Troubleshooting the indexing option

There are many users complaining about high CPU use even when they are not doing anything. Most of the time this is caused by the Indexing of files. I have seen many "power users" recommending to disable this option and that's a real bad idea. Instead of that, here is a very good article that explains how to troubleshoot this functionality.

Sharing: So easy that a caveman can do it

Sharing in Windows 8 is easier than in any previous Windows Operating System.

Lets say that you are navigating the web and you found a page that you want to share with your friends. All you have to do is to slide your finger from right to left in the right side of your Surface to get the right side menu.

 

You click on Share.

Once you do that you click on People and from there either Twitter or Facebook. Next time you are sharing a website you will see in the list of most recent picks your favorite social page listed.

After picking your social site a new slide opens where you can add a note to the link that you want to share like I did in the above picture. When you are done with your note all you do is click in the little icon on your top right below the two little people icon and that's it. Sent to Facebook.

So easy that a caveman can do it.

That simple

My friends at www.wintablet.info have pointed me to a video that is so beautifully done that I have to share here.

The Best Tablet for Business Users

This article summarizes my thoughts about the Surface RT. It may not be perfect or bit the iPad on the black Friday sales but sooner or later it will gain the attention of business users and that will shift the market. Paul Everton is the CEO of Yapmo, a Company specialized in Software for businesses. He recently bought a Surface and his conclusion was that there is not any Tablet in the market better than Surface to cover the business users needs.

I'm going to quote here some fragments of his article that I consider important to understand why so many of us love the Surface. This is what Paul says:

Initially, I thought that the lack of apps was where the Surface would really struggle. My assumption here was only half true. When you have a tablet that has a full web browser that can load anything, the need for apps greatly diminishes. Instead I just went to my favorite "Apps" on the web and pinned them to my start page. Now I get the full experience of everything, and not some slimmed down version to make it an app.

A real file system. This might be one of the most important features. iPad's inability to share files between apps is frustrating and ridiculous. With Surface if someone sends me a word document and I want to download it to a folder and access it with 10 other programs I can do it with ease! This is another place the Surface wins hands down!  

A real browsing experience. I have become numb to mobile device browsers failing on all sorts of websites. So I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Surface will load every web page, no matter what (content?) it's running. A good example of this was sitting on my couch the other day watching TV. I wanted to order a pizza from Dominos (yes, I know I live in Chicago and this is a sin to like Dominos over other pizza restaurants). In the past, this site never worked on any mobile or tablet browser I have used. While I waited for my pizza I opened up Amazon EC2 and also checked the status of our server infrastructure. Finally, something that doesn't show me half the page or fails to load key functionality. 

Optimizing the WiFi in your Surface RT

I never have problems with WiFi in the Surface, now, my 5Ghz band is weaker than the 2.4Ghz which is also normal but I find that it's a little bit weaker than what I think it should be considering the distance between the device and the AP.

Anyway, when I got the Surface and I connected via the 5Ghz band and I found what I just described I went and did what I usually do in all my PC, optimize the TCPIP settings. I was not expecting to find a version of TCPIP Optimizer for WinRT so I did a search in Google for TCPIP optimizing hacks and I found this page:

http://www.speedguide.net/articles/windows-7-vista-2008-tweaks-2574

Using a DOS windows with elevated privileges you can apply almost all the recommended settings there.

Taking in consideration that I did this with my Surface almost right out of the box and that I have only seen the "limited" message issue one time connecting to my phone using it as hotspot in an area with a very poor 3G reception, I'm inclined to think that may be that some of the settings mentioned in the above link may help with some of the issues described here by other users.

Google Search for WinRT

Google Search has been released in WinRT Store. I have played a little with this application and I'm really not impressed at all. The application was not optimized  for WinRT from the performance point of view. Maps shows you the Desktop page which is too heavy for the ARM processor. Blogger does not work properly. Voice Search failed to recognize my broken English 70% of the time. YouTube asks you to install flash player even when it runs properly if you open it from IE. The Search tool works but it does it well when you run it from IE so I do not know at this point if it's a good idea to waste your HDD space in this half cooked application.

