The XPS12 is compact, and the screen flips inside the outer bezel to switch between ultrabook and tablet mode.

Just recently, having taken possession of the machine about two weeks ago, I’ve been slowly but surely getting the machine’s drivers and OS updated, adding my usual software toolkit, and exploring more and better ways to work with this system. In today’s blog, I’d like to report on some of my experiences so far, including:

(a)    Driver-related issues and discoveries
(b)   A laundry list of software elements I’ve found it necessary or useful to add to the system
(c)    What’s been involved in getting backup working, and creating recovery media

Driver Issues and Discoveries
While I have been able to access drivers pretty handily through the Dell support pages, what I really want from them is a driver scanner to examine what’s on my system and then to tell me what I need to download and install (even better would be an automated facility that would march through the download list and install all of them for me). In theory, that’s what the Dell Support Driver & Downloads page is supposed to deliver. But although I could get it to tell me what I might need by way of driver files both quickly and easily, the Dell Driver Analyze Utility didn’t tell me what was up-to-date and what wasn’t on my machine.

So, I turned next to my old stalwart maintenance tool, eSupport’s DriverAgent driver scanning tool. It initially reported that 15 drivers were out of date, at least half of which were related to the Intel Chipset drivers. As somewhat of an old hand at this game, I downloaded the 9.4.0.1014 chipset utility, and extracted its contents to a folder on my 64 GB Mushkin USB3 flash drive (UFD), which proved itself amazingly speedy at handling read/write activities (it’s faster than a conventional external hard disk, in a reversal of the performance ranking when attaching via USB2 instead). I went into Device Manager and manually updated the various Intel devices that DriverAgent labeled as out of date, which knocked off 8 of the offending entries in the list. I had to use the Intel Driver Update utility to find and grab the latest Centrino wireless and PROSet drivers, and upon continuing difficulty in finding the latest AHCI SATA driver for the unit’s SSD, turned to the most recent Intel RST driver (12.5.0.1066 with a 3/18/13 release date) to finally clear that up. I also had to update the audio drivers, the driver for my USB3 Ethernet adapter (which saved my butt on one very interesting issue I’ll elaborate on later), and the Intel Dynamic Platform and Thermal Framework.

Total time invested in picking up where Microsoft Update left off to get things as up-to-date as I could make them (I wound up with two drivers still out of date: one for something I’ll never use, and another for a motherboard resource related to the Intel Thermal Framework) was between three and four hours, which is pretty representative of my usual post-install (or post-unboxing) experience on a Windows 8 laptop (I’ve been through this exercise on perhaps a dozen different such installs at this point).

The New Software Laundry List
In bringing the XPS12 up to what I consider production-ready status, here’s what I’ve installed on that machine so far, above and beyond what it included upon its arrival:

• Piriform’s CCleaner (free version), which I use to clean up dross on the system’s drives and for light-duty registry sweeping
• Google Chrome, which I often prefer to IE, especially when digging into HTML or CSS markup on Web pages, as I must often do
• Windows DriverStore Explorer [RAPR], a free (codeplex) utility that lets you examine and prune older entries from the Windows Driver Store — never a bad idea after updating lots of sometimes-large drivers on a Windows PC
• Image Resizer Powertoy, a (free) codeplex shell extension to Windows Explorer that lets you resize images in PNG, JPG, or GIF format from a right-click inside Explorer.
• RecImg Manager, which puts a Modern UI face on the terrific built-in recimg command line utility used to create a custom Windows image (.wim) file for the Refresh your PC utility that’s new to Windows 8 [Note: you can't target a UFD for a recovery image using this utility because Windows won't let you; if you try, you'll get a mysterious and not terribly informative error message that only indicates that the backup failed but doesn't tell you this is why.]
• SIW Pro (a free version is also available), Gabe Topala’s superb system profiling tool for Windows PCs
• Start8, which is the best of the various “Start button replacement programs” available for Windows 8 (and at $5, cheap enough to buy for all your machines)
• WinDirStat, a (free) sourceforge project that provides a comprehensive view of what’s on your disk drives (very handy for keeping track of scarce and valuable SSD storage space)
• 7-Zip, my favorite — and free — compression/decompression tool, which is also peachy at unpacking drivers from many .exe or .msi driver installer files that don’t update my drivers properly, but which do contain drivers installable through Device Manager (if only you can get at them, which this tool does nicely more often than not)

