Windows 10 Tech Preview: upgrading to build 9860

These 2 updates get the Build 9860

Only a few weeks after the release of "the Most Audacious Release in the History of the Platform", according to Paul Thurrott, in his Supersite for Windows, along came the first updates. These updates may show up in the usual Windows Update section of the Control Panel as a surprise. I did not see them when they were announced early this week but I knew it was a matter of waiting. I'd tried PC settings / Update and Recovery to no avail.  Noteworthy it's the new Notifications Center (as in the Windows Phone 8.1) which now apparently come together with the old Action Center. Other features include custom visual effects while navigating the desktop and using applications, and the rest seem to be bug fixes, under the hood. More details here at ExtremeTech.com.

Windows 7 + Windows 8 = Windows 10

Windows 10 Technical Preview running under Windows 8.1

Being an early adopter, as I am, I have now a full installation of Windows 10 Technical Preview running under Hyper-V in a virtual machine (probably the safest way to give it a try) within Windows 8.1 (which I started using back in 2012).  For a preview version, a work in progress, it is pretty stable, so far, and it runs smoothly with all the familiar features you are accustomed to using both in Windows 7 and Windows 8. Windows 10 has the best of both worlds plus all the goodies of a new release: more frequent updates, more power to developers and regular users and keeping abreast of developments in IT (Cloud, desktop and mobile computing). The most notable feature is the comeback of the "Star Menu" which now neatly incorporates the signature Windows 8 "Tiles" and therefore a more desktop-centric operating system, though you can also use all the touch screen functionality in Windows 8. I feel that now all Windows 7 and Windows 8 users will be on the same page with Windows 10. While I continue playing with this, in my view, great operating system, I will gather more information about features, tips and tricks to share with all of you in my next posts. You can also register as an "insider" to get this software.

It's 10, Windows 10, the Microsoft newest OS proposal

Today, in San Franciso, Microsoft introduced the next iteration of its ubiquitous OS under the moniker of Window 10. Not exactly what the media were suggesting in the previous months to this great event, that is, "Windows 9" as the logical next version to Windows 8. Windows 10 will be available by late 2015 and it will (as quoted by The Verge) "run across an incredibly broad set of devices – from the Internet of Things, to servers in enterprise datacenters worldwide. Some of these devices have 4 inch screens – some have 80 inch screens – and some don’t have screens at all. Some of these devices you hold in your hand, others are ten feet away. Some of these devices you primarily use touch/pen, others mouse/keyboard, others controller/gesture – and some devices can switch between input types." From my viewpoint it's simply a wonderful remake of Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 plus all the good things of a universal OS running on different devices, with different form factors, tightly integrated to the Cloud. We, enthusiasts, are waiting on tenterhooks to sign up for the Windows Insider Program, not yet released as of this time.

Search through your Internet Explorer bookmarks the easy way

Internet Explorer is one of my favorite Web Navigators, but it has always lacked a decent and practical "bookmark manager" like the one that comes with Firefox. However, since IE bookmarks are directly attached to your Windows profile you can easily search through your bookmarks, a task that otherwise can become unwieldy since you can easily accumulate hundreds of bookmarks. To find where your IE bookmarks are located do this: 1) Press the Windows Key (left to the ALT key) and the R key simultaneously, which will open the Run utility; 2) In the text box labeled Open type: %HOMEPATH% and then click OK or hit Enter; 3)This will open the current user profile folder C:\Users\YourUserName\, where you should look for a subfolder called Favorites, where bookmarks are organized into folders and subfolders and each link is a file in the form of an Internet Shortcut (.url). Besides, this allows you to organize and re-organize them to your heart's content. Once you get to the Favorites folder you can search by typing key words into the text box with the grayed text that reads "Search Favorites", on the right-hand side of the window. Bingo! By double-clicking on each one of the results you can jump directly onto that particular Web page you had bookmarked.  A little piece of trivia: the Favorites Bar, the one that includes your most visited Websites, for some reason is stored in your system under the C:\Users\YourUserName\Favorites\Links subfolder but it appears in the File Explorer as Favorites Bar.

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.