70-272: Supporting Users and Troubleshooting Desktop Applications

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QUESTION 1
You work as the network administrator at ABC.com. ABC.com has a domain named ABC.com. All
servers on the ABC.com network run Windows Server 2003 and all client computers run Microsoft
Windows XP Professional SP2.
ABC.com has a Marketing and Finance division which requires using Microsoft Office XP to
perform their daily duties.
How would you instruct the Marketing and Finance user’s to run the Microsoft Office XP setup if
the setup fails and rolls backup without changing the user’s currently assigned privileges?

A. By adding the Marketing and Finance division to the Network Configuration Operators group
and accessing Microsoft Office Product Updates to scan the computer for updates.
B. By adding the Marketing and Finance division to the Power Users group and using Add or
Remove Programs in Control Panel to remove Office and re-install Microsoft Office XP.
C. By creating a remote connection to the Marketing and Finance group client computers and reinstalling
Microsoft Office XP using a network-based installation point with the required .msi file.
D. By adding the Marketing and Finance division to the local Administrators group and restarting
the browser and Workstation services before re-installing Microsoft Office XP from the Windows
Installer command-line utility.

Answer: C

Explanation: To try to recreate the error you have to run the installation in the users’ privileges so
running the installation on your computer with your privileges will not help you to solve the problem
(answer B and D). Visiting the Microsoft Office Product Updates Web site will not help the user in
any way as long as he doesn’t have Microsoft Office installed on his computer.

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QUESTION 2
You work as the desktop support technician at ABC.com. ABC.com has a domain named
ABC.com. All servers on the ABC.com network run Windows 2000 Server and all client computers
run Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2.
ABC.com has a Marketing division which uses Microsoft Office 2003 for their daily duties. During
the course of the day Marketing division users reported that certain files of theirs have been deleted.
How would you configure the Marketing division client computers to track any attempts by
malicious users to alter or delete files on their computers?

A. By running the secedit /analyze command on the client computers.
B. By running the secedit /configure command on the client computers.
C. By configuring security access control lists for their disk drives by auditing the Everyone group
on the client computers.
D. By running the secedit /validate command on the client computers.

Answer: C

Explanation: You must track unauthorized attempts to modify or delete the files so auditing the
Everyone group is the correct choice.

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QUESTION 3
You work as a desktop adminsitrator at ABC.com. ABC.com has a domain named ABC.com. All
servers run Microsoft Windows 2000 server and the client computers run Microsoft Windows XP
Professional.
ABC.com has a Marketing division which makes online purchases during work hours.
How would you configure the network firewall to stop these activities whilst allowing the Marketing
division to access the Internet?

A. By having port 110 blocked on the firewall.
B. By having port 443 blocked on the firewall.
C. By having port 143 blocked on the firewall.
D. By having port 21 blocked on the firewall.

Answer: B

Explanation: Port 443 is used for Secure Sockets Layer connections to Secure HTTP Web sites.
This port should be blocked.

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QUESTION 4
You work as the network administrator at ABC.com. ABC.com has a domain named ABC.com. All
servers on the ABC.com network run Windows Server 2003 and all client computers run Windows
XP Professional.
ABC.com has a Finance division which uses Microsoft Office XP to perform their daily tasks.
How would you configure Microsoft Office XP to ensure opened documents display’s a toolbar
containing the Balloons button?

A. By accessing the Help menu and selecting the Detect and Repair… option.
B. By right-clicking the toolbar and selecting the Reviewing toolbar from the context menu.
C. By re-installing Microsoft Office XP and copying a Normal.dot file from the administrator’s
computer to the My Documents folder.
D. By accessing the tools menu from another user’s document and accessing the Tools menu to
select Shared Workspace.

Answer: B

Explanation: The Balloons button appears on the Reviewing Toolbar. Simply enabling this toolbar
will show this button. To enable the toolbar, right click any open spot in the toolbar area. From the
dropdown list, click Reviewing.

