windows 8

I’m excited that I just received an Intel Haswell Ultrabook to review! Last year I reviewed an Intel Ivy Bridge Ultrabook with Windows 8 and touch screen. Overall I was happy with the device, the hardware, and sensors. Battery life was so-so, but then again, it was about the same as most other machines so no big expectations there anyway. But this is a new year and the Intel Haswell chip has set some pretty big expectations. The folks at Intel recently sent me a Haswell based Ultrabook to examine and provide feedback. They made it clear, in about every way imaginable other than a personal visit, that this is a model that will never be a production...

The combination of good sensors and simplicity of tapping into the Windows 8 sensor APIs are really going to open the doors to some great apps. In this final review I'll touch on the core sensors, how they fared, and how to tap into each of them. I've received a few pieces of hardware and software over the years for review purposes. Unfortunately, some of the hardware I receive falls far short of my expectations and hardly ever gets used again. This is definitely not the case with the Intel IvyBridge Ultrabook running Windows 8 Pro that I received. My experience with it over that time has left me extremely impressed for speed,...

I’ve been using the Intel IvyBridge Ultrabook that I received from the folks at Intel for the past few weeks. My experience with it over that time has left me extremely impressed. The array of sensors on the device are perhaps the most impressive. From what I can tell, the machine itself is not one that we'll see in stores,  but instead its simply just a model Intel used as a sample to show what OEM’s can create for Windows 8. You can read my initial impressions of the IvyBridge Ultrabook here. This time I’ll focus on my experiences with using it over the past few weeks. First, I can&...

Dan Wahlin and I have updated our Introduction to Windows 8 Applications course with Pluralsight. The updates include 2 entirely new modules on building both HTML/JS apps and XAML apps with Visual Studio 2012. You can check out the course material on the site, and the quick list of topics is below. My favorite new clip is some candy on an introduction to using MVVM with Windows 8 XAML apps in the last module. Dan and I hope you enjoy it! Introduction to Building Windows 8 Applications Introduction Windows 8 Start Screen Windows 8 Start Screen Demo Windows 8 UI Windows 8 UI Demo App Snapping App Snapping Demo Charms Charms Demo App Bar App Bar Demo Summary...

I love lightweight, powerful, and fast computers. Sometimes its so I can travel and other times its just to make it easy to move around the house. Not too long ago it was difficult to find these types of computers unless you were willing to sacrifice performance … and I wasn’t. It’s one thing to run Word and a browser, but developers need beefier performance. The folks at Intel recently sent me an Ivy Bridge Ultrabook to examine and provide feedback. They made it clear, in about every way imaginable other than a telegram, that this is a model that will never be a production laptop “as-is”. It is branded as Intel, yet the...