Windows 10

I recently took the plunge on my Surface Pro3 to upgrade the Windows 8.1 Pro to Windows 10. I am usually quite an early adopter with technology, but I wanted to wait a few weeks to hear a little about users experiences of upgrading. However knowing that the Surface Pro3 is Microsoft’s Flagship product and Windows 10 was their latest operating system designed with Surface users in mind (and the whole hybrid user community) I felt relatively safe taking the plunge.

The upgrade itself was pretty seamless and flawless – I was prompted that my upgrade was ready for me by the small icon that appeared in the taskbar at the bottom of the screen and from there all I had to do was accept the T’s & C’s and then let windows download the installation files and wait while it installs. I actually kicked this off before I went to bed and woke up to my newly installed and updated operating system. This was pretty much a seamless transition with a screen welcoming me to my new windows just like unboxing a new PC.

So, firstly the positive… I was worried about how to keep my windows experience in “tablet” mode. – I Say this because of the way I use my Surface Pro3. On the whole, when creating content, writing documents, email etc I have the keyboard attached and in the evening (mostly) I use it as a table where I am a consumer of information (reading web pages, reading emails, watching Netflix and on the whole, I am invariably only doing one thing at a time and I personally find the touch interface of Metro excellent and ideal for the surface. Well my experience has been that Windows 10 allows me to set the tablet up exactly the way I want – and I can manually switch (if I want to) or let windows switch (if I set it that way) whenever I attach and detach the keyboard. I also love the way that Microsoft is no longer delivering big update hits, but constantly keeping the OS up to date. In addition, the Calendar App is vastly improved with great Google Sync built in – it automatically recognised I have a number of calendars associated with my Google account (including my work calendar) and automatically replicated these through. The email app again is significantly improved with a great experience for Gmail users including “archive” options that work the same way as they do on an iPhone (a side swipe on an email allows you to remove it from the inbox and archive it for later)

Now the bad… the first thing that went wrong was astounding… When I bought my Surface Pro3 I bought the 128GB model. In addition I purchased a 128GB Micro SD Card to store my data on and set OneDrive to Sync content to the SD card. This way the internal drive had plenty of space and the external SD card had about 80GB of data on it (all my OneDrive content) which wouldn’t quite fit on my internal drive. However once I had booted up windows 10, OneDrive setup went through the process of configuring Sync but would NOT allow me to Sync to my external SD card! I raised a support case with Microsoft and was talking to them until 12:15 in the morning and they concluded that they couldn’t resolve the issue and gave me a reference number. As you can imagine this is pretty critical as at this point I can only access my files online and its completely dependant on my internet connection. To this date, it is still not resolved and Microsoft have no answer. Trawling through the forums there are hordes of others complaining about the same problem. Some of these people have come up with innovative solutions – which include creating a virtual hard disk on the SD card and then mounting this as a logical mount point (“c:\files\” for example) but there are two large problems with this. Firstly every time you re-boot the mount point disconnects – so you have to manually go and re-attach it. Some have created a batch process for this and run it as a delayed start up process but its really a botch. The other more important problem is that when OneDrive calculates the free space on your drive to sync your data, can only do that by looking at the drive where the mount point is located. So in my case the C drive doesn’t have 80-90GB of free space in it (even though the SD card does) and so OneDrive will still not sync the data.

After doing some extensive research there is a free file sync and replication program called odrive that will sync data from a load of providers (Box, DropBox, Amazon, OneDrive, Google, etc….) to a single location and manage all of this for you. It does allow you to do this to the SD card so as I write this, it is in the process of replicating my OneDrive to my SD card. However this is far from ideal and Microsoft really need to get this fixed as soon as possible.

Microsoft Surface 3

We are in the middle of a mobile computing revolution. With manufacturers bringing smaller lighter and more powerful mobile computing to the masses and consumers realising the benefits of mobile computing. A significant step was made with Microsoft releasing their Surface tablet. This delivered an almost killer combination – the transportability, battery and instant-on features of a tablet with the familiar windows operating system and full office productivity suite included. Although it was heavily criticized for running Windows RT rather than a full version of Windows (limiting the device to run only those applications available through the windows store) this also had its benefits – Increased security: viruses and malware designed to run on an Intel chipset with windows would not work or execute on an RT device. This was due to the processor being an ARM rather than an Intel. But this is almost the only major criticism – consumers were not able to install things like iTunes and Chrome.

