Microsoft revives WinHEC, closer to where the action is

In order to bring the hardware engineering community together in one place, providing a unique opportunity to interact with technical and business experts from Microsoft, other partners, and customers, facilitating exchange of ideas, best practices, and opportunities, Microsoft recently announced the return of WinHEC. The Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) used to be held every year in the US, but now it will be an international event, with frequent smaller conferences and updates, where even the name has been changed to the Windows Hardware Engineering COMMUNITY. In this regard the audience will continue to be executives, engineering managers, engineers and technical product managers at hardware OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers), ODMs (Original Design Manufacturers), IHVs (Independent Hardware Vendors), and IDHs (Independent Design Houses) but this time it's not just for PC hardware any more, but also smartphone and tablet hardware. The first WinHEC technical conference will be held in Shenzhen, China, on March 2015.. The Shenzhen ecosystem consists of a diverse community of hardware companies covering electrical design, software engineering, integration, manufacturing, and all other aspects of the computing-device supply chain.

Tools for IT professionals: Windows ADK, WPR and WPA

All of the tools that you need to customize, assess, and deploy Windows operating systems to new computers are included in The Windows® Assessment and Deployment Kit (Windows ADK) and the likely scenarios are: assess quality on one or more computers, deploy Windows to many computers, review application compatibility, migrate user data and manage licenses. The Windows ADK comes with the Windows® Performance Recorder (WPR), which is a performance recording tool that is based on Event Tracing for Windows (ETW). It records system events that you can then analyze by using Windows® Performance Analyzer (WPA). The file to be analyzed is a "Event Trace Log" kind of file with the extension .etl, for instance, COMPUTERNAME.09-10-2014.22-22-38.etl . You can download WPR by visiting http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=293840. These are extremely sophisticated tools, a geek's delight. Take a look to WPA in action here.

Posterpedia: the big picture of MS technologies

Posterpedia is an interactive app (for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8) that uses technical posters as a reference for understanding Microsoft technologies. This graphical, easy to understand format, links directly to Microsoft TechNet and Microsoft MSDN content. Remember those huge and neat paper posters that started circulating about a decade ago with Visual Studio and .NET technologies? Well, this is the same proposition in a digital and more manageable format. Visit http://www.serverposterpedia.com/, though you could also get them individually in PDF format. This wonderful and useful collection of posters is broken down by Microsoft products: Windows Server (11 posters), SQL Server (3), Business Intelligence (1), Solutions (15), Exchange Server (5), Lync Server (2), System Center (1), Microsoft Azure (10), Office (2), SharePoint Server (23), etc.

Chocolatey brings you a Linux "apt-get-like" command in Windows

Chocolatey NuGet—as in "chocolate nougat" (!)— is a Machine Package Manager, somewhat like apt-get, but built with Windows in mind. NuGet is libraries installed locally for projects, whereas Chocolatey is applications installed globally for your whole system, as Scott Hanselman pointed in his article "Is Windows user ready for apt-get?." I ran into this interesting tool while browsing for help about SysInternals, advanced system utilities and technical information for Windows power users, since 1996 (!). What I found was how to install SysInternals using the OneGet Module in PowerShell version 5.0.9740.0 (as of today). With OneGet you can 1) Manage a list of software repositories in which packages can be searched, acquired, and installed 2) Search and filter your repositories to find the packages you need, and 3) Seamlessly install and uninstall packages from one or more repositories with a single PowerShell command.
First, I had to update PowerShell by installing the Windows Management Framework V5 Preview that includes Windows PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC), and 2 new features in the form of the cmdlets OneGet and NetworkSwitch. Once you install this Framework, in PowerShell type the command $host to verify the version number and other geeky information.

1. Once you installed the PowerShell update, import the module with the command Import-Module -Name OneGet. To list all the commands available with OneGet type Get-Command -Module OneGet. One of them is Find-Package, which will give you a list of packages ready to be installed (it's a long list!). To use the latter again, invoke the former command.
2. However, in this example we just want to install the SysInternals package, which we do with the command Find-Package SysInternals | Install-Package. You may get a message saying "Installing 'SysInternals' from untrusted source". If so, type "y" and then Enter.
3. If you get an error message related to 'running scripts disabled in this system', you have to change the script execution policy to "unrestricted". Obviously, you will do this if you trust the package being installed. Type the command Set-ExecutionPolicy -Scope CurrentUser Unrestricted. For security reasons change it back to "Restricted" once you have installed the package. To find out what is the execution policy in place type Get-ExecutionPolicy.
4. To verify the installation type Get-Package SysInternals, which will show version, status ('installed'), source and summary. If you just type Get-Package, you will get a list of all the packages installed using Chocolatey.
5. To use SysInternals, type the command cd c:\tools\sysinternals, which is the default folder where it is installed, then type dir *.exe to get a list of all the programs/tools available.The script (chocolateyInstall.ps1) in charge of the installation can be found at C:\Chocolatey\lib\sysinternals.2014.05.13\tools. All scripts for installed packages will have their own subfolder within the "lib" folder.
6. If you like further explanations, read Mike F. Robbins' how to install Software with the OneGet Module in PowerShell version 5.

It's really easy: Running old screensavers in Windows 8.1

Three of my favorite Windows screensavers.

