How about typing a keyword instead of an app name? Example: "Photo" on my Windows 7 computer brings up all of the Adobe apps plus all the Microsoft apps installed. Just a thought.

Mike Poz

vitalijs.vaznais wrote:

but after 2 weeks in Win8 I found that I spend more time just to start programs and do daily work

Why? In Windows 8 if you know the name of the app, you hit the Windows key and start typing, just like in the old start menu it will do a search and the more letters you type, the smaller the list gets. Or you could just re-arrange the start screen to put your most used apps in the left most groups as described in this article: Organize Tiles into Groups on the Metro Start Screen in Windows 8[^] Or you could add stuff to the Windows + X menu: How to Add Items to the New Win+X Menu in Windows 8[^] There are lots of additional ways to customize it to make it more easy for you to use, just poke through some of the articles here: The Best Articles for Using and Customizing Windows 8[^] Hope this helps!

Mike Poz

Andrew Leeder wrote:

Sadly Apple have done exactly that...

They have but they haven't. Hear me out before you vote me a 1. Apple says they have an update for existing phones to the new OS but the problem is that all the functionality of the new OS doesn't come with the update, yet it's called a "full update" by older iPhone owners, it's just that the hardware doesn't support the functionality and so they're happy. Microsoft has decided to have a 4.8 update to give SOME of the features and functionality of WP8 to WP7 hardware owners but they're not calling it WP8. Basically it's amounts to being the same thing as what Apple does for older hardware, it's just that Microsoft is calling it what it is, an OS where you won't get all the functionality unless you buy the new hardware that supports it. In the real world it's called "marketing", Apple does the little lie (telling everyone it's the same OS but that older phones won't support all the functionality) and gets rave reviews and pats on the back, Microsoft calls a spade a spade and gets panned for it by the tech reviewers, Apple faithful and the Android supporters (who rarely, if ever, get upgrades provided by their carrier).

Mike Poz

atbennett wrote:

Microsoft and its partners would implement Secure Boot

Microsoft only says that Secure Boot has to be enabled for Windows 8 systems. They're not legally allowed to tell OEMs (Dell, HP, etc.) that they *cannot* put a Linux certificate in the UEFI implementation. That said, Microsoft is under no legal obligation to tell OEMs that they MUST support Linux in the UEFI. At least they're not in the US, the EU/EC may be another matter but won't be decided until after Windows 8 systems are generally available in the EU, and even then, it's the OEMs, not Microsoft that does the implementation.

Mike Poz

Marc Clifton wrote:

Which of course will mean I will either have to move the mouse across potentially two monitors depending on which "corner" I want, or, worse, have to precisely navigate the mouse to the hotspot on the central monitor.

Or you could just press the Windows key on your keyboard.

Marc Clifton wrote:

WTF. "telemetry data"? As in, "user feedback?" What am I, I f***ing machine? X|

SQM data (also known as CEIP[^]. :-D

Mike Poz

ihoecken wrote:

The most hideous tablet I ever saw.

My wife thinks it's gorgeous and cannot wait to get one. And she uses an iPad, a Macbook Air and an iPhone. She's also Japanese and if you've ever been to Japan, you would know that they value beautiful things. So beauty really is in the eye of the beholder, and honestly, I think my wife sees clearly. But that might be my bias speaking.

ihoecken wrote:

I, as a user of Indesign, Premiere and Visual Studio, like to have many tools on my screen. 16:9 for the remaining movie frame isn't possible, when you place toolbars there.

BTW, the notebook I'm typing this on has a 16:9 ratio screen (1920 x 1080) and I write code on it all the time. P.S. Sorry for the multiple edits, I moved the wrong quote the first time.

Mike Poz

RafagaX wrote:

Good luck with that (and with trying to put the cursor exactly after the variable you want to delete).

Have you used a Windows Phone 7.5 device yet? If not, it's acutally very easy, just tap and hold, then when the text cursor appears about a second later, drag it to where you want it. It would be incredibly surprising if they didn't do the same thing for this.

Mike Poz

Dan Mos wrote:

e "...the Intel inside" one should be able to port win 7 apps.

By port do you mean new lipstick on an existing x86/x64 app to make it appear Metro style (which is basically a new UI but no functional code changes) or are you talking a true Metro app (which means an app re-write and so would work on either ARM or Intel)?

Mike Poz

Kevin McFarlane wrote:

But I suspect Apple customers are quite sticky and will continue to buy iPads in their tens of millions.

Some will, some won't. My wife (who uses an Apple Airbook, an iPad, an iPhones, etc.) saw the Surface demo, the form factor, etc. and said flat out that she wants one. No questions, no qualifications. Just flat out "I want one!" and yes, the exclamation point is there to indicate the tone in which she said it. And she's already picked out a cover/keyboard color. Then there are the ABMers who feel that because it says Microsoft on it it *MUST* be substandard and is to not only be avoided, but MUST be ridiculed.

Mike Poz

Sadly there are tools like ReSharper that are required use in some shops that nag you to death about using "var" in place of strongly typed declarations. Yes, I turn off that in my settings but some other developer will come behind me and change all my code in my tools to use "var" everywhere. I'd love to meet the person who created that rule in ReSharper and punch them in the face. Seriously.

