Windows Archive

"Of all the ways you might have imagined Microsoft screwing up, 'making something fantastic' is probably last on the list. As every business student will tell you, the first and most important step to success is making a quality product. Yet, Microsoft seem to have found themselves in the very strange situation of making something very good - their mobile platform, Windows Phone - and actually doing worse than before. Even more confusing, however, is that it might be Microsoft's commitment to finally get it right this time that has hurt them. And somewhere in this mess, there are a number of lessons for some very new challenges to businesses."

Fascinating, this. As a Windows Phone 7 user, I can attest that it is every bit as good as iOS and Android - heck, in my experience, it is more polished, more consistent, smoother, and faster than either of those two. Yet, despite raving reviews and glowing user comments all over the web, Windows Phone 7 simply isn't selling. Former Windows Phone 7 general manager Charlie Kindel believes it's because neither carriers nor device makers like the control Microsoft exerts over the platform.

Windows 8 will be one of the most significant releases for Microsoft ever, since it pretty much rethinks the entire graphical user interface. One of the problems I personally see with Metro is that it doesn't appear to be particularly conducive to getting actual work done. In an interview with The Verge, Microsoft design director Steve Kaneko confirmed that it's hard to adapt applications like Office to use Metro.

Yesterday, Microsoft finally unveiled all the details regarding its Windows Store, which will be the default way to distribute Metro applications on Windows 8. Most of the details are all pretty standard and mirror those of other stores, but there's one interesting twist that is sure to make a lot of you happy: Microsoft has made special exceptions for open source software.

Valid Windows NTFS folder names, rogue antivirus products, dual-boot Windows 7/Windows XP systems - find out how much you really know about everyone's favorite whipping post OS by taking the Windows IQ Test.

Windows 8 will have both the new Metro-style applications and user interface and the traditional Windows 7 desktop for legacy applications, which kind of runs like an application. Since legacy applications have to be recompiled to run on ARM anyway, it's always been a bit unclear if the ARM version of Windows 8 would include the legacy desktop at all - even Microsoft itself confirmed it wasn't sure yet. Microsoft bloggers Mary-Jo Foley and Paul Thurrot have fresh rumours that Microsoft has now made the decision to remove the legacy desktop from the ARM version.

Microsoft just posted on its blog about how Windows 8 is going to handle automatic updating and the consequent system restarts - and they're changing a few things around. They want to make the process less disruptive, and there's reason to cheer: no more popup notifications begging for restarts.

Windows 8 is still in heavy development, and still has a long way to go before it ends up on our desktops, laptops, and tablets. One of the major concerns is how Windows 8 is going to deal with a traditional keyboard and mouse/trackpad combination - especially on non-tablet computers where touch input is pretty much not an option. While Microsoft assures us it's all good, Synaptics decided to see what it, as trackpad maker, can do.

Well, its not official yet, but Microsoft's Windows 7 has now become the most widely used operating system. . . Windows 7 now has a strong 40.21% share of all desktop operating systems around the world whereas, the usage share of Windows XP has slipped to 38.64%. All this happened a couple of days back (in October). The rise in usage of Windows 7 and the drop in usage of Windows XP has been consistent since the time Windows 7 was first launched.

This was an inevitability, right? Android applications were already running on the PlayBook operating system as well as on Maemo (and even some rumblings on iOS), and now BlueStacks is bringing Android applications to Windows. Today they released the alpha version of the BlueStacks App Player, which will allow you to run Android applications on Windows.

The story about how secure boot for Windows 8, part of UEFI, will hinder the use of non-signed binaries and operating systems, like Linux, has registered at Redmond as well. The company posted about it on the Building Windows 8 blog - but didn't take any of the worries away. In fact, Red Hat's Matthew Garrett, who originally broke this story, has some more information - worst of which is that Red Hat has received confirmation from hardware vendors that some of them will not allow you to disable secure boot.

After the walled garden coming to the desktop operating system world, we're currently witnessing another potential nail in the coffin of the relatively open world of desktop and laptop computing. Microsoft has revealed that as part of its Windows 8 logo program, OEMs must implement UEFI secure boot. This could potentially complicate the installation of other operating systems, like Windows 7, XP, and Linux.

InfoWorld's J. Peter Bruzzese provides a list of 15 open source tools for enhancing your Windows server-side experience. 'You might imagine that the best place to go for improving your Microsoft server-side experience is to the mothership itself. In many cases, you would be right. But the truth is there are a meaningful number of open source tools that go above and beyond what Microsoft has to offer in support of Windows Server, Exchange, SQL, and SharePoint. Many of these alternatives provide -- for free -- more powerful capabilities than what you'd get with third-party retail products.' Bruzzese also offers a look at the best free server tools Microsoft has to offer.

In the article on Windows 8, I already mentioned that in order to demonstrate the viability of Metro for something other than Facebook and Twitter, Microsoft should come up with a Metro interface for Microsoft Office - one that doesn't leave out 90% of Office's features. Well, Microsoft has hinted that they are, indeed, working on Metro Office. In addition, it turns out Microsoft isn't entirely sure to how to address the issue if legacy applications on ARM.