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Report: Microsoft and Nokia talked acquisition

Report: Microsoft and Nokia talked acquisition
Recent discussions aimed at a deal aren't likely to be revived, a Wall Street Journal report said

Microsoft and cellphone maker Nokia were in advanced talks about an acquisition of the Finnish company's device business, but the discussions have broken down, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

Such a deal might have improved both companies' ability to compete in a world dominated by smartphones offered by Apple, which makes both hardware and software, and by Google, which relies largely on third parties for devices that run its Android OS.

But the talks, which took place as recently as this month, have faltered and aren't likely to be revived, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. The discussions were held in London and the companies were close to an oral agreement about a combination, the report said.

The deal hit snags regarding price and the market position of Nokia, which trails far behind both Apple and Samsung, the Journal said.

Microsoft declined to comment on the report. Nokia could not immediately be reached for comment.

An acquisition of Nokia by Microsoft is an idea that has seen some discussion in recent years. Two years ago, the companies formed a partnership in which Nokia would use exclusively Microsoft software to power its smartphones.

One idea behind the partnership was that by adopting Microsoft's Windows Phone as its primary smartphone platform, Nokia could make a better product on par with smartphone hardware powered by Google's Android operating system. Other hardware makers, including HTC, also make Windows Phone handsets.

When Nokia announced last year that it would be cutting 10,000 jobs, industry speculation grew over whether the time was right for Microsoft to make a move.

Were Microsoft to buy Nokia's device business, it would help the software company better compete against Apple and also bolster the company's broader position in a diverse market, industry analyst Jeff Kagan said in an email message.

"This is the kind of deal I have been thinking about ever since Microsoft and Nokia got together on the Lumia wireless phones," he said. "This is the perfect time for Microsoft to extend beyond their traditional business, and acquiring Nokia could be their ticket to do just that."

Microsoft already makes its own Surface tablets, as well as the Xbox gaming and entertainment consoles.

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The VAIO Fit 14 is my new touchscreen Windows 8 laptop

As I wrote last week I have been on a quest for a new laptop. I quickly realized that convertibles were not yet ready for primetime in my price range (sub $1,000), so instead I decided that I would get a touchscreen model to fully utilize the Windows 8 interface. Finding the perfect machine for me took a lot of shopping, reading and testing, but I am happy to report I have a new machine that will hopefully last me for the next 18 to 24 months. I bought a VAIO Fit 14. Why did I choose this one? Let me tell you.

My VAIO sports an i7 Intel Core CPU, it has 8GB of RAM, a 750GB (would you believe I wrote MB at first and then realized I was using 2001 specs) traditional hard drive and an 8GB SSD. It also has a DVD-RW drive and a slick 14-inch touchscreen. The screen sports a 1600x900 HD display with an Intel HD 4000 on-board graphics system. It also has USB 3.0 ports, HDMI, Ethernet, wireless and an SD card reader. The keyboard is the Mac-like chicklets with backlighting. The computer is housed in a slick brushed aluminum case. Taken in total, it is a really nice package.

While the size is not quite netbook or as small as some of the other Ultrabooks I looked at, it is much smaller than my previous Toshiba 15.6-inch screen model. The brushed aluminum gives it a rich, solid look. The keyboard is a pleasure to type on compared to my mushy Toshiba keyboard.

Most of all, the touchscreen is a pleasure. I have used a tablet and my Samsung Galaxy S4 has a big screen, but using Windows 8 on a screen this size is really nice. The live tiles are really live. But just scrolling web pages with your finger is a hell of a lot easier than using a mouse or touchpad. I really like the ease of touchscreen and don't know if I will ever be able to go back to a mouse or touchpad. It is a game changer. Before you knock Windows 8, you really need to play with it on a touchscreen to appreciate it.

With the touchscreen I am using the tile interface much more than my desktop, compared to my previous Windows 8 machine. I also have downloaded several apps from the still underpopulated Windows app store.