As I look at my other production machines, I see a few more items in my near-term “to-add list” for software on this machine, including MS Office 2013 (which helps me make my living), FileZilla (still my favorite FTP utility), Secunia PSI (a terrific security status checker for the OS and applications), Notepad++ (an outstanding programmer’s file editor), Revo Uninstaller (even the freeware version beats the built-in Programs and Features utility in Control Panel hands down), and Unlocker (a handy-dandy file unlocking tool when you want to delete a file and Windows won’t let you do it).

Making Backup and Recovery Work Like They Should
I found myself entangled in some issues on the XPS12 related to backup and recovery that puzzled me a bit. I like to use the Windows 7 File Recovery utility in Control Panel, which still runs much like the old ntbackup.exe that goes all the way back to Windows NT 3.5 or thereabouts, because it makes an eminently usable image backup that’s peachy for restoring entire drives (often my preferred method of recovery anyway). Unfortunately, the tool kept failing about 35% of the way into the system drive with error codes 0×81000033 and 0×81000017. A little research showed me that one of three things could be at fault, and by process of elimination, I determined that Dell’s default installation of McAfee Security was the culprit. Upon uninstalling that program, I’ve had no difficulties backing up or restoring since using the built-in Windows utility.

I also like to use RecImg Manager (from Slimware Utilities) to create image backups in the form of .WIM files for my systems, because this then lets me use Windows 8′s “Refresh Your PC” repair tool to restore an image that has all the up-to-date drivers, patches, and apps I want on my machine, instead of rolling all the way back to a factory-fresh image and having to rebuild from there. I’ve done that on this machine not only because it’s a good idea to do so, but also because I took a “before” snapshot to which I’ll want to roll back if I ever want to try a different approach to bringing my system back up to snuff.

More to Come…
This is just the beginning of my continuing adventures with this machine, and with figuring out how to make more and better use of a lightweight convertible tablet PC running Windows 8. I have at least one more interesting adventure to related based on recent experience — which I’ll cover in another blog — and will also be reporting on some upcoming developments at Dell to improve their support and value-add offerings for these PCs. Stay tuned!

EDTech Focus on K-12 provides information, news, and resources of interest to K-12 teachers, school administrators, and interested parents.

The ultimate points of the story rest on two assertions:

1. Most classrooms have only one or two PCs at their disposal, and anywhere from 15 to 30 kids to share them.
2. More computers at kids’ disposal means more opportunities for learning and study.

I’d urge families and small businesses with surplus PCs to loan to schools to consider doing just that to help classrooms out with additional computing resources. Computers for classroom use don’t need to be new, powerful, or support lots of storage. Nearly all the applications that are used run through a Web interface, so it’s not out of line to view such machines more as a kind of thin client rather than as a full-fledged standalone computer. There is one essential element for such use however — namely, wireless networking. Nearly all school campuses now support guest networks running on 802.11g or 802.11n, so any loaner PC must be able to access such wireless networks (this won’t be an issue for most laptops, which routinely come equipped with wireless; but it may require purchase of a $15-20 USB wireless interface for desktops that typically lack wireless connections built-in).

Prepping a machine for classroom use requires system clean-up, and I’d recommend replacing hard disks to avoid the possibility that any data that ever resided on those drives might be sniffed out thanks to ever-more sophisticated data recovery tools for deleted files that once resided upon them. You’ll find the complete details required to do the prep work in my upcoming EDTech K-12 article, where you’ll also learn that those who loan their equipment should also be prepared to donate some time for the upkeep (and occasional tech support) of those machines throughout the school year. But it’s definitely worth it, to help our students make the most of their schooling.

Windows 8.1 will be delivered as a free update to Windows 8 and Windows RT and it will be accessible from the Windows Start Screen through the App store, said Tami Reller, Microsoft’s Windows division Chief Financial Officer said during the J.P. Morgan Global Technology, Media, & Telecom Conference in Boston today. Enterprise customers will have the option of how often and when they deliver the Windows 8.1 update to their end users, she explained.

