Evolution of the Keyboard

When Bill Buxton worked at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center in the early 1990s, he examined the classic children's homemade telephones: two cups connected by a taut string. He wondered why that same concept couldn't improve computer keyboards.

Think about it. The cup is both a microphone and a speaker. It uses the same "hardware" for input and output of sound. Why, Buxton asked, couldn't the same principle apply to text on computers—using a single device for both input and output of text rather than using input from a keyboard to produce output on a screen?

Buxton wasn't alone in recognizing an eventual fusion of the two. Fast-forward a couple decades—and add myriad researchers and huge corporate R&D budgets—and we have touch-screen keyboards on tablets and smartphones. Inputs and outputs share the same surface. The keyboard has fused with the screen, at least for some computing tasks.

But as anyone who's typed on a virtual keyboard—or yelled at a voice-control app like Siri—can attest, no current text input holds a candle to a traditional computer keyboard when it comes to comfort, speed and accuracy. Maybe eventually we'll connect computers to our neurons, but in the meantime, the simple yet highly functional electromechanical keyboard will be around -- and keep improving -- for some time.

Decades after its introduction in the mid-'80s,
IBM's classic Model M remains a favorite
for keyboard purists.

Buxton, now a design guru at Microsoft Research, still closely examines old keyboards for forgotten tricks and technologies that could spawn new ways of thinking about how we enter information into a computer.

"Many of the great discoveries are right under our noses," he says when discussing the future of the keyboard. "A lot of the stuff that's emerging as new is rooted in things that have happened in the past -- and in some cases the really distant past."

Before we look at where computer keyboards might go in the future, then, let's look at where they've been.

Keying up the past

The evolution of the keyboard is not a clean timeline. Contributions to its look, feel and underpinning technologies sometimes draw from preceding models and other times from a far corner of the inventor's universe.

The first devices we'd recognize as related to modern keyboards date from the 19th century. In 1852 John Jones patented a "mechanical typographer," and 15 years laterChristopher Sholes received a patent for a "type-writing machine" -- what is usually considered the original typewriter. Some aspects of even these very early keyboards inform a lot about the design today.

"The typewriter [keyboard] had all sorts of functions. The shift key was really big because you needed a big surface area to push down and raise the carriage up," says David Hill, vice president of design and user experience at computer manufacturer Lenovo. "There was a mechanical advantage required."

Early computer keyboards mimicked
the feel of IBM's classic Selectric typewriter.

As far as direct influences on the modern computer keyboard, IBM's Selectric typewriter was one of the biggest. IBMreleased the first model of its iconic electromechanical typewriter in 1961, a time when being able to type fast and accurately was a highly sought-after skill.

Dag Spicer, senior curator at the Computer History Museum, notes that as the Selectric models rose to prominence, admins grew to love the feel of the keyboard because of IBM's dogged focus on making the ergonomics comfortable. "IBM's probably done more than anyone to find [keyboard] ergonomics that work for everyone," Spicer says. So when the PC hit the scene a decade or two later, the Selectric was largely viewed as the baseline to design keyboards for those newfangled computers you could put in your office or home.

In the late 1970s, companies like Cherry, Key Tronic and the Micro Switch division of Honeywell took off with their own approaches to mimicking the mechanical feel of a typewriter with the circuitry of a computer keyboard. "It was a real big deal back then," says Craig Gates, CEO of KeyTronicEMS, as the company is now called. "How the [keyboard] felt, how reliable it was, what speed could be achieved with a certain design of the switch."

Early switch designs

One of the first computer keyboard designs from the early '70s incorporated reed switches, which work with a magnet and two metal filaments. When the magnetic field gets close enough, it pulls the two filaments together and thus completes a circuit -- or, in the case of a key, a keystroke.

This Key Tronic keyboard used reed switches to
record keystrokes.

These keyboards housed circuit boards with 100 to 120 reed switches, each covered by a key. Underneath each key top was a tiny magnet. When someone depressed the key, the magnet made the filaments touch, thus generating an electrical signal for the desired character to type.

But filaments are fragile. (If you've dealt with busted holiday lights, you know this.) So these reed switch keyboards weren't reliable, Gates explains. If one broke or got out of alignment, or if dust obstructed the contact points, the key wouldn't work anymore—and, unlike holiday lights, individual keys weren't easy to replace.

In addition, they were subject to microvibrations that opened and closed the switch a few times in a single keystroke, thus tricking the computer into thinking the letter had been pressed several times successively. (Microvibrations are still an issue in some keyboards, but microprocessors filter them out.)

KeyTronic shows off the layers of its capacitive keyboards f
rom the late '80s and early '90s.

So in the late '70s, Gates says, reed switches began to give way to keys that relied on a magnetic principle called the Hall Effect. These keyboards, made by Micro Switch and others, didn't use physical contact points to complete a keystroke—instead they used magnetism, which can be less precise (and thus less liable to error) and doesn't require as many moving parts.

Meanwhile, Key Tronic, keen to get away from reed switches, developed the capacitive switch, which worked by putting a little bit of aluminum under the key top. When the key was depressed, that foil changed the capacitance of the circuit board underneath and a microprocessor registered a keystroke. This idea was soon improved upon with membrane keyboards, which simplified the capacitance mechanisms under the key and brought down production costs.