The only other notable observation is the screens aspect ratio – a widescreen tablet is great for watching movies and videos, however if you ever have to use the on-screen keyboard or view web pages, the lack of “vertical real estate” really becomes an issue! With the on-screen keyboard open, you can see very little of any document you might be editing or creating!

Microsoft changed their approach with the launch of the Surface Pro 3 which was a major leap forward. An all day device, extremely thin and light with a 4:3 screen and a killer keyboard.

Microsoft have now launched the Surface 3 (the consumer version of the Pro range) It shares the 4:3 screen ratio (although a little smaller at 10.8″ ) but its built on an Intel Atom x7 quad core processor which delivers performance on par with an earlier generation Core i3 processor.

This means that instead of running the RT (rather restricted version) of windows, it runs the full blown windows 8.1. This allows it to run iTunes, Chrome and any other windows software. What’s more, it not only supports the new Bluetooth surface pen but also has a 10 hour battery. All this for a little over £400. Although you can buy a laptop for less than this, I don’t believe you can can buy a device that is as portable, with a 10 hour battery, and usable performance.

Powermat Wireless charging

I found myself in Starbucks today (a frequent occurrence for me) and there installed in the tables were PowerMac Wireless charging stations. For those devices that don’t inherently support wireless charging, you can pick up a connector for your phone at the end of the table, clip it on and then place your mobile on the table to charge it. The idea being that one day, all wireless devices will operate this way with no connectors to break and wireless charging available everywhere.. No more lost or forgotten chargers, and no more broken connectors forcing replacement devices. Wireless charging is actually quite a simple principal – induction. A coil in the Powermat induces a voltage in a coil in the phone or other device.

As my phone does not inherently support wireless charging Powermat provide a number of adaptors (yes I know this sounds like it defeats the entire purpose) and there was a stack at the end of the table. After having attached the right adaptor to my phone, I then placed the phone and the adaptor on the Powermat to charge my phone.

I must say that there were a number of unexpected experiences. The first was that the phone did not charge with the adaptor up the wrong way. Or let me say that another way, the adaptor must be a certain way up on the table or it won’t charge. The second was that it appeared to be hypersensitive about where it was placed. On several occasions, I placed the unit on the table and the light cam on initially but then went off again – and then didn’t charge – almost as if it was slightly out of some kind of alignment.

I managed to charge my phone to 100% quite quickly (although it was only at 90% before I started charging it) but I’m not yet convinced whether my experience would have been just the same had Starbucks just provided some charging cables and a USB socket on the table.

Microsoft OneNote

Most people know of Microsoft for its windows operating system and its Office Productivity Suite. In addition, its consumer business developing and selling one of the world’s leading Games platforms – the Microsoft X-Box. In addition people might be aware that they make a variety of other software including project management, Technical Drawing, Photograph collages, Publishing, and mapping. However what is probably one of the least known applications that Microsoft provides is OneNote.

OneNote is arguably Microsoft’s most powerful Application. OneNote has notebooks that have categories and each category can have multiple pages (nested if you wish) for starters, this creates a really powerful way to collate your notes and information. But this is only just the start. OneNote includes powerful sharing and collaboration features allowing you to collaborate in real time with other people anywhere on the planet. That means you can share a notebook with other people and send them an invite via email. They can then view and edit the notebook at the same time you are viewing and editing it – adding text, graphics or drawing directly on the pages with a stylus.

For tablets and other touch enabled devices, it supports highlighting and pen input devices allowing you to write using a pen and then getting OneNote to convert your handwriting to text afterwards. OneNote also has screen clipping tools that allow you to capture any area of the screen and embed these directly in your notes. There are many (many!) more features of OneNote including translation, Drawing, Recording and embedding Audio & Video, and exporting to other applications in native formats like Word
OneNote will Synchronise your notebooks and all edits across all of your devices (and all those you share notebooks with) and it is available for Windows, Windows Phone, Mac, iPad, iPhone, Android and directly on the Web.

I now use OneNote extensively and am starting to wonder how I ever coped without it?! Probably the most surprising thing about it is the price. Its Free!

An early adopter invitation from Google…

As an early adopter of Gmail (I’ve now been using Gmail for over 10 years!)  I was privileged to get an invitation to Googles new Inbox.

