WinExtra - Latest Comments

Re: Moving up in the world – migrating from XP to Windows 7

StevenHodson — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 00:21:17 -0000

ROFL .. ya Arni I know the English is a little to over the top but I will keep looking for an posting better alternatives when they show up.

Re: Moving up in the world – migrating from XP to Windows 7

twitter-55703198 — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 00:15:33 -0000

I have been working with computers for 20 years now, and have a pretty decent grasp on the English language, but I am still having problems figuring all that stuff out, and understanding what it's supposed to be telling me. If this 'Migration Page' is supposed to be helpful to the average user, I fail to see how. In fact, I fail to see how it could be helpful to anyone, really.
I guess I'll just go the normal and far simpler route... I'll install 7 and see if it works or not :D

Re: RibbonBar mimicry from OpenOffice – too funny

Otto4242 — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 20:56:30 -0000

I don't get it. Those look nothing alike.

Re: RibbonBar mimicry from OpenOffice – too funny

pb — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 20:22:32 -0000

I think the ribbon *is* more efficient, it was a surprise to me when it showed up, and the learning curve was very short but rather steep. In my case it also coincided with a rapidly approaching deadline, an almost finished report and a quick switch to a computer using the new office.

Re: RibbonBar mimicry from OpenOffice – too funny

rickmahn — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 19:50:45 -0000

Huh, strange. While I didn't mind the ribbon much when I moved to Office 2007, I *do* find it very curious that OpenOffice would copy such a feature. Kinda upsetting in a way as I always found OpenOffice to be the essence of knowledge worker tools - all the things you needed, but not much of the stuff you didn't.

Re: That Microsoft Store – well it apparently has a logo

Pierre — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 04:04:00 -0000

They forgot food and drink... ;))

Re: Family Pack Pricing: The only Windows 7 price I care about

felix — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 08:40:06 -0000

Steve, don't you understand? Those DVDs are a limited resource, Microsoft can't just make as many as they want of them. Jeez.

Re: [Win7 Tip] Change font size in Sticky Notes

yel — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 04:07:41 -0000

Thanks for the tip. It made me test a little more
On (swiss) german keyboard it's Ctrl-Shift and ';' or ':'

Here are some more:
Ctrl-Shift +
'L' Lists (multiple forms!)
'A' Capitalize

Ctrl +
'c' copy
'v' paste
'x' cut
'z' undo
'a' select all
'r' right align
'e' center align
'l' left align
'b' Bold
'i' italic
't' strike through
'u' underlign
'1' single line space
'2' double line space
'5' 1.5 line space

it's getting really usefull ;-)

Re: A sampling of 24 great looking themes for Vista

twitter-55703198 — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 02:12:56 -0000

May be a dumb question here, but would a Vista theme install on 7? (directly and without some modifications)

Re: Family Pack Pricing: The only Windows 7 price I care about

twitter-55703198 — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 01:03:56 -0000

Well thanks for clarifying that for me. I had figured that XP Mode was just the normal Win98 Compatibility Mode thingie that's been in XP and Vista for ages.
However, having played with the Virtual XP thingie in W7, and since I run a number of programs at work that do not work in 7 (or 64bit, or both), and thus work with the same programs at home, I'll have to stick with my original comment... *I* couldn't live without the XP Mode. But I bet most normal users could live just fine without it. :)

Re: Family Pack Pricing: The only Windows 7 price I care about

StevenHodson — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 09:42:11 -0000

I think you might have the wrong idea about XP Mode thing Arni :) The only thing that XP Mode does is let you run a virtual copy of XP. which you can do without having to hand over any extra money - especially if you already have a licensed copy.

give these a read for a bit of a better understanding - http://wildermuth.com/2009/07/25/Windows_7_-_XP...

http://lifehacker.com/5245396/set-up-and-use-xp...

Personally I see very many cases outside of business where this would be a requirement that can not be filled by downloading Virtual PC from Microsoft and using your already licensed copy of XP.

Re: Microsoft changes mind over browserless Windows 7 release

muhammadkashif — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 06:33:56 -0000

i love the new technology

Re: Let’s look at Windows 7 as a fresh start

StevenHodson — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 00:56:15 -0000

interesting point of view but I think that once Microsoft has stabilized itself around Windows 7 we'll start seeing some innovation in future versions of Windows. However I would point out that has been doing some pretty interesting stuff as evidenced by things like PhotoSynth and Seadragon. Even their browser could be looking at some real improvement if the work on Gazelle is any indication.

I wouldn't count Microsoft out just yet when it comes to innovation or quality - they've just needed to find their feet again and I think Windows 7 has done that.

Re: Family Pack Pricing: The only Windows 7 price I care about

twitter-55703198 — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 00:54:40 -0000

As much as I might agree with you that the Home version should be enough, losing the XP compatibility mode might get annoying quickly.

Re: Let’s look at Windows 7 as a fresh start

StevenHodson — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 00:49:19 -0000

just a quick note about Media Player 12 - this is another thing that has seen some real improvement over past versions. It takes up a much smaller resource footprint than previous version. WMP has alway been a resource hog so it was nice to see this big improvement.

