Windows 10 Technical Preview on Surface Pro 1 (my initial thoughts)

I took the plunge and put Windows 10 Technical Preview on my Surface Pro 1 that I recently put on the shelf after moving to the Pro 3.

The Technical Preview was a breeze to install.

You can download it from (here), as of October 1st.  You will need to sign up for the Windows Insider Program to download it.  The files are large so you need a nice fast connection to get it while you are young.

x64 : 4.0 GB
x86 : 3.1 GB

The download and install was a breeze.  I just took the ISO over to the SP1 and mounted it and ran the SETUP.EXE while in the system.  I choose the save nothing and let it run it course.

My initial thoughts
I just really sat down to play with it, but it seems more of a dot release than a full version release. I am sure the innards are where the big changes are but from a visual look and feel, it is pretty similar to 8. I don’t think that there will be any learning curve coming from version 8.1.1.

I had really gotten used to not having the Start button, so it looks strange.
I liked the new desktop icons
The task view (on the task bar) is a touch friendly dream, very nice.
The search (on the task bar) is just ok, not a big search user. (why can’t I unpin it?).
No crashes, yet. Seems very stable.
No missing devices in Device Manager.
Windows Update did grab a Surface Hardware update (8/12/2014)
Also, there was a Technical Preview update as well. (KB3001512)
Installed the Wacom 720_10 without problem.  Initial testing, inking is great in OneNote.
I was also surprised the System Center installed the Configuration Manager Client (corporate software management app).

Found that most of the software that I use installs. There are a few things that don’t, but that is expected.

• Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) (update – MS has released compatible version, AWESOME!)
  http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=44280
• DisplayLink for USB 3.0 Docking Station. I heard there was a work around. Will try that later. (update – just released compatible version)
  http://www.displaylink.com/support/ticket.php?id=376

Overall. I like where they are going with it. Not a lot of surface (pun intended) changes, but good. I think Desktop users will be pleased, I guess. Are there any Desktop users left?

Using ThinkPad USB 3.0 Dock

I have been testing out some Windows 8 Tablets at work and I wanted to be able to hook them up to my dual monitors.  I was having issues with the Surface Pro (Mini DisplayPort) and the Samsung ATIV 700T Pro (Micro HDMI), not being able to find a solution to support dual monitors with their native video out.

So after some research I settled on the ThinkPad USB 3.0 Dock (here).

• Dual DVI Ports (includes a VGA to DVI adapter)
• Ethernet Port (Gigabit)
• 5 USB 3.0 Connections (2 front & 3 in the rear)
• Headphones/Microsoft (audio)

So you run this all through the USB 3.0 port on the Tablet PC.  It has enough to power all that through the dock.  I had my doubts, but it works.  The graphics were horrible to begin with, but after updating the firmware on the Docking Station along with 3 updates to the DisplayLink software the graphics are an 8 out of 10, not as crisp as running directly from the video out, but it is the next best thing.

Drivers
DisplayLink (here).
Lenovo ThinkPad USB 3.0 Dock (here).

PRO
1. Ability to run Dual Monitors
2. Multiple USB 3.0 Ports
3. Ethernet Port

CON
1. The dock is powered by its own power supply.
2. Dock is a little awkward standing by itself when you have it fully loaded with dual DVI adapters and USB cables.  It tends to tip over or lean.  I got around this by putting some double stick tape on it and placing it on the back of my monitor stand (out of site).
3. Price is a bit steep.

The price is a little steep at $180 at Lenovo, but if money is no object I would recommend.

Dell Latitude 10 Impressions

I was highly disappointed with Dell’s first try in the Tablet market with the Latitude ST, so when I heard that Dell was releasing an upgrade or a new mode I was a little hesitant.  But after reviewing the specs I began to get a little excited.  The Latitude ST was way under powered and hearing of the new Dual Atom processor got me a little encouraged.  I still wasn’t convinced.  I was able to get my hands on one through our Dell Rep at work as a try before you buy.  We are looking for something like this for our travelling users.

I have had the Dell Latitude 10 for about two weeks and have had a chance to put it through some tests.

Specs

https://cameronmergel.wordpress.com/2012/11/12/dell-latitude-10-tablet/

POWER [GRADE: 4]
Dual Atom with 2GB of Ram.  Seems a bit light, but it is a pretty good machine as a business machine.  I don’t have anything installed that pushes it to its limit like a Photoshop program, but its pretty snappy.

Includes a micro-USB charging port.  I have not tried, but I have heard that it takes for ever to charge using this method.

Swappable battery – Includes 2-cell with an optional 4-cell battery.  I love the swappable battery.  They go bad, it’s nice to be able to swap them out if needed.  Also the 4-cell.  They stick out a bit and make the tablet a little awkward to hold with the weight, but it’s nice to have that available.