Inbox is a new email client from Google that continues Googles efforts to rationalise and sort the web – making you more streamlined and productive in the process. As email is now so prolific, we have to dedicate more and more time to help manage our inboxes – which takes away from the pleasure of just “being” who we are. Google has done a lot to help manage email and some of the tools and facilities that Gmail already offer can easily be taken for granted (when was the last time you received snap in your Gmail inbox?). Well Inbox continues Googles journey to bring intelligence to email in order to enable and empower you to be more productive with your time.

I only received the invitation yesterday evening, so its still early days but I’m looking forward to seeing how it helps me deal with life in a modern, connected, email driven society!

Take a look at Google’s video of Inbox:

Apple’s “Its Showtime” – oh no it isn’t!

Now I am not one to usually moan. I am a glass half full person. But my experience of trying to watch the Apple live streaming webcast was comical – bordering on embarrassing!

To set the scene, here in the UK I have an 80mb Broadband circuit to my house with a 20mb upload (and nothing else using the connection before you ask!). I had got home, and opened the “Apple Events” icon on my AppleTV (which incidentally is the latest generation and has up to date firmware). and just before the allotted time, I was able to open the live stream and start watching as they got the last people sat down for the session to start. And then it all started to go wrong…

The stream stopped and failed a number of times. Either going back a few seconds, or showing in real time (i.e.. jumping forward and missing seconds or minutes) or displayed a message telling me that there had been an error and to try again. This happened repeatedly and I was unable to watch more than about 45 seconds at the most before a new error was received. However I had my trusty iPad as a backup! – informed before the event that it would only stream on an Apple device, I had an iPad 2 fully patched and up to date (running the latest iOS 7.1.2) with Safari open showing the countdown on Apple’s homepage and ready to stream. Would this now work?

In a word – no. The iPad seemed to have a whole host of issues of its own – some of which were rather surprising to say the least! – The stream would start (presumably picking up where we were in real time) and then like the AppleTV would fail. When it did, it either error’d telling me that I wasn’t authorised to access the website  “www.apple.com/live…..” or even more surprisingly crashed safari completely causing it to quite to the iPad homescreen. I tried turning the iPad off and back on, quitting all other open apps and ensuring Safari was the only app running and the iPad still kept crashing. So the upshot was that despite having a ludicrously fast broadband and multiple Apple products I was still unable to watch Apple’s broadcast.

Now I know that some of you will jump to the defence of Apple and tell me that the sheer demand could not possibly be met and that they were streaming one of the most anticipated broadcasts this year. However – they knew this before the event. They are “Apple” one of the richest and most powerful technology companies on the planet and for them to have a “technology problem/failure” is quite frankly poor! This was afterall their primary marketing platform

What was your experience? Did you try to watch the live stream? did it work for you? What did you think? Let me know how you got on.

Printing from everything for next to nothing.

There’s nothing worse than buying a device and discovering it doesn’t work with what you already have. In todays home we have phones, tablets, Laptops, PC’s and Chromebooks. If if we don’t have some of these now, chances are we will soon! So buying a printer becomes an ever more complicated affair.

I recently decided that although I already had a good laser printer which is very cheap to run, I wanted to print out more pictures of the kids and needed a colour printer. Now anyone who knows me will tell you that I am one for doing my homework and wanted to make sure whatever I chose was going to work with everything I have now and as far as possible, whatever I might use in the future. What I found not only shocked me, but a number of friends so much so that they all asked me to go out and get them one straight away!

This is the HP Envy 4500. Its completely wireless so you can plug it in anywhere in range of your wireless router. It supports AirPrint and works seamlessly from iPhones & iPads instantly. It installs on a Mac without drivers instantly and Windows finds and installs everything without you having to insert a disc. It is a fully cloud ready printer allowing you to send content to the printer using a unique email address that will allow you (or anyone else you allow) to print to it from anywhere in the world. It supports Google’s cloud print natively allowing you to print from Chromebooks or Chrome running on any computer from anywhere in the world.

The App for iPhone and iPad allows you to check on the ink levels, control the printer and scan directly to the device itself allowing you the full benefits of the printer without having to touch a PC (or Mac!)

As if all that wasn’t good enough, its also eligible for HPs instant-ink programme. This allows the printer to order its own ink before it runs out while at the same time saving you up to 70% on ink costs by cutting out both the wholesaler and the retailer.

