Oh Behave... Behaviors SDK and the new BlendBehaviors.NET

Timmy Kokke - Behaviors SDK

When the release candidate of Visual Studio 2013 came available, so did the Behaviors SDK. The Behaviors SDK is somewhat similar to the Expression Blend SDK you might have used before when using Behaviors and Actions. Along with the SDK come a couple of actions and behaviors you can use in your Windows Store applications right away.

What are they?

Both behaviors and actions are small pieces of code that can be reused throughout your projects. In the case of the new Behaviors SDK the only thing you need to do is implement an interface. A behavior adds some behavior to an element in your application. A behavior has a method that is invoked when the behavior is attached to a Dependency Object. It also has a method that is invoked when it is detached. An action contains only one method that is invoked when a certain condition is met. This condition can be a event that is raised, or a state of data or well pretty much everything.

Those of you who are used to working with behaviors and actions on other platforms might miss the triggers. Triggers where used to work together with actions, and presented the reason for an action to be executed. In the new Behaviors SDK triggers are no longer there. They are replaced by behaviors.

What’s in the SDK?

The Behaviors SDK consists of two parts. One (Microsoft.Xaml.Interactivity) contains the tools you need to create your own behaviors and actions(more about this is a sec). The other (Microsoft.Xaml.Interactions) contains a few of the most commonly used behaviors and actions(which are build with the interfaces from the first part b.t.w.). Not everything you might be used to working with from other platforms is included in de SDK, but I’m pretty sure these will be available through open source channels.

Let’s just go over the actions and behaviors included in de SDK.

Actions:

• CallMethodAction : An action that calls a method on a specified object when invoked.
• ChangePropertyAction : An action that will change a specified property to a specified value when invoked.
• GoToStateAction : An action that will transition a FrameworkElement to a specified VisualState when executed.
• InvokeCommandAction : Executes a specified ICommand when invoked.
• NavigateToPageAction : An action that switches the current visual to the specified Page.
• ControlStoryboardAction : An action that will change the state of the specified Storyboard when executed.
• PlaySoundAction : An action that will play a sound to completion.

Behaviors:

• DataTriggerBehavior : A behavior that performs actions when the bound data meets a specified condition.
• EventTriggerBehavior : A behavior that listens for a specified event on its source and executes its actions when that event is fired.
• IncrementalUpdateBehavior : A behavior that allows incremental updating of ListView and GridView contents to support faster updating. By attaching this behavior to elements in the ItemTemplate used by these views, some of the updates can be deferred until there is render time available, resulting in a smoother experience.

The other part contains two interfaces you need when building your own: IAction and IBehavior. There are some attributes and helper classes you can use too.

...

BlendBehaviors.NET

Welcome to BlendBehaviors.NET. As a XAML developer I use behaviors a lot. Like most developers, I don't like writing the same code over and over. Let us all share our behaviors and actions so we have to write even less.

Something I need to look more into, especially in my WPF world...

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High Level View of the Difference Between Office 2003,2007, 2010,2013

Compare the different Office versions from 2003 - 2013

Again, pretty high level, and market'y, but I still thought it interesting...

(via Priyo's SharePoint Blog > Office 2013 vs Office Old)

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Speckie (THE IE Spell Checker Extension) v6 Released, supports IE11 and more

betanews - Internet Explorer spellchecker Speckie adds support for IE11, improves touch

Versoworks has released Speckie 6.0, a major new version of its real-time spellchecking tool for Internet Explorer. The software, available free for personal use as well as in commercial form with additional features, adds support for the forthcoming Internet Explorer 11 with this new release.

Version 6.0 also comes with the promise of improved support for Rich Editors, and has updated the Settings user interface to be more amenable to touch-screen interfaces, despite the fact it doesn’t yet support 64-bit versions of Windows 8 or Windows 8.1.

...

