Microsoft are set to formally unveil Windows 8 in just two days at their BUILD conference in California, but what are we expecting them to announce.  Some details of Windows 8 have already been unveiled but others are sketchy, concealed in mist so far.  So, settings aside what we actually know about the product so far, what are we expecting it to be, and what are expecting it will do for us?

The Kinect Connection

First and foremost Microsoft are pushing a new interface paradigm on the end user based primarily around the tablet / touch screen, but also the Kinect.  This is something that many people have missed so far.  A while ago now Microsoft showed off the new tablet interface, based on their Metro interface from the Zune / Windows Phone.  Most recently Windows Chief Steven Sinofsky implied that this would be the ‘default’ interface for Windows 8, with users dropping down to the traditional desktop should they want it.  No I’m going to wait and see just how true this is on Tuesday because it’s likely that the new tablet interface won’t be integrated any more deeply into Windows 8 than Media Centre currently is with Windows 7.

The exciting part of all this will be tight integration with the Kinect.  Microsoft’s biggest announcement, and probably their most impressive display on Tuesday will be this new tablet interface being operated on a standard desktop machine with a Kinect, possibly built into the bezel of a monitor.  This interface type has been sought after by geeks everywhere since Tom Cruise popularised it in Minority Report.  Microsoft have deliberately kept quiet about the Kinect integration with WIndows 8 but, you mark my words, this is will be a headline feature.

A new virtualization

Microsoft will take virtualization to the next level with Windows 8.  It’s already been leaked/announced that the Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate versions of the OS will include the company’s Hyper-V technology.  This will allow them to completely strip away all the legacy support that has been Windows’ achiles heel in terms of security and stability problems for years.

Where this will leave home users remains to be seen, but the inclusion of Windows 7 Mode will probably rectify this.  At the moment you need the professional version of Windows 7 or above to use XP Mode.  This isn’t something that’s going to change but XP will be out of support while Windows 8 is still in it’s active product cycle.  It’s very likely then that Microsoft will use it’s Hyper-V and MinWIn technologies to provide a downloadable, and completely locked-down copy of XP Pro SP3 (possibly even SP4 just for this virtual machine).  This and Windows 7 Mode will enable them to completely strip out all the legacy support, making Windows smaller, leaner, faster and far more secure.

Will Microsoft’s Share Price Dip?

Because of just these two things, which I am convinced will be the headline announcements on Tuesday, Windows 8 will alienate a huge number of computer users who like the traditional way of doing things, perhaps don’t want a new learning curve, and especially in business will be greatly concerned about the support for their legacy programs and how any new interfaces will play with their workplace productivity.

Suffice to say Windows 8 will be bold, a statement made by Steve Ballmer over a year ago.  There is every possibility that business users will turn away in frustration, at least initially, as they see the consumerisation of Windows take hold.  There will be concessions to them which will include tight integration with Microsoft Lync and Office 365, two more inevitable features and possible integration with Skype; though Microsoft’s purchase of the company came too late in the development process this time around.  But I suspect that Microsoft’s share price will probably dip on Tuesday as businesses take a step back to assess the impact of Windows 8 on their own bottom line.  This situation will soon rectify itself though and the share price will bounce back, and even rally further as businesses realise the full potential, especially with security, of Windows 8.

Windows 8 is indeed going to be bold, and I’d love to find out just how true you think my predictions here will be.  Please feel free to comment here.

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Windows 8 will be the first legacy-free version of Microsoft’s world-beating operating system, at least on its new form-factor, ARM-powered mobile devices.  Here there will be no support, at all, for any traditional Windows applications.  Everything will need to be recoded and rewritten for the new platform.  This will be a welcome break for many and, if Microsoft keep a tight grip on their app marketplace in the same way they do with Windows Phone, will help turn Windows into a truly virus-free platform.

Good news then.  Even better was the discovery of Microsoft’s Hyper-V virtualisation client in the 64-bit alpha builds of the OS.  The inclusion of this will enable true virtualisation of legacy software.  There are a great many questions to ask about this however.  We don’t know yet if this means legacy support will indeed be dropped from Windows 8.  There are many technical reasons preventing Hyper-V from working on the x86 (32-bit) Windows platform.

The, frankly, long list of questions we’re all waiting for Microsoft to answer today include…

• Will legacy support be dropped completely
• Will Hyper-V be the way to install and run all legacy apps
• Will there be a Hyper-V equivalent in the x86 builds or will there be XP Mode
• Will virtualisation support be built into all editions of Windows 8 or only some builds (i.e. Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate)

These are just a few of the more common questions.  But this is a subject that really matters as legacy support is Windows’ achiles heel.  It’s the reason why 60% of all Windows patches exist and it’s the reason why virus and malware writers are able to exploit vulnerabilities in the OS.  Indeed it’s the reason why those vulnerabilities exist in the first instance!

