Tagged with windows

Windows 8: First Impressions

Windows 8

I’m still playing with the Windows 8 beta – er, sorry, “Consumer Preview” — and exploring its details. However, first impressions are important, and I think I have a few key observations to make.

Last year, I downloaded the developer preview when it became available. I didn’t spend too much time with it, because it was obvious how early of a build it was. Still, the Metro interface was promising, and the few apps that were available showed great promise.

One big complaint about the developer preview, though, was how much it relied on touch. You could use a mouse and a keyboard, sure, but they were second-class citizens. On the one hand, this was good: Microsoft desperately needed a good touch interface, and there was nothing better than Metro. But on the other hand, it was awkward to use on a traditional computer. Considering that this was the next version of Windows, that was a major problem.

Since then, Microsoft has attempted to soothe everyone’s fears with a consistent message – a message that was reiterated by Steven Sinofsky at the Consumer Preview launch event:

Sinofsky’s concern, however, is ensuring developers are on the same page, designing Metro apps that work just as well on touchscreens as they do with a mouse.

"The goal should be that the operating system scales with you," added Sinofsky.

"That’s what we mean by a no-compromise experience."

For the Consumer Preview, they took many steps to help make the Metro interface more intuitive for the keyboard and mouse, so that there were no compromises. But were they successful?

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Restoring a Time Machine Backup That’s Stored on a Windows Home Server

I think that may be the longest title I’ve ever had on my blog. Anyway…

Last week, my Macbook Pro hard drive suddenly died after about two years of dedicated service. While it’s a bit surprising, I did push the little guy pretty hard – I regularly run OS X alongside Windows 7 on VMWare, and I keep both platforms busy. Considering the VM is actually running off the Boot Camp partition, it’s a lot of work for the drive. But I digress.

I’ve been running Time Machine for a while, so I was hoping that I could restore its most recent backup onto my replacement hard drive. There was just one snag, and I knew this would be an issue: my Time Machine backups are stored on my Windows Home Server. As you can imagine, doing this is a bit of a hack (here are some instructions if you don’t know how to do this yet). And as I’m sure you can also imagine, doing a hack like this makes a “normal” Time Machine restore impossible.

What I mean by “normal” is that if you boot off the OS X installation disk, you can choose to restore a Time Machine backup instead of installing a brand new copy of the operating system. When you choose this option, it scans for a Time Machine backup – but only the locations it supports, like external hard drives or Time Capsules.

Now, sure, you could probably copy the Time Machine backup on your WHS to an external drive, since the backup on the WHS is essentially just a disk image. But I didn’t have an external drive large enough to spare – and besides, there must be a better way.

Perhaps my Googling was sub-par at the time (I was in the middle of restoring my laptop, after all), but it took a while to find the answer. You can’t do a normal Time Machine restore, but you can use the Migration Assistant:

  1. Install a brand spanking new copy of OS X. Make a throw-away account when you’re prompted to create your first account. I named mine “Admin”.
  2. Mount your Time Machine backup. In Finder, use the menu option Go –> Connect to Server…, and type the address to your Windows Home Server. This is usually “smb://” plus the server’s name. (For me, it was “smb://beat”.) OS X should find the server, connect to it, and list the available shares. Connect to the share that contains your Time Machine backup, and double-click the .sparsebundle file to mount the disk. (Enter your Home Server username and password, if prompted.)
  3. Run Migration Assistant. This tool is located under Applications –> Utilities on your Mac hard drive. Start it up, and read the intro if you’d like. Click Continue when you’re ready. Choose the “From a Time Machine backup or other disk” option, and click Continue. If you were able to mount the disk image in step #2, then it should be an option to choose from. Select it and Continue.
  4. Restore the backup. The last screen shows you the available items to restore, and how much space they’ll take up. If you created the throw-away account in step #1, then there should be no conflicts with restoring your real account from the Time Machine backup. Select what you do or do not want to restore, and then click Continue. The restore can take a while depending on how much data you have.

That’s it! When it finishes, your account should be back to the way it was, exactly as you left it (as of the last Time Machine backup). You can now throw away your throw-away account, or leave it as a battle scar.

Since it took me a while to find this on Google, I’m writing it up to hopefully give it more exposure. And if this is already well know and I just missed it, well – at least now I have a record in my blog of when my hard drive failed and I was sad. :P

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How To: Create a New Windows Boot Partition

Paul Thurrott recently wrote up an excellent article about how to replace your hard drive, but keeping your OS install completely intact.  The secret is using Windows 7’s backup "system image" feature to create a complete, bootable image of your old drive, then restore it onto the new drive. Check out the full article for the details.

But I always end up making things more difficult for myself.  When I was faced with a similar situation, I ended up taking a different route.

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MacBook Pro – One Week Later

A week ago today, FedEx dropped off my shiny new laptop, direct from China.  Since then, I’ve been hurriedly prepping it and setting it up to see how well it would fit into my digital world – especially since that world is mostly Windows-based.

The “too much text, didn’t read” version is that Windows 7 and Mac OS X coexist very nicely.  There are certainly frustrations in doing so, however – you have to be willing to work through the issues.  I also don’t think MBP is the ideal solution if Windows is the only operating system you plan on using. But as a laptop, the machine is stellar.  And for running both Windows and OS X, the choice is obvious (not that there is much of a choice).  Read on for the nitty gritty.

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I’m a PC — AND a Mac

The secret is out — I decided to get a MacBook Pro.  It’s something that I have been considering for a while, but it still feels a bit strange getting an Apple machine.  As anyone who’s met me knows, I’m not a big fan of Apple.  Sure, I have an iPhone.  But I’m not a particularly big fan of OS X, and I’m often critical about Apple’s software and business practices.

So why a MacBook Pro?  Isn’t that like buying into the dark side?

Well, let me assure you first of all that I’m not a "switcher".  I’m not going to port Trowl to OS X, and I’m not going to start wearing black turtleneck sweaters.

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