Blogs|Feb 17, 2013

Review of the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13 for Development

After several months of comparing various Windows 8 devices to replace my old 1.5” thick 6-lb. Dell laptop, I finally settled on the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13. My requirements are fairly straightforward: I want 8GB of RAM and a minimum of 256GB SSD, I have to have a touch display and the resolution needs to…
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Blogs|Jan 13, 2013

Referencing the Windows Runtime from Desktop Apps

Most people think of the Windows Runtime as being synonymous with the formerly-known-as “Metro” applications, now called Windows Store apps. To add to the confusion, of course, is the fact that the ARM-based version of the Windows OS is branded as Windows RT. Programmers, being lazy, like our abbreviations so the runtime has been adopted…
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Blogs|Dec 18, 2012

The Future of Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 Development

Does the snapped view required for Windows 8 apps provide insights into the future of Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 development? Windows 8 app developers are required to create a snapped view for their applications. This is the one option for on screen multi-tasking in the Windows 8 world. The usefulness of this view…
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wintellect-blogs|Dec 16, 2012

ASUS VivoTab RT Review

I recently purchased an ASUS VivoTab RT (the TF600 SKU, 32 GB of storage). As it is one of the less popular WindowsRT models I wanted to write a short review to explain why I made the purchase and how it is working out. Why Get a WindowsRT Device? The first question is, of course,…
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wintellect-blogs|Dec 7, 2012

Going Old School on Windows 8

The other day I was browsing some archives on an old disk drive and came across the T64 formatted binaries of some demo software I wrote for the Commodore 64 in the 1980s. Demo software is fun to write and is more about tricks and optimizations than business rules or data models. I had written…
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wintellect-blogs|Nov 27, 2012

Dogfooding Windows 8: I Tell All

The other day I read an article about Windows 8 and “six long-term Windows 8 users tell all.” The premise? Several columnists over at ZDNet had been using Windows 8 for quite some time, and were interviewed about the experience. You can read about the results in the original article. I am also a writer.…
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Blogs|Nov 26, 2012

Koch Snowflakes on Windows 8 with XAML

A few years back I wrote a little program that would generate Koch snowflakes in Silverlight. After brisk walk in the cold weather today, I decided it was time to port it over to Windows 8, more just to see how easy it would be. It turns out it only took about 5 minutes to…
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wintellect-blogs|Nov 11, 2012

Answering your Windows 8 Questions

I’m extremely excited to be a part of an event this coming Tuesday, November 13th, geared towards answering your questions about Windows 8. An estimated 4 million PC users upgraded to Windows 8 during the first weekend of its release. I’m assuming several of you reading this blog were a part of that wave. While…
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wintellect-blogs|Oct 30, 2012

Building Windows 8 Apps with C# and XAML is Here!

“Jeremy builds real apps for real customers. That’s why I can heartily recommend this book. Go out and write some great apps … and keep this book handy.” – from the forward by Jeff Prosise. When my wife stuck her head in the office and said, “Honey, there’s a UPS truck in front of the…
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wintellect-blogs|Oct 24, 2012

Windows 8 Hands-On Videos from Engadget Round-Up

With the launch of Windows 8 right around the corner, OEMs are releasing a ton of exciting hardware. In fact, there are so many options for Windows 8 machines that it is causing information overload. I thought I’d help simplify things by pulling together some of the hands-on videos I’ve watched over the past few…
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wintellect-blogs|Oct 17, 2012

The Microsoft Surface and Apple iPad 3 Head to Head

I was in a recent discussion about the Microsoft Surface and how it will be received by the consumer market. Obviously there are a lot of emotional reactions. Everyone is speculating about the price points, comparing features, and wondering if average consumers will even care. I would argue that there is a technical aspect to…
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