Category: Windows8

Working with Microsoft Surface Pro 3

Selffie of Surface Pro 3

At Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference, July 14 – July 17 in Washington DC, they offered the Surface Pro 3 with a discount of some $ 300,-. I bought one after stumbling back and forth trying to decide for 2 days. It’s still a lot of money.

But oh joy! This is really an amazing piece of hardware (and I’m pretty spoiled when it comes to hardware). I’m not going to put in all specs, there are plenty of places where you can find those. It’s about experience. The first experience after unboxing is its weight, it will probably float (but I’m not going to try that). It’s much lighter than my Surface Pro, maybe not when you compare specs, but it’s about the experience. Probably you’ve seen the picture somewhere of Surface3 compared with an iPhone for thickness, which shows is exactly how thin it is. How the h*ll do they get all that stuff in a light and thin device like this.

Plug it in and switch it on! Surfaces boot really fast, so does this one. No need to get a cup of coffee first. Great screen resolution! Go through to necessary configuration steps and ready to go. Configure the Pen for the screen, Stream a copy of Office Professional Plus from Office 365 and install a couple of my favorite Apps, run Windows Update. Playtime … or worktime! This device does both. I think I’m out of the 3-devices world. My Surface Pro 3 and my Lumia 925 will do. I travel really a lot so that is a big win.

I bought myself 2 extra’s, the Surface Mouse and a Miracast Receiver. The latter allows to project your screen wireless to any HDMI screen, beamer or projector. Did my first presentation with that yesterday. Just walk across the room, Surface Pro 3 in the hand and do my demo, my presentation and white boarding in PowerPoint and OneNote and the Pen… boy, impressive. And not just for me, imagine what my customer wants now…… At home, stream Netflix movies to my television. Nice technologyJ.

For work, I use my Administrative accounts form a Virtual Machine and Hyper-V runs smoothly on the Surface Pro 3. The type-cover is a bit bigger than the one on my Surface Pro and certainly the mouse pad area is works much better. Of course I’m typing this on my new “machine”.

My impression after one week: totally terrific! Welcome to the 2-devices world. No compromise from a tablet point of view and no compromise from a laptop point of view.

Windows 8.1 Hyper-V Networking and Enhanced Session Mode

As a good Administrator should, I have two user accounts. One as an ordinary user and one Admin Account. We have all our Services running in the Microsoft Cloud and of course I do not want to fill out my credentials every time I open my browser or do stuff in Private Browser sessions. Although tearing it down, we still have some servers Onprem and to access those I need a VPN Connection to our Cisco ASA appliance (I live on Aruba and our office sits on Curacao). It took me some trial and error to get things going…… with my Virtual Admin Machine.

@Home I have a simple Wi-Fi set up and as we all know by now, running a Virtual Admin Machine just over a Wireless Network Adapter is no great success. The proper way to set that up is as follows:

In Hyper-V Manager, create a new Internal Switch:

Assign the Network Adapter of the VM to that Internal Switch:

Go to Network and Sharing center on the Host, click properties on the Wireless Adapter and hit the Sharing Tab and share it with the Internal Switch:

 

At this point the Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client (3.1) on the Host refuses to connect over the Wi-Fi connection because the adapter is being shared. Bummer. There is probably a workaround for that but I want my Admin stuff not on the Host but on the VM. So this is just a note.

I installed the Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility client in the VM and tried to connect. Bummer……. The client refuses to connect out of a RDP Session. I used my favorite Search Engine:

  • There is a client config file on the local machine -> not so
  • In the ASDM Console connected to the Cisco ASA Appliance there is Node called “Client Profile Settings -> not so
  • Both the ASDM Console and the ASA OS are outdated, downloading the latest version -> (Cisco) accountname + pw -> not documented…..

So, I tried starting at the other end, the VM. How come “RDP”? Am I not connected to the Console in the “Virtual Machine Connection”? My favorite Search Engine again: A “cool” feature of Windows 8.1 Hyper-V is “Enhanced Session Mode”. By default this is set to “Enabled”. It allows for RDP-like experience in the Virtual Machine, redirection of drives etc. There are three places where you should look:

And in the Virtual Machine Connection Window:

Unchecking the “Enhanced Session” in the Virtual Machine Connection did the trick. The Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client now connects through my Shared Wi-Fi Connection!

All in a days work………

 

 

 

 

 

 

TechEd Europe 2013 Day 3 and Day 4: Windows 8.1 & Office365 with PowerShell

Due to a tight schedule I have not been able to post a Blog last night… I’ll do it now. Although the Windows 8.1 Preview is already out there I still think I should mention a few things. And of course I had to see my co-chairman of the Dutch Office365 User Group do his session on managing Office365 with Powershell. The rest of my time at TechEd I was proctoring the Hands On Labs and I was assisting in the Instructor Led Labs, making a difference for the delegates of the Event.

So, now we have Windows 8.1 with the return of something like a Start button (imho it could be left out anyway, remember how laughed at the Start button back in ’95?). But if it makes you happy, I’m happy. The real good news is that the switching between “Metro” (oeps, Modern UI) and the classic desktop is much less. For desktop users, they can choose to stay in the classic desktop and yes, boot to the classic desktop, while touch/tablet users can stay in the Modern UI. That’s neat!

In my previous Blog I already mentioned “Workspaces”, a safe online/offline way of connecting to corporate fileshares over https for mobile devices. You need to implement this on a Server 2012 R2. Windows 8.1 defaults to Skydrive for saving files but gives the user the opportunity to keep a locally cached copy of those files.

