Since this happened such software has begun to creep back into Windows.  Windows 8 is without doubt the worst offender ever with a new Metro version of Internet Explorer embedded into the new Start Screen as well as the desktop version present also.  It is the first version of Windows to include anti-virus software and now we learn that the ARM-version of Windows 8 will also include desktop versions of Microsoft’s next office suite, codenamed “Office 15″ in the form of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.  So what’s happening here and could Microsoft face more anti-trust action in the coming years?

To look at this we have to look at the competition.  When Microsoft were going through their anti-trust actions there really wasn’t any.  At first they just had two desktop operating systems to compete against, OS X and GNU/Linux.  With this they had a monopoly, but one that they’d worked hard for and earned.  With the software things were a different issue where there were a great many web browsers, media players and more.

I began to wonder what might happen with further anti-trust actions when Microsoft announced that, for the first time, they would be bundling anti-virus software with Windows.  ”Windows Defender” isn’t like the existing Windows Defender that first appeared with XP, it’s a re-badged version of Microsoft’s free Security Essentials product.  So far no other anti-virus vendor has kicked up a fuss, though that may still happen.

We had further news though this week that Windows 8 on ARM processors will also include bundled versions of the company’s next generation Office suite in the form of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.  Surely then this would cause a real storm and trigger another anti-trust investigation right away?  Actually I don’t think it will, and it’s likely that Microsoft may never face another anti-trust investigation again.

There are several reasons for this.  The first is that in the last few years all manner of popular and effective competition has sprung up in the operating system space, in the form of iOS, WebOS, QNX, Chrome OS and most notably Android.  Each and every one of these operating systems (with the notable exception of ChromeOS which is entirely cloud-based) come pre-installed with a bespoke web browser, media player and more and all but iOS come with a pre-loaded Office productivity suite.  This then is surely what will have triggered Microsoft’s decision to bundle a version of Office with Windows 8 tablets.

It’s a savvy move too.  They will undoubtedly be cut-down versions, similar to the Office web apps, and will be used to try and up-sell people to the full version of Office on their PCs in the same way that Office Starter, which is commonly shipped free of charge with new PCs does already.

It is very easy now then for Microsoft’s lawyers to argue that bundling Office 15 with Windows 8 tablets isn’t anti-competitive at all, especially as they don’t do it with the desktop version of the OS.  They’re just copying what other tablet operating system makers have been doing for some time now.  With the anti-virus argument it might be a harder argument to make, and it is possible we will see some of the smaller or even major anti-virus vendors complaining to the US authorities or to the EU.  It’s much more likely though that they’ll simply dismiss Windows Defender as being “rubbish” (which it isn’t I should add if you’re considering it) and trying to convince people to buy their own suites anyway.

So what do you think the legal future is for Microsoft given everything they’re bundling with Windows 8?  Why not tell us in the comments below?

“WOA (Windows on ARM) includes desktop versions of the new Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. These new Office applications, codenamed ‘Office 15,’ have been significantly architected for both touch and minimized power/resource consumption, while also being fully-featured for consumers and providing complete document compatibility. WOA supports the Windows desktop experience including File Explorer, Internet Explorer 10 for the desktop, and most other intrinsic Windows desktop features—which have been significantly architected for both touch and minimized power/resource consumption.”

Now before I begin I want to talk about some of the things that happened in the last century, namely the birth of the consumer versions of Windows.  This began with Windows 95 which was bold in much the same way as Windows 8 is now because it broke the clearly defined user interface paradigm and went with a new way of working with our desktops.  It turned out that this new way was hugely successful, but this freedom to innovate with Windows came at a cost.  The consumer and business editions of Windows had begun and they stayed on this track until the launch of Windows XP in 2001.

By the end of the 20th century things were not going well for consumer editions of Windows.  The operating system had become a stability nightmare while its business counterpart was doing fine, and clearly the Windows NT kernel, the core of the operating system, was much more stable and secure than anything the consumer team could come up with.  Thus at this point the teams were merged and Windows became a single product for both consumers and businesses alike.  Even this had its problems however with Windows XP, the first outing, being criticised as being too “consumer friendly” and not business-like at all.  The arguments passed however and XP became, and still is, hugely popular on the workplace desktop.

Now the kernel discussion has moved to other platforms with Windows Server and Windows 7 already sharing the same core and rumours abounding that the next major update of the Windows Phone operating system will follow suit and adopt what’s been called MinWin.  This makes complete sense.  If Microsoft have only one kernel across all their products it makes it easier to update, makes cross-device compatibility simpler and much more besides.  This is what Apple has been doing for several years already when they based the first version of iOS on their desktop OS X operating system.

Now however Windows 8 is changing the game, and the problem is tablet computing.  Microsoft are so far behind in the tablet market that if they don’t do something radical, right now, they’ll lose it forever and at that point their market share will inevitably dwindle to the point where they become the next IBM and have to find something else to do.

Windows 8 is giving everybody the new Metro tablet interface as the default Windows 8 UI.  Sure, business users will be able to switch it off and revert to the desktop but that’s not the point.  The point is yesterday’s announcement about Windows 8 running on ARM-powered processors.  Here Microsoft have now stated that the desktop will exist on ARM and that the platform will come pre-loaded with versions of the next editions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.  Surely this is great news?  Anybody who wants a Windows tablet that they can use for serious work will now be able to.  The desktop is being modified to work much more effectively with touch and all is going to go brilliantly.

If you detected a hint of sarcasm running through that last paragraph then you’d be right.  I am deeply concerned about the inclusion of the Windows desktop in the ARM version of the operating system.  While its easy to argue that this paves the way for hardware manufacturers to create low-power ARM-based laptops and ultrabooks, the simple fact remains, and Microsoft have confirmed this, that no existing x86 or x64 apps will run on the ARM version of Windows.  The existence of desktop versions of these Office programs won’t even give hardware makers the option to hide the desktop on their devices.

