Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Category: Computers and Internet

  • Microsoft’s Surface Drops a Veil

    With just over a week to go to the launch of Windows 8, Microsoft has revealed the pricing on the first in its range of tablets, the Surface RT.

    The price starts at $499 for a bare-bones Surface RT tablet with 32GB of storage and 2GB memory, but without a touch keyboard/cover. That puts it on a par with Apple’s iPad, or to put it another way: not cheap, but premium-priced.

    The Surface RT is now available for pre-order in eight countries. Inevitably, this does not include the Netherlands, and there’s no word on whether availability here will come later, or, indeed, ever.

    The announcement also revealed a little more detail about the specifications of the Surface RT and the Surface Pro models. There’s also a comparison chart.

    While both models have sensors (ambient light, accelerometer, gyroscope and compass) built in, neither model has a GPS sensor. This strikes me as a rather surprising omission, particularly since some iPad models have GPS. Using Bing maps on the Surface would seem to be a very limited experience if the Surface has no means of discovering your location. I suppose that, with the Surface Pro, I could always use my GPS Logger connected via Bluetooth. I could install the Windows driver for the logger onto a Surface Pro; something that I don’t think can be done with the Surface RT. Still, on further reflection, this lack of GPS capability may not be a showstopper. I rather think that 3G and GPS capabilities go together in the chipsets, and since neither of the Surface models come with 3G built-in, then GPS is also missing. And as for the Bing maps experience, perhaps the Surfaces can do Wi-Fi positioning to provide location coordinates. We shall see.

    One other thing I notice in the specs for the Surface Pro (which will be available “soon”) is that it lists the CPU as “3rd generation Intel Core i5 Processor with Intel HD Graphics 4000”. That also is a bit odd: using a Core i5 processor, rather than the next generation Intel Atom processor, the Z2760, codenamed Clover Trail. The selling point of the Atom Z2760 is that it is able to take advantage of the new “Connected Standby” capability in Windows 8, which allows longer usage time between battery charging. While the Surface RT, like all ARM-based devices will be able to exploit Connected Standby, Microsoft’s Intel-based tablet, the Surface Pro, will not, because it uses the Intel Core i5. Other manufacturers will have Atom Z2760-based tablets on the market as early as next week, e.g. Samsung, with its Series 5 Slate.

    I think I’ll wait and see how the tablet market develops. In the meantime, my desktop will get upgraded to Windows 8 next week.

    Update: it’s clear that many people are totally confused about the differences between the Windows 8 operating system (used on the Surface Pro), and the Windows RT operating system (used on the Surface RT). For example, I saw a question on a photography forum where someone asked if the Surface RT would be powerful enough to run Adobe Lightroom.

    Many people assume that Windows RT will run traditional Windows applications. Nope, it can’t; not unless the application developer recompiles the software code for the different hardware (ARM instead of Intel/AMD). In addition, this recompilation is not always possible, because the Windows programming environment for the ARM hardware is a subset of what is available for the Intel/AMD platform.

    We will see next week just what the limitations are in detail. For example, one question I have is whether the Surface RT will have the same level of handwriting recognition that Windows 8 has. I suspect that it won’t.

    Update 2: AnandTech has a comprehensive review of the Surface RT that is worth reading. I particularly like the fact that Anand compares the performance of the Surface RT with an unnamed (but shortly to be released) Windows 8 Tablet that uses the Atom Z2760. It’s interesting that the Atom out-performs the ARM-based Surface RT. Plus, of course, the Atom will run all the traditional Windows desktop application software and the Surface RT can’t.

  • RIP – IDimager

    One of my hobbies is photography, and my main tool for managing my digital photos is IDimager. I’ve been using it since January 2007. It’s now up to version 5, and I’ve been very happy with it. I occasionally visit the IDimager support forums, just to see if there are any announcements, or tips and tricks being posted. Yesterday I read a message from the developer that said:

    IDimager V5 is discontinued as of today. Photo Supreme is a different product when compared to IDimager V5. They don’t offer an identical feature set so I recommend all IDimager V5 users to first try Supreme to see if it fits their need before they decide to make the switch.

    My immediate reaction was WTF? Whilst I had been aware of the Photo Supreme product, last time I looked, a few months ago, it was for the Mac, and there was no whisper of a Windows version being made available. Fast forward a couple of months, and now it has killed off IDimager. Needless to say, I’m not very happy about this, and neither are a lot of other IDimager customers. IDimager is a serious Digital Asset Management (DAM) tool, and Photo Supreme, at first glance, has far less functionality; so for many people, Photo Supreme is nowhere near an acceptable replacement. A typical reaction:

    Well that’s a real shame because you have killed off one of the best DAM systems a working professional could ask for and replaced it with a toy. I wish you luck with Photo Supreme, but regrettably it’s not a professional standard product IMO.

    Because I tend to work mostly with JPG images, I’ll probably be able to carry on using IDimager for some time to come. However, for professional photographers who work with RAW format images, then IDimager will soon not be able to handle images produced by new camera models. These people have been thrown into a pit. I can only echo what someone else posted:

    I have always had a lot of respect for Hert [the chief developer] and his responsiveness to bugs and feature requests. It made IDI stand out in a market dominated by big software giants who bought, crippled then abandoned software. Sadly yesterday’s announcement felt all too familiar and not what I have come to expect.

    Since I have never used all of IDimager’s power (similar to most people only ever using a fraction of the capabilities of Microsoft Word), I’m taking a look at Photo Supreme to see it is a possible replacement for my usage patterns. But I’m doing so with a rather sour taste in my mouth at the moment.

    Addendum 18th September 2014: I thought it was worthwhile adding that since writing this post, I switched (a while ago now) across to Photo Supreme, and have not regretted doing so. PSU has continued to evolve (version 3 is about to be released), and it has matured into a very good DAM.

    Photo Supreme V3 is worth looking at.

  • “It’s An Incredible Deal”

    That’s the summary of Paul Thurrott’s article on Microsoft’s Office 2013 pricing. I think his understanding of the definition of the word “incredible” is rather different to mine.

    While you will be able to purchase licenses for the Office 2013 suite, the main thrust of Microsoft’s announcement is to move from a license purchase model to an annual subscription model.

    Thurrott enthuses that:

    Yes, you’ll be able to acquire Office 2013 the old-fashioned way. But the benefits and pricing of the subscription plans are so attractive you won’t want to.

    However, when I do the sums, the subscription model has zero attraction for me.

    I bought a copy of Office Home and Student 2007 for €125 almost 6 years ago; it’s still fine (I never felt the urge to upgrade to Office 2010), and licensed for 3 PCs – which is all I need.

    Under this new subscription model, I would be paying €600 for the equivalent term for Office 365 Home Premium. If I want to buy Office 2013 for my PCs, then I’ll now have to buy three licenses; Microsoft has stopped doing the “licensed for up to 3 PCs” deal that they had for Office 2007 and Office 2010. However, while buying three copies of the traditional Home and Student versions of Office 2013 is cheaper at €420 Euros than the subscription cost for a six-year term, it’s still an enormous increase over the €125 cost of the equivalent license for Office 2007.

    Frankly, if I’m going to get Office 2013 at all, then I’ll only be tempted to buy just one copy of Office 2013 for €140, and leave Office 2007 on the other two PCs.

    The subscription model may be great for Microsoft, but it makes no sense for me.

  • “Windows 8 is Windows 7+1”

    I’ve mentioned before how much I’ve been surprised by the level of vitriol and hatred that has been unleashed against Microsoft’s forthcoming Windows 8 operating system. Everywhere I turn, on tech blogs and forums, there are articles, posts and threads complaining about the “disaster” that is Windows 8. Opinions galore, often complete with falsehoods stated as facts.

    I find it all a bit bemusing. To be sure, Windows 8 is not without blemishes, but it’s hardly a disaster. I actually like it. I’ll be upgrading my release preview of Windows 8 to the full Windows 8 Pro when it is released on October 26. I certainly will not be returning to Windows 7.

    So it’s something of a relief to find a kindred spirit in the form of Scott Hanselman, who describes Windows 8 as Windows 7+1:

    Maybe I’m too relaxed but after a few days and some hotkeys I’ve found Windows 8 to be Windows 7+1. Works fine, no crashes, lots of improvements. I spend most of my desktop time in Windows apps, all of which work. I keep News apps or Video apps in full screen on other monitors and I do move the Start Screen around but generally the whole thing has been a non-issue.

