NoelC

Do you have media you can boot from (ideally a WIndows 8 DVD or a Recovery USB Drive) to try to get into the Windows Recovery environment? Proper computer maintenance requires care, understanding, and rigor. Doing "housecleaning" jobs with software you can't remember the name of implies perhaps you're not being quite as careful as you ought to be. I'm sure you've learned your lesson on that score. Think twice before running any "cleaner" software. While the "cleaner" industry would have you believe otherwise, it's not required. -Noel

Now THAT looks really nice! -Noel

Speaking of "both UIs"... Are you thinking someone might actually miss the Start Screen experience? Does a person exist who actually prefers the Start screen? Just joking, of course there are some. But, just like with the past versions, people will learn to adapt to what's provided - or augment it with 3rd party software. I fully expect Classic Shell to support Windows 9 or whatever stupid name they come up with (maybe "Threshold" will stick). I imagine I'll be using Classic Shell no matter what Microsoft comes up with. I like that my "Start" experience has been more or less consistent since way back; it's better than what's been provided by Microsoft. -Noel

A "Modern App in a Window" capability - which I think is what they're talking about providing - gives you a desktop-oriented App experience, no? It's not hard to think of just hitting Maximize or a good ol' key combo to go "full screen" and boom, it's full-screen. -Noel

Some common sense thoughts... You can't have a 100% Metro/Modern UI without 100% of the needs of users covered. You can't have 100% of the needs covered without years of development if you're not first to the party. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize there is no quick solution. The world is too complex to just throw everything out and start over. No one will do without the stuff being thrown out until stuff that's better - or at least substantially as good - is there to replace it. No one has ever been able to tell me why I need or would want a Microsoft tablet, when I already have an iPad that does the minimal number of things a tablet can do for me when away from my real computer. Why does a company that has a lock on the majority of the world's computing choose to just abandon its strengths? It's like the executives can't hold more than one thought at a time in their heads. -Noel

I believe I recall Big Muscle saying he set it as the way it is now (default disabled on battery) to most closely match Windows' philosophy itself, but people are installing the software because they want it to work, there's really only a negligible impact on battery life, so it would not be unreasonable to make the default setting ENABLED on battery. I support this suggestion. You're asking for the GUI configuration utility to be finished. As developing this is not Big Muscle's full-time job, as Valentine Michael Smith from Mars might say: Waiting Is. For now, why not just use his beta GUI configuration tool? -Noel

Again we are in agreement. By the way, speaking of badly implemented, and in taking us back to the theme of this thread... I just ran afoul of the issue with the IE security roll-up from the August update that needs the "Modal Dialog Performance Fix". :angrym: I guess I'll try layering a hastily-prepared patch on top of the poorly-prepared patch and hope for the best. Sigh. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2991509 This, ladies and gentlemen, is known not so affectionately as "crashing and burning". We may be seeing, unfolding before our very eyes, the end of a computing era. -Noel

Windows 8.1 has gotten some press lately as Microsoft rolled out some Windows Updates that broke stuff, which is uncharacteristic. Well, Windows 7 hasn't been left out of the August update saga... After installing KB2976627, aka "MS14-051: Cumulative security update for Internet Explorer: August 12, 2014" note that your Windows 7 x64 system may fail an SFC check, claiming these two files are corrupt and cannot be corrected: C:\Windows\System32\mshtmled.dll C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\VGX\VGX.dll For more detailed info see: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/9372d631-2682-4695-ba05-9d85ac80f52f/two-new-files-being-reported-as-corrupt-by-sfc-mshtmleddll-and-vgxdll?forum=w7itproinstall -Noel

Then, by implication, are you saying that Microsoft trying to turn Windows into a tablet operating system that also runs on those old, clunky desktops we Neanderthals won't let go of is something er, crazy, enough to succeed? I noticed that those conversions you have pointed out were actually well built. Wow, perhaps THAT'S what's required here! I wonder if anyone at Microsoft has made this connection. I think we may be onto something here! -Noel

That goes a bit beyond "bolt stuff on" I think. -Noel

How I wish it were true that in every way Microsoft had made 7 better than Vista, but even with Windows 7 it was apparent that Microsoft was moving away from hardcore computing and toward it being a toy. Thankfully, there have been many tweaks developed for Windows 7 that are still viable with 8 (thinking, for example, of Folder Options X, Classic Shell, ShellFolderFix, etc. that make Explorer and the desktop more useful). Anything that optimizes for fewer things on the screen, the use of larger fonts, and being touch-oriented could be a move in the wrong direction. Not that there aren't uses for tablets, but that's not what Windows is good at. It's a bit like trying to bolt stuff on a Corvette to get it to compete in a Monster Truck event. It's just never going to be a good approach. -Noel

