Monday, April 23, 2012

Changes to Microsoft SkyDrive

As part of the SkyDrive integration with Windows 8, Microsoft is making changes to how SkyDrive works. Most of the changes are around making it work more seamlessly (in the background with minimal interruption) as well as making it easier to install, configure, and use.

They are also increasing the amount of free storage per account from 2GB to 7GB for new users. However, if you are an existing SkyDrive user and you login into your account within the next few days you will be presented with the option of upgrading your account to 25GB for free as a 'loyalty' reward!

More details here:  http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/04/23/the-next-chapter-for-skydrive-personal-cloud-storage-for-windows-available-anywhere.aspx

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Free SQL Server 2012 eBook

SQL Server 2012 shipped a little while ago and Microsoft has published an eBook titled "Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2012" that they are giving away for free.

Details of the book and contents can be found in this blog post:  Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2012

Direct links to the different versions:

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Windows 8 Editions

Thanks to this blog post from Microsoft, we now know how many editions of 'Windows 8' there will be, and yes, it will be called Windows 8 officially. How novel!

While it is refreshing to see that there isn't a buffet of versions to choose from anymore, one option in the comparison chart for the 3 editions struck me as odd. There will be no support for Windows Media Player in the WinRT (ARM processors) edition. Is there some other application that will provide this functionality out of the box? For many people, especially the 'regular consumers' that just use whatever comes pre-installed, this could be an issue. Installing a 3rd party app from the App Store makes this easy to solve, but I find it hard to imagine that there would not be native support for common media file types.

If I walked into a store and tried to play a media file on a WinRT device that didn't work, I wouldn't buy it no matter how compelling the interface was. Media consumption is a core usage scenario for these devices and a native capability supported by every other tablet on the market since it became a market.

Is there an alternative to the traditional Windows Media Player for the Windows RT edition?