touch is that the length of the bars represents the number of albums in that section as a proportion of the highest section total. If there are no albums in a particular section, then – unlike the Windows Phone convention, where the section is dimmed – here it is dropped altogether. For example, there is no entry for “X”, since I have no albums that begin with “X”:

Clicking, or touching, anywhere along the dark/light grey bar of a section will zoom back into the library to the point represented by the section heading. In the screenshot above, I have moved my mouse over the “T” section, which is why it has become highlighted (the touch interface does not use this highlighting prompt). Left-clicking (or touching) jumps me back into the list of individual albums, starting with those beginning with “T”:

You’ll notice that the “T” section contains the highest total number of albums. That’s because the Music App – unlike Windows Media Center – has not the intelligence to ignore words like “The” or “A” in an album title. It’s a small point, but it’s evidence that teams in Microsoft often don’t appear to build on what went before, but start with a blank sheet of paper. One step forward, two steps back…

In summary, while it’s nice to see that this new version of the Music App has addressed the navigation issue, it still has a long way to go. Of the six issues that I give at the top of this post, only issue 3 seems to have been resolved, the other five issues have yet to be addressed – if indeed they ever will be.

Update 30 March 2013

I’ve been using the Music App to play music stored in my Library, and I’ve got good news and bad news.

See here for more information.

Welcome back to the next episode in what seems to be turning out to be a series of posts on my experience of using my first Windows 8 tablet – a Lenovo ThinkPad 2.

The last post took a look at some of the software applications that Lenovo has provided for their tablet, and I’ll continue that look in this post. I ended that post somewhat abruptly when I discovered how awful Lenovo’s tutorial on Windows 8 was. Not only was it shockingly poor, but it is also built for the Desktop version of Internet Explorer. One might expect that a Windows 8 tutorial would take advantage of the Modern UI of Windows 8. Clearly Lenovo don’t think so.

To see how it should be done, I think it’s instructive to take a look at HP’s tutorial for Windows 8. It is fully a Modern UI App – no forcing the hapless user to open the Desktop web browser here. This tutorial, while it was originally designed by HP for use on their Windows 8 systems, is now freely available in the Windows Store for download and installation onto any Windows 8 system:

If you’re new to Windows 8, it’s worth taking a look at this tutorial.

OK, now onwards with the contents of Lenovo’s Companion App:

Ah, QuickLaunch turns out to be yet another Start Button replacement tool. I really don’t understand the attraction of these. I want to learn how to ride my bike, not go through life with training wheels clamped to it.

Next up is the trial version of Norton Internet Security that Lenovo installed on my ThinkPad. One of the first things I did was to uninstall it, and to revert to Microsoft’s Windows Defender, which is built into Windows 8. It’s sufficient protection, in my opinion.

Then we have a couple of adverts for two of Lenovo’s own utilities: Settings and QuickSnip. I’ll deal with them later.

Lenovo Blogs opens a scrolling view of links to Lenovo’s corporate blogs. Clicking on a link will open the blog post inside the Companion App, rather than switching to the web browser, which is a nice touch. E.g. the “8 Cool Things About The ThinkPad Tablet 2” post shown here:

Needless to say, the blogs are primarily a marketing tool, and present a rosy picture. I couldn’t help but comment on the above blog post to correct some of the rosiness.

The links to the Lenovo channels on YouTube and Twitter are further examples of marketing. Once again, these channels are displayed within the Companion App itself, rather than shelling out to a separate instance of the web browser. I suspect the same thing is supposed to happen for the Accessories tile, but all I got was a blank page and a plaintive message that there was “No matched content for this system”. There is in fact an online Lenovo shop in the Netherlands, so I suspect that once again the developers of the Companion App assume that we all live in the US of A.

And as I said in my last post, I have no interest in signing up for Lenovo’s Cloud Storage – I am already a satisfied SkyDrive user.

To summarise, the Companion App strikes me as primarily a Marketing tool from Lenovo. I think it can be uninstalled without any second thoughts. Right, that about wraps it up for the Companion App, now let’s take a look at the Settings App.

