Windows 10 - how does it seem so far?

Having been an IT consultant before I retired, it will not be a surprise that I was one of the first in the queue to get Windows 10 installed on my laptop. As no doubt other less technically enthusiastic souls will be considering it in the weeks and months to come I thought I’d share my experiences and views after a month of using the new version.

Firstly, the upgrade. I was impressed at how easy and clean Microsoft had made the process. You could say it is in three parts.

Part One happens once you ask Microsoft to give you the upgrade. To do this, look for the Windows 10 icon in your system tray – that’s the bit at the bottom right hand end of your screen. The W10 icon looks like a perspective monochrome picture of the English St George’s flag. If you don’t see it there, you are not up to date on updates to your current Windows version, and you really should be, as mostly these are about fixing security flaws. For more info, follow the instructions on this Microsoft page: http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/windows-10-upgrade. Anyway, once you have requested the upgrade, you will need to wait a few days as Windows 10 software will download to your computer in the background. It’s about the size of a third of an HD movie, so won’t happen quickly.

Part Two is preparing for the upgrade. You should take a backup of your computer as there is always a small risk of things going wrong enough that you need to recover your previous version. If you are already backing up your files to the cloud (e.g. Google Drive, BT Cloud or similar) – and if you are not then you should be! – then all you need to do is create a ‘Restore point’. See Microsoft’s instructions here: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows7/create-a-restore-point. Otherwise, Google ‘create a Windows system image’ and follow guidance. Note that a system image (essentially, a complete copy of your hard drive) will require an external storage device with as much capacity as your current hard drive usage.

Part Three, at last, you kick off the upgrade – Microsoft will let you know when it is ready and provide a nice automated process. Mind you it will take a long time: in my case a couple of hours, and you need to be around to answer the occasional prompt.

But having done all this, is it worth it?

Well, Microsoft claims to have much improved the boot-up time, but although it might be a bit quicker, there’s no significant gain. The home screen comes up quicker, but there are still things going on in the background and response times initially are a bit slow. Just hum “You’d be surprised what I can do, When I’m starting Windows” to George Formby’s well known ditty whilst you wait.

Overall the look and feel is a bit more modern and clean, albeit a bit too small at times (the slider bars at the right and lower edge of a window are quite hard to find and require more precision to click and drag accurately).

As with Windows 8, you have to work much harder on setting up the launch screen than in earlier versions, which were based on the Start menu or on desktop shortcuts. However, the desktop shortcuts work just as well as ever and remain in place after upgrading. You lose the ‘recently opened programs’ list – oh and don’t forget that programs are now called Apps. I find it hard to think of Word or Excel as an app, but that’s modern thinking. I would like a notifications panel for things like latest emails and upcoming appointments, either in the Start menu or on the desktop, but I haven’t worked out yet how to make that work properly. The available information on how to set up and optimise your desktop for your preferred way of working is pretty scant, even from the Googlesphere.

Then there are the new features: Edge and Cortana, both of which aren’t great at the moment.

Edge is the new browser replacing the late and not much lamented Internet Explorer. It is fairly quick, but spoils the effect by waiting for images to load before it lets you scroll. At least you don’t seem to get the annoying movement up and down of text as the browser rearranges the page to put images in, like you get with Chrome.

One issue to note with Edge: if you currently use IE, it will import those bookmarks. If you use Chrome, and you try to import your Chrome bookmarks, it annoyingly reverses the order of them. And once there, it is nearly impossible to change the order or rearrange them – for some reason Microsoft hasn’t put that facility in. I am still sticking on balance with Chrome and occasionally Firefox. Maybe it’s that Microsoft wants you to use Cortana to access your favourite web pages, except that...

Cortana, the much heralded ‘digital assistant’, isn’t available yet for UK users. So you can’t use it or try it out, unless you are prepared to set your Windows location as the USA, and accept all the Americanisms that go with that.

One last point about Windows 10 is that just like Google, it assumes the right to collect and use all sorts of personal data from your usage. If you are nervous about Privacy issues, click here for a useful TechRepublic article that explains these and how to increase your own protection.

So for an overall summary, I’d say make sure you do upgrade to Windows 10 whilst it is still free (Microsoft says it will be free for one year, so upgrade by July 2016), but don’t feel the need to hurry in the short term – Microsoft is still developing some of the features and there are rough edges. Good luck and happy computing!

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A free-for-all in domain names?

One of the biggest shake-ups in naming of internet sites has been approved by the relevant global authority, ICANN. They have opened up the top level domain (TLD) names to virtually anything. (See www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13835997 for the relevant news article.)

Now, there are 22 current TLDs - these are the likes of .com, .net, .gov, .org and so on. These are not to be confused with country level domains like .uk which are often suffixed to TLDs but can be used alone. The plan now is to allow any organisation to apply for ownership of any new TLD name.