It all leaves questions over where home users will be with Windows 8.  Will they be able to use their existing software?  Will they still have the buggy legacy code in the OS?  Will any virtualisation options be simple for non-technical people to use.  The list goes on.

But what are the wider ramifications of dropping legacy support in Windows and what else could it mean for PCs going forward?  Let’s assume for a moment that you’re happy to drop legacy support.  That you don’t have any software or hardware that doesn’t work merrily in Windows 7 and that you’ve never needed to install XP Mode and may indeed never even have heard of it.

The broader implications of this then could turn out to be very good for you indeed.  We could, for instance, begin to see PCs shipping with keyboards that have finally dropped the extra keys required by the original IBM PC, three decades ago.  In this I mean the function keys and others such as Print Screen, Scroll Lock and Pause / Break.  Of these the only keys that are used these days are F1 (universally for help), F8 (when starting your PC for the boot options), Alt-Gr (for producing only about five foreign characters) and Print Screen (for getting screen grabs).

Most keyboards these days come with additional functions mapped onto these keys to adjust backlights, open your email, change the volume and so on.  What’s more there isn’t a single function used by these keys that isn’t easily mappable to another key combination, or that can be done away with completely.  For instance, simply pressing Alt + a letter could produce foreign letters, the B key could bring up boot options and the help button can be done away with completely.

The keyboard is just one example of where the dropping of legacy support in Windows can change other aspects of the PC ecosystem.  We also wouldn’t need much of the support we currently have in hardware (motherboards and processors for instance).  This would in time see a whole new generation of devices that were smaller and consumed much less power, because they didn’t need to be capable of so much.  Before too long, all PCs would be low-power devices with smaller footprints and tiny cases.  The distinction between Intel and Arm devices as we understand it today would be blurred to the point where we’d never be able to tell the difference from looking at them.

Overall there are far more benefits to Microsoft completely dropping legacy support from Windows natively, and hiving it all off to virtual machines that we might think.  This is a great future, one we can all look forward to and I can only hope we see the first signs of it soon.

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It’s long been suspected that Microsoft would include virtualisation technologies in Windows 8.  This is because the largest problem facing Windows is the need for legacy support, which can account for 80% of the latches and updates delivered to the operating system, and is also a major factor in some older software not working.  This is a particular problem in business where a considerable amount of legacy software is used.

Now Microsoft’s Server virtualisation client, Hyper-V, has been been found in the latest leaked build of Windows 8, confirming what many people suspected.

This virtualisation client will do away with the need for plug-in software such as Virtual PC or XP Mode as it means the operating system will support virtualised environments natively.  This could mean something even more pronounced for Windows 8 however.  ZD Net Mary Jo Foley wrote yesterday about a French Microsoft Security and Technical Director who outlined a scenario in which almost all Windows 8 applications would run in a virtualised environment.

The advantages of this approach would be immense.  For starters this means that Microsoft would be able to completely do away with support for legacy applications in the OS and, possibly all the underlying code in the operating system that also support it.  It’s this code that requires the huge number of Windows Updates we currently get every month.

It also means that, we knew this bit already, a virtual machine of Windows 7 would be included with the OS, known as Windows 7 Mode.  It’s possible that XP Mode will also be included.

If Microsoft are sensible, and the inclusion of Hyper-V into Windows 8 seems to indicate that they are.  These legacy operating systems could well be locked-down so that they require neither anti-virus software or updates as XP Mode does at the moment.  This is the single largest problem with XP Mode currently.

The alternative it to find a way to plug these virtual machines into Windows Update so that all of them are updates simultaneously.  This would actually increase the total number of updates received under Windows 8, but if the VMs required updating, it would be the most sensible way to do it.

The benefits of incorporating software virtualisation into Windows 8 are enormous, the core Windows 8 code is much smaller, leaner and fitter and massively more stable and secure.  All the problems are shoved off into easily configurable virtual machines.  The downside is that anybody using these features would essentially have two, perhaps even three, core operating systems to update and maintain.

This is a headache Microsoft needs to make sure that people don’t get as it might well turn people off using the new OS in small business or home environments if they see configuring and updating it to be too much of a chore.  After all, Windows 7 is now good enough for most people.

It’s likely that we could expect to only see the Hyper-V system in x64 versions of Windows 8 as the system is currently only available on 64-bit processors for Windows Server, and has not yet been seen in x86 leaks of Windows 8.  This could essentially leave the x86 version of Windows, which are now in sharp decline anyway, without any legacy software support.

