Category: Windows

5 Days with the HTC Windows Phone 8X

Greg Leave a comment

[sc:mobile-category ]So now that I’ve had my HTC 8x for a few days, what do I think of it?

Hardware

First off, physically the phone is quite impressive, light and thin and sturdily built it is bar none the best HTC phone I’ve owned.  HTC has come a long way since my old Windows Mobile 6800.  The phone almost feels too light and thin in your hands, compared to by Wp7 HTC HD7 it is a major step forward.

For some reason Bell decided to get the California Blue model in, which to pretty much everyone I’ve shown it too says that it’s purple.  The case material feels a little like rubber and provides a good grip on the phone.  However it does show up scuffs quite easily and after only a couple of days I have a dozen or more black marks on it.  On the purple they are hard to see but I can image that on the yellow or green models they would show up easily.  I think I would recommend the black version as they would be effectively invisible on it.  I’ll be getting an Otterbox for it when they come out and that should take care of the problem.

One other hardware issue (which has been common on all the HTC phone’s I’ve had) is the buttons.  They really suck.  If you don’t hit them just right they don’t register.

After an hour or so of using the phone I noticed that once in a while if I had it laying flat on a table and then picked up the phone it would go to sleep at unexpected times.  I couldn’t get it to replicate the issue consistently and a few days later HTC released an update to their “attentive phone” application which controls features like muting the ringer when the phone is turned over.  I assume the update fixed whatever was being misread and since I’ve installed it the problem has not come back.

A second issue that still exists is that the auto-brightness control seems to be a little sensitive.  It dims or brightens at what seem like random intervals and but isn’t too bad so I’ve left it on for now, I can always turn it off if required.  A holdover from WP7 that I would like to see fixed is the ability to pin the brightness control to the start screen, but alas it still can’t be done in WP8.

Initial Setup and Impressions

Once I had the phone powered up, I added my Microsoft account and it added by Twitter and LinkedIn feeds to my phone, however it didn’t bring over Facebook for some reason and I had to re-add it manually.

My HD7 felt fast, but this phone feels like greased lightning.  Page transitions are even faster and smoother than in WP7.

Another nice change is the vibration feature, it’s toned down quite a bit for the key presses and feels much better than the harsh buzz from the HD7.

The camera is also a big step up from the HD7, HTC had a bad reputations for cameras but recently has made major strides.  The camera in the 8X takes crisp and bright photo’s, a huge step up from the muddied mess of the HD7.

Windows Phone 7 Apps

Something I hadn’t seen noted before in other reviews is how WP7 apps run on WP8.  Due to the aspect ratio change from 800×480 to 1280×720 when the app is scaled up there is a space at the top of the screen.  This can look a little weird if the application doesn’t use the default theme background colour, but isn’t a big deal.

Battery Life

Battery life is about the same as my old HD7, a day of reasonable usage gets me down to about 20% left.  A bigger battery would certainly have helped out but its no worse than my last phone so no complaints here.

Windows Phone 8 Start Screen

The WP8 Start Screen is very similar to WP7, but there are a few items of note:

  • The resizable tiles are nice, having a row of small tiles for various mail folders is convenient and reduces the amount of scrolling I have to do.
  • Being able to resize the calendar and pictures tiles is long overdue!
  • The slightly larger tile size in WP8 seems a little off to me still but I suspect I’ll get use to it soon enough.
  •  Without the “gutter” area on the right there’s no where for the right/left arrow button, which they’ve stuck at the very bottom of the Start Menu, they might as well have just let it off completely.

IE10

Being able to add the tabs button to the main address bar is fantastic and IE10 seems very capable at this point.  The only think I wish they would add is the ability to select an icon instead of a screen grab of the site to the Live Tile when you pin an address to the Start Menu.

Pre-Installed Software

Beyond the HTC software, Bell installed NO additional software.  Not even their self service app.  This kind of surprised me but I think that due to the lateness of getting the hardware out the door they may have skipped this step.  Perhaps in the next batch of phones they will add some.

Windows Phone 8 Specific Apps

There are a couple of WP8 specific apps that have already made it to my must have list, these are:

  • Battery Level for WP8, this gives you a percentage of battery remaining, both as a live tile as well as on the lock screen.  It has a fee little issues (never reaches 100% for example) but it’s free and ad free as well so no complaints.
  • Skype, this is still a preview but it certainly shows where it is going.

