I gave the Windows 8 beta a pretty thorough try but I did not find myself a big fan of the changes to the desktop experience. One of the problems was that the Metro style Start Menu was horizontally oriented. If I were on a tablet or touch screen, I could grab the screen anywhere and slide it around. On a standard keyboard and mouse, you have to aim for a small scroll bar at … [Read more...]
Windows 8 reimagines printing
Microsoft's printing team shed some light on their reimagined vision of printing in Windows 8. The printer driver architecture has been updated to version 4 while Windows 8 retains compatibility with version 3, the architecture used from Windows 2000 to Windows 7. Of course, part of the update has to be to support printing from Metro style apps and printing from Windows RT. … [Read more...]
Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion now available in the App Store
You can now find OS X Mountain Lion available for purchase from the App Store. The update, as stated at its announcement, runs $19.99. It is 4.05 GB in size and can be installed on Macs running 10.6.8 or later. … [Read more...]
Microsoft round-up: Windows 8 Release Preview, Server 2012 RC, $15 upgrade offer, IE 10 Do-Not-Track, Visual Studio 2012 RC
Microsoft wanted to send out May with a blast so they put a lot of news on their upcoming products - Windows 8, Server 2012, Visual Studio 2012, .NET Framework 4.5, and IE 10. By time I finish writing this up, there might even be more. … [Read more...]
Microsoft prepares Windows 8 for booting “too fast”
Hitting F10 to get into the BIOS or F8 to get into Safe Mode already comes down to timing. Would you be able to catch those spots if booting took only 7 seconds? Microsoft discussed the problem with Windows 8 and its faster boot times thanks to UEFI, improvements in the operating system, and solid-state drives. The window to hit F8 on some of these systems can be consistently … [Read more...]