Trimming hardware, cutting costs

Though the materials sound cheap, keyboards were expensive in the early '80s. The typical keyboards Key Tronic and Micro Switch sold to computer makers ran about $100, as opposed to three or four bucks for the typical OEM keyboard today. To cut costs in a fiercely competitive market, keyboard manufacturers began to look for ways to cut hardware from the key while ensuring that the key tops, key weights, balance, foundation and "distance to travel"—the space it takes to register a keystroke—were familiar to users' fingers.

This required evaluating the hardware that makes the key move up and down. The "snap point" is one of the most important concepts that govern a keystroke, according to Aaron Stewart, a Lenovo senior design engineer reportedly nicknamed "Mr. Keyboard." This is the point where the key pops, your brain registers you've typed a letter and you pull back your finger. Think back to the first time you typed on a touch screen—remember the shock of not having the snap point?

Patented in 1978, the buckling spring key
mechanism drove IBM's popular PC keyboards for 

Additionally, keyboard makers have to consider the "break force" of the key, which has to provide enough resistance to allow your fingers to rest on the key top without inadvertently depressing it, but also needs to be weak enough to let you type without feeling like you're punching through a membrane with each keystroke.

In 1978, IBM received a patent for a "buckling spring" key mechanism that mimicked the feel of the old Selectrics. The mechanism worked with a small spring attached to non-parallel surfaces under the keycap.

The spring coiled normally when depressed but "buckled" to the side at the snap point due to the non-parallel surfaces of attachment -- and created the familiar click-clack sound of IBM's popular Model M keyboard and other old keyboards. The buckled portion of the spring activated the circuit, which generated the keystroke.

In a rubber-dome keyboard (shown upside down), the key caps
push down on the domes, which collapse, closing circuits
 and recording keystrokes, and then snap back.

But cost cutting gave way to newer ways of suspending the key by IBM and other manufacturers. Rubber domes, which work with the same snapping principle as a toilet plunger, and scissor switches, which also have a rubber dome but use a scissoring mechanism attached to the key top to push down the dome, came to prominence in the late '80s and early '90s.

Part of the goal of the new designs was to reduce the distance of travel. Comfort and speed when typing depend on the distance of travel for the key on each stroke. Shaving off precious fractions of millimeters improved the typing experience for many users.

"Compared to historical examples, today's desktops and notebooks have roughly 40 percent less [distance to travel]," Lenovo's Hill points out. Typing on rubber-dome and scissor-switch keyboards is usually quieter as well.

The scissoring mechanism used in scissor-switch keyboards
shortens the distance a key must travel to record a stroke.

These designs were also cheaper to produce, pushing keyboards to commodity status, according to Gates, and these two types of springs still underpin most of the computer keyboards on the market. Today the low-profile scissor-switch keys are typically found in notebooks and thin keyboards, including the chiclet-style keyboards on Apple's laptops. The taller rubber-dome keys are typically found in standard desktop keyboards and use an interlocking "chimney" structure in place of a scissors to stabilize the key travel.

As with any bygone technology, though, there are still enthusiasts who swear by the old IBM buckling springs. Indeed, keyboards with mechanical switches have undergone something of a renaissance in recent years as users pine for their crisp tactile feedback.

Thinner, lighter...one-handed?

Today, making a thin laptop with a great keyboard is no easy task. Designers run through a startling amount of math and habit analysis to arrive at very precise distances and positions between keys, which need to be exactly where our brain expects them or we'll type more slowly and make more errors. Meanwhile, ergonomic factors must be weighed against dimensions, weight and other practical design considerations, explains Lenovo's Stewart.

Ultrabooks like the Vizio Thin + Light strive for a
 top-grade keyboard in an ultraslim profile

Dish-shaped key tops guide the finger to the center of the key, but the concave shape makes it trickier to keep a laptop thin. A keyboard requires a solid foundation, but the additional material for a good base can add weight. The other side of the coin is that reducing the amount of materials in the keyboard frees space for microprocessors and a bigger battery. Stewart calls the sum of all of these design factors a moving target.

Manufacturers are constantly trying to cut costs and make the keyboard smaller—yet people want a consistency from their keyboards. It's the foundation of their interface with the computer. A company can tweak all the mechanisms or circuitry under the keycap, but if it makes for a poor typing experience, people won't buy the product. Keyboard manufacturers have to weigh the value of innovation against the ergonomic impact.

For now, Stewart believes that range of innovation extends only to the space under the keycap. "With the technology we have today, we think there is a finite limit of being able to create [thin, high-quality keyboards]," he says.

Synaptics says its new ThinTouch key technology
will mean stunningly thin keyboards.

Dish-shaped key tops guide the finger to the center of the key, but the concave shape makes it trickier to keep a laptop thin. A keyboard requires a solid foundation, but the additional material for a good base can add weight. The other side of the coin is that reducing the amount of materials in the keyboard frees space for microprocessors and a bigger battery. Stewart calls the sum of all of these design factors a moving target.

Manufacturers are constantly trying to cut costs and make the keyboard smaller—yet people want a consistency from their keyboards. It's the foundation of their interface with the computer. A company can tweak all the mechanisms or circuitry under the keycap, but if it makes for a poor typing experience, people won't buy the product. Keyboard manufacturers have to weigh the value of innovation against the ergonomic impact.

