With great fear of it being not supported I bought a SanDisk Ultra 64GB Micro SDXC card to use in my Samsung Ativ Smart PC Pro, the main reason being I was all too familiar when the shift from SD to SDHC and having to worry if the card can be read in the slot or not.

According to it’s Wikipedia entry, guess I shouldn’t have been that worried.

Basically, an SDXC card is the same as an SDHC card just that it has a capacity limit of 2TB. The issue of compatibility is more on the software side, as SDXC cards are formatted to the exFAT file system by default. Most modern Operating Systems would have support for this format.

The other bullet point is of course, in your typical SDHC slot the maximum read/write speeds of an SDXC card cannot be achieved.

All in all, it’ll work fine in Windows, maybe not up to full speeds depending on the reader card slot but you’ll still be able to use it.

There are now many thin Windows based Ultrabooks and Windows Tablets running on SSDs, for budget reasons you might have bought one with limited storage. Say 32GB or 64GB and had hoped to expand your storage via other means, either by the use of SD cards, slim form factor USB drives, or some other cheap expandable storage. But after a while you'll realize a very serious limitation to such an upgrade path. Quite a few programs will detect if they're being installed to or running from a removable media and refuse to work in such a manner.

Luckily there is a way around this limitation, which is through the use of a Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) file. A VHD is a file that represents an entire disk, hence it's name.

It's easy to create a VHD file, just press the Windows key to bring up the Start screen or menu depending on wheter you're in Windows 8 or Windows 7 and type Disk Management into the search box. You'll see an option called Create And Format Hard Disk Partitions select that. (In Windows 8, the option is under the Settings category of the search results).

In the Disk Management program, click on Action -> Create VHD.

You'll then be presented with a dialog box to decide on what kind of VHD to make.

Use the Browse button to select where to create the VHD file, you should probably choose to directly create the VHD file on the USB stick or SD card to save the time to move the file onto it later.

Specify the size of the VHD file under Virtual Hard Disk Size. This CANNOT be changed once so make up your mind about it.

IMPORTANT NOTE : Due to the difference in how storage manufacturers and the OS calculates free space, remember to ALWAYS give a buffer of around 10% from the stated capacity of your media if you're not creating the file on it directly. For example if you have a 32GB thumb drive, you should specify 29GB (10% of 32GB being 3.2GB) as the size of your VHD file. Also note that you'll need to format your storage media to NTFS or exFAT instead of FAT32 in order to support extremely large files.

Under Virtual Hard Disk Type make sure it's FIXED.

Press OK and then go grab a snack or something, cause it'll take a while to make the disk depending on the size you wanted.

Once the VHD is ready you should see it in the bottom section of disk management. It should be at the bottom of the list so you might need to scroll down to see it. If you don't see it, then under the Action menu where you selected Create VHD previously, select Attach VHD and select the file you created.

It'll be the one that has the Not Initialized words on it, and of course it'll be of the size you specified. Right Click on it and select Initialize Disk.

Leave all the options as default in the next dialog and just press OK. The disk will now be ready as a basic disk.

Right Click in the Unallocated area and select New Simple Volume.

A dialog with a few pages will pop up, the first is a greetings screen, the second...

Is for you to confirm the formatted size of the volume, by default it should already be the maximum capacity which is what you should keep it as. The next dialog is important.

It'll ask you for the drive letter you want to assign to this drive. You should assign a drive letter that's near the end of the alphabet if you plan on permanently using the VHD in this PC. The next screen will ask you about formatting parameters.

Just leave everything on default, but give it a Volume Label if you'd like. Click on next and then finish up the wizard and wait a while for it to format, once completed the new drive letter will appear in the status display and Windows Explorer.

So... you now have a virtual hard drive that for all intent and purpose IS a real hard drive to Windows. So you can do anything you want to it, install programs on it, back it up using file history, etc. etc.

But there's a slight problem, the VHD goes away everytime you reboot your system. It'll stay in your system if you do a standby or hibernate as long as the media the VHD is on isn't removed from the system when it wakes up. Which means that you'll need to reattach the VHD everytime you reboot the PC.

