Archive for the ‘Windows’ Category

Caveat: I’ve been sitting on the information contained in this post for quite a while now, but it has finally perturbed me enough to put it out there for all of you (and myself, for that matter). If you would be so kind as to help spread the word, that would be great as the lie has spread like wildfire and taken on various forms, such as sites now reporting that Windows 8 will be 128-bit (ridiculous). Not only that, but the perpetrator that started this mess needs to be called out with fair warning given to all. What you choose to believe by the end of this post will be up to you, but my intentions here are to help sift out the garbage in a community full of journalists who – like me – truly bust their butts to bring you solid, unique, and honest content.

Most of you may recall the “exclusive” I posted on this almost 2 months ago now. As most of you may also recall, I’m no stranger to the LinkedIn profile browsing. Well, when I found Mr. Robert Morgan’s profile, I got WAY too excited for my own good. I whipped up that post as soon as I could, then took a step back to see if anyone else had found it. Well, as it had turned out, sometime like a week earlier, it had been, “found” by eightforums (I’ve linked the Google cached page for that link just in case they try to delete it and play none-the-wiser, as you can already compare it to the post on their page today to see that they deleted my comments calling them out on the issue). I say “found” because – as it turns out – it wasn’t really found at all. It was fabricated. Everything on that profile was garbage, and when you read back at what his job description said, it does indeed look like something a “journalist” would write so as to create one hell of a scoop. Check it out again:

Experience
Senior Research & Development Microsoft
Public Company; MSFT; Computer Software industry

 

January 2002 – Present (7 years 10 months)

 

Working in high security department for research and development involving strategic planning for medium and longterm projects. Research & Development projects including 128bit architecture compatibility with the Windows 8 kernel and Windows 9 project plan. Forming relationships with major partners: Intel, AMD, HP and IBM.

Let’s critique this, shall we? First off, “working in a high-security department for research and development” is something that no employee working in those conditions would -in their right mind – write in their profile. I’ve seen some pretty amazing things pop up in people’s job profiles, but nothing so blatant. Second, Research and Development isn’t the Windows team. Each is its own department with its own funding and its own projects. At BEST, Windows 9 MIGHT be accurate here (as in, Research and Development is working on technologies that may make it into Windows much later), but it’s not. If anyone is going to be working on a 128-bit kernel for Windows, it’s going to be the architecture side of the Windows core team (David Cutler’s crew, etc.); not MSR.

I don’t think 128-bit is in the scope of anyone for the next 7-10 years. After all, 64-bit is rarely properly utilized these days – nevermind dropping 128-bit into the laps of devs and consumers! And that brings up another point… at best, 128-bit would exist only for very select industries that could truly use it right now. AMD’s Bulldozer project is real, but it has absolutely nothing to do with Windows 8 or, I would imagine, Windows 9, either.

Alright, so… let’s assume that profile was indeed real. eightforums was certainly enjoying the traffic off of their initial “find.” As a matter of fact, they somehow managed to land an exclusive interview with the guy afterwards! Once again, I’ve linked to the Google cached page for the same reason I did a few paragraphs ago. So… whatever happened with that interview, anyway? What happened with it is that it was one great big old pile of BS, that’s what happened with it! It was a big, fat lie (along with the cake, of course).

Yes, your supposedly down-right and honest Windows 8 market-cornering buddies over at eightforums managed to pull the wool over the eyes of almost every major news site out there. Unfortunately, enough minor details lined up enough for those like me to jump the gun and post what we did, when we did and without ever verifying if this guy was even an employee in the first place. This stuff happens sometimes and, well, I don’t take too kindly to it. Especially considering how much time and effort I know I put into bringing you all the content that I do – nevermind how much time and effort the countless other real journalists around the community put in! Not only that, but stuff like this makes a mockery of the credibility of the sites you know and trust. We’re as human as you are, though, so I’m one who is fully willing to say, “hey, this guy fooled me and I’m sorry he ended up fooling you, too, vicariously through my post.”

Now, a couple of days or so after all of this stuff went global, I noticed a couple of my respected peers make some comments on this story that started to make me take a second look at it all. First, Paul Thurrott said the following:

Windows 8 To Be 128-bit Only? LOL

 

Wow. I have to admit, the most amazing thing about this rumor is that anyone believed it. I won’t single anyone out, but spare me. It’s completely and utterly bogus. Obviously.

The fact that this all got around to him in the form that Windows 8 was going to be *ONLY* was baffling enough for me, never mind seeing the next hit being doled out by one Steven Bink of bink.nu:

Bink says: Sorry but this is BS so to say. We are still in the transition to 64bit, That Morgan guy does not exits at MS

By that time, I immediately thought back to the crap I had already called out the eightforums people on and then… it all just made too much sense that they would be the ones to fabricate garbage like this. At this point, I have now also verified (thanks to two kind Microsoft folks for checking for me) that Robert Morgan is/was nowhere to be found in the employee database. It was all just a load of crap created by a site desperate for traffic and attention. They throw up frivolous posts just to somehow meander Windows 8 into the text to boost their rank in search engines for the keyword. Not only that, but their forum is littered with garbage posts that – once again – only exist so as to skyrocket their keyword density.

