Windows 8 to RTM tomorrow (1st August) and MSDN/TechNet subscribers to get it 1st September? (updated)

Update: Windows 8 did indeed RTM on 1st August, but MSDN/TechNet subscribers will get Windows 8 on 15th August - not 1st September as this post suggests. See this post for more information.

Rumours are everywhere at the moment about Windows 8, saying many different things. But it seems that Windows 8, scheduled to RTM in “the first week of August” will RTM tomorrow, 1st August. This is when Windows 8 will be completely finished and the OEMs (Dell etc.) will get copies to put on PCs ready for 26th October.

One rumour is that MSDN/TechNet subscribers (who usually get Microsoft stuff early) will be able to access Windows 8 from 1st September onwards. This is a little disappointing, especially because these people got Windows 7 days after the RTM, and there’s nothing stopping Microsoft from releasing it, say, next week. But this is a rumour, and the software giant could let the subscribers get it sooner than next month.

In RTM related news, it appears that Microsoft have added some more Start screen patterns for the final release. Throughout the 3 previews, Microsoft have added more customisation options to Windows 8. In the Developer Preview, there was basically no start screen customisation and people were stuck with green and a single pattern. I think the original idea was to have a non-customisable single (different) colour for each preview release, and options in the final release. However, people complained and in the Consumer Preview a small choice of colours and 6 patterns (including no pattern) were available. In the Release Preview, a load more colours but the same 6 patterns were available. But for the final release, Microsoft have kept the RP colours but added a load more patterns (making Windows 8 customisable enough that people won’t mind not being able to set an image as the Start screen background). Here they are, from Win8china.com:

Some of them look a little… childish to me (a little like Hotmail’s themes though these will change with the upcoming metro redesign) so I’m glad the existing themes in the Release Preview are still there, as I like my Start screen just the way it is:

The new SkyDrive – [someone else's] thoughts (now updated with proper link)

I was going to write about the new Microsoft SkyDrive features and what could be improved this week. But someone has beaten me to it , and they’ve essentially summed up what I would like. So I recommend you have a read of this post:

http://wp.me/p15Dp2-eh

In other news, I have updated the blog’s icon to the new Windows 8 logo. I have done this because the focus has changed from a primarily Doctor Who blog to a Doctor Who and technology blog (in part because there hasn’t been any Doctor Who for ages, and there won’t be any Doctor Who for ages yet, and in part because I find technology interesting, wanted to blog about it occasionally and didn’t want to start a different blog). In relation to the icon changes, I’ve changed the name to the more simple doctorwhofan98′s blog. This may or may not be a temporary name (as it depends on whether I think of something better).

Do let me know if you have any good name ideas. Do you use cloud storage? Why/why not?

Edit/update 05/05/2012: I’ve updated the link above in the post to go to the correct article. The previous link went to a post written in February when the features were announced, but not released. The newer post is after the app was released. Here is a link to the old post, and look above for a link to the new post.

The Doctor’s next companion… revealed!

A short post this week, but one with very big Doctor Who news (that was in fact revealed on 21 March) – the new companion’s actress has been revealed. Not the name of the companion (at least not yet), but see the article below for more information…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-17456505

And this one as well…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/dw/news/bulletin_120321_02/Jenna-Louise_Coleman_Announced_as_New_Companion

So, Jenna-Louise Coleman will be the new companion, replacing Amy and Rory Pond. Here’s a timeline:

• Autumn 2012 – Doctor Who Series 7 starts
• Autumn 2012 – Amy and Rory Pond leave the series
• Christmas 2012 – the companion arrives!
• Spring 2013 (Date TBC) - Series 7 part 2, or Series 8 (TBC)

That’s basically the known future of Doctor Who in a few sentences. So, what do you think about the new companion?

Windows Home Server 2011 RC preview

Code named ‘Vail’, this is the next version of Windows Home Server. I’m here to give you an overview of a new feature.

Back in November, Microsoft stirred up a lot of controversy when it announced that due to some application compatibility issues it was pulling Drive Extender from Windows Home Server “Vail” (for the first time, Microsoft has consolidated the code base for Vail with two small business offerings, Small Business Server 2011 Essentials, and Storage Server 2011 Essentials).  Drive Extender was a somewhat unique offering that allowed WHS to “see” all physical drives in a WHS box as a single large blob of storage, and to duplicate data so that if one physical drive failed, data would still be available on another drive (if enough drives and enough storage were available).

Unfortunately, when Microsoft made the decision to consolidate code bases between Windows Home Server and the SBS offerings, they found that Drive Extender didn’t work with some SBS applications, and so it had to go.

Now with the new RC Preview, at least a bit of a replacement is available, with a “Format a Hard Disk” wizard and a “Move my Folder” wizard.  With Drive Extender, you just popped in a hard drive, and WHS would do the rest: formatting the drive, adding it to the blob of storage, and creating redundancies.  With Windows Home Server 2011, it’s a bit harder, and the redundancy, alas, is gone (shouldn’t Windows Live Sync or Mesh be playing a part, here?).

Here’s a “Learning Bite” for WHS 2011 on Managing Storage:

The wizards do make things a bit easier than manually adding drives, creating new folders on the new drives, copying information over to the new drive, and deleting the old folders.  Definitely not Drive Extender, but simpler, and built on a newer code base, one that’s set up to be supported.

Thanks to LiveSide.net for the info.

Come Fly With Me to have Series 2, Merlin not on in 2011 – my thoughts

Two bits of news today – BBC One’s Come Fly With Me has been commissioned for a second series, and Merlin is going to return, as promised, for a fourth series, but it won’t be on until 2012, probably due to Series 6 of Doctor Whos rescheduling. Even when it does come back, it will only be for ten parts. Terrible.

Well, the Come Fly With Me news is very good. I think the TV show’s series one was amazing, and I’m glad we haven’t seen the last of Matt Lucas and David Walliams in an airport. Series One had very good ratings, so that led, of course, to Series Two.

The Merlin news is good and bad, in my opinion. Good: Doctor Who won’t clash with it. Bad: We don’t get any Merlin for a while, and when we do it isn’t much. Good (2): The BBC are considering Series Five for Merlin. Great!

So, that is my thoughts on some good and bad TV news. What do you think of it? While you are thinking, you can listen to Moses’ charity single from Come Fly With Me. Enjoy!

Want more traffic? Publicize now makes it easy (via WordPress.com News)

A bit of WordPress.com news for you today. Not a blogger? Either get a blog or read this anyway. Either’s good.

The news is about sharing. Wouldn’t it be great if your Facebook/Windows Live/Yahoo!/Twitter friends got to know when you did a new post without using the email subscription feature? Now they can! Once you connect a service, the new post update will show up on your profile/feed/wall, with maybe an extract from the post. With a click, your friends will be taken to your blog (that counts as traffic! ) where they can read the whole post and comment/like. Brilliant!

You may be reading this through my Windows Live feed. Or through the email subscription feature. Or via RSS. Or on my actual blog.

So if you have a blog, get publicizing today. Chances are you’ll have Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo! or Windows Live. And you’ll have a lot of friends. So they can now get reading!

Happy Sunday!

Oh, and by the way, keep an eye on WordPress.com news.

We’ve made some big user experience improvements to how the traffic building feature called Publicize works.  This feature allows you to connect your WordPress.com blog to your account on social networking services like Twitter and Facebook, broadcasting your posts to your friends automatically for you. In the past it took a few steps to figure out how to get going. Now it’s just a click away. Starting today, when you publish a post, you’ll see a … Read More

via WordPress.com News