This means, for starters that the most common question asked by people with ARM-powered Windows 8 devices will be “Why won’t my software install on this computer?”  But the ramifications run much deeper than this.  It means, for instance, that Microsoft have pretty much given up, in the short term anyway, of creating any meaningful versions of their Office apps for Metro.  Adobe has shown with Photoshop Touch how powerful touch apps can be, and a Metro implementation of the Ribbon UI, which is already very finger-friendly, could be extremely effective.

But no.  Microsoft have stated “desktop versions” instead, despite the fact that past Windows explorer these people will have nothing else that ever will, or ever can run on their desktop.  The term, ‘frustrating’ will probably come up a lot from these people.

Meanwhile, business users and IT Pros are bemoaning having Metro foisted on them when they’d much rather get used to that at home but still keep the traditional desktop at work.  This doesn’t sound unreasonable on the face of it.  What Microsoft are doing here though is taking Windows 95 too far.  They’re forcing an unwanted consumer interface onto business users, while now at the same time plugging a pointless and useless business interface into consumer devices!

I could have coped with the former but the latter just makes no sense to me.  Thus I believe the time has come to split Windows once again into consumer and business versions, managed by different teams.  It’s a good time to do it too.  The Windows kernel is very well managed and there’s no reason in the world why both versions couldn’t just be features and skins on top of MinWin, much in the way Windows 7 and Windows 8 are already.  We need a clear separation and demarkation between what is a consumer product and what is a business product.

I can understand installing Metro onto some business machines because there are a great many times when a Metro app will work great in the workplace, I’ve seen them demonstrated personally, and for everything else there’s the desktop.  Putting a desktop that won’t run existing Windows programs though, and for which the major software companies are unlikely to ever recode their applications due to the small size of the market they’d be selling into just doesn’t make any sense.  So now Windows has to be split.  There has never, in my view, been a better case for doing it and frankly there’s never been a more appropriate time.

This looks like a reasonable time to launch the beta given that Microsoft previously said it would release it at the end of February.  For those on the official testing programme or who subscribe to their software via the MDSN website, with Windows 7 these groups received the beta around one week to ten days before so if this is repeated this could mean that they get delivery of the beta any time from the 17th of this month, which is what I was expecting personally.

The Consumer Preview will include many features not seen in the previous Developer Preview release, which Microsoft gave out publicly in September last year.  This is because many of those features either had not been written yet or were not finished.  One of the things that is set to change considerably is the new Metro interface, and several leaks in the last couple of weeks have shown that in some ways Microsoft has changed it significantly.

The Developer Preview has received some criticisms from business users and IT Pros, primarily because of Metro, but it remains to be seen how many of those criticisms are answered satisfactorily by the Consumer Preview.  Business users should not be concerned about the name “Consumer Preview” either as this is basically code for, “We’ve got developers excited [hopefully] but now we need to spur those developers on and make sure they’ve not forgotten about us by getting millions of members of the public excited as well.”

New features that have been demonstrated but not yet used by the public, including the new “Windows App Store” will open at the same time.  The final release of the operating system is expected later in the year around October.

I’m writing this as an outsider looking in.  I’ve no real idea why Microsoft have chosen to keep quiet on so many things, such as having Windows 8 default to the desktop as the main user interface which seems to be the biggest and most common question.  I do have some insight into the company, the products and the people behind Windows 8 however, so hopefully I might be able to shed some light as to the reasons why, and what the historical perspective of this is.

Before Windows 7 the Windows betas were a mess.  The official testing community, of which I have been a member for years, usually got access to builds of a new operating system during the alpha stage.  This was pretty pointless as if Microsoft wanted you to find bugs you would probably find one within five minutes of installing the thing that would prevent you from using it completely.  In fact Microsoft have said that the majority of bugs reported by testers over the years were things the company already knew about.  One of the problems associated with such an open development process was that features that never made it to the final product, either because they never worked reliably, or because the company simply ran out of development time, did on occasion cause some distress for testers and bad publicity for Microsoft.  A couple of great examples are the relational file system WinFS and a new Guest Mode that would roll back user settings and files when someone new finished using your PC.  Both were slated for release in Windows Vista and neither worked properly.  WinFS, under a new name, is only making a comeback now, and only in Windows Server 8.

It was after this that the former head of Microsoft’s Office division, Steven Sinofsky, took charge of Windows development.  Sinofsky was already a very secretive man and much of the secrecy now revolves around him, his personality and his desire to make certain that the only information that makes it out into the public domain is the correct information.

Thus Microsoft launched the Building Windows 8 blog where Sinofsky and his team have been trickling out information steadily since shortly before the Developer Preview of Windows 8 was released.  We can be certain that if Microsoft didn’t need to get developers writing Metro apps we certainly wouldn’t have seen Windows 8 then at all, and it wouldn’t be appearing for the first time until now.  This is because Sinofsky and the Windows development team hate releasing anything that’s neither finished nor ready.

Alas this was what they had to do with the Developer Preview and, as such, it’s had a lot of very bad, and probably equally unfair, press.  What Microsoft didn’t do was adjust their marketing strategy at the same time and, as such, the communication about the operating system has focused almost entirely on what’s new, what’s cool, where huge improvements have been made, but that it has not actually been answering many of the questions people have been asking.

This could be because at the time the answers to those questions simply didn’t exist.  Don’t forget that Windows 8 still had an awful lot of development to get through after the DP was signed off at the beginning of last August.  That’s a long time ago now.  It could equally be though that it wasn’t the discussion Microsoft wanted to have.  For example, telling IT Pros that they could simply switch to the desktop as their default UI could very well have undermined all the work they have been doing getting the world, and software developers, excited about Metro.  After all, if Metro was something that could just be switched off, why would people worry about it and you’d very quickly find it being relegated to a minor sub-feature in Windows like Media Centre.

I may be wrong with my assumptions and assertions here, but it’s certainly true that nobody within Microsoft is coming up with the answers.  This might change in the coming weeks or it might not.  One thing is for certain though, the wider world is simply not going to stop asking.