Running into Disk Management everytime you reboot your PC isn't the most convenient thing to do. So what you need is a quicker method to mount the VHD files.

Here are two batch files which automate the process of mounting the VHD

Single VHD AutoMount Script

Multi VHD AutoMount Script

To use the SINGLE VHD script, copy it to the same folder as your VHD file, and rename it to the same name as the VHD file. ie. If the VHD name is mainvhd.vhd the batch file name is mainvhd.bat. Double click to run and mount the VHD

The MULTI VHD script will mount ALL VHD FILES IN THE SAME FOLDER as the script file itself, it's basically for anyone who doesn't know how to rename a file properly... although if you fall in that group you probably shouldn't be doing this.

Note that you still need Administrator rights to mount the VHD.

Hope this super long post gave you some help on how to deal with the relatively limited capacity of your Windows Tablet / Ultrabook! On a last note, writing to a VHD on an external storage should be slower than directly writing directly to the storage itself, but I don't find it that much of a problem, your mileage may wary depending on the performance of your media.

The Acer W510 doesn't come with a full size USB port on the tablet, as mentioned previously Acer has provided a USB Micro to USB port (ie. USB OnTheGo) cable in the box. But when you're mobile you don't want to have a cable dangling around no matter how small a thumbdrive you're connecting it to.

Knowing that it might be a problem I looked around for a solution and found this.

It's basically a solid USB OTG plug, it's also set at an angle so it doesn't extend outwards of the W510 much.

The W510 is a bit thinner than the plug itself, so it's not going to lay flat when this is plugged in. The fact that it's pretty close to the body *might* cause some problems with extra fat USB devices though.

I bought these from Deal Extreme, they come in a pack of 2 connectors. One in each direction

So one will point towards the top, and the other point towards the bottom of the W510.

Highly recommended if you want to have a more mobile, less dangling experience with the Acer W510. You can grab them here. (affliate link)

The Acer Iconia W7 is one of the numerous slate form factor designed for Windows 8 PCs that launched along side Windows 8

It might look like a normal tablet, but it is actually a PC and in the world of PCs its all about having the ability to choose what kind of PC best suits your needs, and the W7 does offer some interesting features.

First of all the W7 is a monster of a tablet, it's hard to tell from stand alone shots but this thing has a 11.6" 16:9 screen, so it's a very tall slab.

The screen is a 1920x1080 IPS screen, so you get your HD resolution AND a bright vibrant screen to go with it.

You get all the usual buttons on each side of the device, power and volume controls on the right followed by the audio out jack

A rotation lock toggle switch on the top, along with the ventilation grills.

Note that this is actually a toggle button because this allows Windows 8 the flexibility of controlling screen rotation via physical (the toggle button) or through software (via the charms bar in Windows 8)

There are actually two sets of grills which run along the top.

The left side has your Mini HDMI port, one sweet USB 3.0 port and the power port.

And at the bottom you find the two speaker grills.

The speakers actually sound quite good and can be pretty loud, don't think it'd pass the chinese dinner test though.

The W7 comes with a dock

One nice thing about the stand is that it serves as a USB 3.0 Hub, giving you 3 USB 3.0 ports when docked in the stand,

To charge the system in the stand you'll need to plug the power adapter into the stand.

The first thing that isn't so good about the dock is that aside from the protruding USB and power plugs

There's no real guide to help the W7 plug into the dock, eventually I got familiar enough with the process so that I wouldn't have to fumble with it much to plug it in.

Another quirk about the dock is how it 'transforms' into portrait mode. It actually doesn't, you basically have to rearrange the support plate for the dock into another groove to make it stand in portrait orientation.

While this works, the fact that the support plate cannot be flattened means you probably would be taking this around with you much. I guess there's not much reason to do so anyway considering that it's just a glorified USB 3.0 hub.

