Windows Phone 8, or 'Apollo,' Debuts Next Month at San Francisco Conference

Microsoft will finally lay out the details on the next version of its smartphone OS, which could be a precursor to Windows 8.

June is turning into Developer's Month. Along with Microsoft's TechEd, there's Apple's WWDC, Google I/O, and a two-day Windows Phone developer conference in San Francisco that will be the coming out party for Windows Phone 8, otherwise known as "Apollo."

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RELATED: Skype May be Windows Phone's Worst Enemy

MORE: Will Windows Phone feel any pain after getting dumped by LG?

Little has been disclosed on Apollo, but thanks to leaks, we have a pretty good idea of what Microsoft has in store. Last February, a leak gave some insight into what Microsoft was planning.

Most significant is that Windows Phone 8 will share components with Windows 8, allowing developers to reuse most of their code when porting an app from desktop to phone. It's believed the kernel, networking stacks, security, and multimedia support will all have heavy overlap between desktop, tablet and phone.

Apollo will also support Near Field Communication (NFC) radios for contactless payments, full Skydrive integration and full integration with Skype and support for multicore processors.

Microsoft has said, and reiterated in an April 5 blog post, that current Windows Phone applications and games will run on the next major version of Windows Phone. How much recoding you'll have to do to accomplish this will probably be discussed at the San Francisco show.

Another question that hopefully will be answered next month is what will change under the hood. Other Microsoft watchers with better connections than me have said they believe Microsoft will change the kernel from Windows CE to Windows 8 RT.

The potential is tremendous. If Microsoft does pull this off, you will have portability between desktop PCs, tablets and phones with relatively minor modification.

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Windows 8 Beta: Microsoft Giveth And Taketh Away

With the release Wednesday of the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) has fixed many of the shortcomings of the developer preview it released last September. That's the good news.

The bad news is that the Consumer Preview (build 8250) has removed some useful things and introduced a few new flaws, not least of which is failing to install at least once on a machine with more than enough resources. Though it appears stable on the whole, Microsoft's first public Windows 8 beta will do little to endear itself to IT departments and others who'll be tasked with installing and supporting it.

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When the CRN Test Center reported last September the 12 things IT will hate about Windows 8, we offered mostly praise for finger-friendly Metro interface. This version improves mouse-friendliness a bit, and animations and movements are smoother.

As in the developer preview, Metro is the first screen to appear when starting Windows 8, and it still displays the active user's ID in the upper-right corner and the word "Start" in the upper-left. What's new is that this Start screen replaces the Start Menu, which is now completely removed. The Metro screen now automatically scrolls when the pointer reaches the edge of the screen, making mouse navigation much easier. Good-bye and good riddance to the bottom scroll bar, but the mouse still can't swoop the screen.

When arranging an individual Metro tile with finger or mouse, other tiles move out of the way and rearrange themselves (as opposed to just nodding). Now you can see how tiles will look when dropped into place. Right-clicking on a tile still presents options for resizing the tile, uninstalling the app or "unpinning" it from "Start."

The Desktop is still present in Windows 8 CP, sans Start Menu. When mousing to the lower left-hand corner, a thumbnail of the "Start" screen appears, but soon disappears when the pointer is moved onto it (as one might do with a menu). Clicking the left button when Start is showing switches back to Metro.

The Alt-Tab still switches between running apps, which appear in turn in the background as well as in a foreground thumbnail view. All except Metro, that is. To activate Metro from another app, users can press the Windows button (on keyboards that have one), quit the current app or ALT-TAB to the desktop and click the lower-left corner. By the way, ALT-F4 is now operational for quitting apps.

While the keyboard quit sequence is a welcome addition, Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) has removed the task bar from the Desktop, and with it the last semblance of menu navigation. Because hidden away in the Taskbar of the developer preview was a Toolbar that allowed mouse or keyboard navigation a la Windows Menu Bar. What's more, there's now one less way to see all the running applications at a glance.

Check back with CRN often to keep current with Windows 8. Next from the CRN Test Center will be a report on migration to Windows 8 from various prior versions. Stay tuned.

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Windows 8 Update: Steve Ballmer's 80-inch Windows 8 tablet

Also, Office for iPads, Ballmer misquoted, Michael Dell predicts no corporate rush to Windows 8

While it lacks the mobility usually associated with this class of device, there's an 80-inch tablet serving the head of Microsoft as a wallboard and as a substitute for other work-related gear.

"Steve Ballmer has an 80-inch Windows 8 tablet in his office. He's got rid of his phone, he's got rid of his note paper. It's touch-enabled and it's hung on his wall," the company's vice president Frank Shaw told wired.co.uk. "It's his whiteboard, his email machine ... and it's a device we're going to sell."

MORE: Windows RT management could be a key to success for Windows 8 tablets

While there's not a huge consumer market yet for such enormous tablets, that could change over time as customers become familiar with these devices and their demands change, Shaw says. "It's not a consumer thing now, but we know historically that that's how all things start," Shaw told wired.co.uk. "The idea that there should be a screen that's not a computer, we'll laugh at that in two years."