    And he actually shows why he has reached this conclusion in a detailed post. It’s worth reading.

  • Microsoft’s Photo Gallery – Yet Another Missed Opportunity?

    As I wrote in my last post, Microsoft has recently released a new version of Windows Live Photo Gallery, now simply known as “Photo Gallery”. That last post documented an issue that Photo Gallery has over its handling of geotags. In this post I want to look at what I would consider to be missed opportunities by Microsoft to set the lead in the field of software aimed at organising digital photos.

    Microsoft is a founding member of the Metadata Working Group, a consortium of leading companies in the digital media industry, focused on the following goals:

    • Preservation and seamless interoperability of digital image metadata
    • Interoperability and availability to all applications, devices, and services

    Almost two years ago, in November 2010, the group published version 2 of its Guidelines for Handling Image Metadata. As I wrote at the time, it’s “a major new version of the Guidelines”. The document states:

    This expanded specification builds on existing metadata standards to describe several emerging consumer properties that:

    • Use regions to record faces, focus points, barcodes, or other data in an image
    • Provide hierarchical keywords to richly describe and classify images
    • Flexibly identify an image as part of a greater media collection

    While software applications are supporting features such as people tags and hierarchical keywords, they use differing implementations, so that interoperability between applications is difficult, if not often impossible.

    Version 2 of the Guidelines was an attempt to define a common specification in these areas, to drive interoperability forward.

    What I find disappointing is that, nearly two years later, the new version of Photo Gallery has not implemented any of these proposed specifications, and continues with the old Microsoft-proprietary ways of doing things, despite the fact that Microsoft is a founding member of the Metadata Working Group.

    Still, the same charge can also be levelled at Adobe, another founding member. Their latest version of Lightroom, Lightroom 4, also continues with the Adobe-proprietary ways of doing things. The result? You can forget about any real interoperability between Photo Gallery and Lightroom when it comes to People Tags and Hierarchical Keywords.

    One last, rather ironic, point. Despite the fact that Google is not a member of the Metadata Working Group, I’m heartened to see that Google has actually implemented the version 2 Guidelines proposed standard for People Tags in version 3.9 of Picasa. So it can be done. C’mon Microsoft and Adobe, get with the programme, give us tools that actually talk to each other…

  • Windows Photo Gallery, Geotags and Other Issues

    Microsoft has recently released a new version of Windows Live Photo Gallery. In keeping with Microsoft’s plan to kill off the “Live” branding, it is now simply known as “Photo Gallery”, and the suite of software utilities is now known as Windows Essentials, rather than the old name of Windows Live Essentials.

    Since this is a step change in the software (it’s now at version 16.4.3503.728, while the last version of Windows Live Photo Gallery was 15.4.3538.513), I thought I’d take another look at it.

    Apart from the name change, not much seems to have been done with the product. Yes, Microsoft has added in the possibility to publish videos to the Vimeo service and Photo Gallery now includes an Auto-Collage feature by default (this was a downloadable plug-in for the previous version), but that’s about it.

    However, while playing around with it, I discovered there was an issue with the way in which Photo Gallery was handling geotags.

    Some of you may recall that, when it was first released in 2010, Windows Live Photo Gallery had a major problem with geotags.  It was writing out GPS coordinate data into photos that was often completely wrong. Microsoft got this fixed in December 2010.

    And there the matter rested, or so I thought.

    However, I have discovered another issue related to geotags in Photo Gallery. For a long time now, Microsoft has said that it holds to the principle that “the truth is in the file”. That means that metadata you apply to your photos is part of the photo, and available to any application that knows how to read it. But I’ve found that this does not apply to geotags in all cases. Photo Gallery looks to see if the image contains metadata, and if so, the following operations occur:

    • If the photo contains Keywords in its metadata, these are added to PG’s list of Descriptive Tags, which it holds in its database and displayed alongside the photo in PG’s information pane. 
    • If the photo contains technical data in Exif (e.g. date taken, shutter and ISO speeds, etc.), these will be copied to PG’s database and displayed in PG’s information pane.
    • If the photo contains GPS coordinates in its metadata when it’s examined by PG, reverse geocoding will be triggered and the location is displayed as text addresses in the information pane.

    The screenshot below shows a photo taken with my Nokia Lumia 800 Windows Phone being displayed in Photo Gallery (click for the full-sized image).

    WPG test 10

    In the information pane on the right, you can see some of the metadata present in the image being shown, including the GPS Latitude and Longitude (at the bottom right). Photo Gallery has used this GPS data to do reverse geocoding via a Bing service to resolve the coordinates to an address. That is being shown under the Geotag heading in the information pane. By default, only the City and Province/State data is shown (i.e. Aalten, Gelderland in this case). The full address is shown in a tooltip if the mouse cursor is placed over the Geotag – in this case, Bing has said that the GPS data is for the location: Tammeldijk 6, Aalten, Gelderland, Netherlands.

    As an aside, Bing has actually got the address wrong. It should be Tammeldijk 4, not 6. Google Maps will show the correct address, if fed these GPS coordinates…

    So, Photo Gallery has just generated some location data based on the GPS coordinates. Now the question is, how is it going to stay with the principle of “the truth is in the file”? It needs to write this generated data out into the image metadata in some fashion. How will it do this, and what standard will it use? I need to make a short digression here into the murky waters of industry standards…

    One very common industry standard for location (and other) metadata used in photos is that defined by the International Press and Telecommunications Council. Back in the early 1990s, the IPTC defined a standard for image metadata: IPTC-IIM. This became widely adopted and supported in many software tools and applications. However, it had design limitations, and the IPTC introduced a new version in 2005, based on the XMP standard, known as IPTC Core. Many software tools and applications handle both standards, and keep the metadata content synchronised between the legacy IIM and the new Core standards. Along with the Core standard, the IPTC also published a set of extensions, known, unsurprisingly, as Extension. The IPTC Core and Extension are published together as the IPTC Photo Metadata Standards.

    Both IPTC-IIM and IPTC Core contain fields for defining locations. Essentially, both define a hierarchy of (sub)location, city, state/province, country and country code. I, like many other photographers, use these fields for assigning locations to my photographs.

    However, somewhere along the line, photographers realised that the term “location” was ambiguous. Did it refer to where the photograph was taken, or did it refer to the location depicted in the photograph? These were not necessarily the same place. The standards did not specify a resolution to this conundrum. That is why, in the IPTC Extension standard, there are two sets of location fields: the location where the photograph was created, and the location depicted in the image.

    Clearly, the GPS coordinates reflect the location where the photograph was created, and Microsoft elected to use the IPTC Extension LocationCreated fields to store the results of the reverse geocoding lookup. The correct decision, in my opinion.

    Back in 2010 when I found that false GPS coordinates were being written out to my photos, what was happening was that Windows Live Photo Gallery was doing the following:

    • If a file contained IPTC-IIM or Core location metadata when it was brought into WLPG, then WLPG used the IPTC Location data to set the location strings in the geotag field of the info pane, and wrote them out into the image metadata as IPTC LocationCreated fields.
    • If the file did not contain GPS coordinates, WLPG would attempt to use the Location metadata with a Bing lookup to get the closest match for the GPS coordinates. In many cases, “the closest match” was miles away, or even in another country…
    • WLPG would then write out its idea of the “correct” GPS coordinates into the Exif metadata of the image.

    I, and other photographers, who had been using IPTC-IIM/Core location metadata, suddenly found our photo collections filled with false GPS coordinates. We complained, and Microsoft responded and changed the way in which WLPG worked. Microsoft told me the changes were:

    • GPS coordinates on a file are read-only inside of WLPG.  WLPG will never add, change or delete the GPS coordinates.
    • If a file contains GPS coordinates when it’s brought in to WLPG, reverse geocoding will be triggered and location strings are displayed in the info pane, users can rename or remove the strings but GPS coordinates won’t be touched. Users may Rename a location but it will then leave a mismatch between the coordinates and the string since the coordinates are read-only.
    • If a file does not contain GPS coordinates, users will be able to geotag by adding a string (that gets validated against Bing as it does today) but no GPS coordinates are added to the file.  The user can remove the string or rename it.
    • If the file contains a geo name only, there will be no GPS coordinates calculated for it.

    What I now see that I missed at the time is that WLPG, and now PG, no longer write out the result of a reverse geocode lookup into the IPTC Extension LocationCreated fields when the lookup is triggered by the presence of GPS coordinates in the image.

