I've been test-driving a Microsoft Surface Pro 3 for work lately. It's been pretty good, more of a true laptop than its predecessors.
In fact, the higher-end Surface Pro 3 models meet or exceed the specs for standard ultralight laptops at my company - the Dell Latitude 7240 and Apple Macbook Air 13". In all cases, these are Core i5, 8/256 SSD machines. It' pricier than the Latitude but about the same price as the Macbook Air, unless you add in the cost of Type keyboard and external mouse.
The Surface Pro 3 only has a single USB port, which in my case is occupied by the USB RF adapter used by the mouse. It has a single DisplayPort (or mini-HDMI, I'm not sure) that I have not tested yet. Wireless is built in. It's running Windows 8.
The chief complaints I've read about the Surface have to do with Windows 8. I honestly don't mind it. Perhaps because I have such a strong background in Apple's operating systems, I'm not emotionally invested in Windows pre-8. Getting to the Desktop is easy - it's a tile in what W8 calls the Start menu. Some of the swiping is not intuitive, and it's weird to have Explorer open sometimes in Modern mode, sometimes in Desktop mode, but otherwise - Windows 8 is new enough, to me at least, to be interesting.
Windows 8 and Office 2013 integrate well with Microsoft's cloud services. Since we recently adoped Office 365 as a productivity platform, this works out well. With cloud services, in particular OneDrive for Business and Sharepoint Online, arguably smaller local storage is required - we could probably get by with 64 GB or 128 SSD drives, and slower processors.
With the announcement of Windows 10 for late 2015, and a lack of people knocking hard for Surface Pro at work, I don't see us doing any kind of mass rollout. However, we are piloting for use as an executive, and a small group of sales people.
Surface Pro 3 is a good device. I'd consider it for myself. For the enterprise, the high cost makes it a specialty item. In each case though, it's not a "no". It's a "maybe".
Thursday, December 25, 2014
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
Windows Phone 8
I'll say it up front: I like Windows Phone 8. I like it so much I've considered letting it replace my iPhone 4s after I drowned it demonstrating a favorite watersport. That's unlikely just because so much of my personal media, not to mention my favorite phone wallet, are invested in iPhone. However, WP8 does everything I need it to and most of what I want it to do.
Some things are odd. I'd testing driving a Nokia Lumia 925, and Nokia pus plenty of their own apps on there. So, there's AT&T's Navigator app, Nokia's Here apps, Bing Maps, and now I've added Google Maps. Nokia has their own camera app, and their own 'photobeaming', which is really just uploading a file to an anonymous share and sending the link.
The Here transit app is cute. Driving maps are great, but while waiting a the Princeton Junction NJTransit station, I decided to see what Here would advise. I suggested that rather than take the express train directly in to New York City, a train that was no more than ten minutes away, that I take that train to Newark, get off, and find the PATH train (a different system) instead. So that was weird. And cute, and in a way, very Microsoft.
I found an app to put my Mac's itunes playlists and photos on the phone. It works well, though someimes WP8 will tell me it can't play a song even as it starts to play.
So, perhaps I'm no making the best case for WP8, but it is pretty slick. It's responsive, customizable, as or more consistent than iOS, and simpler than any Windows OS has a right to be. I'll hold on to it and use it to replace my Galaxy S4. My iPhone and I, however, will make up and go out to the bar. WP8 and I will just be friends.
Some things are odd. I'd testing driving a Nokia Lumia 925, and Nokia pus plenty of their own apps on there. So, there's AT&T's Navigator app, Nokia's Here apps, Bing Maps, and now I've added Google Maps. Nokia has their own camera app, and their own 'photobeaming', which is really just uploading a file to an anonymous share and sending the link.
The Here transit app is cute. Driving maps are great, but while waiting a the Princeton Junction NJTransit station, I decided to see what Here would advise. I suggested that rather than take the express train directly in to New York City, a train that was no more than ten minutes away, that I take that train to Newark, get off, and find the PATH train (a different system) instead. So that was weird. And cute, and in a way, very Microsoft.
