So what is MinKernel in this context? According to one of my sources, MinKernel is a minimal set of functionality that is shared across the different Windows kernels that run on x86, ARM, Windows Phone and Xbox. MinKernel is the one base-level implementation on top of which these platforms are built, the same way that BaseFS may be the base-level file system that is common across different platforms.
Yep. That’s it. Windows is everywhere.
Please buy your copy of Windows 8 now. Please? Seriously, do not pay $199 for Windows. Buy three copies now, assuming you get one new computer every year for three years (the typical length of a Windows upgrade cycle). Just go and spend $40. Seriously.
Oh, and pick up your Media Center code while you’re at it. Go.
I experience Paul’s frustration quite often. I like putting my desktop to sleep now (because it has an SSD). But I hate having to WINKEY + C then clicking on Settings. That brings up a fake context menu with Restart as the closest option to the cursor. Sleep should be the closest because you’re much more likely to do that.
Paul suggests putting the Sleep/Shutdown/Restart buttons in the User icon button menu along with Sign out and Lock. I like his idea, but I would even go further and make the Restart and Shutdown buttons be a split button with Restart on the left and Shutdown on the right (right below sleep).
If you added the Windows Media Center feature pack, and then tried to use your new product key, you might have found yourself with some ridiclous message in the lower right hand corner of your screen. Specifically:
Windows 8 Pro with Media Center Build 9200
Getting rid of it is pretty easy, though it shouldn’t have been this way. After adding your pack product key, you’ll restart a couple times and you’ll get back into Windows. Then, you’ll need to re-activate Windows which is effortless. Just search for Activate under Settings on the start screen. Then you can either crash Explorer, Desktop Window Manager or restart, and if you’re lucky, the watermark message will be gone from your screen.
Three years ago today, I built the best computer I could at the time to celebrate the best operating system money could buy at the time. That was Windows 7.
Today, we face the launch of Windows 8 and everything that it signals for the future. Even I have built up anger for Windows 8, sources stemming from my desktop usage and the inexperience I discover through my community education work. But that anger will dissipate in time and Windows 8 will grow — Windows 7 was completely baked even in the first beta-stages, Windows 8 will take a little longer to mature.
This time, the problem does not lie in the operating system as much as we would like it to. There is no hardware deficiency to overcome, there are no long standing stability issues to face, there are few application incompatibilities. This time, the operating system, Windows 8, is not the excuse, right now, we are. So, it’s time. Let’s try it.
Welcome, Windows 8.
How do you review Windows 8? Last I checked, it’s not even out yet (excluding 99% baked RTM bits).
You would need: a desktop, a laptop (with and without a real trackpad) and a tablet with Windows 8 and Windows RT (which is Windows 8 without Desktop support).
If you don’t review on those things, you’re missing part of the story of Windows 8. They all matter. I can only testify for two of those items: desktop and laptop (without a real trackpad). It’s not that great, but it’s not that bad. It’s not like, “Wow! This new Windows is so fantastic!” in the vein of Windows 7, but it’s not terrible like, “Ugh, my seven year old hardware is apparently not cut out for this new Windows…”.
We’ll see.
It’s been about a week since Argon was built and the last two major components have arrived.
The graphics card, the infamous GTX 670, is finally powering the computer. So, you wonder, is it amazing and does it meet the hype? Maybe. Guild Wars 2 isn’t a very graphics heavy game and while the GTX 670 does allow me to improve the settings from medium to either high or ultra, the game doesn’t look that much better. Other games would probably show the power of the GTX 670 off better, but I’m not really using it for that purpose right now. The multi-monitor setup was important to me, so the $80 between the 660Ti and the 670, I think this works great.
The Crucial M4 256GB SSD finally came in. It’s hosting the full RTM release of Windows 8 Professional. Sadly, it’s already using 50GB for NTFS formatting, Windows and basic applications. That shows that the right choice was getting the bigger albiet slightly more expensive drive.
So, how fast is an SSD? Windows can restart and get back into the start screen within ten seconds (assuming Windows doesn’t hang on an update before restart). Three days ago, we had a brief power outage and when I came back home, I turned Neon back on in the studio and Argon back on in the office. I sat down in front of Argon thereafter checking my mail in about ten seconds and about two minutes later, I heard the Windows 7 startup chime from the studio.