I don’t want you to think though that I will be spouting Microsoft’s official PR line, the company is perfectly capable of doing that on their own and they don’t need me to help them.  What I want to bring to the discussion though are the thoughts from someone who has spent some time with the OS, knows perhaps a bit more about what’s coming than I generally let on  ;)  and understands the different aspects of the OS in some depth.

Many of Martin’s concerns centre around the new dual-interface between the desktop and the Metro UI.  This is a legitimate question about why we either need or should have a dual-interface in an operating system.  I feel that Windows 8 is a transitional OS between the way we’ve been doing things now for around 30 years and the way we’ll be doing them in the future.  Anybody who has spent any time working with a tablet will intuitively use Metro and won’t even think about the fact that they’ve only got one (or two) apps open at a time.  We’ve just gotten used to it.

Martin is quite right though that people often have other things running in the background such as messenger apps, multiple browser tabs and so on.  If you look at the way some tablet operating systems handle these you can get some idea of the direction that we’re going in with Windows 8.  Don’t assume for a moment though that Metro in Windows 8, as seen in the Developer Preview or as expanded in the Consumer Preview (beta) will be anything like Metro when Windows 9 arrives, or even Metro when Windows 8 Service Pack 1 is delivered.  As a UI it’s still a concept, even though it’s roots can be traced back almost a decade ot Windows Media Centre, and as such much is set to change and evolve in the next three years.

So how this multi-application space works in Metro with Windows 8 will be determined by how people and companies write their apps.  We will see a great many different ways of doing things as many imaginative people bring their own ideas and concepts to the Metro UI, and it will be interesting to see where these take us and what Microsoft officially adopt.

Ultimately then we will lose the desktop.  The fact that we’ve been using it for the last thirty years doesn’t mean there isn’t a better way of working.  Metro may not be it, but we have to start somewhere.  I’m not sure how much I’ll use Metro myself but despite having a very uncluttered desktop, the prospect of having an interactive one that is telling me, all in one place, what my latest email is, who’s mentioning me on Twitter, what the forecast is for tomorrow, what my next appointment is, the current currency rate between the £ and the US$ and more is very appealing.

Regards using the desktop, Microsoft have said that, even if it’s just in group policy, you will be able to set the desktop as your default UI.  This will be important for people for whom all their software requires it.  While we’ve seen some very imaginative tablet apps appear such as Adobe Photoshop Touch, it will be several years before top quality professional-grade apps appear for Metro.

Martin also raised concerns about using Metro and the new Windows-orb’less desktop with a mouse and keyboard.  While Microsoft have not announced anything yet, they have said that everything you can do with touch you will be able to do with the mouse and keyboard.  Personally I’m looking forward to seeing what new mouse gestures they offer.  Also don’t forget that very soon we will have monitors and laptops with Kinect sensors in them as well.

Martin is quite right though that as things stand the dual-interface, and how you switch between them and control them, can be confusing.  It’s partly for this reason that one of my new books “Windows 8: Out of the Box” has been commissioned where it probably wouldn’t have been for Windows 7.  On this we’ll just have to see what Microsoft offer us to increase usability and to minimise the learning curve.

So what about the Start Menu?  Microsoft wrote a very long blog post detailing why they were making the changes they were back in October.  I am of the opinion however that the Start Menu should have been dropped when the Windows 7 taskbar was introduced.  These essentially offered us two completely different ways to find and launch programs.  All Microsoft need to do is find a way to control (or bucket) all the extra programs (uninstallers / utilities etc.) that appear in the Start Menu and all new programs should be pinned to the taskbar by default.  For my part, I won’t be sad to see the Start Menu go.

To reassure you Martin there is a great deal more coming for desktop users and IT Pros, but that none of it was finished in time for the Developer Preview.  When the Consumer Preview is released in a couple of weeks we will all see what these features are but Microsoft have promised several hundred small and large features in total still to come.

Let’s be honest that Windows 8, as I said earlier is a transitional OS, much in the way early builds of Apple’s OS X were when the company was moving people off old PowerPC software.  It is probably going to be painful for some, but if there really is a new way of working ahead of us that can genuinely help productivity, usability and most importantly accessibility with computers, then I believe we should embrace it.  For a while though it will have to co-exist with the traditional desktop and there can never be a truly integrated way to do that.

It is a given at this point that full support for both Office 365, Microsoft’s SkyDrive cloud storage service and the next generation Windows Server 8 will be included.  This will include new features that will be coming for Windows Server this year that we may not yet know about.  It will also possibly mean that there is multi-platform support for things like Windows Phone, Windows 8 Metro and tablets.  This is something Microsoft have always been very good at… or have they?

While it’s easy to argue that services such as Office 365 are groundbreaking, and this is why it has been so incredibly popular since launching, and that the Office Web Apps and their integration with SkyDrive is extremely innovative and very welcome for a great many people, the web has sadly continued to move on and Microsoft Office simply hasn’t moved with the times.

One example of this is the rumoured reluctance of the Office development team to create a version of the suite for Windows 8′s new Metro interface.  To a certain extent this rumour, if true, is understandable as Microsoft Office is an incredibly complex piece of software and also the price of tablet and expected price of Metro apps is but a small fraction of the overall cost of Office.  However not only have web apps such as Google Docs and Office Live proven that the majority of people only need basic tools, but software such as Adobe’s Photoshop Touch for Android tablets has proven hos easy and simple it can be to create truly immersive and powerful touch-friendly apps.

Despite my Microsoft ‘lock-in’ for most things I also use other operating systems and software.  For the last six months I have been using an HP Touchpad tablet every day for light web browsing, email and work.  This weekend I will be taking delivery of a Blackberry Playbook and I will evaluate it and decide which of the two will become my day-to-day sofa lounging computer.  The problem with these devices, and also with the iPad, iPhone, Android tablets and Android Smartphones, Linux and to a limited extent also the iMac is the lack of iniquity in the world’s most ubiquitous integrated Office and collaboration suite.