    The only time that LocationCreated metadata gets written out into the image is when the user makes an explicit change to the geotag information in PG. And it has to be a real change. I can open up the “rename location” panel, and click “Save”, but unless I’ve actually made a change in the data, nothing gets written out as metadata – the geotag information resides solely in Photo Gallery’s local database. In other words, the truth is no longer in the file.

    This screenshot shows the “rename location” panel. Clicking “save” does not make Photo Gallery write out the metadata, because I’ve left the contents unchanged.

    WPG test 2

    In this screenshot, I’ve changed “Tammeldijk 6” to “Tammeldijk 4”, and now when I clicked “Save”, the LocationCreated metadata was written out.

    WPG test 3

    This strikes me as a bit counter-intuitive. I would think that clicking “Save” in both cases should force a write of metadata. After all, if Microsoft is going to say that writing out of metadata should be under the explicit control of the user (which I tend to agree with), then even if I don’t change the result of the reverse lookup, I should be able to confirm my acceptance of it by the act of clicking “Save”. If I don’t want PG to write out the metadata, then I would click “Cancel” instead.

    So we currently have here a design where “the truth is in the file” is not fully in place, and where user confirmation is inconsistent.

    That’s poor design, and a poor user experience, in my book.

    I have to say that in one way, I’m rather thankful that the design is still broken. That’s because one of the other bugs in Photo Gallery is still present: it corrupts Canon Makernotes data when it writes out metadata to images. Just imagine: Photo Gallery would be finding location data or GPS coordinates in my photos and writing out LocationCreated metadata to those images. And in doing so, it would be merrily corrupting the Makernotes metadata in every single one of those images. Shudder.

  • Fun and Games With WHS 2011

    Despite some quirks and shortcomings, my Windows Home Server system has been quietly backing itself up onto a pair of hard drives that I rotate to an off-site location.

    But four days ago, the server backups started failing. The error being reported was “There is not enough space on the disk”. This was being reported for both the G: and the D: drives on my system.

    WHS2011 106

    Well, I could understand that being the case for the G: drive, since that had filled up with data leaving only 60 GB free on a 1 TB drive. However, the D: drive had nearly 385 GB free on a 405 GB drive.

    I wondered whether in fact the disk being referred to was not the data disk, but the backup disk, WHS Data Backup #1, which only had a few GB free. WHS 2011 is supposed to purge old backups from the backup drives when they get full, but there seems to be no way to predict when it will do this – I’ve had backup drives bob along for months with only a few GB free.

    I tried a few more server backups, but as you can see from the screenshot, they were all unsuccessful. I also swapped the backup drive for a second drive (WHS Server Backup #2b), but as you can see, server backups still weren’t working.

    I began to wonder whether it was data drive G: being almost full that was triggering the failure, so I moved one of the Shared Folders from the G: drive to the J: drive. Unlike WHS v1, WHS 2011 does not have drive pooling, so you have to manage the storage as a bunch of separate drives.

    Once I’d moved the Folder across to the J: drive (using the “Move the Folder” task in the WHS 2011 Dashboard), the G: drive now had 248 GB of free space, while the J: drive now had 714 GB of free space.

    I tried another server backup. This was also unsuccessful, with an “Element not found” error (whatever that means) being reported on the J: drive.

    WHS2011 107

    I left the system running and waited to see whether the next scheduled backup (at 23:00) would work. That was also reported as unsuccessful, with all drives reporting a “The operation failed because another operation was in progress. Retry the operation” error.

    WHS2011 110

    Trying not to panic, I rebooted the system and tried one more time. Now I got a “The handle is invalid” error on all drives. Another mysterious and opaque message.

    WHS2011 108

    Finally, in desperation, I told WHS 2011 to remove the WHS Data Backup #1 drive from the server backup definition, and added it back as though it was a totally new backup drive. WHS 2011 formatted it, and I gave it the name of WHS Backup Disc #1a.

    The next time server backup ran, the backup was successful. Phew!

    WHS2011 109

    I suspect I’m going to have to reformat the second backup drive, and add it back into the server backup task as a new drive.

    I think things are back to normal again, but I have to confess that this little episode has shaken my confidence in WHS 2011 a bit.

  • Subscribe, Not Purchase?

    There’s a post today on Microsoft’s official Office blog that talks about Office and the Cloud. One thing that leapt out at me was this:

    As part of the Customer Preview, we announced that you’ll be able to sign up for an Office subscription, which will ensure that wherever you go and whatever Windows device you are on, the latest and greatest version of Office will be there for you. We’ll be talking more about our subscription offer in a future post so please stay tuned.

    I’m all ears. I fear that in future, we will no longer be able to purchase the Office software, but we will have to subscribe (on a yearly basis?). I prefer to be able to purchase software, and then be able to make an informed decision about whether I upgrade to the latest and greatest version. It’s for that reason that I’m still using Office 2007 (and some of my neighbours are still using Office 2003). I, and they, saw no reason to upgrade. Will I move to Office 2013 – and will I have to also move to a different pricing structure? Time will tell.

    Update: I see that John Jendrezak (the author of the Microsoft blog post) has replied to my question assuring me that we will still be able to purchase the software as we always have done. So that’s a relief.

  • Just Testing

    This blog post was been created in Microsoft’s Word 2013. Up until now, I’ve been using Microsoft’s Windows Live Writer very happily to do all my blogging with. However, I suspect the writing is on the wall (as it were), and Microsoft will be killing Windows Live Writer off in the not-too-distant future. So now I will probably have to get used to another tool. I’m not overly happy with using Word, but I’ll give it a try for a while.

    It does seem to be a bit of a step backwards from Windows Live Writer. For example, WLW had a facility to add in a photo album, but I’m not sure that Word can do this, it only seems to deal with individual images.

    It also seems to be getting confused with special characters. I’ve just opened a previous blog entry (Windows 8 “Play to” Revisted), and Word seems to think the title is:

    Windows 8 “Play to” Revisited

     And while Word’s template supports the WordPress Categories that I’ve set up, it doesn’t appear to support Tags in the template.

    Oh gawd – now it’s gone and changed the font…

    And I can’t see how I can retrieve older posts for revision, or open the pages (e.g. “About”) on my blog. I’m not impressed.

    Oh well, one step forwards, two steps back – as usual.

  • Backing Up Your Data

    Here’s a simple question: do you have backups of the data held on your Windows PC or your Mac?

    Apparently, the answer from most people (if they’ve ever even thought about the question) is a resounding “no”. That’s the conclusion that Microsoft has reached. In a post on the Building Windows 8 blog, they state:

    Our telemetry shows that less than 5% of consumer PCs use Windows Backup and even adding up all the third party tools in use, it is clear nowhere near half of consumer PCs are backed up. This leaves user’s personal data and digital memories quite vulnerable as any accident can lead to data loss.

    Windows has had data backup tools included in it for years, but the fact is that very few people actually use them. Microsoft is introducing a totally new backup method in Windows 8 called File History. It comes with a user interface that is designed to be attractive and easy to use.

    Now there’s a lot to like about the Windows 8 File History feature, but it focuses on the user’s personal data. It will only backup data held in the user’s Libraries, Desktop, Contacts and Favourites. It will completely ignore applications that have their own databases, e.g. Adobe’s Lightroom. For some time, Microsoft has been telling developers to store application data in locations contained in the C:\ProgramData folder, and now the File History feature will totally ignore such files. Also, user data that is not document-based is supposed to be held in locations contained in the C:\Users\Username\AppData folder. That is also ignored by the File History feature. It turns out that Microsoft’s own Windows 8 Mail App stores mail messages in the AppData folder, so File History will not backup your mail messages. Microsoft seems to be assuming that we store our mail in the Cloud, e.g. in their Hotmail service. I’ve got news for them – we don’t all do this.

    I’ve got used to the elegant and simple-to-use client PC Backup function of Windows Home Server (which covers all files and provides a bare-metal restore). Moving to Windows 8 on my current hardware will mean that I will continue to use WHS for backup.

    However, because WHS does not support backup/restore of client PCs that use EFI/GPT technology, that will mean that I will have to use a combination of File History and some other method of backing up application data, if I invest in new hardware (a PC or a Tablet). Modern PCs use EFI/GPT.

