Author Topic: Microsoft thread (Read 62797 times)

PC · « **Reply #1000:** January 22, 2015, 01:12:16 PM »

http://www.wsj.com/articles/windows-10-a-fresh-start-in-our-relationship-with-microsoft-1421885030

MarquisDeSade · « **Reply #1001:** January 22, 2015, 01:19:07 PM »

Quote from: PC on January 22, 2015, 12:34:57 PM

Ok, I'll bite. Which crappy OS do you prefer?

You can always depend on PC to be a fooking fool.

dracnal · « **Reply #1002:** January 22, 2015, 01:39:30 PM »

Quote from: The Chief on January 22, 2015, 12:04:04 PM

Does "free for the first year" imply that 10 will be subscription based?

Everything I've found says no, you will not be charged a fee for Win 10 after the first year. If you have a Windows 7/8 device and choose not to upgrade it in the first year of Win 10 general release, you will need to pay for a copy of Win 10 to upgrade. Once you have Win 10, you will have support for your device until it is no longer capable of handling features. Think Apple with how they handed the PowerPC chips.

dracnal · « **Reply #1003:** January 22, 2015, 02:16:53 PM »

Also, to link to what I mentioned earlier: http://www.wired.com/2015/01/microsoft-hands-on/.

This is the new HoloLens.

Nathan · « **Reply #1004:** January 22, 2015, 04:55:43 PM »

Quote from: The Chief on January 22, 2015, 12:04:04 PM

Does "free for the first year" imply that 10 will be subscription based?

I thought it was worded a bit weird as well, that's what I was wondering.

The Chief · « **Reply #1005:** January 25, 2015, 04:38:12 PM »

Must admit, I'm really impressed by the build quality of the HP stream

imref · « **Reply #1006:** March 19, 2015, 05:10:23 PM »

In honor of Microsoft announcing the end of IE:

dracnal · « **Reply #1007:** March 19, 2015, 05:29:22 PM »

Having just spent the day trying to find ways around the limitations of One Drive for Business, let me just say it's yet another case of MS ignoring a market segment. Specifically, the business segment. One Drive (the consumer version) works great. One Drive for Business has horrifyingly bad limitations. Like 20k files.

I really do like MS and want them to succeed, but supporting 3rd party phones better than their own. Making home user apps that are free significantly higher functioning than business grade apps... someone needs to go into the Redmond offices with a croquet mallet and practice some selective neutering.

Kevrock · « **Reply #1008:** March 19, 2015, 06:50:18 PM »

OneDrive for Business has serious issues. I don't think they are ignoring these issues, and have ironed out a lot of them. But they aren't ignoring the business market segment, their entire strategy -- including the great, free apps on other platforms -- is geared toward their business customers. They are giving away products for free to promote their strategy of mobile first and cloud first.

BTW, 99% of the issues I see with OneDrive are on Windows 7. Unfortunately, because Windows 8 was such a dud most businesses waited for Windows 10 instead of hopping on to Windows 8.1.

Quote from: dracnal on March 19, 2015, 05:29:22 PM

I really do like MS and want them to succeed, but supporting 3rd party phones better than their own. Making home user apps that are free significantly higher functioning than business grade apps... someone needs to go into the Redmond offices with a croquet mallet and practice some selective neutering.

Isn't OneDrive for Business much more complicated than consumer OneDrive? It syncs multiple entire SharePoint libraries, for example.

Kevrock · « **Reply #1009:** March 19, 2015, 06:51:08 PM »

I can feel you with the OneDrive pain, though. Those are some pretty obnoxious issues to deal with.

dracnal · « **Reply #1010:** March 19, 2015, 07:19:55 PM »

Yeah. It's the one part of Office 365 I hate. The rest of it is such good sense for almost all of my customers (under 100 users, prototypical office is a lawfirm with 15-20 folks). The big trend for lawyers these days seems to be MacBook Pros and the SMB issues make VPN to a traditional file server unpleasant.