Microsoft may be currently in the process of releasing limited apps for these platforms such as their communications platform Lync and the note-taking app OneNote, but the vast majority of Office users, if not the vast majority of computer users, use Word, Excel and PowerPoint.  These are the applications they need on their devices and I very much doubt you will ever find a regular Office user who will admit that working on and editing a document in the Office web apps, inside a browser is a friendly and accessible experience!

It’s odd to look now at how, I was going to say fragmented but that’s the wrong word, how broad the computer and operating system market is.  When Microsoft started producing Office and when it became truly popular, taking over from software such as WordPerfect and Lotus 123 we had only the PC and the Mac.  If you wanted to work on the move you had to synchronise your files with your PC and they could only be stored on your PC.

Now, more and more of us are storing our documents in the cloud, and you only have to look at the success of services such as Mozy, Google Docs and Office 365 to see that this is an unstoppable roller-coaster.  This is something that Office 15 and Microsoft need to address, not just launching a new version of the suite for the PC, but simultaneously launching it for every other operating system available.

For instance they’ll see what emails you receive and subscribe to, what videos you watch, what things you search for, what sorts of documents you work on and what the content of those documents is, what you blog about, what you take photographs of and where, what newspapers and blogs you read, what you buy online, what parts of the world you’re interested in (and where you live), who you chat to and what you like to buy.

All of this information, when put together, helps advertisers paint an incredibly detailed picture of you and with about a billion users worldwide, that information is incredibly valuable.

Now Microsoft have hit back with newspaper adverts in the US saying that this isn’t what want at all and that you should ‘obviously’ use their products and services instead.

In the advert they say…

Google is in the process of making some unpopular changes to some of their most popular products. Those changes, cloaked in language like “transparency”, “simplicity” and “consistency” are really about one thing: making it easier for Google to connect the dots between everything you search, send, say or stream while using one of their services.

But, the way they are doing it is making it harder for you to maintain control of your personal information. Why are they so interested in doing this that they would risk this kind of backlash? One logical reason: Every data point they collect and connect to you increases how valuable you are to an advertiser.

So is this fair enough, sour grapes or the pot calling the kettle black?  In fairness it is all of the above as there are elements of all of these in the advert.  Google make almost all of their revenue from advertising and the better and more attractive they can make their own advertising, and the data they collect on their users, the more companies they will attract and the more money they can charge for the (your) personal information.

Many people simply don’t want to be tracked and Microsoft point out that you can do this in the latest version of Internet Explorer.  What they don’t mention is that you can also do it the latest version of Google’s Chrome browser as well and that many of the advertising and data-mining tactics used by Google are also used by Microsoft.

Consumers will have to decide for themselves how they feel about the approach Microsoft are taking here, though many will just see it as a company taking advantage of an open goal for a publicity stunt.  The fact remains though that the US Congress is so concerned about the new changes Google is introducing that they are holding an closed door hearing to discuss what the changes mean.

So what do you think about Google’s new privacy policy?  Have you even heard about it and what do you think of Microsoft’s response?  Why not tell us in the comments below.

Let’s look first at the missing IT Pro features in the Developer Preview and what this release was actually for.  Microsoft are going after the tablet market aggressively, frankly they have no choice to do this now or to wave goodbye to it forever.  This is why Windows 8′s new Start Screen and Metro apps have been engineered the way they have.  Nobody can blame them for this either.  As we all now know from smartphones and tablets, any platform will live or die on the quality and quantity of the apps available for it.  Let’s just look at what happened to HP’s TouchPad, with the same now beginning to happen to the RIM Playbook.

For this reason it is essential that Windows 8 have a critical mass of Metro apps available in the new Windows store on the day that Windows 8 goes on sale.  The only way to do this is to start early, and the only way to get developers writing for the new interface and platform is to give them a copy to play with.  It was far from essential therefore that anything other than Metro was actually working for the giveaway date at their BUILD developer conference last September.

This doesn’t mean that Windows 8 will be bereft of IT Pro features, it just means that Microsoft’s focus in the run up to September was finishing Metro and making sure it was stable.  Microsoft have told me privately that plenty of new features for IT Pros simply weren’t finished by then.  They are coming and will all be finished for the beta.  In fact that build of Windows 8 will already have been signed off by now and will be going into escrow this week.

Microsoft have a huge mountain to climb in the tablet market and they’ve got to create a buzz with the beta.  Some people at the company have admitted to me privately that the company made a mistake in releasing the Developer Preview publicly instead of just through developer channels.  People downloaded it, expecting it to be a finished product and it simply wasn’t.  This has resulted in the new OS getting large volumes of negative publicity and people damning the finished product when they’ve actually seen less than half of it.

So why Consumer Preview then if IT Pros hated the Developer Preview?  Microsoft need to get consumers worldwide downloading, installing and using the Windows 8 beta in their multi-millions.  They need people talking on blogs and forums and in the press about how much they love it to spur on developers in writing apps for the platform.  Microsoft haven’t released any figures yet about how quickly Metro apps are being written, but this could mean it’s off to a slow start potentially.  Generating excitement and press coverage then is huge.  This doesn’t mean that the IT Pro features won’t be there, just that Microsoft have got to get Metro off to a flying start from being three or four years behind the market leaders.

The company will also want to completely differentiate the latest release from the Developer Preview by indicating that they were both completely different builds and intended for completely different audiences.  Simply calling it the beta next month wouldn’t do this and many people might assume that it will just include a few tweaks and bells on top of what was seen in September.  Thus this differentiation is absolutely necessary.  Especially given Microsoft’s private admission that a public release was an error last time.

The other reason to call it a Consumer Preview is that, for a while at least, all the media attention will be on the new Metro interface.  Microsoft know this and will try to use this coverage to spurr on app developers.  In short it’s actually quiite a clever move calling it this.   It doesn’t mean, as I’ve already said, that it won’t include the ability to switch off the new Start Screen, or won’t include Hyper-V, new multi-monitor tools and much more besides.  It is, frankly, just a name and IT Pros need not be concerned any longer.