This is the third time I have loaded a Windows 8 machine up with all of the software I use. By now I am pretty good at it. It only took me most of the first night I had the machine and it was fully loaded. Using Windows Office 365, which you can install on up to 5 machines, is great. I gave my old machine to my wife and leaving Office on there while installing it on my new machine still leaves me with three more installs. I didn't get any extra software on my laptop. Besides Windows 8 it came with some Sony software for movies and sound, but that was about it.

I bought my new laptop in a Sony store. Yes, that is right, the Sony store in the mall. I looked at all of the computer-type stores around town, looked online, but at the end of the day the Sony store had the best selection of Sony machines and the prices were the same as online and even cheaper than what I saw in the computer stores. In many of the computer stores they were showing older models that were a little cheaper, but the Sony store had the newest models at a good price. I was able to get mine for $999.99. Right at my $1,000 dollar limit.

I have been using it now for about four or five days. I love it. I know a lot of people knock Sony for not coming up with anything groundbreaking since the first Playstation or the Walkman before that, but Sony is the original Apple. Its products are designed well, the quality is evident throughout, and they just look nice.

I was hesitant because I remember when VAIOs were plagued with problems. But the reviews that I have seen recently seem to be very positive for the most part. At this point I would give the machine a high recommendation.

For me, though, the clincher was the reaction of other geeks. When they saw the machine, I got lots of oohs and aahhs. They liked using the touchscreen and really liked the look of my new computer. Already, two of my friends have said they are going out to get the same one.

I would have liked a total SSD drive, but I need more than the 128GB that comes in this class of machine. A friend of mine recently bought a laptop with twin 512GB SSD, but it set him back a pretty penny and it was not a touchscreen. For me, this hybrid of a traditional big HD with a small SSD works just fine.

So, now that I only paid a thousand dollars for my laptop, I have $500 set aside for my tablet. My HP Touchpad is beyond repair. I think the hard drive gave out or something. Anyway, I almost bought the new Sony tablet, but chickened out when I read a review that said it was slightly slower than some of the leading players in its class. So my quest for the next tablet goes on. But my search for the perfect laptop is over for now anyway.

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13 Simple Tips for Improving Your Web Design

How your website is laid out, what colors, fonts and images you use (or don't use) can mean the difference between success (low bounce and exit rates, high conversion) and failure (high abandonment, low sales).

Want to ensure that visitors will exit your website almost immediately after landing there? Be sure to make it difficult for them to find what it is they are looking for. Want to get people to stay on your website longer and click on or buy stuff? Follow these 13 Web design tips.

Web design
1. Have a polished, professional logo--and link it to your home page. "Your logo is an important part of your brand, so make sure it's located prominently on your site," says Tiffany Monhollon, senior content marketing manager at online marketer ReachLocal. "Use a high-resolution image and feature it in the upper left corner of each of your pages," she advises. "Also, it's a good rule of thumb to link your logo back to your home page so that visitors can easily navigate to it."

2.Use intuitive navigation. "Primary navigation options are typically deployed in a horizontal [menu] bar along the top of the site," says Brian Gatti, a partner with Inspire Business Concepts, a digital marketing company. Provide "secondary navigation options underneath the primary navigation bar, or in the [left-hand] margin of the site, known as the sidebar."

Why is intuitive navigation so important? "Confusing navigation layouts will result in people quitting a page rather than trying to figure it out," Gatti says. So instead of putting links to less important pages--that detract from your call to action or primary information--at the top of your home or landing pages, put "less important links or pieces of information at the bottom of a page in the footer."

3. Get rid of clutter. "It's very easy these days to be visually overloaded with images, to the point where our brains stop processing information when confronted with too many options," explains Paolo Vidali, senior digital marketing strategist, DragonSearch, a digital marketing agency.

To keep visitors on your site, "make sure pages do not have competing calls to action or visual clutter [e.g., lots of graphics, photographs or animated gifs] that would draw the visitor's eyes away from the most important part of the page." To further keep clutter down on landing pages, "consider limiting the links and options in the header and footer to narrow the focus even further," he says.

