Windows 8.1 + ModernMix

Stardock helps make our transition to the mobile future a lot easier

Paul Thurrott

Aug. 18, 2013

del.icio.us Tags: Windows 8.1,Windows RT,Operating Systems,installation,tips

Ever since Microsoft released the Windows 8.1 Preview back in June, readers have asked me whether Stardock’s useful utilities like ModernMix and Start8 will work with the new OS version. With the recent leak of a near final Windows 8.1 build, I decided to test ModernMix on my daily-use PC. And I think this is going to be a very useful transition tool indeed.

I think it’s fair to say that Windows 8 has presented a certain challenge to many if not most of the 1.5 billion Windows users worldwide. The cause is obvious: Windows 8 is a “touch-first” version of Windows that ships with its first-ever mobile environment, originally called Metro. And this new Metro environment was unceremoniously and awkwardly tacked onto the classic Windows desktop. The result is a disjointed experience that is optimized for neither touch nor mouse and keyboard.

Enter Windows 8.1. This very major update to Windows 8 (and RT) provides users with the OS that Microsoft should have shipped originally. Windows 8.1 includes major improvements to both the Metro and desktop environments, making this system a far better fit for those users that prefer either. It also eases the transition between the two, which is important because Windows will be moving further down that mobile path in future releases as the desktop is deemphasized and then made optional or removed.

Depending on your mindset, that future is either dystopian or utopian, but let’s not get bogged down in things we can’t change today. For now, we have Windows 8, imperfect as it is, and Windows 8.1, which finally offers some apps—like the improved Mail, Calendar and Xbox Music, among others—that are good enough that even desktop users should start paying attention. But doing so on traditional (non-touch) PCs is still a bit awkward, despite the useful advances in Windows 8.1

Enter Stardock. This Michigan-based firm has been around for over 20 years and been developing useful Windows-based utilities for years. With the advent of Windows 8, Stardock has stepped up to the plate and released a series of very useful products that help ease the transition to Windows 8 and make this less-than-optimal system work the way Windows users expect.

I’ve written about a few Stardock utilities in the recent past, including ModernMix (Windows 8 Tip: Run Metro Apps in Windows on the Desktop) and Start8 (Windows 8 Tip: Boot Directly to the Desktop with Start8) and recommend both highly. But now that I am using a near-final version of Windows 8.1, I find myself curious about using some of those new app versions at home, on my desktop set up (which is currently a jury-rigged Surface Pro docked to a large desktop display, keyboard, mouse and other peripherals, but is normally a tower PC). The thing is, these full-screen apps, good as they are, still don’t work well on such a PC configuration.

So I’ve been using ModernMix to see whether this utility can help cross that final divide between the future (mobile apps) and the present (my desktop PC with keyboard and mouse). And though there are a few bugs that I attribute to the pre-release nature of Windows 8.1, the answer is … yes. Most definitely.

New Windows 8.1 apps running in windows on the desktop

ModernMix provides what I think is a better “mix” (hence the name, presumably) of mobile apps and desktop. It lets you run Windows mobile apps (Mail, Calendar, Xbox Music, etc.) in windows on the Windows desktop, just like real desktop applications. This means they can float, be resized, be pinned to the taskbar, and so on.

What’s interesting is that ModernMix is so mature that it’s smart about how these apps work. I’ve pinned Xbox Music to the desktop, for example, and when I launch it from there it runs in a window as I want. But if I launch the app from the Start screen—which I might do when out and about in the world with the Surface, now used as a tablet—it will run normally, in full-screen mode. Which is also what I want.

This dual-mode use is why ModernMix is so useful as a transition tool. Yes, if you’re just going to use Metro apps on a desktop PC, you may simply want them to run in a window. But if you’re transitioning to this mobile future, not just through software but with a hybrid mobile device like a Surface, Lenovo Yoga, or whatever, you can have it both ways.

Choice is good. And while I applaud the changes Microsoft has made in Windows 8.1, some people will always believe that they’ll never go far enough. For those, and for any user that simply wants an easier transition from the desktop systems they’ve spent over 15 years using, ModernMix is a great (and, at $4.99, inexpensive) option.

You can download Modernmix from the Stardock web site.