Mike Poz

Your first sentence in your first comment says this: "The few times I've tried this I couldn't reliably or consistently get more than an 800x600 screen res. I managed to get a higher res once, but I couldn't get it to come back on reboot of the VM. " I didn't realize you hijacked the thread to be an XP Mode on Virtual PC specific question. I thought you were trying to do what the original thread writer is asking about (using a virtual system for Linux/Windows and which to make the host/guest). That said: I gave up on Virtual PC a long time ago as, while it does have tight integration for XP mode support, it's darned near useless for anything else.

Mike Poz

TNCaver wrote:

The few times I've tried this I couldn't reliably or consistently get more than an 800x600 screen res

Did you install the guest additions (for VirtualBox) or VMWare Tools (for VMWare)? You need to install those to get cool functionality like mouse capture and auto-resize of the desktop.

Mike Poz

I didn't say you said paint.net was crap. You said this:

Quote:

But, as of 2011, Windows apps suck monkey balls[^]. We'll see if MS can reverse this trend with WinRT/Metro.

That was a dig on Windows apps in general, not against purchase/download sites. The hyperlink in your statement pointed to an article about purchase/download sites as justification for your statement that windows apps suck monkey balls. I'm not arguing against the link's statement that sites like that suck monkey balls, they absolutely do. I'm arguing against your base statement that the *apps* suck monkey balls, which is what your sentence actually says. I'll admit that many apps do suck, but many are actually quite good, but you made a blanket statement about apps, not app purchasing websites.

Mike Poz

Actually what average home usrs prefer is cheap/free alternatives over full desktop apps and app suites. It's purely financial in nature where "ok is good enough" for many. There is definitely a place for it, but there's also definitely a place for full desktop apps/desktop suites when it comes to Office style products.

Mike Poz

Wow, I can't believe that you pointed at a poorly created site to get an app and how they've got all kinds of crap as a dig on actual Windows apps themselves. I've never seen a poorer example of how to make your point. Just because some idiot made a website with 85 download links, only one of which actually get you to paint.net application doesn't mean that the paint.net Windows app is crap, it means the person who created the website is crap. Apples and oranges man, apples and oranges.

Mike Poz

Quote:

public delegate Lambda Lambda(Lambda x);

Obviously this was written by a tri-lam nerd during the "Revenge" period of movies... :)

Mike Poz

From the VirtualBox help file: 3.9. Serial ports VirtualBox fully supports virtual serial ports in a virtual machine in an easy-to-use manner.[16] Ever since the original IBM PC, personal computers have been equipped with one or two serial ports (also called COM ports by DOS and Windows). Serial ports were commonly used with modems, and some computer mice used to be connected to serial ports before USB became commonplace. While serial ports are no longer as ubiquitous as they used to be, there are still some important uses left for them. For example, serial ports can be used to set up a primitive network over a null-modem cable, in case Ethernet is not available. Also, serial ports are indispensable for system programmers needing to do kernel debugging, since kernel debugging software usually interacts with developers over a serial port. With virtual serial ports, system programmers can do kernel debugging on a virtual machine instead of needing a real computer to connect to. If a virtual serial port is enabled, the guest operating system sees a standard 16550A compatible UART device. Both receiving and transmitting data is supported. How this virtual serial port is then connected to the host is configurable, and the details depend on your host operating system. You can use either the graphical user interface or the command-line VBoxManage tool to set up virtual serial ports. For the latter, please refer to Section 8.7, “VBoxManage modifyvm”; in that section, look for the --uart and --uartmode options. In either case, you can configure up to two virtual serial ports per virtual machine. For each such device, you will need to determine what kind of serial port the virtual machine should see by selecting an I/O base address and interrupt (IRQ). For these, we recommend to use the traditional values[17], which are: COM1: I/O base 0x3F8, IRQ 4 COM2: I/O base 0x2F8, IRQ 3 COM3: I/O base 0x3E8, IRQ 4 COM4: I/O base 0x2E8, IRQ 3 Then, you will need to determine what this virtual port should be connected to. For each virtual serial port, you have the following options: You can elect to have the virtual serial port "disconnected", which means that the guest will see the device, but it will behave as if no cable had been connected to it. You can connect the virtual serial port to a physical serial port on your host. (On a Windows host, this will be a name like COM1; on Linux or Solaris hosts, it will be a device node like /dev/ttyS0). VirtualBox will then simply redirect all data r

.jpg wrote:

learning to 'not having permission' to do everything to your system at all time is actually a good thing.

You *couldn't* do that in Windows or you CHOSE to not do that in Windows? Since Windows 2000, the person setting up the accounts has had the option of making any account a "Standard User" which doesn't have "root" access. It's how I run my Windows boxes and you know what the learning curve was? Just a hair above zero. Oh, sure I had to learn how to do "runas administrator" but that's pretty close to linux's "sudo" and there were poorly written applications that *had* to have administrator access but those, for the large part, are now gone. And for the record, I've run both Ubuntu and CentOS, and I prefer CentOS over Ubuntu, but I prefer Windows over CentOS. Mac OS X is dead last in my list (but I also run that).

Mike Poz

You can minimize the ribbon by clicking the "carat" button (the upside down v) at the right end of the ribbon and this will "autohide" the ribbon contents. Clicking on what remains will show the ribbon for use but otherwise, give you more room in the list view.

Mike Poz

Or a straight up registry hack if you don't mind playing there: Navigate to "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer" Change "RPEnabled" DWORD Value data to 0, and click OK.

Mike Poz