In addition to the Consumer Preview of Windows 8, Microsoft has also released a public beta build of "Windows Server 8" a few hours ago.
The official Windows Server 8 web page offers more information about what users can expect from this beta release. There's a lot of emphasis on multitenant virtualization, simplified multi-server architecture, cloud computing, and cross-platform access in this newest release of Windows Server.
According to Microsoft, "Windows Server 8" offers businesses and hosting providers a scalable, dynamic, and multitenant-aware, cloud-optimized infrastructure.
Minimum System Requirements:
1.4 GHz 64-bit processor
512 MB RAM
32 GB Available Disk Space
DVD drive
Super VGA (800x600) or higher-resolution monitor
Note: 32 GB should be considered an absolute minimum value for successful installation.
Simply download and run the "Windows8-ConsumerPreview-setup.exe" from the page above, and it will decide which version of Windows 8 is right for your system. It'll inform you which of your programs are compatible with Windows 8, grab you a product key, and automatically download tools that you may need to create an ISO or bootable flash drive.
Windows 8 Consumer Preview is the beta version of Windows 8. The download include pre-release software that may or may not appear in the final version of Windows 8.
Following are the official system requirements for Windows 8 Consumer Preview build released by Microsoft:
Processor: 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64)
RAM: 1 gigabyte (GB) (32-bit) or 2 GB (64-bit)
HDD: 16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver
Taking advantage of touch input requires a screen that supports multi-touch
To run Metro style Apps, you need a screen resolution of 1024 X 768 or greater
To snap apps, you need a screen resolution of at least 1366 x 768
You can upgrade to Windows 8 Consumer Preview from
Windows 8 Developer Preview, Windows 7, Windows Vista, or Windows XP,
but you might not be able to keep all of your files, programs, and
settings.
You can have Windows 8 on your computer in three ways – you can install Windows 8 side-by-side, as a virtual machine (so that it runs inside your existing Windows just like any other software) or Windows 8 can be your main OS (there’s no going back then).
Windows 8 Consumer Preview comes with an expiry date and it'll expire on January 15th, 2013
For those of you who use Digsby, you may have noticed that both Facebook chat and Facebook notifications fail to authenticate and disconnect quite often. What I'm about to tell you isn't a fix for the actual Facebook chat implementation in Digsby, but it does fix Facebook Chat by letting you
access it via the Jabber protocol
Here's the trick :
1) Start Digsby
2) Click on the "Digsby" menu (on the top left of the buddy list)
3) Select "My Accounts"
4) In the "My Accounts" section, click on the icon that looks like a brown light bulb [check the screenshot]
5) Enter the following information :
Jabber ID : username@chat.facebook.com
The "username" is the name in your Facebook address. For example.
If your Facebook profile address is www.facebook.com/techmeasy, thentypetechmeasy@chat.facebook.com in "Jabber ID" field. .. If you don't already have a username for your Facebook account you can obtain one from the following address. https://www.facebook.com/username/ ..
Password : <your facebook password>
6) click the Save button.
That's it. Your Facebook friends should now be showing in Digsby. Also go back to your Digsby "My Account"
box, click on the Facebook icon and uncheck the "chat" label to prevent your Facebook friends to show up twice in your buddy list.
Making a file or folder hidden in Windows is simple : Right click on the file or folder you want to hide, select "Properties" and on the "General" tab, check the box in the "Attributes" section named "Hidden". Click "OK" and you are done.
However, the problem with this trick is that its quite old and almost every windows user knows how to get access to hidden folders/files (In case you don't know, you can view hidden files/folders by first opening "My Computer" then selecting Tools > Folder options > View and checking the "Do not show hidden files and folders" box)
In this tutorial I will show you how to make a super hidden file or folder that you can't find by simply checking "Show hidden files and folders"
1. Click on the Start orb and in the
search bar type"cmd" (without quotes) and hit enter to open command
prompt. (XP users: click Start, then Run and type "cmd" and hit enter)
2. Change the path to the directory in which the file\folder is present
3. Now type :
attrib +s +h FolderHide
Replace “FolderHide” with the name of the folder/file you want to hide.
Note : If your folder/file has spaces in between, then enclose the folder name in double quotes. For example if the folder name is Folder Hide, then your command should be :
attrib +s +h "Folder Hide"
That's it ! Now, go back to the place where the file or folder is located and look, it’s not there!
You cannot find it through simply browsing around, through the command
prompt, or even if you click “Show Hidden Files and Folders”.
In this method, what we did is that we altered the file/folder's attributes to Operating System file\folder attribute. This trick
works because, by default, the option, "Hide Protected Operating System
Files" (in Tools > Folder options > View) is checked. As normally
no one un-checks this option, (as on unchecking, Windows gives a warning detailing why one should not un-check this option), hence the file or folder becomes super hidden.
