Eric Shupps: October 2012

Monday, October 29, 2012

First Impressions of the Lenovo Ideapad Yoga 13

Taking advantage of the fanfare surrounding the general availability of Windows 8, Lenovo have released a new hybrid ultrabook aimed at those who need a thin and light notebook with the touch capabilities of a tablet. In the past, convertible tablet PC's, which have a small but strong following in the enterprise, have been hindered by bulky form factors and awkward screen conversion mechanisms. Lenovo has a strong pedigree in the tablet segment, having produced some of the most popular tablet PC's on the market for many years, so it would be natural to assume that their latest offering would just extend the venerable X-series line without breaking any new ground. Thankfully, that is not the case - instead of simply borrowing from the past the Lenovo engineers have come up with an entirely new offering that breaks the tablet PC mold.

To begin with, the Ideapad Yoga is simply a great looking laptop. Borrowing from the design aesthetic of the U-series ultralights, it has a uniform thickness of just over half an inch with an exterior covering of burnished aluminum and an black interior, giving it the appearance of a high-tech textbook when closed. The palmrest is covered in a matte coating that isn't quite leathery but is far more comfortable during long type sessions than all metal or glossy plastic. The large multitouch trackpad is centered in the middle of the palmrest and has dedicated right and left click zones. It is delightfully responsive and handles all the pinch, zoom, scroll and twist gestures with ease. As would be expected from a Lenovo product, the island-style keyboard is excellent, with a good layout and plenty of room between the keys but, strangely, is not backlit. This is a severe limitation in low-light situations and is a major design flaw in an otherwise excellent machine.

As with most thin and light notebooks, the Yoga has limited port selection. There is an HDMI connector, one USB 3.0 port, one USB 2.0 port, a combination headphone/microphone jack, an SD card slot and a flat USB-style power connector. It also includes a dedicated rocker switch for volume control and a screen orientation lock button. Inside, it can be configured up to a Core i7 processor, a maximum of 8GB RAM, and a 256GB SSD. The retail model in the US ships with 4GB RAM, a Core i5 CPU and a 128GB SSD. The memory can easily be upgraded with an aftermarket DIMM but the hard drive isn't quite so simple to replace - it uses an mSATA/mini-PCIe card instead of a traditional 2.5" or 1.8" form factor, which is harder to find and there are very few options above 256GB.

The display runs at a native resolution of 1600x900 on a dedicated Intel 4000 chip. The color saturation is excellent with almost unlimited viewing angles. The screen surface is glossy but surprisingly resistant to fingerprints - it's on par with the iPad and other small form factor tablets. The multitouch surface works just as well in notebook mode as it does when converted to a tablet, making it almost irresistible to swipe through the Windows 8 screens and menus using the screen instead of the trackpad.

Unlike tablet PC's of the past, the conversion mechanism on the Yoga doesn't twist around and lay flat. Instead, the hinge simply opens like a book - to use the device in slate mode, just flip the screen all the way backwards. Once it passes 180 degrees, the keyboard is deactivated and the screen can be angled for comfortable viewing on a flat surface without the need for a kickstand or jointed cover. Alternatively, just stand the machine up in an inverted "V" (what Lenovo calls "Tent Mode"). The screen automatically adjusts orientation when rotated and can be locked into position using a hardware button on the side of the device. A dedicated Windows button is located between the hinges to exit out of apps while in tablet mode.

For better or worse, Windows 8 is really designed for touch input and the Ideapad Yoga excels in this area. The screen is smooth and responsive - even in notebook mode, the screen has very little wobble despite being exceptionally thin. Although rather large for a true tablet, the 13" screen does provide a lot of real estate for displaying tiles and lends itself to docking one app while using another. The ability to adjust the screen tilt by bending the unit backwards with the keyboard portion touching a flat surface is very useful but it does take some getting used to.

The machine runs quietly without much fan noise. Heat dissipation is excellent and even when running at full speed it only becomes slightly warm on the bottom. Although battery life is rated at 8 hours, real-world usage is more like 6 - 7 hours. Not an impressive showing but not too bad for a device of this size with a full Core i-Series CPU (as opposed to the Tegra processor in the 11" model or the various ARM WinRT models).

The Yoga boots up from a cold start to the Windows 8 start screen in under 15 seconds, making it a nearly "instant on" device. Lenovo includes a handful of specialty apps, including a support center, a transition manager to control screen orientation in the various modes, a motion control program and trackpad manager. There's also a "Companion" app, which is mostly advertisements, and a recovery utility.