I found an app to put my Mac's itunes playlists and photos on the phone. It works well, though someimes WP8 will tell me it can't play a song even as it starts to play.
So, perhaps I'm no making the best case for WP8, but it is pretty slick. It's responsive, customizable, as or more consistent than iOS, and simpler than any Windows OS has a right to be. I'll hold on to it and use it to replace my Galaxy S4. My iPhone and I, however, will make up and go out to the bar. WP8 and I will just be friends.
Sunday, May 4, 2014
Office 365 for Enterprise
One of my projects at work - the biggest, and certainly the most visible - is migrating our email to Office 365. As part of our divestiture from our former parent company, we're migrating off an on-premise solution to the Microsoft cloud.
I won't give any details peculiar to our migration, but I'll highlight some of the talking points that have come up during migration.
It is not hard, it is not easy, but it is detailed. Especially for a large, multi-segmented enterprise, an existing on-premise environment will be very complex. Examples include if you have multiple SMTP domains, shared mailboxes or resource folders, and multiple forests or domains.
Third-party solutions require careful examination. If you have an email archiving solution, you'll want to know how to migrate those archives to the cloud; typically this is not something Microsoft will do for you. If you have an e-discovery solution, you'll want a full understanding of how that ties in to Office 365.
There are a lot of new features in Office 365, compared to most on-premise configurations. For example a huge mailbox, and OneDrive for Business. However, these new features require new governance and guidance for users. Larger mailboxes mean larger profile caches. What will your users put on their OneDrives, and how will you control sharing?
Our migration is moving forward, and I hope to have more notes on the enterprise experience next month.
I won't give any details peculiar to our migration, but I'll highlight some of the talking points that have come up during migration.
It is not hard, it is not easy, but it is detailed. Especially for a large, multi-segmented enterprise, an existing on-premise environment will be very complex. Examples include if you have multiple SMTP domains, shared mailboxes or resource folders, and multiple forests or domains.
Third-party solutions require careful examination. If you have an email archiving solution, you'll want to know how to migrate those archives to the cloud; typically this is not something Microsoft will do for you. If you have an e-discovery solution, you'll want a full understanding of how that ties in to Office 365.
There are a lot of new features in Office 365, compared to most on-premise configurations. For example a huge mailbox, and OneDrive for Business. However, these new features require new governance and guidance for users. Larger mailboxes mean larger profile caches. What will your users put on their OneDrives, and how will you control sharing?
Our migration is moving forward, and I hope to have more notes on the enterprise experience next month.
Thursday, March 20, 2014
Windows Phone
Lately I've been testing out a Nokia Windows phone for work. Currently we have none in our catalog; employees procuring a phone through the company choose from iPhone, a couple of Android models, and Blackberry. Some upcoming infrastructure changes have me testing out Windows phones.
To the surprise of those who know me even just a little bit, I like it. I like Windows Phone 8. In fact I'd say I like it more than my Android Galaxy S3, which feels cluttered by comparison. It's not an iPhone, but it's slick, feels solid, and has good battery life.
This is a bit of a surprise to many because most of my career has been built on supporting Apple devices. I've been using, supporting, and even taking apart Apple products since I was in college - over twenty years - and because of that many people assume I'm an Apple fangirl.
But, I'm not. Apple makes a great product, but the Apple and Microsoft of today are not your mother's Apple and Microsoft.
For one thing, in the mobile space, their roles are practically reversed. Microsoft may continue to dominate the desktop, but PC sales are led by Apple, and while Android dominates to mobile OS space Apple's iOS is still the market leader, even in the enterprise. Android suffers all the challenges of the early PC software industry without Microsoft's then advantage - a market-dominating vendor (IBM) to license to. If anything Apple is the IBM of modern mobile. No one ever goes wrong picking Apple to support as a mobile platform.