The proper implementation of virtualisation technologies though would make an already extremely secure operating system even more so, by vastly reducing the surface area for attack.  We could then expect to see Windows overtake other operating systems including OS X and GNU/Linus to become the most secure operating system on the planet.  Now that would certainly be an interesting day.

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One of the biggest problems with migrating to a new version of Windows is moving all your software to the new operating system as well.  Nowhere was this more apparent than with the move to Windows 7, which for many is still ongoing.    Windows 7 is far more compatible than its predecessor, Vista, but it has to be because one of the largest plus points about Windows (also one of its biggest failings, but I’ll come to that shortly) is its backwards compatibility with apps.

Microsoft released XP mode shortly after Windows 7, a fully-licensed copy of XP Professional with Service Pack 3 running in a virtual machine on the Windows 7 desktop.  Initially though this would only run on PCs with hardware virtualisation supported by the processor and motherboard.  A few months later Microsoft tweaked the code to allow XP Mode to run on any computer, but again it’s limited to those running Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise or Ultimate.

This doesn’t help you port your applications to Windows 7 though as you still need to reinstall them.  There are third-party programs such as zInstall that allow you to do this, but Windows badly needs a option to do this by default.

This would include an option during the installation of the operating system where  by you could perform an upgrade that would take your existing copy of Windows, say XP, and virtualise it in the Windows installer.  You’d need an external hard disk or a second hard disk or partition to do this as you’d need lots of extra disk space, but there’s no reason why Microsoft can’t allow you to turn an existing Windows installation, complete with software and (optionally files) into a VM that will run in the same way that XP Mode does.

But the lack of such a feature means that Windows has to soldier on with legacy software support and XP Mode.  I mentioned earlier that legacy software support is one of Windows’ biggest failings.  This is because some 80% of all patches and updates for the operating system exist to patch problems in, or caused by, this legacy support.  A clean break is what’s needed and it’s looking very unlikely that the next version of Windows will offer the legacy upgrade options that we all so badly need.

This leaves us with the sometimes tricky option of running our older version of Windows in a virtual machine.  While XP Mode is good for some, if you’re running Windows 7 Home Premium or another unsupported version then you’re stuck with Microsoft Virtual PC.  You can install XP in this, but can you then get it to work?

I got an email this week from a reader who had exactly this problem.  He had an old Dell computer running Windows XP but had upgraded to a new machine, also a Dell, and had installed his original copy of XP into Virtual PC running under Windows 7 on the new computer.  When he’d come to activate it though he was met with failure and no number of calls to either Dell or Microsoft Activation support was helping.

This problem was caused by his XP licence being an OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) copy.  Unlike retail copies of Windows this was licensed only for a single, specific machine and when it came time to install it was looking for markers in the BIOS to tell it what machine it was running on.  Because Virtual PC appears to the OS to be a specific combination of hardware it wouldn’t activate.

If he instead had owned a retail copy of XP he wouldn’t necessarily have had a problem as these copies allow you to transfer the licence from one machine to another when you upgrade your hardware.  He was royally stuffed then.

Even if he had got a retail copy of XP though he still might have hit problems as some copies of Windows; and this can vary depending on whether you bought it retail, and what version, or whether you got it from a subscription service such as the Microsoft Action Pack, simply aren’t licensed to operate in the VM and won’t activate.

This leaves many people running older software out in the cold.  Sometimes their only option is to buy another copy of their old Windows from a computer fair or online, and sometimes they have to shell out more money for expensive virtualisation software that will do the job for them.  This isn’t always an option for people.

Microsoft really need to do better at helping those with older software, particularly some they may no longer have the original install disc for, to migrate that software when they buy a new PC.  Until then these problems, sadly, will continue to occur.

If you have a Windows troubleshooting problem you’d like to email me about, feel free to do so at mike@MVPs.org as I’m always happy to help where I can.

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While information about Windows 8 remains almost non-existent, blogger Mary-Jo Foley has reported some interesting slides that tend to indicate that windows 8 will feature your “desktop as a service”.

So what does this mean?  Well it’s a strong pointer towards more virtualisation support for the desktop OS.  Already Windows 7 allows you to boot into a VM containing a copy of Windows 7 Enterprise or Ultimate just as you would book into a normally installed copy of Windows.  I’ve done this and you simply cannot tell that you’re working inside a virtual machine.

The virtual desktop takes things one step further with applications and data being centrally managed and “delivered” to your computer rather than being explicitly installed on it.

There’s precious little information at the moment but it’s been clear for a while that more virtualisation would be key to Windows 8 (referred to in the slides as Windows Next) and it’s also worth noting that a great many future features for Windows products never make it past, or even into, the beta.