    [Update 4 March 2013: Microsoft has at last issued a Hotfix to add backup support for UEFI-based computers to back up to servers that are running Windows Home Server 2011]

    Frankly, that makes it sound a bit of a kludge, instead of the current “set it and forget it” method of WHS.

    Peter Bright has a good analysis of the new File History feature, and a comparison with the older methods of data backup in Windows here. I rather like one of the comments on his analysis:

    So basically, they killed Windows Home Server but still don’t have an effective product to replace its backup mechanism. Got it.

  • Well, I Told You So…

    So Microsoft has effectively killed off their Windows Home Server product.

    Being Microsoft, of course, they don’t say this quite as baldly as I just did. Instead, they’ve announced some details of their forthcoming Windows Server 2012 lineup of software, and buried on page 4 of the 6 page FAQ we find this:

    Q: Will there be a next version of Windows Home Server?

    A: No. Windows Home Server has seen its greatest success in small office/home office (SOHO) environments and among the technology enthusiast community. For this reason, Microsoft is combining the features that were previously only found in Windows Home Server, such as support for DLNA-compliant devices and media streaming, into Windows Server 2012 Essentials and focusing our efforts into making Windows Server 2012 Essentials the ideal first server operating system for both small business and home use—offering an intuitive administration experience, elastic and resilient storage features with Storage Spaces, and robust data protection for the server and client computers.

    OK, so they are saying that Windows Server 2012 Essentials is to be “the ideal first server operating system for both small business and home use”. And how much will it cost? Well, it’s $425. And how much does Windows Home Server 2011 cost? Er, $40. There’s no way I can possibly justify shelling out $425 for Microsoft’s proposed successor to WHS 2011.

    Now, to be fair, that $425 price is a retail price, while the $40 is an OEM price. There isn’t an OEM price for Windows Server 2012 Essentials, instead, there’s another product in the range that will be available as OEM software, and that’s Windows Server 2012 Foundation. We don’t yet know what the OEM price will be for this software, and while it will be less than $425, I very much doubt that it will be $40 either, probably more in the $100 – $150 range.

    But there’s another issue to worry about, will there be things missing from the Foundation version that are present in Essentials? Microsoft says this:

    “If you’re a small business with limited in-house skills, Windows Server 2012 Essentials is an appropriate option. It’s simple, affordable, and easy to manage, and has been tailored to address common small business IT scenarios. Windows Server 2012 Essentials is the ideal solution if you plan to expand your business capabilities through the cloud as it is designed to facilitate your connection to online services. On the other hand, if you have some level of in-house IT skills and want the ability to tailor server roles to their unique environments, then Windows Server Foundation is potentially better suited to your business.”

    In other words, if you are a home user, then you had better have some degree of IT skills at your fingertips if you want to use Windows Server Foundation, assuming that it does contain all the necessary functionality. It certainly won’t have the easy-to-use Wizards that will be present in the Essentials edition…

    The upshot of all this is that Microsoft has essentially dropped the whole concept of a Home Server product, priced for the consumer market. I can’t say that I’m the least little bit surprised, the writing has been on the wall since the early days of the development of WHS 2011.

    The first version of Windows Home Server began with a vision and a focus on the home consumer. There was even a set of guiding principles for the design of the storage system for WHS v1 that were predicated on the needs of the home consumer. After the release of that first version of WHS, the team leader (Charlie Kindel) moved on, the WHS team got reorganised, and ended up in the Server group at Microsoft – small fish in a very big pond. In the process of developing WHS 2011, they effectively tore up Kindel’s guiding principles, and the result has been a product that while it bears the word “Home” in its title, is far less focused on the home consumer than the first version. Now that focus has been reduced even further to a blur.

    While some people will question the value proposition of a home server in these days of cloud services and online streaming, I firmly believe that it has a place. I have more data than I can affordably hold in the cloud, and living as I do in the countryside, I am at the end of a piece of wet string, so streaming of high-quality content is not an option.

    The original concept of WHS, with its easy to manage storage, and single-instance backup of up to 10 client PCs was something that had clear value to me. Microsoft weakened that with WHS 2011, and now they are in effect getting out of the home server market altogether.

    The one possible ray of hope is that it may be possible to replicate the functionality of WHS using Windows 8. That is dependent on someone developing an App for Windows 8 that replicates the client PC backup functionality that is present in WHS, while addressing its limitation (it can’t backup PCs that use EFI/GPT technology). There’s a gap in the market opening up – let’s hope someone will fill it…

    [Update 4th March 2013: Microsoft has at last issued a Hotfix to add backup support for UEFI-based computers to back up to servers that are running Windows Home Server 2011]

    Update 15 July 2012

    Being somewhat curious, I downloaded the beta of Windows Server 2012 Essentials and installed it into a virtual machine. I followed the excellent guides provided by Jim McCarthy on how to do this. Here’s his guide on installing Hyper-V (the virtual machine environment) in Windows 8 and here’s his guide on installing the beta of Windows Server 2012 Essentials.

    I found that I needed to make a change to my PC to enable the virtualisation mode of the CPU, but once that was done (and the PC rebooted multiple times), the Hyper-V environment was up and running. The installation of the beta of WSE 2012 was very straightforward, and before too long, I saw the server appear on my home network.

    I have to say that I think Microsoft is being disingenous when they say that WSE 2012 is suitable for “home use”. From what I saw of the environment, it is clearly aimed at a small business, not the home. For one thing, it provides a full domain controller environment, which is very much overkill for the home.

    I confess that I didn’t leave WSE 2012 in place for very long before I deleted it and removed the Hyper-V environment.

    For one thing, although it may have been a coincidence, following the installation of WSE 2012 into Hyper-V running on my main Desktop PC, the WHS backup service of that PC stopped running. Looking in the Event Viewer showed .NET runtime errors occurring with the Windows Server Client Computer Backup Provider Service, which manages the backup and restore service for client computers. Since this service was stopped (and couldn’t be restarted without errors), I could not back up or restore data for my Desktop PC.

    The other thing that sealed the fate of WSE 2012 for me was the news that a version of MyMovies will not be developed for WSE 2012. Brian Binnerup, the developer of MyMovies, believes (quite rightly, in my view) that the market will be too small to justify development and support of a WSE 2012 version. Since I have the MyMovies server installed on my WHS 2011 system, that rather closes off a possible upgrade path from WHS 2011 to WSE 2012 (quite apart from the cost of WSE 2012, of course). It looks as though a future version of the MyMovies server will only be developed for Windows 8. Update 24 August 2012: I see that Brian Binnerup now seems to have changed his mind about supporting Windows Server Essentials 2012. That’s good to know, but it’s still too expensive for me.

    As a result, I have turned my back on Windows Server Essentials 2012. It has been removed from my PC. I’ve reinstalled the WHS 2011 Connector, and now my Desktop PC is once more being backed up on a daily basis to my WHS 2011 server.

  • The Gauntlet Has Been Thrown Down

    Just to follow up on my post about Microsoft Surface for a moment, I do think we live in interesting times.

    Peter Bright, over at Ars Technica, has a good article on the impact on OEMs of Microsoft entering the tablet hardware market; he likens it to Microsoft giving the OEMs a gentle kick in the teeth. The problem is that, compared with Apple’s iPad, the build quality of tablets running either Android or Windows is pretty dire. Even the so-called quality manufacturers have not exactly covered themselves with glory here. Samsung’s flagship Windows 7 Tablet, the 700T, for example is still plagued with the fact that its screen lifts away from the housing.

    As Peter Bright says:

    To allow Windows 8 to compete with iOS, Microsoft needs hardware to compete with the iPad. Bad hardware would jeopardize Redmond’s ability to play in the tablet space, but the PC OEMs have established for themselves a track record of producing little else. And while many of the OEMs have produced Android tablets to try to compete with the iPad, they’ve also consistently failed to match its quality.

    So Microsoft has drawn upon its 30-year history of producing hardware and made two models of Windows 8 tablets to show the OEMs how its done. Now admittedly, that 30-year history has been mostly spent in the area of producing mice and keyboards. But, on the other hand, Microsoft also makes the Xbox, which although it is a game console, has a similar level of complexity as a PC. Still, the engineering that is required for a high-quality tablet is definitely up a notch from the Xbox, so I am intrigued to see whether Microsoft can pull it off, and kick the OEMs in the teeth.

    What I also find intriguing is Peter Bright’s thoughts on how this might all play out. Scenario one is that the OEMs rise to the challenge and produce high-quality Windows 8 tablets. In which case, Microsoft can keep the Surface going as a small-scale, US-only operation.