Another tip to streamlining pages: "Keep paragraphs short," says Ian Lurie, CEO of internet marketing company Portent, Inc. "On most Web sites, a single paragraph should be no more than five to six lines."

4. Give visitors breathing room. "Create enough space between your paragraphs and images so the viewer has space to breathe and is more able to absorb all of the features your site and business have to offer," says Hannah Spencer, graphic designer, Coalition Technologies, a Web design and online marketing agency.

"Controlling white space through layout will keep users focused on the content and control user flow," adds Paul Novoa, founder and CEO at Novoa Media. "With a lot of visual competition taking place on the Web and on mobile, less is more. Controlling white space will improve user experience, increasing returns from the website."

5. Use color strategically. Using "a mostly neutral color palette can help your site project an elegant, clean and modern appearance," says Mark Hoben, the head of Web design at Egencia, the business travel division of the Expedia group, who is also a believer in using color wisely. "Employing small dashes of color--for headlines or key graphics--helps guide visitors to your most important content," he explains.

It is also important to use a color palette that complements your logo and is consistent with your other marketing materials.

6. Invest in good, professional photography. "Website visitors can sniff out generic photos in a second--and they'll be left with a generic impression of your company," warns Zane Schwarzlose, community relations director, Fahrenheit Marketing. "Your company isn't generic. So show your visitors that by investing in professional photography."

"We strongly recommend that our clients invest in professional photography or purchase professional stock photos," says Gatti. Good photographs "draw the eye, providing an emotional connection to the written content." Poor quality photographs or photographs that have nothing to do with your message, on the other hand, are worse than having no photographs.

Bonus photography tip: "If you want to draw attention to a particular piece of content or a signup button, include a photo of a person looking at the content," suggests Elie Khoury, cofounder and CEO of Woopra, which provides real-time customer and visitor analytics. "We are immediately drawn to faces of other humans--and when we see that face looking' at something, our eyes are instinctively drawn there as well."

7. Choose fonts that are easy to read across devices and browsers. When choosing fonts, keep in mind that people will be looking at your website not just on a laptop but on mobile devices. "Some large-scaled fonts may read well on [a computer monitor], but not scale or render well on mobile, losing the desired look and feel," explains Novoa. So he advises using a universal font.
"Pick a typeface that can be easily read and size it no less than 11pt," says Ethan Giffin, CEO, Groove Commerce. "If you're using Web fonts, try to use no more than two font families in order to ensure fast load times," he says.

"If you're using a fixed-width design, use a font size that allows a maximum of 15 to 20 words per line," adds Lurie. "If you're using a fluid design, use a font size that allows 15 to 20 words per line at 900 to 1000 pixels wide."

8. Design every page as a landing page. "Most websites have a design that assumes a user enters through the home page and navigates into the site," says Michael Freeman, senior manager, Search & Analytics, ShoreTel, Inc., which provides hosted VoIP, cloud PBX service and business phone systems. "The reality, though, is that the majority of visits for most sites begin on a page that is not the home page," he says. Therefore, you need to design the site in such a way that whatever page a visitor lands on, key information is there.

9. Respect the fold. When asked for their top design tips, almost all the Web designers CIO.com queried immediately said: Put your call to action in the upper portion of your website, along with your phone number and/or email address (if you want customers to call or email you). Regarding home page images, "I recommend going against full-width sliders and encourage sliders or set images that cover two-thirds of the width allowing for a contact form to be above the fold," says Aaron Watters, director, Leadhub, a website design and SEO company.

10. Use responsive design--that automatically adapts to how the site is being viewed. "Rather than developing a site for each device, a responsive site is designed to adapt to the browser size," making for a better user experience, says Jayme Pretzloff, online marketing director, Wixon Jewelers. And a better user experience typically translates into more time spent on your site and higher conversion rates.

11. Forget Flash. "Thanks in part to the ongoing dispute between Adobe and Apple, the days of Flash as an Internet standard are slowly coming to a close, so why stay on the bandwagon when there are other options that are much more Web and user friendly?" asks Darrell Benatar, CEO of UserTesting.com. Instead, use HTML5, he says. "HTML5 is gaining more support on the Web, with search-engine friendly text and the ability to function on many of the popular mobile operating systems without requiring a plug-in. The same can't be said for Flash."

