Windows 8.1 on the Surface Pro

In June I blogged about my nightmare experience buying the Microsoft Surface Pro and summarised with 'Buyer Beware!' and a strong recommendation that potential purchasers avoid this item. Since then we've had the Surface Pro 2 announced and I don't know whether to laugh or cry at all the hypocrites who raved at how wonderful the Surface Pro was, now telling us just a few months after it launched how much better the Surface Pro 2 and its new keyboard cover (no refunds on the old one, sorry!) is!

The Surface Pro has largely been a useless paperweight since I bought it. Way too heavy with too little battery life for a tablet. Way too under-powered for a laptop.

But I thought I'd give it another go, now that Windows 8.1 has been released. This, by the way, is the release that had so much quality control applied to it that the version for the Surface RT had to be pulled within hours of release because if totally trashed the Surface RT. You really couldn't make this stuff up! So, anyway, I downloaded and ran the upgrade and the Surface Pro did some reboots and then told me...

Couldn't update to Windows 8.1 0xC1900101 0x30018

Updating Microsoft software on Microsoft hardware I should have known!

I'm not even surprised any more. Apple announce their new iPad today and I'm afraid after all the pain they've caused me and so many friends and family it's hard to see how aside from some niche enterprise scenarios there's anything to stop them a decade from now having gone the same way as Kodak. Time to start learning node.js I guess!

Windows 8: The Official Magazine R.I.P.

The postman delivered two separate items this morning: a magazine and a letter.

The magazine was issue 13 of Windows 8: The Official Magazine. It included the following flyer, as it does with every issue:

'Subscribe for years to come' they exhort. Chance would be a fine thing, because the separately delivered letter contained the news that the magazine has been cancelled. No explanation at all given other than it has been a 'tough decision'. Yeah, right!

But here's the funny bit. They are transferring all remaining subscriptions to a new magazine. Can you guess what that might be? What might be most appropriate for the purchaser of a new PC with the Windows 8 operating system installed?

Yup. You read that right! Windows 7: Help and Advice magazine!

Classy, official Microsoft magazine. Classy! So presumably since this issue coincides with the release of the free Windows 8.1 upgrade the 'official' advice is to hold off that and instead go and install Windows 7?

Actually that's probably pretty good advice, as it turns out.

Oh yeah, and about that Windows 8.1 Upgrade

The good news is that after a huge backlash from developers who pay through the nose for their MSDN subscriptions and early access to Microsoft operating systems and software, only to be told they'd have to wait the same as the general public to get any sniff of the new operating system their applications are supposed to run on, Microsoft decided to let them have access to the RTM (Release-to-Manufacturing) version of Windows 8.1, before its release through retail outlets next month, after all.

Keen to see if the much-touted 'improvements' have actually rescued Windows 8, I tried installing Windows 8.1 on top of the Dell pre-installed Windows 8 Pro softwre on my Dell XPS One (I'm not stupid enough to run Windows 8 on my main workhorse PC - continual switching between two completely different operating systems every time you want to start a new program is a real productivity killer).

The only options the upgrade offered were to retain my data (and lose all my installed applications) or lose everything including my data!

An option to 'keep my applications' isn't offered, although I discovered such an option should be available. A quick question on StackOverflow bore little immediate fruit except a 'downgrade' in my reputation points from some malicious, anonymous little Microsoft shill. My bad for having the temerity to ask how Microsoft could be so stupid as to offer an upgrade that didn't let me keep my applications.

Eventually, thanks to Twitter, I spotted a suggestion that implied Microsoft can't cope with taking an 'en' (English) installation and installing an upgrade that says it's an 'en-gb' (English-British) upgrade.

I think journalist Jon Honeyball, who was suffering the exact same problem on the exact same hardware, summed it up best when he said that something as simple as a language pack being so tightly bound to an operating system install was 'hackery of the worst kind'.

Yup. Hackery of the worst kind. Or, to put it another way, Microsoft business as usual. God help Joe Public trying to upgrade his Windows 8 system when this upgrade hits the shelves next month!

That decision to switch Windows 8 Official Magazine subscribers to Windows 7: Help and Advice suddenly looks like a very canny move!

'Positive' Discrimination at Angular 2014 Conference Is Just Plain Wrong!

Some Thoughts About Conferences in General

Until 2009 I used to attend a Microsoft conference every year.

The cost of attendance wasn't cheap but, at least in the early days, I found them particularly useful when I was feeling a bit jaded. These events presented an opportunity to learn, network, and generally re-invigorate your enthusiasm for an industry where the daily realities of the job and the poor work/life balance can prove stressful and de-moralising.

Our industry has a high 'burn out' rate, and conference attendance can be an excellent way to try and combat that.

In many ways the proliferation of 'free' user groups, especially for those of us living and working in the London area, made many of these advantages somewhat redundant. With so much user group choice (in the days before the reliance on Microsoft funding suddenly dried up so that many user groups simply vanished overnight) I realised that the last few conferences I'd attended had been a disappointment, and very poor value-for-money.

Of course if you're a permanent employee whose company are happy to pay for the cost of admission and give you the time off work to attend, any 'cost' arguments don't apply. But if you're a self-employed contractor who has to not only pay around £3000 to attend a conference that may only last a couple of days, but also take the hit of a week's lost earnings (once you've factored in additional time to cope with jet lag), the cost of attending a conference can be almost impossible to justify.

As a result, particularly after the huge disappointment of the last two Microsoft conferences I attended (where much was promised, but little actually delivered), I've made it a matter of policy to stay away from conferences. Talking to other contractor friends who've attended recent Microsoft conferences like Build or TechEd it doesn't seem like I've missed out on anything at all.

In fact the introduction of video streaming or downloads over the last few years means that 'virtual attendance' often provides a better experience than 'in person' attendance anyway: No extensive travel time or over-priced business hotels; If you hit a poor training 'session' you can just hit the 'stop' button and quickly dive into another one, rather than walking half a mile to find you're too late to be let in to a possible alternative; Wi-fi 'just works' at home unlike most conference venues and hotels; And, thanks to social networks and Twitter, you have the advantage of being able to see what other attendees are saying about a session before commiting to it. Even announcements from these big conferences typically appear on the internet hours before the 'on the ground' attendees have woken up for breakfast!