They’re not wrong either as all of your software and hardware needs to be properly tested, which usually involves picking one or two choice non-critical departments and migrating them immediately to see what if any incompatibilities and problems occur.  Once this testing process is finished, normally after a couple of months, the deployment plan for sometimes hundreds of thousands of workers can begin and, as any IT Systems Administrator will tell you, that is a massive planning job.  It’s difficult in small companies as well because the same process needs to be observed to minimise any downtime that might result from problems arising in the deployment process.

Windows XP is already out of mainstream support which means there are no more service packs or upgrades available.  Extended support ends in April 2014.  After this time there will be no more bug fixes, no more patches and no more security updates.  You can be certain then that when this happens virus and malware writers will target the platform like never before.

The question arises then if Microsoft should continue support if so many people find XP as comfortable as an old shoe, and much more compatible with their older software than Windows 7?  Microsoft have already extended the support life cycle for Windows XP and it’s very unlikely that it would ever be extended again.  In fact I’d simply say that it will never happen.

So where does this leave businesses and home users who need to upgrade?  My advice is simply not to wait any longer.  This problem isn’t going away and unlike the millennium bug of twelve years ago, is a very real threat to businesses everywhere.  It’s not just their own systems too that can be compromised but all of the sensitive data they contain, much of which is about the general public.

Microsoft have many deployment tools that can help ease the burden of a migration and third-parties offer free virtualization environments that can help you keep older software running for a while longer.  If you have bespoke software that you need to use however that will not run, or not run properly under Windows 7 this needs to be addressed urgently.  The problems associated with XP software and Internet Explorer applications have been highlighted for years now.  Everybody knew the end of life was coming and too many businesses seem to be simply ignoring it because XP has always been here, and they expect that it always will.  They simply aren’t looking at the bigger picture of security, data protection, hacking and the associated fines that accompany these, some of which can be extremely hefty indeed.

But what will these companies do?  Will they wait until Microsoft report there’s just 600 days left?  500 days?  300 days even?  After all, can a company physically manage the process in under a year?  It’s good that Microsoft are actively highlighting the problem, but bad that many people are taking it as a marketing exercise to try and sell more copies of Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 and Office 2010.  It really isn’t that at all.  It’s a serious issue, it’s not going away and it needs to be dealt with quickly.

A new post by Microsoft employee Dharmesh Mehta on the Inside Windows Live blog highlights core reasons why users might want to switch from Gmail to Hotmail, before explaining the actual steps that migrates their email account to the Hotmail email service.

• Hotmail & Facebook work well together. You can update your Facebook status, chat with Facebook friends, view their updates, and comment right from your Hotmail inbox. You can’t do this from Gmail.
• You can easily share lots of photos and large attachments. Hotmail lets you share hundreds of photos or other files in one message using the integrated online storage from SkyDrive. You can’t do this in Gmail.
• Hotmail works great with Office. Using the Office Web Apps, Hotmail lets you view and edit Office docs for free right in your inbox. Gmail doesn’t work well with Office.
• Hotmail lets you get a handle on graymail. With customizable categories and scheduled sweeps, you can quickly clean up things like newsletters, social updates, and daily deals so you only see the mail that really matters to you. Gmail doesn’t have Sweep.

These features alone won’t convince many users to move their email account to Hotmail. Combined with Google’s announcement however they could be enough to get some users to move their accounts.

It needs to be noted though that Gmail offers features that Hotmail does not offer. This includes IMAP support or two step authentication, both of which are not supported by Hotmail.

The guide to switch from Gmail to Hotmail lists three steps.

• Create a Hotmail account. If you don’t already have one, you need to create a Hotmail account. The best way to do this is to get a new email address either @hotmail.com or @live.com. Or, if you already have an email address you want to keep using, you can keep using it and sign up here. You don’t have to use our domain.
• Import your old messages from Gmail. You’ll probably want to keep your old email and contacts so we’ve made it simple to bring them in. TrueSwitch is an easy tool which will import your email and contacts and forward any new email to Hotmail for 90 days. Go to the TrueSwitch site and follow the steps there. When you sign back in to Hotmail, you’ll notice that it’s beginning to import your emails (this could take a few hours if you have a lot of emails to bring over).
• Connect your Gmail account. This step is optional, but if you want to make sure you receive future messages from Gmail, you can have Hotmail automatically get all new emails that are sent to your old Gmail account. These are the steps to connect your accounts:
  a. In your inbox, click Options and then More options.

  b. Click Sending/receiving email from other accounts.

  c. Click Add an email account.

  d. Provide your Gmail account details.

Step 2 and 3 address core issues that users who move mail accounts want resolved before they even start thinking about it. Access to all previous mail messages and the forwarding of messages that are send to the old account are covered in those two steps.

Are you considering moving your Gmail account to another provider?

But the technology market is different, and in the last three years we’ve seen it take on a whole new dimension where Windows is no longer the obvious operating system choice, and where comparisons are increasingly being made with IBM.  On tablets, a market that Microsoft invented back around 2003 they’re going to have a real fight on their hands, and in computing generally it’s no longer clear what devices and form factors we’ll be using in even five or ten years time.  What is obvious however is that the traditional desktop PC is well and truly on its way out.  Lastly new operating systems such as iOS, Android and WebOS have blown away the notion that people will resist a learning curve on new devices.  So what would the world be like if Microsoft stopped making Windows desktop and server products?

First of all it’s not very likely, Microsoft would probably drop Windows products last of all with their expensive research and development centres and other products such as Xbox falling by the wayside first, so there’s no need to worry in the short term.  Windows 8 is a big gamble though and if it fails then Microsoft will either have to backtrack with Windows 9, pull an immensely impressive rabbit out of their hat or face the consequences of poor decision-making.

