Windows 8: How Do You Get There from Here?
My position on Windows upgrades from one major release to the next (Windows XP to Windows 7, for example) is that it's generally better to perform a new installation or to wait until you buy a new computer and my experiences with Windows 8 has been much the same as with earlier versions. Which process is right for you may depend on how you use the computer.
You can read my earlier Windows 8 accounts here.
When Windows 8 was released to Microsoft TechNet subscribers, I ran the upgrade process on two notebook computers but in both cases I followed the upgrade by formatting the computer's hard drive and performing a clean installation. In late November, when I upgraded some of the hardware on a desktop computer, installing a solid-state drive (SSD) as the boot device, that ensured that Windows 8 would be installed on a clean disk. But it's worth noting that I did not upgrade this computer to Windows 8 until I changed the hardware.
The desktop system sees a lot of change. Programs are installed for testing and then removed and this can lead to a somewhat tangled Registry. After 3 years, it was time for a fresh installation. Considering that the process of formatting the drive and reinstalling the operating system was something that seemed to be necessary about every 6 months under Windows 95, we've come a long way since then.
If I used the desktop computer the way most people use a computer, it's likely that it would live its entire life without ever needing to go through this process. The way most people use a computer is this: The new computer comes home and is plugged in. Over its life, the owner will add a few programs and update a few programs. In other words, what happens to most computers over a 3-to-5-year period can happen to my desktop system in a few weeks.
So maybe an upgrade to Windows 8 will work for you. In any event, it's worth a try. You need always to be prepared to format the drive and perform a clean installation but, if an upgrade works, the shorter process will save hours of setup time. If it fails, you will have spent only an hour or so on that process so it's not an unreasonable gamble.
Before any upgrade, it's essential that you have a complete backup of all data on the computer. Formatting the drive will delete everything on it and that's one reason why I keep the operating system and applications on one disk drive and all data on other disk drives. Even if you have just a single physical disk drive, it's possible to partition the drive so that the operating system is on one partition (that can be formatted at will) and your photos, music, movies, spreadsheets, and letters are stored on another drive that won't be formatted.
Windows 8 Comes with Internet Explorer 10
Free of additional charge, you'll receive 2 versions of Internet Explorer 10 with Windows 8. One variant runs under the Modern (Metro) interface and the other runs on the Desktop. My preference is to avoid Internet Explorer whenever possible but it's still the most used browser so let's consider the implications of version 10.
It's been around for a while. Microsoft actually released it in April of 2011 for Windows 7 but recent additions and improvements are for Windows 8 users only. IE10 improves support for the 3rd version of the cascading style sheet (CSS) specification, supports HTML5 more fully, and provides some hardware acceleration for the rendering engine.
In mid November, Microsoft released a new preview version of IE10 for Windows 7 and if you're planning to stick with Windows 7 for a while and to use Internet Explorer, you should consider upgrading to IE10 because this version of the browser provides security and performance improvements.
Specifically IE10 addresses the problem of threats that involve social engineering. SmartScreen Filter warns about phishing and malware sites, for example. By default, IE10 sends a "Do Not Track" flag to every website. If you want to allow tracking, you'll need to turn it on for the site.
The Modern version of IE10 is built for touch devices and provides better multi-touch support than other browsers. Incidentally, this is something that has garnered complaints from other browser publishers who claim that Microsoft kept secret from them the application programming interface (API) needed to create multi-touch support.
For now, IE10 is a leader here but expect the other browsers to catch up.
Which Way to Go?
If you don't plan to switch from a 32-bit operating system to a 64-bit operating system or if your Windows 7 system is already running the 64-bit version, an upgrade would make sense. But if you've seen the need for the additional resources that a 64-bit system can provide, you'll need not only a clean installation but also possibly some new hardware.
Having using the new Microsoft Upgrade Assistant twice, I'm impressed by how well it works. If you have applications that won't work under Windows 8, the assistant will provide a list. The list will explicitly state which applications, if any, need to be updated or uninstalled before proceeding and you may see a short list of applications that the assistant doesn't know about.
One mistake that some people make when upgrading is failing to schedule enough time for the job. Assume that something will go wrong. Allow for enough time to format the drive and perform a clean installation if that becomes necessary. In other words, don't start the process on Sunday evening with plans to be finished in time to prepare a presentation for Monday morning. An upgrade that proceeds without issue can be complete in an hour or less (this depends on the speed of the computer) but if you have to format the drive, reinstall the operating system, install your applications, configure the applications, and restore data from backup devices, the process will take many hours and may extend over several days.