For now, Stewart believes that range of innovation extends only to the space under the keycap. "With the technology we have today, we think there is a finite limit of being able to create [thin, high-quality keyboards]," he says.

Tactus' technology uses microfluidics to provide tactile
buttons that rise up from a touch screen's surface.

An outfit called Tactus is taking a different approach with microfluidics "buttons" -- essentially small pouches on the surface of the screen that fill with liquid, appearing only when you need to type. When they're not in use, they deflate, leaving a flat surface. Tactus CEO Craig Ciesla is hopeful that his company, like Synaptics, will have something ready for the market by the middle of next year.

Yet even as it looks toward the future, one of Tactus' core technologies is rooted in the past. Ciesla points out that microfluidics has been around for a couple decades in industries like biotech and computer printers. "We're just redeploying it in a novel and unique way," he notes.

Will wraparound keyboards like this Twitch concept
design provide a comfortable way to
type on mobile devices?

Moving in a whole different direction, a company called Twitch Technologies is developing add-on products such as a pair of one-handed keyboards that wrap around the left and right edges of tablets. Your fingers type on the back of the device and your thumbs on the front, and you use finger combinations to type letters -- for example, depressing your left pinky and right thumb might get you an A—rather than one key per letter for the QWERTY layout. (Don't hunt for Twitch's keyboards in stores yet; they're still in the concept stage.)

Reinventing the layout of the keyboard is hard for us to imagine, but even one-handed keyboards with no letters on them have roots in the past. When inventor Doug Englebart gave "The Mother of All Demos"—introducing myriad computing technologies we still use today, like the mouse and videoconferencing—he demoed a five-finger chorded keyboard that produced letters with different finger combinations. That was in 1968.

The catch, as Microsoft's Buxton points out, is that when you implement a new keyboard, everyone has to learn to type again. But it may just be worth it.

Caleb Garling is a staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle covering technology and business. He used to be on the staff of Wired, covering enterprise technology and culture. He has caught a trout barehanded only twice in his life.

Source: pcworld.com

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The Windows 8 ecosystem: 5 best and 5 worst features

Windows 8 hasn’t just arrived—it has arrived in full force, with an armada of ancillary products. Microsoft’s deployment of the new Windows platform across desktops, laptops, tablets, hybrids, and smartphones constitutes a major push to make Windows 8 your defining computing experience regardless of your hardware persuasion. Depending on your point of view, this can be a good thing or a very, very bad thing.

Or maybe it’s both.

Let’s take a walk through some of the triumphs and failings of Microsoft’s sprawling Windows 8 ecosystem. Like it or not, this is the environment that all new-PC users (and many PC upgraders) will be working with for the next few years.

The good

The great unification

Although Windows 8 stumbles in its attempts to push a touch-centric operating system onto desktops and laptops lacking finger-friendly screens, I’m nonetheless impressed by Microsoft’s execution in delivering a unified experience across all of its major consumer platforms. Windows 8 on x86-based tablets is the same Windows 8 that you can find on laptops and desktops, and this provides a tight degree of unification that’s missing from Apple’s product lineup, which is split between Mac OS and iOS.

You can access SkyDrive across pretty much all
your new Windows devices.

The linchpin is the new Microsoft Account sign-in (formerly Live ID). Through a single username and password, your Microsoft Account taps into the cloud and establishes common preferences among all the Windows-based hardware and services you may use (though regional barriers are still a problem; more about that below). So kudos to Microsoft for acknowledging that our computers, tablets, smartphones, and game consoles should be connected, sharing a common, user-specific experience.

From SkyDrive to SmartGlass to the ability to synchronize settings across environments quickly and easily, the new Windows 8 platform provides the essential core connections for all your software and gear.

Forcing a touchy issue

Since touch is the cornerstone of Windows 8—regardless of whether you actually have a touch-responsive display on your chosen device—Microsoft is pushing third-party developers to take the next big step in app creation. Simply put: Touch cannot be ignored. This mandate is an issue for people without touch-enabled hardware. And it’s bad news for people who have tried touch control but hate it. Yet Microsoft's new “the touch way or the highway” philosophy shows vision and innovation, and affirms the public’s overwhelming support for touch gestures on computing hardware.

Adopting a touch-centric approach will help move Microsoft
forward into the modern computing era.

Sure, some developers will never jump on the touch bandwagon, either because they don’t have an interest in advancing their users' experience, or because their software can’t benefit from touch in any way (after all, some utilities are so simple, one-dimensional, or keyboard-dependent that an investment in touch development wouldn’t make sense). Nonetheless, you can expect to see many more apps that tightly and creatively leverage touch support. These are the apps that will carry Microsoft forward.

And these are the apps that will ensure a consistent, high-quality user experience, regardless of which hardware you use to tap into the new Windows regime.

Leading by (hardware) example

Microsoft isn’t just reinventing its Windows platform. It’s also doubling down on a hardware strategy designed to lead by example, showing tablet manufacturers that tablet-laptophybrids are the future of PC computing.

Surface RT forces hardware partners to innovate
and advance the basic computing form factor.

Yes, I know: Pairing touch-based tablets with keyboards isn’t a new idea. Other parties have done it before, with Asus being the most effective. But Microsoft’s elegant execution of Surface RT, with its keyboard-cover accessories, sets a high bar for what a Windows 8 tablet-laptop hybrid should be. What’s more, because Surface RT is Microsoft’s first foray into computer manufacturing, the company will now compete with its hardware partners, and this might lower prices and encourage the creation of better, more interesting, more innovative computers across the entire Windows 8 ecosystem.