There has already been talk that Google would like to bring Android to the desktop.  HP said the same of WebOS, which they are still developing or at least maintaining, and could put extra resources back into quickly.  Ubuntu Linux is now at least as friendly as Windows XP was, only the lack of big name software for the platform is holding it back now and Apple’s OS X is becoming more like iOS with every release.  So it’s already clear that there’s plenty of choice.

We might also expect an open-source upstart operating system to appear too and it might even be a reinvigorated WebOS.  Companies such as the Mozilla Foundation might see an opportunity as their Firefox browser begins to fade in popularity, and this is just one of several places where a new operating system might emerge.

In the business space, some of the GNU/Linux companies including Red Hat, might jump in with versions that will run Windows programs on the desktop.  This isn’t new and has already been done with operating systems such as Lindows (later renamed Linspire).  This product still exists today and could prove popular with businesses if Windows 8 and Windows 9 fail to deliver the working experience that they need.

Again it’s very unlikely that Microsoft will cease development of Windows in the next twenty years at least.  If they’d have done it even five years ago there would have been almost no alternatives to choose from.  Should they do it now though businesses and consumers would probably just shrug their shoulders and quietly move on to the next big thing.

Much of this depends on how well it sells and what the general uptake is, especially in the tablet market.  Windows 8 is a big tablet gamble as by the time it comes to market the competition will already have had a three year head start, that’s simply enormous and not to be under-estimated.  There are also issues and hurdles about running desktop apps on ARM hardware (which is frankly the only way we’ll have Windows tablets with great battery life for some years yet) and if people can’t run all their favourite desktop apps, or if it is too complex and difficult to use them, will they even bother with Windows tablets at all?  After all, this apparent bonus over the competition, along with the ability to use any USB device may not exist on ARM and as such, Windows 8 won’t be any better than iOS or Android overall.

I’m beginning to wonder then if it might be in Internet TVs that Windows 8 is set to make its biggest impact.  Microsoft have said nothing about Internet TVs past announcing plans to bring Windows Media Centre to set top boxes and then going very quiet on the subject.  Think about it though, when Windows Media Centre gets its Metro makeover, not only will it continue to be a great 10 foot interface for your TV, but that newly designed start screen will also make a great thing to use from a TV.

But, I hear you cry, how would you control it and wouldn’t the lack of touch, mouse of type on a TV present a barrier?  Here I believe Microsoft will have things covered.  At CES this last week we have seen some smart televisions being controlled by tablets.  We also know that small keyboards for 10 foot TV use are commonplace, I have one for my own Media Centre which is the hub of my own living room.  Now though we also have Kinect for the PC, a way to interact with our televisions that’s not just revolutionary but that we’re also used to using and that will genuinely fit the Metro paradigm.

While Kinect might not be the most useful way to type a web address on your TV, for general navigation it’s perfectly good and nobody complained about a complex qwerty remote control for Google TV did they.  Kinect is going to revolutionise how we use computers, I have no doubt about this, but it will also help Windows 8 make sense to more people and put Windows 8 to use in more arenas than are currently planned.

Alas, as I mentioned earlier, Microsoft have said nothing about Windows TV and it’s a shame as the new operating system would fit in this entertainment space perfectly.  This doesn’t mean to say they’re not either thinking about it or actively planning it.  They do have a habit of turning up late to the party though and this is something that causes me worry.

I will be buying a Kinect for my PC (I have Windows 8 books to write after all, and will need one early on) but I will also now be buying a second for my TV in the living room.  Here I’ve been using Windows Media Centre since 2003 as my main way to watch TV and video.  In all that time I’ve bemoaned the lack of a proper 10 foot email and web client.  Windows 8 could well be it and so I’m going to give it a try.  It’s with people using Windows 8 and their hardware, new and old, that innovation takes place.  It’s how it all started with Kinect, and it might just be the start of a huge uptake for the next version of Windows.

When Windows 8 launches the app store will likely be fairly barren, and it will take many months, if not years for Windows to catch up with the number of apps available in the iPad and Android markets.  This ultimately can hurt sales of the platform as people might choose an Android or Apple device over Windows because there’s more they can do with it, they’ll probably not even be able to run their existing desktop software on it so what will be the point in getting one?

It is crucial however that Windows 8 tablets take off in a big way and sell in the millions, the reason for this is that Microsoft have re-engineered Windows directly around tablets, effectively betting the entire platform on the success of these devices that will probably only ever form 10% of the whole computing market.

The remaining 90% is largely constituted of IT Pros and businesses, many of whom are already taking a dim view of Microsoft’s new direction for Windows or who are, at the very least, concerned about what it means for them.  If the new Windows 8 tablets don’t take off and sell in huge volumes it will essentially be seen as one huge slap in the face for the IT Pro community who will have had their precious desktop working environment decimated in the name of a product gamble.

The failure of Windows tablets to sell could see these IT Pros turning on Microsoft in huge numbers and perhaps even looking for an alternative (I’ve even considered a dual-booting iMac as my next PC for the first time ever!)  This means that Microsoft simply cannot afford to get Windows tablets wrong.  As the whole structure of Windows is being re-engineered around them, no matter how friendly they might say Metro will be on desktops and laptops, it is too big a gamble to get it wrong.

The result of a failure to sell tablets now, and crucially to convince hardware makers that it’s actually Windows tablets they should be making and not Android ones, could be the cause of the single-biggest backlash in Microsoft’s company history.  IT Pros and business users have got to be kept sweet and happy, above all else.  The main reason for this of course if the huge software eco-system that Microsoft have built around Windows, which include two products that help keep the company going; Windows Server and Office.  As we head inexorably into the cloud the need for individual companies to maintain their own servers will diminish, Microsoft’s own Office 365 is making sure of that but at least this means they get some of the cash back.  If people rebel against Windows that eco-system will be under threat like never before and Microsoft could find its market shares diminishing rapidly.

Of course this is all speculation, perhaps even slight scaremongering.  It is ultimately entirely possible however as IT Pros and businesses are not known as forgiving souls.