    However, as Peter Bright points out, at least one OEM, Acer, has dismissed Microsoft’s challenge. In fact Acer, in the form of Oliver Ahrens, Acer’s senior VP and president for Europe, Middle East and Africa, believes that Microsoft is making a failed attempt to mimic Apple. He’s quoted as saying “I don’t think it will be successful because you cannot be a hardware player with two products”. Ahrens appears to overlook the fact that Apple dominates the tablet market with just two iPad products.

    Frankly, with friends like Oliver Ahrens, I don’t think Microsoft needs enemies.

    So then it might be opportune for Peter Bright’s second scenario to be realised. If the OEMs fail to rise to the challenge, the Microsoft must ramp up the Surface operation to a global scale, much as they have done with the Xbox.

    As I say, we live in interesting times.

    Addendum, 27 July 2012

    Charlie Kindel has an interesting post up on this subject of whether Microsoft is a hardware company. His view?

    Microsoft is not, and never will be, a hardware company.

    Kindel worked in Microsoft for over twenty years, and knows the company well. What I found particularly telling in today’s post was the observation that there are still organisational silos there:

    I know some of the people who drove the Xbox360 hardware design and supply chain management. They are now war scarred and seasoned experts. They are the type of people you want working on the next big thing. None of them even knew about Surface until it was announced. Typical Microsoft organizational silos.

    Oh dear.

  • Some People Just Don’t Grok It

    Yesterday, Microsoft revealed that it would be entering the Tablet market with two models of its own. I’ll come back to them later, but first, I must say that I’m struck by the continuing negative press that Windows 8 continues to receive. While it’s by no means perfect, I find the hyperbolical vitriol poured on it by some of the technical press quite astounding, and almost entirely without basis.

    Yes, the Metro user interface (UI) is very different from the UI of the traditional Windows Desktop, but I note that the iPad UI is very different from the traditional Mac desktop OS X UI, and yet none of the negative reviewers seem to even give this a second thought. Somehow, they seem to have adapted to being able to use both devices, and praise Apple to the skies.

    Apple, when it created iOS, took the view that a touch-oriented direct-manipulation user interface demands entirely different solutions and paradigms than mouse/pointer-driven user interfaces do. Microsoft, on the other hand, recognises the same challenge, yet is attempting to support both within the one operating system: Windows 8. That seems to me to be a far riskier strategy that the play-it-safe one that Apple has followed.

    I don’t have either a touchscreen or a touchpad on my PC, yet I’ve not found any problem about continuing to be productive using Windows 8, unlike some technical reviewers. I rather suspect that either they don’t like change, or they don’t like Microsoft.

    And now Microsoft has further upped the ante, by announcing two Tablets bearing the Microsoft name, and called Surface. The entry-level Tablet runs Windows RT (the version of Windows 8 designed to run on ARM hardware), while the top-of-the-range model runs Windows 8 Pro and uses Intel’s Ivy Bridge architecture.

    The entry-level Tablet is clearly aimed at the iPad market niche, but I’ve never found that market niche particularly interesting. I want something that is more than just a device for consuming content. I want one that has the power of a desktop available. So the more interesting one (to me) is the one running Windows 8 Pro. This comes with a pen, and (excellent) handwriting recognition is part of Windows 8. Coupled with the detachable keyboard, this model of the Surface range looks as though it meets my desire for origami computing.

    surface_01

    As well as the Surface tablets, Microsoft also announced two new keyboards (which double as covers for the Surface). The “Touch” model (3mm thick) is shown in the picture above. The “Type” model (5 mm thick) comes with moving keys for a traditional feel.

    The specifications of the Surface tablets are still not spelt out in great detail, but the top model seems to have two cameras (one forward-facing and one rear-facing), and a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels. The Intel-based Surface has a mini DisplayPort for Video. I wonder whether this could also be a Thunderbolt port for connecting other devices, although I suspect that that will come in a future Surface model in 2013. No word on price, either, so I’ll have to wait to see whether this is a good match with my wishlist. But I have to say, it does look good.

    Update: I watched the video of the Microsoft presentation yesterday and picked up on a couple of things.

    First, the Windows RT machine being demonstrated by Steven Sinofsky froze up on him during the demo. He had to switch it for another machine. To be fair, demos of unreleased hardware and software are always a highwire act, so it’s hardly surprising he had to rely on the safety net of a second machine.

    Second, the words that are spoken during these Microsoft presentations are very carefully chosen. When Sinofsky talked about retail channels, he only talked about Microsoft’s own stores, both physical and online. These are both US-only, which leads me to worry that Surface may only ever be available in the US. It won’t be the first time Microsoft has done this; the Zune and Microsoft Kin products were also US-only. If that does turn out to be the case, then that will be a real disappointment to me.

    One other thought, I know that I said that it would be the Windows 8 Pro version of Surface that I would be interested in, because I thought the Windows RT Surface would be too limiting, like the iPad. Someone pointed out that you can still get the full PC experience on a Windows RT device by using the Remote Desktop App, and accessing the full environment of a desktop PC through the Surface tablet. Now that is a very interesting idea, and one that I had not considered. I often use the Remote Desktop App to remotely login to my Windows Home Server from my desktop PC, and the experience is indeed just as though I have my monitor, keyboard and mouse directly connected to the server. However, it would mean that I would have to upgrade my Desktop PC to Windows 8 Pro, so it is not a cost-free route.

    So I may have options. Options are good.

  • Windows 8 “Play to” Revisited

    Important Update 27 October 2012: The bug I describe below does seem to have been fixed in the final release of Windows 8. I can now use the “Play to” feature with my Denon AVR-3808.

    Hoorah!

    However, this is just one cheer. The Denon is not a “Windows Certified Play to” device, so the Microsoft-supplied Music Modern UI App does not recognise it as a device that can be used in a “Play to” scenario. While I can use the desktop Windows Media Player to “Play to” my Denon (as I could under Windows 7), the new Music App 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.

    So if I get one of the new tablets (e.g. Microsoft Surface) which run Windows RT, I won’t be able to use it to play music to my Denon. Why? Well, Windows RT does not support the desktop Windows Media Player, and Microsoft has just told me that their Metro Media Apps will not support my Denon, even though it is DLNA-certified. Yet another reason not to touch the Microsoft Surface with a bargepole, I think.

    It looks as though Microsoft are building proprietary extensions on top of the cross-industry DLNA specifications. I’m not convinced that this is a good thing.

    Update 4 February 2013: I see that Paul Thurrott has just written an article on this subject: The Sad Tale of Play To and Windows 8, with much the same conclusions. As I write in the comments here, it’s good to see that Mr. Thurrott is banging the same drum. He is able to make far more noise than I, but I think that Microsoft will remain deaf to the sounds. BTW, it’s 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. One wonders how Microsoft can be so dismal in delivering a product that should delight, not disappoint in so many ways.

    Update 31 March 2013: Barb Bowman has found a way to hack the Registry to get Windows 8 to recognize “uncertified” DLNA devices, and to use them within Windows 8 Apps. Like her, I wish that Microsoft would give advanced users the option to add our DLNA devices directly, without the need for these hacks.

    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/

    Original post

    You may recall that I’ve found that the “Play to” feature of Windows 8 is broken. I’ve been poking around trying different scenarios to see what’s going on, and come up with some further information.

    The bottom line is, yes, the Windows 8 implementation is broken as far as I’m concerned. However, I fear that Microsoft will simply say that this is not a bug, it’s a feature… What’s the old joke? Ah yes:

    Q: How many Microsoft developers does it take to change a lightbulb?
    A: None. Microsoft simply declares darkness to be the new standard.