A Sharp 80-inch touchscreen running Windows was demonstrated at CES earlier this year, but Ballmer's jumbo tablet is something different, made by a different manufacturer, Shaw says.

This screen size goes well beyond the 27-inch "family hub" device described in a Building Windows 8 blog earlier this year that details how to scale the operating system to different screen sizes, but that was not a comprehensive list. "Windows will support just about any screen dimension so long as the graphics driver and hardware combination provide the correct information to Windows," the blog says.
Office for iOS?

The rumor has popped up again, this time from mobile news site bgr.com, that Microsoft plans to release a complete Office suite for iPads and Android tablets. This rumor comes from "a reliable source," the site says.

Contributing doubt to this rumor is that doing so would shoot Microsoft's Windows RT efforts in the foot, something the company is certainly capable of and that in the big picture may be a good tradeoff.

Windows RT, as the ARM-based Windows 8 offering is known, is the closest thing Microsoft will have to an iPad, and like Apple does for the iPad, Microsoft is limiting what software customers can add to it. One of the features Windows RT comes with is a bundle of four out of seven Office applications. (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote included; Outlook, Publisher, Access left out.)

So that would be a worse package than the "complete Office suite" described in the rumor. Why would Microsoft introduce a tablet whose major differentiator is that comes with some Office and then make a better package of Office apps available for iPads? Doesn't make sense.

Of course Microsoft wants to do a lot more than sell Windows RT. It may make more sense and more money to, say, make the very popular iPad more friendly to work environments with some Microsoft software that reaps licensing fees. The company could reap additional license revenues for software to manage the devices.
Microsoft: Ballmer misquoted on Windows 8 uptake estimate

Steve Ballmer predicts that 500 million devices will run Windows 8 by the end of next year, wire service Agence France-Press reported, but Microsoft says that's not what he really said.
The startling estimate would represent an amazing adoption rate for a new operating system, particularly one so different from its predecessor. So startling, in fact, that it turns out not to be true, or at least that's what Microsoft says in response to the unsurprising flood of skeptical commentary about the number.

So what did he say? According to Microsoft, Ballmer was regurgitating numbers the company floated last year when it said that if all the current Windows devices were upgraded to Windows 8 that number could be reached. Big difference and a big if.
Michael Dell on Windows 8

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Businesses won't rush their Windows 8 upgrades, Dell founder Michael Dell predicts, according to a transcript of the company's earnings call.

"We don't see -- corporations are still adopting Windows 7, so we don't think there'll be a massive adoption of Windows 8 by corporations early on," Dell says.

That doesn't mean Dell isn't interested in the new operating system and its potential for consumer devices. "[C]learly, there's Windows 8 dynamic, but that's much more of a consumer business impact relatively late in the year but won't necessarily impact our overall commercial business," Dell says.

In fact, he says, Windows 8 has compelling new capabilities that Dell plans to support with its hardware. "But certainly, the addition of capacitive touch capability into Windows 8, we think, will be a welcome addition and will have a full complement of products at time of launch," he says.
Flash for Metro version of Internet Explorer 10

Windows 8 supports two versions of Internet Explorer 10: "the new Internet Explorer in the Windows Metro style UI experience that is optimized for touch devices, and the familiar browsing experience of Internet Explorer for the desktop," says Microsoft.

And, the company says in a March 13 article, "only supports plug-ins in Internet Explorer for the desktop." Many thought that meant IE10 for Metro wouldn't support Adobe Flash, but would instead rely on HTML5 to support rich Web features.

Now rumor has it that Flash will be integrated into IE10 by Microsoft itself, and employing a version that suits Microsoft after it combed through the actual source code and tweaked it to its liking, according to Within Windows.

"Microsoft does work closely with Adobe, closely enough that Adobe actually provided Microsoft with source code access to Flash, allowing them to seamlessly integrate the technology into IE10," the site says. "Thus, Microsoft did not need to make an exception to its no-add-on policy for Internet Explorer Metro."

If true, that means users of IE 10 Metro will have a better experience at more sites

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Microsoft's upgrade avalanche a challenge for IT pros

In addition to the version for x86 PCs that use chips from Intel and AMD, Windows 8 will also come in a version for devices that use ARM chips. This version, now called Windows RT, will be built on the Windows 8 code base and will probably run mainly on tablets built on chips from ARM licensees Nvidia, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments.

Like Windows 8 PCs for x86/64, Windows RT devices will be able to run Metro-style applications from the Windows Store created using WinRT APIs. WinRT stands for Windows Runtime and contains the API (application programming interface) library for building Metro-style applications.

However, Windows RT hardware will not run, emulate or port existing x86/64 desktop applications. Windows RT will include desktop versions of the upcoming Office 15 applications, like Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote, that have been designed for touch-based interfaces and for minimal power consumption.