Keyboard/Speech Language

When the phone arrived it had two languages installed, English and French, which is quite typical for a Canadian phone.  After a few hours of use I started a new e-mail and suddenly I found all my words being redlined, it turns out that WP8 had decided to flip over to French instead of English for the input language.  I went over to settings and switched back to English and then deleted French.

The next day I was poking around and found that the voice support wasn’t enabled by default and had to download the language file for it.  By default it selected French again and I changed it over to English and downloaded the support file.  When it completed I noticed my keyboard language was changed to French again.  Not only had it switched the language but it had even re-installed French again.

This is weird but it hasn’t happened again so I’ll keep an eye on it and see what happens.

Final Thoughts

The phone is quite nice and WP8, while much the same, has some nice new touches that makes the experience even better than before.  I would not hesitate to recommend the 8X to anyone, which is more than I can say for the previous generation of WP7 devices.

There is one items I haven’t written about here yet, I’m going to make it a separate post, that’s the sync client for Windows Phone 8.  Let’s just say it hasn’t been a smooth transition from WP7 and leave it at that for now.

Windows 7/8 Libraries and Network Shares

Greg

[sc:windows-category ]I have to admit that when I first saw the libraries in Windows 7 I was not convinced I liked them.  For the first few months I actually hacked the registry to get rid of them.  However, since then I have to admit I have come to kind of like them.

One issue I had with them was that I used a network share for my files so that they are available on any of the systems I use.  Windows requires these shares to be indexed on the server and I did not have indexing enabled on my servers.  In Windows 7 I used the Zorn Software Windows 7 Library Tool (the site seems to be down at this time) which allowed you add any location to a library no matter if Windows thought it was supported or not.

This worked, but was a hack and some features didn’t work (or were horribly slow).  When I upgraded to Windows 8 it didn’t work at all so I decided to try to get it functioning “correctly”.

The first step was to add indexing on the servers.  There are two indexing services in Windows Server 2008, the traditional 2003 service and the new Windows Search Service.  Both are added in the features/role section the server manager.  The Windows Search Service is what is required for Windows 7/8 to support indexed file shares and the installation was straight forward.

Theoretically that should have been all that was required, adding the share to the library should then have worked.  However that is not the case.  I have spent several weeks trying to debug the issue of adding the network shares to the libraries and continue to have the dreaded “This network location can’t be included because it is not indexed”.

I found a workaround with a quick search which was to create local symbolic links on drive c and then including these in to the libraries.

This worked (and in fact fixed another annoyance as I replaced the “My Documents” folder with the symbolic link which means anything that doesn’t follow the proper procedure and looks directly on disk instead of through the registry/API they still get to the network share instead of writing to drive c) however the pictures and videos library didn’t display any thumbnails.

There were several suggestions online, including that using short UNC names might fix the issue.  However non of them worked.

I was finally poking around my network share when I noticed that thumbnails were showing up on my pictures/video folders if I went to the mapped drive but didn’t show up through the library link.

I finally decided to remove all my libraries and add them back in.  The first time I added them it put the symbolic link in the configuration (so in my case for music “C:\Users\Greg\Music”).  This time when I added them back in Windows followed the symbolic links and added the full UNC path.  After that the thumbnails came up correctly.

I’m not sure what changed, I suspect when I first created the libraries the indexing hadn’t completed on the folders and Windows never checks to see if indexing is available again.  Recreating the libraries links forced Windows to check again if indexing was enabled  on the server-side and then was happy.

In the end the following steps should get a network share added to a Windows 7/8 Library:

  1. Install Windows Search Services on your file server (if you are using DFS you may have to add it to your DFS root servers as well)
  2. Wait for Indexing to complete on the servers
  3. Remove your local profile directories from the Libraries
  4. Replace your local profile directories with Symbolic links to the network shares (use mklink from the command prompt)
  5. Add your new symbolic links to the Libraries (once added verify they use the UNC path instead of the local symbolic link)

 

Microsoft Surface RT First Impressions

Greg Leave a comment

[sc:hardware-category ]Having finally received my Surface after a few minor issues in the delivery, I’ve had a chance to play with it for a few days and here are my first thoughts on it.

After taking out of the box the first thing that hit me was how large it really is.  The 16×9 aspect ratio really make it look bigger than it I was expecting.  The next thing I noticed is how well made it is.  There is zero flex in this thing and it feels like a single solid piece of magnesium.

Build quality is far beyond any other table, or even laptop, I’ve ever held.

