It’s not the new iPad (3rd generation) that is putting the dagger into MSFT. It’s the strategy that Apple is taking by keeping the iPad 2 on the market at a reduced price. Microsoft used to beat Apple at the pricing game, those days are over now.

There is zero chance that we will see a product that can compete with the iPad 2 on specs and price now and Microsoft used to blow Apple out of the water on pricing. To compete, they are going to have to come up with a tablet at a $199.00 price point and that is not going to happen. Who in their right mind will spend more to but a Microsoft tablet with no ecosystem at a price point higher than an iPad?

They can no longer argue that the iPad is a toy as Windows 8 is… well a toy, especially on ARM where they may be able to sell at around $450.00 or $50.00 higher than an iPad 2 with a ecosystem that is mature.

Microsoft has one choice and it is the tact that it looks like Google is going to take to get their Play stores out in the world and that is to take the Amazon route and try to undercut on price. History says this is how Microsoft has done that, but these are not overpriced Apple computers where you get twice the performance on MSFT at half the price. Suddenly the situation is completely reversed and the price/performance is all in the favor of Apple.

So is Microsoft going to try to subsidize a tablet in the $250.00 price range? That’s what it will take to make a dent now that you can buy an iPad2 for $399.00 ($349.00 refurbished). We don’t see that happening. In fact it may get worse than that if Apple continues to drop the price of the iPad over the next several years.

The iPad 2 is going to put a serious hurt on Microsoft and since they have abandoned the enterprise with Windows 8, it may be time to run far away from Microsoft stock. Who is left as a customer for Microsoft in 2 years?

There are some quirks that take some getting used to when first using W8. The largest one of these for the home user is the lack of flash support in the Metro browser. For me this is really not a big deal as I understand the work around, but I handed over my laptop to my wife and said go visit HULU and she was completely lost. Tried the same thing with my mother and had the same issue. This is an easy fix for Microsoft, but must be fixed or they risk losing the mom and pop base. Simply either turn on flash in Metro, or auto open the desktop version if flash is detected. A simple fix, but one that will cause enormous problems with non techie users.

What’s worse is Microsoft itself is clueless, when you go to the video store there is a big ad for 21 Jump Street’s site. Guess what, it does not work with Metro IE. For me no big deal, but still an unnecessary extra step. For my wife, impossible to navigate.

Second if you have not got your Microsoft account perfectly set up, and I do mean perfectly there can be some problems. Hotmail does not work on my system, nor do the backup and restore from SkyDrive stuff. Why? Well I have had my live mail account for 11 years and there was an 11 year old phone number on there, guess how they verify your new computer.. you guessed it, from a text to your phone which you can not change if you do not have access to that phone anymore, and since the laptop I set up Windows 8 on was my “trusted computer” it is no longer recognized so I must wait 30 days to change it by deleting all my contact info from the MSFT servers. Brilliant setup there.

The other quirk is the lack of 50-50 support in metro apps, this makes it impossible for me to keep two useful sized windows open at once. I love researching in one window while typing in the other. That cannot be done in Metro. Unless you can type and do layout in a 30% window. So I find myself in the classic desktop 90% of the time and with no start menu, everything I do requires an extra step. I have to mouse to the lower corner, open the Metro UI, scroll to find the app I want and open it there. If it’s a desktop app, no problem as now I can resize it in the classic interface and go on working. If it is a Metro app, I now have to switch back and forth from Metro to the Classic interface to work with multiple programs. This is a nightmare in general and once again an easy fix. Run Windows classic apps in a window within Metro. Maybe this can be a third party add on, but without 50-50 support it may still not work well for working within.

Unless MS has lost their mind completely and has decided to cast off the entire business/corporate customer base, there has to be a Windows 8 "Professional" version, suitable for the desktop environment, sans the Metro interface or at least something that allows corporate or power desktop users to switch it off to work and back on for fun stuff.

There is also a lot positive about the experience from a consumer point of view, The Metro tiles are useful and informative, the Metro apps look beautiful in general. Honestly this operating system works much better than iOS in a touch environment and I love my iPad, but am looking forward to a win8pad when they become available.

Windows 8 is snappy and much faster than Windows 7 on the same device as well so there is a lot that Microsoft is doing right here.

The quirks are not enough for me to not want to keep trying and see what workarounds I find for the above noted problems, but my wife and mother will not ever be able to get around the flash issues and that’s a shame as MSFT has the right idea here as flash is dying, but they are just a couple of years early. Put flash back into Metro in x86 editions and disable it in ARM for now and let the market come to you first. Consumers use their hardware for HULU, Crackle and the like and until you get those sites to switch to HTML5, you cannot make it this hard for your base to use your product.

