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Day 14 – Outlook 2013

Tuesday, October 2nd, 2012

It’s been a few days since I’ve been able to post an update. Sorry about that, but it’s been a bit busy and I’ve been in full on work mode. Today I want to write about Outlook 2013 and some of the cool new features, and a few that are driving me nuts!

First, the most awesome thing about Outlook 2013 is the redesign. While it still looks and feels like Outlook, there are new fonts and point sizes aimed at making information easier to find and manage.

Aside from the Mail view, the Calendar and People (or Contacts) have been updated as well. I think the calendar does a much better job with overlaid calendars and the pop-up windows for appointment details are great. People now uses the Social Media connector to bring in LinkedIn and Facebook contacts (in separate folders). It also offers a revamped address card view that takes a little getting used to, but overall is nice. I’d like to see them take this to the next level for click-to-dial from the card, but overall it’s a step in the right direction.

The last new feature I want to discuss also has me a bit annoyed. I’ve got a pretty large mailbox and my offline sync file tends to grow to around 20GB or so (file this under do as I say and not as I do). This takes up a good portion of my fancy 128 GB SSD hard drive (as I’m sure Microsoft figured would happen to many people). As a result, Outlook now gives you the option to change how much mail is downloaded. By default, this is set to 12 months, but you can change this anywhere from 1 month to All. Content outside of this timeframe is available on the server and there are links you can click to easily access that mail – except in the preview these links don’t always work! I’ve found that I live a lot in the past and not having these quickly accessible is a huge problem for me.

That said, I generally really like the new Outlook. Its fast, clean and to the point!

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Day 3: What New Interface?

Friday, September 21st, 2012

There’s been a lot of hype about the “new Windows 8 UI” and I’ve already gone on the record saying that it’s pretty cool and really brings a lot to the table. However, over the past few days, I’ve found myself living inside the familiar desktop view – in fact I’ve only seen the new UI once in the past two days and that was because I rebooted. I think Microsoft has a lot of work to do to drive functions into that UI and while it’s great on a phone or a touch tablet, it’s not quite ready for prime time. That said, I need to give it more attention and tomorrow I will purposely try to live WITHOUT the desktop and see what happens.

Moving on to a discovery, I’ve been going a bit crazy trying to find the Control Panel. It seems that when I upgraded, Windows 8 got set for UK English and all my dates are DD/MM/YY format. After some digging, I’ve found (hidden in plain sight of course). There is a mouse/touch shortcut that appears at the bottom left hand corner of the screen where the Start Menu used to be (the shortcut is even called Start!). Its plain purpose is to toggle back to the new UI, but if you right click you get some magic!

From this context menu, you can open Control Panel, command prompts, file explorer and a host of other system management utilities.

Come back tomorrow to see how a day in the life of the new UI works out!

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30 Days: Day 2 – Outlook 2013 Folder Sort

Wednesday, September 19th, 2012

Today’s been a busy day – in and out of meetings and I haven’t really had much of a chance to play with the new stuff, just basic working inside of Outlook. That’s when I noticed the awesomeness of Outlook 2013 folder list. I’m a folder guy, I have somewhere around 250 of them. One for each client, one for each employee, one of each vendor partner…you get the idea. Well, everything comes into the Inbox and is filed from there. I noticed that the folder list was all out of order. In Outlook 2010, it’s always alphabetized. Not so in 2013!

The folder list had defaulted to some other sort method (I forgot to figure it out) and then I noticed on the right-click context menu that I could “Sort SubFolders A to Z.” Then I noticed that I could drag and drop folder around to manually change the order!

For a folder guy like me, this is HUGE. I can move commonly used folders up, while moving those older and rarely used folders to the bottom faster than you can say productivity boost!

That all for today. Don’t forget to check back tomorrow!

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30 Days with Windows 8 and Office 2013 Preview: Day 1

Tuesday, September 18th, 2012

I’ve decided it’s time to go all in with Windows 8 and Office 2013 Preview – and I’m going to blog about my experiences! These two pieces of software represent the future of PCs and I think it is in everyone’s best interests if I figure it out sooner rather than later. I’ve often said it takes 30 days to learn/get used to a new piece of software, and I expect nothing less from Windows 8 or Office 2013. With that in mind, I have upgraded all of my devices to the latest and the greatest and I am hoping for the best. Come along with me as we laugh, cry, scream, throw across the room, and generally get the hang on this new technology. We may even learn a few tips and tricks along the way.