The Angular Conference 2014

But the announcement of the first annual Angular conference, to take place in Salt Lake City in January next year, was too much to resist. I love using Angular, and can't wait to find out what others are doing with it, and to learn tips and tricks from the experts, as well as the opportunity to network with others who've been working with the technology on a day-to-day basis.

After booking the hotel and flights ahead of time, I thankfully managed to get a ticket in the mad rush that took place yesterday evening UK time and lead to 200 'early bird' tickets selling out in less than 2 minutes.

The fast 'sold out' time is a testament to the interest in Angular. For a new, untested conference, held away from the usual big US cities I think that's unprecedented, and shows the enthusiasm and traction AngularJS has attracted from the developer community: traction that's been won in an incredibly short period of time.

So I'm excited to be attending, and it will be good to catch up with some former Silverlight developers who also managed to get tickets and who, like me, have undertaken quite dramatic career change choices by fleeing the sinking Microsoft ship and looking instead at more open source alternatives like Angular, at least on the front-end.

However, I am extremely disappointed to see that after the initial 'early bird' tickets sold out so fast, a decision to give special priority to 'girls' was announced.

'Positive' Discrimination is Still Discrimination!

An update email from the conference organisers yesterday said that more tickets would be made available on a 'first come, first served' basis next Monday at 7pm UK time.

That's the good news.

But the email also said that 'girls' would be able to effectively 'jump the queue' for tickets by applying through a specially set-up email address rather than just waiting for the next batch to be released and competing with everyone else to grab one.

I think this is just plain wrong, and manifestly unfair. A quick informal survey amongst friends on Facebook both inside and outside the industry showed 100% agreement with my viewpoint. One has to question why the hell this 'preferential treatment' decision on ticket sales has been taken.

For me, it boils down to this one single question: "Are girls less able to go online and order tickets the same way everyone else has to?"

If so, I've missed something.

And if you're going to give special concessions to one group of people, why stop at 'girls'? (Does anybody else think that term for women is at best patronising, and at worst insulting?) Let's have 'positive discrimination' for any and every 'minority' group: bloggers, gays, students, people of colour, people paying a lot more to attend because of the distances they have to travel, people whose middle name is embarrasing... Where do you stop?

'Positive discrimination' is, however you word it or try and justify it, DISCRIMINATION. And discrimination is just plain wrong. The fact that the Angular Conference organisers have not chosen to explain the reasoning behind their peculiar decision, beyond saying they 'want to include more girls' for me sets a worrying tone for the conference. I thought this was to be a developer's conference not a dating one!

AngularJS Video Transcripts

Earlier this year I started working with a team of .NET developers writing a Single Page Application using a whole bunch of JavaScript libraries and frameworks. Transitioning from the world of .NET, Silverlight and CSLA to the new 'wild west' of JavaScript, whilst trying to remain productive and deliver working functionality has been a huge challenge.

I made an early decision to use Pluralsight training as the basis for getting everybody up to speed as quickly as possible.

John Papa's Single Page Architecture in-depth and fast-paced courses on Pluralsight were a huge jump-start, but even with a concentrated six to seven hours running time proved so intense that developers who'd 'completed' (ie viewed) the courses three times in total were still struggling to remember crucial guidlines and coding methods, and when they really needed to re-reference it struggled to find where in the video a specific, quickly talked through code sample had been.

I ended up spending far too many weekends transcribing the video contents of key chapters from different Pluralsight courses into readable PDFs to try and get our team up-to-speed a lot quicker. Since Pluralsight is a paid-for subscription service, unfortunately this material can only be used by my fellow team members who all have paid up Pluralsight subscriptions.

However, there's a host of similar video training material (mostly user group talks) that's available for free. Our biggest learning curve (which is ongoing) was around the awesome AngularJS framework. After flirting with Durandal and Knockout to get up and running with our SPA application, we switched to Angular (with Breeze) as the main framework on which to base our Single Page Application. Its ability to dispense with many individual libraries, dramatically reduce the size of our code base, strong community support with increasing momentum, and its sheer elegance were factors in deciding to use Angular.

Thanks to the generosity of the original video speakers, I've been able to make publicly available these "Angular PDF transcripts" for those who, like me, find re-watching video a poor way of revisiting excellent reference material.

I should stress that my recommendation would be that you watch the videos (links in the individual PDFs) first, and simply use these PDF downloads as backup - a quicker way to revisit the video contents when you want to, and get to the relevant material. (Video 'jump to' timings are shown directly underneath each slide in the PDFs if you really want to go back and view the original video material on a given topic).

The transcripts I've received permission to make available are as follows:

• AngularJS Best Practices by Misko Hevery
• AngularJS Animations by Matias Niemela
• Angular Version 1.2 And Beyond by Brad Green and Igor Minor
• CRUD Apps with Angular and Breeze by Ward Bell

My thanks to Misko Hevery, Matias Niemela and John Lantz (on behalf of Ward Bell) for giving permission for these transcripts to be made publicly available. The material available here is the results of their hard work and not mine, and they own the intellectual copyright. I hope you find them useful.

Microsoft Store - Buyer Beware!

This blog post was updated on 23rd June 2013. Please see the end of the article for the update with the eventual resolution by Microsoft

I honestly didn't think Microsoft's handling of the UK launch of the Surface Pro could have got any worse. I should have known better of course!

The Surface Pro is essentially an over-priced, albeit niche product with terrible battery life and poor weight and handling characteristics that FINALLY officially launched in the UK on 23rd May 2013 - several months after its much hyped debut in the USA, and almost a year after it had been first announced and demonstrated as Microsoft's answer to the all-domineering iPad tablet.

On 23rd May, the morning of release, the Microsoft UK Store officially launched the Surface Pro in the UK and took pre-orders. I placed an order online.

My bad!

This blog post documents how at EVERY SINGLE customer 'touch point' Microsoft have demonstrated staggering incompetence.

1. Microsoft Store Web Site - Frequently Broken

I've lost count of the number of times I visit the Microsoft Store, fill out a ton of details, click to purchase something and encounter the screen shown below which then sits there for hours. You eventually give up and try and process an order again, re-entering every detail of your order, only to get the same screen over and over again for hours at a time until somebody somewhere wakes up to the problem and fixes the web site. How do these people stay in business?

