Windows Archive

InfoWorld's Doug Dineley and Brian Chee round up the best new features of Windows Server 8. 'If you're a large shop struggling to manage hundreds of Windows servers, Windows Server 8 should ease the job. If you're a small shop trying to squeeze high-end capability from a low-end budget, Windows Server 8 has plenty for you, too. With Windows Server 8, everything from server deployment to high availability becomes smoother and more automated.' From multiserver management, to friction-free server deployment, to flexible live migration, 'whatever grudge you may hold against Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 8 will almost certainly make amends.'

The client version of Windows isn't the only one getting overhauled. It's a little less sexy, but Windows Server 8 is every bit as different from its predecessors as the Windows 8 client. Server Core (Windows Server running without the graphical user interface) is the, uh, core now, and everything is done using PowerShell - either directly, or through the new Metro-style Server Manager which is a layer on top of PowerShell. The buzzword here is cloud - not the big one, but those smaller ones on intranets.

This is mandatory listening and watching material for understanding the design methodology and ideas behind the Metro interface in Windows 8 (and thus, Windows Phone 7). All this sounds great in theory, and Jensen Harris, one of the minds behind Metro, is clearly passionate about it - and I love people who are passionate about their work. It's just that to me, the Metro UI doesn't seem to work very well for actual work. I want window management! I'm taking all this into account for an article on Metro in the Developer Preview. Stay tuned.

Chip Hazard posted a pic of a Windows 8 error screen, which in keeping with the overall trend in Windows8, is actually a lot more aesthetically pleasing than the old Blue Screen of Death. Plus: frowny face!

More news on Windows 8. This time around, Gabe Aul, a director of program management in Windows, blogged about the changes Microsoft has made to Windows 8's boot process. The results are impressive - a boot time not much slower than waking from sleep on current Windows 7 and Mac OS X machines. This is, of course, a vital component of getting Windows NT ready for tablets.

After a few relatively small changes and not-so-earth-shattering features, the Windows 8 blog has now unveiled something many of you will surely appreciate: Hyper-V, Microsoft's hypervisor-based virtualisation software, will be integrated into the client releases of Windows 8 - not just the server releases.

Ah yes, Windows Explorer. One of the oldest parts of Windows, and yet, it's far from perfect. It's hated less than, say, the Finder (but that's no achievement), but most geeks I know aren't particularly fond of it either. For Windows 8, Microsoft is going to make the biggest change ever to Explorer's interface: it's getting the ribbon treatment.

"According to a new report, there are as many as 6,000 references to MinWin in an internal Windows 8 client build. This may provide more clues and validation of Microsoft's virtualization plans for the coming operating system release."

"Earlier this morning, the Windows Phone development team officially signed off on the release to manufacturing build of 'Mango' - the latest version of the Windows Phone operating system. This marks the point in the development process where we hand code to our handset and mobile operator partners to optimize Mango for their specific phone and network configurations. Here on the Windows Phone team, we now turn to preparing for the update process. The Mango update for current Windows Phone handsets will be ready this fall, and of course will come pre-installed on new Windows Phones." Myself and those three others who use a WP7 device rejoice.

With Windows Phone 7 being a success among critics and probably the only mobile platform which tries to take at least baby steps away from the old WIMP/desktop paradigm, it's not entirely unsurprising that a lot of people are asking for Windows Phone 7 on tablets. However, Microsoft once again reiterated that WP7 is not meant for tablets, since they view tablets as PCs - hence, they will be running regular Windows.

"Early milestone builds of Windows 8 have leaked onto the Internet, and considerable effort has been put into figuring out how they work. Though officially tight-lipped, snippets of information have escaped Redmond's walls. So far, it appears that Windows 8 development doesn't just look not bad - there are signs that it will actually resolve many long-standing annoyances with writing Windows software. If Microsoft can pull off everything it's hoping to achieve with the platform, Windows 8 will be as important and radical a release as Windows Longhorn was going to be." Fantastic article by Ars' Peter Bright. His stance on H264 and WebM may boil my blood at times, but this is a good piece of writing. Highly recommended.

Way back in old and boring January of this year, Microsoft announced they would be working together with the Windows Phone 7 homebrew community, with the goal of creating a stable, supported way for homebrew developers and people interested in homebrew applications to enable side-loading on their WP7 devices. Well, they took their sweet time, but the ChevronWP7 team (Rafael Rivera, Chris Walsh, and Long Zheng) and Microsoft have just announced the results.

After the end of business on Monday I received the following in an email from Microsoft: "We appreciate your feedback and enthusiasm throughout the Windows Thin PC Community Technology Preview. Today, we are happy to announce that Windows Thin PC has been released to manufacturing (RTM), and will be available for our SA customers to download starting July 1, 2011." Anandtech published a brief but concise review of Windows Thin PC but here's a quick summary of my experience of this 32-bit only OS based on Windows Embedded Standard 7.

Four years ago, July 2007, Microsoft released the first few tidbits of information about Windows 7. Vista had just been shipped, and it wasn't received well - both by critics and the marketplace. During these days, I argued that for Windows 7, Microsoft ought to scrap the Vista userland, and build an entirely new interface and userland on top of Windows NT, while maintaining a 'classic' Windows version on the side for business and other reluctant folk who want to see the 'new' Windows mature a little bit first. While they didn't do this with Windows 7, they are doing exactly this with Windows 8. Ladies and gentlemen, Windows 8 is the first 'cut the legacy'-release we've all been waiting for - and Microsoft couldn't have picked a better time.