Archive for the ‘Windows 8’ Category

Well, on this day of PDC 2009, since I won’t hear anything about Windows 8, I took it upon myself to see what I could scrounge up. It looks like a bit more is being announced to partners where Windows 8 Server is concerned… well, in the context of a roadmap, at least. The information all says the same thing I’ve been reporting via other roadmaps: Windows 8 being released around a time frame of 2012. Perhaps the whole, “end-of-the-world” thing in 2012 really has something to do with Windows 8. Or not. lol. Either way, here are the additions to my ginormous roadmap collection:

 

 

 

Although that second roadmap doesn’t have anything listed for a name, it’s once again the same old song: Windows 8 ~2012.

 

-Stephen
http://msftkitchen.com

If you’re not familiar with these types of things, there are companies out there who perform extensive research into just about anything you could think of. In the technology world, Gartner and Forrester are two of the most formidable players. Companies hire them to research and create statistical data to serve an array of purposes.

 

In a report dated October 2009, Forrester surveyed 653, “PC decision-makers at North American and European enterprises and SMBs about their Windows 7 deployment plans.” When similar research was performed prior to Vista, the majority of businesses surveyed were already singing the praises of a non-existent Windows 7, since anything had to be better than Windows Vista. Interestingly enough, this new research for Windows 7 shows that only 1% of the companies surveyed are planning to wait for Windows 8. Check out the following excerpt from the report:

 

 

The report is a solid look at just how well-received Windows 7 is, most likely by many of the same companies who wanted absolutely nothing to do with Vista. Feel free to download and check out the report – as well as others – from Symantec.

 

-Stephen
http://msftkitchen.com

Two months ago, I posted an extensive list of Windows 8 features and considerations. Amongst all of the information in that post, there was one person in particular who had listed on her resume a feature suggestion straight from the Hyper-V team that was shelved for Windows 8 inclusion. Well, I just ran across another profile on LinkedIn which contains a supporting mention of Hyper-V features going into Windows 8. To quote the profile directly:

 

Working on Hyper-V features for Win8 in the Platform and Management Extendability team, which is part of the Windows Core OS Kernel Group.

 

I guess at this point, I’m curious as to if these are features that are going to go into client, server, or both (most likely, only server). All the roadmaps I’ve seen so far with Windows 8 getting a mention have all been related to Server, so… as always, this is all speculation for the time being. We all know just how much plans change internally.

 

-Stephen
http://msftkitchen.com

As noted previously here on Microsoft Kitchen, Windows 8′s user interface seems to be a fairly major focus. Though I have seen some odds-and-ends mentions on the web of folks who are working on the Windows 8 UI, the following profile I just stumbled across is a bit more telling than just someone working on the UI:

 

 

Manager of Windows 8 User Interface Designers at Microsoft

Managing and Improving software usability for over 10 years, designing, researching, and developing multi-tier distributed applications for Windows 8 focusing on customers using ecommerce, general consumers, and banking companies.

 

 

Again, while it is no surprised whatsoever that Microsoft is updating their UI in Windows 8, focusing on the UI in relation to such a broad userbase all in one release (and with the mention of multi-tier distributed applications), I stand firm in my belief that Windows 8 is shaping up to be one heck of a release. What do you think?

 

UPDATE:Google has an interesting cache of the LinkedIn profile I linked to above which adds details not previously listed when I originally stumbled upon it. It reflects what seems to be a close link between Windows 8 and Windows 9, based on how often I’m seeing the two mentioned together. To quote:

 

I work with other User Experience Directors and User Experience Designers deciding on successful feature possibilities by analyzing competing operating systems (Mac and Linux). Research customer reactions to these features in Windows 8 themes and planning for long-term products such as Windows 9 User Interfacing.

 

-Stephen
http://msftkitchen.com

UPDATE 12/2/2009: It has been discovered that the information once contained in this article is false! It was a lie based off of a convincing fake profile created by eightforums.com. You can read all about it here: 128-Bit Kernel Support in Windows 8 and Windows 9: A Big, Fat Lie

 

-Stephen
http://msftkitchen.com

This weekend was quite fruitful in my quest to find relevant Windows 8-related content! I’m soon going to have a Windows 8 section over in my sidebar to keep track of all the Windows 8 content I post. As I’ve stated previously, my aim is to remain on the bleeding edge of Windows 8 (and Office 15/2013) news, rumors, speculation et al. With that said, onward to the content!