2. Microsoft Store - Order Status? 'Processing' aka 'Completely Unknown'

I was one of the first people to order a Surface Pro for work. I ordered on the morning of Thursday, 23rd May - the supposed day of launch. My order showed as 'processing'. It stayed at 'processing' for a week. I phoned the Microsoft Store to ask when it was likely to be despatched. They said they had no idea and couldn't give me ANY kind of date as 'demand was higher than expected', which is odd since all the media reports are full of stories of poor sales of the product.

I cancelled the order by talking to real people in a real call centre.

Twice!

It still showed as 'processing' three weeks later!

3. Customer Priority Ordering - What Priority?

A week after the Surface Pro launched I had no delivery date or even suggestion of when my order might be despatched. And yet a friend (Hello Brian!) who ordered THE DAY AFTER ME received his 128GB Surface Pro the following Wednesday.

In other words, it doesn't matter when you place your order there is no priority, rhyme or reason around the delivery system. No 'common sense' approach that says 'first come, first served'. It's a complete lottery.

4. We can't supply the product but we've started and charged for your extended warranty...

I ordered the extended warranty for the Surface Pro because everything I've read about this device says it runs hot and will be a pig to get repaired because the design is so bad parts are impossible for Microsoft engineers to get at. If you purchase the Surface Pro from the Microsoft Store you can buy an extended warranty for £65. Not cheap - especially when the only other place offering to sell the product (John Lewis) bundles it in free. I ordered it. I was charged for it immediately. The Microsoft Store rep I spoke to actually admitted that the extended warranty had started and been charged for EVEN THOUGH THEY HAD NO IDEA WHEN THEY COULD SUPPLY THE PRODUCT THE WARRANTY WAS TO COVER!

5. We cancelled your order.... but we haven't

Fortunately there is one alternative source for the Microsoft Surface Pro if you really need one (ie you work at a Microsoft 'shop' that has mandated their use because of the device's inherent security benefits over the iPad): John Lewis. Friendly staff, and a two year warranty for free instead of £65, and they had stock a week after launch. I cancelled my order by phoning the Microsoft Store, sitting in a 'hold' queue and speaking to a real person who was friendly and helpful. My order was cancelled I was told. My credit card would not be charged. Phew!

Next day however, the store is still showing my order as 'processing'. Whatever happens I don't want to be charged twice or have a second item shipped. So before heading out to John Lewis I phone the Microsoft Store again. Hold queue again, but eventually I get to speak to another friendly, helpful lady. She tells me that the Microsoft Store 'back office' systems are slow to update. Uho! How slow? She can't say, but tells me I am not to worry because she will ESCALATE my cancellation to make sure my credit card is not charged. Blimey! What would have happened if I hadn't called and just assumed the cancellation had happened as I'd been told the previous day? I think we all know the answer to that! She can't tell me when the store status will change from 'processing' to 'cancelled' but she gives me a long cancellation reference number and apologises for the fact the Microsoft Store web site has no concept of what an order status really is.

I go to John Lewis and purchase my Surface Pro

6. Two weeks after we cancelled your order we took your money

Two weeks after I've confirmed my order as cancelled by speaking to a real human being and getting a cancellation reference, I get an automated email telling me that my items couldn't be cancelled and have been sent and charged for!

I also get another email telling me not to worry because I can refuse to accept the goods (me: "but the courier will just leave them with a neighbour - how will that help when I'm not at home?") or I have 30 days to return them at my own cost... to Holland! Then 2 weeks after that I might get my money back. But probably not the interest charges that will have been applied because I don't have the money to pay the charges because I already spent them at John Lewis.

UPDATE: A couple of hours after posting this blog entry (and nearly 24 hours after receiving the original return instructions) I received emails telling me I could print off pre-paid labels for UPS to return the cancelled goods, relieving me of the cost of shipping everything back. It seems odd that this should happen (a) so long after the original 'How to return the items' email (b) two hours after I'd been lucky enough to be at home when UPS attempted delivery of the items and therefore able to refuse to take them, making the labels completely redundant. A knee-jerk reaction to this blog post maybe? Hard to tell!

In summary, "our back end systems take more than two weeks to process an 'escalated' cancellation and as a result you will have to pay significant costs to cover our negligence and incompetence". Thanks Microsoft. You really are truly unbelievable!

6. Customer Service - just follow this link

Each email from the Microsoft store has a 'Customer Service' hyperlink. It takes you to a completely grey empty page:

I wish I could say I was surprised. This is Microsoft. I'm NOT surprised. It's just business as usual. I know what you're thinking "Heh, give them a break. It's not like they write software for a living or anything". Oh wait!....

7. We'll say we shipped one thing, but offer to reimburse you for another (cheaper) thing!

The email detailing what has been sent two weeks after cancellation correctly identifies my order as being for a 128GB Surface Pro. The email I have to use to return the unwanted goods to Holland, and on which presumably refund costs will be based, says what is being returned is a 64GB Surface Pro. How on earth can this happen? Is the Microsoft 'Back office' system that generates these things a monkey with a pencil? It sure looks that way.

8. Customer Service - I can't give you a name or address to complain to

One thing the online web site DOES have is interactive chat which appears to be designed to help them sell you stuff. Desperate to avoid high phone charges sitting on hold and unanswered emails I tried to use it to find someone I could complain to. Nope. They can't give me the name of a manager or an address to write a letter of complaint to. They can email me 'in 10 minutes' and I can reply to that email address with my complaint but that's all. What's the point of emailing the minion I've already chatted to about the complaint? Completely pointless!

I've been round this 'send us your complaint' loop before. Some years ago I purchased an expensive online introductory training course for WPF that was truly terrible. I tweeted about it, warning potential purchasers to avoid at all costs. Three Microsoft employees contacted me asking for details on what was wrong so that they could rectify things. I spent significant time putting together a detailed report documenting everything that was wrong with the course. I was thanked for my comments and told someone would get back to me. 3 months later nothing had happened. I asked why. Nobody could say, other than to say the report had been forwarded to somebody in the States, and a shrug-of-the-shoulders suggestion that the course had probably been put together by 'a partner' who hadn't bothered to read, let alone respond to, the detailed report I'd sent. This is of course the classic Microsoft reaction to terrible customer service like this: sympathise, say 'I'm sorry I'll look into that' ... and then do absolutely nothing!