I really, really wanted ODFB to fill the niche, but it just can't yet. From reading blogs, it looks like with Win 10 they'll unify the One Drive lines into one single product. In the short term, that means getting rid of the thing that makes 8 work so well (Partials) and adopting Win 7 across the board just to have it for release. Then, by end of year, bring back something that emulates Partials. In the short term though, it means that I'm sending yet more business to Rackspace because I just haven't found a file share program that works as well with Macs as Jungledisk does.

Overall, the move to give out Win 10 licenses to everyone, including pirated Chinese users is pretty brilliant. It's about the only shot they've got for getting any traction in the cheap global mobile market with the 5xx Lumia lines. Let developers focus on one platform across board and it'll be much easier to get people to develop for it.

imref · « **Reply #1011:** March 20, 2015, 12:01:48 AM »

In case you missed it, this past Wednesday they announced a renaming of Lync to Skype for Business (and Skype for Business Cloud as part of Office 365). The client will look the same as the Skype consumer client (though it will still be a different app). They will offer seamless federation between the business and consumer worlds so if you are a SFB user you can IM/voice chat/video chat with consumer Skype users. They also announced plans to offer telephony services through SFBC/O365, so O365 can pretty much deliver everything a business would need - voice, email, calendar, IM, video conferencing, mobile management, file sharing, etc.).

dracnal · « **Reply #1012:** March 20, 2015, 09:13:49 AM »

Technically, it already has been providing the voice stuff for at least a two years. Just doesn't get much attention.

That said, call me when they make Skype work on Windows Phones. It's closer than it's been for a long time, but it's still insane that it doesn't toast correctly when they own both Skype and WP.

imref · « **Reply #1013:** March 20, 2015, 10:53:56 AM »

Quote from: dracnal on March 20, 2015, 09:13:49 AM

Technically, it already has been providing the voice stuff for at least a two years. Just doesn't get much attention.

O365/Lync Online has offered voice chat, but what's new is full PSTN connectivity and PBX features. Currently if you want to use Lync as your phone system you had to provision an on-premise Lync server.

Kevrock · « **Reply #1014:** March 20, 2015, 10:59:42 AM »

Is dracnal Paul Thurrott? Never met anyone in real life that is so worked up about Windows Phones.

Kevrock · « **Reply #1015:** March 20, 2015, 11:00:50 AM »

I think 50% of the reason I wouldn't entertain Windows Phone is so clients don't think I'm straight 100% Microsoft biased.

HalfSmokes · « **Reply #1016:** March 20, 2015, 11:01:37 AM »

I've still never seen a windows phone in the wild

dracnal · « **Reply #1017:** March 20, 2015, 11:18:50 AM »

Quote from: imref on March 20, 2015, 10:53:56 AM

O365/Lync Online has offered voice chat, but what's new is full PSTN connectivity and PBX features. Currently if you want to use Lync as your phone system you had to provision an on-premise Lync server.

Mm... there's been E4 plans that offered voice mail and virtual PBX services for a while. Maybe I've misunderstood something in the reqs. Entirely possible because our company tends to try and stay way the hell away from VoIP. Way too many potential headaches. But I'm sure there was virtual PBX stuff out there...

imref · « **Reply #1018:** March 20, 2015, 11:22:12 AM »

Quote from: dracnal on March 20, 2015, 11:18:50 AM

Mm... there's been E4 plans that offered voice mail and virtual PBX services for a while. Maybe I've misunderstood something in the reqs. Entirely possible because our company tends to try and stay way the hell away from VoIP. Way too many potential headaches. But I'm sure there was virtual PBX stuff out there...

you needed an on-premise server or one of the server-in-a-box offerings from Audio Codes or Sangoma.

dracnal · « **Reply #1019:** March 20, 2015, 11:22:59 AM »

Quote from: Kevrock on March 20, 2015, 10:59:42 AM

Is dracnal Paul Thurrott? Never met anyone in real life that is so worked up about Windows Phones.

