Engineering Windows 8 for mobile networks

re: Engineering Windows 8 for mobile networks

IsoUnit — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 02:27:33 GMT

I'm happy to see the effort that has gone into streamlining the process of connecting to all types of networks, as well as making Windows more aware of the type of network it's connecting to (and whether it is a metered network).

In fact, everything else the developers have done with Win8 has been fantastic. They've really put out some of their best work the last few years (Win8, Win7, and the behind-the-scenes stuff in WinVista).

Except... the Metro UI. The screenshots and video in this article and others makes it painfully obvious how awkward it is.

It appears as though some accessibility feature for the visually impaired is stuck on. All the menus, icons, and controls look like they are right out of an MS-DOS program (this extends to Windows Setup as well unfortunately). It requires so much effort for the eye to make sense of it all, that I can't use it for very long at a time. And slime green as the default background?? I was hoping the Beta would have some enormous visual improvements, but after seeing the state of Win8 at CES, I'm getting worried. I never thought I'd see the day when a Microsoft UI would make me feel envious of your average Frankenstein-like Linux monstrosity.

The tile system itself is great though. Tablets have a lot of limitations compared to desktops and notebooks, and on that platform the Metro UI really works great. It even makes a lot of sense to have the same ecosystem of Metro style apps available on more capable systems as well. But Metro style apps should be able to run in a window like any modern multitasking OS is supposed to be able to accomplish. Let's not erase the last 20 years of progress. This is also why it's a horrible design choice to enter the Metro UI just because someone pressed the start button. It makes no sense whatsoever to mash together those two completely different UI's. It's extremely disorienting and breaks the multitasking paradigm. It seems like the UI team has suddenly become completely obsessed with number of clicks and so forth (or maybe just promoting the Windows 8 Store?), while completely losing sight of usability. They can't see the forest for the trees. Win8 should give you the choice during setup, but the default selection should be Metro UI for touch devices only. In it's current form, I can't imagine recommending Win8 to our home or corporate clients, or making it the default option on our desktop or notebook systems (last time we did that was with Vista, and we sold zero systems with Vista installed). I've also put plans for developing any Metro style apps on hold since it will simply be too frustrating to use one on anything but a tablet system. It's a real shame.

re: Engineering Windows 8 for mobile networks

xpclient — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 16:32:37 GMT

In fact internet communication for any feature mentioned here (technet.microsoft.com/.../cc766257(WS.10).aspx) which is not important should be disabled when "Reduce data usage" is checked.

re: Engineering Windows 8 for mobile networks

xpclient — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 08:40:37 GMT

@Pekka Niikkonen and @Srini Malayala, thanks for the replies.

@Windows mobile networking team, one very important feature request I forgot is about IE's RSS feed synchronization and low bandwidth networks. Can you make IE not sync the feeds and delay it to when I am on a high speed network if "Reduce data usage" is checked? Often I find feed synchronization taking a lot of time and bandwidth with many subscribed feeds.

re: Engineering Windows 8 for mobile networks

Mark — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 19:42:40 GMT

I love all of this!

Especially metered networks... It is one of my biggest worries whenever I connect to 3G on my Win7 laptop. I always worry that there are applications needlessly using up bandwidth. Please make a UAC Metered Bandwidth prompt for any application that does not utilize the new API. If some clunky application wants to connect to the network over 3G, it should require user authorization.

I think most of us would like to know when an older application wants to use bandwidth. I think there should also be separate firewall rules as well, just as there are different firewall rules for Public and Private networks.

re: Engineering Windows 8 for mobile networks

Srini Malayala [MSFT] — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 04:10:49 GMT

@xpclient

>>> 1. What control path features does the class driver support? (SMS, PIN, service activation, roaming config??)

Windows 8 supports all of the control path features introduced with Mobile Broadband in Windows 7 to manage device, connection and radio states, pin, SMS, provisioned contexts etc.,

In addition, the following new capabilities are introduced with Windows 8 for Mobile Broadband control path -

- USSD

- Network selection (for carrier unlocked devices),

- SIM based authentication (EAP-SIM/AKA/AKA') for Wi-Fi networks

- Multi-mode networks (3GPP + 3GPP2 for CDMA networks adopting LTE for 4G) and

- “Device Services” enabling device makers to extend with custom commands to fit their needs.

Introduction of the feature rich “Device Services” extensibility framework in MB Class Driver supersedes the VendorSpecific control path feature of Windows 7.

re: Engineering Windows 8 for mobile networks

Like it — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 02:31:36 GMT

Like it.

A quick facebook like is helpful for some of these blog entries...

re: Engineering Windows 8 for mobile networks

Billy Anders - MSFT — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 01:50:07 GMT

@Peter @Kyoto

The graphs show the high-level network operations and typical timings for when users resume their laptops from standby. We’ve lowered the overall Wi-Fi connect times by reducing the number and timings of these operations, how these operations were serialized behind one another, and by working with our Wi-Fi device partners on connection ‘hints’ (for example preferred SSIDs), allowing the Wi-Fi hardware to begin operations much sooner and complete more quickly.

Please see this //Build conference presentation on Understanding Wi-Fi networking in Windows 8 (channel9.msdn.com/.../HW-342T) for more details.

re: Engineering Windows 8 for mobile networks

Chris Hynes — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 23:01:58 GMT

Please make sure to automatically switch back to the mobile broadband network if the WiFi connection seems to be available but isn't actually transacting data.

This is one of my biggest pet peeves with phones -- you'll be on the edge of a WiFi network, so you'll get a bar or two -- enough to make the phone turn off mobile broadband, but not enough signal to actually do anything. Instead, it should stay connected to mobile broadband if the WiFi network is slower than the broadband or is dropping more packets.

This makes me end up running around with WiFi off most of the time so I know I always have a connection, rather than having the device be able to automatically switch back and forth to the fastest network device.

re: Engineering Windows 8 for mobile networks

pmbAustin — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 18:58:34 GMT

Yes, NTFAN ... Paul Thurrott has already confirmed that Metro under Windows 8 uses the Registry (unfortunately). It uses it for registering interfaces like the "share" integration, etc... among other things. If you go to his WindowsSuperSite.com blog and search, you might be able find the article discussing this. I don't have a link handy.

re: Engineering Windows 8 for mobile networks

Jason — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 18:42:04 GMT

I would hope that in terms of battery life conservation, if a device was on mobile broadband (at least having access to coordinates of cell towers), and those were outside of the expected range of a known access point (i.e. my home or work wifi), that wifi could be automatically disabled. It could be re-enabled when brought back into range. Such behavior, especially when pushed into Windows Phones, would very much increase battery life and keep you on fast connections.