For means of protecting the W7 when you're moving around, Acer was nice enough to provide this folio case with it. (The sales people say that it's a special deal but considering that the folio case fit in the actual packaging I kinda doubt that)

The folio can do the usual tricks such as stand up so you can watch movies

or slightly nudge it up so you can type on the W7 better

So.. that pretty much sums up the physical aspects of the W7, how well does it work as a PC then? The W7 packs an Intel Core i3 1.4Ghz processor and 4GB of memory, which means that it can pretty much handle any routine PC task you can throw at it. The use of the standard Intel integrated display means that you're probably not going to be playing Diablo 3 in full res on this thing.

There is one critical flaw with the W7 though, the WiFi performance is abysmal!! I don't know wheter this is caused by the Atheros AR5BMD222 they decided to put in the W7, or wheter it's because of the aluminum body that's causing wifi issues but the W7 has very weak signal reception and also is prone to 'hiccup' on occasion, requiring me to disconnect and reconnect back to my AP to fix it.

The Final Word

In summary, the Acer Iconia W7 is a big 11.6" tablet, is abit hefty at 950 grams when you compare it to other tablets, and the fact that it uses a Core i3 means that it gets a bit toasty if the CPU gets loaded.

That said, it has a BEAUTIFUL screen, and that i3 processor means you'd never have to ask yourself if you'd be able to watch that HD video or not. In fact I wouldn't stop anyone from getting it...

If it wasn't for the damn WiFi issue, a driver update *might* fix it in the future but that's of course an uncertainty, and of course.. being a PC, you could just plug in a better USB WiFi adapter, but that's kinda inconvenient actually. This is actually the SECOND time I've seen performance issues with an Atheros WiFi adapter, kinda makes me abit cautious towards them from now on.

UPDATE 30th November 2012: An updated Wifi Driver WAS issued, you can nab it here. After running this for 2 days, it seems to have solved the INSTABILITY of the Atheros WiFi so it doesn't disconnect like crazy anymore. But signal strength is still relatively weak, but I guess that's what is expected when you have a metal body and only a strip of plastic on the top for the antennae. It might also depend on wheter or not you're holding it wrong.

So, the W7 is a great Windows 8 tablet if you can accept the gimpy WiFi capabilities.

Here are some tips for using Window 8 with a touchscreen that you might not know about.

Moving Tiles On The Start Screen

It's easy to move tiles around using the mouse, just click and drag the icons from where they are on the start screen. But when you try to do it using a touch screen, you might find it a bit harder, sometimes you end up scrolling the screen instead of dragging the tile.

What's happening is because if you try to drag a tile directly off it's spot as indicated by the RED arrows, Windows will interpret that as an intent to scroll the screen and you end up scrolling instead of moving the tile. If you want to move the tile via touch, what you need to do is to drag the tile DOWNWARDS first as indicated by the BLUE arrow, once you draw a tile down far enough it'll tear off it's spot in the screen and you can start moving it.

Showing The Keyboard Whenever You Want

The touch keyboard automatically shows up when there's a need for it, do not fret if you need to access the keyboard when there doesn't seem to be anyway for you to do so. Just bring up the Charms Bar, hit Settings then in the lower right corner you'll see a Keyboard icon.

Hitting the Keyboard icon, brings up the input selection list and at the bottom of the list is the option Touch keyboard and handwriting panel tapping on this option will immediately bring up the touch keyboard.

Getting access to other keys on the keyboard

The default touch keyboard is a nice finger friendly keyboard consisting of the most commonly used keys.

This is enough for most of your typing duties, but for legacy desktop apps this might not be sufficient, for example you don't have access to the ALT key and also the function keys.

You can enable a fuller keyboard by bringing up the Charms Bar -> Settings -> Change PC Settings (it's at the bottom) Then in the PC settings screen, hit General on the left, then scroll down to the Touch Keyboard section on the right and find the setting Make The Standard Keyboard Available and turn it on.

Once you turned that setting on you'll now find a new keyboard icon in the change keyboard type button on the touch keyboard (it's the little keyboard icon beside the right arrow key)

This will bring up the fuller more cramped touch keyboard.

You can toggle between numbers and function keys by hitting the Fn button in the lower left. One thing to note is that if you encounter any instance where the program doesn't seem to respond to the default keyboard, you might want to try it with the fuller keyboard.

