Somehow, this is where I always end up with my laptop.

Pros:

• Feels nice in the hands (you have to use 2 hands)
• Touch is really responsive
• Good screen (angles and colors)
• Free RDP app (this was the only reason I used the device)
• Touch cover trackpad was actually good
• Touch keyboard was more usable than I expected (more on it below)
• Full size USB (although what do you use it with?)

Cons:

• Lack of good apps. Lots of apps, but most of them suck. Coming from iOS I feel like Android apps are 2nd class citizens (especially tablet apps). Windows RT apps are even worse
• Too big/heavy/awkward to be mobile with it. After using a Nexus 7 for so long this feels huge. And compared to the iPad 2/3/4 it feels too wide and thick.
• No easy way for video out which makes it hard to use as a full time computer (microHDMI doesn’t count)
• Lack of Google ecosystem integration. I don’t use Skydrive, Outlook, Office, etc. This made me just use IE10 which isn’t that great when you can’t have any plugins. It also would not pull up the virtual keyboard inside a google doc no matter what I tried.

Conclusion

I came to the realization that the Surface was designed by CEOs and directors who spend all day in a board room. The device is too hard to use anywhere else. At a desk, with the keyboard and if you have Citrix or RDP it can be very functional. Outside of that, I never chose to use this over my phone, Nexus 7, or laptop because the apps suck, the hardware is too heavy, and the ergonomics are not good. I wish the keyboard cover was detachable so I could at least set the Surface further away from me so the screen would be at the proper angle (the kickstand is not adjustable). Or it would have been nice to not have the keyboard at all so then I’d use the onscreen keyboard more (when it works). I don’t think the Surface Pro is going to solve any of these issues because the device will be even thicker, heavier, and get worse battery. For $800, the MacBook Air (or almost any other ultrabook) is a much better device plus it has a better keyboard/trackpad.

Anyone out there have experience with a Surface RT or any other Windows 8 (RT or Pro) tablet. I’m curious to hear your thoughts.

psexec \machinename reg add “hklmsystemcurrentcontrolsetcontrolterminal server” /f /v fDenyTSConnections /t REG_DWORD /d 0

Make sure you replace “machinename” with the computer you are trying to control remotely. Once this command has run you should now be able to connect with mstsc.exe to the remote computer.

To get the biometric devices to show up in Windows 7 control panel download the drivers from AuthenTec’s website (mirror here). I am not sure if this next step is necessary, but the directions I found said to extract the driver with uniextractor. I have extracted the driver for you and zipped it up here (x32, x64) so you don’t have to. Open the zip file and extract the files somewhere and run setup.exe. This installer will create a folder under C:Program Files called WIN7TS and will install the drivers for your finger print scanner. It will also load the necessary components so you can use the fingerprint scanner from the control panel. Once the biometric devices option shows up you can set up everything from the control panel.

If you are getting the ‘Set-up Failure’ error, then try running C:Program FilesWIN7TSTrueSuiteApplication.exe directly. It is the same program that runs from the control panel but sometimes has less errors on setup.

Let me know in the comments if you have any problems or questions.

The error message you probably got is:

The password does not meet the password policy requirements. Check the minimum password length, password complexity and password history requirements.

To allow a blank password go to Start -> Run and type in gpedit.msc then hit enter.
You should get a window that pops up and has a whole bunch of settings you may have never seen before. On the left side expand Windows Settings -> Security Settings -> Account Policies and then click on Password Policy. On the right side you will need to change a few of the settings.

The three settings you will need to change are Maximum password age, Minimum password length, and Password must meet complexity requirements. Change maximum age and maximum length both to zero and disable the complexity requirements. Once you have these three settings changed you can just close out the window and now you should be able to set a blank password for your user account.
If you cannot change these settings you may be joined to a domain which has these settings locked down. I can’t help you there, but this should help in most other cases.
Let me know if this helps, or doesn’t help, in the comments.

The main indication that the user is using a temporary user profile is all of their documents appear to be missing (desktop, documents, favorites, etc.). Any settings the user may have are also set to default (default background, screen saver), and the user will have this popup in the lower right hand corner.

The popup warns the user saying “User profile was not loaded correctly. You have been logged on with a temporary profile. Changes you make to this profile will be lost when you log off. Please see the event log for details or contact your administrator”

If this problem happens for a user the first thing that will probably fix the problem is restarting the computer (so the computer can connect to the domain controller). If that does not fix the problem please put in a work order so we can look at the problem and narrow down why this is happening.

One important thing to note when the user is logged into a temporary user is that their documents in their profile are not lost. Nothing has been erased they are just logged in as a different user. It is also important that the user does not save anything to the temporary profile. If they need to save a document they should email it to themselves using apumail.apu.edu, save the document to one of their network drives, or save files to a usb drive. If anything is saved to the desktop, documents, or favorites of the temporary profile it will be lost once the user is logged off.

Please see these links for more information.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940453
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947242/en-us
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/257580/en-us

Once the patch is done you will need to restart (to reload the files into aero).

After the restart clear some space on your hard drive to download some visual styles. You are going to be looking for .msstyles files. Once you download the file you will want to copy them over to your WindowsResourcesThemes folder and double click on them. Your “Appearance Settings” window will open and you can apply the newly installed theme and you are done. Give a few a try to find the one you like best.

Here are a couple of links to find some new themes:

Gui Modes Vista Visual Styles
DiviantART Vista Styles
AeroXperience
Neowin Forums
joejoe.org

Oh, and lets not forget about your vista sidebar. How-to Geek found some great software to apply custom themes to that too. Download the Windows Sidebar Styler and install it. I would tell you how to use the program but you can just head over to the How-to Geek for that.

BTW I am currently using Curved Sidebar and Ezlo Thin Style.

*EDIT* Just to let everyone know. It appears that with Vista SP1 RC1 build 6001 this doesn’t work anymore. The SP1 installer replaces the hacked dll’s and Vista Glazz shows that the dll’s are corrupt now. It may work if I hack them again but I need to test SP1 a bit more before I do that. I will keep this post updated with what I find.

*EDIT* I want to keep this up to date.  If you have Vista SP1 you will need to download the new UxTheme patches that Vista SP1 requires.  I uploaded the 32 bit version here.  If you need x64 or Windows server patches you can head over to where I got them. You can also patch the files the easy way with Vista Visual Master from vista123. Vista Visual Master lets you do a whole lot more than just patch your UxTheme files but you can read about all that over at their site.

*EDIT* I heard that the guy that actually made Vista Glazz worked with someone to make a new/easier tool for custom themes. I think it works with Windows Vista and Windows 7 but I haven’t tried it myself. I just wanted to keep everyone updated on what I found. The new site is called UxStyle. Let me know if you try it and find it useful.