In an interview with veteran Microsoft journalist Mary-Jo Foley, Rizzo said “We want to work where people work, whether it’s online or offline, and on various platforms.”  He went on to say that Android is in the frame as well as a bigger focus on the iPad.

So why would Microsoft do this when they have their own tablet operating system, Windows 8, coming out within a year?  Well let’s not forget that Microsoft are a ‘software’ company, not an operating system company first and foremost.  While Windows might be a huge revenue earner for them on the desktop and the server, Office also does well for them on both PCs and Macs, where on both platforms it is the dominant office productivity package.

With the hugely successful launch of Office 365 this year it makes complete sense for the company to roll out its products across as many platforms as possible.  Rizzo acknowledged that the iPad is “mattering more in the enterprise” and so clients for their office productivity software including Lync, OneNote, SkyDrive and Office Live matter.

All in all we’re moving towards a world of apps.  Anyone who picks up an iPad won’t expect to have to go online to use a service such as Office 365.  They’ll expect there to be an apps for it.  As such we can fully expect Microsoft to deliver such an app, or more likely a series of them, that will deliver the entire Office 365 experience to their customers on the iPad.

But why should Android be left out?  It’s becoming more and more common for cross-scripted packages to be ported to every mobile platform and the tools have existed for some time to enable this.  Thus it is cheaper and simpler than ever before and Microsoft would only be sensible to make sure that their productivity apps are available for Android devices and others including those form Blackberry and perhaps even WebOS.

As I mentioned before this is nothing new for Microsoft who have been producing and supporting office on the Mac for many years.  Why should this software company be defined by their operating system?  If their cloud products are genuinely good and people are using them in ever greater numbers, it makes good business sense to support those customers on the platforms they choose to use.  After all, you don’t make something a cloud-based service in order to tie them to a particular operating system, or even web browser.

Other companies, including Google with its own web apps system, have fallen some way behind Microsoft this year with products that simply don’t stand up against Office 365.  These companies could still come forward with a winner, but the longer they take and the more platforms Microsoft support in the interim, the harder it will be for competitors to compete long-term.  After all, just ask Microsoft what sales are like for their Windows Phone OS.  If anybody knows how tough competition can be when you arrive late to the party, Microsoft do.

New email accounts can be created on the official Hotmail website. Please note that you can use an existing Windows Live account to sign in as well.

Schedule Cleanup

The new cleanup option is configured individually for each sender. It basically allows you to delete messages from that particular sender automatically. This can be handy for “daily-offer” emails, logs, notifications or any other kind of messages that are only relevant for a specific amount of time. You can alternatively configure the messages to be moved to another folder instead.

To configure cleanups select a message from the inbox, and then Sweep > Schedule Cleanup.

This displays an overlay menu with the following configuration options:

• Only keep the latest message from this sender
• Delete all messages older than 10 days (alternatively 3, 30 or 60 days)
• Move all messages older than 10 days (3, 30 or 60) to a specific folder.

One-click unsubscribe

This is a similar to Gmail’s unsubscribe from newsletter and notification option. Hotmail notifies the sender that the user wants to unsubscribe, and will furthermore configure filters to move existing and future messages into the junk.

Flag Important Messages

It is now easier to flag important message to locate them faster in the future. The new “Keep this message at the top of your inbox” option makes sure that important messages stay on top of the box and are not moved down with the rest of the messages.

The Hotmail team has created a short video demonstrating the new flag capabilities.

Photo Album, Attachment Improvements

Users who send photos regularly now see the photos in Hotmail when they are composing the email. That’s useful considering that you’d only see file names before.

Large attachments can now also be send using SkyDrive which resolves possible attachment size limitations. Instead of compressing emails or splitting them up to stay below the limit, it is now possible to store the files on SkyDrive instead.

The new forgotten attachment detector makes sure that you have not forgotten to attach files to the email. This is based on popular words and phrases that indicate attachments.

Instant Actions

Instant actions are one-click actions. Flag to stick mails at the top is for instance an instant action. Hotmail users can configure actions in detail. This is done under Options > More Options > Customizing Hotmail > Instant Actions.

Actions can be configured to always show or only show on mouse over. Flag is the only action that is always shown by default, while delete and mark read/unread are only shown on hoover.

Additional actions are moving and categorizing messages, sweep and junk. The order can be configured as well.

Folder Management

Hotmail users can now create and manage folders more easily with a right-click on the folder. Messages can now also be moved directly to folders that are displayed under Folders.

Hotmail for Android

Android users can now download and install the official Hotmail Android app. The app features email, calendar and contact synchronization.

It supports multiple Hotmail accounts on the same device and displays new mail notifications on the Home screen.

Of all the features, the option to stick emails on top of a folder is the one that I like the most.

What’s your take on the new set of features? (via)

Other browsers offer automatic updates regularly to keep their user base on the latest version. And while that works well for some (Chrome), others browser developers are also experiencing a divided user base. The reason for not updating is usually different though. Most Firefox users know for instance that a new version is available (as it is displayed to them). They choose to stay with an earlier version of the browser because of design, compatibility or performance reasons.

A new announcement on the Windows Team Blog details that Microsoft is going to change the way the browser is updated from next year on.

Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 users will receive automatic upgrades to update their version of Internet Explorer to the latest one. Depending on the operating system, they are either updated to Internet Explorer 8 (in the case of XP), or Internet Explorer 9 when they are running Vista or 7.

Australian and Brazilian users will receive the first batch of updates in January, followed by users from other countries soon thereafter.

It needs to be noted though that that customers and organizations still have options to avoid the automatic deployment of the new Internet Explorer version on their PC systems. Customers who have previously declined the installation of IE8 or IE9 will not be asked again to install it. Organizations who want to make sure that the browser is not updated automatically can install blocker kits to prevent this from happening.

Available for download and deployment are Blocker Toolkits for Internet Explorer 8 and IE9.

It is likely that the majority of organizations will use the blockers to avoid the automatic installation of a newer version of Internet Explorer on their systems. Most end users on the other hand are likely to accept the browser update, which may improve security on their PC system significantly.