STORAGE/DISK [GRADE: 2]
64GB SSD in size but with the OS and Recovery Partition the available space is very small.  These devices should be a minimum of 128GB and go up from there.  I can’t believe they have a 32GB unit.  Seriously?

MISC. [GRADE: 5]
Full Size SD Card.  I am a huge fan, but have a couple of units that have the MicroSD and they perform and work just as well, so this is not as big of a deal for me as it use to be.

SCREEN [GRADE: 3]
10.1” Capacitive multi-touch HD display.  The screen is so nice and touch is very snappy.

Intel Graphics Media Accelerator is a little weak.

DIGITIZER [GRADE: 3]
This was difficult for me to grade.  I love Wacom and was very excited to hear that the Latitude 10 was going to be using Wacom.  However, the stylus and digitizer don’t seem to be tracking correctly.  Even after calibrating the stylus is not right.  The accuracy is off a bit and have to press a little harder than normal to double click on things.  Driver issue maybe?  I would think that Dell should be able to correct this.

WINDOWS 8 [GRADE: 5]
Windows 8 is very snappy and fluid.  It took me awhile to get use to it, but now I can’t go back to Windows 7.  I don’t

NOISE [GRADE: 5]
Fanless.  Absolutely quiet.  Nice feature of the Dual Atoms.

KEYBOARD [GRADE: 0]
No Keyboard.  Unforgivable!!!  The lack of a keyboard dock like the XPS 10 is unforgivable Dell.  This is a being sold as a Business Device.  This alone for me would have made it a definite “buy it device”.  I have heard of someone purchasing the XPS 10 keyboard and removing the notches that hold the XPS in.  Again, why Dell?  The extra battery in the keyboard!!!!  Why Dell?

OVERALL/FINAL [GRADE 27/40] [C-]
I was overall impressed with the Latitude 10.  I think if the Digitizer issue get resolved this will be an outstanding device.

If you can get at a discounted price on eBay, go for it.

Dell Latitude 10 Tablet

I am a pretty big fan of Windows Tablets and have been for some time.  I am especially excited with all the new stuff that is coming out.  One such Windows Tablet that I have been drooling over is the Dell Latitude 10 (here).  It is currently retailing for $900, but currently on a special price for $650.

I was recently visited by one of our Dell representatives at work and he had brought the sister tablet Latitude XPS 10, which is the Windows RT version.  I was able to play around with it for a bit and loved the touch, the responsiveness, and the fact that it had detachable keyboard with touchpad.  It was a very solid fit.  Unfortunately, I later found out that the Latitude 10 will not have that same keyboard.  Big disappointment if you ask me.  The Dell rep said that he would send me one when he got them in stock so I could give it a spin.  Well I just got the email and have it coming my way to give it a run. 

LATITUDE 10 SPECIFICATIONS

• Intel® Atom™ processor Z2760 1.8GHz with Intel® Burst Technology, 1.5GHz HFM, 600MHz LFM
• Windows 8 Pro, 32-bit
• 10.1" IPS (1366 X 768) Wide View Angle LCD, Corning® Gorilla® Glass, Capacitive 10 Finger Touch
• 2GB DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz
• 64GB of Solid State Storage, enabled for mobile broadband (HSPA+)
• Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator (533MHz)
• 1.47 lbs
• Full Size SD Slot
• USB 2.0 Slot
• Mini HDMI
• Removable Battery
• 2MP Front Facing Camera
• 8MP Rear Facing Camera
• Wacom Digitizer (optional pen)
• Productivity Docking Station (optional) (2) USB, Ethernet, HDMI and Audio Output

I will have it for about 30 days to test it out and will blog about it more.

N-trig digitizer on my HP Slate 500 (Windows 8 RTM)

N-trig released their much anticipated W8 drivers recently (August 13th).  The drivers have been broken since the Consumer Preview.  Well I downloaded these and immediately tried to install them on my W8 Release Preview.  I wasn’t impressed.

After going back to the instructions I noticed a blurb “before updating to Windows 8, make sure you have the latest bundle installed”.  I must have skipped right over that in my first pass.

I sent an email to N-trig support to get clarification and received email back a couple of days later.  Basically they stated.

This step comes to ensure you have the latest DuoSense SW installed under Win7.  Then when you upgrade to Win8, you should follow the installations of our new driver and it should work OK.

So they are expecting everybody to upgrade to W8 and not do a fresh install.  I don’t know about you, but I am not a big fan of upgrading.  I like to perform a fresh install.