In essence: Consumers get more choice, and better products to pick from. Microsoft, meanwhile, achieves faster market-share gains for Windows 8. The new Surface tablet isn’t just the premier hardware component in the new Windows ecosystem—it’s actually a catalyst for greater ecosystem success.

Fearing giants promotes innovation

Now that Microsoft has committed to the brave new world of touch—and smartphones and tablets—it has to deliver the goods. It’s now competing directly with the iPad and iPhone. It’s now competing with scads of Android devices. This isn’t necessarily an enviable position given Microsoft’s uphill climb, but it will definitely drive innovation, and that bodes well for the Windows ecosystem as a whole.

In short, Microsoft has to get very creative, very quickly. Ultimately this challenge will benefit consumers the most. Microsoft will have to drive new features throughout its platform, especially new ways for all of the hardware components to interact with one another. And this is an opportunity that neither Apple nor Google really gets to explore, since Apple splits its ecosystem between Mac OS and iOS, and Google doesn’t even have a computer OS.

Apps such as Xbox SmartGlass, and services such as the SkyDrive cloud platform and Xbox Music streaming, are great starts. But what else can Microsoft do to persuade users to abandon their existing devices and ecosystems, and leap head-first into Windows 8? More important, how fast can Microsoft pull that off? These are scary questions for Microsoft, but I think standing in place doing nothing is an even scarier option.

Joining the app-store masses

Apple had one first. Then Google got one. Now, finally, Microsoft has one too: a software store. It’s not for your Windows Phone 8 device, but for Windows itself. And the new Windows Store is the only place you can download “Windows 8 apps,” the Start screen-centric programs previously known as Metro apps.

The new Windows Store ensures a reliable
user experience for PC neophytes

Although the move has frustrated developers who create software that Microsoft doesn’t want—either a result of a particular app falling short of Microsoft’s guidelines, or the fact that Microsoft isn’t opening the Windows Store to the full purchase of desktop applications—it’s nonetheless a powerful driver in making Microsoft’s ecosystem more accessible, more convenient, and more secure for users.

The Windows Store is a great step forward; but in order to recognize its benefits, you can’t look at it through the eyes of a power user. Envision, instead, the typical technological neophyte who wants access to online shopping, streaming movies, financial information, games, rudimentary media editing, and all the other simple services that computers make possible. Throughout their computing lives, these novices have been tempted numerous times: A Web ad has asked them to install something they shouldn’t. Or they’ve installed software upon the recommendation of a friend, but that software isn’t compatible with their system. Or, even sadder, these newbies might not even know how to find and download new programs for their PCs.

The Windows Store gives such users a simple and secure entry point for downloading apps that have passed stringent certification from Microsoft itself. Sure, an app might ultimately stink, but at least users now have strong assurance that the software won’t muck up their systems. To wit: Apple’s App Store went more than five years before succumbing to its first piece of malware, and the company quickly expunged the app so that no new user could download it ever again.

The Bad

Friendly compromises that were never made

To construct a user experience that works fairly seamlessly across desktops, tablets, and smartphones, Microsoft had to make some compromises, and these trade-offs are affecting desktop users the most. Although it’s relatively easy to operate a touchscreen-oriented interface on a device with an actual touchscreen, it’s not so easy to translate touch gestures to the world of mice and keyboards. Power users aren’t happy with Microsoft’s new Windows 8 mouse gestures, so you can only imagine how well they’ll be received by the enterprise market, and by all of our grandparents.

In some cases Microsoft didn’t even have to make compromises, but still opted to restrict the user’s ability to navigate Windows in a familiar, friendly way. The company had ample opportunity to give users choice and freedom in its construction of Windows 8, but decided not to.

Want a Start menu? We won’t show it by default, but you can enable it if you really need to. Don’t like the Start screen? That’s totally cool. We’ll make it so that you can still access it, but we won’t force you to deal with it up front each time you start the OS. Don’t need a lock screen since you’re on a desktop computer instead of a tablet? Great. We won’t force you to “reveal” your password prompt. Or at least, we won’t bury the option that lets you eliminate this.

That’s how Microsoft’s internal dialogue could have sounded. But in the real world, Microsoft chose differently. In creating a common ecosystem for Windows 8, Microsoft has shifted portions of its new user interface into places where they don’t need to be.

Common interface, uncommon apps

The scariest part of the Windows 8 ecosystem is the fact that Microsoft has put a good chunk of the potential success of its OS—across PCs, tablets, and smartphones—in the hands of third-party developers. Even though it’s premature to declare Windows 8 a complete dud in terms of available apps, we have to be concerned about the critical dearth of apps that one would otherwise expect to find on a major new platform. Windows 8 has no official Facebook app, no official Twitter app, and no Instagram. And those are just three of the most obvious omissions.

Windows Phone 8 devices bear a similar interface
to Windows 8, but they can't run Windows 8 apps.

The app situation could very well change in a few months, so I won’t quibble about specifics. After all, Microsoft execs have stated that they hope to have 100,000 apps in the Windows Store within 90 days of the Windows 8 launch.