Running Windows 7 applications in Surface RT

The above screen shot shows HandBrake, a tool used to create MP4 or MVK from any other video format or DVD, running in my Surface RT. Ok, I'm cheating. In reality I'm using a new feature introduced in Windows Server 2008 called RemoteApps or Remote Applications. This feature allows a machine with Remote Control enabled to connect to another machine, server, with Remote Control enabled and run just one specific application resident in the Server Machine. The trick is that some users found that this feature from Windows 2008 Server is hidden but present in Windows 7 if they change some registry keys. Later on somebody created this tool to make the life of the rest of us easier.

The whole process is really simple. You enable Remote Desktop in your Windows 7, you install Remote Desktop in your Surface RT, search in your App Store for it, it's free. Once you have that, download and install the above mentioned tool in your W7 and run it. You fill all the fields needed, create the Application Settings in W7 and then hit the create the RDP file button. That will create a file that you are going to copy in your Desktop in Surface RT. The rest is just double clicking on it and after establishing the connection you will see the application opened in your WinRT device.

People has tested this approach with other applications as complex as Visual Studio and it works perfect. The feeling is like you are running that application in your WinRT machine.

Update: 2014-05-04. Still one of the most useful tricks to be used in Windows RT. Here is a screen shot taken in a Surface 2 of iTunes.

 

 

Give the Surface RT and WinRT 8 a chance

I was recently reading one of my favorite pages and I ended with a sad feeling thinking that while Apple fanatics saved the first iPad with all it's restrictions, lack of software, lack of multitasking, impossibility to sharing with other devices other than Apple's, without a decent Office package, without a full control of the file space and tied to a PC for anything or common tasks as simple as copying a eBook! While the Apple fans did that we have Windows users and News pages making big deal out of few imperfections found in Surface RT and it's OS.

And the worse thing is that we all the bad press of these insignificant points we are going to kill the first steps in more than 20 years of creating a new or at least different OS and the hardware around this OS. For every single thing mentioned in those pages and articles, I can mention many features that make me a believer in W8 RT and the Surface.

Just read these articles:
http://winsupersite.com/windows-rt/why-surface-rt-part-1-multiple-users
http://winsupersite.com/windows-rt/why-surface-rt-part-2-microsoft-office
http://winsupersite.com/windows-rt/why-surface-rt-part-3-usb
http://winsupersite.com/windows-rt/why-surface-rt-part-4-task-switching

In more than 3 years of iPad supremacy they have not provided us consumers any of these solutions because their multitasking is far from being one. Come on, it’s time to look toward the Sun and see the beauty of it and no the black spots. Yes, they are there, we are not blind! But there are more than those black spots.

Out there we do not have anything in the tablet market that can give us a decent level of productivity until know. Let’s help this new concept. Let’s open our minds. Give Microsoft a chance!

Windows RT update released today

A Windows RT update has been released today, the more than 105Mb package is said to fix some security holes and performance issues in this recently released Operating System.

At last, a comparison point for WinRT

Benchmark are good because they help you to establish comparison points between PCs. Speed Test Pro may be is not fancy or the best, but it's the first one to help in this task of comparing WinRT devices.

Here are the results that I got in my Surface RT.

Zinio

Zinio is one if not the best Magazine Reader available. And it was recently released in WinRT Store!

The Weather Channel

The Weather Channel Apps is one of my "Must Have" Applications. It's was just released today.

 

 

Shazam for WinRT

Shazam is one of the tools that I had it in my iPad, I have it in my Android phone and now I have it in my Surface. For those who do not know this tool, it's a software capable of recognizing any music playing and tell you all the information available about the song including videos available at YouTube and what's more important, where to buy it.

The WinRT version has some very nice animations and design.

Surface RT covers all your printing needs

Printing from any Tablet is almost a pain in ... You know where. No anymore if you have a Surface RT. You can print even in one of those old matrix printer! Can you iPad do this?