Hehe. It's because I have a Lumia 920. It's honestly a great phone, very durable, love the battery life... but MS provides better support to Android and iPhone. I get that it's a numbers game, but you can't make something a flagship product, ignore it, and then cry about market pen. I'm ticked off that SharePoint and One Drive integration on the phone is garbage compared to the real phone OSes. The built in search that ties to Bing automatically? No way to get that linked to your rewards account. Again, that's an automatic thing for the others.

It's just a bunch of things like that - they rolled out some innovative ideas and features on WP8 and then proceeded to release the better full featured versions for Android and iPhone without bothering to update their own. Frustrating to no end. Don't get me wrong. I love my phone and will likely replace it with another once Win 10 comes out and proves stable. Cortana is fantastic and for business productivity (minus the SP integration) it does what I need. I have a Kindle Fire and a laptop for games, apps and other time wasting garbage. Don't need to clutter the phone with that.

dracnal · « **Reply #1020:** March 20, 2015, 11:26:15 AM »

Quote from: imref on March 20, 2015, 11:22:12 AM

you needed an on-premise server or one of the server-in-a-box offerings from Audio Codes or Sangoma.

Gotcha. This is the blurb from E4 plans that threw me off:

Voicemail integration (Unified Messaging): Hosted voicemail support with auto-attendant capabilities. Voicemails are recorded to Exchange Online and users can access them from Outlook, Outlook Web App, or a compatible mobile phone.

Enterprise voice: Enhance or replace your traditional private branch exchange (PBX) phone system with the enterprise calling capabilities of Lync Server 2013. Get features such as answer, forward, transfer, hold, divert, release, and park, plus support for analog devices and a broad range of both IP and USB user devices from partners.

To me that sounded like they could provide the server instead of just modding your in house servers to do the job.

imref · « **Reply #1021:** March 20, 2015, 11:28:21 AM »

Quote from: dracnal on March 20, 2015, 11:26:15 AM

Gotcha. This is the blurb from E4 plans that threw me off:

Voicemail integration (Unified Messaging): Hosted voicemail support with auto-attendant capabilities. Voicemails are recorded to Exchange Online and users can access them from Outlook, Outlook Web App, or a compatible mobile phone.

Enterprise voice: Enhance or replace your traditional private branch exchange (PBX) phone system with the enterprise calling capabilities of Lync Server 2013. Get features such as answer, forward, transfer, hold, divert, release, and park, plus support for analog devices and a broad range of both IP and USB user devices from partners.

To me that sounded like they could provide the server instead of just modding your in house servers to do the job.

if you click on the little exclamation point next to "enterprise voice" on the info page - https://products.office.com/en-us/business/office-365-enterprise-e4-business-software#a it says you need an on-premises server.

dracnal · « **Reply #1022:** March 20, 2015, 11:32:05 AM »

And that's why I stay the hell away from VoIP

**edit: Thanks for pointing out the clarifying piece, imref. Have you deployed Lync Server anywhere? Had someone swearing up and down that even on Cable over open Internet it was the most latency/jigger tolerant thing ever with the most incredible voice quality. I was skeptical.

imref · « **Reply #1023:** March 20, 2015, 11:32:48 AM »

Quote from: dracnal on March 20, 2015, 11:32:05 AM

And that's why I stay the hell away from VoIP

Kevrock · « **Reply #1024:** March 20, 2015, 11:45:44 AM »

Quote from: dracnal on March 20, 2015, 11:32:05 AM

**edit: Thanks for pointing out the clarifying piece, imref. Have you deployed Lync Server anywhere? Had someone swearing up and down that even on Cable over open Internet it was the most latency/jigger tolerant thing ever with the most incredible voice quality. I was skeptical.

I'm migrating on-prem Lync to 365 right now, although I'm more involved in the Exchange piece. It was an awful deployment of it in the first place as well, basically half-done.

I would be skeptical also.