Group Policy Settings Reference for Windows Server "8" Beta and Windows "8" Consumer Preview: This spreadsheet lists the policy settings for computer and user configurations included in the Administrative template files (admx/adml) delivered with Windows Server® "8" Beta.

Happy now?

Greg Fell, CIO for global manufacturer Terex, is so keen to adopt Windows 8 for tablets that he has arranged with Microsoft to test a Windows 8 tablet in May. Fell, who supports 200 iPads among his 23,000 Terex workers, said he was interested in the interoperability Microsoft is promising between desktops, tablets and phones with Windows 8.</p><p>

Fell has another motive for scrutinizing Windows 8. He wants another viable platform to support. “We don’t want Apple to be the only vendor in the enterprise,” Fell said. “If BlackBerry is not going to be the strong No. 1 or No. 2, somebody else has to be, and if that’s Microsoft, that’s good for us and competition.”

Does assume that enterprises will be using Windows 8 and Windows Phone on smartphones. The latter may not be such a safe assumption.

One of the biggest changes in the Windows 8 Consumer Preview is the Removal of Start Orb along with the Good o’l Start Menu with it,a move which was said to be necessary to emphasize on the Metro UI and the new Start Screen Page with Tiles making it more touch friendly.

But with many likings for the new Metro UI also come many dislikes as well.So for those who don’t like to use the Metro UI and those who want to bring back the Start Button along with the Start Menu,ViStart is the way to go.It was initially designed for bring the Windows Vista’s Start Menu to Windows XP,but it also works for the Windows 8 versions as well,thanks to the recent updates to the software.

We can see the "want the Start orb!" "You don't need it!" wars being a feature of the next few years. (Thanks @rquick for the link.)

Andrew Orlowski:

Metro is a user interface designed for smartphones, which I have praised generously, and which looks good and works well on small devices. It may yet mature into something equally attractive and useful on iPad-like tablets. But welded onto a non-touch laptop or desktop PC, it represents a huge negative for the majority of Windows users.

Guess how many people run Vista?

Oh, look! Worldwide, 8% of all desktop/portable computer users are still running the hated, reviled Windows Vista. That’s more than all users of OS X and Linux combined.

And, of course, if you add up the number of Windows XP users (dominated by enterprises) and Windows 7 (mostly consumers and small businesses), the percentage is more than 10 times the total of all OS X and Linux users combined.

That’s from a worldwide base of nearly 1.5 billion traditional computers—PCs and Macs.

Pretty good for an irrelevant company.

Yeah, but Microsoft's invitations are really easy to parse.

Ballmer never thought he’d be in this position — not only porting a gaming peripheral to his beloved Windows machines, or even opening it up for commercial development by other software companies, but owning it, taking control of it, and positioning it as a key component in the future of the company.

Considering that a little over a year ago, Microsoft was threatening to sue and/or prosecute anyone who wanted to develop for Kinect on a PC, it’s a remarkable turnaround.

Very thoughtful, starting from what's real and happening now, and working forward logically.

In time for Christmas? Don't betcha bottom dollar, but interesting nonetheless.

Good rapid liveblog of the Microsoft annual meeting. Shareholders being asked to be patient with Bing and Windows Phone as they're on the "path to profitability".

Then the Q+A. Fifth question: Are we in the post-PC era?

Ballmer: “We are in the Windows era — we were, we are, and we always will be. … We are in an era in which the range of smart devices is continuing to expand. That’s a fantastic thing for Microsoft.”

Ed Bott: "These trend lines illustrate how spectacularly Windows Vista failed in the marketplace. Vista hits its peak of usage, not surprisingly, in October 2009, the same month that Windows 7 was introduced. After three years on the market, it had not cracked the 20% mark—Windows 7 hit that number after only a year. As of October 2011, Vista’s share has declined to 8.8%, and it will probably be below the 5% mark next year at this time.

"By contrast, Windows 7 has reached roughly 35% share in just two years and shows no signs of slowing. I’ve drawn trend lines on this chart to estimate when the shares for Windows XP and Windows 7 will cross. That should be in about six months, although recent numbers suggest that Windows 7 is picking up steam."

Vista is receding so quickly that it will be below Mac OSX some time in spring next year.

"Microsoft’s new Windows 8 OA 3.0 verification system will add complication and costs for ODMs (Original Device Manufacturers) who create and build PCs for the big name OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers). These costs will, undoubtedly, be passed on to us, the consumers.