Despite the broad availability of the beta version since late February, it is still too early for enterprises to be even considering adopting Windows 8, IDC's Gillen said.

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"Windows 8 isn't even in Release Candidate code yet, so it's premature for most organizations to make any business decision about replacing Windows 7 with Windows 8. We need to see the finished product first," Gillen said.

Gartner's Silver believes that Windows 8 will largely be bypassed altogether, except in specific cases, such as in organizations that want to deploy Windows-based tablets to their users. It has become popular for users to come to work with their personal smartphones and tablets (mostly Android and Apple iOS devices), a trend known as "bring your own device," or BYOD. Microsoft wants to enter that party, but Windows is currently a small player in tablets and smartphones.

At hotel titan Hyatt, the work to upgrade desktops from Windows XP to Windows 7 began in 2009 and continues today. The company expects to complete the upgrade of all 34,000 desktops in North America by the end of this year.

Hyatt's CIO, Mike Blake, is very impressed with Windows 7, calling it "a great product." While not closed to Windows 8, Blake said there are still many unanswered questions about the new OS.

"I've wavered from one end of the Microsoft spectrum to the other. I was a hater and now I'm more of a proponent, and a lot of it has to do with Windows 7," he said.

Forrester also has found in its surveys that CIOs are moving their enterprises at a very quick and steady pace to Windows 7 and to Office 2010, according to Schadler. Almost 200 million copies of Office 2010 have been sold to date, according to Microsoft.

In fact, an argument can be made that Microsoft may be pushing out Windows 8 and Office 15 too close to their predecessors, and may find it is competing against itself, Osterman said.

"Unless there's something really compelling in Windows 8, I don't see the upgrade push," Osterman said. "And with Office 15, Microsoft is going to be hard-pressed to make the case for it, only because Office 2010 is so good. Microsoft has a very nice set of products on the desktop right now."
The next Office suite

Office 15 is in limited-access, early testing. A broader beta period is slated for the summer. Very little is known about technical details and improvements in the Office 15 applications at this point. What Microsoft is saying unequivocally is that Office 15 will be "the most ambitious undertaking yet for the Office Division." The revamped applications, which will also include Project and Visio, will all get new "touch-friendly" UIs on tablets and similar devices.

For now, the Office product that Hyatt's Blake is most focused on is the cloud-hosted email and collaboration suite Office 365 and its predecessor, BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite). Hyatt is deploying BPOS and plans to later upgrade to Office 365, which was released in mid-2011 and includes online versions of Exchange, SharePoint, Office and Lync. Office 365 will be upgraded again once Office 15 is released in final form.

Coming from IBM Lotus Notes, Hyatt has experienced a significant improvement in email reliability and in employee collaboration from using BPOS.

Prior to rolling out BPOS, Hyatt's email system was down 81 times over three years, with each of those outages being 10 minutes long or more. In the 13 months since it has been using Exchange Online, Hyatt has had only three hours of downtime, he said.

Meanwhile, SharePoint Online has taken employees' ability to collaborate with each other and with customers and partners to another level, he said.

Blake, however, isn't too happy with the licensing scheme for BPOS and Office 365, which he finds too complicated, especially considering that they are subscription-based suites.

He wishes the Microsoft suites would be licensed and billed in the "all inclusive" model of rival Google Apps. The Google suite costs $50 per user, per year, or, alternatively, $5 per user, per month. Hyatt almost picked Google Apps over BPOS, ultimately deciding against it in large part due to users' historical familiarity with the Outlook email client. "It was almost a coin toss between the two," Blake said.

Instead, Office 365 has multiple versions at different prices with different mixes of components, and as Hyatt looks ahead at transferring to it from BPOS, Blake finds the licensing scenario annoyingly complex, calling the many versions of Office 365 "crazy" and "foolish."

"With Google Apps, it doesn't matter how many trips to the buffet you make, you're good to go. Microsoft on the other hand segments the salad bar, the starches, the meat, and you have to say, 'did I remember the meat? The starch?' And if you forgot the salad, then you need to pay another license fee for that," Blake said.
Explorer and Windows Phone

In development along with Windows 8 is the next version of the browser, IE 10, which, according to Microsoft, is designed to be "edge-to-edge fast" with "less browser and more Web." It will offer two different interface experiences -- Metro-style and traditional Windows desktop. IE10 is being designed to take advantage of hardware acceleration features; supports HTML5, CSS3 and other Web standards broadly; and will be more secure than its predecessors, Microsoft has said.

Also relevant for enterprise IT executives is the next major version of the Windows Phone OS, which hasn't been officially announced but is said to be code-named Apollo. Some speculate it will be called Windows Phone 8 and that it will provide more code and application consistency with the desktop and server OSes than has existed up to now.

Whatever enhancements are present in Windows Phone 8, Microsoft finds itself -- much as in the tablet market -- as an underdog. At the end of last year's third quarter, Android held 52.5% of the worldwide mobile operating system market, while Microsoft ended in sixth place with 1.5%, according to Gartner. In the U.S., as of the end of February of this year, Android had 50.1% of the smartphone OS market, while Microsoft had almost 4%, according to comScore.