What’s worse for Microsoft is the way that it has decided to treat the Windows Stores on smartphones, tablets, and desktops, walling them off in separate silos instead of unifying all of the environments. How cool would it be to buy a copy of Microsoft Office, and receive a version geared for your Windows 8 smartphone and for your Windows 8 desktop or tablet? Or, for that matter, wouldn’t it be nice to purchase rights to run your favorite Windows 8 smartphone game on your tablet?

But, no, that’s not happening.

A Windows 8 tablet or hybrid is the functional equivalent of a laptop, which shares the same Windows Store as your desktop PC (unless you’re running a Windows RT-based tablet; I'll get into that below). In contrast, a Windows Phone device—whose interface inspired Windows 8 and exhibits many of the same behaviors and features of Windows 8—taps into a completely different software store. Phone apps share a common code with tablet and PC apps, but they can’t directly transfer over to your tablets and PCs.

The sins of Windows RT

If you thought the Windows 8 ecosystem was confusing enough in terms of app support, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Windows 8 RT has entered the fray, too. If the Windows 8 ecosystem of desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones were a great land mass, then Windows 8 RT would be an island off the coast. It’s under the mother country's protection, and it likely enjoys much of the same climate and vegetation, but it’s still separated enough to be its own little, self-contained world.

The desktop in Windows RT is little more than
a home base for Microsoft Word
and file management

Microsoft representatives have had trouble explaining the differences between Windows 8 and Windows RT in the months leading up to Windows 8’s big launch. And if they can’t get it right, how is an average consumer supposed to understand that Windows RT is a stripped-down OS version that won’t run desktop applications, save the ones that come preinstalled? In a nutshell, the Windows RT desktop runs a junior edition of Microsoft Office and a motley crew of legacy utilities. That’s it, along with providing the basic file-management functions of any Windows desktop OS.

Microsoft might gain some depth-of-ecosystem advantages by opening Windows 8 to inexpensive (and energy-efficient) ARM processors; in fact, the move to support ARM extends the reach of the new Windows platform. But Windows RT also has the potential to create serious confusion for people expecting to jump between all Windows 8 devices without issues.

It’s commercial time

Never before has Microsoft been so unapologetic about tying its commercial interests so closely with the raw mechanics of its OS ecosystem. Although you’re free to set up your own default applications in Windows 8, or to install other apps to manage the multimedia as you see fit, there’s no question that Microsoft would prefer that you use its branded, tiled apps to watch or listen to content. And, oh, while you’re there, perhaps you might like to rent or purchase a movie or two from one of the tiles advertised on your screen.

The Games app mostly feels like a storefront for,
well, games, including those designed for the Xbox 360.

It’s bad, folks. The Music app isn’t so much a media player as a storefront for Xbox Music. The Games app isn’t so much a portal for installed games as a platform for buying Windows 8 games—and even Xbox 360 games. And the same conceit holds true for the Video app. These are sales tools, not user-focused programs, and the sales pitch persists throughout the Windows ecosystem.

Android—and even iTunes, to a lesser extent—separates commercialization from content to such a degree that it’s there if you want it, and you know how to reach it, but it isn't in your face, atop a lackluster multimedia player (or games browser). But in the new Windows ecosystem, no matter what you’ve paid for your device or for your subscription content, advertising is now a part of the norm. That’s not fun.

Region migration?

Although this issue won’t affect the mainstay of Microsoft’s Windows 8 user base, one of the problems Microsoft has now created in unifying its ecosystem under a common account—the Microsoft Account—is that transferring your account between regions is about two degrees short of impossible. In other words, if you’ve done a lot with your old Live ID in Europe, for instance, and are about to move to the States, you’re in for a bit of a shock: Your new Microsoft Account will remain tied to the country where you created it.

Unfortunately, at the moment you can't just open a drop-down menu in some options panel and change over from, say, England to the United States. Without the ability to make such a switch, users lose the capability to pay for the very services Microsoft offers—apps, Xbox Live points, and the like—in addition to losing access to any region-locked apps, games, services, or subscriptions they’ve already ponied up for.

What would have been an annoying issue in previous years is even worse now that Microsoft is tying a number of Windows 8’s more compelling features to a user’s online account. Microsoft’s standard solution—create a new Microsoft Account—just doesn’t cut it anymore, not when the goal is to have a single sign-on for the entirety of the Windows 8 ecosystem.

The real solution is twofold. First, Microsoft should give its users the opportunity to switch their billing country without hassle. And second, those people who already took Microsoft up on its advice to create multiple accounts need the ability to merge multiple accounts into one.

Source: pcworld.com

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How to master Storage Spaces in Windows 8

Windows 8 includes a ton of great new features that are easy to overlook amidst the sturm und drang over the Start screen. Meet Storage Spaces, a new Windows utility that allows you to connect multiple data storage devices (internal and external) that rely on different interfaces (SATA hard drives, USB flash drives, and Serial Attached WSCSI drives, for example) to your PC and treat them as a single giant storehouse dubbed your “storage pool.”

You can divide that pool into spaces with names like ‘My Movie Space’ or ‘Jane’s Spreadsheets’ that function exactly like traditional formatted Windows directories. In fact, it isn’t entirely accurate to describe your motley crew of heterogeneous hard drives as a pool; the spaces in Storage Spaces are actually formatted with a unique file system that renders all incorporated hard drives inaccessible to Windows proper.