The Settings App is a bit strange on my system. I’m not sure whether it’s working as it is supposed to. If I look at the Settings App in the Windows Store, I see this:

It shows a screenshot of the Settings App that contains five major sections:

• Mobile Hotspots (for internet sharing)
• Power
• Location Awareness
• Camera
• Audio

Yet, when I open up the Settings App on my ThinkPad, this is what I see:

That is, just three:

• Power
• Location Awareness
• Audio

Yet, I have two cameras in the ThinkPad. Why aren’t the settings for these shown here? ‘Tis a puzzlement.

(Update 26 February 2013: Lenovo has just released a new version of the Settings App, and there is now an entry for the Camera Settings. They’ve also said that they are working on the Mobile Settings entry for the ThinkPad Tablet 2, so this should arrive at some point)

I suppose this App is OK, as far as it goes, but I think I would have liked to have seen the Power setting (in particular, the battery charge remaining) broken out into a separate tile that could be pinned to the Start Screen, or displayed in the Settings App tile itself. That would have been useful. Having to start up the Settings App, and then select the Power section – not so much.

There’s not much more to say about this App – it’s pretty ho-hum as it stands.

The Support App opens with a horizontally scrollable window showing six sections:

• User Guide
• Services and Warranty
• System Health
• Hints and Tips
• Knowledge Base
• Discussion Forum

The User Guide section launches the PDF file of the user guide in the Microsoft Reader App. While it may be thought to be a little more clumsy to launch the Reader, rather than display the user guide directly within the Support App, this does have one advantage. The Reader App is able to use the Devices in the Charms bar to print out pages from the user guide. The Support App (just like all the other Lenovo Apps) does not support Devices. What is more, the Reader App, unlike Microsoft’s Modern UI Internet Explorer and Mail Apps, can print out a subset of pages from the guide.

I do like the fact that the Service and Warranty section displays the exact state of the warranty on my ThinkPad. It tells me how many days I have left before something will inevitably break – just after the warranty runs out, or am I being overly cynical here?

The System Health section is a little useful. It does indicate the amount of free storage and the amount of installed memory. However, while it tantalisingly states that “You can run certain tests on your computer to check the condition of your hard disk drive”, it doesn’t actually tell you what these tests actually are and where to find them.

I’m also slightly disappointed that under the memory section, there is a clickable link that takes you to the online Lenovo shop where you can buy additional memory. Er, the ThinkPad 2 uses the Intel Clover Trail Atom chip – this only supports a maximum of 2GB memory, and more cannot be fitted. That link should never appear if this App is running on the ThinkPad 2.

Attention to detail is important, I think. It makes the difference between an acceptable user experience, and a great user experience. It also turns your users into active supporters of your products.

The rest of the sections (“Hints and Tips”, “Knowledge Base”, “Discussion Forum”) show information scraped from the various Lenovo resources and forums on the web. Like the Companion App, these are shown directly within the Support App itself, rather than shelling out to the web browser. For a quick overview, this is probably OK, but frankly, if I want to read the Lenovo ThinkPad forums, it is far easier to read them directly in a web browser. I can also interact, by replying to threads or making new ones. I cannot do this from within the Support App.

In summary, I find the App OK. It is good-looking, but without much depth. However, it can stay on my system.

The QuickSnip App is a simple image cropping tool, which uses the Share function in the Charms bar to pass on cropped images:

This App from Lenovo is like the majority of the current crop of Modern UI Apps provided by Microsoft: almost entirely useless.

I’ve just uninstalled it from my system.

Overall, I cannot say that the Lenovo Apps have provided a great experience. I still think that the ThinkPad 2 hardware is basically a solid product, and I’m still very happy with my purchase. But I don’t think I’m head over heels in love with it. Perhaps I’m just too rational – I doubt whether I could ever be an Apple fanboi either.

Following on from the last post, here’s some further thoughts on the software experience of the ThinkPad tablet.