Surface RT + Outlook 2013 RT … + More?

del.icio.us Tags: Windows RT,Outlook

Paul Thurrott 6/18/2013

Starting next week, overeager Windows RT users will be able to install a preview version of the Windows 8.1 update, which includes, among other things, the long-awaited release of Outlook 2013 RT. This addition, in tandem with the Office 2013 Home & Student RT version that already free with Windows RT, provides consumer with an amazingly complete and completely free Office experience.

But wait, there’s more.

As I noted in Microsoft Outlook 2013 RT Sneak Peek two weeks ago, prerelease versions of Outlook RT actually shipped as part of a broader Office 15 installer that includes other Office apps recompiled for Windows RT. So it’s possible that Microsoft could expand beyond Outlook RT in the future, too, possibly offering additional Office applications to Windows RT users for a fee, or as a coming perk to Office 365.

So here’s the weird bit about the other Office 2013 applications that are available internally at Microsoft for Windows RT: According to the installer, it’s a full Office install, with Access, Excel, InfoPath, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint, Publisher, SharePoint Designer, SkyDrive Pro, Visio, and Word.

But after Setup is complete, you see only a subset of that installed. Excel, OneNote, PowerPoint and Word are there already, of course. And then Outlook. But you also get InfoPath, SkyDrive Pro, Publisher, and SharePoint Designer 2013. (Put another way, Access and Visio are in fact not part of the actual install.)

As for Outlook RT itself, sometimes you wait and wait for something and the anticipation starts to outweigh the significance of that thing. And so it is with Outlook 2013 RT. It looks exactly as you’d expect. It works exactly as you’d expect, except that I couldn’t get it to work with any add-ins from the Office store. I suspect someone who actually uses Outlook could pick out differences, performance or otherwise, better than I. What I can tell you is that it’s pretty leisurely. Like the rest of Windows RT and Office RT, really.

But honestly, the big story here isn’t Outlook RT exactly. It’s how Outlook RT fits into Microsoft’s broader strategy. Given the release last week of Office Mobile for iPhone, we now have a better idea of how Microsoft intends to position its own mobile OSes—Windows 8 and Windows RT, of course, but also Windows Phone—against other mobile platforms that, over time, will have Microsoft Office versions of their own.

Here’s how it works.

Non-Windows platforms—iPhone and iPad now, and Android soon—will be served by a combination of Office Mobile and the web-based Office Web Apps. Office Mobile, of course, requires an Office 365 subscription of some kind, so it’s not free. And if and when we do get a version of Office for iPad, it will almost certainly be Office Mobile—i.e. very limited—or at best a very limited version of “full” Office that is more akin to Office Web Apps, functionally. This would answer the rhetorical questions I asked in Office for iPad: Yes or No?.

For Microsoft’s devices-based Windows versions—Windows RT, Windows Phone 8, and, in the near future, Windows 8 Core on mini-tablets—customers get some version of Office for free, as part of the base install. This is Office Mobile on Windows Phone 8, Office Home & Student 2013 RT on Windows RT and Office Home & Student 2013 on Windows 8 Core for mini-tablets; the latter two are “full” Office versions and a considerable differentiator over the iOS and Android competition.

For full PCs running Windows 8, customers can of course obtain Office relatively cheaply now, most notably through the Office 365 Home Premium subscription, which is $99 per family per year and provides up to 5 installs.

Put more simply, Office is better, built-in, and/or free with Windows and limited and tied to a subscription on non-Windows platforms.

In that light, adding Outlook RT to Windows RT makes a ton of sense. Devices based on this OS are not selling well, and by adding Outlook to the Office RT mix, the value proposition has exploded. I don’t happen to care about Outlook, but tons of users do. Indeed, it’s clear that the lack of Outlook on Windows RT was one of the top five complaints about the system. This inclusion will end that complaint.

And who knows? If the complaining continues, Microsoft has another secret weapon it could cart out, too: Windows RT versions of InfoPath, SkyDrive Pro, Publisher, and SharePoint Designer 2013. Of those, SkyDrive Pro is clearly the killer app generally speaking, and the one I want and need the most. But these applications, together with the rest of Office RT, could really turn the tide for Windows RT. It will be interesting to see whether Microsoft ever pulls the trigger on it.