"According to DigiTimes, the issue revolves around Microsoft’s new activation system for Windows 8. (Note: The DigiTimes piece inaccurately refers to OA 3.0 as being incorporated into the BIOS. What we are actually talking about here is UEFI firmware, which all Windows 8 certified systems must have.)"

The keys will be embedded in the firmware, rather than PCs shipping with a certificate of authentication. Something about this sounds like an accident waiting to happen.

Ed Bott: "don’t forget Europe and Korea and other jurisdictions that continue to scrutinize Microsoft for any signs of anticompetitive behavior. The EU already fined Microsoft billions of dollars for antitrust violations. Nobody likes writing a check that large.

"So, yes, Microsoft has the right to set conditions on how PCs are configured when Windows is preinstalled on those systems. They will insist that secure boot be enabled. They require certain minimum hardware requirements to be met, and they mandate that the system drive be formatted using the NTFS file system.

"But there is a very good reason you will not see Microsoft making any statement of any kind on how PC manufacturers should or should not implement the secure boot feature in their BIOS.

"Because anything they say can be used against them in a court of law. Literally."

In other words, it's not saying whether or not OEMs can install secure boot. Only how they can do it <em>when they choose to preinstall Windows</em>.

"When a Microsoft Windows machine gets infected by viruses/malware it does so mainly because users forget to update the Java JRE, Adobe Reader/Acrobat and Adobe Flash."

"Speaking at Dell World 2011, Otellini told an audience of industry executives that Intel loves PCs. 'I suspect Steve Ballmer said the same thing this morning and I know that our partner Dell absolutely loves PCs,' said Otellini. He continued to say that Intel and Microsoft have built a “wonderful industry” and that he believes PCs are now being taken for granted because they’re so useful. 'To some extent the evolution of the PC has been retarded I think in the last few years so as we look forward in terms of where the PC has to continue to grow…it has to get more and more consumer friendly.' Intel plans to solve the problem with Ultrabooks. 'We want to make sure that these devices are portable, user friendly, but also have the capability to do the high capacity creative work that all of our workers do day in day out,' said Otellini."

Ultrabooks, eh?

"Dell is throwing its weight firmly behind the Windows 8 tablet platform in a bid to challenge the dominance of the Apple iPad 2.
Michael Dell, founder and chief executive of Dell, appeared to play down Android in favour of Windows and hinted there would be a number of Microsoft-based products announced soon.

"'We are very aligned with Microsoft around Windows 8. You'll hear more about Windows 8 from us and see a wide range of products released,' Dell told journalists during a Q&A; at Dell World 2011 in Texas."

That's the Dell which is pulling back from Windows Phone and focussing on Android smartphones.

"Windows 7 now accounts for 40.21% of all global desktop operating system usage across the world. Windows XP usage slipped to 38.64% in the month of October according to StatCounter. The drop in XP usage has been consistent since Windows 7′s launch but October marks the first time that Windows 7 has passed Windows XP usage, an important milestone for Microsoft after two years of Windows 7 sales."

Breathes sigh of relief. Windows 7 is simply far more secure in so many ways; everyone benefits from there being fewer XP installations. Now what will it take to get IE6 replaced, especailly in western governments?

"According to new study by Boston Consulting Group, there’s a surprising amount of interest in tablets running Microsoft’s Windows operating system, more so than iPads. Sales figures for Windows tablet PCs versus iPads certainly don’t support the survey results, but the interest is perhaps generated from Microsoft’s recent preview of Windows 8, which won’t be hitting the market until next year."

Survey size not detailed, though it does agree with one that appeared earlier this year by Forrester. So Windows 8 could get a good reception on tablets in late 2012.

"The (mostly) sad fates of 32 early answers to Apple's tablet."

Something tells us that in a year's time the Amazon Fire will not be among the dead.

"Microsoft’s huge presence at the event indicates a significant announcement. Nokia is expected to unveil its first Windows Phone device at Nokia World and Microsoft appears to be waiting in the wings with its best personnel to ensure Nokia’s audience is well informed of the Windows Phone benefits."<br />
<br />
That's going to make it a very different atmosphere from last year's Nokia World, where the company had just ejected its chief executive and was busy seeing members of the board hit ejector seats. <br />
<br />
Oh, and who mentioned that the first Windows Phones wouldn't appear from Nokia until October? We did.