When Microsoft does talk in detail about the next major version of Windows Phone, there are two major areas CIOs should focus on, according to Avi Greengart, an analyst with Current Analysis.

The first area is the phone IT security and management controls that will be available to IT departments via Windows server products.

While Windows Phone 7 and 7.5 are in general more advanced than their predecessor, Windows Mobile 6.5, the latter gave IT staffers more administration controls over phones, Greengart said.

"If I was a CIO, I'd be asking for a more detailed road map on what is and isn't supported before I'd commit to deploy Windows Phone," Greengart said.

The other major issue is the level of application compatibility. "There will be some compatibility. The question is how much," Greengart said.

Microsoft recently said in a blog post that "today's Windows Phone applications and games will run on the next major version of Windows Phone."

The company also said that "all" of Windows Phone developers' programming skills "are transferable to building applications for Windows 8, and in many cases, much of your code will be transferable as well."

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Chrome trumps IE as world's top browser

StatCounter says Google's browser edged Microsoft's for the week's No. 1 spot; Chrome on pace to take May, too
By Gregg Keizer

Computerworld - Google's Chrome edged past Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) last week to become the world's most widely used browser, according to data from an Irish metric firm.

Chrome's average usage share for the week of May 14-20 was 32.8%, said StatCounter, an analytics company that tracks browser and operating system trends. For the same week, IE's share was 31.9%.

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Although Chrome has beaten IE in StatCounter's tally before -- a day here, another there, this was the first time that Google's browser took the top spot for an entire week.

Mozilla's Firefox placed third with a share of 25.5%, while Apple's Safari and Opera Software's Opera brought up the rear with 7.1% and 1.7%, respectively.

Chrome and IE are locked in a dead heat so far this month, separated by only five-hundredths of a percentage point through Sunday. The trend, however, is in Chrome's favor: It came within a whisker of beating IE the week of May 7-13, and early Monday it led Microsoft's browser 31.9% to 31.5%.

As recently as April, IE trounced Chrome by several percentage points. StatCounter pegged IE last month at 34.1%, Chrome at 31.2%.

But while Chrome may be on the verge of overtaking the long-time leader in StatCounter's eyes, other measurement companies still have IE far ahead of Google's 2008 upstart.

U.S.-based Net Applications, for example, tagged IE with a 54.1% share for April, compared to Chrome's 18.9% and Firefox's 20.2%. (By StatCounter's numbers, Chrome slipped past Firefox to take second place six months ago.)

The two metrics vendors use different counting techniques, which results in their widely-divergent results.

Net Applications weights its data by country to account for the relative paucity of information from nations such as China, and adjusts for Chrome's "pre-rendered" pages that users never actually see.

StatCounter does not weight its data by country, and only started to exclude Chrome's pre-rendered pages May 1.

The result is that Net Applications' numbers for IE are always larger than StatCounter's, primarily because Chinese users overwhelmingly run Microsoft's browser.

Not surprisingly, Microsoft has praised Net Applications' browser share reporting and dismissed StatCounter's as skewed.

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Because you’re doing your research on MCTS courses, the chances are you’re in 1 of 2 situations: You might be wondering about completely changing your working life to the field of computers, and research demonstrates there’s a growing demand for people with the right qualifications. In contrast you could already be in IT – and you want to enhance your CV with the MCTS accreditation.

When looking into training providers, ensure that you steer clear of those that short-change you by failing to provide the latest Microsoft version. This will only hamper the student due to the fact that they’ll have learned an old version of MCTS which doesn’t fall in with the present exams, so they’ll probably fail. A training provider’s focus must be centred on the most for their students, and everyone involved should have a passion for getting things right. Studying isn’t simply about qualifications – the process should be all about helping you to decide on the best course of action for you.

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It’s essential to have an accredited exam preparation programme included in your course. Because many examining boards for IT are from the USA, it’s essential to understand how exam questions will be phrased and formatted. It’s no use just answering any old technical questions – they must be in an exam format that exactly replicates the real thing. A way to build self-confidence is if you test your depth of understanding by doing tests and mock ups of exams prior to taking the actual exam.

There are colossal changes washing over technology over the next generation – and this means greater innovations all the time. We’ve barely started to see just how technology will affect our lives in the future. Computers and the web will profoundly revolutionise how we see and interrelate with the entire world over the next few years.

Let’s not ignore salaries moreover – the typical remuneration in the UK for a typical person working in IT is considerably better than remuneration packages in other sectors. Odds are you’ll make a whole lot more than you could reasonably hope to get in other industries. With the IT marketplace developing year on year, it’s predictable that the requirement for well trained and qualified IT technicians will continue actively for decades to come.