One criticism that I’ve often read of PC OEMs is that they stuff their machines with bloat-ware. While I don’t think that Lenovo is quite as bad as some, it still comes with some software of questionable utility.

Here we see five utilities, I’ve already removed a couple; the inevitable anti-virus trial, and an application to access Lenovo’s cloud storage

Since I already use Skydrive (with luckily 25 GB free storage), I don’t need the hassle of managing more cloud storage.

Let’s take a look at the remaining five applications. First up, the Companion App.

Oh dear, this doesn’t look good. Basically lots of (questionable) style, and little (apparent) substance. OK, let’s take a look at the “Getting Started” section.

Oh gawd, another invitation to install Norton Internet Security. Look, people, Windows 8 comes with a perfectly good anti-virus and anti-malware software out of the box. A Pox on your suggested alternatives. I’ve been there, I’ve done that. I’ve paid the money, had the bloated software experience, and frankly – no more…

OK. What’s this “Customize your start menu” stuff?  Well, frankly, I haven’t a clue, because there’s nothing on that screen that is a link to take me to anything resembling a “Lenovo Quicklaunch”.  It’s dead. Fail number two.

So then I made the mistake of clicking on the “About Companion”  tile.

Welcome to the land of Exclamation Points!!!

Discover! Change is Good! Your Companion!

Er, basically – fuck off.

OK – onwards to the next point in our journey: the “Stay Connected” tile. This is, as expected an advert for the Lenovo Mobile Access service.

Well, this is all very well; but unfortunately, it doesn’t work for me, as I’ve documented here. I still haven’t had my connectivity issues resolved by Macheen’s Support service, so I’m continuing to use Vodafone’s service, thank you very much.

Update 25 February 2013: I’ve now heard back from Lenovo/Macheen Support, and they have indeed fixed my problems with Lenovo Mobile Access, so I can now choose to use their pay-as-you-go mobile access service. Excellent.

Update 30 December 2013: Ah, not so excellent. Lenovo/Macheen have deactivated my SIM card because I hadn’t used it for six months, and expect me to buy a new one to continue using their service. Sorry, guys, you’ve just lost a customer, and I’m certainly not recommending you to all my friends.

Onwards to the Lenovo Services, with its very busy graphic. This turns out to be an invitation to shell out money to enjoy extra warranty protection or premium support services.

While I have no objection in principle to this, I do wish that the developers of these web pages would realise that not everyone lives in the US of A and direct us to the local country services.

On to the “App Showcase”tile. Personally, I’m underwhelmed, but maybe that’s just me.

After all, I could just search for “Lenovo” in the Windows Store and see many more possibilities to choose from. Or not, as the case may be:

I’ll skip over the “Last Gadget Standing” tile, which is a transient advert for an event in the past, and the “rara.com” tile, which is an invite to download yet another music service and move swiftly on to the “How to DO Windows® 8” tile. Really, the title alone is enough to make me want to lose the will to live. Still, let’s steel ourselves and press on.

There are some ominous signs in the welcome message that this is not going to be a smooth experience. For example: “When you click the ‘Learn more’ button, you will be prompted to open the Desktop browser”. Oh dearie me; this does not bode well.

And sure enough:

Oh, dear god – is this really the best you could do?

I’m sorry. I really need to pause and take a deep breath at this point. I’ll carry on with exploring the Lenovo experience later on, when I’ve had a chance to recover.

I should just say that I do rather like the Lenovo ThinkPad 2 tablet. It’s just that the software that’s been tossed onto it rather sours the overall experience.

This is a test post made on my new Lenovo ThinkPad 2 using the handwriting recognition of Windows 8. I must admit that it’s pretty scarily good at recognising my scrawl.

You know, I think it is preferable for someone to acknowledge that they don’t know the answer, rather than to either studiously ignore the question, or make something up on the spot.

This has been brought to mind during my hunt for a suitable Windows 8 Tablet.

You may recall that I haven’t been too impressed with the current state of the Windows 8 Tablet market. Well, it’s now six weeks further on, so I’ve been gathering more data points in my search for a suitable tablet to invest in.