Startup

Powering on the unit the first thing Microsoft has done is replace the standard “Windows” boot message with “Surface”, which is a nice little touch.  Once up you go through the standard Windows 8 setup steps including connecting to your Microsoft account.

For the rest of my PC’s I have a domain and I use the AD account to login to my systems, but unfortunately Windows 8 RT doesn’t support domain membership so I had to create a local account to start with.

This got me in to Windows but there doesn’t seem to be a way to associate the local Windows account with the Microsoft account like there is with an AD users.  This means you have to use your Microsoft account to login with if you want to get the sync features and access to the Store.

For me this presented a small problem as I don’t use my Microsoft account much and I use KeepPass on my PC’s to manage my passwords so I don’t actually have the Microsoft account password memorized.  Because of this I use a long randomly generated password which of course would be impossible to memorize.  This has forced me to change my Microsoft account password to something easier to remember.

Once I was logged in to the Surface with my Microsoft account, the rest proceeded easily enough and I was presented with the Start screen.

Differences with Windows 8 on a tablet

Windows RT looks exactly the same as the standard Windows and it was a smooth transition.  There were a few things to get use to though.  On the desktop I often go to the Start screen and just start typing the name of the app I want.  This brings up the search feature and I’m good to go.  However on the tablet there is no way to bring up the soft keyboard on the Start screen.  Instead you swipe in from the right to bring up the system charms and from there select search.  Then the software keyboard pops up and your good to go.

Type Cover

Speaking of keyboards, I didn’t get the Touch cover as I just can’t conceive of typing on a hard surface for any length of time.  Instead I ordered the Type cover with the real keys.  The Type cover is a marvel of engineering and actually feels pretty good to type on.

I only have two small items that I don’t like about it.  The first is the touchpad, the left/right buttons are integrated and it doesn’t quite feel natural to use as I often use one hand to move the mouse and the second to click the buttons.  With the Type cover I can’t do this as the second-hand acts as a second touch point and you get things like zoom or random mouse movements.  I’ll probably get use to it, but more likely I’ll just use a bluetooth mouse.

The second item is the function keys.  the top row of keys on the keyboard are shared between various functions (like play, pause, zoom, etc.) and the F1-F12 keys.  Normally I would expect the F keys to be the primary function and the other to be the secondary but on the Type keyboard this is reversed.  So if I want to close a Windows with Alt-F4, I now have to hit Alt-Fn-F4.  Not a major issue, just a little strange.

I suspect I won’t use the Type cover much and instead, like the mouse, pick up a bluetooth keyboard to use with it.

The built-in kickstand on the Surface is a great feature, even without the Type cover being used as a keyboard it’s nice to be able to stand the Surface up without having a separate stand.

Accessories

One of the things we haven’t seen much of yet is accessories for the Surface.  I’m sure there will be cases and stands made for it and I’m wondering about charging it.  As I’ve mentioned in previous articles, the wireless charging on my HP TouchPad is a great feature and Microsoft decided to go with a magnetic charger on the Surface.  The charging port is on the right hand side of the unit which makes me wonder if a charging dock is possible or not.  There is the port for the Touch/Type cover at the bottom of the Surface, did Microsoft include charging capabilities in this port as well?

Applications

First off the Surface RT comes with Office built-in, however at this time it is still the preview release.  The final version is complete according to Microsoft but isn’t in the Store yet.

The Office programs look and act just like Office on the PC so I won’t go in to details on them, the only comment I’ll make is about what’s missing.  Outlook and Project.  Both should be there and they aren’t.  I can only assume they will make an appearance at some point in the future.

Beyond the bundled apps I pulled down several from the Store and they all worked flawlessly.  The Store is still pretty small but that will change over the next few months.  The big ones for me that missing are KeepPass, Opera.

The built-in Mail app is kind of limited, but it does work and overall is functional enough to get by.  Microsoft has been busily updating many of the launch apps even before Windows 8 was officially available so I expect to see some major improvements in these apps over the next few months.

Windows 8 Settings Sync

Part of Windows 8 is the ability to sync your settings through your Microsoft Account.  The feature is great but I was in for a surprise about how great when I took the Surface to a Wi-Fi hotspot I visit quite often that requires a WPA2 passphrase.  I turned on the Surface and was showing a friend how it worked and suddenly a mail alert came up saying I had new mail.