Well, I since it didn’t seem to work very well in W8 as a fresh install I decided to go back to W7 and see if it was any better.  I found my original W7 image that I took way back in March 2011 and restored it.  I did have to go into the and edit the booting information that W8 updated.  No real big issue.  After getting back to W7 (yuck), I made my W8RTM bootable USB drive and ran the setup.exe off the USB drive.  Got prompted to upgrade and save user settings.  Took about 45 minutes.  After reboot I found that I had no touch or stylus.  I then installed the updated N-trig driver and found that touch and stylus came back.  Checked Device Mgr. and found nothing missing or had issues.

THE GOOD

The much anticipated calibration tool is great and helps with the false touches and ghost taps.

THE BAD

The lack of the Input Control Panel.  Having upgraded from W7 it is there but throws when trying to use.  The exclusion of the Input Control, the ability to put the digitizer to Touch Only, Pen Only, or Auto is a huge missing component.

I will say that the drivers are better than what they were in the Consumer Preview and Release Preview (note that they didn’t exist), but still in my opinion are lacking.

I emailed N-trig support to find out when this was going to added and their response back was there are no plans.  Huge, huge disappointment.

I do a lot of inking with the stylus and without this control I get a lot of false touches or palm rejection.  It comes close to being unusable.

Shame on you N-trig…

ASUS EP121 and B121 have the same exact SanDisk SSD

I was hoping to see an improvement in the SSD but the B121 is really the EP121 with a different Wireless/Bluetooth card and the TPM Chip.  Other than that they look to be the same hardware.

SANDISK 64GB SSD P4
mSATA 50mm
SDSA4D4-064G

EP121 Specifications here.
B121 Specifications here.

I have upgraded to an Intel 310 80GB which has increased the performance drastically.  You can buy here.  A decent upgrade, but may not be worth the cost.

 

CrystalDiskMark | faq

SANDISK 64GB SSD

 

Intel 310 80GB SSD

 

Windows Experience Index increased from a 5.9 to a 7.6

EP121

 

B121

My impressions of the Asus Eee Slate EP121

The Asus Eee Slate EP121 is the most powerful Tablet on the market (as of 10/2011) with an Intel Dual Core i5 processor (x64), 64GB Solid State Drive, and 4GB Ram.

You can get the full specifications (here).

I have always loved the concept of the Tablet PC.  I like the idea of being to use the computer and also the ability to use it as a Tablet with the stylus pen to write/ink.

My first introduction to the Tablet PC world was the HP TC1100 Tablet PC.  This came out around 2003 era with Windows XP Tablet Edition.  The Wacom digitizer and inking was fantastic.  I still own and use this Tablet to this day and even have Windows 7 rocking on it.  This definitely gave it new life.  I always thought if this basic design was updated with today’s technology it would be the best Tablet PC ever.  Still waiting.

When I heard that HP was releasing the HP Slate 500 I couldn’t wait, I thought this was the update to the TC1100 that I was waiting for.  I was quickly disappointed with the inking.  The N-trig digitizer and pen wasn’t a fluid as my old HP TC1100 and it was noisy to boot.  Then I heard about the Asus Eee Slate EP121 having the Wacom digitizer and I thought that maybe this is the one.

I have had the Asus Eee Slate EP121 device for just over two months now.

Grade A:
The Wacom Digitizer and Pen.  The fluid inking with the Wacom pen make it a real pleasant writing experience.  It is really like a hot knife cutting through butter.  It is that smooth.

The CPU power (Intel Dual Core i5 processor, x64), Ram (4GB), and Solid State Drive (64GB) that really make this a workhorse.  This is more powerful than my Dell Latitude E6400 that I am running at work.

Touch screen and brightness are really outstanding.  The wide viewing angles are great.

Grade B:
I like the included Bluetooth keyboard.  It is a great addition to make this very nice to use at your desk.  The included case also allows you stand the Tablet upright.

Includes 2 USB ports, Full SD Card slot, and mini HDMI port.

The pen silo.  This is huge having a slot where the pen can go in.  Very nice and really under rated in my opinion.

Grade C:
The wireless card seems to be a little weak in reception.  I am not getting great connectivity or speed.

I may get a little heat on this but the size of the display is too big (12.1”).  I wish this was more around the 10” range.  Fitting more of a page in portrait without the blank edges and wasted space.  Might be just me.

Grade D:
The noise coming from the fan being constantly on.  I understand that this is a Dual Core i5 processor, but the fan is annoying.  I feel like I need to tape up the exhaust fan cover when I go into a meeting.  It is very noticeable.

The battery life states 4.5hrs, but I am getting around 3hrs of use and that is mostly notes, and web browsing.  Using a better power mode setting like balanced mode would definitely increase this time.  Again I can understand some of that with the power that this has.  Just a little disappointed.

No rear facing camera.

Missing TPM Security.

Windows 7 Home Premium.

Update: I see that Asus has released a refresh model BP121 which looks to be more Business related and includes the TPM Security and Windows 7 Ultimate edition.