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It’s a good idea to understand what expectations industry may have of you. Which precise qualifications they will want you to have and how you’ll go about getting some commercial experience. Spend some time assessing how far you think you’ll want to go as often it can control your selection of accreditations. Talk to a skilled advisor that has a commercial understanding of the realities faced in the industry, and could provide an in-depth explanation of what tasks are going to make up a typical day for you. Getting to the bottom of all this before commencement of any study program will save you both time and money.

Many trainers will provide an useful Job Placement Assistance program, to assist your search for your first position. Don’t get caught up in this feature – it’s easy for eager sales people to make too much of it. In reality, the massive skills shortage in the United Kingdom is why employers will be interested in you.

Nevertheless, don’t leave it until you have finished your training before bringing your CV up to date. As soon as your training commences, mark down what you’re doing and tell people about it! Quite frequently, you will get your first job whilst you’re still studying (occasionally right at the beginning). If your CV doesn’t say what you’re learning (and it isn’t in the hands of someone with jobs to offer) then you won’t even be considered! Actually, an independent and specialised local recruitment consultancy – who make their money when they’ve found you a job – is going to give you a better service than a recruitment division from a training organisation. They should, of course, also know local industry and the area better.

A slight frustration of many training companies is how hard people are prepared to work to get qualified, but how little effort that student will then put into getting the job they have trained for. Don’t falter at the last fence..

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Microsoft reprises free Xbox back-to-school PC promo

Expands deal to Canada, adds more retail partners for program that gives Xbox with purchase of Windows 7 PC

Computerworld - Microsoft will repeat last year's back-to-school promotion, kicking off the deal Sunday with an offer of a free Xbox 360 game console to eligible U.S. students who buy a new Windows 7 PC.

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Canadian students also qualify for this year's program, which launches there today.

U.S. high school or college students with proof of status -- a student ID card or an email address that ends in .edu -- will receive a 4GB Xbox 360 when they purchase a Windows PC for $699 or more. In Canada, the benchmark PC price is $599.

Microsoft will be giving students the $199 Xbox 360, its lowest-priced console, and one that does not come with the Kinect controller.

Unlike last year, when Microsoft's only retail partner was Best Buy, this year the company has expanded the list of participating retailers to Best Buy and Fry's Electronics in the U.S., and Best Buy, Future Shop, Staples and The Source in Canada. Online sellers include Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Newegg in the U.S., and Dell in Canada.

Microsoft will also honor the deal at its own retail stores -- there are 21, all in the U.S., either open or expected to open this summer -- and at its U.S. Microsoft Store website.

The company has apparently left more in the hands of its partners than last year, when Microsoft specified the end date -- Sept. 3, 2011 -- and the deal's terms and conditions.

Those details are now up to the participating retailers and e-tailers, Microsoft said in a blog post today. For example, Dell Canada said that its offer expires June 29.

This was the second year running that Microsoft beat Apple to the back-to-school punch. Apple, which has a longer history of offering deals to students, launched its promotion June 16, 2011, nearly a month after Microsoft's.

Apple's 2011 program was also the first in years that did not feature a free iPod Touch with the purchase of a new Mac. Instead, the Cupertino, Calif. company handed out $100 iTunes gift cards to students, parents, teachers and staff members.

The cards could be used for purchases at Apple's digital content markets, including the Mac App Store, the iOS App Store, iBookstore and the iTunes music store.

Depending on when students purchase a Windows PC to get an Xbox, they may be eligible for a free upgrade to Windows 8 Pro when the new operating system launches later this year.

Microsoft has not unveiled a Windows 8 upgrade program, but recent rumors have pegged an announcement to the first week of June, when the company also will debut Windows 8 Release Preview, the OS's final public milestone.

Earlier this week, Windows blogger Paul Thurrott, citing unnamed sources, claimed that Microsoft would charge users $14.99 for the upgrade to Windows 8 Pro if they purchased a Windows 7 PC between the launch of the program and January 2013.

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Microsoft tunes up Windows 8 multi-screen

Better task-bar control, window mobility coming next month

When Microsoft launches Windows 8 Release Preview next month the operating system will have improved navigation features for users who like more than one monitor to display all their applications.

The upgrade - the last major tune-up expected before the final version launches sometime this fall - addresses task bars, desktop backgrounds and that no man's land, the common edge shared by adjacent screens, according to the Building Windows 8 blog.

The current problem with that common edge is that when users mouse over to them - for example to hit the minimize button - they sometimes overshoot and wind up on the next screen instead of the screen they started off on. They either have to slow down or adjust the window size so there's a buffer between the edge of the window and the edge of the screen.

TEST YOURSELF: The Windows 8 Quiz

MORE WINDOWS 8: Why aren't Apple and Amazon dumping on Windows RT?

With Windows 8 Release Preview, Microsoft has created interface corners that are larger than 6 pixels tall so users can pull up a little short of the edge but still hit the active interface. The active area extends a little beyond the corner itself to present a larger target.

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These corners have new uses with Windows 8 that they didn't have with Windows 7. Corners contain access to applications, charm bars and the Start screen.