Windows 8 is a little strange. The taskbar is semi-transparent now, the window buttons (close, maximize and minimize) are treated as icons floating on the window’s menubar instead of being classically surrounded boxed buttons. On the classic Windows side, nothing is that much worse, and overall things looks fine. That said, there are still references to ancient imagery; disk defragment, permission keys and the worst probably of all, the horrible storage pies when viewing properties of folders. In fact, those ancient images from the verge of the century, I mean, Windows 2000, really make you wonder just how much of Windows was actually updated in each iteration. Did everyone honestly ignore the ten year icons? Seriously?
On the Metro front, the Windows key + [search] feature is reasonable — that’s the same functionality it presented in Windows 7, but there are problems with it. I would expect the search interface to search everything; if I search for windows update, I’d like it to show up, but unfortunately, updating Windows is under settings in Metro-search. It works fine for most programs too, but sadly, some programs also install uninstallers, and for some reason, the uninstaller will get listed before the actual application. I assume the application I saw this issue with had a name with a beginning letter that was after U in the alphabet, but I’m guessing. There’s not a great way to see all Applications installed — well, except for randomly right clicking on the start screen and clicking on a tiny little circular button in the bottom right corner. Since it’s related to Metro, the Charms bar. What is it? So except in the start screen and on the Windows desktop, it’s on the left, otherwise, it’s on the bottom (like Metro IE and Metro apps). It comes and goes on whim anytime when touching the right side of any monitor. Oh, right, monitors. Sometimes the start screen will appear on the left monitor, sometimes on the right, there doesn’t seem to be too much sense to it.
Metro’s tiles are strange too. They default to sitting there and because I did not opt to make a Microsoft account to be my sign to Windows, I see them but they literally are just blocks. Windows Mail app for example is unlike OSX’s Mail.app that can just log me into my email but not the entire computer. There are services I would like to use, but not all of them — I should be able to choose.
So that’s all for now. I haven’t switched Neon with Argon yet, but I’m almost there. Maybe another week or so.
Companies need to build drivers, developers need to test and ensure compatibility, and manufacturers need to figure out the best way for their hardware to support the new software. Plus, the Windows Store needs more and better apps if it’s going to be compelling from day one.
There are two ways this is currently being worked on. The first is (mostly) gamma correct blitting of text, which has just gone in. The second is that there is now in active development a DirectWrite backend, which will greatly improve the glyph rendering on Windows.
I am on my Mac for part of the day, but when I come back to Windows and view my beloved Nexus, I weep at Chrome’s atrocious rendering of the fonts I used.
I have been using the Windows 8 Consumer Preview since the launch at the end of February. To test more than just the regular Windows desktop, I’ve wanted to attempt using the built in applications like Mail and Calendar. Those two applications are of prime importance on my Android phone, so on Windows, I like to think they would be too.
The woes of Windows 8 Mail begin with the standardized login screen for all those Microsoft-metro apps.
This screen which insists on Microsoft credentials block some degree of my progress. Previously, I don’t think Live Mail needed any special accounts to the application. This has something to do with the new sync feature of Windows 8, where you can log in anywhere and everything will just be like it is at home. The screen prompts:
Sing in with a Microsoft account
Enter the Microsoft account you want to use with Mail, Calendar, People and Messaging.
Incidentally, I have an account I never use save for Live Messenger once in a blue moon. I don’t know what that password is by memory either since I use the wonderful LastPass – only the best security for email accounts, right? I open up the LastPass site editor via the vault and bring forth the details, and then copy right password right out like I do for other non-webapp apps on Windows.
Then back on the log in screen for Windows 8 Mail, I enter my Microsoft account username, which is of course is my email address, and then I go to the password box ready to paste in my very long and secure password. Except it does not paste. So I assume I waited too long and maybe it was cleared by LastPass for security reasons. I leave the metro side and copy the password again, and return, and try again. No difference.
It turns out that Windows 8 will keep the clipboard separate between the Windows 8 desktop and the Metro-interface. You know, to be secure and all – to prevent mischievous things from happening.
That’s ridiculous. In order to the use the Mail application on Windows 8, I need to have an intentionally short and memorable password just so I can log in a sync service I do not really intend on using. That’s absolutely unacceptable.
The Building Windows 8 blog details the changes to Explorer in Windows 8. Those changes have been met with criticism and much disdain.
Buttons, Buttons, Buttons!
I’m a power user. I use shortcuts as much as possible because they save time and relatively easy to remember. Actually, I can’t remember what shortcuts I use other than copy, cutting and pasting in Explorer. What else is there? There is no other purpose than to move files around either by copy or simply moving. I suppose it’s useful for opening files up too, but that doesn’t require any shortcuts.