I use two computers – a Samsung ultrabook at home and Dell laptop at the office and at client locations. I upgraded both of these to Windows 8 Pro and Office 2013 Pro Plus Preview. So far, I think I am right on the money with needing 30 days to figure this stuff out. The good news is that while Office 2013 has a ton of new features, the working are relatively similar. A great feature of Office is that it is built for the cloud – in fact, it has the ability to save data into a corporate SharePoint site or personal Skydrive site right out of the box.

So far, the real challenge has been Windows and the new interface. Neither of my machines are touch enabled, and so far I’ve not had a lot of luck translating the touch aspects to my mouse – but I have hope! There are also a tone of keyboard shortcuts to make the transition easier. For example, today I learned that touching the Windows key toggles between the traditional desktop and the new user interface.

My goal is to post a tip or trick every day. Keep reading for more features as I progress through the 30 days.

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A Review of Windows 8

Tuesday, August 21st, 2012

We recently went ahead and took the plunge and installed Windows 8 Enterprise on a laptop. Setup was pretty quick and uneventful. Windows 8 had no problems recognizing most of the hardware, we had to use windows 7 64bit USB3 drivers since Windows could not recognize the USB3 ports. We used Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (ADK, formerly known as WAIK) to create an unattended answer file to customize the installation. No problem there either. From what we’ve seen on Windows 8 To Go and now the full installation, MS has definitely  made some changes and improvements to the core engine. A lot of stuff that was missing on 7 are now standard in 8. Yes, METRO is ugly and at first awkward to use. But after playing around with it a bit and customizing the way we wanted it, we are rather enjoying it. They are a lot of quirks and bugs still, things that will eventually patched by October’s public release. Below is a list of Pro’s and Cons:

CON’S:
- No more Desktop Gadgets, SIDEBAR.EXE no longer exists.
- Goodbye Aero & eye candy. We really miss my AERO. The sharp corners and metro UI are just ugly.
- No recent Documents Shortcut!
- No Start Menu. Not really a con, just a different way/mentality of getting to your application.

PRO’s:

- Windows Explorer and surprisingly the ribbon interface on it.
- Task Manager.
- Picture Passwords! Log in using a favorite picture and create patterns on it.
- Hyper-V. No need to buy VMware.
- New Metro START page, we’ve already customized one and it works great!
- New Windows Reset feature. Re-image your PC without loosing user data and apps!
- Cool Transfer File Dialog, includes pause feature.
- Metro Tiles can be customized to include real-time data.
- Charms Bar Power and menu, new possibilities of configuring system shortcuts.

If you want to see a demo of Windows 8 for your office, please let us know!

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The Next 12 Months from Microsoft

Wednesday, July 11th, 2012

This morning’s keynote from Microsoft COO Kevin Turner was nothing sort of spectacular. Kevin is a great speaker and motivator, but the power of his presentation was not in his delivery, but in the data. He even commented a few times about getting on your glasses so you can be impressed with the slide!

Basically, Microsoft is aggressively attacking all of its major competition – more so than ever before. Over the next 24 months, every single product they make will be refreshed and each of these products not only outdoes the last but claims to outperform their competition. From Windows 8 and Office 15 to XBox to Microsoft SQL, everything is being poised for a major push.

Supporting his claims, Kevin listed off several benchmarks from internal and third party surveys. SQL Server has more than twice the market share than any of it’s competitors. Bing has higher server relevancy than Google. Virtualization through Hyper-V increased market share while VMware began to lose. Dynamics CRM has more fatures with salesforce.com. Heck, even Siri knows that the Windows Phone gets better reviews!

Additionally, Microsoft is planning to open more stores, including pop-up stores in time for the holidays.

While it remains to be seen what will really happen when everything is released, one thing is for sure, Microsoft is pushing hard and you will continue to hear more from them.