Looking for a PDF notation App for WinRT

You do not have to keep looking any more. Today PDF Touch has been released.

The application allows you to highlight, draw with your finger or stylus, and save your changes in a PDF. And the best thing, it's free!

Office Depot

Office Depot released today an Application in Microsoft Store compatible for WinRT.

Another one joining MS Store's Club!

Surface RT only have 16 Gb free out of 32 and what?!

There is a lot of comments and articles around the web talking about an explanation from MS of why the Surface RT has only 16Gb free. That was not news a week ago when it was released and many reported that fact. Why is so important now? The fact is that you pay the same for even less free space in the iPad 16Gb. And yes, the whole iOS uses a lot let space than WinRT, what nobody is mentioning is that WinRT supports out of the box a lot more printers and other devices than the iPad. That in the Surface RT you have a microSD slot that allows you to add 64Gb more of storage space. That WinRT allows you to create multiple accounts and that WinRT comes with many features of the full version of Windows that allows you to do what you simply can't do in an iPad.

And if you doubt it here is an old trick that works very well in WinRT.

Go to Windows Desktop and create a folder and name it: GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

The GodMode name can be changed to anything as long as you keep the extension the same.

When you open the folder you will be surprised to see how many features can be configured from there and as an iPad owner I can tell you, Apple does not give you access to the iOS like MS does and that the iOS does not even half of the features that MS included in WinRT.

Speed up IE10 in your Surface RT

Recently I was reading a review at pocketnow.com where the author was complaining about the bad performance of IE10 in his Surface, experience that I was not experiencing. I decided to post a comment in his review and then I noticed myself the bad performance that he was mentioning. At that moment I thought that it was something relative to a bad web design or something like that. Later on I visited XDA Developers where again I noticed the same thing. I usually don't visit these sites and that explained why I never had any issues with IE10 with Metro Style. At XDA I also noticed that if I opened the site in the Desktop Mode I did not have any problems. I commented about this in the XDA forum and they recommended to block the advertising using a feature in IE10 that I did not know about it. One IE10 in the Desktop Mode, go to Tools, Manage Add-ons.

Once there click on Track Protection and then in Get Track Protection List Online.

That will open a site where you will click on Add to add your favorite lists. I selected two of them, Easylist and Fanboy.

Once this is done you will noticed right after that a huge improve when you open those sites and blank spaces where they had before publicity banners.

One of the best

Microsoft has released an extension to one of the best publicity videos released this year.

Using the Surface to play video in your TV

Sometime ago I was talking with an Apple fan and he was mentioning with a lot of proud that he loved the fact that he could play video from his iPad to his TV thanks to the Apple TV device he had connected to his TV. Now is my turn to say, the Surface RT can do that and even more and here is how is done.

Whenever you play a video in the Video Application of your Surface you will notice a button that allow you to play the video in other devices.

This button appears in the iPad whenever it detects an Airplay device or server. In Surface that button is there even when there is not any device where you could play the video.

 

And here is the trick, the fact is that there will be listed only devices that have been Microsoft Certified or your Xbox if you have one, and I do not have one. But this does not mean that everything is lost. If you switch to Desktop Mode and locate the file that you want to play, do a right click, you will see this menu:

 

 

The Play To option in my case shows the two media player devices I have the WDTVLive and the WDTVLivePlus. As you can see they are not Microsoft Certified, but if you select one of them you will see this other screen coming:

 

 

 

And right after that...

 

The video is playing in my TV, something that the iPad will never do using a device that was not made by Apple or without having applied, installed or hacked a workaround. That's the beauty of Microsoft ecosystem. The total cost of everything needed for this trick is a lot less than what the Apple fan boy pays for his iPad and Airplay device, and that does not count that either WD device mentioned here plays more movies formats and have a lot more features than the AirPlay. Currently we have around 290 devices in the market to select from to use this feature included in Windows RT.