Use Storage Spaces to transform your external drives into a redundant virtual
storage drive that you can expand as needed.

That’s because the spaces in Windows 8 Storage Spaces are designed to mirror the data stored in them to other drives in the pool, so you can safeguard your data against the threat of drive failure without having to pay for and maintain dedicated RAID drives. Though the Storage Spaces arrangement isn’t foolproof, it greatly increases the likelihood that—if one or more drives in your pool fail—a copy of your data will remain available (or be reconstructable) from one or more of the other drives in the pool. Storage Spaces gives you a handy way to manage large pools of data, especially ones that will gradually expand over time (such as family photo albums or movie collections).

Building your first pool

To create a new pool, first make sure that all of the storage devices you want to include are connected to your PC; then open your Windows 8 Control Panel by pressing your Windows key, typing control panel, and pressing Enter. Select the Storage Spaces option from the Control Panel, and select Create a new pool and storage space.

Windows 8 will display a list of drives attached to your PC that are compatible with Storage Spaces. Select the drives that you want to use in your new pool, but be aware that Windows 8 will format them, meaning that you’ll permanently lose any data already stored on them. Before creating a pool, click the View files option next to each drive that you wish to use, to check its contents. If you don’t see one or more of your drives listed, confirm that they’re properly connected to your PC and that they’re compatible with Windows 8. Once you’ve selected all of the drives that you want to format into your new pool, press theCreate pool button at the bottom of the menu.

Give your space a memorable name, and then choose a resili­ency type
defining how your data gets copied.

Now you need to name the first storage space in your pool, assign it a drive letter and a maximum capacity, and pick your desired level of data resiliency. Name it something memorable, and don’t worry too much about the drive letter or maximum capacity; you can change those later if necessary. Do pay attention to the resiliency setting, which entails selecting how Windows 8 renders your data redundant across multiple drives in the pool. You can create pools that are resilient against one or multiple drives failing at once, though higher levels of resiliency require more drives in the pool; check the descriptions of each resiliency option for more details. Once you’re happy with your choices, click the Create storage space button at the bottom of the menu, and Windows 8 will format your new storage space.

After it formats the new space, Windows 8 will list the storage
pool and spaces in the Storage Spaces menu.

If all goes well, you should be redirected to the Storage Spaces menu in the Windows 8 Control Panel, where your new storage pool and the spaces it contains should be listed. You can return to this menu any time you want to make changes to your storage pool (to change names or add drives, for example), though you won’t be able to change the resiliency setting without reformatting the drives and creating a new pool. All storage spaces will show up as hard disk drives in Windows Explorer, so feel free to store files there as you would on any external hard drive.

Source: pcworld.com

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How to optimize Windows 8 on old hardware

Microsoft has made a point of advertising the performance enhancements and optimizations being made to Windows 8. Although Windows 7 was well received and typically offered better performance and stability than its much-maligned predecessor, Windows Vista, Microsoft had some loftier goals in mind for the jump to Windows 8.

Although it’s too early to confirm that Microsoft has achieved all of their goals, it appears they're on the right track. Windows 8 has generally been an improvement over Windows 7 on the few systems we've installed the RTM release on: they boot up and shut down quicker, for example, and overall performance seems faster. This makes sense, because the new OS is built to boot and shut down faster than previous editions, use less memory and disk space, consume fewer combined processor and GPU resources, and accommodate a wider range of devices and screen sizes.

The Windows 8 file manager, task manager, and even the setup process itself has been optimized; the ultimate goal for these improvements is to enhance performance and minimize resource consumption, which in turn would lower power consumption and potentially improve battery life on laptops, tablets and other mobile devices. So while it's not terribly expensive to build a new PC tuned for Windows 8 (check out our guide to building a speedy Windows 8 PC for under $500) you might want to try installing it on your old PC first and implementing a few of the tricks and tweaks we've learned from testing Microsoft's latest operating system.

While Windows 8 is designed to be installed on cutting edge technology, it was also engineered to work well on lower-performing hardware. In fact, Windows 8’s system requirements are barely any higher than Windows Vista’s, which was released almost six years ago.

According to Microsoft, Window 8’s hardware requirements are:

• Processor: 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster
• RAM: 1 gigabyte (GB) (32-bit) or 2 GB (64-bit)
• Disk space: 16 GB (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
• Graphics card: Microsoft DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM driver

If you’d like to take advantage of some of Windows 8’s ancillary features and capabilities, these additional items will also be required:

• To use touch, you’ll need a tablet or a monitor that supports multi-touch.
• To access the Windows Store to download and run apps, you need an active Internet connection and a screen resolution of at least 1024 x 768.
• To snap apps, you need a screen resolution of at least 1366 x 768.
• Internet access (ISP fees might apply)

With that said, Windows 8 should still install and run on some systems that don’t meet these requirements. To test that theory we installed it on an ancient Asus Eee PC 900, which is powered by a lowly, single-core Intel Celeron M 900MHz CPU and paltry integrated Intel 915GM graphics. The Eee PC 900 system had been updated with 2GB of memory and a 64GB solid state drive, though.