Accessing The Even FULLER Keyboard

You'll notice that on the standard touch keyboard, some keys are still missing. Such as the Print Screen key, you still have one more option, bring up the Start Screen and type On Screen Keyboard.

This will bring up the legacy on screen keyboard meant for accessibility use.

This should solve all your legacy keyboard needs.

Today's post starts off with an interactive exercise, first download the sample project file and run the program in there. The program looks like this.

When you've run the program, perform a simple exercise, move your mouse in and out of the extra large buttons and note what happens.

The buttons are essentially a ViewBox control containing the XAML which makes up the buttons. The viewbox is then contained inside a grid and scaled to the grid's size.

Code is tied to the PointerEntered and PointerExited events of the Viewbox which basically just changes the background color of the Grid which contains it. If you haven't already run the program and then move the mouse in and out of all of the buttons, do so now.

After running the program and trying out what I mentioned you should have noticed the following problem, given that a button looks like this.

• Button 1 didn't seem to respond to mouse events in the green area
• Buttons 2 and 3 did.

So what's happening and why the difference in behavior? Let's take a look at Button 1's XAML construction. (Behold my l33t diagraming skills!)

Note that it is made up of two vector paths (the Stroke and the [Path])

Now let's take a look at Button 2's XAML construction.

Compared to Button 1, there's an extra Ellipse element (the green circle) called hitAssist which is sitting behind the blue circle and 'i' which makes up the button.

By now you should have figured out why Button 1's mouse events where behaving so weirdly, for Button 1 the only elements which have a physical appearance are the circle and the 'i' and that's exactly what triggers the mouse events.

Whereas Button 2 has an additional hitAssist element which fills up the empty gap between the circle and the 'i' and hence the mouse events are triggered as if they're one consecutive element.

"But what about the Grids that are containing the strokes? Wouldn't THEY trigger the mouse entry and exit events?" But they don't! In XAML you'll use a LOT of Grids, Panels and Canvas to layout your elements, you do NOT want every single container to simple fire mouse events!

So how DOES an element qualify for mouse interactivity? Well, I gave a hint just now already. It must have a PHYSICAL appearance. In more easy to understand terms... Make sure the element has a Background Brush assigned to it. The moment a background brush is assigned to an element it will start participating in mouse events because the mouse is able to know if it's running over an element's background brush or not.

So now we know that what we want to do is to fill up gaps in our interactive elements so it makes more sense when users are using them. "But I don't want my sleek outline buttons to have an ugly unadaptable background color!" you say. Well, that's why there's a Button 3 in the sample.

Construction wise it looks just like Button 2, except the Ellipse element that's covering the gap is called hitAssistClear and it's can't be seen. "But didn't you just say that only elements which have a physical appearance can have mouse events?" Because it IS still physically there, it just has an Opacity property value of 0%. It's like a really really really clear piece of glass, you can't see it but it's there! Just remember:-

Any element that has a Visibility property value of Visible will participate in mouse events even if Opacity is 0%. Setting Visibility to Collapsed will remove it from mouse events too. And just in case you didn't realize, there's a property on every element called IsHitTestVisible setting that to FALSE will remove it from mouse events too.

And that is what the name of this whole notion of seeing wheter the mouse is over an element or not : Hit Testing

It's something that I feel all XAML developers and designers should know about, yet I don't really see anyone talking about it much. If you think this is not important, what if the button was only this small?

Notice the hit area of 'i' is now merely a few pixels, do you want your users to have to pixel hunt in order to click a button? Would YOU like to pixel hunt in order to click a button? This experience gets WORSE if your user is using touch to navigate your app!

ps. The button icon you see was created using the TOTALLY EXCELLENT Metro Studio by SyncFusion. Hmm... I should submit a feature request where they insert a hit test element into their XAML output.

At some point when you're developing a Windows 8 App you probably realized that if the app is run on a tablet form factor device you'd want to freeze the app orientation in either landscape or portrait display modes like you'd do in a Windows Phone app. So what you do in Visual Studio 2012 is that you double click on the Package.appxmanifest file so you can start tweaking the manifest settings for your app, in particular is the Supported rotations section.

