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Steve Ballmer -- everyone's invited! gimme a hug! etc.

I've had a lot to say nigh Windows 8 already this year, and I'll doubtlessly have more than as we border closer to its official late-October release engagement. And, let'southward face information technology: nearly of it hasn't been good. I've stated on a few split occasions my belief that this Bone is a disaster in the making, and that anybody non using a touch device of some sort is, for want of a ameliorate give-and-take, hosed. But last calendar week I discovered one area in which Windows 8 has potential for providing existent benefit for both the industry and its finish users.

A couple of representatives from Microsoft showed me the Windows Assessment Toolkit, and it's one of the most advanced and easy-to-utilise methods I've yet seen for measuring system performance. Variations of this take existed in one form or another since at least the days of Vista, only the new tweaks and innovations fabricated for the coming Windows 8 world might just be enough to pluck this technology from obscurity and put it where information technology belongs: in everyone'south hands.

Unlike a lot of the tools out there that most of us "in the concern" use because, well, there merely aren't a ton of other options (such as PCMark, SysMark, and a few others with "Mark" in their names), this one doesn't give you a simple, useless number or two that you can toss out for garden-diverseness comparing. It gives you deep, detailed information about practically every aspect of your system that yous can think of. The chief categories are Startup and Shutdown, Browsing and Windows UI, Media Feel, Hardware Operation, and Battery Run Down, which give yous an idea, but they're just where the Toolkit starts.

Windows Assessment Toolkit, in windows 8

With the accompanying graphical Windows Assessment Panel, y'all can run almost two dozen specific assessments to clarify kick operation (cold or warm), driver certification and validation, file handling, memory usage, streaming media, and a lot more than — on either x86 and x64 or ARM devices. You can create jobs to run whatsoever combination of the assessments you desire, and fifty-fifty export them to a USB key to run on whatsoever other car. If all this wasn't enough, the entire affair is besides an open up organization with public APIs, then experienced users can apply it equally a launching pad for fifty-fifty more exciting things.

Although Microsoft may have intended the toolkit for OEMs and system integrators, so they can make each individual piece of system hardware is operating at top efficiency prior to aircraft them off, it gives ordinary computer owners powers they've never earlier had — in as convenient a way, at whatever rate — to pinpoint problem areas. The Windows Experience Index was sort of a wide-based early footstep in this direction, just every bit we've demonstrated on ExtremeTech in the past, information technology was fairly silly, difficult to interpret, and fifty-fifty more challenging to properly "fix."

Not so this. Sure, only those with a fair amount of technical knowledge will know how to employ the data they glean from the final reports (sorry mom). But the use of universal green-yellow-red color coding of each attribute of the reports means that anyone volition be able to await at the output and place at a glance where something might be operating at less than peak strength. This will guarantee fewer guessing games on support calls, whether to professionals or to other members of the family, and help the experts get a jump commencement on what matters most: really solving the issue.

In many cases, however, bum systems might not even get that far. Tech journalists and analysts will be able to apply these tools to computers they're looking at earlier y'all even have a take a chance to buy them, and will be able to warn you alee of time near troubles yous might encounter during everyday usage. Forewarned is forearmed, every bit they say, and there'south no way to get better information than trusting the reckoner itself to tell you — with no third-party "estimation" interfering. Whether you're curious about how long your laptop's bombardment will last or the degree to which your new SSD will improve your PC's kicking time, the Toolkit can give you more accurate information than you've ever had admission to — and it's all from a single application, with no scouring of the Registry, Event Viewer, or other cabalistic locations required.

Windows Assessment Toolkit, results

I don't want to oversell it also much, especially given how precious picayune hands-on time Microsoft gave me with it during our meeting. If you lot have an MSDN account, you can download it now, and the RTM version should be available there inside the next few weeks; everyone else will demand to wait for Windows 8 to come out. And even one time more people are using it, my Microsoft contacts estimated that nosotros won't meet the full value of the tool for anywhere from half-dozen months to a year. That's a fair chunk of time, and a lot of deficiencies or weaknesses in the Toolkit could be plant earlier and then; at that place'southward likewise no way to know for certain what other Windows viii–specific tools may come up out that volition rival or fifty-fifty surpass it in capabilities.

Truth exist told, I'1000 not convinced that'due south very likely. What I think will happen is that meaning numbers of people will see the value in this and realize that at that place's no meliorate method for examining the inner workings of all sorts of Windows-based products. I call up it will demystify so much of what already seems dark and difficult about organisation diagnosis, and inspire (admittedly enterprising) people to accept more control over what they do with their ain systems. And, cartel I say it, I think it volition tell us a lot more than nearly the mysterious Windows RT and what it can do — or, perhaps more appropriately, what information technology can't do — than we otherwise might have been able to easily excerpt from Microsoft. The Toolkit obviously won't exist able to do everything, but it might be the all-time style some of us have ever seen to dispel component-level secrets.

Then bring on the Windows Assessment Toolkit, I say, and first shining the sunlight where it's ever been needed: inside Windows boxes. With the proper Linux-based PC or enough Windows cognition, you've always been able to glean this kind of information, but you've had to work to get it and piece of work to read it. Now, a few clicks and you're not just at that place, merely you know exactly what you lot're looking at and where you need to go next. It's tough to imagine many more than powerful ways of taking control of your computing life than this. The Toolkit merely might change everything — and I, for one, can't wait to see the results.

Read: Windows eight may bulldoze me to Linux

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