Speckie 6.0 is available now as a free-for-personal-use download for PCs running Windows XP or later. 32-bit support is universal, but 64-bit versions of Windows 8, 8.1 and Server are not supported, although 64-bit versions of Internet Explorer in other 64-bit builds are.

speckie

Speckie is the first and only dedicated, real-time spell check solution for Internet Explorer. Proudly brought to you by Versoworks, download your free, personal use copy now

When I was on Windows 7, I used this all the time... Now that all my personal machines are on Win8+, I haven't install this recently (actually I've been on 8 long enough that I almost forgot about it). Still, if you're on Win7, this is a must have extension...

 

Related Past Post XRef:
Speckie - Inline, real time spell checker for IE, including IE9

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Cool JavaScript of the Day - The World in 1k

Dougal Campbell's geek ramblings - The World in 1K

Mind. Blown. (view source)

The World in 1K

Okay, seeing the world rotate is cool, but when you view source, like Dougal says... wow.

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Did you get the message? Message Analyzer v1.0 has RTW'd

MessageAnalyzer - Message Analyzer has Released – A New Beginning

We are excited to announce the official release of Message Analyzer to the Microsoft Download Center. Sci-Fi movie references aside, this really is a new beginning for troubleshooting and analysis. Message Analyzer brings a set of new ideas, new techniques, and new paradigms in order to make analysis of protocols, log files, and system events a cohesive activity which allows correlation across all those types of traces.

New Ways to Capture

As I detailed in the Network Capture is Dead blog, we have updated the way we capture messages. By leveraging ETW and providing inspection points to capture at the Firewall and HTTP Proxy layers, you can capture loopback and encrypted traffic ...

New Ways to Analyze

There are also new ways to analyze and organize the trace data. Automatic diagnosis and coalescing of fragments and messages provide a concise and succinct view allowing you to focus on the problems and not the noise. New visualizations let you see a problem at a high level, and then dig in by viewing selected data in detail in the Analysis Grid. New tools like....

New Ways to Share

The world is full of many specialized areas each with their own silos of knowledge. Subject matter experts need a way to share this expertise so that everybody can benefit and learn from the masters. ....

Analyze Now

...

Microsoft Downloads - Microsoft Message Analyzer

Message Analyzer enables you to capture, display, and analyze protocol messaging traffic; and to trace and assess system events and other messages from Windows components

Version: 1.0

Date Published: 9/24/2013

Message Analyzer FAQ and Known Issues.docx, 126 KB

MessageAnalyzer.msi, 33.6 MB

MessageAnalyzer64.msi, 33.9 MB

Microsoft Message Analyzer is a new tool for capturing, displaying, and analyzing protocol messaging traffic and other system messages. Message Analyzer also enables you to import, aggregate, and analyze data from log and trace files. It is the successor to Microsoft Network Monitor 3.4 and a key component in the Protocol Engineering Framework (PEF) that was created by Microsoft for the improvement of protocol design, development, documentation, testing, and support. With Message Analyzer, you can choose to capture data live or load archived message collections from multiple data sources simultaneously.

Message Analyzer enables you to display trace, log, and other message data in numerous data viewer formats, including a default tree grid view and other selectable graphical views that employ grids, charts, and timeline visualizer components which provide high-level data summaries and other statistics. It also enables you to configure your own custom data viewers. In addition, Message Analyzer is not only an effective tool for troubleshooting network issues, but for testing and verifying protocol implementations as well.

Supported Operating System

Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2

32-bit and 64-bit of Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2

Microsoft Message Analyzer Operating Guide

 

Related Past Post XRef:
Microsoft Message Analyzer better in Beta 2 (Gantt viewer, Quick filter, Parsing REST Protocols and more)
Goodbye Microsoft Network Monitor... Hello Microsoft Message Analyzer!

Capturing data (cough… passwords… cough) on unsecured wireless isn’t hard… (so don’t use them or SSL it baby!)