Over the years, I've developed a process by which I can install Windows and the most critical applications (the ones I use many times every day) in about 90 minutes. By the end of an 8-hour day, nearly everything I need will be restored but possibly not configured. Over about a 2-week period I'll complete the restoration and setup processes. So plan to spend some time tinkering with the machine.
Depending on your level of knowledge and interest, you might find yourself wishing (as I did) that Microsoft would be a bit more forthcoming with information. A message that says "Taking care of a few things" is enough to tell you that something is happening, but it would be helpful to know what. Should something go wrong "Taking care of a few things" doesn't really provide any useful information about where the process went wrong.
During the installation, you'll need to decide whether you want to use a cloud-based login and I think there's a practical way to make this decision: If you have just a single computer, it doesn't matter. But if you have several computers (or plan to add more Windows computing devices), the cloud-based login offers the advantage of allowing you to synchronize settings between the various computers.
If you don't have any strong feelings one way or the other, use your Microsoft account. Settings you change on one computer will be replicated on the others. You may find that you want to restrict some settings to a particular computer and Microsoft provides a way to do that. You'll have to dig a bit, but you can turn off specific options within the synchronization settings to accomplish what you want.
Upgrading Hardware and Making Windows 8 My Own
If you're thinking about upgrading to Windows 8, I hope that my experiences will be helpful. There are significant differences between Windows 7 and Windows 8 but the one that seems to have caught everyone's attention is that the Start Menu no longer exists and many consider this to be a disaster. I have to admit that I was among this crowd a year ago but today my position is this: A Windows installation without a Start Menu is like a fish without a bicycle.
Really. If you look at some of my earlier commentaries on Windows 8, you'll see that initially I felt Microsoft was making a terrible mistake. That's no longer the case. Now that I have Windows 8 on a desktop, I've become a bit more serious about finding keyboard shortcuts. Pressing the WinKey switches immediately to the Desktop view on the desktop computer but this doesn't work on the notebooks. Maybe it's a feature of the Enterprise edition. But on any Win8 machine, pressing WinKey-D switches to the Desktop. So if you miss the Desktop, just press WinKey-D when Metro shows its pretty interface and you'll go to the desktop.
Also, I think what may people miss is that the Start Screen (or Metro or Modern) is really just a screen-size Start Menu. For example, here's a screen capture that displays what's on both of my monitors:
I kept some of the Metro apps that I like on the left and created groups for the primary applications, utilities, and a few other groups. Even though I created these groups, I have pinned most of the applications that I use frequently to the Task Bar on the Desktop. In other words, it's just like Windows 7. And if there's an application that's not immediately available in either location, pressing the WinKey followed by the first few letters of the program name allows me to start it. (Example: WinKey, e, a, r, Enter starts Google Earth — actually, though, WinKey, e, a, Enter is enough. Or WinKey, w, o, Enter for Word. Or WinKey, e, x, c, Enter for Excel.) This is difficult? Confusing?
Yes, that's a few keystrokes but its considerably faster to press four keys than to take your hands off the keyboard, find the mouse, move the cursor to the Start Menu, click the Start Menu, click All Programs, click Google, and then click Google Earth even though those who praise the Start Menu will try to say otherwise. Five quick keystrokes will always beat taking your hands off the keyboard, positioning the mouse, clicking, repositioning the mouse, clicking, repositioning the mouse and clicking. But how much faster? Maybe 1000 to 2000 milliseconds. In other words, it's a major non-issue that some pundits seem to be pushing relentlessly and I don't understand why.
Among the Metro apps I retained is Weather but it turned out to be somewhat disappointing.
The weather applet is of course a full-screen application but for reasons known only in Redmond, it's possible to select only 11 locations. I had visions of filling a screen with 20 or 30 locations just because I'm interested in what the weather is like on other parts of the planet's surface. When I tried to add a 12th location, Windows warned me that I couldn't.
Solid State Drives
When I contacted TCR about upgrading the 3-year-old system, I mentioned a faster CPU, a new main-board, increased RAM, and more disk storage but I neglected to say anything about a solid-state drive even though I have written about these devices.
Fortunately, TCR's Marshall Thompson described how he had improved the performance of a small netbook computer by adding a solid-state drive and asked if I would consider adding one. I did and the change has been dramatic.
I start a lot of applications automatically at boot time because it saves time later when I need them but this also makes the boot process more than a bit tedious. The computer is all but unusable for 10 to 15 minutes. To counteract that, I load yet another application called Startup Delayer that can start applications at specific times. So essential programs started immediately and applications that I usually don't need for a while are delayed for 5 minutes or 10 minutes or, in a few cases, 30 minutes.