The active corners have also been revised so they only work for the monitor the cursor is active on. So when the cursor moves from one screen to another, the corners won't initially work on the second screen until the user establishes that that is the screen being worked on. So if users do overshoot the active screen, they won't accidentally click on an active corner on the other screen.

To improve the ability to organize the location of active applications, the Release Preview will add a new keyboard shortcut just for moving Metro applications from screen to screen - Windows key+page up/page down. The shortcut for moving traditional desktop apps remains Windows key+shift+arrow. All apps can be moved from screen to screen via drag and drop as well.

In the upcoming version Microsoft gives more options for the functionality of taskbars on each screen, giving users new options.

The default setting is to make the taskbar fully functional on all screens. Rather than having to manipulate the cursor back to the primary screen and perhaps turn their heads, users can access all taskbar icons from every screen.

Alternatively, they can have the taskbar show icons only for those windows that appear on each screen. The downside is that users have to remember which windows are open on which screens in order to find their icons.

Or users can set up a main monitor with a taskbar that always displays all icons, and other monitors' taskbars show only icons for the windows open on them. So when users are looking for a particular window but aren't sure on which screen it is open, they know they can find it on the master monitor.

The Start button, charms bar and calling up recently used application will be accessible from all monitors. In the Consumer Preview they were available only on one screen.

Microsoft has spent a lot of effort on desktop backgrounds in the release preview, making it possible to put a different one on each screen or to spread a single image so it is displayed just once over all the screens. When different pictures are used, they can be displayed on horizontally oriented monitors in landscape mode or rotated 90 degrees with in portrait mode.

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Microsoft issues release candidate of System Center 2012

The company says the software can help businesses more efficiently manage their use of cloud services

IDG News Service - Microsoft on Tuesday said the release candidate of System Center 2011, software that companies use to manage their cloud services, is now available.

Customers are already managing more than 100,000 virtual machines using the software as part of an early access program, Satya Nadella, president of Microsoft's Server and Tools Business, said during a video conference about the news.

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Using System Center, an organization can manage its internal private cloud as well as applications and services it is running in public clouds. This hybrid approach -- where a company may run an application in a public cloud but retain the corresponding database on a private cloud, for example -- is increasingly common.

System Center 2012 combines eight former products into one and addresses one common complaint customers have, said Brad Anderson, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Management and Security Division. "We hear a lot that licensing is complex," he said. System Center 2012 aims to simplify licensing by combining several former products into one and by offering just two different versions.

In addition, Microsoft bases its license on a slightly different model than its competitors, he said. Customers pay for System Center 2012 on a per-server basis, rather than a per-virtual machine basis. That can keep costs down for people who are running many virtual machines per server.

During the video conference about the release, Microsoft showcased a few companies that have already been using System Center. They include Luftansa, T. Rowe Price and Unilver. Those companies said that System Center 2012 has let them quickly expand their infrastructure and automate the management of their systems.

Microsoft says that using a tool like System Center can help organizations more efficiently manage their cloud environments. The company typically hears from customers who have full time IT administrators managing 30 to 40 servers. But Microsoft itself, which operates huge data centers to run services like Bing, Azure and Hotmail, finds that each of its IT workers, using System Center 2012, manages as many as 5,000 servers.

System Center 2012 has also expanded to allow IT administrators to manage non-Microsoft devices, including mobile phones. Rather than thinking of devices as being at the center of the management process, System Center 2012 puts the user in the middle, said Anderson. That means a manager can set policies for an employee that applies no matter what device the employee is using, including Android phones, iPhones or a variety of tablets.

The release candidate of System Center 2012 is available immediately. Provided users don't find any major bugs, the next step should be general availability of the software.

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Microsoft security patches include fixes for Word, Office, Windows

In its May "Patch Tuesday," Microsoft released seven bulletins covering 23 vulnerabilities

Microsoft has fixed 23 vulnerabilities in its software products, including several considered critical, the company said on Tuesday in its monthly security patch report.

The most mortiyfing moments in network security history

The security holes, included in seven bulletins, affect Office, Windows, .Net Framework and Silverlight, and in the worst-case scenarios could give attackers control of affected systems, including the ability to run malicious code remotely on them.

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The first critical bulletin covers a vulnerability in Microsoft Office that could allow attackers to execute remote code on compromised systems. For that to happen, users would have to open an infected rich-text format (RTF) file. If successful, the exploit would give attackers the same usage rights as the current user.

The issue is labeled critical for all supported editions of Microsoft Word 2007. It is rated "important" -- the second highest severity level in Microsoft's four-level scale -- for all supported editions of Word 2003, Office 2008 for Mac and Office for Mac 2011, as well as all supported versions of Office Compatibility Pack. The security hole was privately reported to Microsoft.

The second critical bulletin involves 10 vulnerabilities in Office, Windows, .NET Framework, and Silverlight, seven of which were privately reported to the company. The most dangerous vulnerability would let attackers run code remotely on an affected user's machine if the user opens an infected document or is tricked into visiting a malware-laden webpage with embedded TrueType font files.