Since you want your app to only support landscape mode, you check both landscape modes. Then you decide to test if this works, so you fire up the simulator, and rotate it, but instead of being locked in landscape, your app still rotates to potrait mode.

This doesn't work because the simulator doesn't accurately simulate the hardware rotation, as mentioned in the documentation (look under the change device orientation section)

Since that doesn't work, you try to manually rotate your screen using Windows Mobility Center (Windows + X, then select Windows Mobility Center)

And STILL your app doesn't stick to landscape orientation!

So what exactly is wrong?

The problem here is that the rotation preference setting of the app is only enforced on a Windows 8 system with a supported HARDWARE ACCELEROMETER.

Which means unless Windows knows how the system is orientated through the means of a supported sensor, it'll never attempt to switch to the app's preferred orientation.

So you shouldn't need to worry that your preferred orientation setting isn't working, it'll work on any hardware that is properly designed for Windows 8. How do you deal with people who manually rotate their screens using Windows Mobility Center then? Well... did you know you could rotate your screen using Windows Mobility Center? Did you even know that there was a Windows Mobility Center? It should be safe to assume that if someone knew enough to manually rotate their screen display, they'll know enough that not all apps run fine in both portrait and landscape orientations.

So I've recently obtained the RTM version of Windows 8 through my MSDN subscription. And therefore I have a few updates to add to my previous Windows To Go post.

The first and most important finding which was discovered by a friend was that the San Disk Cruzer Fit 32GB is actually capable of running Windows 8 at usable speeds.

Performance wise, it's still not going to be as good as a hard disk, but the fact that it's

• Bloody small so it doesn't get in your way like a hard disk would.
• Bloody cheap (RM67!)

Makes it a very tempting proposition! So what kind of performance are we talking about? Well... overall reading performance will feel slow, but not unbearably slow during normal usage. And you might encounter some instances where it seems like the system stalls for while when there's heavy traffic going through the USB bus. Also, disk intensive scenarios like when you try to install programs might be a bit slower than usual.

One thing to note is that actual performance still depends a lot on your PC's USB Bus, if that becomes a performance bottleneck you still will get unbearable speeds from the drive.

Speaking of installing programs, another interesting scenario popped up once my friend made his Windows To Go drive. If you installed Windows 8 directly onto the USB drive, it's possible that the OS would regard it as a removable drive, this would cause many programs to refuse to install onto the OS drive. Which is not what you'd want.

Luckily, there is a solution for this. All you need to do is to install Windows 8 onto a VHD that's on the USB drive and boot into it. There are again various guides to do this on the net so just search around for it. I might get around to doing one if people actually ask for it.

Till the next update then!

So you’ve just finished installing Windows 8, and you’re staring at the spanking new Start screen.

After staring at this for a few seconds you might already have a few questions on your mind. Let me try and answer them for you.

Where’s the Start Button?

The Start button is in the same place where it was in previous versions of Windows, just that it’s hidden to not take up an extra icon of space. Space saving is not exactly a good argument but in any case, to access the Start button, just move your mouse pointer into the LOWER LEFT CORNER of the screen and the Start button will appear.

The basic idea is to hide your mouse pointer in the lower left corner of the screen to get it. You’ll probably fumble around once or twice but it’s easy enough to get used to it, since it is pretty much in the same place where it was in previous Windows.

Note: Don’t try this when you’re actually IN the Start Screen (The screen you see when you first launch windows, ie. The one on top) When you’re in the Start Screen, the lower left corner brings you to the last app that was opened before your arrived at the Start Screen.

Keyboard Tip : Typing when you're in the Start Screen works just like typing in the Start Menu of Windows 7, it'll immediately start searching for whatever you typed.

What’s this Charms Bar thingy I keep hearing about?

When you hide the mouse pointer in the upper right or lower right corner of the screen, a column of icons will appear.

Then when you reach for them, the icons will gain a proper background and look like a toolbar.

This is what is known as the Charms Bar, it provides quick access to Windows and App features. Start is self explanatory and is basically the Start Button. Devices brings up a list of devices which you can interact with, you can control your projector output settings from this.