Re: Let’s look at Windows 7 as a fresh start

StevenHodson — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 00:40:26 -0000

On the surface there may not seem like much of a reason to move to Win7 but there are some definite reasons under the hood to make the move. Win7 is a smaller tighter code base than than Vista and the driver support is the best I have seen with any Windows release. I remember with Vista that both nVidia and ATI driver support was terrible. With Win7 both of them have been right there since the earliest beta with video driver support. I also think that when it comes the 'eye candy' Win7 is a vast improvement over Vista.

Unlike Vista I would heartily recommend Win7 as a viable upgrade for the operating system.

Re: Let’s look at Windows 7 as a fresh start

pb — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 21:40:38 -0000

Strangely enough, our household used to swear by XP, and now there isn't a single XP machine in our house, and life is honestly much simpler.

My wife got a new desktop at almost the exact same time they released the W7 beta, so it was a logical candidate, particularly since she was running win2k before that. She seems really happy with w7. My main leisure desktop that is used mostly for web email & multimedia etc, was an XP box, that ran into several issues, that i could never resolve. I'm now using a variant of linux for these tasks, and have done so since a few months before the w7 beta was released. Thanks to synaptic, and a helpful Open source community, life is a whole lot easier.

I have a laptop that ran vista, and had been toying with moving it to either W7 or Linux. I recently loaded W7 for one primary reason - Media player 12. That is the only UpnP media server I have been able to find that just works with my new TV, the setup hassles I was having with vista and some of the 3rd party apps, meant that after a lot of research I stopped with the first one that worked.

The other great thing is al of the games that used to work ok on XP and then refused to run on vista now work again on W7.

I think most Joe/Jane computer users are likely to be using vista rather XP as they will have gotten their computer at a discount from a big box retailer using easy credit with vista bundled and will come by w7 the same way.

For me, if w7 had been more of the same vista retardedness, I would have continued with linux. If my wife had disliked w7 i would have tried getting her to install linux - (I had already convinced her to give it a try when the w7 beta was released while the new desktop was being shipped).

The challenge for me now, is that up until now, the price of running w7 RC has been the same as running Linux, with a similar ease of use. I am prepared to bear a reasonable cost to use w7, as it is a really good OS, but if the cost becomes unreasonable (after all the laptop is simply an upgrade from a Vista home premium), then I'm likely to continue with linux.

I am actually amazed at how easy life is since changing to these 2 OSes

Re: Let’s look at Windows 7 as a fresh start

zota — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 13:21:11 -0000

The central problem that John pointed out is that although Microsoft may know they've screwed up, in response they've completely surrendered quality and innovation. Marketing Windows as "crap you buy when you can't afford something good" does not look like the path back to market dominance.

As a dedicated Mac user, I find this especially upsetting. Where Apple is one among other options (hardware, OS), they offer many excellent reasons to choose their tools. Where they have managed to dominate the market (iPod, iTunes, App store) Apple is a pushy, closed, unresponsive bully.

If Microsoft is now done with giving people reasons to actively choose Windows (aside from "cheaply made hardware") then I'm selfishly afraid of what it's going to do to Apple...

Re: Let’s look at Windows 7 as a fresh start

Pa_2 — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 09:43:30 -0000

This is a serious question, "What compelling reason(s) does a Joe/Jane Average XP user have to upgrade to Windows 7?" Aside from the 'Microsoft will discontinue supporting XP' concern I have difficulty recognizing a clear benefit from upgrading. (I will acknowledge the "Eye-candy" value of W7 which has always been a driving force in the PC world.)

Re: [Win7 Tip] Change font size in Sticky Notes

Anthon — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 02:15:52 -0000

You can also use ctrl+mouse scroll up/down to change the font size for the whole note.

Re: The workings behind that Microsoft 2019 video

twitter-20791486 — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 15:28:36 -0000

Just testing out the Discus system via Twitter.

Re: Starting the road back

empoprises — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 12:01:47 -0000

I probably could have used your expertise last week, when my two-month old computer suddenly starting doing strange things and running really slow. The problem turned out to be a hard disk failure, but Costco's Concierge service (I bought the computer at Costco) and Hewlett-Packard are working on replacing the defective drive.

By the time that I encountered WinExtra, it had already strayed from its original roots. I obviously enjoyed what I read, and continue to subscribe to Shooting at Bubbles, but I look forward to the relaunch of WinExtra. With the forthcoming release of Windows 7, and the continued emergence of netbook solutions, there's obviously a lot to cover in the Windows arena.

Re: Hello world!

StevenHodson — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 14:36:59 -0000

call it a bit of a return to my roots but with a lot more of a targeted approach. It's still a few days away from getting into place but since you've already found out keep in touch to see what is coming down the pipeline here.

Re: Hello world!

jezarnold — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 04:58:20 -0000

oooh..... new blog! Whats going on here then??