To un-hide the folder or file again, open command prompt and navigate to the folder where
the hidden folder is located and type :
attrib -s -h FolderHide
Make sure to replace "FolderHide" with the name of the folder or file
Bored looking at the same default home page whenever your browser starts? Then try "EIGHT", a browser start screen inspired from Windows 8's tiled interface. It is basically a web page created using HTML, CSS and jQuery. It shows website shortcuts as tiles which when clicked open the associated URLs. It's also got a search bar right in the page itself.
Not only EIGHT looks awesome, it is customizable too. You can replace the shortcuts with your own favorite sites, you can change the default search engine, you can customize the background color and you can even use a wallpaper as background. EIGHT is compatible with all the major browsers (Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Internet Explorer).
To use it, first download the ZIP file from here and extract the folder contained in it somewhere on your hard drive. Navigate to the folder (usually named "EIGHT-firefox start page+config") and open the “index.htm” with your preferred web browser. Close all other opened tabs before you continue.
Mozilla Firefox Users : Click on the orange Firefox button and choose "Options". Under the "General" tab select “Show my home page” from “When Firefox starts“ and click the "Use Current Pages" button. Press [enter].
Google Chrome Users : Copy the URL from the address bar. Click on the "wrench" button and select "Options". Choose "Open the following pages:" under "On startup" and in the "New tab" field paste the URL you copied earlier. Also, select "Open this page" from "Home page" and paste the same URL in its field. Close the tab and reload.
Other Browser Users : Follow similar steps as mentioned above.
Customizing EIGHT :
To customize EIGHT, again navigate to "EIGHT-firefox start page+config" and run "config.htm". Modify the shortcuts and texts as per your preference and click "Generate settings file". Copy the entire code. Now open "source.js" (also present in "EIGHT-firefox start page+config" folder) with notepad, replace the original texts with the copied text. Save the file.
Note : If you wish to change any pre-defined website shortcut with a new one, first paste the website logo in the "thumbs" folder. Now run "config.htm", click on the shortcut tile you wish to replace and provide title and URL of the website along with the name of the website logo.
As previewed by Microsoft, Windows 8 will feature a new "Start Screen" (known as Metro) which looks similar to the Windows Phone 7 home screen. It basically shows live tiles of the installed programs in Windows 8. Check this official Microsoft video :
Would you like to have a taste of the Windows 8 today? In this post, I’ll show you a very unique way to transform your entire Windows desktop into the more modern and intuitive Windows 8 interface.
For this tutorial, I will focus on achieving the following desktop:
Once you get over with the basics, feel free to experiment and let your creativity fly.
Note :
1. You can download the wallpaper from here
2. The dock I am using is RocketDock. You can download it from here.
What you need
1. The transformation you see above is actually a very elaborate theme for an application called "Rainmeter". So download and install Rainmeter first from the following link:
3. Double click on the downloaded zip file and extract "SETUP.rmskin". Now open the SETUP.rmskin file and click "Install". The extraction might take a minute or two.
3. After that you'll be guided by the Intro. Here enter your preference for time format (ON = 24 hour time, OFF = 12 hour time), unit of time (ON = Farenheit, OFF = Celsius) and whether you wish to hide your desktop icons (recommended). The whether code will automatically be filled by Omnimo.
Click on the "arrow" to proceed.
3. Click on the language of your choice.
4. Click on the third theme [Blank Theme] and hit "Apply"
5. After that, the "Style" window will greet you. Here you can customize the look and feel of the panels and Text Items. The "Style" window also comes with a number of themes. These themes are various pre-made styles to show all the stuff you can customize. You can even activate the clear skin, which makes the panel background completely transparent. For this tutorial, click on "HTC Skin (Neutral). Click "APPLY" and then "CLOSE"
6. Next you'll be presented with the "Gallery view", where you can choose between loads of different panels.
Simply click the icons to add the widgets to the screen. For this tutorial I chose "Flip Clock", "Fruit Clock", "Date", "Network", "CPU Meter", "RAM", "SlideShow", "Gmail", "Weather" and the "Radio" widget.
Once you are done with widget selection, click on the "CLOSE" button on the right.
Note: You can add more gadgets later by bringing back the "Panels" window. Simply Click on the arrow on your desktop to open the "Panels" window. If you can't find the arrow on your desktop, right-click the Rainmeter tray icon and choose Configs -> WP7 -> galleryarrow.ini.
7. Now drag the widgets wherever you'd like to. If your widgets doesn't snap very well, hold Shift and drag it for a perfect position.