    This is what I think I have found:

    • In Windows 7, the “Play to” feature will negotiate with the media renderer device to ensure that the audio format streamed from the server can be handled. If it can’t, it will try and have the server transcode it to a format that can be understood by the renderer.
    • In Windows 8, the “Play to” feature doesn’t bother to find out whether the device can cope with the streamed format, it just sends it, and the consequences be damned…

    Here are the details:

    First, let me recapitulate some of the terms and technology specification used by Microsoft in its implementation of “Play to”. These come from the Digital Living Networking Alliance, or DLNA for short. Their specification defines how a variety of different types of digital devices can connect and share information. I’ve summarised the devices used in “Play to” in the following table:

    Device Class What it Does Examples
    Digital Media Server (DMS) Stores content and makes it available to networked digital media players (DMP) and digital media renderers (DMR). PCs, Windows Home Server, and network attached storage (NAS) devices
    Digital Media Player (DMP) Finds content on digital media servers (DMS) and provides playback and rendering capabilities. TVs, stereos and home theaters, wireless monitors and game consoles. Windows Media Player also has a DMP capability
    Digital Media Renderer (DMR) These devices play content received from a digital media controller (DMC), which will find content from a digital media server (DMS). TVs, audio/video receivers, video displays and remote speakers for music
    Digital Media Controller (DMC) These devices find content on digital media servers (DMS) and play it on digital media renderers (DMR). Internet tablets, Wi-Fi® enabled digital cameras and the “Play to” function in Windows 7 and Windows 8.

    Table 1: Information drawn from the DLNA web site.

    Windows 7 and Windows 8 implement a number of these classes as shown here:

    Device Class Windows Implementations
    Digital Media Server (DMS) When media streaming is enabled, Windows acts as a DMS.
    Digital Media Player (DMP) Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center act as a DMP when browsing shared media libraries
    Digital Media Renderer (DMR) Windows Media Player acts as a DMR when configured to allow remote control of the Player.
    Digital Media Controller (DMC) The “Play To” feature from Windows Media Player (and the Windows Explorer in Windows 8) launches a DMC to control the media playback experience

    Table 2: Information drawn from the Engineering Windows 7 Blog.

    At its simplest, just two devices can be involved: a Server and a Player. These can even be running on the same physical device, as in the case where your Windows Media Player on your Desktop PC is streaming music or video stored on the PC itself. The next step up is where the server and player are on separate physical devices. Two typical scenarios are shown in figure 1:

    WMP Scenarios

    Figure 1: Typical scenarios of simple case of DMP devices accessing DMS devices.

    I’ve used the Denon AVR-3808 as an example, since this is what I have in my home network. My DMS is a headless (no monitor, keyboard or mouse) home-built PC running the Windows Home Server 2011 operating system.

    In my particular case, both the two scenarios shown above will work, that is, the DMS that is part of WHS 2011 will stream audio to other PCs in the home network, and to the Denon AVR3808.

    Now, this next bit is important, I’ll return to it later: Under the covers, there’s actually some negotiation of streaming formats going on.

    This is because I have stored all my music files on the WHS 2011 in Windows Media Audio Lossless (WMAL) format. This presents no problems for the PCs, since the Windows Media Players installed on them can handle WMAL. But while the Denon can handle standard Windows Media Audio, it can’t handle the Lossless variant. So when I use the Denon to browse my music library on the server and select a track to play, the DMS in WHS 2011 sees that the Denon can’t handle WMAL and transcodes the stream into a format that the Denon can handle on the fly – it transcodes it into a PCM stream, which the Denon can deal with.

    Now let’s look at scenarios are where there are three devices linked together: a Digital Media Server, a Digital Media Controller, and a Digital Media Renderer.

    WMP Scenarios 2

    Figure 2: Typical scenarios of a three device link (DMS-DMC-DMR).

    In my case, all flavours of scenario 3 will work. That is, I can stream from my Windows Home Server using the “Play To” feature in either Windows 7 or Windows 8 Release Preview, and push the stream to PCs that are running Windows Media Player in Windows 7 or the Windows 8 Release Preview.

    But while scenario 4 (streaming to the Denon) works with the “Play to” of Windows 7, it does not always work with the “Play to” of Windows 8 Release Preview.

    The following table shows which formats work and which don’t, when using scenario 4:

    Format Windows 7 Windows 8
    MP3 Yes Yes
    Windows Media Audio Yes Yes
    Windows Media Audio Lossless Yes No

    Table 3: Audio formats used with “Play to” features in Windows 7 and Windows 8

    Now take a look at a table showing which formats are supported by the Denon AVR-3808:

    Format Supported by the Denon
    MP3 Yes
    Windows Media Audio Yes
    Windows Media Audio Lossless No
    FLAC Yes

    Table 4: Audio formats supported by the Denon AVR-3808

    My very strong suspicion, therefore, is that the Windows 8 “Play to” does not negotiate a playable format with the DMR of the the Denon, it simply sends the source format regardless. The Denon’s display panel has indicators  (MP3, WMA, PCM) that show the audio formats being received.  Let’s take another look at Table 3, but this time, show the state of the Denon indicators:

    Format Windows 7 Windows 8
    MP3 MP3 MP3
    Windows Media Audio WMA WMA
    Windows Media Audio (Lossless) MP3 –

    Table 5: Denon front panel indicators state

    You can see that, for Windows 7, the WMA Lossless format of the source media has been transcoded into an MP3 stream so that the Denon can deal with it. In scenario 2 (the Denon communicating directly with the Windows Home Server), the PCM indicator lights, showing that the negotiation with WHS 2011 has resulted in an alternative format being used.

    If the Windows 8 “Play to” is not carrying out any negotiation, as I think is happening in scenario 4, then of course the Denon will respond with an error – it cannot play native Windows Media Audio Lossless format.

    I note that Microsoft states that:

    Improved device experience: Metro style apps work only with Windows certified Play To receivers. 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.

    Fine words, except that Microsoft are being economical with the truth at the moment. “The desktop experience first introduced in Windows 7” does not “continue to support all DLNA DMR devices”.

    It’s broken.

  • What’s Not To Like In Windows 8?

    Unlike many people, I don’t consider myself a dyed-in-the-wool hater of Windows 8. In fact, I find much to like in Microsoft’s latest operating system, which will be available this October. Nevertheless, I thought it might be useful to gather together in one place all the bugs, quirks, and the WTFs that I’ve come across in the last few months of kicking the tyres of the pre-release versions of Windows 8.

    This post will be updated and/or corrected as I come across new information.

    The List

    • I really dislike the marketing decision that Microsoft has made concerning Windows Media Center. However, on the upside, it means that I won’t be upgrading my HTPC to Windows 8. It will remain on Windows 7, running Windows Media Center, until something better comes along.
      NOTE: since writing that, Microsoft has announced an upgrade offer of just $40 to upgrade Windows 7 systems to Windows 8 Pro. That sweetens the pill substantially, since the Pro version will include Media Center for free until 31st January 2013.
    • Not only is Microsoft’s marketing going to hamper Windows Media Center, but they have also deliberately removed two of its features that are required for use in dedicated HTPC systems.
    • Windows 8 takes full advantage of modern PC hardware, such as UEFI for firmware and GPT drives. However, Microsoft’s dirty little secret is that their Windows Home Server 2011 product cannot backup or restore any systemusing UEFI and GPT drives. [Update 4th March 2013: Microsoft has at last issued a Hotfix to add backup support for UEFI-based computers to back up to servers that are running Windows Home Server 2011]
    • Your Microsoft Account is tied to a single country/region, and can’t be changed, either by you or Microsoft. Bad news if you move to a different country. Microsoft claims to be working on addressing this, but when we will see results is anyone’s guess (this has been a known issue since at least 2007 – it’s caused by a limitation in the Xbox Live infrastructure).
      Update 17th October 2012 – it looks as though Microsoft are starting to offer Xbox Live customers the ability to migrate their accounts under certain circumstances.
    • The Photos App cannot access pictures held on Network Shares. This includes photo libraries held on Windows Home Server systems.
      See Update 1 and Update 2 below.
    • The Music App only has four views of your music library: songs, albums, artists and playlists. I miss the sorting by composer that I have in Windows Media Player or Windows Media Center. And where is “Play to” or Podcast support?
    • The “Play to” feature that was introduced in Windows 7 is now broken in Windows 8.
      Update: This has been fixed in the final release of Windows 8.
    • I consider that the Windows Explorer in Windows 8 is more clumsy than the version in Windows 7. I find it’s a step backwards in usability.
    • The Mail App still doesn’t have IMAP or POP support. This is a staggering omission, since these protocols are the foundation on which internet email clients have been based for years.
      See Update 2 below.
    • To search within a Metro App, you use Winkey+Q. However, not all Apps support this, including, rather strangely, the Reader App. Here, you have to right-click in the App to reveal the Search button (which then has to be clicked to reveal the Search box where you type your search terms).
    • Searches in the Video App will only return results from the Video Marketplace (if your region has a Marketplace). It does not seem to search any of your own content, not even filenames that match the search terms. As for searching on any metadata, such as tags, in your video files; forget it.
    • The Weather App is supposed to have a “Live Tile”. On my system it doesn’t; why, I have no idea.
    • Microsoft’s News App looks good, but the news it displays is hardly up-to-the-minute, is it? There are articles dating from 4 days ago (at least in the UK feeds). That’s not news – that’s what we use to wrap fish and chips in. Also, this App (like too many others) can’t use Printing Devices. I’m sufficiently old-fashioned to want to be able to print things for hardcopy now and then.
    • Printing in Metro Apps. So tell me, how do I just print the current page, or a selection of pages? Something that’s easily done with the traditional Windows Print dialog, but that seems totally impossible with the whizzo new Metro design with certain Apps. The Metro Mail and IE10 Apps, for example. They drop the “Pages” setting from the Metro Print screen. See below for screenshots. Sigh.
    • Backing up your data. Windows 8 has a new backup method: File History. Be aware that it only covers the contents of your Libraries, Desktop, Contacts and Favourites. It won’t cover application data, or your mail messages… Microsoft assumes that we all hold our email in the Cloud. Er, no, we don’t.