Microsoft, which has already delivered 739 updates, will preview Windows 8.1 at the Microsoft Build Conference on June 26 in San Francisco, Reller said.
Customers who want to purchase a Windows 8 device today can upgrade their devices for free when the software is available, she said.

Companies have been slow to adopt Windows 8 so far. Although many businesses wait for the first update of an OS before doing an upgrade, Windows 8.1 probably won’t make a huge impact on enterprise plans. The Windows 8 learning curve and additional cost for touch screen devices makes it a hard proposition to upgrade all users to the new operating system at this time.

Reller noted two thirds of enterprise desktops today deploy Windows 7. Microsoft recommends that enterprises continue on the Windows 7 deployment path, evaluate the Windows 8 tablets and other new device types coming out, and look at the line of business applications, she said.

Asked about the next version of Surface and what future products would look like, Reller smoothly deflected the question to talk about the generalities of touch-based convertibles and detachable products. Reller also reiterated support for Windows 8-based 7- and 8-inch tablets without spilling the beans on what those devices might actually include.

With Microsoft executives dribbling out Windows news at every conference, I’ll be interested to hear what’s next on the agenda.

In light of MJF’s discussions and disclosures, the co-mingling of Windows 7 and 8 visual elements actually makes a perverse kind of sense.

In addition to these widely reported updates planned for Blue, MJF also calls on unidentified “tipsters” to report some additional UI tweaks potentially in the offing:

• changes to the Charms designed to make them more mouse-friendly
• changes to the Start screen specifically aimed at desktop users (presumably, only with mouse and keyboard at their disposal)
• new tutorials and context-sensitive help information to help newbies make better sense of Blue than they’ve apparently been able to make of the current Windows 8 release

Her take is that this might just be enough to move experienced users off of Windows 7 and into Windows 8, including her own production gear, given the reduction in learning curve and ease of use such changes would entail. I’ve already learned on my own 5 Windows 8 systems that by installing either Start8 or Classic Shell you can bypass most of the “UI friction” experienced users grouse about, and in so doing, have observed that Windows 8 is modestly faster, more compact, and quite stable in everyday test and production use.

My favorite part of this occurs when she quotes former Windows division president Steven Sinofsky’s “damned if we do; damned if we don’t” blog post (the actual title is “disrupt or die“) wherein he quite rightly observes that MS has no choice but to push the envelope on touch and tablet features in Windows versions from here on out. If they don’t do, somebody else will — and they’ lose market share; and if they do do it (or perhaps it’s appropriate to say “when they do it” at this point, what with Windows 8 out for 7 months-plus now), they’re going to disgruntle users who don’t want to deal with change, or who don’t like their changes or design ethos. There’s actually some of all of those things in what’s been happening with Windows 8 and its market reception and analysis since the consumer preview starting circulating in February 2012, and it doesn’t appear to have any end in sight.

The key point here is that Microsoft had to do something, and that is what they did. With the next version (“Blue”) they can make some corrections, but it’s not going to change either Microsoft’s or the technology world’s migration path from static, non-touch, deskbound devices to mobile, touch, hand-held and portable ones. Please check out the original article, and ponder its conclusion: “I believe Microsoft can stay its Metro-centric, touch-centric course with Windows Blue, while still making some changes that will make the OS more usable and comfortable for a bigger pool of users. While it would have been great if Windows 8 debuted this way last October, I say better late than never.” Amen and indeed, I say in reply. Good work, MJF!

