Posted on 05/01/2008 5:11:26 PM PDT by Swordmaker
Odd web server would be mentioned. Windows has come with a built in web server since at least Windows 98.
Per Secunia IIS has fewer seccurity holes than Apache, and per Zone-H Apache is hacked significantly more.
:’D
I’ve tried six+ virtual workspace managers for MS Windows, including the one MS offers via its add-on tools site. They all have problems, but there is one I can recommend.
VirtuaWin: http://virtuawin.sourceforge.net/
I’ve had it set up for 12 workspaces on some machines, right now I’m using 4. It has the most working features and works the least quirkily of them all.
To the detriment of us all.
Next time, buy a $500 or $600 Lenovo ThinkPad with Windows XP Professional. The consumer systems turned out by the likes of HP and Dell are garbage.
All I really needed was the ability to run IE 7 for a couple of online classes. I considered the computer a throwaway. I haven’t had any mechanical problems with the computer. My only problems are with Vista and the HP/Compaq “add ons.”
Most of these at best are so-so wouldn’t use them anyway features.
Expose - looks like it’s not as annoying as the flip3D but still one of those features that my usage would never need. Got the icons on the start bar, got alt-tab, don’t need to thumbnail everything.
Virtual Workspace - There was an app for Win3.11 that did this, Dashboard which I think was made by Quarterdeck, Dashboard also had dockable applets back before anybody even invented the word applet. I really liked Dashboard but I never used the Virtual Workspace thing, tried it once or twice but it turned into a “which freaking desktop did I put that app in” frustration.
Back to my Mac - never left a document at home, and 99 bucks a year sounds pretty steep to fix a problem I’ve never had.
Screen sharing - don’t chat, never felt a need to show anybody my screen that wasn’t accessible by a shout of “come here”.
Time machine - I remember when I cared about backups, then I realized I was spending vast hours making them and never used them.
ISO burning - there are so many 3rd party apps for ISO burning, many available free from places like TuCows. I can sort of agree it should be in the OS, but it’s not that exciting.
Stickie Notes - I remember about 8 years ago somebody figured out how to tweak some settings in Win98 to get iconless shortcuts to nothing which you could then name anything, fake stickie notes. When I need to leave myself a reminder I just use notepad. An OK feature I suppose.
Podcast capture - never wanted to do it, don’t listen to podcasts, but I know there’s tons of apps on TuCows for it.
Software repositories - You mean TuCows? OK you have to do a download and install but is it really that hard?
Desktop Cube - looks ugly, wouldn’t use it.
Application Dock - Remember Dashboard? Did the same thing in Win3.11. Not really sure what’s so terribly different between that and the QuickLaunch in XP, unclutter, one click launch, maybe it’s got sexier icons.
Automated screen shots - Isn’t PC World the guys that labeled Paint one of the worst apps ever last year? I think they just don’t get it and therefore anything that uses it is “bad”. Paint’s a fine no thrills app and pasting screenshots into it isn’t a pain.
Multitouch trackpad gestures - Having played Black & White anything that mentions “gestures” as a form of UI immediately makes me recoil in horror. I suppose this is probably implemented better but as a concept I still don’t like it.
Cover flow - oh great add a bunch of graphics to a simple folder view, just what the world didn’t need.
Pre-installed web server - they don’t even make sense on this one, they admit that the latest version of Windows can pre-install a web server.
POSIX compliance - there’s plenty of free software for Windows too. I suppose if you’re a cross platform person putting the same app on all your platforms is nice, but MS has never believed in cross platform users.
Standardized menu ribbon - Actually there IS a standard for Windows menus, but the only way they have to enforce it is with logo certification and the vast majority of things made for Windows never bother with logo cert.
Single file apps - OK this one is good. Though when apps are clean they do tend to be single folder.
Time Machine is like both Backup and Shadow Copy together, with a much simpler user interface. It does a full backup every hour. That would normally fill up your backup drive fast, but only changed files get copied, non-changed files only get a new hard link in the backup folder. OS X also has a service that constantly looks for changes in files. This feeds both Spotlight and Time Machine.
The only non-MS software I have installed on my PC's is security software.
Even using the restore feature in XP does not put the icons back where they were.
And Dell technicians pretty much shrugged over this.
There's a lot of this basic stuff that MS has never gotten straight.
One problem that didn't exist in WordPerfect for DOS is when I use my mouse to click a place on the screen to start typing, the cursor remains visible as I type, which obscures the area I'm typing in, so my hands need to leave the keyboard to push the mouse to get the cursor out of the way.
As I remember, in WP, as soon as I started typing the cursor disappeared.
Basic stuff.