We will report further after some more extensive testing, but the early thoughts are that this is a fantastic tablet operating system and a quite good desktop system where multiple monitors mitigate a lot of the problems with task switching, but leaves a lot to be desired in a laptop operating environment when used for business tasks.

To download the preview and test for yourself click the image below

The service will be added to Apple’s iOS soon, Dropbox said.

On Android, the photo-upload function mirrors one already built into phone: Google+ already can be set to automatically upload photos and store them in the cloud. On the other hand, Google won’t allow any photos over 2,048 pixels wide, so high-resolution cameraphone images won’t be stored on Google+ in their full resolution.

However on Dropbox they are uploaded at original size and full quality, and saved to a private folder called Camera Uploads in your Dropbox

Users will receive 500MB of Dropbox space, for free, just for downloading the app. As users upload more photos, the available space will increase, up to a total of 3GB, the company said.

So if you have not signed up for dropbox yet, use this link and get an extra 250 MB of space on top of the 2.5GB you will get normally.

I cannot imagine anyone giving up their privacy for a year and a half for 25 bucks, but interest has been so high that they are overwhelmed by interest and have already cut off participation after just one day. It may come back if you are interested for some reason if you visit the screenwise page here.

The more interesting part of the project is that the page already has 6200 +1’s so what do we know. It appears you are all for sale, for a very very low price.

Now, I have been called stubborn in the past, but Metro is just not a good desktop operating system. It is cute and is a fantastic second screen application on my dual screen home desktop to run twitter and the like in. But for getting work done, forget it. We do our production work on 26 inch single monitor machines and we are not going to buy second monitors for all of our systems to get around Windows 8’s major flaw. No one in our office will be upgrading and we are desperately hoping that upon final release there will be a way to make the “classic” interface the default.

We are not alone. Time after time as we talk to developers, no one is using or even considering Metro to do work. It’s the equivalent of iOS. Can you work on iOS? Sort of, but if you’re Microsoft, sort of is not the answer you want in the enterprise.

Windows claims you can go to the classic interface easily, and it is not that hard, but its an unnecessary extra step, unnecessary bloat, and for those of us who do productivity work daily, it just is not as easy in practice as that. Our production machines do not need, nor do we want 10 or 15 desktop apps running on the desktop.

Here is what Microsoft should do:

There is a reason that MacBooks do not run iOS. Metro should be brought out as Windows Tablet edition. Call it what you want, call it Windows Tablet, or call it Metro as we already do, it is a fantastic system for a tablet experience. Build the store, do everything the same except do not make it the primary desktop interface. What is the point of pissing off pretty much all of your customer base? You want to emulate what Apple did with the iPad, then that’s what you do, reinventing the wheel is senseless.

Put all of the existing improvements into Windows 8, there are some great tools like the ability to refresh the operating system, faster booting, the Windows store, and the live boot from a USB drive. These can all be left in as they currently exist, the only thing that has to change is that Windows 8 needs to have Metro stripped as the primary desktop and turned into an application or overlay on the desktop that is user accessible. It could be as simple as a taskbar button like explorer is today. It can be available, but should not be the primary entry point.

Nothing would really change for Microsoft except that they would have 2 clear operating systems, (which in all honesty they already do with the ARM and x86 versions) and the ability to run Metro applications across both the desktop and the tablet without alienating the customer base. It’s a win-win for customers and Microsoft. Windows 8 as it is currently designed will do nothing but create another situation like they had with XP/Vista where no one will upgrade and enterprise will be looking for a way out.

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Ninite includes the latest Web Browsers, Messaging, Media, Imaging, Security and more software categories with over 80 applications in total available for you. You don’t even have to choose 32 or 64 bit versions as Ninite does it all for you.

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Symantec is telling users of its pcAnywhere to disable or uninstall the remote-access software until it can fix an unknown number of bugs. Stolen source code for the program may have fallen into the hands of the hacking group Anonymous, making it unsafe to use.

Symantec warns users to disable pcAnywhere

Here is the actual quote

“Those who count on quote ‘Hollywood’ for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who’s going to stand up for them when their job is at stake," Dodd told Fox News. "Don’t ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don’t pay any attention to me when my job is at stake.”

Into this world steps the perfect super villain in Kim Dotcom. The founder of Megaupload even looks like Kingpin. Dotcom is facing up to 50 years for piracy. Think about that though, 50 years for piracy. We give rapists and murderers less time than that.

This is the world in which we now live, now think about this, by posting this, we are going to be monitored by homeland security as well. Yes that’s right, Homeland Security has permission to collect and retain personal information from journalists, news anchors, reporters or anyone who uses “traditional and/or social media in real time to keep their audience situationally aware and informed.” This data is then shared with both private sector businesses such as the RIAA an MPAA and international third parties according to RT.

So by posting this link into our Facebook and Twitter feeds we are now on the Homeland Security list.

That’s the legal system here in the United States circa 2012.