Wh-wh-wh-Windows 8?

It's not controversial to say that Windows 8 has not won the hearts and minds in the technology community. In fact, recently, Windows 8 and Microsoft were blamed for the slide in PC sales. While I personally think there are plenty of other reasons for said slide, IDC isn't exactly nobody in the tech business so people will take note.

I am a pretty technically savvy person so my concerns and needs do not exactly mirror that of a more every day consumer. Nonetheless, people like me buy a lot of computers, advise others what to buy and often support those systems at home and in our business. What we think does matter beyond what our ownership or market presence bespeaks.

Let's start with a few key issues. These arise from my use of Windows 8 over the course of the last month on my HP ENVY dv6 laptop. It is not touch enabled so this represents the vast majority of desktop and laptop computers in existence today was well as most new units shipped for the foreseeable future.

How Much of Your Life Is on Your Computer?

Or on your various devices? Do you have an app from your bank that remembers your username and password? Or your web browser? What about electronic copies of your credit card, bank statements, tax returns, social security, etc.? Our devices are increasingly mobile and increasingly powerful  the perfect target for identity thieves.

Identity theft is going nowhere but up. 2012 was a banner year for thieves making lots of money by pretending to be you. If they swipe your phone or your laptop they can re-write your life in short order. The financial toll is estimated at more than $50 billion annually by one organization. But that's nothing to say about how much disruption and time and effort it is going to cost you. 

Closer to home, recently my in-law's laptop was stolen. As with most thefts of this type, it's relatively impossible to recover anything. He ran his household from it which meant it contained an extremely complete picture of their financial life. Wisely, they assumed the worst and started to proactively contain any potential damage by cancelling or changing accounts and setting locks and monitors.

There is simply no way to eliminate theft or simply never lose a device - they are just too pervasive now and yet also in high demand. As our use of technology evolves, we need to get smarter about it. Here are three pretty universal recommendations for reducing the impact on your life when the inevitable happens.

Office 2010 - Not So Fast

I've recently spent some time with Office 2010. Because I have an MSDN account, I usually get access to a lot of stuff from Microsoft prior to public release. I think the actual release date is tomorrow, June 15th.

Today, June 14th, I uninstalled it.

Several of my issues were rather minor. I felt that the file ribbon was a bit freakish in all the '10 apps. It is a bright and overly vivid green. This is a petty complaint, but distracting nonetheless when you are trying to get work done.

Outlook 2010 also incorporated the ribbon approach to the user interface. That was no problem. But the UI has become a box, with a colored "borders" around the entire application. This leaves white space in the middle and the email content there. It's like you are looking through a whole in the wall. Again, it's not a very welcome UI for something you tend to work with all day.

The real kicker though became the fact that the combination of Outlook and Excel suddenly decided that they couldn't open Excel files from the 97 to 2000 era. That certainly became an issue for me - within hours. I don't recall when it started happening or if it always was, but that just made it a no go.

So I uninstalled it and decided to go back to 2007. That was also apparently a mistake. Outlook 2010 did not uninstall or remove the Mail setup it had created on installation. When I went to install Outlook 2007, it could not handle the fact that Outlook 2010 (jealous anyone?) had been there and apparently Windows still only supports one Exchange account.

The solution to that at least was a registry change. You'd think in this day and age, what with Windows 7 and so forth that we wouldn't still be stuck using regedit. Maybe that'll be in the next version.

In the meantime, if you are running 2007 I recommend you stick. You'll do just fine. I suspect folks looking at Sharepoint 2010 would find some benefit, but others not so much. I'll wait for the next version at this point.

Windows Home Server

Just over a year ago I bought an HP MediaSmart EX485 Server running Windows Home Server. I thought it might be time to look back and see how it's been. 

First of all, why did I buy the HP?

1. I had a coupon
2. I have an employee discount because my company has a purchasing agreement with HP
3. I thought the software add-ons were great
4. The form factor was fantastic with the hot swap hard drive bays

Secondly, how has the last year been? Well midway through the year, HP updated the software from 2.0 to 2.5. That added and update a lot of functionality, including the ability to convert videos on the fly a lot more efficiently. I primarily use this to stream to my XBOX 360, though I've streamed it to my iPhone as well over my WiFi network as well.

It's great to have an automatic backup system for my PCs and it does work on Macs as well. I also like that I'm able to put the server to sleep on a schedule to save wear and tear on the box. I found the hot swap bays to be a little clunky but still usable and I've loaded up the three available drive bays with 1TB drives so I have plenty of space for music and video storage. 

I will say that the drive and folder management is a little clunky. It's probably easier for a lay person than for a techie like me who is used to weird stuff like RAID levels and things like that. Nonetheless, it's quite workable and shouldn't cause a lot of drama.

The system also communicates well with you, letting you know when and if problems exist with storage, anti-virus, backups, etc. These are both software-based warnings and visual cues on the box itself. A great thing too, is that Microsoft has allowed software authors to create plug-ins so you can have the server Tweet to you if there's a problem or control an un-interruptible power supply.

With anything there is room for improvement. Streaming video performance over the wired or wireless network is moderate to poor depending on the size of the video files. That's a shame too, because, the other utilities seem to combine to make a nice package for that type of thing. In addition, I dislike the McAfee virus protection. Just try to extend the 1 year trial. I dare you. It's not that it's expensive, it's just ridiculously difficult to do.

The access over the Internet is spotty at best. Microsoft gives you a free home server domain to use so that you can share your media over the Internet. Well, that's true in theory anyway. I continually get errors indicating that the server cannot update it's domain information. That's unfortunate, because it's a great way to take your media with you.

All said though, I don't at all regret buying this system. It solves a lot of problems for a multiple PC household and I'd heartily recommend folks buying one as well. Just a quick note that the model I purchased has been replaced with the HP MediaSmart Server EX490.