Microsoft truly is in danger of becoming the 'Kodak of the 2010's. It seems to be rotten to the core: full of smiley snake-oil covered young 'passionate' sales and marketing people with Teflon shoulders who will smile and say "How can I help?" before emptying your wallet with promises of what's to come or what's 'strategically important' (ie about to be killed off) before they quickly move on to something else or if they have any sort of self-respect somewhere else (seems to be mostly Telerik if they're a software engineer!) when you start asking "Wait a minute. What happened here? I think I just got shafted.... again!".

If you're considering purchasing ANYTHING from Microsoft or the Microsoft Store, I suggest you bear all the above headline points in mind. Every single Microsoft rep I've spoken to when I've had a problem has said they're 'sorry'. Every single one has, when pushed, privately admitted they can't actually do anything because ... well find your excuse: it's this partner or that partner, or somebody in Redmond that's the cause of the problem. Nobody takes account. Nobody takes responsibility. Nobody addresses the problems. And in the meantime you've lost a whole ton of money and time for no good reason.

Like the title of this blog post says: Buyer beware!

Update 23rd June 2013

Journalist Tim Anderson linked to this blog post in an article he wrote Microsoft and Mediocrity in Programming which seemed to stir Microsoft into action.

Last Wednesday I received a call from a Microsoft employee in Toronto (!) apologising for my experience and giving me contact details as he tried to get to the bottom of the situation. Refunds for accessory items were made in the middle of last week and although I haven't officially been notified yet, it appears my credit card was credited with the main cost of the Surface Pro itself yesterday, 22nd June - the day after my credit card statement which means I'll get stung for the charge but have a credit on my account for future purchases (sigh!) Microsoft also, by way of apology, refunded the cost of the 'Limited edition' Wedge Mouse for Surface which I separately had ordered and kept - which is generous given it retailed for £69.99 (For other Pro owners I should point out this is identical to the 'non-limited, non-Surface' edition Wedge Mouse that retails for about £40 on Amazon, except for the fact it has black ends instead of silver ends - just in case you were wondering, like me, what the heck the difference in this 'Surface limited edition' accessory was!).

Given my experience, albeit with a happy ending eventually, would I use Microsoft Store again? Not if I have ANY choice in the matter. See the 'Comments' section below for others who have struggled to get refunds or cancellations out of Microsoft for orders placed through their store!

Unfortunately if you want Surface Pro accessories you have little to no choice. John Lewis, the only other reliable supplier I've been able to find, don't stock most of the accessories (yet?)

Having had the Surface Pro for two weeks now I regret my rather imulsive purchase - it's a shame I don't follow my own advice as the signs were all there BEFORE I bought the Pro!

I can see this is a niche product for niche users, but the poor battery life and overall clumsy form factor and weight when added to the "Windows 8 and touch on hi-res screens just doesn't work" problems mean it will be of little interest to most. The 'hack' of including a stylus pen that occupies the same slot as the power lead (doh!) is an interesting attempt to solve part of the problem, but it's a hack, and not a very good one! Add in the exhorbitant costs: of the unit, the £110 keyboard, the £70 mouse, the £65 spare power supply etc and the appalling battery life and it's hard to justify buying the Surface Pro when you can get so much more for a lot less money in an ultraportable Windows 8 PC.

No doubt next week at Build we'll get the same shills who were over-promoting this Frankenstein's monster hardware last year doing the same for its "improved", smaller 'Surface Mini' (really?!!) version that many have predicted will be announced. Take all the hype with a pinch of salt until you can actually try units that are available to buy in the UK (a year from now if the usual pattern is followed)!

My Week With Windows 8: Conclusion

My 'Week working exclusively with Windows 8' to give it a second chance (as suggested by journalist Tim Anderson) is over. Actually it was over a few days ago but I've been struggling with getting this 'summary' blog post together.

So what's the verdict?

I wrote a blog post summarising my findings over the weekend.

I then rewrote it several times to try and make it less ranty, and less obsessed with all the nit-picky problems I found that were more to do with my main apps than the operating system itself.

I re-edited it again to avoid sounding like a broken record on the subject of where Microsoft is headed and how badly it's handled the Windows 8 launch. After all, it's not like I haven't done that particular subject to death over the last 18 months ;-)

Then I decided that trying to get this 'Windows 8 summary' into a well-rounded 'honest' blog post was just turning into a HUGE time sink.

So, the bottom line is this: Tim was kinda right - Windows 8 is a lot better than I thought it was going to be.

I had problems, but all my desktop apps run fine on it after a couple of support calls were made and in one very particular case a quick fix obtained.

More interestingly, I actually love the 'modern apps' stuff that's plumbed in, even if the poor APIs underneath mean that even the apps that initially look great (MetroTwit and Evernote I'm talking about you!) and almost had me enthusiastically shouting 'The emperor's wearing clothes after all' turned out to be highly varnished turds that just aren't of sufficient quality for day-to-day usage.

I'm sure that with time, service packs and new APIs things will improve.

In the meantime Windows 8 isn't the car crash that Vista was so far as ordinary users are likely to be concerned. You just need to spend a couple of hours learning the new way of working (ALT + F4 is my new best friend, the Windows key on its own the other!) so that you can get back to the trusty Windows desktop environment you're used to with Windows 7. So if you're feeling brave, just avoid buying any ARM tablets or 'modern style apps' for that tablet until they've ironed out all the nightmare issues around the poor APIs and buggy controls and go for it.

I'm NOT going for it. But for mostly arbitrary reasons around the usage of Windows Key + M being taken away for no good reason (I use that combination a lot!) and not liking the 'thin barrier' the new 'modern app' Start Page puts in my way. Well that and the fact no client or potential client has ever expressed any interest in running Windows 8 and I'm a firm believer in developing on the platform you're going to be deploying to.

At the time of writing I have one outstanding problem (a big one) where I can't create a home network (Windows 8 wants a password from a PC that was running a beta and has since been repaved and refuses to offer any kind of new 'Create a new HomeGroup' option instead) but otherwise the operating system seems pretty solid. Even using it with just mouse and keyboard.

I can see consumers really getting to like 'modern apps' and 'live tiles' as demonstrated with the pre-installed apps (the biggest disappointment here is that none of the apps in the app store seem to support live tiles or contracts when they should). I can see those same users then realising they'd like the same experience on their phone.

