Watching a good part of the Google IO keynote yesterday, I was struck by how nice it would be to be part of the Google ecosystem. It could bring a new level of convenience to my life and various Google apps could suggest new things I might really be interested in doing.
I would happily sacrifice some significant level of privacy for these things. (In fact, yesterday I set up my Exchange Online account so that it automatically forwards a copy of all my emails to my most unused Gmail account so that Google apps can know more about me and thereby be more helpful.) Partly this is because I think the loss of privacy is a foregone conclusion.
But, also I was captivated by the potential of Google to do useful things with my personal information and their ability to mine my information and that of countless others for data that would ultimately be useful to me. That is Google’s killer app—its ability to know more than anyone else in the cloud and thereby be more useful to me—and to advertisers or anyone else who wants access to that kind of knowledge.
The key to this is Google’s access to information—via emails, location data, photographs, videos, searches and the like. So the more people that use Google services the more knowledge they gain and the greater their competitive advantage over other companies that might hope to do the same.
Their non-cloud products of Android, Glass or the Nexus hardware should exist to make more people use Google services and feed its appetite for data.The should NOT sacrifice this to attempt to win some competition with non-cloud competitors. Why should Google care if Android kills off Windows Phone, or if Gmail is accessed from Outlook.com? If those things happen they have already won.
This is why Google is correct to stress the importance of interoperability—they get access to more people’s data, and wrong for them to sacrifice that to promote non-cloud products, e.g. not letting Windows Phone users access Youtube with a native app. Some teams there must not understand what is really important.
Our kids think it is really cool, especially the new Lenovo convertible tablets we got—the Yoga and Thinkpad Twist.
My wife does not like it at all– usually because she finds herself running a new Metro app when she would have preferred to run a traditional desktop app. This happens with the most annoyance PDF readers, mail and Internet Explorer. I have removed these from the start screen and changed the default applications, but this is a shame: Windows 8 should let you use different default apps depending on whether they are being invoked from a Metro app or a desktop app.
Is there any rhyme or reason to what portions of the OS have been metrofied and what portions have not? Switching between these apps isn’t problematic but it is aesthetically annoying.
Windows Key-D is my new favorite command. In now use the Windows key more than I ever did in two decades of using older iterations of Windows. Here is a handy list of keyboard shortcuts.
Metro needs a way to elegantly address apps that will never be touch-centric, e.g. Word, Photoshop etc. Maybe that means creating a metro-style aesthetic for desktop apps,
This move had been a long time coming..
All of our PCs were now running Windows 8 and were not joined to or SBS domain. It was time to decommission our SBS 2008 server and remove it from our home network.
This was the easiest part of the process. I purchased a Dell tower PC at Costco, upgraded it to Windows 8 and di the following:
- Named it with the same name as our old SBS server (Leora after the character in Arrowsmith)
- Moved the external drives containing shared files and backups from our SBS machine to the new Windows 8 box.
- Shared the files from the user “Server” using Homegroup (and seprarately as well, but this may not have been necessary)
- Installed Media Center 18 on the new box
- Installed Homeseer on the new box and copied over the directories from the SBS installation of Homeseer using a flash drive
- Set up file history to back up files to external backup drive
- Disconnected the SBS box
- Connected the new server to our network
- Set our router to turn on DHCP (formerly handled by SBS) and assign a specific IP to the new server
As I installed Windows 8 on our PCs or added new Windows 8 PCs to our network, I did not connect them to our SBS domain—except the first one which I used to sync settings to the Microsoft accounts for the users, before removing from the domain.
The process was longer was longer than what I had previously used when connecting to our domain—which made me appreciate the existence of the domain a little more than I had before.
Here were (most of( the steps in the first Windows 8 conversion:
- Connect to Office 365 rather than local Exchange
- Transfer all the users documents to SkyDrive (this would replace My Documents redirection to the server)
- Sync Live Mesh Settings
- Install Windows 8
- Associate domain users settings with their Microsoft ID (used by Windows 8 to sync settings)
- Remove the PC from the domain
- Create a Home Grioup
The rest of the steps were used on each new Windows 8 PC and each newly converted Windows 8 PC (after disconnecting it from the domain):
- Add the (now) free Media Center upograde
- Create users for each member of the family
- Add child users to Family Safety
- Set the parameters for their computer use using Family Safety from Control Panel
- Assign admin privileges to my own user ID
- Add the PC to Homegroup, selecting not to share anything (only an ID on our server will actually be sharing files)
- Install Aoos:
- Office 2010
- J River Media Center 18
- Feed Demon
- Add printers
- Sign on as each user and:
- Install Windows Essentials
- Set the PC as a Trusted PC using Snyc Settings
- Access Skydrive from the desktiop to start syncing user files
- Add Skydrive to the user;s documents library
- Do other library setup for that user
- Sign in to Outlook
- Run Media Center 18 and set the default library to that on the server
It almost makes you wish you could do this with a domain. But of course, while some of this might be done using a domaiin, much could not (at least not by me.
So, while this was a tedious process involving 6 PCs and 5 users each, it is one hope not to have to repeat again soon.
I also hope that Windows 8’s sync functionality improves to make this easier as it evolves.
In order to keep the benefits of an Exchange Server and lose the complexity of Small Business Server I need to move to a cloud Exchange provider. At $4/month/user, and Microsoft standing behind it, Office 365 seemed to fit the bill.