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Windows 8 on the Horizon

Tuesday, July 10th, 2012

If you’re following along at home, you already know that Windows 8 will be released in about a month. If you follow tech news then you’ve also seen a ton or rumors about what it will look like and if you believe what you read, you’re probably pretty scared. The good news? It’s just like Windows 7 – only with a fancy new interface on top of it.

Really, the big noticeable change is the Metro User Interface (UI). Metro is a tiled interface that you can currently see on Windows mobile phones. It provides real time updates in the tile – new email, calendar reminder, news headlines, stock prices – you get the idea. If you haven’t seen A Windows phone, think about an iPad but the App icons update with the latest info.

There are Apps that run in this Metro style interface that can either be purchased in the Windows Store or “side-loaded” onto the Windows device. Anyone who is familiar with developing Windows applications today should have no problem developing a Metro app, but if you need to run a non-Metro app, the device will flip over into a familiar Windows 7 interface, making it easy to move forward without having to update every app (Microsoft Office 2010 runs this way).

Now that we know the big change, let’s talk about those rumors:
No Start Menu – This one is true with the Metro UI. The truth is that you don’t need it. Search is fully integrated in Windows 7 and the best way to find something is not to dig into the menu, but to just search for it. For old applications, the Windows interface is readily available. File this under – it will take some getting used to.

I need a touch screen to use it – I’m not going to lie. Touch is awesome. Windows 8 makes it a first class citizen with the keyboard and mouse. However, it works just fine with a mouse and keyboard.

It’s really made for a tablet – This is 100% true, but not the tablet that you use today. With touch, 3G/4G and mobility built into the core of the system, it can run on your desktop, your laptop, your Intel CPU tablet or your basic tablet that you use today. I’ve seen a few different laptops where the touchscreen pops off and becomes a tablet – with the full power of Windows. There is also a version that only runs Metro UI apps, this is the most direct competitor to today’s tablet.

It will be expensive to upgradeFalse. If you up a computer today (give it a few days – this was just announced) you’ll be able to upgrade for under $20.00. All other computers will only cost $40.

It will slow my computer down – False. Tests show that it boots up 50% faster than Windows 7.

There you have it, myths debunked! I was just handed a Windows To Go preview drive, so I’m going to start playing with Windows 8 ASAP. I’ll keep everyone posted.

What’s that? Never heard of Windows to Go? Another new feature! You can now work with your IT department to save all of your computers settings to a bootable USB drive. You boot to the drive and your corporate work computer is there. Maybe you’re on vacation at Aunt Sally’s house. Maybe you travel globally and can use a spare PC at every office you travel. Windows To ago includes your corporate accounts and fully supports the bit locker drive encryption, making this a fantastic way to deploy Windows for many different situations.

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Greetings from Toronto and Microsoft WPC

Tuesday, July 10th, 2012

Hello from Toronto! I’m currently sitting in the Air Canada Centre with over 16,000 people representing Microsoft Partners from around the globe. We’re here to watch Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, deliver his keynote address. And what an address it was! Steve, and his team, talked about a number of new items being released by Microsoft in the coming months.

First the big news, Windows 8 is officially on track to be be completed in early August – that’s next month! While it will take until mid-October for computer manufacturers to start delivering the new operating system on new PCs, volume license customers should have access to the foibles in just a few short week! To match that, we saw a demo of several new touch enabled ultra books. The only comparison I can come up with is imagine the MacBook Air, with Windows 8 and a touch screen. It was pretty awesome to see that new technology.

Another major topic was Office 365. Just celebrating its first birthday, it has grown faster that ever expected – across all business sizes. Loses Home Improvement stores, for example, recently migrated over 200,000 users into the platform! Microsoft also revealed a new licensing strategy for the platform that allows resellers to package the offering – this bit of news was in direct response to the communities request and received a huge ovation.

Rounding out the session, there was a brief discussion of Office 15. And by brief, I mean it’s existence was acknowledged. No news yet, but they hinted that it will include a ton if new features and capabilities that address the consumerization trend happening in corporate IT.

Overall, the keynote delivered a few surprises and some great announcements. More to come late, on to a day of Windows 8 training!