Here’s how my personal Omnimo desktop looks like when I was in step 7 :
8. Now that you have the widgets on the desktop, it's time to configure them by hovering over the widget until the tiny icons appear in the upper right-hand corner, and then using the wrench to open the configuration screen. Note that not all widgets have configuration.
Lets start with configuring the Gmail panel. Hover your mouse pointer over the panel and click on the wrench to open the configuration screen. In the "GmailUsername" tab enter your Gmail username (without @gmail.com) and your Gmail password in the "GmailPassword" tab. (Dont forget to click on "Set" before switching tabs) Click "Close". Now right click on the Gmail widget and click "Refresh Skin".
Next, hover to the "Radio" panel and click on the wrench. A text file "UserVariables.inc" will open up. As this widget depends on VLC Player, we need to provide the exact path of VLC for this panel to work. Assuming that VLC is installed, in the "PathToVLC= " provide the complete path of "vlc.exe". Once done, save and close the file.
Now click on any of the station listed in the Radio panel to start listening to that station. You can stop the radio by clicking on the " ► ". Note : In case even after clicking ► the radio continues to play, bring the task manager by pressing ctrl+shift+esc, select vlc.exe and click on "End Process".
You can even add your own radio stations in the "Radio" panel. For that, right click on the panel and click "WP7\Panels\Radio". The "Radio" explorer window will open up. Next search and download .pls file(s) of your favourite radio station(s) from shoutcast.com (check my earlier post for details). Rename the file(s) to something else and paste them in the "Radio" folder. Now open "UserVariable.inc" file by clicking on the "wrench" and edit "StationLink"(s) to point to the .pls file(s). Next provide a name to the station(s) by editing "Station1Title". Save the file when you are done. Refresh the "Radio" panel to reflect the changes.
If the "Weather" panel is showing the weather of our some other place instead of showing the weather of your locality, then you need to modify the weather code manually. But before doing so, go to weather.com and search your city. Now copy the weather code from addressbar (usually something like INXX0093) [see screenshot below]
Now click on the wrench of the"Weather" panel. In the "WeatherCode" tab paste the weather code. Click "Set" and "Close" and you are done.
9. To close any widget, hover your mouse pointer over it and click on the "X". Note that you can always add it back from the gallery (The gallery can be invoked anytime by clicking on the → present on the desktop).
10. Some panels have an arrow that will let you rotate between views or functions. For example, on the calendar widget, using the arrow switches between views :
11. Almost every single one of Omnimo panels is resizable. The panels can be resized to any size between 100x100px and 300x300px squares. The default size is 150x150px. To start resizing panels, click the resize button in the lower right corner of the panel.
A slider will pop up allowing you to change the panel size. To fine-tune the size, you can use the keyboard arrows. If you want to cancel the resizing, simply click on the number.
The new size will be applied after you release the left mouse button.
My desktop after step 11
12. Omnimo skin is not only about Panels. It also comes with a number of "Text items" to choose from. To open multiple, different Text Items, hover over the arrow on your desktop and Click on the T on right. This will open the Text Items gallery for you. Click any one to try it out. It will open up right on your desktop. For this tutorial I chose "Menu", "Courier", "Day" and "Custom".
13. Create your own panels :
To create panels for your own apps, folders, contacts and websites, you can use the "Omnimo Panel Creator". It creates fully functional (and resizable!) panels from your icons, shortcuts and contact files.
First download the "Omnimo Panel Creator" from here. Once you've installed it , click on the arrow on the desktop to open "Panels" gallery. Click "my panels" text on bottom right and you should see an interface like this :
Click the plus icon on bottom right and you should see an interface like this :
To start, drag an icon (.ico), an image (.png, .jpg, .bmp, .gif), a contact file (.contact) or a shortcut (.lnk) to the blue square on the left. Fill out the Name field and select an action for the panel by using the Browse buttons. When you're done, hit the Create Panel button.
For this tutorial I created four panels : Firefox, Facebook, Media Player, Maintenance and Picasa.
14. Time for some finishing touches. Minimizing the transparency of text items is a great way to blend text items with the wallpaper. To do so, right click on a text item, select Settings > Transparency > "Transparency Value"
In this tutorial I changed the transparency of text items Day, Courier, Custom to 30%, 40% and 30% respectively.
Another thing you can do is that you can make the position of text items and panels fixed so as to prevent accidental dragging of panels and text items. For that, right click on text items or panels, select Settings and uncheck Draggable
Result:
Before
After
How do you like it?
I personally think that the new Metro interface is beautifully designed; it feels more modern than the classic, icon-dependent Apple iOS or Google Android. This is why I fell in love with this unique Windows theme. What do you think? Did you check out any of the other tile packs and add-ons available on http://omnimo.co.cc ?
in the lower right corner of the panel.
