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-UE
Hello there, Windows 8.1.
1. Oh gosh why do you have all these apps preinstalled it's like i have to uninstall fifty things before I can get started here
2. Why do computers these days default to having the function keys do strange things? The number of times I need to work with projector settings or even adjust my computer speaker volume is far dwarfed by the number of times I use Alt+F4 to close a window, or even F12 to take a screenshot in Steam.
3. Touchscreen's "hold to bring up context menu" is wonky. When I let go, apparently the context menu SHOULD stay, but it often doesn't.
4. WHY CAN'T I RIGHT CLICK YOU TO UNINSTALL YOU, GROUPON.
5. Why can't I seem to right-click ANYTHING in the new start menu? I just want to bring up context menus so I can get rid of these things. I can find a use for this newfangled start menu but I want to fill it with things I ACTUALLY WANT TO USE. And that means cleaning up this junk first.
Comments
One good thing so far: the context menus have a letter underlined by default (i.e. the keyboard shortcut letter). I had to purposely enable this in Win7 but it seems they brought this back.
Okay, what is this Digital Pass thing?
How can I decide whether it's useful to me when I can't even get a competent Google search result on what it even is? Is it a Windows thing? a Toshiba thing? a 3rd-party thing?
Windows 8.1 no longer has the Classic style taskbar as an option in the themes. I guess I'll have to hunt that down myself.
The Function keys thing turns out, again (as my past experience has told me), to be a setting actually in the BIOS, not Windows itself. Well, that's fixed now.
Now to figure out how to boot to the login screen, rather than to the lock screen. Lock screen looks cool and all but I have to swipe it...and then I have to touch the password entry box.
Also, not a Win8 issue, but the new touchpad has a continuous surface that's clickable at the bottom. It is kinda better (larger surface for movement and fewer places to ), but instead it treats my finger moving on the clickable portion as part of the movement. Why? I should just have it establish a virtual "deadzone" at the bottom where I can move my fingers all over with no response. Especially important in the case of scrolling left/right using edge scrolling, since there's no more edge now. Maybe I could use the top edge...?
Regarding apps: I guess they are sort of a good idea. I mean, the old paradigm was programs that you install. They go somewhere on your hard drive, and then there's a shortcut in your Start Menu for them. Now, instead, there are apps that you install, they go somewhere on your hard drive, and there's a shortcut in your Start Menu for them, but the process is even more automated than before. You just install and only see the user interface end of things, rather than anything below the hood ("C:\Program Files"? what's that?).
Would be nice if it could basically quarantine their installations but this just leads me to more questions about what exactly are they doing when they are installed -- where are the files, and where do I go if I need to mess with stuff under-the-hood.
Ideally, I'd like the Start Menu to be filled only with those few applications I really use often. And it'd better be worth my effort to move my hand over to the screen to touch something. Yeah, it's nifty with novelty value, but once that wears off after a month or two, it'll only take more time for me to swipe over to and then touch my desired application.
Honestly, replacing this whole start menu nonsense with the original one -- and simply making things touchable -- sounds like a great idea.
An even better idea would be to totally customize the start menu so that everything is within a few keystrokes of opening the menu...
I had to go to the Control Panel to figure out that this is a Toshiba thing.
Then I had to look in the trademark filing just to figure out what it's supposed to do: http://trademarks.justia.com/862/23/digital-86223465.html
Digital entertainment media provider app thing, basically.
> swipe in charms bar
Devices
Play / Print / Project
Why is Play different from Project?
And why can Play only be done in an app?
> Music (app)
Hmm, is this my Music folder?
> Welcome to Xbox Music
nopenopenopenopenopenopenopenopenopenopenopenope
One problem with the Winkey bringing up a touchscreen-oriented start menu is that the Winkey is located on the line furthest from the screen.
Yeah, I'm pretty happy I decided to go for 7 again.
"Project" is the settings for enabling a second monitor, e.g. a projector
They decided to call it "project" and not something more descriptive because they chose alliteration over clarity.