It’s an interesting concept though to allow complete virtualisation of an OS, especially where stability and compatibility issues are concerned.  Microsoft should be applauded for taking this issue so seriously for the next version of Windows.

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In a move that was very expected, but is very unexpectedly early, Microsoft have today announced that they’ve removed the barrier that has been preventing many people from installing and using the new XP Mode feature in Windows 7 Professional and higher.

As of today it will run without requiring this hardware support.  This is excellent news for Windows going forward and is finally a clear sign that Windows 8 could drop all legacy support completely in favour of a virtualised solution like this.

In an interview this week, the General manager of Microsoft’s Windows Commercial Product Management (how do they fit these titles on business cards?) Gavriella Schuster, admitted that Microsoft have found a way to eliminate the need for hardware virtualisation at the BIOS level.

An updated version of XP Mode is being released today, though Microsoft have stressed that anybody already running it has no need to upgrade.

XP Mode is a virtualisation solution that allows you to run older, incompatible software, in a virtual machine as though they were installed in your current Windows 7 installation.  This means they will appear in your Windows 7 Start Menu and run in normal windows on your Windows 7 desktop.  There is no need to have your own licence for XP, as it comes will a full licence for XP Professional, and you don’t need to boot into Windows 7 and then also boot into XP in the VM.

This is excellent news for all Windows 7 users, especially businesses.  Virtualisation offers a way to truly aid in maintaining a stable and reliable operating system.  XP Mode is a huge advance in this area now that the physical hardware barrier has been eliminated.

It was widely expected that this move would come in time for the launch of Windows 8 in 2012.  Clearly the general availability of it already paves the way for a smaller, leaner Windows in two years time that business users will embrace.

You can download XP Mode here.

Source : ZD Net

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Recently there have been rumours that the next version of Windows will move the whole platform completely over to 128-bit architecture, dumping 32 and 64-bit compatibility completely.

This first came about because of a news story broken by Microsoft Kitchen a few days ago in which Robert Morgan, a senior research and development officer at Microsoft posted the following on his LinkedIn profile.

Experience
Senior Research & Development
Microsoft
Public Company; MSFT; Computer Software industry

January 2002 – Present (7 years 10 months)

Working in high security department for research and development involving strategic planning for medium and long-term projects. Research & Development projects including 128bit architecture compatibility with the Windows 8 kernel and Windows 9 project plan. Forming relationships with major partners: Intel, AMD, HP and IBM.

Since then the sweaty masses have, frankly let their imaginations run away with themselves so I thought we needed to look at the situation more objectively, fact by fact.

It’s true that AMD and Intel are working on 128-bit chips, this is something that’s been out there for a while now.  But Windows 8 can’t possibly be 128-bit only.  The reasons for this are as follows.

Windows 7 is still, sadly, saddled with 32-bit compatibility.  This is despite the fact that almost every modern processor supports true 64-bit computing.  This is purely to maintain compatibility with older software (primarily in Microsoft’s most important market, business).  XP Mode, the virtualisation plug-in that allows you to run older software in a licensed copy of XP, goes some way towards addressing this and many people are hoping that 32-bit support will be dropped from Windows 8 completely.  Sadly though, it can’t happen.

This is because in order for XP Mode to work you need hardware virtualisation support on the motherboard and nowhere near enough motherboards yet support this.  By the time Windows 8 comes out it’s possible that all motherboards will, but Microsoft have to get started on Windows 8 code now, and they can’t guarantee this will happen.

It is for exactly the same reasons why Windows 8 can never be 128-bit only.  By the time the technology is mature enough Windows 8 will be ready to launch but the cost of the chips will still be extremely expensive.  They will, I predict, only be used in server farms for hard-core virtualisation tasks on servers.

It’s much more likely that Windows 8 Server will offer full support for 128-bit architecture and that the feature will then be ported to the business and consumer editions of Windows for Windows 9.

The move to 128-bit in itself isn’t such a big job, but it becomes a nightmare when you consider that you also have to maintain compatibility with 32-bit applications.  I can’t foresee a situation where we can have an operating system that supports 32, 64 and 128-bit code simultaneously while still remaining stable.  The only reason that Windows 8 Server could support it is because the 32-bit legacy support has already been dropped from Windows 7 Server.

For all the people who want to see 128-bit support in Windows 8, forget it.  Frankly you wouldn’t get any benefit from it at all anyway.  No software will be written to support it for years to come, full 64-bit support in software is only beginning to appear now, and it will offer the average user or gamer no additional benefits over the 64-bit architecture you already have.

Unless and until the whole computing experience we use in our daily lives demands a move to such technology, it will remain in the server farms of the future.

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