Here’s some more information and speculation on the categories and their applets, from left to right and top to bottom in order of appearance:

• VPN Configuration: a great many more cmdlets for managing Virtual Private Network connections, triggers, routes, and DNS make an appearance
• Windows Defender: make it possible to automate management of Windows Defender across an entire Windows network
• Start Screen: provide the ability to customize the Windows 8 Start screen
• DISM has been at odds with PowerShell syntax in the past; these cmdlets hide the differences inside standard structure and syntax
• Kiosk: enables setting up Windows 8 to run a single application (for a museum, store, or special-purpose kiosk PC)
• NAT management: enable automated handling for Network Address Translation elements in the Windows Routing and Remote Access (RRAS) infrastructure found in Windows Server
• Trusted Platform Module (TPM): provides access to important TPM info without having to work through a TPM API or access the TPM Management Console
• TCP/IP: a “net compartment” is new terminology, so we’ll have to wait and see what this means/is for
• Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI): manages information in WMI schemas and instances
• Systems Management: provides access to the new Physical Computer System View (PCSV) information to be found in next-generation Windows systems in the enterprise
• Storage: management for storage roles in Windows Server “Blue”, interacts with Storage Pools on both clients and servers
• Volume: miscellaneous volume management utilities
• SMB: something inside which to wrap the Systems Management Bus APIs from Microsoft
• Printer: these items reference NFC (“near field communications”) so Rivera speculates — and I agree — that this is an intimation of support for NFC printers, possibly for asset management or tracking

In his story Rivera includes a screen capture from the Registry Editor that clearly shows a new PowerShell 4.0 version reported in Windows 8.1 “Blue,” indicating another version change is  pending. It will be interesting to see what new language changes and features this brings to the table. I’m going to contact some of my PowerShell buddies and see if they can give me a preview of coming attractions. More information on that as and when it comes my way!

Looks like Windows Blue is intended to dispel the Windows 8 Blues, rather than to pump them up.
[Image Credit: Softpedia]

At the same time, MS has also indicated it has sold over 100 million Windows 8 licenses, presumably as of the end of April, keeping sales more or less on par with those for Windows 7. At 5 months plus 5 days out on April 30, that translates into average sales of between 19 and 20 million per month, which ain’t bad even for an operating system as castigated and sometimes reviled as Windows 8 has been. It’s certainly way ahead of Vista, to which Windows 8 is often compared.

In a famous epigram about remarriage in the wake of divorce, satirist and playwright Ben Jonson called it “the triumph of hope over reason.” Where Windows 8 is concerned, it’s starting to look like an opposite situation, where Microsoft’s hope to reinvent the desktop paradigm by forcing exposure to a touch-0riented interface is being trumped by a more reasonable and open-ended approach to meeting user’s need and wants, particularly for those users who don’t have touch-enabled PCs to work on. According to the New York Times, Tami Reller, Chief Marketing and Financial Officer for the Windows Division as MS, “revealed that Windows Blue will be released this calendar year and will include modifications that make the software easier to learn, especially for people running it on computers without touch screens.” In a direct quote from an IGN story, Ms. Reller herself said: “The Windows Blue update is an opportunity for us to respond to the customer feedback that we’ve been closely listening to since the launch of Windows 8 and Windows RT.”

More details about Blue will be disclosed at Microsoft’s upcoming  Build conference, to be held in San Francisco from June 26-28 at Moscone Center. Perhaps that’s why the conference sold out in three hours the same day registration opened. Until then, we’ll have to rely on analysis of leaked builds of Blue to try to puzzle out the shape of the new vision for Windows 8 that Microsoft still has under construction.

What makes these UFDs special is that they typically integrate an SSD controller along with their flash chips so they behave (and perform) more like an SSD than a UFD in everyday use.
Inside shot of a 64 GB Kingston Datatraveler Workspace, courtesy of The SSD Review

Here’s a list of hardware requirements prospective Windows To Go hosts must meet:

1. USB boot must be enabled (because Windows To Go’s OS lives on a UFD, and that’s whence it boots)
2. The CPU must support the image that’s installed on the Windows To Go UFD
3. Does not work through an external USB hub: the Windows To Go UFD must be inserted into a socket on the host machine
4. CPU speed must be 1 GHz or faster
5. PC must include no less than 2 GB RAM
6. Graphics capabilities must support at least DirectX 9 graphics and WDDM 1.2 or higher
7. The USB port into which the Windows To Go UFD is inserted must be USB version 2.0 or higher; 3.0 is preferable for performance reasons
8. Only a limited number of drives are certified for use as Windows To Go devices (see the WTG Overview page for a complete list); currently certified models include the IronKey Workspace (no size info available), Kingston DataTraveler Workspace (32, 64, 128 GB models), Spyrus Portable Workspace (no size info available), SuperTalent USB Express RC4 and RC8 models (RC4: 32, 64, 128, and 256 GB models; RC8: 50 & 100 GB models), and Western Digital MyPassport Enterprise (conventional HD, 500 GB).