I showed my mom today the new UI in Windows 8 for Explorer. She has used Office 2007 and Office 2010 at home, but uses 2003 at work. Here’s what she said:
Well, I don’t know what any of that means.
She can figure out how to move her pictures on her own, but only as long as that little pop up comes up when you plug in a USB camera. She gets confused with folders but generally manages well. When she needs to copy something, and I’ve seen her do this, she will not go to the menu but instead she will right click and hit copy. She had no reaction to the UI changes. I don’t know if this means it doesn’t matter until she uses it or if she doesn’t care how it looks.
But you know, when I showed her Word in Office 2007 the first time, she hated it. She liked her menus. She loved them. She protested slightly less with Office 2010 but still disliked it. In contrast, in Office, I think it makes sense to have the ribbon. Advanced tools are brought to the forefront. I always set paragraph styles via a context menu in Office 2010 but it’s also much easier to add page and column breaks in Office 2010 than it ever was in Office 2003.
Here’s a comment I wrote to someone on Google+ about this.
I like the ribbon in office. It exposes a lot of useful things buried in menus. The ribbon makes sense when there was no other way to get to the functionality, e.g. a context menu. I always change paragraph settings by high lighting my text, right clicking and then selecting the paragraph style settings. I have no idea how to do it from the ribbon because it doesn’t have anything to do with the ribbon, it’s based on context. On the other hand, there is no better way to insert different types of page or column breaks than by using the ribbon.
I almost feel like the ribbon makes more sense now that I have a Mac. OSX had right clicking, but it didn’t embrace it, instead there would be palettes, menus and buttons.
I like the idea of exposing functionality but all it needs is a cleaner presentation.
In two weeks, this will die down and nobody will care. That’s what Windows 8 will be like unless their is a massive overhaul; that won’t happen. I assume most Normal People™ will not care what it looks like. If a button says copy instead of right clicking, they will hit the button.
When I get a chance, I will ask some real Normal People™ what they think of these changes.
People like buttons.
Didn’t someone say 90% of people only use 10% of the features?
A couple of days ago I was away from home but I wanted to fetch a bunch of files from my server. I had ssh access so I quickly installed vsftp, a simple FTP server for Ubuntu Lucid. I would’ve used WinSCP and sftp but I wanted to try something new. What’s that, new?
I wasn’t expecting the Windows 7 FTP access manager to be down right ancient. It looks like it crawled out of Windows 2000. So what, ten years after the initial release of New Technology, we’re still using the same icons?
Look at those icons - Ancient
No, it’s not a big deal but I wanted to mention it because it’s out-of-place. And if something as subtle as the icons are out of date, what does that say about the code that powers these features? It could be just as old if not older. At least Windows realized it couldn’t log in with the first credentials I supplied.
I ran my Apple Keynote review two weeks ago but I still hadn’t gotten around to my first look at Windows 8 impressions from D9. There isn’t much to work on, but I’ll give it an honest shot. I’m going in order of the video that Microsoft shared.
To start, the new default UI is based on the current generation of Windows Phone 7 phones. The basic UI is built in blocks instead of Android and iOS’ icons. Unlike the original Metro-UI, the textual design has given way to discrete spaces. These tiles leverage two ideas that icons of old did not have: interaction and updating. Tiles can display information while not be used, but if they are tapped or clicked, they can do things in response to the user, not just opening the app itself. In addition, by using web technologies, these tiles can display more information than just is available locally. It’s more than just weather and twitter integration, it could be anything.
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Funny thing. I blog about Ubuntu all the time but I don’t have a category for Ubuntu. No, I have a category for Linux. I don’t have a catch-all category for crappy-closed-source-operating-systems either. No, I have one for Windows.
At home I use only 64-bit versions of Windows 7. At school, my laptop remains the original 32-bit install. Despite that, I use the 32-bit version of Java at home (and everywhere else) because it is just so easy to get.
However, the 64-bit version does offer some enhancements. On every computer I compare with, the x64 Java is always 30% faster. I think everyone agrees that Java needs to be faster. Only the 64-bit version of Java will work with the incredible x64 Eclipse.
Java.com’s explanation of whether or not to download the x64 version is kind of silly as it focuses on if you use Internet Explorer.
If you’re looking for the 64-bit version of the JRE or the 64-bit version of the JDK, you can find those at the Java SE Download page.
Of course, if you download either of the x64 Java packages, you’ll need to update your enviroment variables, probably. You may also want to checkout which version is right for you.