12. Don't forget about buttons "The 'Submit' or 'Send' button at the bottom of a Web form can be the ugliest part of a website," says Watters. So he encourages designers to make form submission buttons "so appealing visitors can't help themselves. They just have to click it." In addition, "when a visitor hovers over your submit button, it should change color, gradient, opacity or font treatment," he says.

13. Test your design. "Whether you are trying different placements for a call to action or even testing different shades of a color, website optimization can make a big impact to your bottom line," states Lindsey Marshall, production director, Red Clay Interactive, an Atlanta-based interactive marketing agency. "A user experience manager at Bing once remarked that Microsoft generated an additional $80 million in annual revenue just by testing and implementing a specific shade of blue!"

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Will iOS 7 and iCloud changes meet post-PC needs for enterprise users?

At Apple WWDC, IT groups look for options, users for new classes of apps

One place where the post-PC era is in full swing is the enterprise. And enterprise IT groups will be watching when Apple unveils iOS 7 at its Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, June 10, to see if the new version improves its fit for business users.

iOS has achieved an astonishing acceptance in the enterprise, and is the basis for most companies' mobile deployments. But increasingly, those iOS deployments are grappling with more complex tasks than email, PDFs, presentations and Web browsing. And in doing so, enterprise IT staff are looking for iOS changes that make the platform better suited to enterprise computing.

Apple is widely expected to show at least a partial redesign of the iOS user interface, creating a more consistent visual syntax and cues. But power users, especially in the enterprise, need more. [see "Will iOS 7 finally make traditional PCs irrelevant?"]

To achieve that, the UI changes need to be married with deeper changes that make the OS more capable when dealing with complex, long-durations tasks; and that give IT the ability to somehow fit together Apple's mobile experience with business requirements for manageability and security.

"Apple famously likes to keep tight control over the UI and user experience," says Avi Greengart, research director of consumer devices and platforms, Current Analysis, a Washington, D.C., competitive intelligence consulting firm. "But in doing so it has siloed most of its own apps: they don't share data easily."

A related issue is the way iOS currently handles, or doesn't handle, multi-tasking. "You have a single app that commands your attention at all times," says Greengart. "But if you're bouncing around between tasks, or between related tasks, other mobile operating systems do a better job of moving users between them."

Making it easier for iOS users to handle files and to leverage the platform's multi-tasking capabilities would go a long way toward making iOS more effective in more complex tasks.

Many IT staff are in effect hoping for a subset of features that let them better administer hundreds and thousands of iOS devices. "I would like to see consideration for more enterprise needs such as device management, and [enterprise] app stores, that provide us with greater choice," says Rich Adduci, senior vice president and CIO at Boston Scientific, Marlborough, Mass.

"An Apple-branded full mobile device management [system] would be great, as well as additional APIs for third-party MDM solutions to better manage iOS devices and [bridge] the gap between managing iOS and other platforms," says a technology manager at a leading private university, who requested anonymity because he's not authorized to speak publicly on behalf of the institution.

One new API would be one that lets MDM applications "globally restrict cut/copy/paste functions," says James Gordon, vice president of IT for Needham Bank, Needham, Mass. It's a small community bank that relies on iOS as its mobile platform. "This will drive greater adoption and innovation among enterprises that are still on the fence about [iOS] security," Gordon says.

"One limitation of iOS devices compared to other corporate devices is the lack of administrator control, so that devices can easily be pre-configured, cloned, remote-controlled, and [so that] controls can be put in place to force or block iOS upgrades," says Carl Maisonneuve, chief systems architect, The Ottawa Hospital, Ottawa, Ontario. The hospital has widely and aggressively deployed several thousand iPhones and iPads for doctors, nurses and staff.

