Office 2012 Preview and the Microsoft Account

Greg Leave a comment

[sc:software-category ]Microsoft has release a consumer preview of Office 2012, with the Office 365 label, what exactly does that mean?

First off is the most obvious requirement for a Microsoft Account to install Office on your PC.  This is a little troubling as I really don’t want Microsoft (or anyone else for that matter) to have any more information about me then they actually need to have.  I decided to take a look any why and I have to admit the install and integration was very slick.

The new, more Metro look of Office 2013 is a little jarring at first, but it works quite well once the initial shock has worn off.

With this version of Office there is no way to remove the online connectivity, though you can work offline of course.  SkyDrive is now the default save location and that rubs me the wrong way.  Why should I eat up bandwidth to store files on a remote server when I have terabytes of hard disk space sitting locally?  I know most non-technical people probably won’t even give it a second thought but its a choice Microsoft made that I just don’t like.

In the initial flurry of news releases they were all focused on this new Office 365 version of the preview, but Technet now has a non-365 version up for download.  I uninstalled the 365 version and installed the Pro Plus version to see how they handled the Microsoft Account integration.

unfortunately it looks like the preview doesn’t remove all its settings so it picked up my account from the 365 install.  I’ll have to try installing it again on a clean system.

I don’t belive for a moment that Microsoft will force all Office 2013 users to have a Microsoft Account, after all any large company would never let software with that kind of requirement to be installed on their network.

I can see why MS has gone in this direction, to complete against the purely web-based suites, I just hope they don’t throw the baby out with the bath water in their rush for the cloud.

Windows 8 and Metro Apps

Greg

[sc:windows-category ]Microsoft is moving full steam ahead on Metro in Window 8 but some of their decisions seem a little wrong to me.

For example, they have decided to limit Metro apps to be installed from the Windows Store only.  Ok, obviously this is inspired from the mobile world, where Apple pioneered this model, but we’re talking about a desktop OS here.  Everyone is used to installing apps on their desktops and there is no benefit to end users to limit it to the store.

You could argue about safety and security, but as all the vendors have found out, spyware and malware make their way in to the online stores all the time.

So what’s really behind the move?  Money of course!

Limiting Metro apps the store only means Microsoft can take a 30% (or whatever they decide) cut of each app purchased and as Apple has found out, that can add up quickly.

There have been many articles on “The War on General Purpose Computing” and this is just the latest salvo.

I’m fundamentally opposed to this position, it’s my hardware, let me install what I want.  I’m not a child and I don’t need big brother to decide what I install.

Anyway, how long do you think it will take the hackers to bypass this restriction?  If they can do it almost same day as release on an iPhone with limited tools and documentation, image what they will be able to do on a full-blown PC.

Of course just to make matters worse, Microsoft now says that in Windows RT, you will be able to load your own Metro apps, if you’re an enterprise customer.  So will that mean as long as a publisher has a valid signing certificate of some kind you will be able to load their app on to your device?  Will this hold true for the standard Windows 8?

So many questions, I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Windows Phone 8 and hardware upgradeability – Part 2

Greg

[sc:mobile-category ]A while ago I wrote an article on the issue of hardware upgradability for WP7 devices, now’ the time to take a quick look back at it.

What we know now is that WP7 phones won’t be upgradable.  Full stop.  WP8 is going to be new hardware only.  From my original article:

However if MS does go with the NT kernel (and in my opinion they should, they get all kinds of benefits like the standard driver model, true multitasking, etc.), then it seems unlikely any WP7 phones will be upgradeable as the amount of effort to create new drivers for the NT kernel would not have enough return on investment.

Which is spot on.  It comes down to simple economics on this one, writing new drivers for hardware that you are never going to use again makes no sense.

So lets assume the worst case for a moment, no WP7 hardware will be upgradeable to WP8.  First generation devices, like my HD7, will not be upgradeable, however they will have been out for over 2 years by the time WP8 ships.  For most users this will be at the end of their contracts and they will be looking to upgrade to new hardware anyway.

My worst case scenario above has come true, but the mitigation for most users of first gen WP7 devices is easy, a few extra months with WP7.8 and they will be able to upgrade to new hardware and get WP8.

Where it gets ugly is for the people who just picked up their shiny new Titan II or Lumia 900, these users, if no upgrade is available, are likely going to be stuck with WP7.

Again, those that just purchased their phones are the ones hardest hit.  But this is true any time you buy a new phone, there’s always something better coming along.  Even with that though, a Titan II or Lumia 900 will still be a great phone for the majority of users until their contracts expire.  The questions of application support will likely be the critical issue for these users and in general the apps that are available now will continue to be so.  The new apps will continue to roll in for at least the next six months and more likely year or more as it will take a while for WP8 to get similar market share to WP7.

But when I say “stuck”, perhaps “stick” would be a better term.  Let’s face it, WP7 is great and no matter what WP8 is, that won’t change.

This is still true, WP7 is GREAT.  To make it better WP7.8 will at least bring the new start screen to WP7 devices and maybe more.

So yes, there may be some disappointment about when a user can upgrade to a WP8 device, but that is just life in the fast moving world of mobile phones.

This is true in all technology, just even more so these days in mobile.

 

Opera 12

Greg Leave a comment

[sc:software-category ]I love Opera, it’s a great web browser, but the recently released version 12 was kind of a let down.

After all it was a full whole number release but there wasn’t any real user visible major changes.  The only thing that was really visible to users was the removal of Unite/Widgets in favour of extensions.  Which is fine and all but I was kind of expecting more.

I guess when you’ve had such a great run of major releases like Opera, the expectations are hard to meet every time 😉

The new theme engine is nice and all, but I really don’t use theme’s on any of my apps, I want function over form and the default theme is pretty much the definition of this in Opera.

I wonder if they’re working on a Metro version for Windows 8?

Doing the Tango… on Canada Day!

Greg Leave a comment

[sc:mobile-category ]Previously I updated my HD7 to WP 7.5 Build 8107 manually and now that Tango is out (Build 8773) it’s time to do it again!

You can go over to the XDA Forums and find the links to the update cabs here.

Something I missed in the first manual update was to figure out which languages my phone had installed on it.  In reality it doesn’t matter much as I only use English, but for the sake of completeness this time I downloaded and installed the “version and languages” app that’s contained in the first post at the XDA forums thread.  Of course if you don’t have an unlocked phone that’s not going to work 😉

It turns out Bell ships several languages with the HD7:

  • 0407: Deutsch
  • 0409: US English
  • 040C: French
  • 0410: Italian
  • 0C0A: Spanish

So the first thing I did to my phone was to load the extra 4 languages from the original 8107 update that I performed.  At this time I also did a device backup, just in case anything went wrong later on.

Note, if you try to send a language to the device that isn’t on the device it will fail the installation of all the cab’s you’ve sent.  So make sure to send the right ones.

Getting to Tango actually requires two updates to be done, the 8112 update and then the 8773 update.  I’m not sure what 8112 contains, but it seems like a small move up from 8107.

Using WP7 Cab Sender makes it easy enough to send the update and unlike the first time I decided to install the languages and the update at the same time.  This seems to have worked fine and I repeated the process for 8773.  Having taken the backup while installing the language files for 8107, I didn’t bother repeating it again during the 8112 ro 8773 updates to save time.

Like before, I did all these steps on my development phone before executing them on my primary phone.

So far everything is still working, tethering is still enabled so it all looks good.

Happy Canada Day everyone!

Source: XDA Developers, wpcentral