Silicon Shecky

This summer, when Microsoft announced it was going to make its own tablet, I was pretty excited. I had a chance to play with Windows 8 at TechEd the week before the announcement, and felt it would do well as a tablet OS. When pre-orders opened, I got my boss to get me one so I can test it for deployment in our company. After having it almost a week, I can tell you, this is a product that definitely has the 1st generation problems.

I felt like a kid in a candy store that had free samples all over the place. Opening the boxes that contained my Microsoft Surface and starting it up for the first time, that sense of anticipation for something you just can’t wait for was bursting. Then the testing began. Simple enough at first, connect to a wireless network, and go through all the setup routines. Simple enough, and easy enough, but then it hit me. The Surface came with 2 small books. The warranty book in 20 different languages, and a pamphlet book that had some crappy diagrams in it. No instruction manual, no real quick start guide, nothing. this over faith in the simplicity and easy of use is the first problem I have.

No information on how to close apps on the unit. No information about swipe gestures at all, let alone things such as how to switch between apps, how to bring up a settings menu, the things one should know. The tiles are nice, and pretty, but the constant (and I mean constant) update speed on them gets annoying. When I finally found the setting (swipe in from the right side) area to adjust it, I was disappointed that the slowest refresh rate was 90 seconds.I personally believe this helps shorten the battery life of the Surface itself. As I played with opening apps, and setting up a connection to my office’s Exchange server, I found I could not pinch and zoom. I also had to do a search on the web to find how to close apps, and then the motion (swipe down) had to be performed very specifically with regards to speed, otherwise the app would stay open. Not very intuitive in my estimation, and the slower speed of swipe to close items, will drive some people crazy.

The office apps were next for me to dig into, along with switching to the desktop mode and going to a share on a server to grab some Docs. This worked fantastically. Going into explorer, pulling up a server, logging in with my domain credentials, and then opening and working in office was nice and easy. Office itself was pretty decent to work with, especially with the tablet mode turned on so items were spaced a bit apart. I also tried to find the built in Cisco VPN system that I had been told about at training in Chicago’s Microsoft Tech Center the day before, but as of this writing, I still cannot find it.

Speaking of Apps, and the App store, I have found it to be frustrating. Not because of the lack of Apps, but because of the problems I have getting the store to open up and recognize that I am online. In fact the whole, am I online issue happens in most of the Metro, oops sorry, Modern Style Apps, including mail. Yet when any one of these shows that I am offline, I can open up IE in desktop mode and show that I am online. Heck I can go to a command prompt through the desktop and ping the internet at large. This to me was very surprising, as it is not a factor of the hardware, but of the Modern UI and Apps that have the issues.

Hardware wise, everything seems pretty solid. The disappointments to me is more with responsiveness (which could be an OS thing) and with the Touch Type Keyboard cover. I have found that the responsiveness to be sluggish half the time. Switching from portrait to landscape modes is slow. Response to touch even gets slow and sluggish. The Touch Type Keyboard Cover, is a different creature. When used as a keyboard (provided the tablet sees it which occasionally it doesn’t) it is great. Where I find it lacks is when you close it. It does not have a magnet to keep it closed, nor does it put the unit into a sleep or standby mode. It makes me feel like I should have another cover that will be more protective to the Surface itself. The next issue I have is that there is no way to keep the wireless on that I have found (I have this same issue with my Asus T300 Android tablet). This means no new mails when it shuts off. The iPad seems to be the only tablet not to have this problem so I can keep it nearby and know when I get new mail as long as I am in a place where I have wireless. This also affects the Windows Automatic Updates, which are supposed to happen at 3am (when the wireless is offline). I also have found that if I store my Surface in my bag next to my iPad, the Surface turns on.

I will not go into the Apps so much except on one surprise front. Microsoft bought int Barns and Noble’s Nook spinoff. Yet the only App is Amazon’s Kindle app, which I don’t use (I own a Nook Color). the lack of a Nook app at launch is extremely surprising, and I have yet to hear when a Nook app will come out. The rest of the App story all depends on what one is looking for. There are fewer Apps than Android or iOS, right now, but that should change, and is not a worry point for me as I don’t use 500,00 to a million apps. My Android tablet has the most downloaded apps on it and that is maybe 30, out of which I use many 10-15 apps regularly. The Nook app though is a big one for me, as I have all my tech manuals in my Nook system, and do not wish to repurchase them.