This can only be good news for the uptake on the third attempt at launching Microsoft's phone operating system, assuming the retail chain forces Windows 8 onto consumers via the 'new PC purchase' route (although a quick visit to computer stores doesn't indicate that this is actually happening, with most stores I checked still selling only PCs with Windows 7 preinstalled - what's that about??!)

Those expecting the usual long rant and disappointed not to find one might want to check out this video 'The Microsoft Roadmap' from last week's Oredev conference instead.

If you don't have time to watch an hour long video summarising the last five years of Microsoft I hope the speaker (Scott Barnes) doesn't mind me summarising the whole thing with his closing line "The takeaway is you've been part of an experiment for the last five years".

As a footnote to this post, I made a similar comment in a tweet some months back. A relatively high profile contractor/community member working for an investment bank replied that my tweets were always 'too negative' and that he was perfectly happy with the current Microsoft situation. Although he's an MVP and so has to pay the 'public shill' tax of being publicly positive about everything to do with Microsoft, in private he's always been as 'negative' as I am about Microsoft, so his public tweet surprised me, and I couldn't resist asking him if his clients who had now wasted millions on a 'dead man walking' technology were equally happy and loved putting a 'positive spin' on things instead of being 'too negative' at their wasted millions.

The reply of 'I've earnt good money, and continue to do so. What's the problem?' probably says all that needs to be said about the average contractor/consultant, their sense of responsibility for those who've followed their advice and paid them big sums of money, and the Microsoft software industry as a whole.

That being said, it's probably true to say I'm jaundiced where the investment banking industry and Microsoft are concerned. A couple of weeks ago I lost a potential 'big bucks' client through pointing out that 'No, actually you CAN'T just take your big enterprise Silverlight app built on MVVM and various frameworks and 'just recompile it' to run as a Windows 8 XAML/C# application. The interviewer visibly sulked throughout the remaining 40 minutes of the 'tell us what you've done' interview (pointing out his incompetence in front of a colleague probably wasn't one of my best moves!)

Oh well, if nothing else it's good to see so many of those in the investment banking industry have learnt from the big crash of the last few years and can now justify those big salaries and big decisions </sarcasm>

We reap what we sow I guess, and whilst carping on about how dreadful most of this stuff is isn't helping me win friends and influence at a certain Redmond-based software company or within its rewards-based 'community', I can at least satisfy myself with the fact that I'm not the business owner paying for all this incredible incompetence and greed!

If you're a business owner who wants software built by someone serving YOUR best interests rather than their own, feel free to drop me an email! I haz references - lots of them :-)

Week With Windows 8. Day Zero: Dell XPS One Review

This is the second of several 'resource' reviews that will be appearing as part of my Week with Windows 8 series of blog posts.

Background Information

My Current Hardware

I've looked at Windows 8 twice before now - first in its 'Build 2011 release' beta form around this time last year, and then again when the Consumer Preview was issued, which I think was about six months later. For those early releases I didn't want to screw up my main laptop, so I used an HP DV-2 netbook. I had regretted buying this PC within weeks of getting it - an impulse purchase made just before a trip to the States for a Microsoft conference when I wanted something small and portable to take. It was small and pretty, but was seriously overpriced (just under £700, at a time when most other netbooks were more like £300-£400). I paid that high price because it was one of the few netbooks available with 4GB memory at the time I got it, which made it potentially usable for running Visual Studio. Also HP had announced they would be releasing an optional Blu-ray player for it. I work away from home a lot during the week and like to be able to take new Blu-ray movies with me to watch so this seemed ideal. HP totally reneged on the promises they used to get the sale (no Blu-ray drive was ever released) and to add insult to injury the 64-bit AMD Athlon Neo chip is dog slow, the battery life was terrible (2 hours at best), and when connected to an external 'touch' HD monitor I'd purchased specifically to test Windows 8 I discovered the graphics card can't go high enough resolution-wise to make the touch screen in any way usable.

By the way, this was the PC that made me scoff at all the Microsoft echo chamber iPad nay-sayers when it was first announced because as I said at the time: I used my iPad more in the first two weeks I had it than I'd used this more expensive 'netbook' in a year!

Initially Windows 8 looked like a way to make this slow hardware a useful bit of kit again, but the lack of touch support and the horrible user experience of endlessly being thrown between the 'Metro' interface and the desktop interface killed both it and any interest in Windows 8 for me. Windows 8 DID make it slightly more usable than Windows 7 had done in a couple of ways: startup was MUCH faster, and overall performance seemed slightly better. But the hardware was still a dog and the software and inability to find things killed my productivity rate. Most independent reviewers have pointed out that Windows 8 has a 'steep learning curve', and in my experience most end users just want their new PCs to work out the box like their old one did.

At the start of the year I bought a Dell XPS 17 (pictured above), maxed out to 16GB memory, with 256GB solid state drive and all the extra's (digital TV card, Blu-ray player, backlit keyboard, 3D screen etc). I love this PC and it's by far the best I've ever owned. It oozes quality. Ideally I'd have gone for a MacBook Pro, but that was limited to 8GB memory, had no Blu-ray player and would have cost over £1000 more so I had to pass on that. I don't regret it in any way. The only thing I'd change is maybe ordering the non-3D option. Not that the 3D option isn't great with Blu-ray, but that the screen is artificially boosted in brightness to make the most of 3D and I prefer to work with a properly color-calibrated monitor (the XPS 17 can be calibrated but then 3D would become pretty much unwatchable, and I found the calibration process a confusing mess - a Windows issue rather than a Dell one).

I've only had one problem with the XPS 17. After moving house the 'i' key started playing up - it would 'stick' or randomly repeat. With terror in my heart I had to contact Dell Support. They are a very different company from the one I dealt with 10 years ago. The support call was all dealt with in about 5 minutes, and the next day an engineer arrived at my home and fitted a brand new keyboard at no cost and with minimum fuss. Dell get a lot of bad press but I'm VERY happy with the service I received on the laptop.

The XPS 17 is my main work machine. There is no way I want to 'break' that work machine with Windows 8. The whole point of taking up Tim Anderson's challenge to exclusively use Windows 8 for a week is to see if I really can cope with having to live with my workhorse PC running Windows 8. There are some horror stories about people installing Windows 8, hating it and finding it impossible to go back to Windows 7, so there was no way I was going to risk my 'bread and butter' work horse on this one week challenge. I needed to get a new PC.

