Windows 8 Road Test

I have Windows 8 installed in two locations, on my "lab" box at work, which is standard monitor/mouse/keyboard and on my Lenovo W510 laptop at home, which has a two-point touch screen.

Now, don't get me wrong, I used Windows 8 back when it was in it's Release Candidate days. I have an out of the box install as a Windows-To-Go stick that I played with from time to time.  But I really didn't get down and dirty with it until I started using it as my main machine at home and have it in front of me all day at the office.

My "first" impressions?

It's bigger. Visually bigger. Fluffy even. The tiles are great, I don't mind that as my start screen. But the resolution on everything just seems big, even though I have it set to highest possible. The built-in mail application. The calendar.  My contact list.  I might be getting older, but I'm not THAT old yet. My vision is still hanging on, I swear. I just like to have more of my data visible. (And in a smaller font so that the people in the next cube can't read what I'm typing.)

I don't mind not having touch screen capabilities on my full sized monitor.  While I occasionally find myself about to tap the screen, I'm happy with the way the mouse and keyboard work.  I find myself using the keyboard to bring up menu options and to get back to the Start page quickly.

I'm annoyed that the "Messenging" application can't connect to gChat, or any commonly used instant messaging service for that matter.  And the mail application is pretty bare bones, to put it nicely.

I miss having multiple applications "open" at the same time, unless I'm using the Desktop. I know they are running in the background, but sometimes its feels like they aren't really there unless I can see them. Now only having one application active on your screen could be handy when you are trying to concentrate on that ONE thing, but when the computer is just there in the background with Rowi (for Twitter) going and IM+ (for connecting to Yahoo! and gChat) and my personal email, I feel like I want to see them all.

Right now, Windows 8 makes me wish I had a Surface or a laptop that converts to a tablet format, since I feel like it's better for a device that's more "private" than a desktop monitor.  I'd love some kind of feature or setting you could change that would make better use of the real estate provided by a regular monitor.

Meanwhile, I'll stick with it - I know there's more to love as I use it more and more.

Windows 8 with Stephen Rose at PacITPros!

Ah, 2012 is quickly drawing to a close and the Pacific IT Professionals are proud to have Stephen Rose presenting on Windows 8 at our December 4th meeting.

Stephen Rose is the Sr. Product Marketing and Community Manager for the Windows Commercial Team at Microsoft Headquarters in Redmond, WA. Before joining Microsoft, Stephen spent 15 years working as a network infrastructure design and virtualization consultant for many Fortune 500 companies. His current role includes managing the IT pro community for the Windows Commercial team overseeing the technical content on the Springboard Series on TechNet, managing the Windows7 Forums, the Springboard Insider Newsletter, and the Windows Team Blog.

According to a Gartner study, the average user carries 3 devices, a tablet, a smartphone and a PC every day. With the release of Windows 8 and Server 2012, how does this change how you manage your users while taking advantage of the many new ways to make your users productive? Stephen Rose, Sr Product Marketing Manager with the Windows team will discuss the impact  and opportunities that Windows 8 will have on users, IT pros and developers. From a new fast and fluid UI  to being able to manage and deploy custom Windows 8 applications,Windows 8 brings new opportunities to users and business.

RSVP here!

Also, since the first Tuesday in January 2013 happens to be New Years Day, there will be NO PacITPros meeting in January. 

I Like Plumbing

Not the water kind, the telecom kind.

Right now, I'm in the midst of planning and preparing to move our office to a new location. Since telecom is a lot of setting and forgetting, I've been having a great time reviewing the phone numbers we use, what they are used for, deciding if they'll be needed in the new location and refreshing my memory on some of the details of our Shoretel configuration.

Things I've been thinking about:

• Analog Devices - Our existing office has old 66-blocks wired back to the desks that I've used to punch down fax machines and analog polycoms.  Our new office won't have 66-blocks, so I need to allot space on or LAN racks for connecting the wiring pairs from the harmonica whips on the Shoretel switches.  And make sure that the two cable drops we are doing everywhere is going to be enough for each location.
• Backup Lines - The phone system will use a regular PRI trunk, but we also have regular POTS lines installed as a backup.  Those need to be grouped in a Hunt Group over at AT&T and the configuration on the DIDs need to allow for roll-over if the PRI goes down.
• AT&T is moving away from their legacy Centrex Voicemail service and with our move, we can't retain the few VM boxes we have for external uses. Turns out we'll only need one (as part of our disaster recovery planning) and I'm fine with having an new number issued on the new Unified Messaging platform AT&T is selling now. 
• We have a lot of guest phones and old devices on the floor now that won't be needed in the new office. It's time for me to wander around and start collecting that up.  Today I have that time, I know in the next few week, I probably won't.

Hope everyone has a great long weekend filled with turkey, stuffing and pie!