Windoze 8

I found how to restore the quick launch icons!

I've been working hard with the Win 8.1 preview in order to tweak it to my liking. The damned system takes a lot fo tweaking to rationalize to something close to full usability. Here's what needs to be done:

1) Add a start menu replacement. This is paramount, and I won't even try to use Win Hell without it.

2) De-group the boxes in the taskbar. The bone-headed development started with Windows 7, which sought to imitate, I've been told, the functionality of the Mac something or other feature (really, I've enough with Windows and Android to bother learning what the Apple paperweights do). The end result was to make the taskbar a largely useless and time-wasting area, rather than a clean, easy to grasp administrative area.

Though I still have some work to do on it, like removing the pop-up miniatures and the automatic highlighting when mousing over or downloading.

3) Eliminate the "hot" corners, in particular the very annoying "charms bar." You can't do this tweaking Windows' settings. Fortunately many start menu replacements include this function as well.

4) Eliminate the lock screen. Honestly I was surprised there wasn't even an option to do this when installing the system, or when first running it.

5) Eliminate signing in each time I want to use the PC. I've no idea yet if this is even possible. On one experiment, I could install without signing in, but once you get the PC connected to the internet, the sign in compulsion comes to the fore.

6) Restore the quick launch icons. This was rather easy, but it took some time to find out how.

7) Once all of the above is done, fiddle with the resolution, wallpaper, default font sizes, default programs (so as not to fall into the M/M/W interface, though with Modern Mix by Stardock, all such things run on desktop windows), install Firefox and other programs and utilities.

Then I can have the system I want, rather than the system Microsoft thinks I should want.

This is too good to be made up:

This guy at the office wants a tablet. He's been using an iPhone since they first came out, so I thought he'd want an iPad. After all, they both pretty much work the same way. But no, he says he wants a Windows tablet, and he's leaning towards an HP model (I've no idea if HP is making Windows tablets).

Here's the kicker, though: he wants it to run Windows 7.

Is that even possible?

Success! I disabled the lock screen, and I managed to remove the need to log in every time I start up Windows Hell.

An interesting development took place today.

Three coworkers are being given new laptops (or netbooks, I fail to grasp the distinction). They wanted tablets, actually, but management seems allergic to them. Anyway, they've been given a choice bewteen Windows 7 and 8. They went for Win8. Now, this will be the 8 version, not 8.1 (the altter won't be out til October at the earliest).

We'll see what happens.

Just the same, I plan to bring the laptop tomorrow and show them what it is they're getting.

My coworkers get their Windows8 laptops today. I'll post a report on it.

In the meantime, I've given up hope that MS will reverse course and put in a start menu back in Windows. They really should, but they won't. For one thing, they're really, really pushing the M/M/W interface hard. The other reason is that the Windows team itself conceives of the start screen as an evolution of the start menu.

They're 100% wrong, of course, but people fall in love with their ideas, good or bad (love is blind, don't you know?) Let's try an analogy: The start menu is a fully equipped kitchen. The start screen is a toaster. Sure, they both can produce food, but if all you could amke at home was toast, you'd wind up eating 99.9999999999% of your meals out. In this case you end up installing a start menu replacement.

Then, too, having explored the Win8.1 preview, MS si dead set on imposing a great many other things on their users. Consider this list fo things that either cannot be changed, or take getting "under the hood" to change:

1) Transparent taskbar
2) No start menu
3) Lock screen
4) Password log in every session
5) Win key only opens the start screen
6) No quick launch toolbar
7) No default desktop icons save the trash can

It's not that these things are set as default, but that there is no easy way to change them if one wants to (and of course there is no start menu at all). the sole concession is in the password, which can be set not to be required when waking up the PC from stand by, but that's very minor. The lock screen can be configured to display a slideshow, too, but there is no immeadiately apparent option to disable it.

It's believed that Henry Ford once said "Customers can have a car in any color they want, so long as they want black." That's Microsoft today: "Customers can configure Windows8 any way they want, so long as they want it the way we think they should want."

So as you could get your model T (or model A) re-painted any color post-market, you can customize Windows8 in the same way. It only takes third party software, some work, some patience searching for the means online, and even some ability using the PC.

I'm still more concerned that MS will stop developing the desktop and desktop programs (or "apps" to use the modern baby talk in favor). While there is a shell by Stardock called Modern Mix which will run the M/M/W "apps" in the desktop (windowed, too), they don't all run well every time. If/when that happens, it will be time to move over to Linux.

Alas, (un)fortunately my colleagues wound up receiving Win7 laptops (very pretty ones, too).