My shortlist of tablets came down in the end to

• the Lenovo Thinkpad 2
• the Dell Latitude 10
• the Asus Vivo Tab TF810c
• the HP Envy X2

The Lenovo and the Dell are pure tablets, while the Asus and HP are hybrid convertibles – they can be used as notebooks, but their keyboards completely detach when required. All four supposedly had active digitizers with proper pen support, which was one of my requirements.

I also had an outside candidate, the Microsoft Surface Pro. Outside, because although it uses the more powerful Intel Core i5 CPU, in place of the Intel Atom Z2760 CPU used in the above tablets, this in turn means that it has a shorter battery life, and requires a cooling fan. There’s also a question mark over whether it will be available in the Dutch market.

In the end, I dropped both the HP and the Asus from consideration. The HP, while it supposedly had an active digitizer, the pen was optional, and at the moment is completely unobtainable. In fact, it’s like the mythical unicorn – some people claim to have seen it, but in practice, it’s missing in action. The Asus looks good, and seems to have a decent build quality, but what finally knocked it out of consideration for me is the fact that Asus support is lagging badly. Unlike the other vendors, Asus still do not yet have updated software drivers available for their product, or the Intel Atom chipset. That’s not a good sign in my book.

It was then down to a choice between the Lenovo or the Dell. I liked the fact that the Dell had a replaceable battery, but on the other hand, the prices for the accessories were always higher than for the Lenovo range. So my choice came down to the Lenovo Thinkpad 2.

The problem was, that there was not just the one model in the Thinkpad 2 range, there was a veritable army of them, and it was far from clear as to what precisely the differences might be, or what what be available in the Dutch market.

Lenovo publish documents that detail the models that are available in Western Europe. The first time I looked, last December, there were only a few to choose from. Then, in January, more became available. There seemed to be two series of products: the 3679 series and the 3682 series. From the published information (as of January 2013), that detailed the models as follows:

Type-model	Storage	Tablet Pen	WWAN	NFC	O.S.
3679-23G	64GB	No	None	None	Win8 32
3679-24G	64GB	Pen	Yes	None	Win8 Pro32
3679-25G	64GB	Pen	Yes	NFC	Win8 Pro32
3679-2PG	32GB	No	None	None	Win8 32
3679-4HG	64GB	No	Yes	None	Win8 32

Type-model	Storage	Tablet Pen	WWAN	NFC	O.S.
3682-28G	64GB	Pen	None	None	Win8 Pro32
3682-29G	64GB	Pen	None	NFC	Win8 Pro32
3682-25G	32GB	No	None	None	Win8 32
3682-42G	64GB	No	Yes	None	Win8 Pro32
3682-4FG	64GB	Pen	Yes	NFC	Win8 Pro32

However, when I looked at the sites of the Dutch retailers, I was seeing a completely different series of numbers:

N3S23MH – 64GB, Win 8 (not clear whether it has the pen or NFC)
N3S25MH – 64GB, Win 8 Pro (not clear whether it has the pen or NFC)
N3S4HMH – 64GB, Win 8 (not clear whether it has the pen or NFC)
N3S2PMH – 32GB, Win 8 (not clear whether it has the pen or NFC)

Looking at all the sets of numbers, and the prices, then I was fairly sure that the mapping would be:

3679-23G – N3S23MH
3679-24G – ?
3679-25G  – N3S25MH
3679-2PG – N3S2PMH
3679-4HG – N3S4HMH

However, I had no clue as to what the difference was between the 3679 and the 3682 series.

I documented all this in the Lenovo Thinkpad forum, and hoped that someone from Lenovo would pop along to clear up the confusion.

No such luck.

And there it stood until a few days ago when I saw that one of the Dutch retailers (only the one so far) had the N3S25MH model arriving in stock. So, I emailed the retailer to ask whether this model shipped with the digitizer and the pen.

No response.

Yesterday, the model was showing as in stock, so I asked again. I also took a chance and ordered it.