Search, Share and Settings have a very interesting and not so obvious behavior that new users wouldn’t understand at first. They are app-specific. For example, if you’re using a calendar application and you’re looking for a button in the app that will open up a setting’s page for you to set reminder options, you don’t have to go digging around just hit the Settings button on the charms bar and you’ll be able to access the application’s settings page. If you’re using a mail application and you want to search for something, hitting the Search button on the charms bar will bring you to the app’s search interface.

One caveat though, as always all these integrated buttons will work like they’re supposed to if the app developer was paying attention and doing their jobs properly.

KEYBOARD TIP: The keyboard shortcut for the Charms Bar is Windows + C

How Do I Turn Off My System?

A very good question considering that the option is now quite hidden compared to previous versions of Windows. Bring up the Charms Bar and click on Settings. Look at the bottom part of the panel.

Apart from the Power Button which we're looking for (FYI clicking on it brings up the options to Sleep, Restart, Shutdown and doesn't immediately turn your system off) There're a few other useful controls that are easily accessible.

Keyboard Tip : Press the physical power button on your PC to turn it off. Ok... I suppose some machines are configured to sleep when the power button is pressed.

Where Did The Internet Explorer Address Bar Go?

When you first open Internet Explorer from the Start screen you'll see the address bar at the lower part of the screen.

But after you start surfing for a while the address bar disappears, and you can't seem to get the address bar back by moving the mouse to the bottom of the screen.

To reveal the address bar in Internet Explorer, or the application bar for any other Windows 8 UI app. Right Click on any BLANK space in the application.

Keyboard Tip : You can press Windows + Z to bring up the application bar in Internet Explorer as well as any other Windows 8 UI app. You can also use the familiar Alt-D shortcut as well.

How Come I Can't Run A Program I Just Downloaded!

So you've just downloaded a program and you double click to run it just like you'd do in any other Windows, but a dialog box appears with the message "Windows SmartScreen prevented an unrecognized app from starting. Running this app might put your PC at risk."

Unlike the previous dialog boxes that block direct execution of downloaded programs, there's no "Yes just run the darn thing already" button that's clearly visible in the dialog. But rest assured, this is not Microsoft preventing you from running anything you want. It's just another well meaning but probably futile effort at stopping people from simply running things which they don't intend to.

In any case, clicking on the More info link in the dialog will present you with the Run Anyway button to run your program.

And that's it for now, future updates as and when I think there's something to add to this.

November 18th 2012 : If you're using Windows 8 on a touch enabled PC you might want to follow up with this post.

So there I was writing my first application for Windows 8, I had to call a web service sitting on a server which had to be connected through HTTPS, but because it wasn't a production server the certificate was self signed and thus is considered to be an invalid cert. No biggie I thought, with all my years of .Net experience I knew that all I had to do was fiddle with the System.Net.ServicePointManager.ServerCertificateValidationCallback method, as mentioned here.

Imagine my surprise when I realized that the class doesn't exists when you're writing a .Net app for the Windows Runtime!

Trying to look for other solutions also came up empty, it was then which I realized that what I needed to do was to allow the application to get a certificate which ISN'T invalid. What I needed was a web proxy which could give the impression that the remote certificate was actually valid.

What I needed... was Fiddler!

So first download Fiddler4 (Because Windows 8 comes with .Net 4.0) from the download page.

After installation and running the program enter Fiddler Options by selecting Tools->Fiddler Options from the menu bar.

After which head into the HTTPS tab and check Decrypt HTTPS Traffic

You'll be warned that you're about to install a wild card certificate on your system. Shown below is one of the many warning screens, you'll have to answer YES to ALL of them.

After the certificate is installed, look back at the options window and check Ignore Certificate Errors. This will make Fiddler not complain about any invalid certs.

Fiddler is a web proxy, which basically means it sits between your machine and the internet so you can monitor the web traffic your PC is making as long as the program is setup to use the system proxy. If you don't know what this implies then just keep Fiddler on only when you're doing development, and turn it off once you're done.

For more information about using Fiddler to assist in Windows 8 development out this post.