 

Windows 8: Bear-Friendly

 

Are you a, “hibernate” kind of person? Maybe only in the winter (get it?), but if so, it appears that Windows 8 is going to contain a new Hibernate/Resume Integration API and a new TLZ file compression engine (I don’t think TLZ is an acronym for the name of the engine, but rather an acronym related to TLA, or, “Temporal Logic of Actions” which you can read about here) that will replace Windows Vistas Xpress compression engine. One would assume the benefits of such a change will spell better performance via quicker hibernate/resume times due to the improved compression engine and however the new Integration API interfaces with it.

More specifically, the former Microsoft SDE intern whose online resume I acquired this information from, says the following:

“Researched new algorithms and programming methods to build Hibernate/Resume Integration API that can integrate and utilize the new TLZ file compression engine for the Hibernate/Resume component of new Windows 8 Operating System.”

“Using C and C++ programming languages in SourceInsight, developed a 100% functional C wrapper for C++ functions and the Hibernate/Resume Integration API, which will be used in Windows 8 replacing Windows Vista’s Xpress compression engine.”

Personally, I always disable hibernation and I don’t think I’ve ever intentionally used it in all my years as a computer user. I’m not sure how large of a demographic I represent where that’s concerned, but I will be interested to see if anyone sings the praises of improved hibernation/resume if such an enhancement does indeed make its way into Windows 8.

 

Windows 8: Can’t Touch This

 

If you’re one of those hacker-types who enjoys making Windows’ innards your playground, then you’re probably familiar with PatchGuard (aka Kernel Patch Protection). If not, PatchGuard is a feature on x64 versions of Windows that prevents you from patching the kernel. Though not impenetrable, PatchGuard has enjoyed its fair share of scolding from anti-virus companies. They have had to rewrite their software for x64 so that it does not leverage the kernel patching techniques they typically used for 32-bit.

Well, guess what?

PatchGuard is apparently going to make life even a little more difficult for hackers (and anti-virus companies as well, perhaps). Contained in the resume of a Senior Program Manager of the Windows Hyper-V Service and Platform Management division is the following:

“Led working group to make a recommendation on a PatchGuard follow-on. Wrote a summary white paper and presented the results of the working group to the executive team. Recommendation of tabling the function until Windows 8 was accepted and it is now a Windows 8 feature candidate.”

So, whatever this PatchGuard follow-on is, it must be pretty awesome to have been tabled until Windows 8. And speaking of awesome, it looks like Windows 8 is shaping up to become quite the major release. Follow my nose!

 

Windows 8: Software Vendor Partners, Take a Ticket

 

Before I speculate, this one speaks for itself:

“Mapped 120 top software vendor partners into business taxonomy for Windows 8 planning. Developed and refined taxonomy guidelines through several iterative mappings.”

Perhaps that’s a typical number of software vendor partners Microsoft takes into consideration while planning for future revisions of Windows, but that seems like a rather high (but good) number to me. That said, there’s no telling when Microsoft plans to reach out to said partners, so that number stretched out over a period of time seems quite reasonable. I’m curious to see which partners made the top of the list and which are on the bottom, though. Regardless, it’s interesting to see a number put on the heads of the companies Microsoft plans on reaching out to for the planning stages of Windows 8.

 

Windows 8 Server: Making Datacenters feel as Safe as Hiding Under a Blanket

 

In his LinkedIn summary, former Senior SAN Engineer, Chris Lionetti, states the following:

“Hold multiple patents related to SAN infrastructure, hard drive technology, and security aspects within the datacenter space one which one of which is already generating royalties and another is slated for inclusion in Windows8. Integrate well into standards organizations such as the FCIA, T10, T10, SNIA, and T13.”

That’s not much to go off of, but seeing it as security is typically on the forefront of Microsoft’s focuses, it’s really no suprise to see this mention. The question is, of course, what this particular security feature – slated for inclusion in Windows 8 – will be.

 

Windows 8: DirectAccess (DA), Here to Stay

 

Or so it appears, as one might glean from the following experience of a particular Microsoft Software Test Engineer:

“Authored DA setup guide, a complete guide for setting up DA that was used by several customers and other teams internal to Microsoft for configuring their DA environments. This guide was also the foundation for the DA test automation that will be created for Windows 8, and provided the foundation for the publicly available DA setup guide.”