I have no problem with someone creating a brave new user interface / experience if it's as good as or better than the Windows desktop (or even CAN be after much tweaking). When I see one I'll be the first to adopt it, use it, write software for it. Unfortunately, so far it's a fantasy. Microsoft envisioned a brave new Metro/Modern world where programmers could just write applications trivially easily, then there'd be this massive publication of such applications (with Microsoft poised to take 30% of the action), and the next great age of computing would be born. Trouble is, someone forgot that for serious applications to deliver value in this day and age of really complex problems and big data, there need to be complex applications. They just can't use big fonts and be touch-friendly. The problems are no longer that simple. A Weather app has been done, and while fun and games are, well, fun, they don't make the world go 'round. But Microsoft, on starting to realize their failure, decided to "actively de-emphasize" the desktop, instead of finding ways to improve it at the same time as introducing the new paradigm. This could be considered "doubling down with a bluff". If all they'd done is make the desktop just as powerful as with Windows 7, perhaps with a few additional features, they'd not have alienated the business community. But nooooooo, they had to eliminate the Start Menu, they had to turn off Aero Glass, they had to eliminate 3rd party theme support. They had to hide the ability to make and use a local account. It didn't/doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that they were actively turning away from serious computer usage. I'm sure there are (were?) bright people inside Microsoft who knew this was the wrong move. But apparently in Microsoft no one can hear you scream (as your boss shoots you in the foot over and over again). Ballmer and Sinosfsky, in the process of making themselves rich, basically set the advance of high tech back 10 years. -Noel

Ptd163, yes, that's the factory default theme plus Aero Glass for Win 8.1 plus my own theme atlas. Save for a small change to make light characters on a dark "glow", it is available on BigMuscle's download site. Here's a version that puts up a dark background "glow" behind title text, in case you like the light characters on dark background look. http://Noel.ProDigitalSoftware.com/temp/themeatlas.png And yes, that's BigMuscle's own beta GUI application to modify Aero Glass parameters pictured in my screen grab, also available from his download site, and with which I changed the caption text color to white as shown. -Noel

All the Windows Update tech is already in place. Service packs have always gone in as a big update. Beyond that, every recent set of updates has been in the hundreds of megabytes, which says that the infrastructure is worthy. The question that comes to my mind is: Why is it newsworthy? Should it be breaking news every time they drop back to working technology instead of something new they botched? Shakespeare's character said "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." Perhaps the second thing out to be to consider Marketeers. Does the job description involve the term "spin"? Off with their heads! -Noel

By the way, on analysis using virtual metallurgy I believe I've found the MSFN "gears" to be made of aluminum. I'm not sure I dare analyze the $... -Noel

Perhaps this implies a bit of additional brilliance... -Noel

I was thinking "bright idea" award myself, but you're right, the dim-bulb implication is not good and is certainly not intended. Perhaps next time I get a little time I'll try lighting things up a bit. -Noel

Now to "bake your noodle" a bit... Imagine that Microsoft itself notices these market trends where their roughly alternating releases do better or worse... What do you suppose they do to act on that? Imagine sitting in a cubicle planning along these lines: "...Well, we're making money hand over fist now, so what ditzy/risky projects can we undertake while times are so good?..." It's pretty clear - and has been since about 30 minutes after the Windows 8 Developer Preview was released (obviously longer inside Microsoft) - that Windows 8 won't be a giant success amongst business users (my own adoption notwithstanding). So it's clearly been time to play. Then comes the time the poor, poor executives are cut loose and the next round of serious work begins. Now re-imagine that these alternating success stories are now not the whims of the market, but they are being made on purpose. -Noel

Here are some just for you. -Noel

I'm sure it's not a problem, per se, but I see it as a possible minor insight into the minds and culture of Microsoft. I have compared it with Win 7 and there are quite a bit fewer errors showing up there. No, I haven't run it in compatibility mode as it shouldn't need it. -Noel

Trouble is, Adobe's not publishing such estimates. A few supporting thoughts: 1. Glance some time to see who's the top contributor on Adobe's Photoshop forum, which has been a merged PC and Mac forum for a few years now (not the best idea, but it is what it is). Before it was split, I did some stats gathering. Forum activity was pretty close to the same on both sides of the fence. 2. I sell products into that market. With some sub-segments of the market people are predominantly PC users. 3. You have met me (well, electronically at least). It's true that I don't only do that. Perhaps it's the people who need to do more than just graphics design who use the more powerful system. -Noel

And I agree with you 100% that it is your opinion. Perhaps we can both agree that we hope new versions will just keep getting better and better. -Noel

I'm thinking it could be a half-baked self diagnosis and tuning feature that was underway but abandoned when the "leadership" at the time decided to emasculate Windows 8 and turn it into a half-baked toy. Maybe in their haste to delete desktop Aero functionality they cut something out that would have made the events reasonable. Think how distant some obscure performance events in a log are from the toy Windows 8 actually became. -Noel

And yet, that's a system that is now mature and (on appropriate hardware) just runs and runs without complaint, satisfying the group of users who don't want everything thrown away every year, but just want to continue to get their work done. And no, not everyone who cares about graphics is using a Mac. Since becoming Intel-based Macs don't do graphics any better than PCs (which is not a bad thing; both are incredibly powerful graphics systems). By most estimates use of Adobe Photoshop is about split evenly between Macs and PCs. -Noel

Right, I know that. But my point here is very subtle. Even though we have direct error checking, we also instrument our code to look for unexpected error codes cropping up anyway at the start and end of event handling, so as to pick up on any subtle errors our local error handling may have missed. In the past we've always been able to get to the bottom of why such errors show up, and eliminate them. It makes the code more robust. Problem is, there's a whole new set with Windows 8 and it's starting to look like we're not going to be able to eliminate them all. That tells us subtle things about the robustness of the operating system. -Noel