Large-scale deployments pose special challenges given how Apple currently handles AppleIDs and app purchasing. "My greatest hope would be a solid and easy to implement solution for corporate AppleIDs and volume purchases for apps," says Benjamin Levy, a principal with Solutions Consulting, a Los Angeles firm that specializes in OS X and iOS deployments for business customers.

"At present we have two basic models for how a company can manage apps for its users: Either the user can own the apps or the company can own the apps," Levy explains. "But in the current model it's far easier for a company to decide to let the users own the apps, because of the management requirements for handling what might be thousands of AppleIDs and multiples of apps on top of that. This wasn't so much of an issue with iOS apps because [in the past] few were significant in cost. But as more apps move to the Mac App Store with higher prices it becomes a real question."

One example of an enterprise option that's emerged in recent months is the interest in a secure "container" or virtualized workspace within iOS, where corporate apps and data can be fully protected and managed, entirely separate from the end user's personal apps and information. "One of my biggest wishes is virtualization on iOS devices to allow separate sandboxed home and work environments, similar to what BlackBerry is doing on the Z10 smartphone [via the BlackBerry 10 operating system]," says the university IT manager.

"Customers would be joyous over this: a separate 'dual persona' capability so that the device could have separate areas with separate security characteristics," agrees Ken Dulaney, vice president, mobile, at Gartner, the Stamford, Conn., technology research firm.

One area that's not yet being addressed is Apple's cloud-based data syncing, which is vital for future, complex, database-driven mobile apps, especially for the enterprise. But only the university technology manager mentioned, as his No. 1 "biggest wish," the need for improvements to Apple's Core Data sync service. It's an illustration of the close relationship between the OS, app development and cloud services.

iCloud is the Apple-maintained online service that receives, stores and downloads data (music, photos, etc.) among multiple iOS and OS X clients logged into an iCloud account. Core Data is an application-level framework, supplied by both operating systems, that lets applications store items and data about those items in a single cloud database, without developers having to write a lot of their own SQL code and data persistence logic.

It's simple in concept. But for many developers the reality borders on nightmarish. For months, the complaints, accompanied by detailed analyses of Core Data shortcomings, have been growing.

iMore's Rene Ritchie cataloged one group of complaints in a post headlined "iCloud gets kicked in the Core Data sync -- totally had it coming." Another catalog was put together by Jacqui Cheng, at Ars Technica: "Frustrated with iCloud, Apple's developer community speaks up en masse."

Developers complain that Core Data is opaque, poorly documented, without reliable mechanisms for troubleshooting problems, or even for identifying them. One of the Ars Technica sources was developer Rich Siegel, of Bare Bones Software. His own subsequent blog post on their Core Data travails describes a service that sounds like it was thrown together with bailing wire and spit. Some of his comments:

"In general, when iCloud data doesn't synchronize correctly (and this happens, in practice, often), neither the developer nor the user has any idea why."
"[W]e ran into a situation in which the baseline (a reference copy of the synchronization data) would become corrupted in various easily encountered situations. There is no recovery from a corrupted baseline, short of digging in to the innards of your local iCloud storage and scraping everything out, and there is no visible indication that corruption has occurred -- syncing simply stops."
"Finally, one of the most maddening issues: the iCloud-just-says-no problem. Sometimes, when initializing the iCloud application subsystem, it will simply return an opaque internal error. When it fails, there's no option to recover -- all you can do is try again (and again ...) until it finally works."

But Siegel's most damning comment is this observation: "And we find it noteworthy that, to the best of our knowledge, none of Apple's currently shipping products on Mac OS X use iCloud to sync Core Data [emphasis in original]. (One might think that Address Book or Calendars would, but in fact they use CardDAV and CalDAV, respectively. These are both HTTP-based protocols for communicating directly with a server, and do not rely on Core Data or the Ubiquity system.)"

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How Windows Red can fix Windows 8: The right strategy for Microsoft

The Charms bar is eliminated
Another unnatural aspect of Windows 8 is the Charms bar, which takes search, device access (printers, scanners, and monitors), sharing, and settings configuration out of the apps using them and into an independent element you have to call up each time you want it. This requires users to move outside of a Metro app for these common functions -- it's also unfriendly and unnecessary.