"I visited Russia and needed to help someone purchase a new computer. This post is the result of the interesting experience, which should at least partially explain the share of malware from Russia .<br />
"The two reasons I saw were the widespread use of pirated Windows that cannot be updated and poisoned Google.ru results for any commonly used software - nearly all Google Sponsored Links for searches of Adobe products, antivirus products, free players and utilities will redirect you to malware downloads. Sites.google.com is most commonly used domain for advertising these malicious 'products'."<br />
<br />
Scary tale.

Quad-core! Great. We think there may be more unreleased Windows slates than ones actually on the market.

Steve Sinofsky, head of the Windows division, explains how you size your Windows team: "When folks do the math and come up with the number of developers on the team, we usually hear one of two reactions: “wow, that is a lot, and there is no way that can work,” or “wow, you build a product for a billion people with a pretty small number folks.” It is to our benefit to have the smallest number of people on the team possible, but it is to your benefit to have the largest number of people adding all the things that folks might want. So, we find a place in the middle. We want the team to be manageable and able to produce high quality, full-featured code."<br />
<br />
Though he doesn't say how many that actually is in practice.

A little late, but: "By the end of March 2011, Windows 7 was powering 20.9 percent of corporate PCs, according to a new Forrester Research report, while Windows XP was on 60% of business PCs — down from 69% a year ago.<br />
"Forrester’s report, “Corporate Desktop Operating System And Browser Trends, Q2 2010 To Q2 2011″ included results from Forrester’s analysis of more than 400,000 client PCs at 2,500 companies. The June 16 report includes 12 months of data collected between the start of the second calendar quarter of 2010 through the end of the first calendar quarter of 2011."<br />
<br />
The table is interesting: well worth the clickthrough.

"Without going into a huge history lesson of my involvement with Windows and how the prospect of me purchasing a Mac was a laughable concept up until not that long ago, long story short, I’m a happy Windows user who decided it was time to purchase the latest MacBook Air. And I’m excited as all get-out about it, despite my initial reservation to dole out almost 2-large on it (maxed-out 13″ model + taxes).<br />
"Now, before I posit my questions, I want to ask that you please try to temper yourselves."<br />
<br />
Ping! That's the popcorn ready.<br />
<br />
More seriously, he doesn't deal with why he switched, and that's the more interesting question.

What's puzzling is the dip and then leap in the 2009 period. We'd love an explanation.

"Fujitsu today announced that the new Windows® 7 F-07C mobile phone will be available in Japan from NTT DOCOMO, Inc. beginning July 23, 2011.<br />
"The F-07C mobile phone, featuring Windows® 7(1), is the world's smallest PC(2) that fits into the palm of the user's hand.<br />
"F-07C comes standard with a two-year license for Microsoft® Office Personal 2010-an essential business tool-and other basic PC functionality, in addition to convenient mobile phone features such as Osaifu-Keitai. By combining both PC and mobile phone functionality, F-07C opens the door to a range of new uses."<br />
<br />
Includes pictures. (Go on, have a look.) You will require heroic eyesight and fingers made of pinheads to use one of these. Atom processor (natch). Claimed battery life: "~2 hours in Windows 7 mode." We'd like to see that.

"Has anyone noticed that this week’s released screenshots of the New Xbox Dashboard conspicuously omit the Zune logo? If you look at the Music experience shot, below, you’ll see some generic music note graphics, but no Zune.<br />
"The Zune brand, of course, is being phased out. This is just the latest public-facing example of this slow migration."<br />
<br />
More like a slow eradication from Microsoft's history, Soviet-style.

"The situation probably won't be as grim as many developers fear. 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."<br />
<br />
Until they discovered that they couldn't build it using traditional methods, that is. Long, but worth reading.

Worth a read. The question is still: yes, they're all supported. But which is easiest to make happen? You could say that all platforms "support" various languages.

"Microsoft has gone out of its way to build an awesome experience for the phone with Windows Phone 7. But the one experience they can't control is what happens when you walk into a retail store to buy one. And it's too bad, because the retail experience, as handle by carriers and their affiliates, is an abomination. It's pretty hard to try out a new device experience when the device is either broken, dead, or a plastic shell with a sticker for a home screen. Or when the response to 'Can I see a Windows Phone?' is met with 'Have you seen the AMOLED screen on the Samsung Charge?'"<br />
<br />
Interesting experiment.

"This situation [with Windows 8] sounds a lot like the computing lifestyle that PC users lived with from 1990-1995 or thereabouts, when the commonplace state of affairs was to run Windows 3.x on top of DOS.<br />
<br />
"Back then, DOS was tried-and-true, and Windows 3.x was a reaction–albeit a rather delayed one–to the trends Apple put into place with the original Mac. Every Windows user ran it on top of DOS, since Windows was at that point an environment rather than a self-contained operating system. And the vast majority of users split their time between new-wave Windows apps and old-school DOS ones."<br />
<br />
Intriguing way of viewing it.