Network Monitor (NetMon/NM) 3.3 Released
NetMon Parsers – Existing parsers available and more coming via CodePlex
NetMon API – Capture, Parse and and Capture File Access (with Managed P/Invoke example too)
Network Monitor 3.2 (aka NetMon, NM3) Beta Released – Now with application network conversation tracking UI
NetMon 3.1 Released
Network Monitor 3 (aka NetMon 3, aka NM3) Re-released for Vista
NetMon 3.0 RTW

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[Geek Humor] If Windows 8 came on Floppies...

Global Nerdy - I’m Installing This Tonight…

I had a good laugh and trip down memory lane after seeing this...

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Get a big jump into Big Data with the "Getting Started with Microsoft Big Data" series

Channel 9 - Getting Started with Microsoft Big Data

Developers, take this course to get an overview of Microsoft Big Data tools as part of the Windows Azure HDInsight and Storage services. As a developer, you'll learn how to create map-reduce programs and automate the workflow of processing Big Data jobs. As a SQL developer, you'll learn Hive can make you instantly productive with Hadoop data.

• Getting Started with Microsoft Big Data- (01) Introduction to Big Data
• Getting Started with Microsoft Big Data- (02) Introduction to Map Reduce
• Getting Started with Microsoft Big Data- (03) Introduction to Hive and HiveQL
• Getting Started with Microsoft Big Data- (04) Developing Big Data Applications with .NET
• Getting Started with Microsoft Big Data- (05) Operationalize your Big Data Pipeline

Added to the billion and one of things I need to learn ASAP. When I find the time and "want to" this series looks like a great way to get started. I've done a tiny bit of hadoop, and I already know I'm going to need all the help I can get up this learning curve...

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"The Ultimate Agile Planning Handbook" Free [email address-ware] eBook from Telerik

Telerik - The Ultimate Agile Planning Handbook

Stay on top of your backlog and manage your iterations like an Agile guru with the help of our Ultimate Agile Planning Handbook. Dive into this 20-page whitepaper with how-to tips and important Agile planning best practices that will help you improve your processes today. Some of the areas we address are:

• Time boxing
• Optimizing iterations
• Prioritizing and sizing the backlog
• Using uncertainty and maturity to improve prioritization
• Improving predictions using velocity and capacity and more
• Most common challenges related to planning and how to overcome them

Start transforming your planning process today!

This looks to be a "manager safe" short little eBook.

Here's a snap of it;

(via Tatworth - Free book from Telerik - The Ultimate Agile Planning Handbook)

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WakaWaka wild holiday solar special... Power a company with a cool mission as you power your mobile devices!

Tech Strategy Trends - Get a WakaWaka solar-powered mobile device charger (or three) at a discount

A few months ago I wrote a short review of the WakaWaka solar-powered mobile device charger. With a WakaWaka, as long as you can find a little sunlight, you can charge your smartphone, tablet, or really any other device that can be powered through a USB cable. The one issue or complaint I have about the device is its price–it’s a tad steep at $80.

Well, now WakaWaka has decided to get an early jump on the holiday discount craze with some special pricing. The holiday deals are bargains, but if you were hoping to get a WakaWaka solar-powered mobile device charger for half off you’re out of luck.There are four holiday discount deals:

• Buy two WakaWaka solar-powered mobile device chargers, get one free
• Buy two WakaWaka solar lamps for $60 (a savings of $38)
• Buy one WakaWaka solar-powered mobile device charger and one WakaWaka solar lamp for $105 (a savings of $23)
• Buy one WakaWaka solar-powered mobile device charger, get free AC charger (in case there’s no sun available)

The best deal there–at least in my opinion–is getting three solar-powered mobile device chargers for the price of two. Of course, you still have to spend $160, and you end up with three solar-powered mobile device chargers when you really only need one. But, it is a holiday special, so that may be a good deal to use to give out a couple as gifts.