At first I didn’t think much of it, but then I realized I hadn’t connected to the WiFi yet.  I have my laptop configured with Windows 8 and the WPA2 passphrase and the Surface tablet simply sync’d these settings over including the auto connect.  So when I turned on Surface within range of the WiFi it simply connected up and starting talking to the net again.

Cool 🙂

Speaking of things missing…

I mentioned earlier that Windows RT can’t join a domain, this also means it can’t receive Group Polices.  Both seem like strange limitations and are effectively showstoppers for businesses to use RT.  I assume they had to limit developement time on these features to get RT out the door on time and so I would expect to see them implemented in future updates.  Either that or for some kind of RT Enterprise Edition to crop up.

Silverlight is also missing from RT, which seems kind of strange as it was their cross-platform play for a long time.

The Display

There has been quite a bit written about the resolution of the display on Surface as it is not a “retina” type of display.  But really it looks gorgeous.  Bright and crisp.

The one thing I don’t like about it is the 16×9 aspect ratio.  I have to admit I prefer the 4×3 aspect ratio better for a tablet, but virtually everyone other than Apple is going to this ratio so I suspect it’s a loosing battle 🙁

Summary

Overall it’s a really nice device, kind of big to be a pure tablet in my opinion, but well made and slick.

I don’t think it will replace my laptop, perhaps the Surface Pro might do that, but even then I don’t think so.

I would like to see a Surface Pro with a 4×3 aspect ratio or perhaps just a smaller display.  Maybe ASUS or Acer will make one that will catch my fancy.

Microsoft has more work to do, but Windows 8 is a great OS and Surface has shown what can be done in term of design.  Now it’s up to Microsoft’s partners to step up to the plate and take it even farther.

The last question to answer is then, would I recommend it to someone?  The answer is… depends:

  • If you want to replace you iPad, no, Surface is too big as a pure tablet.
  • If you want to replace your netbook… absolutely.
  • If you want to replace you notebook… probably not, but if you only do some basic browsing and e-mail it would be a yes.
  • If you want to replace you desktop… definitely not, let’s not get carried away here 😉

 

Halloween Special! Surface Pre-order Nightmare

Greg Leave a comment

[sc:hardware-category ]I pre-ordered my Surface RT tablet back on the 16th, the first day pre-orders were available and I was looking forward to getting my hands on it on the 26th.  This is the story of the mess that followed.

To start at the beginning on October 16th, Microsoft opened pre-orders with a tweet that contained the URL for them.  This URL at first didn’t work for Canadian orders but a few minutes later properly redirected me to the Canadian order page.

Pet peeve number one was the price, the Canadian dollar is currently above parity with the US dollar but the tablet still costs more in Canada then the US.  This really shouldn’t be the case these days, but alas it is so lets move on.

Ordering the Surface was easy enough and I bought the Type keyboard as well.  Once completed and reviewed my order page and pet peeve two cropped up, the order page has the following description in it:

Surface with Windows RT
Price: CDN$519.00 Quantity: 1
Status: In process
Pre-Order Boxed Shipment
Language: 32 GB without Black Touch Cover
Pre-Order Pre-order now for delivery by 10/26

I’m sorry “without Black Touch Cover” is just bad grammar, there’s no need to indicate the lack of Touch cover, that should just be assumed.

Now note the last line in the above “delivery by 10/26”, that means it should arrive before the 26th technically but I’ll give them the 26th as well.

And finally note the “In process” as the status, when this was still the status on the 25th I was just a little bit concerned as the Type cover had switched over to “Completed”.  The net had several stories saying Canadian shipments had been delayed.  Likewise on the 20th I had received a tracking number for the Type cover but not the tablet.

So I decided to call Microsoft and see what the story was.  Service was quick and I didn’t have to wait on hold at all.  Talking to the agent I was assured the order would arrive on schedule for the 26th and I would receive an e-mail in the morning with details on it.

I was tracking the Type cover via the UPS site during the day and I had to wait until almost 6pm before it arrived.  When they didn’t deliver the Surface as well I called Microsoft as second time.

Once again getting through was easy and again I was assured it would be arriving that day.  They still could not provide me with a tracking number and the status on the web site was still listed as “In process” so I waited until 7pm.  7pm is important as that’s as late as the delivery companies will deliver to residential addresses.  When that time passed I call Microsoft back and this time received a “we are closed, call back during normal business hours” message.

Having no other recourse, I left it for the night.