So Windows Red kills the Charms bar.
Instead, there are Search, Share, and Settings buttons standard in every app's control bar, both in Windows Red Pro and Windows Red Mobile. The Share button, by the way, extends the sharing notion from social apps and cloud storage to include printing, screen mirroring, and screen placement (on devices connected to multiple displays). Essentially, it absorbs the features of the Devices charm.

The Charms bar's PC Settings controls, which managed Metro-wide preferences, are part of a separate Settings app in Windows Red Mobile. In Windows Red Pro, the PC Settings controls not already duplicated in the Control Panel are moved to the Control Panel for a unified OS settings environment.

Live tiles and Metro apps are incorporated into the Windows Desktop
If Windows Red Pro were merely a better version of Windows 7, there'd be little hope that the Microsoft platform would ever transition into the new generation of computing that Apple's iOS points to. Fortunately, Microsoft can move Windows forward on the PC.

One way is to let Metro apps -- both from Windows 8/RT and Windows Phone -- run on the Desktop like any other apps. (Because Windows Phone 8 shares a common core with Windows 8, Microsoft's engineers should be able to support Windows Phone apps on PCs and other Intel-based devices.) It'd be a great boon to Microsoft's desktop and smartphone ambitions.)

So in Windows Red Pro, Metro apps run in application windows, using the keyboard and mouse instead of gestures and the onscreen keyboard. They're accessed from the Start menu like traditional Desktop apps, and they can be pinned to the taskbar like Desktop apps. This is a more sensible way to transition PC users to the Metro approach.

When running in Windows Red Pro's Desktop, Metro apps change their UI slightly. The App bar that appears at the bottom of the screen in Windows 8 Metro and Windows RT (and thus in Windows Red Mobile) moves to the top of the screen when running in Windows Red Pro. That keeps parallelism -- important for a consistent user experience and motor memory -- with the equivalent menu bar in Windows Desktop apps.

For Metro apps that also have a Control bar (at the top of the screen in today's Metro environments), the Control bar appears under the App bar when running in Windows Red Pro. Again, that's parallel to the Ribbon's placement in Windows Desktop apps.

The second way to introduce Metro into the traditional PC environment is to incorporate the live tiles introduced in Windows Phone and adopted by today's Metro. Thus, Windows Red Pro has a pullout Live Tiles tray that contains the live tiles for all installed Metro apps that have them. It's similar in concept to the pullout Running Apps bar in Windows 8, which shows live tiles of running apps.

The Live Tiles tray in Windows Red Pro has a handle so that you know it's there, and you can drag a tile out of it to the Desktop to keep it always visible there. The Live Tiles tray also provides quick access to any notifications you may have missed.

The user experience is simplified and rationalized
Microsoft's complex overlaying of the Windows Desktop and Metro environments is an outrageous imposition on users. Windows Red gets rid of that. But other complexities in both the Windows Desktop and Metro also need to go.

As previously mentioned, Windows Red Pro consolidates the Control Panel and PC Settings controls into the single Control Panel. It also streamlines the confusing, multiple interface approaches in the Windows 7 Control Panel.

For example, we adopted Metro's simple list of individual panel groups, so it's easy to change panels. Those panels organize their controls in panes, similar to OS X's System Preferences, so you won't face a clutter of settings windows as happens in the Control Panels of Windows 7 and Windows 8.

Also as previously mentioned, we ended the jumping back and forth between apps and the Charms bar by eliminating the Charms bar and moving the search, sharing, devices, and settings functions into the apps themselves.

We also dropped the Running Apps bar in Windows Red Pro, even though Windows 8 had it. After all, the task bar serves the same function, so there's no need for a duplicative Running Apps bar in Windows Red Pro.