Overall, the Ideapad Yoga is an excellent device. It brings together a quality high-end notebook with a true tablet experience. The fold-over hinge design is well-thought out and very practical. Although a bit large to be a true ultrabook or stand-alone tablet, as a hybrid device it excels in delivering the best of both worlds - portability, acceptable battery life, and touch capabilities. The one major flaw in the Yoga's design is the lack of a backlit keyboard, which Lenovo will have to rectify if they want this device to be taken seriously. While it may not satisfy tablet purists or those looking for the most features in the smallest notebook, the Ideapad Yoga strikes a good balance and is surprisingly fun to use.

Articles

Ten Steps to Optimize SharePoint Performance

Webcasts

Secrets of SharePoint Part 5: Configuring Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Optimal Performance
Creating End User SharePoint Solutions for Performance and Scalability
SharePoint 2010 Performance Enhancements for Administrators
Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 for the ASP.NET Developer
Following Best Practices and Avoiding Common Errors with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Development
SharePoint Performance and Capacity Planning Essentials
Troubleshooting Common Performance Problems in SharePoint 2010

Videos

Channel 9 Interview with Eric Shupps
SharePoint TechTalk - Different Views on Social Computing
SharePoint Post-Deployment Planning and Management

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SharePoint Pod Show - Design for Performance
SharePoint Pod Show - Test Driven Development
Run As Radio - Eric Shupps Improves SharePoint Performance

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Sunday, October 28, 2012

Using Multiple Displays and Projectors with Windows 8 and Lenovo W520

When Lenovo started shipping hybrid graphics in their W500-series workstations, it was a great improvement for road warriors who need both full-power graphics when connected to a power source and long battery life on the go. This is achieved by the presence of two video cards – an integrated Intel chip side-by-side with an nVidia Quadro GPU. The nVidia drivers ship with software that automatically switch between graphics modes based on the current power profile.

This configuration works great until the machine is connected to an external monitor or projector via the VGA port. For some reason, the nVidia software is unable to automatically balance the output between both video cards when the display is duplicated. Many users have resorted to disabling one or the other video cards in the BIOS, which works fine but requires that the change be made manually each time to computer is rebooted (assuming that the user wants the low power mode at some point – if the machine is always plugged in then it's really not an issue).

There is, however, a way to get display duplication working with the auto-switching Optimus mode. All the configuration options are there in the nVidia control panel but the configuration isn't very intuitive. Here's how to make it work (this holds true for both Windows 7 and Windows 8, although the sub-menu text in the control panel is a bit different between driver versions)...

Read more from Eric Shupps

Articles

Ten Steps to Optimize SharePoint Performance

Webcasts

Secrets of SharePoint Part 5: Configuring Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Optimal Performance
Creating End User SharePoint Solutions for Performance and Scalability
SharePoint 2010 Performance Enhancements for Administrators
Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 for the ASP.NET Developer
Following Best Practices and Avoiding Common Errors with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Development
SharePoint Performance and Capacity Planning Essentials
Troubleshooting Common Performance Problems in SharePoint 2010

Videos

Channel 9 Interview with Eric Shupps
SharePoint TechTalk - Different Views on Social Computing
SharePoint Post-Deployment Planning and Management

Podcasts

SharePoint Pod Show - Design for Performance
SharePoint Pod Show - Test Driven Development
Run As Radio - Eric Shupps Improves SharePoint Performance

Social

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Monday, October 15, 2012

Developing SharePoint 2013 Apps with the Chrome Control

In the new SharePoint 2013 App model, there are essentially two ways to host apps – within SharePoint itself or from an external web site (also known as "provider hosted" or "autohosted"). One of the disadvantages of external apps is that they don't look or feel like SharePoint. All the familiar navigation menus and shortcuts are missing, resulting in a stark contrast between the default SharePoint visual experience and whichever app is currently being used unless the app developer went the extra mile (or ten) to style their app.

While this isn't really a bad thing – the app is fully functional and can communicate with SharePoint – it doesn't quite lend itself to a cohesive user experience. To bridge this gap, Microsoft allows developers to import a very basic version of the SharePoint 2013 chrome into their apps without having to manually create matching HTML controls. The functionality for this can be found in the SP.UI.Controls.js file located in the new /_layouts/15 directory. To use the chrome control, first add a reference to SP.UI.Controls.js (make sure you've already loaded the requisite JQuery files and other dependencies), then add an empty <div> to your page markup at or near the top of the page..