    Here’s examples of the confusing Print screen in Metro. This is what you see when you want to print something in the Metro Reader App:

    W8RP 10

    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 Metro Mail App (you’ll also see the same settings when you print out a web site in the Metro IE10 App):

    W8RP 08

    Er, hello? We’ve got additional options, but the “Pages” setting has disappeared altogether. Don’t bother clicking on the “More settings” link, it’s not lurking under there either. I like consistency in my tools, not nasty surprises.

    Update 28th October 2012: This inconsistent print behaviour is still present in the final version of Windows 8, despite some of the Apps being updated. The Mail App and IE10, for example, still can’t print out a single page or a range of pages. Sigh.

    Update 1: Brad Weed, a program manager in the Windows Live team has contributed a post on the Photos App in the Building Windows 8 blog. I note that he doesn’t even mention the fact that the Photos App cannot display photos held on Windows Home Server, yet he boasts that the Photos App will “display photos from all your devices”. Er, no, Mr. Weed, it won’t, as you damn well know. Please try harder.

    Update 2: On October 5th, Microsoft announced that many of its Modern Apps would be updated in the run-up to the release of Windows 8 on October 26th. This includes the the Mail App, which will at long last get IMAP support, and the Photo App, which will finally be able to support network locations. I found it rather curious that only a couple of days earlier, Analy Otero, on the Photo App team, said (my emphasis):

    …support for network locations is definitely something we will consider for future versions of the app.

    When she could quite easily have said:

    …support for network locations is definitely something we will provide for future versions of the app.

    Odd. Mind you, it still doesn’t support searching on Tags. So, the Photo App is still a miserable excuse for what it should be.

    Microsoft are doing themselves no favours with the current collection of Metro Apps, which are little better than toys.

    Update 26th March 2013: The Mail, People, Calendar and Xbox Music Apps have been updated. Some small improvements, but there are still shortcomings.

  • Fun With Technology – Part VIII

    Important Update 27th October 2012: The bug I describe below was fixed in the final release of Windows 8. I can now use the “Play to” feature with my Denon AVR-3808 receiver.

    Hoorah!

    Update 24 October 2013: With the release of Windows 8.1, I was getting problems with “Play to” again. I posted the Windows 8.1 issue in a Microsoft forum, and got some useful feedback from Microsoft’s 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/

    Original Post

    Sigh. I’m having another facepalm moment with Microsoft again. I’ve downloaded and installed the Windows 8 Release Preview, and am currently kicking the tyres. I’ve already found some nasty things in Microsoft’s Metro Apps; this post is about something else.

    Microsoft introduced the “Play to” feature in Windows 7. It’s a very useful feature that allows Windows Media Player to stream music to other devices (e.g. my Hi-Fi amplifier) on the network. I found that this feature was broken when I tried it in the Windows 8 Consumer Preview. Now that I have the Release Preview installed, I had hoped that Microsoft would have fixed it.

    Alas, no, it still doesn’t work, and there’s been a rather worrying development… Here’s what I saw when I tried it in the Consumer Preview:

    WMP 12 13

    Now take a look at the error message I get when I try using the “Play to” feature in the Release Preview:

    W8RP 06

    Er, what’s that “Not Windows certified” message? I thought the whole point of having DLNA-certified devices (which I have) was that they would plug and play. It worked in Windows 7. Now it seems as though Microsoft are introducing something else for Windows 8 – and breaking the whole concept that DLNA is trying to address.

    I would have thought that Microsoft would have learned from the failure of their “Plays for Sure” branding, but no, they’re at it again. In a final irony, my Hi-Fi amplifier, a Denon 3808 AVR, proudly bears a Microsoft “Plays for Sure” sticker. Well, it doesn’t “play for sure” any more, thanks to Microsoft and Windows 8.

  • Thoughts on the Windows 8 Release Preview

    I must admit, since Windows 8 is going to be released in October 2012, I was expecting Microsoft’s Metro Apps in the Windows 8 Release Preview to be more fully functional than they are. To my mind, they are still little better than toy demos. Yes, I know that they are still labelled “Previews”, but there’s precious little time left before October, and an enormous amount of functional ground left to cover.

    For example, the Mail App still doesn’t have IMAP or POP support. This is a staggering omission, since these protocols are the foundation on which internet email clients have been based for years. Then there’s all the extra stuff in the Windows Live Mail client that is missing from the Metro App, such as message rules or the ability to define extra storage folders. Since my email is hosted on an IMAP mail server by my internet service provider, I haven’t been able to use the Metro Mail App in earnest. There may well be other shortcomings that I haven’t discovered yet.

    The Music App only has four views of your music library: songs, albums, artists and playlists, as shown in this screenshot:

    W8RP 04

    Since you can’t define your own additional views, I miss the sorting by genre or composer that I have in Windows Media Player or Windows Media Center. And where is “Play to” or Podcast support? Missing in action, it would seem.

    The Photos App is still only a viewer, not an organizer/editor/metadata tagger in the manner of Windows Live Photo Gallery or Picasa.

    And then there are the bugs.

    For example, amazingly, it turns out that the Photos App cannot deal with photos that are stored on a Windows Home Server. The Photos App is supposed to use the Picture Libraries that you define in Windows 8. In both Windows 7 and Windows 8, you have a standard set of libraries defined for your media. See this screenshot:

    W8RP 01

    The Documents, Music, Pictures and Videos libraries are defined by default in installations of Windows 7 or Windows 8. If you install the Zune client (which is currently needed to support Windows Phones), then you get a Library defined for Podcasts as well.

    By default, each of these libraries point to the corresponding folder in your Windows account on your PC, plus a pointer to the corresponding folder in the Public account on your PC. Here’s the pointers for the Documents library as an example:

    W8RP 02

    You can add additional pointers to folder hierarchies held locally on your PC, or network locations. If you have a Windows Home Server, then it will automatically add pointers to the corresponding Shared Folders on the server. Here’s a screenshot of the pointers to my music folders in the Music Library as an example:

    W8RP 03

    However, it turns out that the Photos App can only handle local folders, not network locations, such as the Shared Folder for pictures held on a Windows Home Server.

    This is even more curious when you realise that the Music App can handle music held in the Shared Folder for music on a Windows Home Server… That screenshot above of the Music App is showing music stored on my Windows Home Server.

    Now, the team responsible for the Photos App have admitted this is an issue. In this thread on the Microsoft Answers forum, Analy Otero, a member of the Photos App’s team states:

    The Photos team is aware of the concerns and issues that surround network locations, removable storage and Windows Home Servers. Unfortunately there are technical limitations to supporting them completely and correctly and as you have noted those locations are not supported in the Release Preview version either. 

    Rest assured that we are want to see these scenarios work and we aspire to support them just as all of you do so that you can use the Photos app as one place to see all of your photos regardless of where they are.

    If you have your photos in other PCs (Vista, Win7 or Win8 machines) you have the option to install the recently released SkyDrive client on them to be able to fetch files from them from anywhere. This includes being able to browse all your photos (and videos) from the Photos app as well. Definitely check it out if you have a chance.

    Thanks for the feedback, we’re definitely are listening and understand that support for WHS and other network locations is important for you.