If you’re unfamiliar with exactly what DA is, as defined by Microsoft’s website, it, “[g]ive(s) mobile users seamless access to corporate networks without a need to VPN.”

 

Windows 8: UI, UC (User Interface, Under Construction)

 

In conjunction with my post exposing Windows 8 containing a new, “next-generation graphical user interface framework,” here is another employee working on the Windows 8 UI:

“Windows 7 Find and Organize, Windows 8 User Interface”

Naturally, UI development is equally as perpetual as the other key components of the OS, but seeing direct references to it by employees themselves always serves as a reminder and gets my noodle churning on wondering exactly what they could be cooking up.

 

Windows 8: Let’s Get Mental

 

Here is an interesting reference to Windows 8′s download experience research:

“Working Group – For Win 8 download experience, researched security user mental models to inform design.”

I’m not quite sure what that entails, exactly, but I thought it was worth throwing in as it sure does sound cool! =)

 

Windows 8 Server: “Dublin” is Comin’ for YOU

 

On this Microsoft employee’s LinkedIn profile, we see a short-but-sweet mention in his, “specialties” section:

“Win8 Server (Windows Application Server)”

If you’re interested, I’ll cut to the chase and just link you to a video that sums up Windows Application Server (code name, “Dublin”) quite well: Channel 9

 

Windows 8: RDP Moving Right Along

 

Windows 7 saw some great RDP enhancements – and if Windows 8 is going to be as big of a release as it appears it is going to be so far, one can’t help but wonder what Microsoft will try to do next. Here is the mention I found for it on an employee’s online resume:

“Dev. work for Win7 & Win8 as part of the RDP (Remote Desktop Client and Protocol) team in Terminal Services group.”

And a rewording on his resume found here:

“Working on feature development, enhancements and bug fixing activities for Win7 and Win8’s Remote Desktop client. Involved in bug fixes and improvements for Remote Application and Server Tools as well.”

 

Conclusion

 

Well, that about wraps it up for the latest Windows 8 excursion of mine! It looks like Windows 8 is shaping up to be a pretty ambitious release thus far. Hopefully, Windows 7 will be the standard for past indicators from here on out in regards to the development of Windows. I think Windows 7 is a very solid release and quite simply, Microsoft just got it done and out of the door, delay-free.

A bit of revelation and speculation all wrapped up in a neat ‘n tidy blog post. Thanks for reading!

-Stephen
http://msftkitchen.com

In my quest to post any and every little morsel of Windows 8 information I can scrounge up, the latest is something I unexpectedly ran across in an unlikely place.

Let me preface this with a bit of information as to how this whole, “presentation template” thing works internally. Basically, there are blank templates created for Microsoft employees to use for their presentations. Typically, these templates are in Powerpoint format. Templates, clip-art, etc. are all lying around on Microsoft’s intranet. So, let’s say I’m an employee and I want to slap together a quick presentation for a group I’m presenting to. I could go out, take a look at some of these templates, select which one I want and go to town. Alternately, let’s say I have one sitting around that I like from using previously. All I’d have to do is delete the content currently in it and start over.

Here’s the kicker: Most of the time, there are keywords and other properties stored in these templates. Sometimes, templates are created with a specific product in mind, so keywords related to that product will be stored in the document. In other words, I may be doing a presentation on Windows 7 that I put together using a template that was actually created for Office or something of the like. The only way anyone would know or care what a template was specifically created for is if it was either filled with product-specific graphics or if they checked the document properties.

Now, with all of that in mind, I ran across a presentation from a Microsoft Research conference held at the University of Washington from July 26-29 of this year. It’s titled, “What Could New-Era Corporate Systems Management Mean for the Home? And Vice Versa?” and was presented by Anders Vinberg, Technical Fellow in the Management and Services Division at Microsoft. Though the presentation itself is interesting, it’s what I found in the document properties that grabbed my attention:

(Click for the full template screenshot)

From those properties, we can glean two potential explanations:

1 – This is simply a template created for the Windows team to give presentations on Windows 8 but was used by Anders for this presentation. Obviously, the master slide is quite clean which could be analogous to Windows 8 not having much beyond planning completed at the point of the template’s creation.

