If you don’t fancy reading through the all the posts on there then allow us here at Glo Networks to summarise a few of the features we’ve found interesting just for you.

Improved file management: File copy jobs (copy, move, rename and delete) make up a large percentage of Windows 7 command use. As such Windows 8 looks to improve these functions. There’s a new centralised copy interface (no longer one dialogue per copy job, all will appear in the same) which has new monitoring and control tools, including the ability to pause individual jobs and a real-time throughput graph.

Improved “File Name Collision”: This is the situation that arises when copying a file to a location which already contains a file with the same name. The new conflict resolution dialogue displays the files from the source on the left and the files in the destination on the right. There’s a thumbnail image for each file, as well as information (modified date, size etc.) to help you make the decision on which file to keep.

ISO and VHD Access: ISO’s (virtual DVDs) and VHD’s (virtual hard disks) are now mountable natively in Windows 8. Simply double click the file and it will appear under Computer as either a DVD drive or hard disk, allowing easy access to the contents.

Hyper-V: Formally the domain of Windows Server editions, Hyper-V will be enabled in Windows 8. Hyper-V is a machine virtualization technology that will let you run more than one operating system at the same time on the same computer. One new Hyper-V feature developed specially for Windows 8 is the ability to use a wireless connection for your virtual machines to connect to the network.

Metro: This one’s a biggy. Windows 8 will have two user interfaces (UIs) available. Firstly the Windows Desktop UI that we know and love from previous versions of Windows makes a comeback, with improvements and new features aplenty. But available alongside this, or even instead of this should you prefer, is the new ‘Metro’, app based, touch friendly, UI. If you’ve seen the UI on the Zune devices, or the new Windows Phone (both interfaces are also called Metro) then you’ll already have an idea of the look and feel of this new UI. The idea is to bring together the power user capabilities of the PC and the more casual, app centric focus of tablets into a single device, with no compromise of the capabilities of either.

This is just a small selection of what has been discussed on the Building Windows 8 blog, there’s much more information on there and it also offers a way to give your feedback (via the comments section and the forum).

We’re excited to see what other new features and improvements will be present in the new OS, and will certainly be taking part in the open beta when the time comes. Keep an eye out for our thoughts and opinions in the future!

There’s a Corsair Force 3 240Gb SSD in the machine that was running in the 400MB/s range before the I’d loaded the machine with my Apps / Data and config etc. It’s running a 2Ghz i7 in a macBook Pro from early 2011 so should be able to cope!  So I took some rough benchmarks using Disk Speed Test from the App Store.

With FileVault	Without FileVault

That’s roughly a 70% speed decrease ! Shall not be using FileVault anymore.

Disclaimer : something else might have been causing this speed funny but it certainly doesn’t look like it !

As the newest edition of Apples popular OSX family of operating systems Lion has great pedigree. Previous OSX versions (Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard etc.) have been very well received. But when you look at the interface changes and new features in Lion another source of inspiration is also apparent; Apples iPhone and iPad operating system iOS.

OSX Lion is available from today, from the Mac App Store, for £20.99. Unlike other OSX releases there is no hard copy available; it’s a download only purchase.

We’ve not yet had a chance to play with Lion but rest assured, once we’ve got our teeth into it we’ll report our thoughts on the new OS here on the blog.

Because of this here at Glo Networks we receive a large amount of screen shots saved inside Microsoft Word files. While this isn’t exactly a problem it does make the files slightly larger than necessary and also increases the time it takes for us to open them (as we don’t always have Word loaded). This is where the Windows Snipping Tool can be very useful

The Snipping tool was introduced in Windows Vista and is also present in Windows 7 (though not the Home Basic edition) and Windows Server 2008 R2. Its function is to take screen shots, and it offers some handy tools to do so. You can chose to take Free-form, Rectangular, Window, or Full-screen screen shots, or Snips as it calls them, and then you can immediately either Save the Snip to file as a PNG, JPG, GIF or MHT file, or insert the file to into a new email (either as an embedded image or a attachment). It also includes a pen tool to make simple annotations to the snip and a highlighter.

The Snipping Tool is incredibly simple to use and perfect for its purpose. Spend a little time checking it out and you’ll get to grips with it in no time at all, or you can check out instructions on its use here

If you’ve still got Vista devices deployed on your network we highly recommend that they are patched to SP2.

As always, if your devices are managed by a Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) server, you can enforce SP2 from there. If your WSUS server is running on Windows 2003 be aware that you may need to install another KB article in order for it to be picked up correctly. Full details over on Technet.

To take a screen shot -
cmd – shift – 3 : takes a full screenshot and pops it on your desktop
cmd – shift – 4 : gives you a cross hair that you can draw around an object
cmd – shift – 4 then space : allows you to pick and application with a mouse click (best option in our opinion)

alt – 3 : for the # symbol
alt – 2 : for the €

More coming soon, unless you’d like to suggest some ?

With both companies founded in 1975 this has been no short journey for either. However since that time Microsoft has maintained its dominance pretty much consistently, and it has only really been in the last 10 years (which has seen the release of such iconic Apple products as the iPod, iPhone and the Macbook) that Apple providing a challenge to Microsoft’s market supremacy.

Through out the ’00′s Apple  created several iconic, genre leading products with which Microsoft have seemed to struggled to compete . Business products aside, we would challenge you to offer a Microsoft product in the last 5 years that rivals Apples innovation. One possible exception worth considering is the Xbox 360, which was  ground breaking in terms of online connectivity when released in 2005. That said Apple have yet to enter the console gaming market!

More information and figures can be found in the following articles: Engadget, Financial Times, TGDaily

Of course those that have paid for a legit copy of Windows 7 need worry about nothing but if you have a problem in the next few days give us a shout and we’ll get you sorted (the right way).

The website we use is subnet-calculator.com, not very pretty by does exactly what you want in a clear interface.