"Jobs is going to sacrifice the Macintosh in order to kill Windows. He isn’t beating Windows, he’s making Windows inconsequential.<br />
<br />
"Having been shown the way by Apple, I expect Google to shortly do the same thing, adding automated backup, synchronization and migration to Android and Chrome.Both companies will be grabbing for data, claiming territory, and leaving Microsoft alone to defend a desktop that will soon cease to exist.<br />
<br />
"And what happens once all our data is in that iCloud, is there any easy way to get it back out? Nope. It’s in there forever and we are captive customers — trapped more completely than Microsoft ever imagined."<br />
<br />
Woah, slow down there. Chromebooks will nibble at Windows if they're successful. iCloud will make teeny dents in Windows revenue. What Apple (and likely Google) will want is to tie you more closely into their best ecosystems. Microsoft can play that game too, though. It already tries to.

"Office 365 will allow businesses to deploy the latest Office software from Microsoft whether it’s on the desktop, online or via the cloud. Office 365 provides Office 2010, Exchange, SharePoint and Lync all Online in a cloud-based service. <br />
<br />
"The service is a full browser-based solution that incorporates webmail, collaboration and document management. The entry-level package, Office 365 for Small Businesses, provides Office Web Apps, Exchange, SharePoint and Lync online with an external website for $6 per user, per month. Larger businesses can take advantage of Office 365 for Enterprise. The package is $24 a user, per month and will include email, voicemail, enterprise social networking, instant messaging, web portals, extranets, voiceconferencing and videoconferencing. <br />
<br />
"The Enterprise package also includes pay-as-you-go access to Office Professional Plus."<br />
<br />
You have to have Office first. This isn't some price-reducing move by Microsoft.

"Office 365 will allow businesses to deploy the latest Office software from Microsoft whether it’s on the desktop, online or via the cloud. Office 365 provides Office 2010, Exchange, SharePoint and Lync all Online in a cloud-based service. <br />
<br />
"The service is a full browser-based solution that incorporates webmail, collaboration and document management. The entry-level package, Office 365 for Small Businesses, provides Office Web Apps, Exchange, SharePoint and Lync online with an external website for $6 per user, per month. Larger businesses can take advantage of Office 365 for Enterprise. The package is $24 a user, per month and will include email, voicemail, enterprise social networking, instant messaging, web portals, extranets, voiceconferencing and videoconferencing. <br />
<br />
"The Enterprise package also includes pay-as-you-go access to Office Professional Plus."<br />
<br />
You have to have Office first. This isn't some price-reducing move by Microsoft.

"'The part that makes me most excited is not just the new look, but along with that comes features like always-on, always-connected, which really to me addresses a big sore point of the traditional PC,' [Lenovo product exec Peter Hortensius] said. 'I have to boot it and I have to then restore connections.'<br />
"Hortensius said he isn’t too worried that businesses will be scared off by the new tiled start-screen that accompanies the traditional Windows desktop. Nor does he think it is that big a deal that Microsoft isn’t allowing customers an option of just booting into a more traditional Windows desktop.'If business customers want that, they already have that,' he said. 'It’s called Windows 7.'"<br />
<br />
That won't help sales of Windows 8.

"During remarks at a developers conference in Japan on May 23, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer referred to the next version of Windows as “Windows 8.” He also said the next generation of Windows systems will be out next year.<br />
To those not following Microsoft’s Windows saga closely, this may seem like a “so what” moment. But Microsoft execs have been studiously avoiding any references to the timing or naming of the next version of Windows to try to keep the specifics of the product as quiet as possible. Microsoft’s top brass has been avoiding calling the next version of Windows “Windows 8″ publicly, preferring instead to call it “Windows Next.” (Internally, a number of  Microsoft job postings and leaked slides have referenced “Windows 8,” however.”<br />
<br />
Also interesting: Ballmer says that "Windows 7 PCs will sell over 350m units this year". Given that last year the market for PCs was about 500m, there seems a big gap between the two numbers.

"Today, Microsoft announced Windows Azure Toolkits for Devices, consisting of assets for Windows Phone, iOS and a preview of tools for Android.<br />
"Using the toolkits, developers can use the cloud to accelerate the creation of applications on the major mobile platforms. Companies, including Groupon, are taking advantage to create a unified approach to cloud-to-mobile user experience."<br />
<br />
That's right - Microsoft cloud tools for Android.

