Windows 8

Adebisi_sl said:

Adebisi wants to change some network settings

Opens Charms
Clicks Settings
Clicks Network

Wtf Windows 8... there are no Network settings here! Just "Network Connected".

Way to go, W8.

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Stop doing things in metro ui or whatever. Use it like windows 7 and all your win 8 problems go away.

Hint - right click bottom left corner.

Adebisi_sl said:

Is this Microsoft's official response?

Buy W8 but don't use it like W7?

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Doubtful I imagine they want everyone to use Metro so their tablet & phone interfaces are familiar.

I dual screen in Win 8 - extend.
What do you guys do if in full screen a game-app-whatever freezes and does not close down properly / stays in front? Usually I'd open the task manager and kill it, but I can't seem to bring the task manager up on my non-primary screen if it was closed on primary last. It opens fine, but always on the screen it was closed last. If the task manager is opening on the same screen as the frozen app it stays behind said frozen app and is useless to me. I can ctrl+alt+del to bring log off screen to the front, select log off and thus kill everything, sure. I just want Task Manager to always be brought to the front like it used to like it used to in previous windoze versions

Suggestions?

EDIT:
This guy noted the same thing. I'll try to put 'always on top' on, though I don't recall it being in ticked in previous versions of windoze.
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2292785

I finally went mint full time, though I'd recently realised I never play PC games anymore and 99% of the stuff I do is in a browser so it might not be for everyone.

When's 8.1 coming out? Supposed to make Metro fuck off

Windows 8 became much more enjoyable when I started using Start8 and ModernMix from Stardock. ModernMix lets you run Metro apps in a window.

Lenas_sl said:

What, you don't think there are ANY worthwhile applications in the Microsoft Store? That's being a little harsh, some of them are good.

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The main problem is that I completely avoid metro as soon as I turn on my PC. The Microsoft Store might as well not exist if it can't run on the desktop. I haven't looked at it since the day I installed W8.

Alkorin_sl said:

Didn't say that. I said that I don't see why I'd need any of them, probably because I've never bothered to look. Can you point me at a few good ones?

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The apps I use are the Kindle app, messaging App, the mail app, the people app, and the NBC News app. So not that many, but I haven't looked at the store very hard. I also have a couple of the games installed.

Mostly the apps are nice because they run invisibly in the background (if you set them to) and drop HUD elements while I am using the desktop. Sure you can get some of that functionality by installing things on the desktop, but I like my desktop to be clean and having these things running as Windows 8 Apps keeps them out of the way until I need them. The Kindle app is nicer to use than the desktop version I think, so I prefer using that as well.

The quality of the apps varies significantly, and as far as I can tell most of them don't use a fraction of the features. The NBC News app does a decent job showing what you can make, although it is a little buggy. The Video player is nice, and you can pin individual elements directly to the start menu. So, if you want to watch, say, "All In" you just pin it to the menu and it opens directly into that show with the video player and starts. It is faster and easier than using their website. It also has news pop-ups you can turn on and off. Plus the lives tiles look nice. I dropped them some feedback a while ago and they actually sent me an email back, and implemented my suggestions (although I think they were going to anyway).

At a higher level the apps useful in ways tablets are useful, i.e. they are really good for things you consume, but less so for a work multi-tasking enviroment. So while the email app is great for quickly checking all your email accounts, or being updated when one arrives (you can pin accounts separately), heavy lifting is usually better done in the web-mail version. This might change as better applications are developed and features are added to the OS.

The things I would like to see that might make me work in it more are better tiling and really an increase in app quality. Most of the times, as far as I can tell, when there are problems it is at the application level, which is kind of expected since it is a new development environment. I don't know how easy or difficult it is to develop for, so it might be a Win8 issue as well.

I use Winsplit on my desktop and generally dock windows in the 4 corners so I am looking forward to that functionality for apps. I would also like a built in way to manage how traditional program icons look, I use Oblytile but the functionality really should be built into windows.

Anyway... those are my rambly incoherent thoughts. Overall I like the OS and think there is a lot of potential in it.