Windows

The Los Angeles Times newspaper long ran its motto at the top of page 1: "One of the world's great newspapers!". Pretty cocky, but I once saw the newspaper's publisher, Otis Chandler, explain that motto in an interview. Chandler said "this is a challenge to ourselves". He wasn't bragging. He was setting the bar for his employees. When I look at the split personalities of Windows 8 and Server 2012, I picture the board of Microsoft, stung by Apple and Google in the last decade of the mobile device, plastering a mobile operating system where no one can miss it, perhaps more for internal than for external consumption. What is easy to lose sight of, for those frustrated by the superfluous navigation the dual interfaces cause, is a great deal of improved performance, diagnostics and automation support in the newer Windows versions. I like Windows 8 and I run it on my computer.

Microsoft and Apple deserve all the credit in the world for paying attention to studies of human behavior and designing computer interfaces compatible with humans. For a decade plus, Microsoft so dominated the personal computer operating system market through shrewd distribution techniques and people friendly software, that they seemed a permanent fixture at the top of the software world. Somehow, though, Microsoft didn't notice Apple and Google racing ahead in the mobile device market. Now, Microsoft is only one of the top dogs. But competition is good, and Microsoft is turning out some very sophisticated operating systems and management systems for them, in addition to offering cloud based versions of its popular productivity software.

Howtos, Examples and Observations

Shutting down a computer over a remote desktop connection - Remote Desktop Shutdown

Location of Windows VPN Settings - Path To Windows VPN Settings

Migrating the Outlook auto-complete address list to a new computer - Migrating the Outlook auto-complete email addresses

How to remove an unwanted Homegroup icon from the desktop - How to remove an unwanted Homegroup icon from the desktop

Robocopy, the system cannot find the path specified - Robocopy - The system cannot find the path specified