Of course, as soon as my order was accepted, I had a reply from the retailer that (1) this model did not come with a pen, but that (2) I could order a pen part number FRU39T0803. Naturally, this pen was NOT the Thinkpad 2 pen, but something else entirely. 

Clearly, either this salesperson did not have a clue, or my assumption that the N3S25MH model was the 3679-25G model was completely wrong. I might add that a few weeks back, I was reliably informed by another Dutch reseller that the N3S23MH model came with a digitizer and pen (it doesn’t).

Well, the Thinkpad 2 arrived today, and I’m relieved to report that the N3S25MH is exactly the same as the 3679-25G model – it even says this on the box. So it came with the pen, with WWAN and NFC.

It also came with a large sticky label plastered on the back saying NON-ENCRYPTION. I suspect that this is the difference between the 3679 series and the 3682 series. The latter has the TPM hardware fitted and enabled, while the former does not.

It is a bit frustrating that we have to figure all this out by ourselves. Lenovo don’t make it clear, and their resellers, judging from my experience of the Dutch resellers, don’t have a clue.

I admit that I am getting fed up with two things.

• The constant drip-drip of people complaining about Windows 8, and how it is a disaster of epic proportions.
• Microsoft’s seeming inability to market Windows 8 as something that really is a step change for the better.

So it gives me some pleasure to be able to claim that someone, somewhere in Microsoft knows how to do proper marketing. Enter the (small) demonstrator.

I really like the punchline at the end. It punctures prejudices on a number of levels.

Back in March, I wrote a post called “Microsoft’s Marmite”, which likened the reactions of people to Marmite to their reactions to Windows 8 – they either love it or hate it.

Now that Windows 8 has been released, I continue to be amazed at the amount of vitriol being poured upon it. I really can’t see what all the fuss is about. Yes, there are some radical changes in the user interface, but I certainly don’t find them a problem at all.

In that light, I was somewhat amused to read Jakob Nielsen’s condemnation of the design of Windows 8. After all, he’s the design guru who jointly set up the Nielsen Norman Group along with Don Norman, another design guru, who has written:

Windows 8 is brilliant, and its principles have been extended to phones, tablets, laptops, and desktop machines (and larger — for example, Surface), whether operated by gesture, mouse and keyboard, or stylus, but with appropriately changed interaction styles for the different sizes of devices and different input devices.

(note: the Surface device that Norman refers to is Microsoft’s table top device, now renamed as Microsoft PixelSense – he wrote this piece before Microsoft announced their Surface tablets)

As well as being amused, I confess to also being more than a little irritated by Nielsen’s review, because it seemed to me that he was often deliberately misrepresenting what Windows 8 is, and how it behaves in practice.

For example, he writes:

“Windows” no longer supports multiple windows on the screen. Win8 does have an option to temporarily show a second area in a small part of the screen, but none of our test users were able to make this work. Also, the main UI restricts users to a single window, so the product ought to be renamed “Microsoft Window.”

Er, sorry, the Windows desktop is just as it always has been, supporting multiple overlapping windows. The Modern UI view, designed for tablets and similar devices, does indeed show only two Modern UI apps simultaneously, but the traditional desktop hasn’t gone away, it’s still there. I find it hilarious that Nielsen states that “none of our test users were able to make this [the Modern UI view] work”, when he has just proudly stated

we invited 12 experienced PC users to test Windows 8 on both regular computers and Microsoft’s new Surface RT tablets

“Experienced”? They don’t seem particularly savvy to me. I cottoned on to this facility very early on, and use it to share my Desktop with Modern UI Apps.

The other example that I’ll give where it seems to me that Nielsen is not playing fair is the section where he claims that Windows 8’s “Flat style Reduces Discoverability”. He uses the example of the Settings Charm to illustrate this:

I find it odd that none of his “experienced PC users” noticed that as they moused over the icons and text in this panel, they would be highlighted to indicate that they were buttons, e.g.:

   or  

Frankly, I think Mr. Nielsen has not done a very good job in reviewing Windows 8 here. Scott Barnes also thinks that, and goes into far more detail. His critique of the Nielsen review is worth reading.