All of the problems and issues I have found can be fixed. It just make sit obvious that this is a first generation device, and a first serious attempt. From the screw up with the word Metro, to the issues outlined above, everything is fixable. The question is, will Microsoft fix these problems quickly and let the platform live up to the potential it has?

A couple of weeks ago, Verizon pushed ICS down to my Razr. I had been look forward to the upgrade for a while, but was it everything one wants?

The biggest problem with the Android OS is Google puts out a new version right about the time the Upgrades to the prior version come out. That being said, I finally got the ICS upgrade on my Droid Razr. With all the talk and positive things I had heard about ICS, I was excited.

The upgrade process was mostly painless, except for the notification coming at 4am on a work day. Once completed, I started looking for changes. First thing though was letting a number of my applications update. One of the biggest changes there was the Google+ app. The widget for it now showed actual posts, which makes my life easier, especially since I tend to forget about Google+ for days at a time (a post for another day).

The first bad thing about ICS I ran into was with my home button right after seeing the Google+ change. On Gingerbread, if you hit the home button once, it brought you to your home screen, and this hasn’t changed. Hitting the home button from your home screen on ICS does nothing, compared to Gingerbread which zoomed out and shows you all 5 screens so you could jump to a specific screen and not have to scroll to the far ones. This feature removal is a definite down side, although understandable since ICS is designed for devices without the  4 buttons below the actual screen.

The new set of customizable on screen quick start buttons is decent. the have put a nice App button there to bring you to the full application listing also. To add items to a home screen was completely different. You actually have to go into your main app list and hold touch on the itme. Apps that have widgets should show a widget app in the App screens also.

There are 2 big annoyances with ICS though. First is battery life, which already was limited on the Razr, has dropped even more. The second was after the upgrade, all the personalization I had done for ringtones, notifications etc, were gone. I wondered for a couple days why I was not vibrating when I got a new text message, until I figure this out.

Overall ICS has some good and bad. At this point in time, Android really reminds me of Microsoft and Windows. So many different configurations and hardware, the main company can’t keep up with it all, and the OEMs don’t care about keeping things current for their users. Instead they want you to buy new all the time.

Here I am a week away from Tech-Ed. I am going for my first time and I am a little bit nervous. Nerves aside, there are some key things I am looking forward to and things I am hoping for.

This year’s Tech-Ed is shaping up to be fantastic. At least for someone who has spent years convincing his company to send him to the premier tech event for Microsoft Technologies. I’ve used a number of different places such as Twitter and Linked in to get information on how to best manage my time and get into sessions while there. That said there are a few key sessions I am looking forward to. Most of them hit more on the security side of things, but there are also Powershell and Windows 8 sessions and hands on labs that I have marked on my schedule.

As far as the hopeful stuff goes, there is one big thing. That is getting some real time with a Windows 8 tablet. I have an iPad from the office, along with a Blackberry phone. I have a Droid phone as my personal phone (yes, I do believe in separation of work and personal devices). I have touched 2 Windows 7.5 phones, and have thought them alright, but have not had a chance to really learn them. That is mostly due to lack of need to learn them. On the other hand if the Windows 8 tablets on x64 architecture are what they say, it could be the perfect storm for Microsoft. The melding of the tablet into the office in an elegant fashion.

The one thing I hope they did fix, is the signing certificate installs. On Windows 7.5 installing a SBS self signed cert is a pain. Its Microsoft technologies not playing nice with each other, and that needs to be fixed, otherwise Exchange integration is a failure compared to the iPad and Android.

With all the vendors, Sessions and yes, parties (a group called #TheKrew and the Jam Session are the ones I want in on), the chances to not just network, but in this day of connectivity the chance to make friends is amazing. Tech-Ed should be a site to see, and I will be tweeting and Blogging from there, so stay tuned!