Read more from Eric Shupps

ArticlesTen Steps to Optimize SharePoint Performance

Webcasts

Secrets of SharePoint Part 5: Configuring Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Optimal Performance
Creating End User SharePoint Solutions for Performance and Scalability
SharePoint 2010 Performance Enhancements for Administrators
Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 for the ASP.NET Developer
Following Best Practices and Avoiding Common Errors with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Development
SharePoint Performance and Capacity Planning Essentials
Troubleshooting Common Performance Problems in SharePoint 2010

Videos

Channel 9 Interview with Eric Shupps
SharePoint TechTalk - Different Views on Social Computing
SharePoint Post-Deployment Planning and Management

Podcasts

SharePoint Pod Show - Design for Performance
SharePoint Pod Show - Test Driven Development
Run As Radio - Eric Shupps Improves SharePoint Performance
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Planet SharePoint
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Thursday, October 11, 2012

Using PowerShell to Set List View Parameters in SharePoint Web Parts

While working on some modifications to the SharePoint 2010 blog site template I ran across an interesting problem. I was trying to duplicate the functionality of a particular web part; in this case, the Posts web part which outputs a formatted display of list items on the Category.aspx page of a blog site. The default web part was listed in the contents page (reachable using the "?contents=1" query string parameter) as a basic XsltListViewWebPart, which meant that I should be able to drop the Posts web part from Lists and Libraries in the web part gallery, set the view, and get the desired results. If only it were that simple.

No matter which view I picked, all the web part showed was a standard list view with rows and columns, not the nicely formatted view with the calendar page image, title link and summary information that I was after. Since it was a stock list view web part I knew it was using a view to fetch the data and then transforming it in XSL but there didn't seem to be any way to force it into using the correct view. Assuming that the view itself might be hidden from the drop-down selector, I turned to PowerShell to see if I could find out what was going on. I began by iterating through the web parts on the page to find the one I wanted and writing out the view ID...

Read more from Eric Shupps

Articles

Ten Steps to Optimize SharePoint Performance

Webcasts

Secrets of SharePoint Part 5: Configuring Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Optimal Performance
Creating End User SharePoint Solutions for Performance and Scalability
SharePoint 2010 Performance Enhancements for Administrators
Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 for the ASP.NET Developer
Following Best Practices and Avoiding Common Errors with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Development
SharePoint Performance and Capacity Planning Essentials
Troubleshooting Common Performance Problems in SharePoint 2010

Videos

Channel 9 Interview with Eric Shupps
SharePoint TechTalk - Different Views on Social Computing
SharePoint Post-Deployment Planning and Management

Podcasts

SharePoint Pod Show - Design for Performance
SharePoint Pod Show - Test Driven Development
Run As Radio - Eric Shupps Improves SharePoint Performance

Social

ConferenceHound
Talk TechNet
Channel 9
Planet SharePoint
Lanyrd
MVP Profile
About.me
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Speakerfile
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Thursday, October 4, 2012

Creating SharePoint 2013 High Trust Apps

Monday, October 1, 2012

SharePoint MVP for Another Year

Well, it's that time of year again, and Microsoft has seen fit to keep me in the MVP program for another go around. This will be my sixth year as an MVP. When I first came into the program there were only a few dozen SharePoint MVP's - now there are hundreds all over the world. The yearly MVP summit used to be an opportunity to catch up with old friends you didn't see very often but with the growth of the group (which is still quite small compared with groups like SQL or ASP.NET) it's now become a way to meet new people you might not have even heard of before.

For those of us who have been around a while, the quarterly renewal cycles can often be bittersweet - sometimes we have to say goodbye to friends who have moved on or focused their community efforts in other directions. Despite what some people on the outside who have no knowledge of the inner workings of the program may think, it still takes a lot of work to attain and retain MVP status. You don't have to be the brightest technical guru or constantly on the speaking circuit to become an MVP (although both of those certainly help) but you do have to put in the hours contributing to the community in whatever fashion suits you. Not everyone has the capability or flexibility to continue contributing at a high level - life and circumstances change and sometimes there's just not enough hours in the day. It's sad to see good people leave the program but always exciting to meet the new kids on the block.

So congratulations to all the new and returning SharePoint MVP's. With a new product release on the horizon it's going to be a busy year ahead. Be sure to join us all in Las Vegas on November 12th - 15th for SharePoint Conference 2012 for lots of learning and plenty of partying!