Meanwhile, IE doesn't have a font size large enough for my old eyes to comfortably read.
But to the rescue comes the latest upgrade to IE that I installed, with its magnify feature, allowing the user to magnify the screen 150%.
Sounds great, right?
No.
Because I often have to scroll left and right to read a web-page when it's magnified.
And here's a good one: whenever I magnify a web-page, the font size, which I set to large, gets setback to medium.
So when I'm done using the magnifying feature, I need to manually reset the font size.
And finally, should I want to copy text on a magnified web-page, I need to de-magnify it, else I cannot select it.
The incompetence of MS is incredible. This is basic stuff!
bump for later
Compaq is screwing you. Their reinstall disks will put the same buggy crap right back on if you do a rebuild. Save yourself an immense about of wasted time and frustration by tossing the Compaq into the garbage and buy a different machine.
If you have a Mac you can rotate, delete and reshuffle pages from the built-in viewer, but there are still things you need Acrobat for.
How bout a free DVD decoder for Windows media player?
I don't think that's the point. We're talking about people running it from home, which likely means they really don't know what they're doing. Prior to IIS 6 (and Win98 was referenced so PWS/IIS 3/4(?) is fair game) this was a very big mistake since most everything got installed and left open by default. That's a huge gaping hole that non-pros don't have much chance of securing successfully. Apache installed without everything on, or even included, by default, so would have been a safer bet for those people.
Expose: It really is that good and fast when you have multiple things open. An option for activating it will spread out all of the documents for just the current application. Another one does the equivalent of Windows-D.
Virtual Workspace - Definitely not new. But this is the best way of managing them I've ever seen. You even can do Expose with your workspaces, helpful for those “which freaking desktop did I put that app in” moments.
Back to my Mac, Screen sharing: Yeah, those are really need-based ones.
Time machine: Still don't have to care, spend only a second setting up backups ("Yes, I want to use this drive for Time Machine" when you plug one in) and then forget about them. Unless you need a restore, the issue will only come up again when you fill your backup drive, and clicking to allow it to drop off older backups takes care of that. That's the beauty of Time Machine -- backups that people will actually make.
ISO burning: Not exciting, but still a useful item.
Stickie Notes: Funny, I actually never use this one.
Podcast capture: This one either.
Software repositories: agree.
Desktop Cube: Definitely agree.
Application Dock: It's really a combination of quick launch, the task bar and putting in a few toolbars. And yes it has sexier, and live icons (video still runs, progress of apps shows in the icons). Little things like actually showing today's date on the Calendar icon lets me know someone was paying attention to detail.
Automated screen shots: Paint's fine for what it's for. But Windows adds unnecessary steps to taking screenshots. To get the full ability of OS X screenshots you have to install a third-party app.
Multitouch trackpad gestures: It is implemented better, more natural.
Cover flow: Cover Flow rocks! It's not just graphics, it's seeing your documents fly by. Looking for an image and tiny thumbnails aren't doing it? Flip through them in Cover Flow. Hitting the space bar shows whatever document you have selected in a larger window -- if it's a multi-page document you can flip through pages, if it's a movie you can play it (even make it go full screen), etc. Actually playing a movie in the QuickTime application is now unnecessary.
Pre-installed web server: I don't get that one either, unless you're talking about Vista Home, which doesn't come with it.
POSIX compliance: This is cool in that a lot of high-speed stuff (not just crapware) is out there free for UNIX, and thus now Mac.
Standardized menu ribbon: True, it's the applications. This is where Apple's momentum helps, since it's been hammering on developers about such standards from the beginning. Not mentioned, the menu bar always being at the top is a big advantage.
Single file apps: Yep, it is good. Unfortunately not all installs are drag-and-drop on the Mac.
Yes. It is not the same, or as easy, as Time Machine.
Something is going wrong with the shutdown of your machines. I’ve been using desktop icon Windows (ie 95 or above) since before it even betaed, and there’s only two conditions that make my desktop icons move, the first is what Swordmaker pointed out, poorly written games that screw with the screen resolution of the entire machine to run; and the second is something going wrong with the commitment of the desktop.ini on shutdown, which usually means something’s wrong with the machine that’s hosing the entire shutdown process. Might check that security software, it could be write protecting the ini or something else annoying, if the security software is Norton get rid of it because it’s doing a lot of bad things to the machines.
In Word 2003 the cursor goes away when you start typing.
If IE’s fonts are too small for your eyes you should probably change your screen resolution.
The magnify feature is a bad cludge, no doubt about it. Of course if you setup the computer so you could see the stuff you wouldn’t need it in the first place.
They can... but it is not an OS level function.
Nothing on that list that I need.
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