    Notice that she mentions that the SkyDrive client can be used as a workaround to allow the Photos App to access files and folders held on other PCs in your network. It’s not clear whether the client is officially supported on the WHS operating system. This post on the SkyDrive forum does say that it will run on Windows Server 2008 R2, and that is the operating system that underlies WHS 2011. However, whether this also means that Microsoft will support the use of the client on WHS 2011 is another matter.  Update: Analy Otero has confirmed that Microsoft does not support the use of the SkyDrive client on WHS 2011, and it won’t install at all on WHS v1.

    I downloaded the SkyDrive client onto my Windows 8 system (which is 64bit), and then copied it across to my WHS 2011 (this is a 64bit operating system). I then did a Remote Desktop connection into my (headless) WHS, and successfully installed the client.

    Sure enough, the client then started synchronizing with my SkyDrive photos, but interestingly, something else also started happening… When I next opened the Metro Photo App, an additional pane had appeared on the opening screen – it was for “Degas” – the name of my WHS 2011 system.

    W8RP 05

    This view of the pictures folder on my Windows Home Server is not the default Pictures Shared Folder. Instead, it appears to be mapped to the Pictures folder of the Public user on WHS 2011. Now, while this is logical when the SkyDrive client is installed on a Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8 PC, it makes no sense at all for a Windows Home Server. For one thing, no user account folders, including the Public user account folders, are ever exposed over the network in a standard Windows Home Server setup. A standard WHS 2011 system uses Shared Folders that are not tied to the Public user account.

    WHS2011 57a

    Also, I discovered that the Public Folders are only exposed so long as you are logged on to the Administrator’s Desktop (so that the SkyDrive Client runs). So if you want to use this workaround, you’re going to have to Remote Desktop in to your WHS, and populate the Pictures folder of the Public user account and keep logged on via Remote Desktop; photos in the standard Shared Folder for Pictures simply aren’t accessible by the Photos App. In my opinion, it’s a kludge. An unsupported kludge. Sigh.

    Update: I’ve gathered together in one place all the bugs, quirks and WTFs that I’ve found thus far with Windows 8. Check it out if you want to see the full list.

  • Origami Computing

    As you may be aware, I’ve been following the development of Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system with some interest.

    I confess that I have been somewhat taken aback at the amount of negative press that Windows 8 has been receiving, both from technology pundits and users, because I’m finding Windows 8 rather exciting. I’ve been using it on my main desktop PC since the Windows 8 Consumer Preview was released in February, and I’ve never thought for a moment about uninstalling it and going back to Windows 7. Indeed, I’m looking forward to the Release Preview of Windows 8 that will be available in a couple of weeks.

    It’s true that my joy over Windows 8 has not been entirely unalloyed. At the moment, I have a list of three negatives:

    I can live with the first two, but the last does worry me. New PC systems are increasingly based on UEFI/GPT technology, so I am likely to be faced with a problem in the future if Microsoft don’t fix this. Update: I’ve gathered all the bugs, quirks, and WTFs that I’ve found in Windows 8 thus far into one place: here.

    It seems to me that with Windows 8, Microsoft has a chance to move personal computing into a new era, one where not only can a range of computing devices (PCs, Tablets, Smartphones) share a common operating system and applications, but where the hardware itself can have a range of flexibility that goes beyond what we have seen so far.

    I got a taste of this with my old HP TX2000 Tablet PC, but running Windows 7, it couldn’t deliver what will be possible with Windows 8.

    Paul Thurrott touches upon this in his latest opinion piece. I think he is right. My next PC purchase is unlikely to be a Desktop PC. It will be a Slate, running Windows 8, based on Intel’s Broadwell. It will have multitouch and a pressure-sensitive stylus. I will be able to carry it around and take notes/photos/videos on the move, and I’ll be able to plug it into multiple monitors, a keyboard, and a mouse for my next generation Desktop.

    We are at the dawn of Origami Computing. Apple and Android are way behind.

  • At Long Last – A Result!

    You may recall that I’ve been trying for some time to get Microsoft to correct some false data that they’ve been holding on me. My Microsoft account for their online stores (the Zune/Xbox Live/Windows Phone service account) states that I live in the US, and not The Netherlands. It’s not possible for the owner of the personal data held in these service accounts to change this, so I’ve been asking Microsoft since December 2010 to either change it on my behalf, or delete the account so that I can create a new one with the correct data.

    The answer (stated in both Microsoft’s Support Forums and by their online Customer Support Teams) has always been that neither of these two options are possible.

    The only option that has ever been offered is to create a new Windows Live ID (WLID) and then use this to create a new service account that is linked to the new Windows Live ID. This has never been an attractive option to me, because it means I would end up with multiple online identities (the WLIDs), and multiple service accounts – at least one of which would still be holding incorrect data.

    It also seems to me that Microsoft could also be said to be contravening EU law on Data Protection, by refusing to correct false data that they hold on me.

    After feeling like I was beating my head against a brick wall with Microsoft’s online Customer Support Teams about this, in March I wrote to Microsoft’s European Headquarters to complain.

    I received a reply from Rob Warwick, XBOX EMEA Senior Advocacy Team, that had me scratching my head, because he was claiming that it was possible to delete my old service account (with the false information) and set up a new one that used my existing Windows Live ID. This directly contradicted everything stated in Microsoft’s Support Forums and by their Customer Support Teams, so I wrote and told him this. For good measure, I also wrote a formal complaint to Microsoft in The Netherlands, using text supplied by the Dutch Data Protection Authority, pointing out that, by holding incorrect data about me, Microsoft was in contravention of Dutch Law (artikel 36 van de Wet bescherming persoonsgegevens).

    I don’t know which of the two complaints worked (see update below), but last week I received an email from a member of Microsoft’s Xbox Global Escalations team. He informed me that they are the highest point of escalation for Xbox across the whole of Europe and that my case had been passed up to them to handle and they now had full ownership.

    He proposed creating a new temporary email address that would be attached to my old service account, thus freeing up my existing Windows Live ID to create a new service account (with the correct data). The old service account, and the temporary email address, would then be deleted by Microsoft. This is effectively what I had been asking for since December 2010.

    I must say that I was a little surprised that I had to get it escalated so far. I’ve asked repeatedly on the Microsoft Answers forums for the old account to be deleted and a new account opened with the same WLID, and had two attempts via online chat with Customer Support to get this done. In all cases, I (and many other people who asked for the same thing) have been repeatedly told that this was not possible, but that I needed to create a new WLID and use it to create a new account. However, it appears, as the Xbox Global Escalations team have demonstrated, to be perfectly possible.

    There are many people who are still in the same situation as I was, and equally frustrated. I find it strange that Microsoft should continue to frustrate and anger its customers, and not take steps to rectify the false information spread via its own Answers forum and Customer Support staff. I should add that the person in the Escalation Team that was dealing with my case has told me that he has now passed the case details regarding this to Microsoft’s Call Center feedback team to ensure the support staff are aware of this process and to ensure that moving forward this is an option for future customers. So hopefully things will improve.

    So to summarise, if you find yourself in the same position as I was, and are being given the runaround by Microsoft’s Customer Support, just write a formal letter of complaint to Microsoft, and ask that it get escalated within Microsoft.

    Update: I’m now pretty sure that it was writing to Microsoft’s European Headquarters, and the subsequent correspondence with Rob Warwick, that got my complaint escalated and successfully addressed. I say this because last week I was phoned by the Dutch Xbox Live support team. My letter to Microsoft in the Netherlands had been passed to them to deal with. The support team proceeded to tell me that the data could not be corrected, and that I’d need to create a new Windows Live ID and a new service account. The same old story, in other words. I took some delight in being able to tell them that in fact I had already got my data corrected, and I did not need to have a new Windows Live ID created. Clearly, the message from the Xbox Global Escalations team has not yet got out to customer support…

    Update 11 October 2012: I’ve seen it being reported in several places on the web that Microsoft Customer Support is now able to migrate your account from one country to another. So it’s just taken five months for the message to get out from the Global Escalation team to Customer Support that migrations are possible…

    Update 25 January 2014: I’m back battling with Microsoft again. This time it’s because of the same problem that has occurred with Martin’s WLID (now called Microsoft Account). It has a US billing account associated with it, despite the fact that we live in the Netherlands. Trying to get Microsoft to resolve the issue is proving frustrating, to say the least.

  • OK, So I’m Old…

    Scott Hanselman has a post about computer icons that refer to dead technology.

    Depressingly, I found that I knew all of them firsthand. In my defense, I claim that books are not a dead technology.