[sc:windows-category ]I’ve been using Windows since, well, before it was really Windows .

When the developers preview of Windows 8 came out a few months ago I downloaded it and it was quite apparent it wasn’t meant for anything but development, which was fine.

The consumer preview on the other hand came out on February 29th and obviously it was meant for the masses to take a look at.

It’s no secret I’m a big fan of the Metro interface on both the Zune HD and Windows Phone, but does it translate to a desktop PC?

Kinda, I guess…

It does work, and Microsoft has spent a lot of time between the developers and the consumer preview’s working on the keyboard interface.

It looks VERY lovely, I have no doubt that on a tablet PC it’s going to be a killer OS.  On the PC, I’m less convinced.

I had an older Acer Aspire 751 netbook/notebook lying around so I decided to see how it would run on that.  The hardware more than meet’s MS’s minimums, but even so, the interface felt a little sluggish.

Microsoft has been in the last few years really been pushing the boundaries on its interfaces (from the ribbon bar to Metro) and it’s worked out well for them so far.

I suspect on a desktop or more powerful PC, Windows 8 will do just fine, but on the lower end hardware it may struggle to give that smooth Metro experience we’ve all come to expect.

Of course there’s still lots of time for Microsoft to optimize before Windows 8 is release .

The biggest grip I have with the consumer preview is the “consumer” part.  No domain membership is supported so I won’t be converting any of my day-to-day PC’s to Windows 8 until we see a final version.

[sc:windows-category ]My previous posts about moving from VMWare Server to Hyper-V for my main servers I didn’t touch on time services as in general it’s not something you have to think about too much.

However, over the last couple of weeks I have noticed that my domain controllers started to get farther and farther out of sync with the real time.  Last week it was at about 10 minutes so it was time to do something about it.

Within my current configuration there are three competing clocks trying to set the time on the virtualized domain controllers:

• The NTP configuration on the DC
• The Hyper-V time sync service
• The NTP configuration on the host motherboard

In my original setup I had configured the DC’s to point to an external NTP source to get their time settings, then set the motherboard to point to the DC’s for it’s time.

This probably would have been fine except for Hyper-V also trying to keep the DC’s in line… what I believe was happening was as follows:

• During normal run time, the DC’s would pull from the NTP servers and set the clock
• Hyper-V would see the drift and “correct” it to the host time, which would always drift a bit due to the software clock
• The Hyper-V host was part of the domain so the domain time sync would then also update the host clock to be off as well
• Each time the host rebooted (patches, etc), it would pull the time from the DC, which would off a bit due to Hyper-V fixing the clock all the time
• This drift would then become the new norm and the process would start all over again

In any given month, the drift was not too bad, but over multiple months it added up to the 10 minutes or so I was seeing.

My first instinct was to kill the Hyper-V time sync service on the DC’s, but that just messed up the DC clocks due to the virtualization.

What I believe will resolve the issue (I’m going to have to wait a couple of months to make sure of course) is to instead set the motherboard NTP servers to the same NTP servers that the DC’s use and leave the Hyper-V time sync service in place.  This should ensure that during reboots the MB clock is updated to the right time and that should propagate through to the DC’s.  This would break the loop and keep the clock’s in sync with the proper time again.

[sc:windows-category ]Last week Microsoft posted a developers preview of Windows 8 and Metro is front and center.

The preview shows just how far the Metro UI has come from the humble Zune HD to now dominate MS’s entire UI strategy.

The preview is slick, the Metro elements work well and of course I’ve said several times that I love Metro on the Zune and Phone, but do I like it on my desktop?

For tablets and other touch screen devices it will of course be brilliant, but with a mouse and keyboard the experience takes a big hit on usability.  On the touch screen, a quick swipe takes you left or right on the start menu, but with a mouse you have to find the scroll bar and click it.  It just lacks the joy of the touch interface.

And before anyone says that everyone will upgrade to touch screens for their PC’s, lets stop that dead in it’s tracks.  Touchscreens and physical  keyboards are antithetical to each other.  Each takes you out of the experience and makes it harder to be productive.  Even moving your hand over to your mouse is a significant disruption, a third input device will make it even worse.

And don’t get me started on the fingerprints.  Imagine a nice 24 or 32 inch monitor covered in fingerprints… and having to clean it every couple of hours .

I think this really comes down to the rise of two competing use cases for computers over the last few years:

• Input (IUC): the use case where people enter information in to the computer.  Writing a document, creating a spreadsheet, editing a video, etc.
• Output (OUC): the use case where people view information from the computer.  Watching a video, browsing the web, reading e-mail, etc.

The difference comes down to the amount of interaction it takes to perform the task, IUC takes a lot more interaction with the computer to accomplish.  Where as OUC tends to have a small amount of interaction to start the content and then very little after that.

Since the birth of the PC, IUC has dominated the use of computers, however PDA’s, tablets and other form factors have made OUC more prevalent than ever.  So far no one has tried to combine these two use cases together in one OS.  Apple has OSX and iOS, Microsoft has Windows and Windows Phone.  Everyone else is pretty much in the OUC camp (Google with Android and pretty much any other phone OS).

MS is trying to accomplish this merger with Windows 8.  Will it work?  Don’t know, the preview obviously focuses on the new Metro UI components more than the traditional UI, but that is to be expected at this point.  So far I’m excited to see a Windows 8 tablet or a Media Center PC, but from what I’ve seen so far I’m not sure I’ll much like Windows 8 on my PC.