Although I've installed Startup Delayer on the Windows 8 computer, only a few programs are currently set to be delayed and I've noticed that the boot time remains fast even with all of those "essential" applications starting at the same time.
In previous years, my recommendation for accelerating a computer involved adding more RAM and that's still a good idea. Any 32-bit system that has less than 4GB of RAM should be upgraded to that amount, which is the maximum a 32-bit system can address. Any 64-bit system that has less than 4GB of RAM should be upgraded at least to 4GB and preferably to 6 or 8GB.
But another improvement that's well worth considering in adding a solid-state drive. Most computer cases can hold at least 2 hard drives so installing a solid-state drive, cloning the operating system from the existing hard drive to the new drive, and then using the old hard drive for data storage is a quick and reasonably painless way to go. If you're not comfortable performing surgery on the computer, find a local technician who is.
Local Hot-Backup Drives
Good backup means never having to say you're sorry and I've managed to avoid disasters by maintaining a system of backups:
- Local hot backups of all working files for immediate recovery.
- Backup disk drives that are stored at the office.
- Website files are additionally backed up to non-public areas on the server.
- Carbonite's online backup service backs up the local backups.
This process means that losing critical data would require that the files be lost or damaged: 1) on the computer, 2) on the hot backup drives, 3) on the drives stored at the office, 4) on Carbonite, and (for websites) 5) on the non-public area of the Web server.
As part of the upgrade process, I retired one older hot-backup drive and assigned a newer drive to the drives that I store at the office. Two new hot backup drives, a matched set, are in place. They take advantage of faster USB3 connectivity and they provide nearly enough storage space to back up both of the internal data drives even when they're full (which I hope they never will be).
It's still possible for me to do something incredibly stupid and lose a file, but I've done my best to stack the deck against stupidity.
Batting Outlook Out of the Park
When I installed Windows 8 on the desktop computer and followed that with Office 2013, the time seemed right to take a look at Outlook. Although I'm required to use Outlook at the office and I like the calendar and contact sections of Outlook, I've never been able to make peace with the e-mail component. Maybe the 2013 version would be different.
Setting up my four primary e-mail accounts was easy enough but Outlook places the data files on the C drive by default. In the new computer, the C drive is a relatively small (500GB) solid-state drive and I didn't want to waste precious SSD space with e-mail and organizer files.
Moving the Outlook data files to another drive should be easy. Should be. It wasn't. The process took nearly 3 hours and required several trips to Microsoft's support site and to several other sites where I found various, and often conflicting, recommendations.
I like the fact that Outlook handles HTML e-mail beautifully but I receive a lot of mail and use an extensive set of filters to sort messages into various folders in The Bat. I'm familiar with setting up Outlook filters but replicating what would be simple filters in The Bat seemed impossible. The filters I wanted to create probably can be created but after several hours I had two filters that worked as desired and one that, despite more than an hour's worth of tinkering, still failed miserably.
When I receive spams, it's sometimes useful to look at the message source. In The Bat pressing F9 immediately displays the source (both headers and message text, even if the message is a multi-part document with an HTML component and a plain-text component). Outlook requires drilling down several layers to display the headers and that's all it can display. No method exists by which one can view the actual message body's source.
Is the Bat Superior?
That depends on your point of view.
The Bat has no calendar. It has no task list. It offers a directory function that's far weaker than Outlook Contacts. And the display, although much improved, still isn't what anyone could call pretty. What it offers is immense programmability via scripting, macros, and quick templates. It's reasonably safe to say that anyone who wants to do anything with The Bat will probably be able to find a way to do it.
Some of these capabilities can be achieved in Outlook by using third-party applications such as MacroExpress and Outlook integrates e-mail closely with calendars, scheduling, and other components. Despite conferencing functions and links to contacts and the calendar, Outlook still comes up far short on features that I need every day.
At the office, we are connected to an Exchange server and that makes Outlook the preferred e-mail client—indeed the only e-mail client that is permitted by corporate IT.
In some ways, Outlook is the Rolls Royce of e-mail programs. It's pleasing to look at but not particularly practical. The Bat, on the other hand, is simultaneously a Ferrari (because it's so fast) and a heavy-duty truck (because it can be used for so many tasks). The bottom line? Outlook 2013 is still "Look Out!" to me. (One of the newspapers in Toronto referred to this program as "Microsoft LookOut" at least 15 years ago and I've always liked that particular twist on Outlook's name.)
Short Circuits
Would the Latest Facebook Fraud Fool You?
Probably not. You've seen these ploys deconstructed on TechByter Worldwide before and this one is nothing special. It's a bit different in that it closely mimics the appearance of a message from Facebook but the fact that it comes from an individual user at AOL should be enough to warn you away from the link.