Why Did I Choose the Dell XPS All-in-one

I didn't want another laptop. I have my 'large' Dell XPS 17 'workhorse' laptop PC, my 'test' HP netbook laptop if I really do just want something more portable, and an iPad3 with the Logitech keyboard cover for when I'm away from home. My main home office is already cramped with these PCS (and secondary monitors) a Mac Mini, two HP Proliant servers and a ridiculously large HP Colour LaserJet. I've been meaning to replace a desktop machine that went to the recycling dump for the last 3 years but somehow never got round to it, and the trouble is my office is already 'full' and I don't want anything 'ugly' in my main lounge/dining area which is where the new PC would have to go. An all-in-one PC that looked 'sexy' seemed like a good idea.

Googling Windows 8 PCs the Dell XPS One kept coming up in the results list. HP make an all-in-one but were out of the running just because of my recent experiences with them: don't buy from a company you don't trust! Reviews for the Dell All-in-one were universally enthusiastic, describing it time and time again as being 'great value for money'. It even included a Blu-ray player as standard!

Even better, the day I decided this was probably the new desktop PC I should buy I saw a tweet from Quidco (the discount scheme company), offering an 11% discount (for 2 days only) on the advertised online price for any Dell XPS PC, with an additional 15% cashback from Quidco 30 days after purchase. Wow! This brought the price down to not much over a grand. The XPS One was already getting rave reviews on pricing that assumed it would sell for about £1500, and here was an opportunity to save an additional 26% if I acted quickly.

I acted quickly!

The big worry with the XPS One was that it would be in high demand, since there seemed to be so few other PCs around boasting Windows 8. When I ordered my XPS 17 laptop earlier this year there was a 'build' time of several weeks and a week before the advertised delviery date I was told there would be an additional 2 week delay (until I got on the phone to cancel the order, when it miraculously reverted to its originally promised delivery date!) At this week's Build Conference Steve Ballmer boasted that demand for Windows 8 PCs was '20% higher than expected' - a figure he later explained as having been supplied by Dixons in the UK. It seems odd to me that a big US corporation would use a UK-exclusive retail chain to show high demand for a product rather than a big US chain, and to be brutally honest I think what Ballmer said was total spin and the use of Dixons was cynical and deliberate. If Dixons could see what was coming and set 'expected' demand way lower than is usual for a new Windows release then it would make sense to quote their figures rather than anybody elses! My suspicions seemed to be confirmed when I ordered the Dell XPS One only to be told its delivery date would be THE NEXT DAY!!! In the event UPS let me down and it was a day late, but nevertheless two days for a new Dell PC is unprecedented in my book. Especially for a machine where 'demand is 20% higher than expected'!

There is ONE big disadvantage to ordering the Dell XPS One that's available today: There is only one configuration available, despite the fact all the published reviews are based on a second, higher-specced configuration. The unit currently available has just 6GB memory and uses an Intel i5 processor. The reviews I found appear to all be based on an 8GB model with an i7 processor, and in fact Ballmer showed the Dell One at the Build conference keynote with the 'i7' badge proudly displayed on the video title bar - more 'spin' for a machine that he claimed was 'available today' but isn't. If you go to the Dell web site the i7 model is listed but there is no 'Customise' button for that option and the 'Purchase' button is greyed out and unclickable. One review indicates that Dell have stated the i7 processor model won't be shipping until December so presumably they're having some teething problems with it. I wasn't prepared to wait until December as I have some down time right now that I can't guarantee I'll have in December. Hence the lower-specced model.

Packaging

The first thing that needs to be said is the packaging used to ship the Dell XPS One is not good. I would be surprised if Dell don't find they're getting damaged returns because of the weak packaging. The shipped package weighs 24kg and is encased in cardboard that is easily bent or torn. Four plastic "bolts" are used to try and keep the bottom cardboard section holding the bulk of the weight to the top section, with a single 2" band of sellotape added as backup. In my case one of the plastic "bolts" was missing and the others were lose with the cardboard around them crushed and bent. This meant that the top half of the box had a good 5 to 6 inches of height movement and you could feel the PC shaking about inside as you carried the box, which just added to the box damage.

Stripping off the outer packaging, youa re faced with a polysteirine cage which again I felt was insufficient for the weight of the unit enclosed within.

Aside from the PC itself there are two cardboard boxes. One contains the small keyboard and mouse with two AAA batteries for the keyboard and two AA batteries for the mouse, and diagrams showing how to fit the batteries printed inside the box lid. The other contains a disc of drivers and utilities, presumably just in case you decide to reinstall Windows 8 from scratch using a disc that isn't supplied with the PC, a safety sheet and an 8 page colour pamphlet 'Getting Started' that basically tells you what to do to turn on the PC and gives you some links to get to grips with Windows 8. Two pages give an annotated diagram of the top side and various plug sockets to familarise you with where the microphone, camera (which comes with a handy flip cover switch), power button and various plug sockets (HDMI, USB etc) are.

Initial Impressions

The PC itself is heavy but manageable. It feels solid. Unlike other Dell Touch monitors it can't be laid completely flat, which is a weakness for a touch monitor, but the angle of rotation is otherwise quite generous. The resolution of 2560x1440 is stunning and the display is bright and colourful.

The keyboard is small - not cheap and nasty but not exactly exuding luxury either. However it's certainly better than the God-awful Apple wireless keyboard that is not only smaller but has horrible 'chiclet' keys. The mouse is extremely basic but does its job. Both keyboard and mouse are wireless and 'just work' when tiny switches that turn them on are used.

The power switch for the PC is, rather oddly, placed on the right hand side of the unit rather than the front. I found this to be a pain when adjusting the monitor angle - twice I accidentally shut down the PC when all I wanted to do was change the monitor angle. It's far too easy to hit the button by accident. There is a one inch bevel around the main display area and then a further dead inch of plastic at the bottom of the display. I don't understand why the Power button wasn't placed here where it wouldn't be so prone to accidental exposure.

I'm working in a very quiet environment and am aware of the system's fan running as soon as the unit is powered on. It's not loud (certainly much quieter than the fan on my Dell XPS 17 laptop) but I am aware of it in the background, where I'm not aware of the fans on my 65" Panasonic plasma TV next to it and which has received some criticisms for being 'too noisy'.