The device is small enough to be portable, and rugged enough to be durable. It’s a good thing to have in your glove compartment on road trips in case your car dies and you need to charge your smartphone to call for help. It’s also an excellent thing to have with you when hiking, camping, or going to the beach–really any outdoor activities–because it may come in handy and the odds of finding an available electrical outlet while tramping through the woods is essentially nil.

...

WakaWaka - Holiday Specials

Thanks to your input, we have created some specials so you can share WakaWaka Powers and WakaWaka Lights with family and friends while helping a family living in darkness.

Our Holiday Specials catalog is the result of your suggestions and feedback!  We have included discounts that enable sharing of lights and power while still empowering us to fund a solar lamp with every purchase. Thank you for making it possible for WakaWaka to help fund our partner organizations all over the world to bring entrepreneurial education and micro-financing to women and last mile distribution of clean, safe light to those living in darkness.

Every purchase helps us further our mission to end energy poverty in our lifetime!!

Given it's Preparedness Month, now's a great time to jump on this deal.

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Space Mining - Science Fiction or just Science? (NASA wonders about exo-solar Diamond space mining)

open.NASA - Awesome Stuff in Space: Planet Mining GONE

You may have heard of the hyper-startup Planetary Resources, a company which aims to “expand Earth’s natural resource base” by developing (and eventually using) the technology to mine asteroids in the Solar System. They also have a lot of money, with investors such as Larry Page (Co-founder of Google) and James Cameron (Writer of Rambo: First Blood Part II). But what if they’re thinking a bit too small? There’s an exoplanet called 55 Cancri e which orbits the star 55 Cancri A ~41 light-years away from Earth. What makes 55 Cancri e interesting is that it weighs about 8.63 times the mass of the Earth and there is a good chance that about third of that mass is diamond. That’s a lot of diamond. Let’s be optimistic and assume for the moment that 55 Cancri e does in fact contain 2.88 times the mass of the Earth on diamond. What would happen if Planetary Resources really turned on the afterburner and tried to mine 55 Cancri e?

...

It would be prudent to open up the wormhole portal thing reasonable far away from Earth, we’ll use 35,786km because that’s the same height as a Geosynchronous orbit and I can calculate how much it costs to to get our mining equipment up there! Using the SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch system, currently the world’s most powerful rocket, it costs $130 million to get 21.2 tonnes up to that altitude. I don’t know much about mining equipment, so I just found the most expensive looking Drill I could. I know it probably won’t be the right kind of thing, but I’m going to use it’s mass as a benchmark for the weight for the fancy laser-using robotic miners we’re going to deploy to 55 Cancri e. Fortunately, the expensive looking drill weighs 20.4 tonnes, so we’ll say each Robo-Miner thing costs $130 million to get to 55 Cancri e (assuming the wormhole was already there or something). We’re also going to want to bring some transportation equipment to send the diamonds back to Earth! Since there likely aren’t any people on 55 Cancri e, we can probably put one of the wormhole entrances on the surface of 55 Cancri e (and figure out some way to slow down our equipment when it passes through the wormhole from Geostationary Transfer orbit). I’m going to use the specs of the SpaceX Dragon as a benchmark for what the specifications of our diamond return vehicle will be like (we’d need a souped up heatshield though!). A SpaceX dragon weighs 4.2 tonnes and can return to Earth with 3.13 tonnes of extra cargo, so if we use some fancy folding system we can assume that we can launch 5 diamond return vehicles on one SpaceX Falcon Heavy. Since R&D/Construction/Running costs are notoriously hard to estimate, let’s assume that the cost will be in the same order of magnitude as the Apollo program (I’ve excluded the cost of the launch vehicles, because we’re going to get them from SpaceX): $15.2 billion. I’m going to sum up our costs below:

Startup Costs: 20 Robo-Miners x $130 million each for launch = $2.6 billion. Total Estimated Costs = $2.6 billion + $15.2 billion = $17.8 billion (This does not take into account the cost of the Diamond Return Vehicle launches).

