Windows 8 Release Preview

0
12 years
by in General

Considering Microsoft have now announced Windows 8 will be released in October, I figure it’s high time I actually try using Windows 8 as an everyday machine.

To give it the best chance, I’ve put it on an SSD (only a 60GB OCZ Vertex Plus but it does the job) on my Dell XPS M1530 laptop.

So to use it as a main OS I figure I will need all the usual apps I use, again to be fair I installed most of the apps I use in Windows 7 regularly.
Thus far I have Microsoft Office 2013 preview, Thunderbird, Adobe CS6 Design and Web Premium, Firefox, Winamp and a few other knick-knacks.

All installed without issue and none of then needed any compatibility options, which wasn’t really a surprise considering Windows 8 is relatively unchanged on the normal desktop side of things.

The new Office installer was really weird in that you can actually start using it before it’s finished; somehow it streams in the files it needs whilst it’s running.

Adobe CS6 installed without a hitch and it works as intended. Ive done some basic image editing in Photoshop and HTML editing in Dreamweaver, all seems to be working as it did in Windows 7.

On the Windows side of things, frankly, I cannot stand the new Metro interface. I’ve tried and tried over again to get used to it, but I’m pretty sure it will never happen.
It’s clunky, it’s discontinuous, unintuitive, and VERY confusing!

I understand that we have more than 15 years of the ‘Start’ button and menu to overcome, but I’m pretty sure this goes beyond that. It’s just sheer lunacy in my opinion; Metro doesn’t make sense!

The worst ‘feature’ of Windows 8 is the Shutdown menu, or lack thereof. It still takes me more than 10 seconds to figure it out. In the end I found it easier to simply ALT-F4 everything until the Shutdown menu appears

Other than that there are a few nice things such as

  • the much more detailed file transfer dialog
  • The task manager is much more detailed
    • It now includes network and disk i/o per app
    • It has startup apps included now (instead of in msconfig)

Fix for 7MC Blackcreen on Skip – Disable MHEG

0
12 years
by in General

Having issues with Windows Media Center fading to black and then sometimes not recovering. Well apparently it’s caused by the MHEG (whatever that is). Kill it with the fix below and enjoy skipping back/forward to your hearts content!

Simply delete these 2 reg keys and reboot to fix the issue:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Extensibility\Entry Points\{7e7a8710-9e4a-40a3-824a-7b0baf38abcf}][HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Extensibility\Applications\{a0cd8951-e5b6-4662-9c9c-d56c5b38ca59}]

Found it here http://experts.windows.com/frms/windows_entertainment_and_connected_home/f/114/p/88321/451286.aspx#451286

Android Ringtones, notifications, alarms; all gone?

1
12 years
by in android, mobile

Just a quick post before I forget,
I noticed this morning my Galaxy Nexus got a notification, and the sound it made was like a little bell which I had never heard before.
Turns out, after a quick check in the ‘Sounds’ menu within the settings app, that the only sound file I had was ‘Silent’.
I’m not sure how long this has been happening, I had missed 2 calls and 3 messages before I noticed, so I think it must’ve happened after I (Un)installed something or maybe it was something else; I haven’t updated my ROM/Google Apps for nearly a week, so I don’t think it was something I’ve flashed.

Anyways, a quick Google gave me nothing, mainly because Google wasn’t working at the time (yay for Optus! what excellent service). But I figured I was dealing with a permissions problem, so I fired up Rom Manager, hit ‘Fix Permissions’ (of course you could always use the same feature in Recovery), and rebooted.

From then on, no problems.

Hope this is helpful,
Derryn

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