The price for all this? £49 which is hard to believe I know. As I mentioned earlier, since buying this, I have had to buy loads more for my friends and family who all seem to want one and are all equally stunned  by the amazing features and incredible value for money.

Banking Safely online

Although most people have now forgotten about the recent GoZeus & Cryptolocker virus outbreak along with the largest co-ordinated response to a Cyber-threat, the risk of a virus, trojan or other malware stealing your banking credentials is still just as real. So I thought I would share with you three ways to access your online banking safely.

Firstly using Apple’s iPad. There have been long and lenghty debates on Apples security model however there are certain benefits to the “limitations” in the way Apps work on the iPad. One of those is that until recently true multitasking wasn’t possible, but even though it is now, Apps cannot unilaterally interoperate with each other – only specific types of interaction and only with the users permission. This means its virtually impossible for for one app to spy on another app. So if you use Apple’s Safari or Google’s Chrome, you can be sure that your details are not being stolen. In addition, the only thing that will run on an iPad are Apps that have previously been through Apple’s vetting process and been approved. This means it is incapable of running the viruses, trojans and malware designed for a traditional PC

Google’s Chromebook is basically Google’s Chrome web browser on a  purpose designed and built laptop. Although there’s little fanfare about it, the firmware is digitally signed and verified at every boot verifying it hasn’t been tampered with. No other malware can inject themselves into the boot sequence and once running delivers an assured safe environment. Again like the iPad, it is incapable of running the viruses, trojans and malware designed for a traditional PC. You can currently purchase one of these in PC World or Currys for £179 which makes them somewhat of a bargain as they are a great, cheap ‘most of the day’ laptop (6-8 hours on a single charge)

I have written before of the virtues of Microsoft’s SurfaceRT or Surface 2 and here is no exception. Although it looks and feels like a traditional windows 8 machine, the simple fact that it doesn’t have a traditional Intel processor and cannot run traditional windows applications (only those available through the built-in Microsoft Store) also means it cannot run the viruses malware and other infections that plague traditional computers. It offers up to 10 hours of battery life and has the flexibility of a traditional computer with USB ports, video out, bluetooth and expandable memory – you could truly use this as your only machine.

To be clear, there are no guarantees in life. I’m not saying it’s impossible for any of these to have malware specifically written for them, however today if you used one of the above for your banking and important work (if not everything else!) you would be immune from more than  99.99% of the viruses, trojans and malware present on the internet today, and I’d be happy to discuss the remaining .01%

Cloud Storage

In 2004 Google launched Gmail with a (then) whopping 1GB of storage for your email. This was arguably the first cloud service and it offered users the tantalising opportunity to “never have to delete your email” everything would always be there for you to search and you’d never have to regret deleting an email again. Since then, cloud service providers have taken off in a big way offering users storage for their data, services like email and video calling, web publishing, and much more.

Where these services really excel is when they manage to integrate their services into the mainstream user environment allowing you to take advantage of their service without having to think about it. Dropbox are a great example of this. Their folder synchronisation allows users to store data in a local folder on their computer that is silently replicated online with just the changes and updates being replicated. This allows you to gain access to your files wherever you are. Since then everyone and his dog are starting to offer cloud storage for user. Most companies offer users a modest amount of online storage with a tiered pricing allowing users to buy more if they need it on a monthly basis.

Well now we are on the verge of a storage revolution. Microsoft has recently announced that anyone who has an Office 365 subscription will have their complementary 20GB of storage increased to 1TB (that’s 1 Terabyte!). This is not only for existing users, but anyone who now buys Office 365 will have 1TB of online storage available to them. This is a massive amount of storage and for most people will be more than you will ever need.

To make this even more compelling, OneDrive functionality is built into Windows 8.1 allowing you to set the default locations for office and applications to your online storage. In addition, you can set Windows to locally “cache” the contents of your OneDrive.

What this means is that  you get the ability to use the files as if they were locally held – fast and offline on your PC when you are not connected to the internet AND you can gain access to them wherever you are in the world AND you can edit them in an online Office if you are not near your machine.

Lastly (as if that wasn’t enough) most home users have a ‘sketchy-at-best’ backup regime. If their computer fails, is lost or stolen then its goodbye to their “digital life” – photos videos, documents & music. However OneDrive is like having an online back saving your files in the event of a catastrophe.