So, now we’re at this juncture ONCE AGAIN with eightforums. First, it was stealing content from my site (which, I hope I’ve made clear will not be tolerated any longer) and now, one big lie heard ’round the net. And to top it off, dishonest means obviously get you somewhere since this guy was apparently at PDC 2009 as press! How he got in, I have no idea but at this point, I wouldn’t doubt it if he really wasn’t there and his PDC coverage was also a big, fat lie. Everything he wrote could have been discerned from watching the keynotes streaming online. Not to mention, out of all his blabber about, “I wonder if we will hear about Windows 8,” he produced a whole lot of NOTHING! My favorite line of his from PDC comes from his PDC Day 1 blog entry:

What can we dig up about Windows 8? I see tons of wannabe journalists and some actually talented bloggers, how will we be different then all the others? We’ll bring you the dirt!!, we’ll interview the top minds at the conference in the next few days to get all the best information. Like always, members of the Windows 8 forums will get the stuff we just can’t post here, all that leaked information, we try to get all our members to say things off record and sneak them into the underground circles of Windows 8 Forums, only members can see!

“Wannabe journalists,” huh? LOL! Oh, the irony. Lot of top minds he interviewed there, huh? Lot of Windows 8 information they were able to dig up, huh? And leave it to this guy to not only pull the wool over everyone’s eyes a couple of times, but his loyal followers by creating a paid membership for his website as well! He’s actually going to charge people for his lies. Man, if you’re a glutton for being ripped off, by all means, whip out that Paypal account… but if you’re AT ALL wise – even if you’re a member on that forum and see me as the bad guy because I’m taking shots at your “leader” – you’ll take a good look at the big picture here and see that this guy has provided absolutely NOTHING of substance for his readers or for this community. Nothing. Just a bunch of empty promises and cliffhangers. Where’s the PDC 2009 Windows 8 info you were going to dig up? Where are the interviews with the “top minds” about Windows 8? Where’s that Robert Morgan interview exclusive you supposedly had? I mean, to see just how bad it is, take a look at his latest ENLIGHTENING post:

Seriously? You’re *that* desperate to throw Windows 8 (and italicize it, none-the-less) into a story? lol. Oh, the humanity…

So, at this point, I can’t spell it out much clearer for everyone. For some reason, though, I can’t help but wonder who you’re going to believe: Some nobody site trying to corner the Windows 8 market by littering their site with pointless references to Windows 8, or tried-and-true individuals who have been in this community for countless years reporting the good with the bad and truly busting their butts to bring you content with REAL substance? I certainly hope the latter, as people like me calling out sites like eightforums serves me no purpose other than wasting my time and creating drama that I would rather not have to deal with. In cases like this, though, it’s totally worth it.

Update: Be sure to go to his site to catch him poking fun at the frequency of road maps I post. Even I laughed at it; nothing like a good bit of roasting every once in a while.

Update 2: I’ve decided to remove the antagonizing comment about awaiting negative comments from eightforums and disable comments for this post. End of discussion. If you have something to say, feel free to email me. Thanks to those of you who left supportive comments initially. I really do appreciate it.

-Stephen
http://www.msftkitchen.com

Another day, ano……. oh, wait. I keep saying that every time I find one of these things. lol. Basically, I’ve run across YET ANOTHER road map (the second one in Korean) that further solidifies the ~2012 release of Windows 8 Server. Let me clarify, all of these road maps I’ve found – ALL of them – resided in Windows Server 2008 R2 slide decks. None of these are in relation to client, but since Microsoft has made the decision to align Server and Client release dates, it may be fairly safe to assume that these cadences apply to Windows 8 client as well. Either way, here’s the latest of the onslaught:

Since I’ve found so many of these things now, I’m going to go ahead and recap the others below. Click each of the following road maps to be taken to their respective posts, if you’re interested:

 

 

 

 

And that’s it! Stay tuned for more road maps. Even though it’s pretty damn obvious that Microsoft is shooting for a 2012 release date, I’m going to post every single one of these I find. =)

-Stephen
http://www.msftkitchen.com

Hey, you. Yes, you! Do you have at least $7000*(see bottom of post) to pay as an entry fee to a Microsoft .NET 4.0 conference (and that’s the early bird offer; it’s a cool $8000*(see bottom of post) if you wait)? Are you willing/able to travel to Indiranagar, Bangalore, India to attend said conference? Well, if so, then you will be one of very few to be given the opportunity to attend an incredibly dense cloud-computing course (amongst other courses, but for the intentions of this article, the cloud-computing course is one of particular interest) – of which, Windows 8 Server will be a focus!

Facilitated by Mubarak Abdulla on behalf of Vertical Divers, the aim of the upcoming December 10-11, 2009 .NET 4.0 conference is:

“…to provide participants with concepts, techniques and lessons from experience that will help them be more successful. The training starts by explaining the emerging trends like Cloud, Grid, Mesh and Parallel, and then continues to discuss in depth how to develop applications which harvest the potential of these emerging technologies. You will not only Dotnet 4.0, but also relevant design guidelines, best practices, and pitfalls.”