As you probably suspect, Windows 8’s performance isn’t stellar on a machine with such meager specifications, but the OS was surprisingly smooth. It wasn’t until the system was taxed with a handful of running applications and multiple open browser windows that things significantly slowed. We managed to remedy the situation with some tweaking and streamlining, and now we know enough to show you how you can optimize Windows 8 on an older PC.

New OS, new issues

Before we dive into the actual Windows 8 tweaks we made to our low-end Eee PC, we should mention that it is exceedingly common (and dare we say expected) that any new operating system will have its fair share of bugs. As such, it is paramount that users looking to migrate and get the most out of Windows 8 download the latest patches for their software and install the latest drivers for their hardware.

Although nearly any component or device that works with Windows 7 should also work with Windows 8, there are low-level differences between the operating systems that could affect compatibility, stability, and performance. Keeping the OS patched and using the latest drivers available for Windows 8 will help ensure optimal performance and stability, so run Microsoft Update and seek out any new drivers available for your components right away.

Don't rely on Microsoft

Microsoft may have made great strides in recent years to improve the reliability and performance of Windows, and the company does include some useful tools to help users maintain their systems, but there is always room for improvement. Many free third-party applications are more comprehensive and offer additional features than Microsoft’s built-in tools and the adaptive nature of a few of Windows’ features consume resources and can affect the user experience on slower hardware. Because of this, it’s often beneficial to replace or augment some of the tools built into Windows 8 and manually specify some settings to prevent the OS from having to manage them on the fly.

If you have a hard drive, the first thing we’d recommend is replacing Windows 8’s built-in disk defragmenter (do not use a disk defragmenter on a solid state drive). Windows 8’s built-in defrag utility isn’t bad, but there are a few free solutions out there that are much better. Defraggler, available for download at piriform.com, is a free replacement for Windows’ integrated disk defragmenter, and (because it does a more thorough job analyzing and remedying file fragments) drives defragmented with Defraggler can theoretically offer better performance. The real-world performance differences will be miniscule, but on older hardware every little bit counts. We’d suggest downloading and installing Defraggler immediately after installing the OS. Do a Disk Cleanup to free up some space, update the OS, and then run Defraggler to ensure the majority of the OS’ files are contiguous and that they are placed on the fastest part of your hard drive.

Another free tool available at piriform.com, CCleaner, can also come in handy when optimizing a system. Not only does CCleaner do a good job of augmenting Windows’ built-in Disk Cleanup utility to better clean out junk files and reclaim disk space, but it has easy-to-use options for cleaning out startup items too. On a fresh installation of Windows 8, the removal of unnecessary startup items is less important, but if you’re upgrading a system that’s already running an older version of Windows, all of the junk that’s polluted the original OS will migrate to the Windows 8 upgrade, so all of the unnecessary junk should be cleaned out.

Here's what we did for our aging Asus Eee PC: First, install Windows 8 to a freshly formatted drive. Next, update the OS and install any patches and drivers available from Microsoft Update. Check the websites of your major component manufacturers (your graphics card, monitor, etc.) and install the latest drivers, then download and install CCleaner from Piriform's website (mentioned earlier). If you're using a standard hard drive (not an SSD), you should also download and install Defraggler. Finally, run Windows’ built-in Disk Cleanup tool and CCleaner. If you have a hard drive  run Defraggler and defrag the disk for optimum performance; we didn't need to do this since our eeePC is now running an SSD.

Make some changes

After installing the OS and cleaning up any junk leftover from the installation and update procedures, we move on to tweaking some of Windows 8’s settings to better suit our aged PC. Our first stop was the Advanced System Settings menu, where we can alter the OS’ virtual memory settings and visual options.To get to the Advanced System Settings in Windows 8, switch to Desktop mode, click the Librariesshortcut in the taskbar, and then right-click on Computer. In the resulting context menu, select Properties, and the System control panel will open. Click on Advanced System Settings in the left pane of the window and the System Properties control panel will open. Click on the Advanced tab, and then click on the Settings button in the Performance section at the top to open thePerformance Options control panel. Once open, click on the Visual Effects tab at the top and then tick the "Adjust For Best Performance" option and hit Apply. If there is a particular visual effect you’d prefer to leave enabled, you can individually select it here, but the more options that are disabled the better your PC's performance will be. 

While the Performance Options control panel is still open, click on the Advanced tab at the top and on the resulting menu click on the Change button in the Virtual Memory section.

There’s lots of debate as to how to best configure Windows’ paging file, but unless you consistently run tons of applications a run out of physical and virtual memory, Microsoft’s recommended paging file size should be fine. The recommended size of the paging file is going to vary based on how much memory is installed in your system; in our Eee PC, which had 2GB of RAM, the recommended size for the paging file was 2039MB. By default, Windows will start with a smaller paging file and scale it up on the fly if necessary. By manually specifying the paging file size, Windows will no longer have to dynamically manage the file and the recommended amount will always be available.

To specify the paging file size in Windows 8, select the Custom Size: radio button in the middle of the Virtual Memory control panel and then input the recommended paging file size in megabytes (listed at the bottom of the window) in both the Initial Size and Maximum Size fields. Then click the Set button, click OK, and the click OK to close the Performance Options window. Click OK in the System Properties window as well, then restart the computer if necessary. However, as noted earlier, you really don't have to do this.

Disable unnecessary items

To further optimize Windows 8 on older hardware, we recommend disabling as many unnecessary startup items and services as possible, disabling any unused hardware, and turning off any nonessential Live Tiles.

