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Windows 8

Windows 8 is dead so don't waste your money

technologyEdward Kiledjian
Image by IsaacMao under Creative Commons License

Image by IsaacMao under Creative Commons License

There is no denying Windows Vista was a total flop. So much so that Microsoft did everything to quickly move away and erase it from our memory.  

One of the best connected Microsoft watchers, Paul Thurrot says

Paul then follows up with

Paul's comment simply aludes to the fact that Windows 8 has had horrible adoption rate (sales) and customers just hate it. Believe it or not, Vista had sold more copies in this phase of its life cycle (compared to Win8).

So what's next?

Most analysts believe the next version of windows codenamed threshold will be released spring 2015 (probably bundled with a new version of Office Touch). Microsoft will do everything to make sure consumers forget about Windows 8 so why waste your money on it? 

Microsoft SkyDrive to become OneDrive

technologyEdward Kiledjian
2014-01-28_06-59-36.jpg

British Sky Broadcasting Group won a court battle with Microsoft last year and the settlement included an undisclosed amount of compensation and Microsoft agreed to change the name of its infringing SkyDrive product.

Now Microsoft has announced that Skydrive will be rebranded to OneDrive (link). They are promising that OneDrive is everything Skydrive is and more. What the more means is anyone's guess and Skydrive hasn't been the most popular consumer online cloud storage service. 

No date of when the new service will go live but you can give them your email address and they will let you know.

Clean Install Windows 8 with an upgrade key

technologyEdward Kiledjian
Creative Commons Image - Flicker user Tripp

Creative Commons Image - Flicker user Tripp

Let's say you bought one of those $30 Windows upgrade promotion keys from Microsoft last year and now want to perform a clean install. What do you do?

The media you downloaded does allow you to perform the install but windows will refuse to activate a new install with that upgrade key. Unless you perform this magical process.

If you don't know what you are doing, stop and call a friend. If you make a mistake with regedit, you can harm your windows installation.

  • Start Regedit
  • Navigate to this registry folder HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Setup/OOBE/
  • Double click on the MediaBootInstall key and change the value from 1 to 0
  • Open a cmd prompt with admin rights and execute this command: slmgr /rearm
  • Now you have to reboot Windows

You will now be able to activate your windows with that upgrade key you bought.

Windows 8.1 coming in October

technologyEdward Kiledjian
Although Microsoft will finalize the Windows 8.1 update in the next couple of weeks, the official update won't be released to the general public [or pushed to existing users] until October.
OEM partners will receive the update in August and are being given time to test and ensure drivers are updated to support the update.
I'm really disappointed that Microsoft is implementing an artificial delay to the much anticipated update. 
Most analysts expect the 8.1 update to bring with it some new devices 7/8" tablets, new laptops, new all-in-one desktops [right before the holiday shopping season].

Microsoft SkyDrive celebrates 250 million users

technologyEdward Kiledjian
Since the launch of Windows 8, Microsoft has been under attack about forcing users to a less usable Operating System. That is why its doubly nice to see Microsoft having cause to celebrate. Microsoft is celebrating 250 million SkyDrive users. 
Microsoft is forcing Windows 8 on consumers buying a new PC and SkyDrive is intimately tied into windows 8 so it is logical that the giant's online cloud storage service got a bump in usage. It is a decent competitor to Google Drive, Box and Sugarsync but falls short of Dropbox.
Microsoft blog article.