SkyDrive now lets users share individual files within a folder without having to first configure that folder’s permissions first.

The Sharing options have been simplified. Users now have three sharing options that are accessible with a click on Share in the SkyDrive info pane.

• Send Email – This option can be used to share documents and a message to recipients. Recipients receive an email address with links to view, and if selected, edit the document.
• Post to social networking sites – Users can now post their documents to sites such as Facebook or LinkedIn.
• Get a link – Grab a sharing link to share it manually with other users.

Sharing was not the only feature that the Windows Live developers improved in the update. The site makes use of HTML5 uploads now which make it possible to upload files to SkyDrive and navigate the site at the same time.

The service’s file management capabilities have been improved significantly as well. Basic operations like creating or renaming folders that were not optimized previously can now be completed almost instantly. Other improvements include right-click functionality on photos and documents, faster creation of new Office documents, and a rebuilt photo slideshow application.

Watch this video to see a feature overview.

SkyDrive still has a lont way to go to reach the functionality that is offered by Google Docs. The new features do make life for SkyDrive users a lot easier.

Have you tried Microsoft SkyDrive? You can read the official announcement over at the Microsoft website.

Microsoft has recently released Excel Mashup, a web based service to create rich and interactive data mashups. A SkyDrive account is required, as it is used to store the workbooks. Web developers can then make use of the JavaScript Api to create the mashups and embed them on their web sites.

Microsoft has made available several demo applications that demonstrate the functionality of Excel Mashup.

Destination Explorer for instance displays weather or visitor information for a city or park in regions of the world. The data is visualized both with charts and on Bing Maps.

How healthy was your meal today on the other hand displays a persons meal’s calorie intake in detail. Adjustments can be made and the data entered is compared to the recommended intake for male or female adults with a sedentary or active lifestyle.

The basic idea behind Excel Mashup is to give developers the ability to publish rich interactive applications using Excel data on the web.

The whole process has been divided into three steps. First the sign up, then the embedding of the workbook on a self-hosted web page and finally the creation of rich data mashups using the Excel Services JavaScript library.

Development examples are available on the website. One of the examples walks developers through the creation of the Destination Explorer application. JavaScript and HTML skills are required to follow the guide.

Developers find links to all three APIs on the web page as well.

Silverlight 5 now could be the last version of the technology that gets released. The new version is available for download for all support platforms (all Windows operating systems from Windows XP SP3 and higher and Intel based Mac OS X 10.5.7 or higher) and web browsers (Internet Explorer 6 and higher, Firefox 3.6 and higher, Safari 4 and higher, Google Chrome 12 and higher). Opera is not listed on the compatibility page even though it is compatible with Silverlight. Other browsers may also be compatible even though they are not listed.

Visit the Silverlight getting started page for information about the installed Silverlight installation on your system, the system requirement chart, instructions on how to uninstall Silverlight and download links pointing to the latest version of the application.

Users can download and install the new version of Silverlight. Browsers that are open during installation need to be closed and reopened before they recognize the new plugin version automatically.

So what is new in Silverlight 5? The announcement over at the Silverlight blog highlights the following changes:

New features in Silverlight 5 include Hardware Decode of H.264 media, which provides a significant performance improvement with decoding of unprotected content using the GPU; Postscript Vector Printing to improve output quality and file size; and an improved graphics stack with 3D support that uses the XNA API on the Windows platform to gain low-level access to the GPU for drawing vertex shaders and low-level 3D primitives.

In addition, Silverlight 5 extends the ‘Trusted Application’ model to the browser for the first time. These features, when enabled via a group policy registry key and an application certificate, mean users won’t need to leave the browser to perform complex tasks such as multiple window support, full trust support in browser including COM and file system access, in browser HTML hosting within Silverlight, and P/Invoke support for existing native code to be run directly from Silverlight.

Here is a video highlighting new features and changes in Silverlight 5.

Additional information about Silverlight are available at the official website over at Microsoft. (via Mike)

Some support requests redirect users to the new Answer Desk website which – according to Microsoft – is a premium online support service. It is certainly no coincidence that Answer Desk is also the name of Microsoft’s in-store service.

The service offers 24/7 support for Microsoft products on the Internet. Customers are either charged by the hour or by service that they request. A two hour virus removal and protection session for instance sets you back $99. You get 60 minutes of premium Microsoft software support or advanced PC tune up for the same price, while one hour long personal training sessions are available for $49 each.

Each page lists what the service may include and the answer tech support members available for the session.

A particular support service, like virus removal and protection may include several support related tasks. It may include removal of viruses, spyware and malware, installation of Microsoft Security Essentials, an audit of the PC’s security configuration or a comprehensive PC health diagnosis.

Support sessions will take place over chat or phone, and remote connections to customer PCs will be established should the need arise. Customers need to have a Windows Live ID which they use to sign in on the Answer Tech website.

The service is currently only available to users from the United States. Proxies or vpns may display the site’s contents but it is still not that easy to get tech support as a US address is also required for the service (likely a credit card associated with a US address).

Visitors from outside the United States will receive the following notification message:

Sorry,this site restricted to US visitors only
Dear Answer Desk visitor We believe that your IP address may be from outside the United States. If you think we have incorrectly detected from where you are visiting, please proceed. In order to make purchases, your address will need to reside within the United States.
If you are outside the United States, we welcome you to visit any of the online resources listed below to help you with your Microsoft product questions.
Microsoft Answers:
Microsoft Solution Centers:
Microsoft Fixit Center:
http://answers.microsoft.com
http://support.microsoft.com/select/
http://fixitcenter.support.microsoft.com/Portal
Currently, we are working to expand our service internationally to best support all Microsoft customers.

Sincerely,
Microsoft Answer Desk Team.

It all comes down to how effective the service is. I personally would not mind paying $49 for one hour training sessions or even $99 if I had a pressing problem in a Microsoft product that I could not find an answer for. Microsoft backs the service with a 30-day service guarantee.