Cost of each Diamond Return Vehicle: $130 million for each launch/5 Vehicles = $26 million.

Current estimated price of 1 Tonne of Diamond: $60 million for 0.01192 kilograms. Therefore 1 Tonne of Diamond is currently worth $83892 million.

Cost to return 1 Tonne of Diamond: Each Diamond Return Vehicle costs $26 million and can return 3.13 Tonnes of Diamond. Therefore 1 Tonne costs $8.3 million

Profit on each Tonne of Diamond: $83892 million – $8.2 million = ~$84.9 billion

As you can see from the above, this would be very profitable! Keep in mind the effect INFINITY DIAMOND would have on the price of diamond (Economists, help me out!) It would give the miners of 55 Cancri e essentially a monopoly in the diamond industry though, and each capsule returning to Earth would make ~$265.7 billion in profit with the diamond prices of today! This would likely make the extremely high R&D costs much easier to stomach!

I SO want to be a space miner. If our race is to survive, we need to get off this rock... and if there's money to be made doing it, well so much the better! :)

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Red Gate goes SQL Loco for OSS Projects...

Simple Talk - SQL Support for OSS Projects

We recently blogged about two new open source websites, OSS Zero to Sixty and OSSPerks. Set up by Nik and Anthony, founders of Glimpse, they’re two sites dedicated to helping anyone looking for help, tips, resources and tooling for open source projects.

Since then, we’ve heard about all sorts of exciting things the open source community is doing and we would love our tools at Red Gate to help along the way. We’ve just added a bunch of Red Gate SQL Server tools to the growing list on OSSPerks, including:

• SQL Prompt
• SQL Doc
• SQL Data Generator
• SQL Dependency Tracker
• SQL Test

We’re offering free licenses of these tools for work on open source projects. Just drop us an email at sales[at]red-gate[you know]com with your contact details and a little information about your plans, and we’ll be in touch to set you up with a license...

OSS Perks

A listing of tools and services that are made freely available to open source projects.

OSS Zero to Sixty

Running OSS Projects: From Zero to Sixty

osszerotosixty.com is starting out as a companion website for Nik Molnar's NDC 2013 presentation by the same name. The presentation is available here for viewing and re-presenting at developer groups worldwide.

In addition, the presentation has been build using reveal.js and is open source (Creative Commons) itself. Please contribute any tips, tricks or valuable lessons to improve this quick start for OSS developers.

The video recording of this presentation from NDC is now available!. In addition, here is the session abstract:

Glimpse, an open source web application diagnostics tool, went from a rough back-of-a-napkin idea to a project with tens of thousands of users and developer media attention within a period of eight weeks. Join Glimpse’s co-founder, Nik Molnar, for an honestly raw tale of the pains and lessons learned that arose managing an open source project. Along the way, Nik will cover the tools and techniques that have proven successful over the past two years developing Glimpse, focusing on technical challenges and best practices for community management, communications and open source/life balance.This session is suitable for founders, maintainers, contributors and all users of open source software and aims to spark conversation around the best way to foster open source and open source etiquette.

It's always nice to see a favorite vendor "do good"...

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It's [going to be] a girl!

My favorite Daughter (well, she's my only daughter, but she's still my favorite) and my favorite son-in-law (well, he's my only... you get the picture ;) are finally ready to let the world know that early next year they are going to be the proud parents of a baby girl!

Making me (OMG, OMG, OMG) a grandparent! (Pappy Greg, is what I'm thinking... ;)

Erica and Garrett, your life journey only new truly begins. Congratulations and I think you're both going to be great parents! (But please, I don't want to be a Great Grand Pappy for many years yet... ;)

 

Image Credit: Baby 12 image

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"The 7 Irrefutable Rules of Bacon"

Jon Gallant - The 7 Irrefutable Rules of Bacon

Bacon! And in my mind, 7 is #1... :)

Also I think #8 should be;

8. Bacon must be respected and enjoyed for what it is. No bacon ties, car paint jobs, phone cases (though that would be kind of cool), etc. Bacon is bacon! Not decoration...

