Outlook.com: more cloud integration and power to you

Microsoft launched today its new web mail service, Outlook.com, as a personal e-mail service that aspires to be "a modern email for the next billion mailboxes." It is the same desktop application and service for business (Exchange server) that you are probably already used to, but with a new Metro interface, from within your Internet browser, with a neat interface and a nimble performance . You can subscribe to this free service either creating a new account or using one of your Hotmail or Live.com accounts. Outlook.com will replace Hotmail and its aimed, among other things, to attract users from Google's Gmail service as a very solid competitor. Microsoft thinks that the time is right to reimagine email, "we realized that we needed to take a bold step, break from the past and build you a brand new service from the ground up." Read more in the Outlook Blog.

In spite of "strategic" naysayers Windows 8 is and will continue to be a success

In a tech media landscape apparently covered by iPhone and iPad fanboys, if not Android ones, there appears to be a concerted effort to rain on Microsoft's parade, with its new line of products around Windows 8, namely, Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 for desktop PCs and tablets. Take for example, the unwarranted article featured on the cover of the otherwise serious and unbiased magazine Vanity Fair under the header Microsoft's Lost Decade. The question is, why precisely now? This article has the "news (?) angle" or better yet the "editorial angle" in which Microsoft is portrayed as if they hadn't done anything (to be reckoned with)  since the release of Windows XP, ten years ago! And it also appears to come from ex Microsoft employees, like someone who left the company 16 years ago (in 1996!) and is featured by blogger Preston Gralla of ComputerWord,  in an article with a dramatic National Enquirer-style headline:  Microsoft ex-employee -- Windows 8 is a "catastrophe." Gralla boasts that "he can offer insightful, clear-eyed commentary about Microsoft and all its technologies" (!) Hard to believe. Not to mention, a number of so called tech journalists, i.e. "journos" everywhere on the Web spewing, often regurgitated, false statements and clearly biased opinions on these products. "Analysis" on software and hardware products they haven't used for more than a few minutes, and that in the event that they actually did. And don't get me started with the ubiquitous Apple laptop on every movie, commercial, magazine ad or news about computers developers and startups and entrepreneurs. Coincidence? I definitely don't think so!
On the other hand there are the thousands of enthusiastic old and new followers of the super nimble and elegant Windows Phone 7, Windows 8 Release preview and the Surface Tablet. How about "Mac User: Why I love Windows 8"? And how about Seton Hall University, in New Jersey, providing new freshmen with a Windows 8 Tablet and a Nokia Lumia 900 phone?
A lost decade for Microsoft? With a repertoire of proven business tools like these?! The bias is completely obvious in the media outlets mentioned above and everywhere else.

Wozniak, Apple's co-founder, praises Microsoft, again

Steve Wozniak is an electronics engineer and a computer pioneer, with a bunch of Doctor of Engineering degrees, and better known as the co-founder, with Steve Jobs, of Apple. Last week, as a special guest of the Entel Summit, in Chile, once again he expressed his appreciation for Microsoft technologies.  He said, more or less verbatim, that "I do see a lot of stuff coming out from Microsoft in the consumer arena (Nokia Lumia phones, Surface) and they have such a strikingly good visual appearance, which is a lot of what Steve Jobs always looked for: the convergence of art and technology...so I made a joke that Steve Jobs came back reincarnated at Microsoft... and I do want to see the surface, I want to own one, I want to use one; I prefer to judge things that I really know, and not what I read about. I'm glad that Microsoft is starting to show that maybe they're a different company than before. I don't remember this sort of thing happening in a long, long time for Microsoft. I'm very happy..." Wozniak, a gadget geek, had specifically expressed his admiration for the Nokia Lumia 900 a few months ago when he declared, in a interview, that "Windows Phone apps are much more beautiful than the same apps on Android and iPhone". Well, I have to agree with him, not just, this because this a Windows blog and because I am a happy owner of a Nokia Lumia phone, but because he's spot on.

It's official: a new Microsoft Tablet has arrived!

Sooner than expected! A few minutes ago, at around 7:20 pm PT, Steve Ballmer made official the launch of new devices to go with the upcoming iteration of the Windows 8 operating system frenzy. A new tablet, called the Surface, and with Microsoft hardware, which is 9.3 mm thin, 675 grams in weight, has been announced in Los Angeles, city of entertainment and celebrities, during a secretive gathering of selected media representatives who never knew exactly what they were going to cover up until the last minute. There are two products that were introduced: The Surface for Windows RT, with an nVidia processor, and the second one, called Surface for Windows 8 Pro with an Intel x86 microprocessor, full HD display, and both have specs that rival the finest ultrabooks.

Windows 8 Release Preview up and running

Composed screenshot: the opening screen plus an insert of the setup.

My first most notable impression about this latest release of Windows 8 in its path to its final launch, is that I like it even more after having installed, reviewed, played and enjoyed the Developer Preview and the Consumer Preview versions. I assume that it will do a great iPad competitor and that even without using touch, it'll do a great laptop computer operating system as well. In this iteration the use and functionality of the Metro UI and its applications is more evident. It's nimble, it's practical, it's beautiful. While you are at it, don't forget to go around the world with the Travel tile, one of the many cool and vibrant apps already in the operating system.

Windows 8 Release Preview is here!

Not in "early June" as previously announced, but today, the last day of May, everybody can get hold of the newest version of the evolving Windows 8 operating system. You can go directly to the Windows 8 Release Preview, which "is Windows reimagined and reinvented from a solid core of Windows 7 speed and reliability. It's an all-new touch interface. It's a new Windows for new devices." We have experienced the Developer Preview back in late summer 2011, then Consumer Preview in February 2012 and now this version which gets closer to the the release to manufacturing within the software release lifecycle. Windows 7 was and continues to be a success because people from all over the world had the opportunity to preview it before buying it or getting a new computer and, no doubt, this marketing strategy has and will continue to work for Windows 8. These are auspicious times not only for Microsoft but for the PC and mobile world at large. Let's make a toast to that!

Use the Windows Key and switch between Metro and Desktop

...and it is very likely you will enjoy the adventure of discovering what's underneath the Metro UI! The Windows Key or WinKey (to the left of the space key, and then to the left of the ALT key) as pictured here, is a wonderful key that has been there since the times of Windows 95. Once you get to the Metro Interface in Windows 8, press WinKey and E (E, for Explorer, i.e. Windows Explorer) and bingo! you are in "Desktop Mode", almost identical to the Windows 7 desktop, except, most notably, for the use of the Ribbon (as in Office) on each Explorer windows. Type also WinKey and F (F, for Find) and, attention! this is more or less the equivalent of the "Start button" (a bunch of shortcuts, nothing else!) that "a lot" of people are missing out (some of them even to the point of throwing tantrums...as I read in blog after blog). Are you there yet? OK, you will be positioned in the right hand side of the screen and will have three choices for making a search: Apps, Settings and Files. Use this feature to your heart's content. That is your Start button and the search box you had in Win 7 and in Vista. What's not to like?