There is a down side to this: the minimum bid will be $185,000, but then if you gain ownership of a domain like .music or .sport you should be able to sell a lot of URLs to web site owners. After all, the tiny Pacific island state of Tuvalu now gains most of its export income from selling domain names using its country level domain .tv (including for example Channel Five's www.five.tv).

So what can we expect from this? Well, various global brands have already announced their intention to buy their brand name - for example, .canon and .nike. If they don't intend to have various domains within the TLD, then they will have a website which can be addressed simply as http://nike. One might imagine various global superbrands will follow this route. Even if the likes of Microsoft, Apple, Google and so on did not particularly want to change from current well-known URLs, they cannot sit back and allow someone else to acquire a TLD with their brand name.

Then there will be the "domain name investors" who will acquire the names which will be saleable as domain suffices. Besides the examples of .music and .sport already mentioned, there could be many more: other category descriptions from .air to .zoo; location domains like .london or .scotland; perhaps even some corralling of the, shall we say, specialist portion of the internet behind .porn or .adult.

One of the biggest expansion areas is expected to be for the likes of China, Japan, Korea and the Middle East, as non-Latin character sets will be able to be used for the first time in domain names.

What will it mean for smaller, sub-global companies? Well, one impact is that the increasing trend towards longer domain names may be averted for a while. I was lucky in that (a) I have a relatively unusual surname, and (b) I bought my domain name around 2000, when .biz was a comparatively new TLD and so there was an opportunity to get the www.emmens.biz name I wanted (the .com and .co.uk variants were already taken back then). These days, I'd probably have to go for something unwieldy, like www.emmensconsultancyservices.co.uk - definitely a candidate for one of the 'short URL' services if tweeting! I've also encountered medium-sized businesses with 20 or 25 character names which also use the email convention of firstname.surname@25charactercompanyurlname.co.uk, and when an employee with a long name like Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen - well, you get the picture. There's no doubt that shorter, snappier URLs are more likely to be remembered and typed than long ones, but at present the only other option is to find a weird, made-up company name that won't already be registered as a domain name, like zxrg421. (Yes, that one is still available, I checked. Feel free to claim it, I won't charge a finder's fee.)

Is there a down side? Well, there is some concern about organised crime getting hold of specific domain names that could enable them to spoof corporate network locations (see www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/04/dotless_domain_security/), but I would expect ICANN to be fairly careful with the release of sensitive TLDs, so the risk should be small for most of us. There will I guess be a proliferation of web sites with the same name but different TLDs, which could get confusing, but no doubt as most of us find a site through a search engine, it won't be too much of a minefield. Wait though for the first law suits as for example small independent shopkeeper Mr. Clarke sets up his web site as www.clarkes.shoes, and the big corporation gets all proprietorial!

So in general, I look forward to the brave new future with more and more names available to choose. I'm off to relax with a www.glassof.beer!

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When is Democracy a bad thing?

It's a momentous time for Democracy. In Tunisia and Egypt, the population is clamouring for a genuine say in how the country is run. In the UK, we have to decide which is more democratic: first past the post, or the alternative vote. In the west, it is almost unthinkable not to have a form of democracy for public representation.

But would you apply democracy everywhere? Take business, for example. I have recently been working on a contract for a FTSE-250 company, guiding their information systems department through a reorganisation. They had taken the approach that the current heads of each section should develop the new organisation and create the objectives and terms of reference of each new team within the planned structure. Very democratic, you might think. The result was a structure to which all of the existing section heads had fully contributed and had "bought into".

However, there was a down side. Naturally, they each ensured that a nice piece of the organisation was created that could be led by themselves. This was not quite the optimum organisation, and there were a few who were not up to the task of leading a significant group within it.

So of course the responsible Director reviewed the organisation and decreed that whilst it was a distinct improvement over the status quo, some parts should be merged and others arranged slightly differently. The number of available leadership roles reduced significantly, and some existing leaders were going to be disappointed. The Director came out with the cliché: "This is not a democracy, it's a business."

So how do you get involvement, buy-in and commitment from your staff to new business initiatives? One extreme is to make the decisions yourself, as the business head, and your staff accept it or lump it. The other is to make the process entirely democratic, and then you have a result which is in the interests of the staff but not necessarily of the business.

There has to be a third way. Whether a small business or a FTSE company, to develop as an organisation requires all staff to make a contribution. They will generally know what would make their jobs easier, more efficient, more productive. The key skills that you as a manager can add are:
- Create the environment where staff are comfortable generating ideas and proposing changes.
- Ensure that you listen to opinions and get input.
- Make the final decision as to what gets implemented and what not.
- Provide a clear explanation to staff, not only regarding what will be done, but also why.

Because a business is not a democracy, but neither should it be a dictatorship.

To help with determining the best way to organise or change your business, it can often be constructive to use outside assistance. A third party can bring wider experience to bear, recommend what has worked elsewhere, help to make the business case viable, and crucially provide the time outside day to day operations to define and implement the change. We have wide experience of all kinds of business change, from organisation to IT to business development - contact us for more information.

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