Correction: Once I swipe I don't have to touch the password entry box.
Also, it apparently takes one keystroke to auto-swipe it. So I don't need to swipe it at all. That's much more like it.
Now to figure out how to customize both of these screens. A fun activity might be to feature an anime character background on the password entry screen...so that people who are observant enough will see it, and only for like two seconds.
To be fair, the bunch of preinstalled shit happens on 7 too...just that I know better how to deal with it in 7 than I do here.
Usually annoying preinstalled stuff come from the PC vendor. There isn't much aside from Internet Explorer if you get it directly from Microsoft (as I did), on 7 at least.
> attempt to uninstall games
> brings me to Control Panel installed programs list
> no entry for them, or for WildTangent anymore (since I uninstalled that)
In other news, it seems I accidentally uninstalled the Calendar and Mail apps. Oh well.
OH GOSH WHY DOES THE CALCULATOR APP TAKE UP THE ENTIRE SCREEN FOR A FOURBANGER
Re underlined letters in context menu: actually, it's still off by default in Win 8.1.
However, it can be easily enabled in the Ease of Access thingy in the Control Panel.
Also, I just installed some foreign language packs. I hope using them doesn't require a restart or someshit.
Uh-oh. New system font is actually sans-serif for everything...including capital letter I.
Seems like Classic Shell is solving a lot of problems. I even have a Start Menu again!
Okay, Metapad's installed now, as is 7-zip and 7+ Taskbar Tweaker.
lol metroRe calculator: it's still there, just hidden. I uninstalled the Win8 calculator and went with the old calculator.exe.
The touchpad issue is probably a function of it's all being one touch panel rather than having two buttons: when I don't lift my movement finger, and simply hit right-click with my thumb, it registers that as a left-click. I'll have to figure out how to turn this behavior off.
The default Win8 theme suffers from a major appearance flaw: it uses the same color for window titlebars as it does for the taskbar. BUT...if you choose to have taskbar buttons labeled with text names, that text is white, while the window titlebar text is black.
So you need to pick out a color that works as backing for both black AND white text. Needless to say, this is rather difficult, and the default pastel-style colors just end up making the whole experience far too brightly-colored.
Some people have recommended the UX Theme Multi-Patcher ( http://www.windowsxlive.net/uxtheme-multi-patcher/ ) or UXStyle. This apparently disallows some styling that Windows prohibits by default, for some reason. For example:
It links to this theme: http://mrgrim01.deviantart.com/art/Windows-8-Default-Style-327107030
Well, I tried installing that theme without using UXStyle. Or, technically, I used the UXTheme Multi-Patch, then restored it (using the same prog, which it says it does), and then I installed that theme.
It apparently broke Aero so now I have a non-transparent taskbar. However, the names are now black text. So I still win.
Nifty little realization with Windows 8:
Re touchpad:
Actually, the rightclick works fine if I just have another finger set on the movement area.
When it DOESN'T work fine is if I haven't yet lifted my finger from the movement area before clicking. So if I just move my index finger to an icon, leave my index finger sitting there, then right-click, it becomes a left-click.
There are a couple other changes too:
Top row is the version included with Windows Vista (2006), bottom one is Windows 8 (2012).
Oh my gosh, I can't see anything on this Task Manager.
Hit More Details, see ALL the things
My new laptop should be arriving tomorrow. It has Win8, so I'll probably be postin' my initial reactions here.
^
^^ Oh, I see.
Anyway, the following is why every program should keep all its settings within its own folder.
I just copied my foobar2000 folder from Win7 to Win8.1.
Opening foobar2000, I find that nothing has changed. Which is how it should be. All my settings, customization in positioning features, even my last-played playlist...are all still there.
Why can't other programs do the same thing?
So that you can have multiple users that use the same program with different settings. Also in general Windows is very overprotective of the Program Files folder where everything gets installed by default.
> multiple users
You have a point, I guess. I forgot about that.
Also, there are instructions on changing the default system fonts on the internet.
They don't work. Even with a full restart (i.e. shift + shutdown).