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OSS that a sysadmin can love... InfoWorld's 12 Sysadmin CodePlex Gems...

InfoWorld - Microsoft CodePlex: 12 open source gems for every Windows admin

Microsoft CodePlex gems: 12 open source tools every Windows admin will love

While it may seem antithetical to Microsoft’s image, free open source tools abound for Microsoft admins, many of which are hosted by Microsoft itself on CodePlex, the company’s free open source project hosting site.

The tools offered at CodePlex are diverse and often downright awesome. Whether you’re working with Windows, Windows Server, SharePoint, Exchange, you name it, CodePlex is a rich resource for filling out your Microsoft-based toolset -- and at the right price: free.

The following 12 CodePlex projects are some of the best, but the site offers thousands of others that can benefit IT and developer pros alike. Happy hunting.

• Windows 7/8 USB/DVD Download Tool
• Terminals
• Performance Analysis of Logs (PAL)
• SharePoint Manager 2013
• Squiggle
• RamHook
• Corefig for Windows Server 2012 Core and Hyper-V Server 2012
• Start Screen Button
• Hyper-V Manager for Server 2012 Core console using PowerShell Scripts
• ConfigMgr 2012 PowerShell Right-Click Tools
• Windows Product Key Finder
• Finestra Virtual Desktops

I've used a number of these and agree that they rock. One that many of us have used, but maybe didn't know it was OSS is the Windows 7/8 USB/DVD Download Tool (https://wudt.codeplex.com). Yep, it looks like this is "that" tool...

BTW, I don't get credit for finding this, Martin Woodward found this and due to my role on This Week on Channel 9, I kind of stole, well borrowed, it from him (hint, you'll this also mentioned in tomorrow's show).

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The HOL "Building a Release Pipeline with Team Foundation Server 2012" thing

Microsoft Downloads - Building a Release Pipeline with Team Foundation Server 2012 – Hands-on Labs

These labs teach you how to implement a continuous delivery release pipeline by using Team Foundation Server 2012. You begin by building a simple release pipeline that supports continuous integration. Later labs modify and extend the pipeline until it supports continuous delivery and includes features such as automated deployments and testing.

Version: 1

Date Published: 9/19/2013

ReleasePipelineHOL_V1.zip, 80.8 MB

This series of labs are a companion to the book "Building a Release Pipeline with Team Foundation Server 2012." They teach you how to implement a continuous delivery release pipeline by using Team Foundation Server 2012. You begin by building a simple release pipeline that supports continuous integration, but has no other automation. Subsequent labs modify and extend the pipeline until it supports continuous delivery and includes features such as automated deployments and automated testing.

Here's a snap of the zip contents;

The ToC from the Introduction doc;

Finally a snip from the doc

Objectives

This series of labs teaches you how to implement a continuous delivery release pipeline by using Team Foundation Server 2012. You begin by building a simple release pipeline that supports continuous integration, but has no other automation. Subsequent labs modify and extend the pipeline until it supports continuous delivery and includes features such as automated deployments and automated testing.

A good starting point is to read the guidance that the labs are based on, which is Building a Release Pipeline with Team Foundation Server 2012. [GD: seems this link is active right now] This guidance emphasizes three patterns that are critical to developing a continuous delivery pipeline and whose importance is reinforced by the hands-on labs (HOL). The patterns are:

· Orchestration

· Automation

· Monitoring and Metrics

Even as new technologies become available, the underlying patterns that shape your development efforts will remain the same.

...