Turning off Live Tiles couldn’t be any easier. On the Start Screen, simply right-click on any Live Tile and select the option to turn it off. By default, Windows 8 launches with the Sports, Travel, Finance, News, Mail, Bing and Weather live tiles all active. If there are any you can live without, disable them to prevent Windows 8 from constantly fetching data and updating them.

There probably aren’t many hardware components that can be disabled, but by doing so Windows will boot faster and with more available memory because the component’s driver won’t be initialized. There are two ways of disabling hardware—via the system BIOS or in Device Manager. The BIOS method is preferred because the component won’t even be recognized by Windows, which will prevent its drivers from loading at all. The exact procedure is going to vary from system to system, but typically you’ll have to press F2 or DEL when your system is first powered up to enter the BIOS and then navigate to the Integrated Peripherals section where items can then be disabled. To disable hardware components via Device Manager, switch to Desktop mode; click the Libraries shortcut in the taskbar, and then right-click on Computer. In the resulting context menu, select Properties, and in the System control panel click on Device Manger. When the Device Manger window opens, click on any arrow next to a hardware group to expand the list, and the right-click on an item you’d like to disable and select Disable from the context menu. On our system, we disabled the wired network controller since we were using Wi-Fi and also a Bluetooth controller. Many systems still have BIOS entries for serial ports (RS-232); this can usually be disabled as well.

To disable unnecessary startup items, we’d once again recommend using CCleaner. Windows 8’s built-in configuration utility (msconfig) will work as well, but CCleaner’s startup menu is more comprehensive, expandable, and easier to navigate. CCleaner also has the added benefit of being able to list add-ons launching with Internet Explorer, should you want to clean up the browser as well.

On a fresh Windows 8 installation, there won’t be many startup items to consider. After an upgrade from a previous edition of Windows, or after installing a myriad of applications, however, there will probably be numerous items that can be eliminated. To disable unnecessary startup items, launch CCleaner, then click on the Tools button on the left side of the program’s menu, and then click on the Startup button. On the Startup menu, click on the Windows tab, and every program that launches with Windows will be listed. Delete any unneeded items, which usually means everything except for anti-virus/anti-malware tools and any utilities you use regularly. Any “helper” or “speed launcher” apps can probably be disabled. If you’re unsure, Google the name of the program to ascertain what it does and if it is essential.

There are multiple ways to disable services in Windows 8, but using the System Configuration utility (aka msconfig) seems to be the most foolproof and least confusing. To launch the System Configuration utility, press the WIN+R key combination, type msconfigin the run field and hit the Enter key. When the utility opens, click on the Services tab and then tick the option at the lower left labeled "Hide all Microsoft Services." What you’ll be left with is a list of services installed with any application or drivers that were installed on the system.

You shouldn't start disabling all services willy-nilly, but chances are many application-specific services can be safely disabled. On our machine, even though we started with a clean OS and installed only a few applications, we were still able to disable four services, three associated with Google software updates and another associated with Adobe Reader. There may also be a couple of Microsoft services that can be disabled, like the Theme service or the Touch Keyboard service (if you don’t have a touch-screen), but tread lightly here; if you’re not certain a service can be disabled, leave it alone.

Eliminate annoying UAC notifications

This recommendation may put off PC veterans who manage multiple systems for other, less savvy users; if you are tweaking your personal PC, however, it shouldn’t be an issue. Every time a UAC (User Account Control) warning pops up, not only does it pause the system and require a click, but the warning and screen dimming effect can take an eternity on older hardware. Eliminating UAC notifications entirely can significantly boost the performance of Windows 8 on aging hardware; to minimize the number of pop-ups while still having some level of additional protection, you can also just reduce the UAC notification level.

To do so, slide out the Windows 8 charms by placing your mouse cursor in either the upper- or lower-right corner of the screen and click on the Search icon. Then highlight Settings in the Search panel and type UAC into the search field. “Change User Account Control settings” will appear in the left pane, click it, and the UAC Settings window will open. Simply drag the slider down one notch so Windows 8 will no longer dim the screen and will only notify you when an app tried to make changes to the system.  Dragging the slider all the way to the bottom will disable all notifications, which is not recommended unless you're a PC power user who is willing to take the risk. 

Results

We collected some data on how these tricks affected our aging Asus Eee PC running Windows 8, and here's what we came up with: immediately following a fresh installation (and fully patching the OS via Microsoft Update), Windows 8 would launch with 34 running processes, consume 30% (.6MB) of available memory, and use 9.72GB on the disk in our particular machine. After running Disk Cleanup and CCleaner, 9.52GB of disk space was used. After disabling any unneeded startup items, visual options, services, and hardware, running processes were reduced to the 33 and the used memory dropped to only 20% (.4MB). Anecdotally, the PC seemed to perform typical tasks faster (opening and closing applications, moving files, etc.) and navigating the Windows 8 interface seemed to be much smoother.

The changes we outline here probably aren’t going to affect any benchmark scores, but they will result in a snappier system with more available memory and resources, which is exactly what’s necessary to squeeze some additional life out of an aging PC. Try it out on your hardware and let us know how it goes; if you’ve got some tweaks of your own to optimize Windows 8, we’d love to hear them in the comments section below.

Source: pcworld.com

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