Ah the new Windows 8.1

So if you're running the setup of Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 it looks EXACTLY the same. With one tiny tiny exception. On the splash screen, the copyright for Windows 8 is 2012, and the copyright for Windows 8.1 is 2013. Otherwise, you cannot tell which of the two you are installing. I still don't understand why it could not be just a service pack.

Here are screen captures to illustrate the case. Note, the colours don't look exactly the same because the setups were on different LCD's with the light hitting it from a different angle. The colour is exactly the same shade of blue.

Windows 8

Windows 8.1

UGH

Microsoft things I'm unimpressed with.

I'm on Outlook Webmail using Firefox, and it spams me to upgrade my IE!

It's obvious I don't give a rats ass about IE, I'm using Firefox.

Don't get me started on the Windows 8 'Store'.  Compared to the Sony store, the Microsoft store is a piece of junk. I mean other then the fact that there is no way to configure it for a proxy.

I do love my job somedays

Yesterday I was talking to one of the software engineers that works on some of the problems I find.  In my testing of Windows 8, I also tested Direct X 11 samples. It turns out that the software emulation we do to render some of these samples was causing weird crashes and it was on some of my newer systems with I7 CPU's.  Apparently I seemed to have found an obscure bug in Intels I7 CPU's. If they change the CPU of my system with an I5, the bug miraculously vanish!

I've always said I'm gifted at finding the weirdest problems, this is one of them!!!!  I've found all sorts of bugs in the hardware I test, but this is the find time I find an Intel CPU bug. I've found an Intel chipset bug before.  One of our hardware engineers will be contacting Intel with the particulars of the bug.

I still hate Windows 8 even if it was the source of this cool bug!

Oh UEFI systems, how I do love you. {end sarcasm}

So I've been arguing with a few UEFI systems that came with Windows 8 pre-loaded, and with secure boot.

For instance so far I've been setting up new machines with Windows 7 64 bits, Server 2008 R2, Windows 8 64 bits and Server 2012 on one drive and configuring the system to Boot UEFI for this drive, and the drive is partitioned GPT.  On the Dell 7010, that came with Windows 8 , was never able to install Windows 7 in UEFI mode. It just hangs before even installing. Even with secure boot disabled.

So I figured I'd use the Windows 8 drive it came with and add Server 2012. So I boot the DVD and before I even get to a menu where I can start installing I get the following error "The product key entered does not match any of the Window images available for installation. Please enter another key". I tried again, got the same message. That left me perplexed and discouraged. 

So I moved on from that Dell 7010 and started setting up the Lenovo M92p. I manage to install W7-64, S2008 R2, W8-64 [enterprise] and once I get to Server 2012, I get the same error about the product key.  This is when I went to do research. Turns out that the key it's talking about is embedded somewhere in the UEFI BIOS.   I guess no one ever considered that you might want to install an OS different then the one the system came with.  In the end the solution was simple. Instead of using a 'retail' version of Server 2012, if I used the Volume License version I did not run into this issue. 

I would have ran into the issue with Windows 8 if I had used the Pro version. But because I used Enterprise, I got around the built in serial number.

If you do not have access to Enterprise and Volume License versions, there is a way to by-pass this problem, by adding a .PID file to the install media, this article explains it. 

Wind8w and the corporate world

Windows 8 comes with 15 built in metro applications. Including Mail, which still goes to my hotmail and not the new Web Outlook, though I updated, and Messenger, which uses my MSN messenger contact list.  Aren't they killing Messenger and going with Skype?   That's neither here or there.  The Microsoft store, from which these Metro apps can be bought or updated is not proxy friendly or even proxy aware. As it goes, all 15 of those metro applications need updating already!

So how the heck do they expect these to get updated in a corporate environment? I was asked to test metro apps but I had to use my direct connect. I could not by-pass the proxy. The IT guy spent part of the afternoon in my test lab,  after having configured to open  my sub-net  to all accesses to the Microsoft store. He followed the instructions Microsoft had for IT professionals. It did not work at all.  And they can't open my subnet to everything, that's not secure!

This is really not going to deploy in large companies until it becomes more backwards compatible. Also all those metro apps that all run full screen? In the PC world we don't have just 1 display. Sometimes we even have 16 displays.  Running full screen doesn't seen all that intuitive.  Found an interesting article for running metro apps in windowed mode instead of being full screen all the time.

The Store in Windows 8 is poorly designed. There's no search that I could find. I could hate being on some tablet and have to go through pages and pages of tiles to find the app I want to install? In one category there is already close to 6000 apps. You can sort them by their price or if they are free.  But you can't search. We had to use a browser and then it found the app and launched the store and installed.

Even with open access to internet having metro apps install is slow process and you might have to kill the store over and over, because it seems once an app fails to install, it is in a weird state and until you restart the store app, it is stuck in no man's land.

I'm still not a big fan of Wind8ws

Doesn't Metro look "nice" on a stretched desktop?

Months after it's been out there I'm still not a big fan. Especially not in a stretched desktop, as illustrated. It wouldn't be so bad if you could turn this look off but you cannot. All other versions of windows you could choose to go to a classic or previous look, but not Wind8ws. Microsoft thought they would re-educate us on Windows. Just because someone had a vision doesn't mean we're all going to adopt it like sheep. I never used Windows Me or Vista on a home system. I suspect Wind8ws will also be such OS.

Quality of products go down as quantity goes up

The race to get your product out of the door faster to be the first with a product out to get the share of the market is making for very sloppy products.  I've been noticing that big companies like Microsoft, Apple, google, release products way too early without having fixed most of the problems.

One of hte biggest problems I've been noticing of late, is poor support for larger fonts. And here's the amusing part, the western world is full of baby boomers, who now all suffer from from presbyopia.


Last night blogger forced their new interface on me and the size of fonts I was using in firefox made me run into a plethora of bugs that made blogging a real PITA.  Today as I squint to write this in a smaller font size, I'm not running into 1001 bugs.

I have to admit though, being a QA specialist for the past 20 years, no one ever tests anything other then in small fonts in Windows [with the exception of me that is].  It's obvious when you use large fonts with some apps. Never mind the new "extra large fonts" in windows 7. 

I remember years ago, we wanted to develop a product with high DPI, where we were going to use an extra large font. I believe it was 150 DPI [small is 96 DPI and large is 120 DPI] or maybe even larger, and I did some research for them.   I remember finding that most applications did not function well in such large font sizes, and that developing a product to support such font sizes was just going to be nightmarish because we would get blamed for the fact 3rd party software was not functioning well with fonts that large.

And I bet most people who do QA aren't in the age group who need to use larger fonts so they never think about it.

And for the record I'm not anymore impressed with Windows 8 now then I was back in June. I also have no desire to own any apple products!

Windows 8 - a Catastrophe!!!

I gave my feedback about Windows 8 a few weeks back, and apparently I'm not the only one who has that feeling. This is what an Ex-Microsoft employee has to say.