So for £7.99 a month you will get the full version of Microsoft Office on 5 computers (enough for the whole family) with 1TB of OneDrive online storage for each (yup thats a total of 5TB of storage) and the ability to edit your documents online. This will surely set up the whole family.  Alternatively for £5.99 a month you can get the package for a single user and computer.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not perfect. It’s doesn’t backup multiple coipies of your files at different times and if you delete a file from OneDrive it will be gone, but it still provides a level of safety and convenience that’s currently unparalleled.

GOZeus & Cryptolocker

I hope by now you have seen the various news articles on the Cyber threat “GOZeus” or Game Over Zeus. What’s interesting is that this is the largest joint operation between Government and the private sector working together collaboratively to combat what can be regarded as the single largest cyber threat to the UK public we have ever witnessed.

Behind the scenes the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA), the Centre for Protection for National Infrastructure (CPNI), UK Computer Emergency Response Team (UK-CERT) together with Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and other private organisations have been coordinating a response. In many senses, the success of this will set the scene for future collaboration projects.

What’s interesting is that this is probably the first time the public have been given an “early warning” of a specific threat with the ability to act and do something about it.

Interestingly, this is not a new threat. The cryptolocker virus has been around for a while with many victims caught in a quandary : with my personal files completely encrypted and beyond my reach, do I pay a painful amount of money to unscrupulous individuals who I shouldn’t trust, in the hope they might honor their part of the deal and decrypt my files?

Unfortunately the right answer is a painful one and aligned with the government’s approach to terrorism – never negotiate or give in to their demands. If you do, even just once, you set a precedent and provide an incentive to the attacker to continue in their endeavor.

However although it is easy to understand this perspective and agree with it today when you still have access to your files, photos, music and home videos, it becomes another matter entirely when you are put under duress. We all think differently under pressure and the threat of loss, and this is what our perpetrators are counting on. For the cyber attacker, the metrics of scale are tipped in his favor. For a newly crafted virus to be delivered to thousands or millions of machines is relatively straight forward and generally speaking until the first discovery of the virus (which only starts to happen when something awry starts to happen) all anti-virus programs will be completely oblivious to the infection. If millions of machines are infected (as they are now in the case of GOZeus), it only takes a a small percentage of victims to respond to make the attacker millions of pounds. Cryptolocker charges £300 to unlock your files so 4000 victims agreeing to this nets the attackers £1.2 million.

Keeping your cyber-self safe hasn’t changed much over the years. Install and keep up to date an antivirus product, turn on a firewall, periodically back up your files off your computer to another location, don’t open email that have come from someone you don’t know or trust and refrain from the temptation of visiting web sites that purport to offer something that looks too good to be true. Following this simple advice will help reduce your exposure to these risks dramatically and although they will not guarantee you remain virus free, they will

Unfortunately too many people don’t follow these sensible guidelines and experience the pain of clearing up after a virus has

The other option is second is to use a device that cannot be infected. You could for example use an Apple iPad or Microsoft Surface RT tablet which has a different processor and cannot run programs or executables that a normal windows computer can. The Surface provides the same user experience that any other Windows machine does, coupled with the benefits of a tablet and the security of a machine that cannot run traditional windows viruses.

The following are free tools that have been specially developed and made available to you by a number of internet security software companies that will scan and remove the GOZeus and Cryptolocker threats. You can use any of these tools regardless of the make of internet security software you normally use.

Symantec
http://www.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2014-052915-1402-99

F-Secure
F-Secure Online scanner (Windows Vista, 7 and 8)
http://www.f-secure.com/en/web/home_global/online-scanner
F-Secure Rescue CD (Windows XP systems)
http://www.f-secure.com/en/web/labs_global/removal-tools/-/carousel/view/142

Kaspersky
http://support.kaspersky.com/viruses/utility#kasperskyvirusremovaltool (if you think your computer is infected with malware)
http://support.kaspersky.com/8005 (WindowsUnlocker utility for if your computer is infected with CryptoLocker)

Sophos
http://www.sophos.com/VirusRemoval (Windows XP (SP2) and above)
Heimdal Security
http://goz.heimdalsecurity.com/ (Microsoft Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8 and 8.1.)

Microsoft
http://www.microsoft.com/security/scanner/en-us/default.aspx Microsoft Safety Scanner (Windows 8.1, Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP)

McAfee
http://www.mcafee.com/stinger

Trend Micro
http://www.trendmicro.com/threatdetector
(Windows XP, Vista, Windows, Windows 8/8.1, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Server 2008 R2).