Posts by Tim Anderson

Re: Some applications will run...

We're trying to get clarification on this and will report back.

Tim

Or other open source software :-)

Re: Is this new?

GA is new. Was previously a preview.

Swing is not going away!

Swing is not going anywhere, not sure where that idea came from but it is not in the article.

Tim

Re: "UWP does solve long-standing Windows problem, safely & easily installing & removing apps"

Not really. What has changed is that when first conceived, a WinRT (basis of UWP) app was sandboxed so that the system prevented it from misbehaving. Now the policy is to open up the whole Windows API to UWP apps so that is no longer the case. Microsoft argues that since you can still install desktop apps, the security benefits of locked down WinRT apps are illusory. However UWP apps are still designed to be easily and cleanly installed and removed, which is the feature I am referencing here.

Tim

Re: Umm...

Added prices now.

Tim

Re: Bullshit !!!

You need to look here https://github.com/dotnet/roslyn/issues/10365 where there is a lot of discussion and a fix (thanks to @drpizza on twitter for pointing this out)

Re: Passive tense?

Fixed - many thanks :-)

Tim

Re: People need to be warned that Office 365 is not the same as Office 2016 ...

> No you don't. Just install it and it will remove / update the old version automatically.

Sorry, doesn't work in this case. I believe the problem is that the plan change meant a downgrade to a version of Office without Access and probably other differences. Anyway, the documented migration specifies that you must remove Office from Control Panel.

Re: Excel Co Authoring or not?

No real-time co-authoring in Excel. Apologies for confusing wording, this refers to the feature in Word, PowerPoint, OneNote.

Tim

Re: It does what it says on the tin...

Yes it is a preview; but there is not much point in trying stuff out if you do not report honestly on the experience. I like Windows Phone / Mobile etc and would love for Microsoft to get this right and revive the platform somehow. At the same time it is fair to say that Microsoft's media player efforts have a long history of not working right - Windows Media Player has always been slow and prone to throwing up obscure errors - and this stuff is important to the user experience. Streaming your own stuff from OneDrive is a great feature but only if it works reliably.

Tim

Re: Not an emulator

Thanks, oversight corrected.

Tim

Re: idiotic attitudes all round

It's any shortcut, not just Metro apps

Re: So close!

The back panel does come off and you can easily upgrade the SSD.

Tim

Re: Sure of your interpretation?

The EULA specifically refers to "system and app updates".

Tim

Re: Write about your subject

Fair point, the rationale is that Surface was created to work properly with Windows 8 and I wanted to bring out that context.

Tim

Re: Control Panel

True :-) but it still seems to me that a search in the Start menu should find it.

Tim

Check the FAQ: "True “console” apps aren’t really going to be supported for the IoT core OS, headless or not. You can still deploy and run a standard win32 console app here, it just won’t be connected to any on-device console. When running headless you should just get that black screen. When running headed the only supported UI is via the UWP UI stacks (XAML, HTML, DirectX)."

http://ms-iot.github.io/content/Faqs.htm

Tim

Re: Haha!

I think the idea is that your active data is always local so that perf is maintained. Microsoft also says "As core transactional tables grow in size, you may need to archive historical data to lower cost and to maintain fast performance" so I guess shunting stale data to the cloud could help with that.

Tim

Re: Promotional feature?

Nope, I wrote it because new commercial C++ IDEs are uncommon, plus the JetBrains tools are pretty good IME.

Tim

Re: Hungarian notation

There was, but couldn't fit it in. Just for you though: "there was a style of identifying variables known as Hungarian notation that I imitated and perhaps propagated more than was desirable (laughs)." Almost a confession :-)

Re: "Most" enterprises "want" hybrid cloud??

Another way of putting this is that enterprises are not busy closing their datacentres. So to the extent that they have any interest in public cloud, it is hybrid.

Tim

Re: Right click admin options

OK, so you are beating me up because you can right-click the bottom left corner in Win 8.0 too for the admin menu (or press Win-X).

True, but the reason I mention it is that I most often right-click the Start button in Win 8.1 for the "Shut down or sign out" option which was added - it is not in Win 8.0.

The right-click menu is also more discoverable in Win 8.1, which does not matter once you have discovered it, but that discoverability is improved is also important.

There is another thing you should know about this review. After discussion we agreed not to repeat everything that we had already said about Windows 8.1 Preview, which was reviewed here last month:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/12/windows_eight_one_review/

Hence the focus on some of the business features. We should have included a link to the earlier piece though, so apologies for that.

Tim