The minimum size of a Windows To Go UFD appears to be 32 GB, and the solid state models top out at 256 GB, with most available in a range from 32-128 GB in size. Prices can be high (the SuperTalent RC8 drives cost around $200 for the 50 GB model and $350 for the 100 GB model, here’s a note about RC4 pricing, and the 64 GB Kingston model goes for $130 – 170; Spyrus and IronKey models must generally be purchased directly from the vendor, often in concert with other software and services). Even considering the expense, the Windows To Go solution is a great way for people to take their normal working environments with them on the road, if only to use on personal notebook PCs, or on loaner units when they arrive at some temporary work location. And because WTG never stores any data on the local host, and isolates the entire contents of the WTG UFD cryptographically using BitLocker, you don’t need to worry about inadvertent disclosure of, or access to, a WTG UFD’s contents. Good stuff!

Although it looks a lot like the Surface Pro, it’s a little bit lighter and includes a few more features, too.

Otherwise, the specs sound remarkably similar to those for the Microsoft Surface Pro including:

• 11.6″ 1980×1020 Full HD touch display with Intel HD Graphics 4000
• an ultralow-voltage i5 Intel processor like the i5-3317U found in the Surface Pro
• a digitizer pen stylus
• SSD storage, probably 128 and/or 256 GB
• USB 3.0 port (at least one, possibly two)
• micro-HDMI for graphics and audio output
• SD card slot (probably SDXC capable, to support up to 128 GB of added high-speed solid-state storage, and more as bigger cards become available into 2014)
• SIM card for 4G HSPA+/LTE WWLAN support
• The various stories I’ve found don’t say so specifically, but I’m guessing with some degree of confidence that these units will include 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth wireless modules as well (the PC Advisor story already cited also states that the unit will include Wi-Di support as well)
• A docking cradle will also be available to provide additional USB ports and GbE wired Ethernet
• Dimensions are reported at V3 as 229x189x12.4mm (9.02″ x 7.44″ x 0.49″) and weight at 825g (29.1 oz/1.82 lbs)

There’s no information available yet about battery life nor about pricing, either. But so far, this is one of the most interesting current-Intel-generation processor Windows 8 tablets I’ve seen. I’m curious why Toshiba is coming to market with this unit so late in the game, and have to wonder why they just didn’t wait to release a Haswell-based model later this year, presumably with more CPU and graphics power and improved battery life. I’m hoping I get a chance to check this puppy out, nevertheless!

SDHC and SDXC cards come in many forms and in many sizes, but 32 GB or larger works best for extending portable notebook or tablet storage
[Image source: Tom's Hardware]

Until recently, I’ve routinely used 32 GB SDHC cards — which generally retail for around $20 these days — to extend and expand storage on my Lenovo, HP, and Dell notebooks, all of which I’ve converted from 300-500 GB conventional hard disks to SSDs in the 128 to 256 GB range (a mix of Intel and OCZ drives mostly, with a mixture of offerings from other vendors including Corsair and Samsung as well). Given tighter space on those machines as a result, a bit of added drop-in storage often proves very handy, especially on those systems where adding a second mSATA SSD is not an option.

But with the recent introduction of extreme capacity (SDXC) memory cards, available today in capacities up to 128 GB, 64 and 128 GB add-ons to compact portable systems are now achievable. Price ranges for these cards look something like this (abstracted from a total of 161 products available at Newegg.com):

• 32 GB: $28-30
• 64 GB: $37-150
• 128 GB: $85-180

The reason for the wide range of pricing for the higher-capacity models comes from different speed ratings for those respective memory cards. The most expensive offerings are generally labeled UHS Speed Class 1, followed in order by Class 10, and 400X speed ratings. According to the afore-cited Tom’s Hardware story (see link beneath image), maximum data transfer rates for these technologies are roughly as follows: 104 MB/sec for UHS Speed Class 1, 80 MB/sec for Class 10 (which actually guarantees a minimum 10 MB/sec rate), and 60 MB/sec for 400x devices. Ultimately, data rates as measured in their benchmarking tests show up at significantly lower values (here’s a sample table of combined streaming reads and writes, for example) with early UHS Speed Class 1 devices clocking in at between 13 and 20 MB/sec, and Class 10 at between 7 and 18 MB/sec).