The problem is rated critical for all supported editions of Windows, .Net Framework 4 (except when installed on Windows editions for Itanium chips); and Silverlight 4 and 5. It's considered important for Office 2003, Office 2007 and Office 2010.

Commenting on this bulletin in a separate blog post, Jonathan Ness, from the Microsoft Security Response Center Engineering team, said that since fixing a vulnerability five months ago that was being exploited by the Duqu malware through malicious Office documents, Microsoft found that the problematic Microsoft code, win32k.sys, was in other products as well.

Fixing the vulnerabilty, an insufficient bounds check within the font parsing subsystem of win32k.sys, in the newly-discovered places led Microsoft to include several products in this bulletin and consolidate a variety of other fixes in it, according to Ness.

The third critical bulletin covers two privately-reported vulnerabilities in .Net Framework that could open the door for attackers to execute code remotely on the infected machine with the same level of rights as the affected user. For the exploit to be successful, users would need to visit an infected webpage using a browser that can run XAML Browser Applications (XBAPs).

This security update is considered critical for all supported editions of the Microsoft .NET Framework on all supported editions of Microsoft Windows.

The four bulletins labeled important include one that covers six Office vulnerabilities that could allow remote code execution if users open an infected Office file. This fix is considered important for all supported editions of Excel 2003, Excel 2007, Office 2007, Excel 2010, Office 2010, Office 2008 for Mac, and Office for Mac 2011, as well as for supported versions of Excel Viewer and Office Compatibility Pack.

Another important bulletin addresses one vulnerability in Visio Viewer 2010 that could give attackers the ability to execute malicious code remotely if users open an infected Visio file.

The third bulletin tagged as important deals with two security holes in Windows, including one affecting the TCP/IP component that could allow an attacker that logs on to a system to upgrade his user access privileges by running a specially crafted application. This hole is considered important for all supported editions of Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008 R2.

The final bulletin also involves Windows, specifically its Windows Partition Manager and a vulnerability that could let an attacker who gains access to a system to run a malicious application to elevate his user access privileges. The attacker needs to have valid credentials to access the system, and must log on manually on the affected machine. This issue is considered important for all supported editions of Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008 R2.

Users who have their machines set up to receive Microsoft's software patches automatically don't need to do anything. The fixes will be installed on their computers automatically. The updates can also be manually downloaded at the Microsoft Update and Windows Update sites.

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MCTS Windows Server 2008 Active Directory Configuration Study Guide: Exam 70-640

I had previously started out with the Microsoft Press material but found myself falling asleep after reading just a few pages. Technical material is rather dry and boring so it’s difficult to find the right books to study with. After reading reviews on Amazon I picked up this book by William Panek.

William Panek has a number of Microsoft certifications – MCSA, MCSE – 200 & 2003, MCT, MCDBA, MCTS and more.

What I find most valuable in this book is how simple it is to follow and learn the concepts. There are many exercises in each chapter. Steps are easy to follow with a simple VM setup. Concepts are explained clearly.

Each chapter begins with the objectives that they’ll be covering. I found this helpful for my own studies so I can drill in further on my weaknesses.

This book is a good resource for self-study of the 70-640 Microsoft exam but I wouldn’t make it your only resource. Additionally, some of the steps are different in Windows Server 2008 R2.

Chapters of the book:

Chapter 1 – Over of Active Directory
Chapter 2 – Domain Name System (DNS)
Chapter 3 – Planning and Installation of Active Directory
Chapter 4 – Installing and Managing Trees and Forests
Chapter 5 – Configuring Sites and Replication
Chapter 6 – Configuring Active Directory Server Roles
Chapter 7 – Administering Active Directory
Chapter 8 – Configuring Group Policies
Chapter 9 – Planning Security for Active Directory
Chapter 10 – Active Directory Optimization and Reliability

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LinkedIn to buy SlideShare for $119M

LinkedIn also reported 101% revenue growth for the first quarter

IDG News Service - LinkedIn is acquiring SlideShare, which allows its users to share presentations online, for $118.75 million as it tries to find new ways to make its site more useful, the company said on Thursday.

SlideShare allows users to upload presentations publicly or privately, which can be embedded on blogs, websites, company intranets and shared across Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, so the two companies aren't new acquaintances.

Exactly how LinkedIn will integrate SlideShare beyond what is possible today remains to be seen. The company is "excited to figure out the best ways our offerings will work together," according to a LinkedIn blog post. In the meantime, SlideShare will continue to work as it usually does, the post said.

SlideShare users have uploaded more than 9 million presentations. In March, SlideShare had nearly 29 million unique visitors, according to data from market research company ComScore, LinkedIn said.

Besides presentations, SlideShare also hosts documents, PDFs, videos and webinars.

The purchase price is a combination of approximately 45% in cash and 55% in stock, according to LinkedIn. If everything goes according to plan, the acquisition will close during the second quarter.

On Thursday, LinkedIn also released its financial result for the first quarter. Revenue was $188.5 million, an increase of 101% compared to the first quarter last year. Net income grew from $2.1 million to $5 million during the same period.