All versions of Windows Red provide a visual cue for each pullout tray. Today's Metro requires users to know to swipe or click in one of the sides to open basic controls such as the App bar, Control bar, and Running Apps bar. These features are too fundamental to be made part of a hide-and-seek game.

In Windows Red Pro, the handle for the Live Tiles tray is always visible, so you know something's there. In Windows Red Mobile, there's a handle each for the Running Apps bar, the App bar, and the Control bar, so you know they're present.

Finally, we adopted the innovation in Stardock's ModernMix app as part of Windows Red Pro, providing users a way to group items -- folders, files, and apps -- however it makes sense to them. These items continue to reside in their folders, but the groups exist independently of the folder hierarchy, so you can have all manner of collections that make use of aliases to those resources.

In Windows Red Mobile, we enhance the Snap View function that lets two apps run side by side by letting users adjust that division through a slider. Windows 8's Metro environment fixes one app to 75 percent of the screen width and the other to 25 percent, which aren't always the best divisions. Microsoft's forthcoming Windows 8.1 "Blue" also provides an adjustable slider for Snap View, which we're glad to see. But we're dubious about its splitting of the screen into four windows -- on a tablet, those windows are simply too small to be useful. So Windows Red doesn't do that.

Tablet users get a real Microsoft Office, Desktop users get the People app
Rather than create a tablet-savvy version of Microsoft Office for Metro, Microsoft made a few tweaks to its existing Office version, such as a full-screen mode. It's a really bad experience on a touchscreen. To make Office run on Windows RT tablets, Microsoft essentially created a runtime version of Office that exists outside of the RT operating system.

It's not clear why Microsoft has no true Metro version of Office. Perhaps it's afraid that a Metro version -- which would be priced much cheaper, as mobile apps always seem to be -- would undercut its highly profitable Office sales and staunch one of Microsoft's big income flows. But the lack of a realistic mobile version of Office only depresses demand for mobile Windows, which will depress Office sales as people adopt other mobile OSes running other office productivity apps like Apple's iWork or Google's Quickoffice. Microsoft needs to bite the bullet and build Office for Metro. On the Windows Desktop, Office 2013 is great; Office for Metro needs to be great, too.

Microsoft did create one compelling app for Windows Phone that it wisely brought to Windows 8: the People app, which runs in Metro. It combines contact management and social networking, so you can go to any contact and participate in their social conversations in one place. It's a smart idea that originated in the defunct Palm WebOS, was adopted by the short-lived Microsoft Kin, and performed well in Windows Phone.

Although the Metro People app could run in Windows Red Pro's Desktop, we believe the app deserves to be a native Desktop app because it is so useful. As a Desktop app, it could be enhanced with capabilities such as group messaging, support for multiple simultaneous conversations, and perhaps some sort of Google Hangout-like video clustering. Integration, or at least symbiosis, with Skype and Microsoft Lync is also a natural Desktop extension.

Windows Red should be Windows 9
Microsoft almost never admits a mistake -- it's even more arrogant than Apple in this regard. Microsoft doesn't change its public plans either; for example, despite nine months of growing concerns over Windows 8 and Windows RT before official release, Microsoft shipped its new OSes as is, with zero adjustments to the chorus of criticism.

Fine -- Microsoft will release Windows 8.1 "Blue" this fall, with all signs indicating merely cosmetic changes. Users will again avoid Windows PCs and Windows tablets, ceding even more ground to iOS and Android. It's inevitable that 2013 is a lost year.

But Microsoft could aim to adopt Windows Red in 2014 -- maybe by spring -- and call it Windows 9. It need not say Windows 8 was a failure, just as it never admitted the Vista fiasco. It can simply move on to the "even better" Windows, as it did with Windows 7's release.

Sooner would be better, given Apple's continued work on iOS and Google's on Android -- the only two operating systems whose adoption is growing in any real way. At some point, it will be too late even for Microsoft despite its vast legacy user base, as BlackBerry discovered in a similarly disastrous slide.

Microsoft, please swallow your pride and take off your blinders. Take InfoWorld's Windows Red plan seriously, and save Windows for the long term.

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