The supplied Cyberlink DVD/Blu-ray player software works well. The drive itself is on the thin right-hand side of the monitor. The software requires you to set a Region Code (which can be changed up to five times before being locked) and then modifies the screen resolution to fit the 1920x1080 (1080p) standard. Remember that the native resolution of this monitor is ordinarily higher than HD! I thought the audio was more than acceptable for a unit of this size. I own a couple of Dell ST2220 21.5" touch screen monitors and for the price they're fantastic displays, but the audio on them is terrible - a gnat would struggle to hear the audio even at maximum volume. The XPS One is MUCH better.

On top of the unit is a simple slider switch to cover the in-built webcam. When you buy the XPS One as part of the customisation process you'll be offered a Logitech HD webcam as an available accessory. Shame on Dell for offering an accessory you don't need! Oddly the delivery time on the Logitech webcam is 4 weeks as opposed to the 2 days for the '20% higher than expected demand' Windows 8 PC! Like I said, I'm finding the whole 'demand for Windows 8 PCs is 20% higher than expected' very hard to swallow!

The specs of this 'entry level' all in one (the only one available at the time of writing) include a 32GB Intel SRT SSD, a 1TB SATA 7200 rpm hard drive, 6GB 1600Hz DD3 memory, a Blu-Ray/DVD combo drive (Blu-Ray is read only, DVD is read/write), a 2GB NVIDIA Geforce GT 640M graphics card and Dell 1703 802.11b/g/n and Bluetooth v4.0+LE wireless. There is no TV card. Software includes the 64-bit version of Windows 8 and a copy of Cyber Link's Power DVD BD to enable DVD and Blu-ray movies to be played as the in-built Windows DVD player included in Windows 7 has been removed from Windows 8.

Initial Windows 8 Set-Up

On power on you are asked to set the language and keyboard, which annoyingly default to US, despite this being a UK-shipped unit with UK keyboard. You are then asked to select a colour scheme (a single colour which defaults to yellow - pretty pointless since you have no idea at this stage what this single colour will actually affect but fortunately it is easy to change later via the Metro 'Settings' charm). I didn't have a wired connection in my lounge, which is where I want my All-In-One to sit, but the next setup screen correctly identified my wireless network with a strong signal, as well as several others in the area and it was a very simple case to select the network, enter my network password and move on. The next screen offered an 'Express Setup' or 'Custom Setup' for what essentially looked like a bunch of privacy settings. Those which would be set by selecting 'Express Setup' were listed and I went with this option. I was then prompted for my email address to set up my Microsoft account. I'd already done this when playing with the beta version and consumer preview on my netbook, and this is where the magic started to happen. I was asked to confirm my email address and previously entered phone number and then the Windows Start screen appeared with a very obvious live tile that switched between photos of some of my friends and a group of strangers. Very scary! How did that happen?

I say 'scary' because most of the pictures were marked with a small LinkedIn logo! I hadn't explicitly said 'Use my Linked In contacts' but the software had found them and was displaying them the first time I logged in.

One other thing that impressed me, but also confused me, was the Weather app. This defaulted to London, so I clicked on the application and it asked if I wanted to share location information and I said 'yes' at which point it automatically switched me to Bursledon, the Southampton suburb/village where I live. This impressed me because my iPad and iPhone which have 3G connectivity as well as router connectivity always show my location on Facebook posts as "Sholing" which is quite some way from here. I have no idea why the two different ecosystems (Apple and Microsoft) should show different locations and I would have expected the Apple devices which have 3G connectivity, which the PC doesn't have, to have been more accurate.

Confirming the new PC's authority

One of the nice touches to the account registration process was that I got an automatic SMS text message on my phone asking me to confirm that I wanted this new PC to be trusted with my Windows account, giving me a URL to visit and a confirmation code to enter. Entering the code confirms that the PC is now fully trusted.

However after I'd done this an email also arrived asking me to click on a link to confirm the PC was trusted. This actually gave an error, presumably because the SMS phone message had already done what was needed. I think the registration process should probably have asked me if I wanted to use my email address OR phone number to confirm the account rather than use both, which would have avoided confusion.

Performance

I haven't done extensive tests on performance but the PC feels slick and fast. Start-up time for Windows from a cold power-up is currently about 15 seconds which is very nice if you're used to Windows 7, Vista or XP startup times. The interface feels fast and fluid, and the multi-touch screen supports up to 10 points of articulation and seems responsive. So far as the disk space is concerned I'm not sure why the SSD isn't showing unless it's somehow RAIDed in with the SATA hard drive. All that shows up in File Explorer is a single C drive (together with the DVD/BD drive) listed as having 885GB of 918GB free after the 'important' Windows Updates available as of 1st November 2012 were downloaded and run. I know figures for hard drives get rounded up using some nasty 'let's pretend 1000 bytes is really 1024 bytes' algorithm but I'm still struggling to understand how 1TB plus 32GB can equate to 918GB!

Dead In The Water

So Windows 8 installed and was activated with my account details in less than 15 minutes. All seemed good. Unfortunately I then left the PC for 10 minutes ... and returned to find it powered off.

Powering it on again just sat on the Dell startup logo. Powering off the device and leaving it a few minutes made no difference. Suddenly I had a dead paperweight whose only job was to display the Dell logo. And I hadn't installed a single bit of software or even a hardware driver of my own!

Fortunately Dell Support proved as good this time as they had been the last time I had to use them. My call was promptly answered (no 'Please hold due to unexpected demand' nonsense here!) but it took the best part of 90 minutes to get the PC working again, and it's still not clear what the problem is/was or whether it might recur again. Dell firmly pointed the finger at Windows 8, trying to imply that once activated Windows 8 applied updates and these could cause a temporary glitch in the BIOS setting for SATA. However watching the remote debugging session where by flipping the BIOS SATA setting from its default 'RAID' setting (presumably needed to present the 32GB SSD drive and the 1TB hard disk as a single C drive?) to each of the other two settings after numerous frownie "something went wrong" Windows 8 screens the engineer was able to get Windows 8 desktop up and running and apply six important Windows updates via the usual Control Panel 'Windows Updates' window. However the Windows Updates screen clearly showed no updates had yet been applied, with the last time update was run showing as 'never' so the Dell engineer explanation, repeated several times, didn't hold water. When I pointed this out I got an explanation that 'Windows 8 is very new software. It's less than a week old. There are problems with it'. Wow!