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A Better Wireless

Friday, May 11th, 2012

I recently did something for the first time – not something that I get to say often! I’ve mentioned on these pages before about the new office that one of our clients was opening and how they took the opportunity to upgrade their LAN room equipment. One thing I briefly touched on was the installation of a secure wireless network. Well, that network is now up and running and everyone is pretty pleased with the results.

Implemented with SonicWall SonicPoint technology, the wireless network consists of 3 access points distributed around the office. Each access point is capable of transmitting 802.11 A/B/G/N signals and can have multiple SSID’s on separate networks. Additionally, the entire thing is managed through the familiar and friendly SonicWall interface. The company needed Corporate private network access (to bring their laptop into the conference room with ease) and Guest access (to allow any office visitors to have access). We decided to publish two SSID’s for each network, one for 802.11 G connections and another for 802.11 N connections so users whose computers support 802.11 N are able to take advantage of the faster speeds. This is where the fun starts. While the Guest network uses the standard wireless passphrase, the Corporate network has been integrated with Active Directory for authentication.

Integrating with Active Directory does a few fantastic things for wireless network security:

  1. You are not relying on a pre-shared key that everyone knows and has to be changed often enough to protect the network from disgruntled former employees.
  2. It adds a layer of protection as users are not likely to share network passwords with other users or visitors – forcing them to go get the Guest network password.
  3. It allows network administrators to decide which user accounts can access the wireless – maybe desktop users don’t get to connect but laptop users do?
  4. It uses a certificate based authentication – that means that, if deployed correctly, computers must be configured as local domain members to connect. This restricts access to the network to devices that are managed to the corporate standard. Unsecure home laptops, iPhones and mobile devices need not apply – that’s what the guest network is for!
  5. The certificate authentication also allows for an encrypted session, meaning that the login and connection is just about as secure as connecting to the network through a cable. Granted, wireless goes through walls, so it’s not 100% the same, but it’s as close as you’ll be able to get.

In addition to the added security features, Active Directory integration also allows for a seamless login experience for network users. You simply find the network and hit connect. The authentication happens in the background and within a few seconds you’re connected!

While SonicWall SonicPoints are far from the only device that provides this level of integration, it is quickly becoming our preferred device. It’s easy to use, quick to deploy and meets the needs of our customers.

If you’re struggling with how to provide secure wireless access to the private network, let me know and we can talk about how to incorporate some of this technology.

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Time for a New iPad?

Thursday, March 22nd, 2012

Did you wait in line for the new iPad? How about pre-order? Are you just DYING to get one? I was, at first, then I started to think about it for a bit. Why? What am I going to do with the new iPad that I can’t do on my current one? Without a clear answer in my head, I did what I always do and asked the smartest people I know (my management team) their thoughts. What I found was pretty similar to what I was thinking.

To give you some background, I have an old and ugly iPad 1. It’s actually my second iPad. I found out pretty quickly that WiFi only was too limiting for me and I made someone at CNS very happy and got myself an upgrade. I use it basic things like email, Kindle, travel, and meeting notes. I don’t notice not having a camera and while iOS 5 made it a little sluggish, it’s generally a pretty good device.

Everything starts to unravel now that the new iPad has been launched. My old and ugly iPad 1, is now older and uglier. Common computer trends say that you should upgrade and replace when you are two versions behind (as I now am), but common trends also indicate that a device should last for three years and I’ve still got one to go. In today’s age of Bring Your Own Device and Consumerization of IT, there are simply no studies or good data to support when consumer devices should naturally expire and be replaced.

The best advice I got on the matter came from our Anvil Dataworks manager, Chuck Melton. Chuck suggested that its not the screen or the camera, but what you are going to do with it. He specifically mentioned that the increased RAM and CPU will make FileMaker Go users extremely happy and provide a noticeable improvement. I see that, and I’m all about the noticeable improvements! It stands to reason that any app that is memory or resource intensive would also benefit greatly.

In the end, I don’t really have a good answer. While the gadget fever is still running high, I’ve tempered that and will probably wait until the next iPad comes out before upgrading. For me, I don’t see the purpose. I think the industry is still trying to figure out what to do with these things. While new iPads are hip and sexy, they are also expensive and don’t replace your primary machine. Hip and sexy can only get you so far, and money talks!

What about you? Are you ready to upgrade? If so, what are your reasons?

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