Two of my favorite screensavers in Windows Vista were Aurora and Windows Energy and later The Matrix, based on the movie, with that impressive and definitely cool introductory screen with characters flowing down the screen, like rain. These three screensavers can be found in three .scr files: Aurora.scr, ssBranded.scr and TheMatrix.scr, respectively. Installing them is quite simple: just copy these files into the C:\Windows\System32 folder. Then, right click on the desktop and select "Personalize" or go directly to Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Personalization. You can also find more information here: Windows Vista screensavers in Windows 7 and The Matrix screensaver, a timeless classic.

How to update to Windows Phone 8.1

To install the newest version of Windows Phone 8.1, "a magnificent smartphone platform" according to a rare review by ars technica, requires some steps that at first I couldn't figure out easily. I tried to install it through the free tool Visual Studio Express for Windows Phone, but I was not able to go anywhere (perhaps I was mistaking WP8 with Windows 8.1? I don't know, but it doesn't matter now) yet, I kept trying. Finally, I was able to do it with a free App called Preview for Developers (see icon to the right). Very important to note that "You must meet one of the following three requirements: (a) have an active Windows Phone Dev Center account; (b) have an active App Studio account; OR (c) be running a registered developer device (‘dev unlocked’ phone)" but you should also heed this warning: You CANNOT REVERT to a prior OS version once you have taken an update via this program. Additionally, your phone needs to be connected to a Wi-Fi network and follow, after reading carefully, all the prompts on your phone. The process takes more than an hour (not minutes as indicated!) and a lot of phone restarts. Make sure you don't do it close to midnight if you don't want to stay up late!

The trite 'Linux talk' that, as usual, falls short on real facts

Here  we go again. Another IT expert conjecturing about the (present and) future of the Linux operating system, which by the way, I have always considered a "me-too OS". Whatever Apple and Microsoft have done in decades you can find in Linux KDE and GNOME reproduced, copied, emulated, you name it, at least when it comes to GUI design, functionality and even keyboard shortcuts. But don't get me wrong here, I am able to appreciate Linux (its many flavors or 'distributions') but what I can't stand is biased or incomplete information about Windows, especially now which is better than ever. The writer explains that "Linux is about to take over the desktop but not like you think it will" by comparing the limited laptop and OS designed by Google known as Chromebook, with Windows, but apparently with Windows XP. And no, Chromebook, which is just another flavor of Linux, is not going to take over anything, given its limitations. For starters, who wants to buy a new laptop computer that only runs a browser, that is, Google Chrome, and that needs to be connected to the Internet all the time to really be useful? Guess what, in a Windows machine Chrome can be one of the many Web browsers and if you want to run Linux, all you have to do is run it in a virtual machine (Hyper-V, VMware, VirtualBox, etc.). I would feel really shortchanged if I had a Chromebook as my working laptop.   His contentions, actually over-generalizations, are laid out in 7 points, which I'm going to refute next to each one:

1. Interface - People don't like Windows 8.x. (?) What people? The interface of Windows 8.x is simply an extra layer in the form of Tiles, the rest of the OS is practically the same as Windows 7, but with added extra functionality and security. If some people don't get the Tiles interface, I seriously doubt about their cognitive ability, especially in this day and age when digital products have been around for more than 2 decades. Even kids can do it.
2. Price - People are tired of the constant hardware, software, and OS upgrade cycle. (?) What people? What do you mean by "constant"? If you actually upgrade you will do it only every few years and all the patches and service packs are always free. Hey, some folks and companies don't even upgrade. They're still using a 13-year old OS called Windows XP—and by the way, complaining about how "bad" Windows is (!)
3. Security - People are tired of viruses, malware, and hacks. (?) What people? That's another of the most widespread misconceptions about Windows. If you are still using Windows XP, and, worse, IE 6, then you certainly deserve to get all the viruses, malware and hacks available. Windows 8.1 is nowadays one of the most secure operating systems. Period. Even Windows 7.
4. Loss - People are tired of losing data when a disk crashes or a device is stolen. (?) What people? You can lose your data when a disk malfunctions or your computer is stolen, regardless of the operating system you are using. The cloud? Not a bad idea, but, I'd rather have my data also at my home in my own computer. And how about making back-up copies regularly? Only fool people get tired of making the same mistakes over and over, or they're fool precisely for that. 
5. Battery Life - Mobile users need longer battery life. (?) That's a very relative issue. It depends on the make and model of your laptop computer. This is sort of a non-issue, on the other hand. Smart people always carry their charger, regardless.
6. Usability - More versatile than a tablet. Less cumbersome than a laptop. (?) Do you really want to talk versatility? A Microsoft Surface tablet beats them all, hands down. A Surface is both a laptop computer and a tablet and allows you to run, without compromises, anything you can run in a laptop or desktop computer, including legacy applications. I think the Google Chrome laptop is not versatile. In a world of choice, why on earth, you want to have a computer that only runs watered-down software from the same company?! Just about any Microsoft Windows computer is really versatile: you install hardware and software from a myriad of vendors. It can be done. What I'm saying here is that the Google Chromebook is limited (it doesn't matter it is a nice piece of hardware). You'll do better with a nice laptop even running just Linux. Besides, by the same price of Chromebook you can get a decent traditional laptop...
7. Browser-based - The future of software is SaaS. The writer may have a point here, but Software as a Service is nothing new. However, I don't see companies or regular folks putting all their eggs on the cloud. This point can be argued at length as an exercise in futility.

My point as usual, in this blog, and in my professional life is: if you don't use Windows and don't know about it thoroughly, please don't spread rumors.  The worse part is that some IT folks are the ones more entrenched on these misconceptions.