 

Danny Burlage did a nice job in delivering his session Powershell. I know as a MCT and speaker that Powershell is not “sexy” and it’s hard to deliver an interesting hour! It took him only 1 hour to provision a newly created Office365 Tenant with User, Contact, DistributionGroups, Rooms, Archives and so on with just a few amazingly simple PowerShell scripts.

CU at the next Teched?

 

Surface experiences, absolutely fabulous!

My Surface was late, USPS Express Mail took 8 days from Seattle to Amsterdam….. But that’s all forgotten now, I’ve been playing (and working) with it for 3 days now. And I’m HOOKED!

Although I have had Windows 8 running on my Laptop for a couple of months now, Surface is surprisingly “new” because of the touch experience. I only attach the Touch Cover when I really need to type, like right now. I can manage Tweets and mail very well with the on screen keyboard. When you are already used to Windows 8, the first thing you notice is that Surface is Windows! Mostly because of Office and with that SharePoint.

I try to do everything on Surface, my full blown Laptop (2x SSD, 16 GB) just sits there as RDP endpoint. This week I will do a MCSA Server 2012 Training, the VMs run on the laptop and I will presenting on my Surface…. Cool! There is just one drawback on that; the VGA-adapter sits way to loose for walking around and gesturing, I will have to use some duck tape to keep the adapter in place. So far I do not miss a thing on Surface, and, it’s NOT a PC. For a lot of work I will use the laptop but mostly I will leave it at work or at home. No more carrying around my “portable datacenter” when I visit customers or do events. Light travelling J.

There is one thing really bugging me and that is the Lync App; it works at home, it does not work in the office. Both on the Office365 Community site and the Lync site, I found people struggling with this issue as well. So far none of the suggestions worked for me, it seems to be in the App, as the Office Lync client works perfectly and according to the Forums it happens with both Office365 and Lync Server onprem. Just have to wait for a fix I guess.

So, what else can I say. Not much although I realize I hold the Future in my hands. As I said many times before, who needs an OS, who needs a Desktop. We just want an interface in which our apps are accessible. Surface is just that.

Keep you posted!

Opinions on Windows 8 RT, where are we going?

Just five more days and Windows 8 reaches General Availability. And Windows 8 RT devices are for sale next weekend. There’s a lot of opinions going round now, a lot of them angry-like or even negative. I also have an opinion, I happily run Windows 8 and I was in time to pre-order Microsoft’s Surface RT, so my opinion is clear J.

I want to be in front, ahead of things, I’m already done with Server 2012, looking for what’s next. So I’ll be one of the first in The Netherlands to own a Surface RT, without a Start Button and without a Desktop. And I think that’s where we are going, who needs an OS, who needs a Desktop with a Start Button. It’s all about the apps.

And that is exactly what Microsoft is aiming at: deliver consistent apps-experience (apperience) on whatever device, there’s even tiles on Server 2012! Very nice that we can run our VMs on Azure but running VMs is so out of date. Microsoft is the first – and as largest OS producer they should – to recognize the end of the OS era. It will take some time, sure. But look at how fast we abandoned wired phones, both at work and at home. It must be a year ago since I last held a wired telephone device in my hands (or actually DIALED a number). On our mobile phones we talk just a little on the brand and flavor, we talk more about the apps. And if the app will run on a particular device.

That is the next step when there is no more need to run apps on the devices, here is HTML5, so the apps runs in a browser and browsers are found on all devices. Delivering apps is becoming a nightmare because of all those platforms, I think it’s really stupid to want to run a Windows Desktop running in a Datacenter on an iPad through a Citrix Receiver. Only because there are some “legacy” apps on that Desktop that cannot be run on the iPad? In my opinion it’s a transition phase, the Desktop is dying and with that so is VDI, SBC, XP, Windows 7 and even Windows 8.

In a couple of years we will all have pretty simple devices running nothing but a browser and some supporting OS for connectivity and Interface purposes; not for running apps though. Microsoft’s Surface RT is a pretty dumb device, kind of portal for apps. I will use Office2013 WebApps on Office365, save my files on SkyDrive and SkyDrive Pro, tether through my Windows Phone when there’s no Wifi available (hardly imaginable in The Netherlands), and yes, connect to my full blown Windows 8 Enterprise machine if I must (hey, this is a transition phase for me also). Some people are waiting for the Windows 8 Pro tablets, the Intel based machines which can run legacy Windows application. Those people clearly missed something in the conversation. Huh? You wait to by the newest of the newest of the hottest because you want to be able to run LEGACY apps? Yeah, smart. Will cost you something also.

So, I can hardly wait to start working with my Surface RT!

 

Windows8 and Office365

After 48 hours of playing with Windows8 I found some interesting things when using Office365 Services.

Exchange

Windows8 comes with a Mail client. For my company Qwise, we have set up Active Directory Federation Services. But when connecting with the Windows8 Mail client, you just put in your mailaddress and your password and your ready to go. Apparantly the redirection to the Federation Server occurs in the background. That’s neat!

And you can have multiple accounts in there as well; I use Office365 for both my workmail as for my private mail. As in Outlook 2010, I can connect to more than one Exchange Server! Cool!

Here’s what the mail client looks like:

Sharepoint

When connecting to SharePoint Online you do get redirected from the Portal to your AD FS Server for credentials. But from that point all looks great in Internet Explorer 10 (?).

Here’s a shot of Word WebApp:

Lync

The Lync client is a bit less….. it does not run as a Tile, you have to go to the old Desktop for running Lync….. I guess there will be some sort of remake of Lync Mobile that will fit in to Windows8.

Looking forward to more………