"The end of an era is the end of growth in one dominant business model. The PC era was epitomized by the concentration of profits in a dominant operating system vendor. That growth has slowed if not ended. The post-PC era is being kicked off by a new business model where profits are being concentrated in a hardware+software+service integrator."<br />
<br />
It would be interesting to see the profits for Windows PCs manufacturers added in.

"The software giant is expected to post earnings of 56 cents per share, up from last year’s 45 cents per share. Revenue is likely to increase by an impressive 12% to $16.2bn in revenue, up from $14.5bn in the same period last year."<br />
<br />
Might be the first quarter in decades in which Apple has the larger revenue and larger profit. 56c per share translates roughly to slightly over $5bn; Apple's profit last quarter was $5.62bn.

Intriguing: Apple's "Grand Central Dispatch" (a method to push some threads off to the GPU for processing) ported and "lightly tested" to Win32.<br />
<br />
The interesting thing being that in days gone by, you'd have seen the Mac programmers desperately trying to port Win32 APIs to run on MacOS, not vice-versa.

"After the fake scan is complete, another dialog box comes up, warning that 'Google Chrome recommends you to install proper software.'<br />
"That’s terrible grammar, and this social-engineering attack is likely to fail with an English-speaking victim, who should be suspicious of the odd wording. But a user whose primary language is something other than English might well be fooled. And the malware author has anticipated the possibility that you might click Cancel in the dialog box. If you do, it still tries to download the malicious software.<br />
"Each time I visited this page, the download I was offered was slightly different. My installed antivirus software (Microsoft Security Essentials) didn’t flag it as dangerous. When I submitted it to VirusTotal.com, only five of the 42 engines correctly identified it as a suspicious file. Less than 8 hours later, a second scan at VirusTotal was a little better. This time, eight engines confirmed that the file was suspicious."

"The best numbers I’ve seen from an independent source (i.e., one that isn’t trying to sell a security product) are in Microsoft’s annual Security Intelligence Report. The Malware Trends section of the most recent report contains telemetry data drawn from more than 600 million Windows computers worldwide by a number of different Microsoft security tools and services, including the Malicious Software Removal Tool (which is included with automatic Windows updates every month), the free Microsoft Security Essentials and Windows Defender programs, and Microsoft’s enterprise security software."<br />
<br />
The figure: between 1% and 6%. It would be interesting to know how sensitive this is at detecting botnets. But of course it won't apply to pirated versions of Windows on PCs in Asia, where most botnets take hold.

"Microsoft had some fun while offering up details of the software development kit for Kinect for Windows. A technology evangelist named Clint Rutkas jury-rigged a lounge chair with wheels, wiring, and a Kinect motion-sensing controller for the company's Xbox 360 game console. Then, using just hand gestures, he drove the chair onto the stage at Mix11, Microsoft's annual Web and mobile phone developer conference.The Kinect SDK, though, may wind up leading to a business that's anything but trivial...<br />
"Think about running a meeting and moving through presentation with hand gestures, instead of a handheld clicker. Or maybe a device for conference video calls that knows to shift camera angles for different speakers. And there's little doubt Microsoft will come up with applications inside products such as Office."<br />
<br />
If - big if - the Office team supports it. They didn't (still don't) with tablets. Can Steve Ballmer persuade them to?

"Investors aren't the only ones betting on the decline of Microsoft Windows: Intel is working with Google and hardware partners to get its chips into a bunch of Android tablets this year.<br />
"PC makers like Asus had already said they were building Android tablets based on Atom, Intel's low-powered chip for portable devices.<br />
<br />
"But earlier this week, an Intel exec confirmed that its newest version of Atom -- previously codenamed Oak Trail -- will show up in tablets running Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) later this year."

"In a yellow box, under the bold heading Important, you’ll find these instructions:<br />
"'Before you install Windows Home Server 2011, set your BIOS clock to match the time and date for the Pacific Time Zone (PST) regardless of where you are located in the world. After successfully installing Windows Home Server 2011 and joining client computers, do not reset the time, date, and time zone on the Dashboard for another day.<br />
"'If you do not set your server time to PST, you should not use the server or connect computers to it until the number of hours pass that equals the difference between your time and PST.'"<br />
<br />
Besides the final bit rating only average on the "huh?" scale of confusing Windows instructions, we want to know what happens if you *don't* do what it says. At your own risk, obviously.