In the morning, I placed another call with MS.  This time the agent was apologetic but of no real help.  They still didn’t have a tracking number and didn’t know when the tablet would arrive, but assured me it had shipped.  I was escalated to their supervisor and he assured me he would investigate and get back to me by end of day.  I asked specifically for a telephone call and when 5pm rolled around and I hadn’t heard anything back I called in for the 4th time. I was quickly moved to a new supervisor who said they would escalate the issue internally as there should have been a tracking ID.

Once more I was assured he would get back to me within 24 hours, however no response was to be found.  Just before 4pm on Sunday I decided to call back and see what was going on.  This time the agent tried to once again say that I would be seeing a response with 24 to 48 hours and the tablet should arrive within 5 to 7 business days.  That was clearly not acceptable and I escalated to the supervisor,  after being pushed for more detail the supervisor finally let slip the truth.  There was an issue with shipping and a batch of tablets for Canada had not shipped yet.

There was a team working on getting new shipping information and $50 vouchers out to these effected orders and I should be seeing an update by end of day with delivery by end of the 29th.

Having at least found out the truth, I let the shipping date go and waited to see what would happen.  Sure enough at 4:10 I received a new tracking number, which UPS didn’t think was valid yet.

I didn’t accept the $50 voucher though, there is no point in getting a voucher you will never use or that you have to spend more money at the store to use it.  The supervisor escalated to the third tier support and said they might be able to do something for me and I should expect them to contact me within 72 hours.

Now at this point I have to bring to your attention that each time I called in to Microsoft, they lied to me.  Yes that’s a strong statement but none the less it’s true.  To be clear, the agents themselves may not have known the truth either, but Microsoft as a whole did:

  • On the first call on Thursday they knew there was a shipping issue when I didn’t have a tracking number and the internet already had stories of the $50 voucher.  When I was assured it was on track for delivery on the 26th, that was a lie.
  • On the second call on Friday when they said it would be delivered by end of day, that was a lie.
  • On the third call on Saturday when they said it had been shipped, that was a lie.
  • On Sunday when I called they lied right up until I pushed hard enough to get a real answer.  And even then they knew the 29th was not going to happen as they had just created a shipping label, it wasn’t until the 29th that UPS even had it in their system.

The shipping label sat without an update until finally on the morning of Oct 30 at 3:16am UPS finally picked it up off the dock.  Clearly at this point Microsoft had sprung for air mail as it quickly moved to Canada and was through customs and out the door for delivery by 9:51am.

The next issue I was concerned about was the delivery itself.  On the 26th I had worked from home to ensure I would be there to get the parcel, however on the 30th I couldn’t work from home and so I called UPS.  It turns out they didn’t need a signature so it was left at my door and when I arrived home it was waiting for me.

On Sunday the 28th when I was on the call with Microsoft I had them escalate beyond the supervisor as I indicated I was not happy with the $50 voucher (after all why would I want to buy something from their store again?).  They indicated I could expect a call back within 72 hours.

I’m still waiting for that and we’ll see what they’re willing to do.  I don’t want a voucher, I expect a discount on the order I already placed or something useful for free.  I expect a response by end of day today, but I’m not holding my breath and expect to have to call back in yet again.

I’ll post a follow-up to this once my escalation is complete.

The good news is though that I now do have my Surface and that is a whole nother post all by itself!

 

Windows 8 Classic Shell

Greg

[sc:windows-category ]Windows 8 is a big change from previous versions, one of the most significant changes is the removal of the start menu from the desktop.  Several “replacements” have come around and I installed Classic Shell to give it a try.

First off, I have to say that Classic Shell is a very nice piece of software.  Full of options and support for just about everything you could image.  It is composed of three components:

  • The replacement Start Menu
  • The Windows 8 File Explorer toolbar
  • The IE 10 toolbar

I found the IE and File Explorer toolbars to be not to my liking but I can see where some may find these very desirable.

The real heart of the product though is the Start Menu replacement.  It has options for different styles, from XP to 7.  It can also override the behaviour of the Windows Key, skip the Start Screen on first logon and lots of other things.

I really like the product, but a funny thing happened (and I kind of thought it would), I’ve uninstalled it now.  Not because there’s anything wrong with it, but I’ve found I don’t use it.  In fact it was getting in the way.  Microsoft has done a good job of building the Windows 8 interface and I find that Classic Shell just gets in the way of that design.

If you’re looking to have the Start Menu back, give it a try, but I’d suggest just seeing if you can use the new interface first.  Give it a week and see if you find it better or not.