I started this exercise cynical about how robust the new O.S. was, minimised risk by ordering a new PC with the software preinstalled and here I was with a 'dead in the water' piece of kit and the hardware manufacturer was insisting it was because of the software. Not good! To pre-empt the 'It must be Dell's hardware or drivers that are broken' in any comments to this post I can only repeat the answer the Dell engineer gave me: 'Everything is working fine now, so it's not the hardware'. I have no idea why faffing around with the BIOS SATA settings (which finally had to be reset to their original RAID setting) and putting a few Windows updates on should have fixed a 'dead in the water' PC. But it gives me little confidence in the underlying O.S. Buying a new PC was supposed to avoid exactly this sort of problem, and it makes me VERY wary of attempting to upgrade my workhorse laptop PC.

Someone Moved The Cheese

With Windows 8 finally up and running I had a little play and was reminded of what I'd hated about the O.S. when playing with the early beta's. I wanted to check the display resolution. I right clicked on the desktop which works in Windows 7. In Windows 8, regardless of whether you're in Metro mode or desktop mode, that doesn't do what it normally does. There's no Start button to get to Control Panel and if I wend my way to it using the 'Charms' in the Metro interface I get what looks like a drastically cut down version with no option telling me the resolution anywhere to be found. I'm sure this is just part of the 'steep learning curve' that will get resolved when I read some guides, but it's symtomatic of why I think Joe Public will get frustrated and ranty with it. The only thing keeping many from moving to Apple Mac is the new learning curve. Now that learning curve is just as bad if they want to stay on Windows but run the most current version.

Getting Started Videos

On the Metro desktop there is a tile for 'Getting Started with Windows 8 on Your Dell', with videos for touch (confusingly showing a tablet rather than this All In One PC) and for mouse and keyboard. These are cartoony videos and just a minute or two long and are almost content free. They basically say "swipe from one of the sides of the screen" or "touch one of the corners of the screen with your mouse" and not much else! The idea that you would be 'good to go' after viewing these videos is beyond laughable, and reminds me of this joke about computer documentation:

Final Verdict on the Dell XPS One

Although this post is headed 'Review of the Dell XPS One With Windows 8', I don't feel it's safe to give a final verdict at this stage. The poor packaging and the fact that the machine died before I had the chance to do anything other than register my account and connect to my wireless network gives me great cause for concern, although touch wood it seems to restart just fine at the moment. The 'auto-sleep' mode is very unpredictable. Sometimes I leave the PC for 10 minutes and return to find it in 'sleep' mode where a simple press of a key on the keyboard brings it back to life, other times I leave it for an hour and it's still all lit-up and displaying live tiles on the Start screen. I hate inconsistent and unpredictable behaviour!

More importantly, a new user should not have to phone Support and spend the best part of 2 hours trying to revive the machine within 10 minutes of starting it up, and it's unclear at this stage whether the problem's the hardware (the Dell XPS One) or the software (Windows 8). I'll try and give a final verdict on the PC itself at the end of my 'Week with Windows 8' but for now the jury's definitely out.

Verdict on Windows 8 at the end of 'Day 0'

I think Windows 8 is going to be a frustrating exercise for most who will try and use it without proper support resources. Tomorrow is officially my first 'exclusive' day with Windows 8, although I suspect I'm going to be hopping back to my workhorse laptop for mail, Twitter and Facebook until I'm more comfortable with finding my way around the O.S. and have got all my basic software installed under Windows 8 which will more likely be on Day 2.

I'll be using the PC Pro Ultimate Guide to Windows 8 to try and get over these frustrations and initial hurdles of working out precisely what's moved where. If the PC Pro Guide doesn't give me enough confidence to get on and install all my core applications I'll move on to the 800 page (really?!! To explain just how to use the O.S.? Wow!) Windows 8 Step-by-Step book I've purchased from Microsoft Press.

Expect an update 'Week with Windows 8: Day One' blog post tomorrow!

Update (One Week Later)

Having lived with the Dell XPS One for over a week now, using it (almost) exclusively I thought I should add a post script to the above review

Firstly the machine has had no reboot problems since the initial one and has performed flawlessly. That's the good news.

The bad news is that 32 GB SSD. A Dell engineer confirmed that this is not accessible for user data or programs, which is why it doesn't show in Explorer. He claimed that it is used 'for caching' and that this makes the performance of the machine much better. That may be true, but nothing on the web site advertising the product and not one of the reviews mentioned the fact that this 32GB SSD is not in any way directly accessible by the end user. They all imply you're getting a PC with two drives - one, the traditional 'rusty' type, the other an SSD. I think that is misleading if not downright lying!

I should also add that although I love the high resolution of the screen and the 10 touch points seem to work well MOST of the time, there is discoloration in all four corners of the monitor and along two edges where on white backgrounds (which are used heavily throughout Metro) the 'dark blue/black' tinge is extremly distracting. This is not a set-up I'd recommend for someone wanting to do good colour work. It's reminiscent of the old CRT monitors and the problem you'd get if you put a pair of speakers or something with a strong magnet near them, and in this day and age is not really acceptable. For a so-called competitor to the Apple Mac all-in-one this is a glaring weakness in the product.

Those quibbles aside, I'm generally happy with the All-in-One. At the price I paid for it (with the various quidco discounts) it's good value for money. At the full recommended price I'm not as enthusiastic as the other traditional print reviewers have been. The price implies luxury. The actual product falls just a little short of that promise.

Update (Two Weeks Later)

On trying to run the Windows Phone 8 emulator inside Visual Studio 2012 I got a message saying I needed to 'purchase additional Windows 8 features' in order to be able to run the emulator, and advised I would have to pay £49.99, which subsequently turned out to be £58 once some VAT had been added (no I can't make it add up either, given UK VAT is 20%). This is nothing short of a rip-off given that I can buy a full copy of Windows 8 Pro from BT Business Direct for £42, or from Amazon for £49. It seems Dell have cut corners in the version of Windows installed and short of doing a complete reinstall using an existing license key (the update dialog insists on payment BEFORE offering you the chance to enter an 'upgrade' license key) I'm forced to pay through the nose if I want to do Windows Phone 8 Development. To say I am not best pleased to discover this late surcharge is putting it mildly. Another cost to factor into your likely purchase costs!