Contents of the HOLs

One the biggest challenges in learning about distributed architectures such as the one required for these labs is creating the infrastructure. The details of setting up a complex infrastructure can be a serious distraction that makes focusing on the actual purpose of the labs difficult. To remove this difficulty, the labs have two versions. Labs 1 through 5 assume that you are using the Brian Keller VM for your infrastructure.

Lab 6 is considered an advanced lab, and assumes you are not using the Brian Keller VM. This is because it shows you how to install the components of the Trey Research Windows Phone 8 app and how to deploy a Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) service to Windows Azure. Currently, the Brian Keller VM cannot support these features, so you must create the entire infrastructure yourself. Here is a more detailed description of the labs.

· Lab 1: Starting Point. In this lab you install the Trey Research application and create the initial version of the Trey Research release pipeline.

· Lab 2: Orchestration. This is a set of four labs. In the first lab you orchestrate the commit stage of the pipeline. In the second lab you orchestrate the rest of the pipeline stages. In the third lab you configure the pipeline. In the fourth lab you test the orchestration.

· Lab 3: Automation. This is a series of three labs. In the first lab you automate the deployment of the WCF service. In the second lab you automate the deployment of the WPF application. In the third lab you automate the tests. At the conclusion of the Automation HOL, you will have created a continuous delivery pipeline.

· Lab 4: Monitoring and Metrics. This is a set of two labs. In the first lab you learn how to monitor a continuous delivery pipeline. In the second lab you learn how to create custom reports in Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS) to track some of the key metrics that are used with continuous delivery projects.

· Lab 5: Adding New Stages to the Pipeline. In this lab you learn how to add new stages to the pipeline. New stages contain new tests that improve how you test the pipeline

· Lab 6: Advanced. This is a set of two labs. The first lab is similar to the Starting Point lab, but has additional sections that show you how to add the components for the Windows Phone 8 app and the WCF Windows Azure service. The second lab shows you how to automatically deploy the components for the Windows Phone 8 app.

Completing the Labs in Sequence

As was mentioned above, there are two ways to complete all the labs. Here are the two possible sequences.

With the Brian Keller VM

Here is the sequence you should follow if you are using the Brian Keller VM.

...

Without the Brian Keller VM

Here is the sequence you should follow if you are not using the Brian Keller VM.

...

Looks interesting (for a guy in my shoes at least... ;)

 

Related Past Post XRef:
Featuring Agile Planning and Portfolio Management with TFS2013 in these Hands On Labs
Visual Studio 2013 ALM and HOL VM now available...
Playing with SQL Server 2014 (and VS2013) the Azure VM way
VS2012 Update 1 ALM VM and HOL / Demo Scripts now available
The VS 2012 ALM Virtual Machine and VS 2012 Update 1 (In short, there's an updated VM coming, don't install it on this VM if you don't have too)
The big BK has updated the Visual Studio 2012 RC ALM Virtual Machine and Hands-on-Labs
VS 11 ALM DemoMates updated for the Beta
Visual Studio/TFS11 ALM Demo's... Mate! See the VS/TFS 11 ALM's hands-on-labs in DemoMate form
Visual Studio 11 ALM VHD's, VirtualBoxed (and even on x86 hosts too)
Want to play with Visual Studio 11 & TFS 11 Dev Preview but don't want to install it (and have access to a Hyper-V server)? Here's a VHD just for

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[Hardware Review] Life with Haswell... Haswell/Harris Beach Intel SDS Ultrabook Review - Part 2

"So Greg, how's life with Haswell been?"

"Pretty Sweet! (Mostly)"

I've been given an opportunity to review the latest and greatest Intel chipset, Haswell, in the form of a engineering reference ultrabook from Intel. As I said in my previous post in this series, "Hello Haswell" , in order to try to provide a good review, I've been living with the notebook as a primary, as a machine I use through out the day, doing pretty much everything in my personal digital live.

I've now been using it for some weeks now, and besides a few whines and missteps, I'm still as wow'd as I was last time. In short, while still in my honeymoon period, the shiny has not come off the box...