But remember the other coworker, call him Lefty (trust me, it fits), who wanted Win7 on a tablet? well, he saw an add for a Surface tablet from the local Best Buy, at a considerable discount, with a camera thrown in for good measure. He asked me whether I could modify the Win8 to run like Win7. I said I could, but then I remembered that Surface and SurfaceRT are not quite the same thing. Does anyone know what the difference is? As I'm not interested in an overpriced MS tablet, I've paid little attention to the whole kerfuffle.

Windows and overall MS supporter Paul Thurrot of the Super Site for Windows (I apologize for the pleonasm) wrote an opinion piece on the upcoming death of the desktop. While there is, as far as I know, no official pronouncement from MS to that effect, the intent to do away with the desktop is clear as can be. Consider the following:

1) The desktop is labeled as "legacy"

2) While the start screen is billed as a start menu follow-on, a kind of forward evolution of the start menu, it's not part of the desktop interface.

3) All default programs for audio, video and other things open in the M/M/W interface, even when run from the desktop.

4) M/M/W features, like the lock screen, charms bar and so on, intrude on the desktop, even when they ahve no function there.

5) In the M/M/W environment, the "app switcher" shows all individual "apps," unless they are desktop programs. if you ahve, say, twelve windows opened on the desktop, they're all lumped on one "desktop" app in the switcher.

6) Microsoft's development focus for PCs is in M/M/W "apps." Either their own effort, or where they want developers to focus. The only major releases for the desktop since Win8 came out, other than IE 10, are the plethora of start menu replacements floating around.

It all points to MS's intent to let the desktop wither and die, much as they did with DOS once before (though I dimly half-recall attempts at some DOS upgrades after Win95 was released; in any case, that dind't last long).

The problem this time is that the M/M/W environment is a touch-centric, mobile/tablet-based construct. It's good enough for mobile/tablet tasks, and a little more. It's not good enough for work, at least not intensively. If you've used an Android tablet, or I imagine an iPad, try to imagine working with that kind of environment when you need several programs opened at once and require to switch often between them. If the "snap" fucntion is good enough for you, then you may ger away with that. but it limits you to only 4 open apps at a time (perhaps as many as 6, I'm not sure), and then only if your monitor's resolution is high enough. Otherwise the limit is two. And while you can resize them horizontally, you can't do that vertically or diagonally, as you can on the desktop (with an indefinite number of windowed programs running at once, to boot).

You can say the M/M/W interface will improve. No doubt. But can poeple who depend on their PCs for work afford to wait? No, they're supposed to use the desktop now, and get used to the M/M/W environment in the meantime.

Of course, MS could improve it by, say, adding a toolbar, and some tool which would give quick and easy access to to all programs, libraries, settings, devices, frequently used programs, power options, search options, help and a few other things. In other words, by turning it into the dekstop.

I wonder if they're even aware of the irony...

I brought the laptop to the office again, this time with the much reconfigured Win8.1, including naturally the start menu replacement (Start8).

Of course everyone could now use the coputer without any trouble. Lefty says that's how he wants his Surface tablet to run (I swear I can hear Messrs Sinofsky and Ballmer gnash their teeth when I type this <w>).

But more amazing was when I tried to contrast the retooled desktop version with the M/M/W interface. Most amusing was when they kept telling me to "switch to Windows 8" :)

Of course, once you put in Start8 and Modern Mix (to force the M/M/W "apps" to run in a desktop window), and add the XP/Vista style taskbar (with quick launch icons and no bunched tasks), disable the "hot" corners and even force the Windows key to open the start menu, running M/M/W "apps" in the M/M/W interface is rather difficult.

Of course that's a good thing :)

The big news this week, or the one buzzing anyway, is that Windows Store "apps" can be intalled in up to 81 devices linked to a single MS account.

<crickets chirping>

Let's see: 1) I don't have any Win8/8.1 devices, 2) I've no desire to run any M/M/W "apps," 3) I will get a Win8.1 PC later this year, or more likely early next year, where I will likely not run any "apps" at all, 4) in the unlikely case I find a Windows 8/8.1 "app" I like and would run, I'll still only have the one "device," 5) it's very unusual for me to run any paid "apps" to begin with (I did pay for a podcast Android "app," but only because it was pretty good and cost a mere $3)

Of course, I'm not int he Windows market anymore (not really). But, sure, if one wanted to install Office in several Windows PCs and overpriced tablets, one could do so. But only when attached to one MS account, which means a business, big or small, couldn't do so (in theory). But then Office is not a Windows Store app anyway...