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Microsoft to retire Windows Live brand ahead of Windows 8 launch

Windows 8 will allow Microsoft to offer a more tightly integrated set of online services and desktop apps for consumers

IDG News Service - Microsoft will retire the Windows Live brand as it gets ready to release what it describes as a more connected set of online consumer services with the launch of its Windows 8 operating system.

Its vision for a set of tightly woven services and desktop applications that Microsoft outlined when it unveiled Windows Live in 2005 hasn't been fully realized, the company said on Wednesday.

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Right now, services like its Hotmail webmail service, SkyDrive storage service and Messenger IM service aren't as closely meshed as they should be with Windows Live desktop software like Photo Gallery and Movie Maker, nor with the Windows Live ID account service, Microsoft said in a blog post.

The problem lies with Windows desktop operating systems, which so far haven't been designed to fully interact with cloud services. Microsoft expects that situation to change with Windows 8, which is being designed to work not just with desktop and laptop PCs but also tablets and other devices. For example, Windows 8 features a new user interface called Metro, which uses a tile design and is optimized for touch interfaces.

"Windows 8 provides us with an opportunity to reimagine our approach to services and software and to design them to be a seamless part of the Windows experience, accessible in Windows desktop apps, Windows Metro style apps, standard web browsers, and on mobile devices. Today the expectation is that a modern device comes with services as well as apps for communication and sharing. There is no 'separate brand' to think about or a separate service to install -- it is all included when you turn on your PC for the first time," reads the blog post, authored by Steven Sinofsky, president of the Windows and Windows Live Division.

Some of the changes in the pipeline for the coming months include a rebranding of Windows Live ID as Microsoft Account, along with back-end changes intended to make the account service the main door into a broad set of online services that can be accessed via Web browsers but also synchronized and replicated through Windows Phone devices and Windows 8 PCs and tablets.

In Windows 8 machines, pre-installed applications that will have both local and cloud components include Microsoft Account, SkyDrive, Mail, Calendar, People (contacts), Messaging and Photos/Videos.

Along the way, Microsoft will shed their existing names, including Windows Live ID, Windows Live Mail, Windows Calendar, Windows Contacts, MSN Messenger, Windows Live Photo Gallery and Movie Maker.

It will also be possible to link the Microsoft Account with third-party online services, like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, in a way that a single list of contacts is maintained not only across Microsoft products but is also augmented by contacts from these other sites.

Microsoft plans to provide more information about this initiative in the coming weeks, including more details about how Skype will fit in with this plan.

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Microsoft a decade ahead of Apple on security, We’re not so sure

In a recent interview, Kaspersky Lab founder and CEO Eugene Kaspersky claimed that Apple is “10 years” behind Microsoft on security, as evidenced by the recent malware attacks affecting Mac OS X

There’s been a lot of chatter lately that the recent Flashback and Flashfake malware infestations plaguing Apple’s Max OS X are a sign that the Mac is not nearly as secure as Apple and its devout fans would like you to believe.

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Eugene Kaspersky, however, founder and CEO of Kaspersky Lab—a leading producer of security software—claims things are much worse. He says that Apple is in a potentially dire position and must change its approach to patches and updates, much in the same way Microsoft did year ago to more quickly and efficiently address vulnerabilities in Windows.

In a recent interview with CBR Online, Kaspersky said,

“I think they are ten years behind Microsoft in terms of security. For many years I've been saying that from a security point of view there is no big difference between Mac and Windows. It's always been possible to develop Mac malware, but this one was a bit different. For example it was asking questions about being installed on the system and, using vulnerabilities, it was able to get to the user mode without any alarms."

Of course it’s possible to develop malware for OSX. Malware could be developed for any OS. As far as malware exploiting vulnerabilities, is that what’s been happening on Windows systems for ages?

Before we go on, we should point out what we believe to be a serious flaw in that statement. When Kaspersky says “there is no big difference between Mac and Windows,” that may be true on some level because they are both consumer operating systems, but the underlying technologies in OS X and Windows are fundamentally different. OS X is based on UNIX, which is decades more mature than Windows. And with that maturity also comes strong security.

Kaspersky goes on to say, "They will understand very soon that they have the same problems Microsoft had ten or 12 years ago. They will have to make changes in terms of the cycle of updates and so on and will be forced to invest more into their security audits for the software."

This may or may not be the case. Kaspersky asserts that the success of Flashback / Flashfake will result in more malware being released for OS X. We’re not so sure. Most malware producers are in it to make a quick buck, not for notoriety. And the success of one piece of malware, doesn’t guarantee more will follow. Flashback / Flashfake may be getting some attention now, but targeting the Mac just doesn’t make as much financial sense as targeting Windows.

The fact of the matter is, even with relatively strong Mac sales, Windows-based systems far outsell the Mac and malware producers are always going to more aggressively target the largest install base. At least that’s our opinion. What say you?

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