OVERALL GRADE
I would give this an overall score of a C+.  It is definitely on the right track, but at the price of this unit I would find something else.  It is missing some key components for me to really recommend.

New Data Protection Manager 2010 Book by Steve Buchanan

New Microsoft Data Protection Manager 2010 Book by Steve Buchanan’s [Packt Publishing] (Get it from Packt here).  The book is still warm from being just printed (rel: May 27, 2011)

Visit the Publisher site (link above) and download a free chapter.

I am new to Data Protection Manager (DPM) and needed a way to get up to speed quickly to start managing an existing deployment.  This book is arranged in a way that helps you understand what DPM is, what it does, and how to do it.  The step by step instructions are very detailed.  I would highly recommend this book for those starting out or those wanting to learn more about DPM.

This is currently the only book out on DPM 2010 (as of June 2011).

* I am not affiliated with Packt Publishing or the Author nor did I receive any benefits from this recommendation.

Dropbox – Cloud Storage

Have you ever been at work and wished you could get access to a document that was on your home computer.  Well there is a way to have these files accessible where you have internet connectivity.  It is a service called Dropbox.

What is Dropbox?  Dropbox is like cloud storage.  It is a small application that is installed on your local computer that creates a folder structure that automatically sync’s to the Dropbox website.  Once there any other computer or device like iPhone or Android that you sync to will have those files/folders available.  Because these files are locally stored they are available offline.  They will sync up the next time you are connected to the internet, not the whole file just the parts of the file that has changed.  That is slick.

For example at work you have a document that you have saved to your Dropbox folder.  Now you get home and you want to edit that document.  If you have installed the Dropbox application on your home computer you can access that file because it will download that document to your linked Dropbox folder on your home computer.

Dropbox also keeps a one-month history of your work along with the ability to undelete files, or revert back to a previous version of a file.

So you can’t install Dropbox on your computer at work, no worries.  Just go out to the Dropbox website, log in with your account and have access to all the files through the web.  You’re at a client site and you need access to a toolkit script, just browse out to the web to your Dropbox account and download the file you need.  You’re at your kids concert and you get an email about a document that needs to get to the client.  You access your Dropbox folder from your Droid phone and then emailed to the customer.  That easy.

Sign up for free and get 2GB of space.  By using the following link get an additional 250MB in space.

http://db.tt/Shpkx31

If 2GB doesn’t seem like a lot, there are other storage options available.

Get 50Gb for $9.99/month

100GB for $19.99/month

HP Slate 500 – TPM Chip and BitLocker

I tried to make a case for the Slate at work but the lack of Trusted Platform Module chip (TPM) unfortunately made it a deal breaker.  I work in the aerospace industry and we have some strict policies for mobile computers and one of them being TPM with BitLocker encryption.  The TPM chip gives additional security by forming a “Root of Trust” between the BIOS and the TPM chip.  Basically the TPM chip has to be there to authenticate which prevents the drive from being access if removed from the device.  The lack of TPM chip in the Slate would basically just encrypt the drive at a software level.  If the drive was removed from the Slate it could be accessed by hacking the encryption.

BitLocker without TPM

You can enable BitLocker on a computer that does not have the TPM chip, it just is not as strong security as with the TPM chip.  To do this on the Slate you will need to do a few things.

1. Upgrade OS from Professional to Ultimate or Enterprise. BitLocker is not available with the stock Slate OS Windows 7 Professional.  This will require the upgrade anytime feature or a fresh install.  In my test I decided to try a fresh install of Windows 7 Enterprise edition (90 day Eval).

2. Because the Slate does not have the TPM chip you will need to go into group policy and allow BitLocker without TPM.

Enter gpedit.msc in the search box or run command (must be run as a local administrator).  Under Local Computer Policy browse to Computer Configuration | Administrative Templates | Windows Components | BitLocker Drive Encryption | Operating System Drives. On the right screen double click on Require additional authentication at startup.  You must first Enable it and then select the Allow BitLocker without a compatible TPM check box. 

3. Then you can turn on and enable BitLocker.  It took about 3 hours for it to install/encrypt the 64GB SSD.

Please note that you will have to create a USB BitLocker startup key and a Recovery key on another USB.  The Startup key is required in the Slate when you restart the computer or you will be required to enter the 48 digit code every time you restart.  Also note that the onscreen keyboard is not available in the BitLocker boot up routine, so you would have to have a external keyboard connected.

I ran this for about a week without any system problems.  The only problem that I ran into is I forgot to bring my USB Startup key (only once), which rendered the computer a brick for that one day.  After that I did put the recovery key on my phone which I do take everywhere in case I forget the USB Startup key.

I hope that the next generation Slate will have a more powerful CPU with the TPM Chip.