Windows Phone 8 has the same interface as Windows 8's Modern interface. There are tiles on the home screen that can be moved, and snap neatly into place. Moving around a lot of tiles can be cumbersome but it's not terrible, especially compared to iOS icon dragging. All apps are just a swipe away.
I was able to set up my Gmail and, yes, Apple email on it pretty easily, along with a notification center for Hotmail and Facebook. I'm starting to shop around for apps. While it's true there are many fewer, I do recall Apple making arguments about quantity of apps being less important than quality. I'm still assessing the quality of apps on Windows Phone 8.
One thing my executives will like is that Office is on this phone. While most phones can display Office documents, and I'm not sure who will want to get in-depth on Powerpoint or Excel on a phone, it's nice to know I can do it.
So, yeah, Windows Phone 8. Not bad, and even a refreshing change of pace.
To the surprise of those who know me even just a little bit, I like it. I like Windows Phone 8. In fact I'd say I like it more than my Android Galaxy S3, which feels cluttered by comparison. It's not an iPhone, but it's slick, feels solid, and has good battery life.
This is a bit of a surprise to many because most of my career has been built on supporting Apple devices. I've been using, supporting, and even taking apart Apple products since I was in college - over twenty years - and because of that many people assume I'm an Apple fangirl.
But, I'm not. Apple makes a great product, but the Apple and Microsoft of today are not your mother's Apple and Microsoft.
For one thing, in the mobile space, their roles are practically reversed. Microsoft may continue to dominate the desktop, but PC sales are led by Apple, and while Android dominates to mobile OS space Apple's iOS is still the market leader, even in the enterprise. Android suffers all the challenges of the early PC software industry without Microsoft's then advantage - a market-dominating vendor (IBM) to license to. If anything Apple is the IBM of modern mobile. No one ever goes wrong picking Apple to support as a mobile platform.
Windows Phone 8 has the same interface as Windows 8's Modern interface. There are tiles on the home screen that can be moved, and snap neatly into place. Moving around a lot of tiles can be cumbersome but it's not terrible, especially compared to iOS icon dragging. All apps are just a swipe away.
I was able to set up my Gmail and, yes, Apple email on it pretty easily, along with a notification center for Hotmail and Facebook. I'm starting to shop around for apps. While it's true there are many fewer, I do recall Apple making arguments about quantity of apps being less important than quality. I'm still assessing the quality of apps on Windows Phone 8.
One thing my executives will like is that Office is on this phone. While most phones can display Office documents, and I'm not sure who will want to get in-depth on Powerpoint or Excel on a phone, it's nice to know I can do it.
So, yeah, Windows Phone 8. Not bad, and even a refreshing change of pace.
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
A New Year
I remember when I started this blog, I expected it would be about the joy of technology - specifically consumer technology, sometimes applied to the enterprise space.
Many years later, as new things have come and gone, I have to re-assess: what is this blog for?
The answer is much the same, but with more of a tilt towards enterprise, and endpoint computing in general.
When I started this blog, endpoint computing pretty much meant the workstation: a desktop or laptop PC (Macintosh included - I use PC in the generic sense).
Nowadays it also includes mobile devices, whether smartphones or tablets; virtual devices, whether applications or workstations; and cloud data, whether personal storage like Box and DropBox, or collaboration tools such as Sharepoint.
So now, I'll blog more, with stories from the front lines, as it were, personally and professionally.
Here's to a new year.
Many years later, as new things have come and gone, I have to re-assess: what is this blog for?
The answer is much the same, but with more of a tilt towards enterprise, and endpoint computing in general.
When I started this blog, endpoint computing pretty much meant the workstation: a desktop or laptop PC (Macintosh included - I use PC in the generic sense).
Nowadays it also includes mobile devices, whether smartphones or tablets; virtual devices, whether applications or workstations; and cloud data, whether personal storage like Box and DropBox, or collaboration tools such as Sharepoint.
So now, I'll blog more, with stories from the front lines, as it were, personally and professionally.
Here's to a new year.
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