It’s now a little over two weeks since Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system and the Surface tablet running Windows RT were released and I’ve been following the many reactions to the products that have been published in blogs, articles, and forums around the web.

I’ll write about Windows 8 in another post; here I want to consider some of the reactions to the Surface with Windows RT (I’m just going to refer to it as the “Surface RT” from now on…). I should say at the outset that I don’t own one, and for reasons that I hope will become clear, I doubt whether I would want to.

It seems as though most reviewers give high marks to the hardware design, fit and finish of the Surface RT. There are some niggles, e.g. the magnetic power connector doesn’t always make proper contact for charging, and as time goes on, other issues may start arising, which will require some corrective action by Microsoft in the design. For example, reports are emerging that may point to a weakness in the keyboard/cover design – however, it appears that only two people have experienced this issue so far. In general, the Surface RT and its keyboard/cover get high marks.

The hardware, of course, is only half the story. It’s the combination of the hardware and the Windows RT operating system that form the experience that the user has with the device. And it’s there that my doubts start to creep in. My starting point is that I have no interest in getting an Apple iPad – it’s too limited a device for me. Microsoft’s marketing positions the Surface RT as a device that can do more (“See more, share more, and do more with Surface”). For some people, that is undoubtedly true, but that is not the case for everyone. For example, Peter Bright, whose reviews of Microsoft products I trust, has discovered, I think to his dismay, that the Surface RT falls far short of what he is looking for in a tablet device. Mind you, he sets the bar pretty high, and it’s clear that an iPad also wouldn’t meet it. The deal breaker, for him, was that he relies on Outlook. While the Surface comes with some stripped-down components of Microsoft’s Office suite, it does not include Outlook. He summarised his opinion of the Surface thus:

Surface is meant to be something more than a plain iPad-like tablet. For me, it failed to be enough more, leaving it in limbo; it’s not good enough to take on laptops, and it’s not good enough to take on iPad. It falls short of both goals.

It seems to me that the Achilles heel of the Surface RT is the Windows RT operating system. It may look like Windows 8, but under the covers, it runs on completely different hardware. Simply put, that means that it can’t run the millions of Windows applications that are available. At this point, it can only run the 10,000+ applications that have been written for the Modern UI environment of Windows 8.

Here’s a few practical examples of why I won’t be buying a Surface RT:

• It doesn’t have GPS built-in. Now, I can add GPS capability to any Windows Notebook or a Tablet that has Bluetooth using my Qstarz GPS logger. However, even though the Surface has Bluetooth, I won’t be able to add the software driver for the GPS logger to the Surface, so no GPS for me.
• It doesn’t have an active stylus (unlike the Surface Pro), only a capacitive stylus. I write, as I always have done, by resting my wrist, or lower arm, on the writing surface. With an active stylus, the tablet is able to distinguish between the tip of the stylus, and my wrist that is resting on the tablet’s screen. I don’t think the Surface RT can do this very effectively, so I would have to write in what to me is an unnatural fashion (or wear a glove!). Handwriting recognition is built-into Windows RT as it is in Windows 8, but I suspect that it won’t be as fast on the RT platform as it is on the Surface Pro.
• There may be 10,000+ applications available for the Surface RT, but the quality of the majority is abysmal. I am still finding that I am working in the Desktop mode of Windows 8, with desktop applications, for most of the time. This blog post itself is being written using Microsoft’s own Windows Live Writer, which doesn’t run on Surface RT.

When Microsoft releases the second model in their Surface range, the Surface Pro, the situation may change. The Surface Pro will run all my Windows applications, and it uses Intel hardware. However, as I’ve written before, it uses an older generation of Intel hardware, which means that the Surface Pro requires a cooling fan. I suspect I’ll end up waiting for the new generation of Intel processors to start appearing – then fanless tablets will be available.

Update: Here’s another review of the Surface RT, this one being very positive. I can fully understand why, the Surface RT delivers on the requirements of this particular user. Unfortunately, it seems to me that my requirements exceed the current capabilities of the Surface RT.