Check out the following breakdown of all the coverage you can expect from this course (emphasis on Windows 8 Server by yours truly):

Introduction to Cloud computing
Cloud Architecture
Cloud v/s Grid v/s Mesh
Introduction to Windows Azure
Windows Azure v/s Windows Server 8
Azure Services
.Net Services
.Net Service Bus Architecture
Limitations of Service bus
SQL Services
Azure Storage v/s SQL storage
Limitations of SQL Services
Live Services, Live Mesh and Live Framework
Creating Mashup Applications
Design Strategies for developing applications for the Cloud

Currently, all that is mostly known publicly about Windows 8 or Windows 8 Server can be found right here on Microsoft Kitchen. What I find of particular interest, though, is the juxtaposition of Windows Azure and Windows 8 Server. I could understand Windows 7 Server (aka Windows Server 2008 R2), but to compare/contrast the two implies Mr. Abdulla is privy to Windows 8 information the public currently is not. If I had the money to blow and the time off to take, I would attend just for that session alone!

Just in case they remove it, here’s a screen shot of the course list with Windows 8 Server in it:

Source: Vertical Divers by Colossal Technologies

*UPDATE: Thank you for the individual who commented to let me know that the monetary figure is more than likely set to their locale, which would make the cost in USD approx. $150-$200, depending on which price you paid.

-Stephen
http://msftkitchen.com

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

I took the time to write up a little review of Windows 7 on Amazon.com a couple of days ago. I tried to make it approachable for users of all operating systems since I have nothing against anyone for what they choose to use (I honestly hate the OS wars, but I don’t mind getting down into the trenches if I have to, mwah ha ha). Anyway, here’s an excerpt from the beginning of my review:

Let me preface this review with my qualifications so that you may understand the extent I’ve gone to with operating systems to end up proudly claiming, “I’m a PC.”

 

I use Linux (RedHat) at work, I’ve tried Ubuntu and Lycoris long before it, I’ve tried Debian and Slackware and however many other flavors of *nix in the past just to say I tried them. I’ve messed with BeOS (Zeta development was an exciting time), I’ve played with Mac OS X on numerous occasions (beautiful OS), and I’ve tried countless obscure operating systems that I doubt even 1% of those reading this would know about (and trust me; there’s a reason for you not knowing about them, lol). Why have I messed with them all? Because I enjoy operating systems and I find them to be amazing achievements. There’s no denying that Mac OS X is a beautiful OS that performs quite well within the structured hardware environment Apple has created. Linux is hella useful on an enterprise level (though Windows Server is easily comparable these days) and even home flavors of Linux have become quite nice (Ubuntu)! The fact of the matter is that I’m partial to Windows through my experiences with having tried just about every flavor of every OS out there over the past 10 years or so. I used to collect beta versions of operating systems (not just Windows, but others as well), so I’ve not only tried the final products, but I’ve also gained appreciation for them by seeing them and playing with them through their development cycles. Where Windows is concerned, at one point or another, I’ve instally just about every build of every version currently out there (and trust me, there are TONS of builds – alpha and beta bits from every version of Windows, including obscure bits like Windows Neptune). I’ve ridden the roller coaster through the highs (Windows 95, 98, 2000, XP, and now 7) and lows (Windows ME, Windows Vista’s initial release) and I couldn’t be happier that I’ve stuck it out.

 

Enter Windows 7.

Check it out and rate it however you feel it should be if you’re a member of Amazon! It’s nice to see that Windows 7 actually has so many positive reviews, I think. There was a 1-star, “review” (I say, “review” because too many people think that Amazon is simply a forum for them to get up on their soapbox) there that I guess the, “reviewer” decided to nix once I left a comment questioning the integrity of his opinion. He basically felt like Windows should be cheaper than it is for people like him who want to run Windows on a second partition just to, “use occasionally.” Somehow he felt that in all his marketing genius, that would help Windows’ market share… you know, if Microsoft brought down the price of their OS simply so people who wanted to use it, “occasionally” could do so. Since when did an OPERATING SYSTEM (sit there for a second and think about just what an operating system is and does) become something to be purchased and used occasionally!? There is software out there that provides very specific functionality (albeit, very well) that costs WAAAAY more than the operating systems that run them! Windows 7, too expensive? Hardly. But I digress…

Link: Windows 7 Review on Amazon

UPDATE: 7 of 7 people approve my review of Windows 7! (Dorky, I know… lol)

-Stephen
Microsoft Kitchen

Man, Windows 7 really is the talk of the town today. With it being the official launch of Windows 7, there are all kinds of deals and promotions going on. I’ve seen deals on Windows 7 on Newegg, Buy.com, many of the sites that list deals all in one place, people giving away copies of Windows 7 for helping promote it and all kinds of other stuff. This, though, is one of the, “other stuff” that was too good not to post:

Is there anyone out there who can actually get one of these and take pictures? This is absolutely hysterical!

Source: Windows 7 Whopper

UPDATE: Thanks to Leith Blade in the comments below for posting this video, where you can see this burger in action:

-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