Wow Factors:

Battery Life

You all are probably tired of hearing this, "Batt, batt, batt, omg Haswell is batt nirvana!" Well, it kind of is. At least for now, it's the high water mark. You can get all day usage from a pretty fully powering box. Sure, if you're playing a uber game, or watching videos non-stop, you won't get all day usage, but if you're a "normal" user you really can get all day usage.

Windows 8.1

Windows 8.1 really shines. It shines on about any box for that matter. If you're not concerned about any driver issues and your running Windows 8 now, you should upgrade as soon as you can...

High DPI Displays

In a word, the display is pretty awesome. Like almost as good as the batter life awesome...

Touch

Having touch as an additional input method is hard to live without. You don't use all the time, but when you do, it's nice. There's just some things that are easier and more intuitive with touch. As I think Intel said recently, touch is going to be everywhere really soon. In a few years we're going to look back on pre-touch computer devices and wonder how we lived with just two human to computer interfaces.

BIOS (or UEFI or whatever it's called these days...) Settings

Every box I've owned in the past has been a consumer or business device. I've never had or built an unlocked, open BIOS/hardware settings device before. Since many of you might not of either, I've grabbed pictures of most of the settings screens. The number of ways I can screw up these settings and my device is mind boggling... :P

Whine Points:

Keyboard Layout.

I really dislike the arrow/Home/End/Page key combinations. Having to hit the FN key to access Home/End/Page keys kind of bytes.

App's that don't handle High DPI's

Seems a few Desktop app's don't scale well when running on higher DPI settings. For example, Skype's Contact list looks a little funny, not scaling the items bigger.

Keyboard Backlighting

The Keyboard backlighting seems to freak out a little when the machine goes to sleep. It flashes, flickers and finally turns off. I thought I was going crazy for a while as I'd only catch this on the corner of my eye... Took a while to actually catch it in the act (which I recorded of course)

Non-production hardware

This hardware is pretty bleeding edge. It's not production hardware, it's a engineering sample/reference and so there's some pain involved in using it. Examples? I'm writing this on my third device. The first one got into some kind of weird state where the F2/F7 keys on the keyboard stopped working when in BIOS mode. They worked okay when Windows actually booted, but not before. Weird. The second device, powered on once, I activated it, it said it couldn't find the battery. So, being me, I unplugged it and sure enough, it turned off. And that was the last time that one ever powered on. This third device seems to be working okay. There's a few things I noticed that concern me a little (there's no "Intel" power setting in the Power config settings, where there were on the first device, before it went wonky. Also the fan, which is a documented known issue, cycles up and down seemingly randomly, and can be a little loud when doing so. Finally, something that's also weird, in the XBox Music app, I can never get any second song to play. The first plays fine, sounds great, but the second stops after one seconds. And I've seen this on both devices... Weird.

What am I not using?

• Mobile SIM
• NFC
• Accelerometer
• GPS

 

Summary

Windows 8.1 and Haswell are a great match. The combination of the battery life and hardware performance, along with the features of Windows 8.1 is could make this holiday season interesting. Enough to stave off the "death of the PC?" Can't say that, but [insert some kind of kicking the life support machines into a higher gear, getting CPR from a super model, witty comment here]

If you are thinking about getting a high'ish end system soon, wait for a Haswell based one.

Since I'm a dev (or at least like to play one during the day) in the next post I'll cover some of the code samples that came in the box, that exercise some of the features of this Ultrabook.

 

Here's the planned post schedule:

• Part 0 - "Haswell is coming...", July 20
• Part 1 - "Hello Haswell" - Unboxing and initial impressions, July 28
• Part 2 - "Life with Haswell"  - A couple week with Haswell, September 15  [This Post]
• Part 3 - "It's been a Haswell Summer", October 13

 

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received one or more of the products or services mentioned above for free in the hope that I would mention it on my blog. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe my readers will enjoy. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

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