2 – Prior to being presented at the MSR conference, this exact presentation was given internally with planning for Windows 8 in mind. That would mean this presentation sheds a bit of light on what Microsoft may specifically be focusing on in Windows 8; Security and Systems Management. Obviously security is always a focus, but the systems management information in this document is interesting if placed in the context of it being a focus in Windows 8.

Perhaps I’m reading too far into this, but hypothesizing is half the fun of this phase of development (for me, at least)! I’m even going so far as to say that the, “Windows 8 Waves” (that’s what I’m going to call that image, at least) is analogous to, “waves of change” or something like that. Or maybe not.

Windows 8 Waves

Anyway, that’s my take on this document! It’s linked below, so feel free to give it a go yourself and see what you think.

Source: UW MSR Institute 2009
Document: Anders Vinberg’s Presentation

-Stephen
http://msftkitchen.com

First in Italian, then in English and now in Korean! Adding to my shiny collection of Windows Server roadmaps with Windows 8 appearing on them, I stumbled across a Microsoft presentation in Korean that shows exactly the same data as seen on this roadmap and this roadmap. It’s a hideous port of a Powerpoint presentation to PDF on the behalf of the site I found it on, but, hey… it is what it is. Check it out:

There’s not much more to say that I haven’t already said in the previous two roadmap posts I linked to above other than to reiterate that this timeline appears to be pretty solidified, company-wide. And yes, I’m champing at the bit for Windows 8 anything and that will never be more evident than with my next Windows 8 post coming up. =)

-Stephen
http://msftkitchen.com

Windows 7: Done. On to the next.

I’m interested in seeing what all of you want to see happen in Windows 8. Myself? There are only 2 things I would personally like to see changed (and before Windows 8, preferably):

Folder Views: I can’t vent my frustration enough about Windows automatically selecting views for me, even when I tell it that I want to view ALL of my folders a certain way. ARGH, SO FRUSTRATING!

Desktop Click + Shift + Click Select: Why on this green earth would Microsoft let you click and drag to select items on your desktop, control + click to select any number of items randomly, but automatically select whole rows of items for you if you click on an item, hold shift, then click on another item even 1 item up in the same column? Truly baffling.

About a month ago, I posted my opinion of Windows 7 up to this point and those were my only two gripes. Feel free to check out the comments of others to see if you experience their issues as well. Anyway, nothing major here. I know Windows 7 still hasn’t officially been released, but I just thought I’d throw something out there to see if any of you guys and gals who are already well-seasoned Windows 7 users had some thoughts for what you would like to see happen in Windows 8!

[rant] Oh, and to the anti-Windows Mac/Linux users. Let me go ahead and get your irrelavant prattle out of the way so that you don’t waste your time or ours: Windows needs to do what Linux can already do graphically, it needs to be impenetrable and it needs to be free. Also, Windows needs to make its users feel like they matter in life and are cooler than everyone else and Microsoft needs to stop being the big, bad bulley in the marketplace. Yadda, yadda, yadda. I think that about sums it up for the folks who – even if Microsoft catered to their laundry list of issues – wouldn’t use Windows even if hell froze over. So why do they even complain in the first place? It makes you wonder… [/rant]

-Stephen
http://msftkitchen.com

Good post? Help me out and spread the word!

Whilst surfing along the information superhighway today, I ran across something labeled as, “Microsoft Windows 8 Professional Edition (Leaked Version).” Well, curiosity certainly got the better of me, so I clicked to have a look. When I arrived at my destination, I was greeted with the following image:

Now, while that absolutely looks horrible and would fail to fool any of the enthusiasts in this community, it’s certainly going to attract some downloaders… and as such, it did. Luckily, for you curious lot, a number of people who downloaded the ISO from the site noted it’s nothing but Windows Vista with some additional applications, a theme pack, and some changes to make it say Windows 8 instead of Windows Vista in certain places. Long story short, don’t be fooled by things like this going around. Though it would be nice, Windows 8 is far from falling into the hands of the enthusiast community at this point.

Rest assured that Windows 8 leaking in any capacity will be covered here, so if you’re ever in doubt… uhhh… check my site out (had to say something that rhymed)!

Source: Fake Windows 8 Download Page

-Stephen
http://msftkitchen.com