To try this newer technology, I purchased a brand-new SanDisk Extreme Pro 64 GB SDXC card, having observed that the SanDisk Extreme memory card models generally come in at or near the top of all the comparative performance ratings. Here’s what CrystalDiskMark reported for that card in my Lenovo T520 notebook PC (Windows 7 Professional x64, i7-2640M, OCZ Vertex4 128GB SSD, 12 GB RAM):

Blazing fast results for the SanDisk 64 GB Extreme Pro memory card! As fast as my SSD, or faster…

Of course, I did have to pay through the nose for this memory card: it cost me $126.40 through a Newegg affiliate partner. The SanDisk Extreme Pro models are among the most expensive SDXC cards currently available, but they appear to offer a storage extension that is close to par with an SSD than most other memory cards do. As a true “storage extension” this is very desirable to me (this capability is primarily intended to serve on fast cameras where video recording or burst mode still photography puts pretty high demands on memory write bandwidth). Whether or not it’s sufficiently desirable to you to make the cost justifiable is between you and your checkbook!

Soluto finally starts to share some results from its massive PC stability and performance monitoring of its large current user community.

In reporting on the top 10 PCs, Soluto incorporated a large data set, including the following information:

Data points considered included counts of crashes, hangs, BSODs, boots, and overall boot time.

In addition, in publishing the guide, Soluto filtered its results to include only Windows laptops that are currently for sale through various commercial outlets, including online, from the manufacturer, in big-box stores, and so forth. Interestingly the highest-scoring machine wasn’t a PC at all: The Ivy Bridge MacBook Pro (vintage mid-2012) took the pole position, closely followed by a $429 budget notebook from Acer, the Aspire E1-571. Dell notched up 5 out of the top 10 slots, with Acer and Apple each picking up another spot themselves, and Lenovo barely squeaking into tenth place with its Thinkpad X1 Carbon. Even more interestingly, units that cost at or under $700 dominated the list, racking up six spots overall.

Soluto’s Top 10 puts a MacBook Pro in top position, with Dell sweeping “overall best by total count.”

In their reporting on the Top 10 units, Soluto observes that PCs from vendors who traditionally load their machines up with third-party software, often called “crapware,” do not appear in this list. Such machines often experience lower stability and longer boot times as a result of this practice — which OEMs defend as a way to reduce PC pricing, since the companies that provide the added software help to subsidize the cost of PCs that include their warez — so it’s no big surprise that this would cost them position on Soluto’s list, given the metrics they use and the way those metrics get weighted. One of the reasons Soluto attributes to a MacBook landing in the top spot “is the fact that every Windows installation on it is clean.”

To me, what makes this report interesting is the data that drives it, and what that data tells us about how things work out there in homes and workplaces as measured empirically. This paints a very different picture from the reviews we see at the major online PC publications (PC Magazine, PC World, CNET, and so forth) and even at more focused laptop oriented sites (NotebookReview.com, NotebookCheck.com, LaptopMag.com, and so on). There, reviews concentrate most heavily on features and functions, and a “how fast can it go” kind of review philosophy that doesn’t always incorporate stability or reliability considerations (let alone the kind of database that Soluto can bring to bear).

This is extremely interesting stuff, not just because of what this single dataset and analysis has to say — which is pretty valuable and informative all by itself — but because of the ways the Soluto can (and promises to) be sliced and diced in future reports as well. Soluto already plans to report on stability differences between OEM installs and clean reinstalls on the same  hardware; given their observations on the impact of crapware on overall stability and reliability this, too, promises to make for some fascinating reading and learning. It also already argues pretty forcefully that re-imaging new machines with clean installs may repay the time and effort required to replace an OEM image with a clean image of one’s own may repay itself quickly, and offer users a better overall computing experience as well.