My first attempts at migration met with failure. I could not get Office 365 to connect to my Exchange Server. Hours on the phone with Office 365 support yielded no solution. My strong suspicion was that some misconfiguration in SBS Exchange was the source of the problem. This was the complexity of SBS striking out at my from its position with one foot in the grave. Fortunately I had access to free MS technical support from Microsoft to assist in the migration.
Finally someone suggested simply exporting my 5 users’ accounts to a PST file, signing on to Office 365 and then importing that PST file. It was a kludge, but with only five users it was the path of least resistance.
This approach worked and I could finally cease using SBS Exchange. A few more Snafus lay in wait, however:
- I discovered the hard way (not getting emai for a weekend) that I needed to change my users over to use our domain manually within Office 365. This does not happen automatically when configuring Office 365 to work with a user’s domain.
- I needed to disable auto discover on my old SBS box so that clients could connect to Office 365 instead of the dead Exchange server.
- I also needed to change a setting on the group I had created as a common email address for my wife and me so that emails from outside the organization could go to that address.
This would prove to be the hardest part of the move away from Small Business Server.
With the release of Windows 8, I decided this was an opportune time for some significant changes in our home technology infrastructure: we cease using Small Business Server 2008 and start using Windows 8 on the six client PCs scattered throughout our house.
This change was prompted in the main by two changes in Windows and Small Business Server: Windows 8 would allow syncing various aspects of users settings and files that had previously been done using our Small Business Server Domain; and the latest version of Small Business Server ceased to include Exchange.
Running Small Business Server in our home had brought the benefit of a home Exchange Server (e.g. shared family calendars) and an easy single sign on using any PC in the house. But it had also brought its share of travails:
- WSUS ceased to function on several occasions
- There was a nagging DCOM problem
- It was slow
- J River Media Center was hard to set up on it
- Mobile email access required special work with certificates
- A problem with SBS made it hard for other PCs to access the internet
- and so on…
With the advent of Windows 8, I thought had the opportunity to keep the advantages of SBS while getting rid of the complexity.
The first step in the plan was moving from our SBS 2008 Exchange Server to Exchange in the cloud: Office 365.
What an embarrassment of riches. Never have there been so many great portable computing devices. But with so many great devices has come a profusion of mobile operating systems. Ideally, I would like to focus our home’s devices on one, but I fear that may not be possible.
We currently have: a Windows Phone 7.5 (that I use), a Nexus 7 Tablet (used in our living room), and iPhone used by my wife, a couple of old IOS devices (an iPhone 3GS used over Wi-Fi and an iPod Touch used by the kids), 5 Kindles of varying types and generations (one for each person in our family).
We have a common family account for Google, iTunes and Amazon so that we can share content purchased from each of the services. At this point, I have purchased core apps for each platform, making it possible to buy a new device without a big investment in apps (this investment probably would not exceed $75 in any event).
I wish we could standardize on one OS and one content provider, but that is not without issues. Here is what I like and dislike about each of the operating systems and ecosystems:
Windows Phone
In general I like the user interface on my Windows Phone, preferring it to Android and IOS. I like having a device with a large 4.3” AMOLED screen.
Here is what I don’t like:
- Missing key apps: e.g. and app for HomeSeer, for Schwab and for Amazon MP3.
- Lack of folders for apps, which leads me to forget about apps that I have and might otherwise use more frequently.
- The need to use Zune software to load music files. I wish I could simply copy music files onto the phone when it is connected by USB to my computer.
- Broken podcast support. I cannot get podcasts to sync, despite spending over 4 months in email communications with the Zune support people. So I am forced to use clunky third party software.
IOS
In general I like that almost any app I want is available for this platform.
I dislike the small 3.5” screens on iPhones and iPads that are too heavy for comfortable reading. I also would find it had to justify spending $400 for an iPad to be used mainly for Media consumption.
I find the user interface is dated, but functional.
Android
In general I like that almost any app I want is available for this platform.
I like the size and price of the Nexus 7. I like the fact that the Nexus 7 can act as slightly too expensive digital picture frame when not in use. I like the fact that I can sync whatever content I want with the Nexus 7 simply by connecting it by USB cable to any PC.
Like IOS, I find its user interact (with screens of icons) to be dated but functional. I have not found many widgets in useful enough forms to make much use of them.
To Standardize?
If nothing new were on the horizon, I would move to standardize on Android, replacing my Windows phone with a Galaxy Nexus. I like its openness, plethora of apps and inexpensive nice devices. (We will keep e-ink Kindles in any event because they service a unique function for which we don’t need a generalized computing device: replacing stacks of books.)
But that is not the case and the following events that will occur in the next two months lead me to hold off on that course of action:
- The emergence of Windows RT tablets. At what price? Any 7-inch tablets that I could substitute for the Nexus 7?
- Windows Phone 8. The new Nokia 920 looked like a very nice device. Will it have folders? Can sync music files to it without using Zune?
- The Kindle Fire HD. Will this marginalize the Nexus 7 that I like so much?
- iPhone 5. Will this be so great it leads me to reconsider the reasons am skeptical of IOS devices.
- A new Galaxy Nexus phone. How will this compare to the new Windows Phone 8 phones and iPhone 5?