If not, then hovering your mouse over the Go To Facebook link (Don't click! Just hover.) will quickly reveal that the link goes to globaltradealert.org, a website that has probably been victimized by crooks. It's possible that the crooks set up the GlobalTradeAlert site but that's not something that can easily be determined.
Looking Beneath the Covers
One of my favorite tools for examining rogue sites is Microsoft's PowerShell, which is the replacement for the Command Prompt (which still exists). PowerShell offers numerous additional features, including the ability to read a website and save the text to a variable.
Once you've done that, you can dump the text to the screen or save it to a text file that can be examined safely. A good sign that this site is up to no good is the fact that it contains a redirect but that's as far as my investigation went. In some cases, these redirects simply take you to a site that's trying to sell "generic" Viagra (no such thing exists). This redirect, however specifies a PHP page, which can hide bad code. The person who created the e-mail message already lied to me about the source of the message and is now trying to redirect my browser from one site to another site that's in Russia, so No Thanks!
"Don't Be a Petraeus" — The General Must Be Proud
We like to think that generals who serve in hostile parts of the planet during wars and who then become head of the Central Intelligence Agency to have a certain degree of intelligence when it comes to security. The Petraeus soap opera suggests otherwise and the Electronic Frontier Foundation has come to the rescue with a tutorial called "Don't be a Petraeus: A Tutorial on Anonymous Email Accounts."
Where was this article when the general needed it?
The article notes that members of the Senate Judiciary Committee who reviewed current laws on e-mail privacy this week and recommended increased privacy to the full Senate probably didn't have the Petraeus affair in mind, but it's a backdrop for the Senate hearings. During the investigation, the FBI obtained e-mail messages from CIA Director David Petraeus, Paula Broadwell, Jill Kelly, and General John Allen.
If nothing else, this clearly illustrates two points: First, current laws allow investigators to have broad and deep access to e-mail, and second, e-mail is about as private as a post card. Those who understand how computers and networks function have known about that second point for decades and processes exist by which e-mail messages can be encrypted but most of these have been too much trouble to use and they haven't been used by most people. Not even by CIA directors.
The EFF's tutorial on anonymous e-mail accounts is worth your time if you ever send an e-mail message that contains information that you might not want to see on the front page of the New York Times.
What you'll find is that the process still isn't exactly easy but if you're in line for a top government position and you want to keep certain aspects of your private life somewhat private (the FBI still has the capability to work around even most of these precautions), consider setting up a process by which you can communicate securely.
Ballmer Says Microsoft is in the Portable Market to Stay
At Microsoft's annual stockholders meeting, CEO Steve Ballmer said that he should have moved faster to transition the company so that it could take advantage of portable computing, and particular tablet-based computing that is a piece of the market dominated by Apple's Ipad.
After all, Bill Gates started talking about tablet computing a decade ago but the company was unprepared or unable to make progress on that front, possibly in part because of the Vista misstep that required a great deal of time and attention to fix.
Ballmer said, "We're innovating on the seam between software and hardware." If anyone can tell me what that means in plain English, I'd appreciate it.
The smaller of Microsoft's new Surface tablets is now on sale but the more powerful version probably won't be on sale until the first quarter of 2013, which leaves the holiday market largely to Apple. Blamer says that smart phones running the new Windows 8 software are selling 4 times as many devices as they were at this time last year. By that account, Microsoft must have sold at least 135 phones by now but the company has not announced sales figures for phones or tablets.
Will the United Nations Regulate the Internet?
More than 2 billion people around the world use the Internet now and there is no central administration. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is probably the closest thing to a governing body and its primary goal is simply to maintain stable operations. No national or international body controls the content.
In Dubai, capital of the United Arab Emirates, a nearly 2-week session of World Conference on International Telecommunications is about to get underway. The expectation is that the conference will consider, among other topics, censorship. At previous sessions, US and other western members have managed to hold the line against censorship despite attempts by nations such as Iran, China, and Russia to impose it.
In theory, no individual nation would be bound by any decision made by the conference and the structure of the Internet allows it to "route around damage" and the network considers censorship to be "damage". Even so, individual nations can (and some already have) instituted some forms of censorship. Consider, for example, "the great firewall" of China.
OPINION: Additional restrictions will not serve anyone or any nation well so I hope that the western delegations will continue to defeat any international attempts to impose censorship. Unfortunately, the conference sessions are not open to the public and that is not a good sign.
The author's image: It's that photo over at the right. This explains why TechByter Worldwide was never on television, doesn't it?
