There are always going to be situations when you don't have net access for whatever reason and at that point the completely online solutions like Chromebook become a useless paperweight.
Their comes a point when improvements are made for improvements sake and are just used as a way to generate cash.
Microsoft Office is a case in point - office 97 was and is perfectly usable for any of todays office task's ( i'm not including outlook in this ). Word and Excel certainly haven't been 'improved' by any of the later revisions.The basic function remains the same.
Their comes a point when improvements are made for improvements sake and are just used as a way to generate cash.
Microsoft Office is a case in point - office 97 was and is perfectly usable for any of todays office task's ( i'm not including outlook in this ). Word and Excel certainly haven't been 'improved' by any of the later revisions.The basic function remains the same.
Although, I hated the new ribbon, it does allow me to stylise documents with more ease. So now I can put together very well styled and consistent reports with properly headed sections, figures, and tables very quickly. All those features were in previous versions like 97, but they are much easier to use.
However, all these iterations of word and they still have not fixed the bug in image positioning. However I don;t like as much the new versions of Excell all the handy wizards have gone. I mean why did they take the chart wizard away.
But that's also what's deeply frustrating about it, because it just doesn't improve in any notable sense either. Similar problem with the iPhone, which is looking increasingly less interesting as the new versions become an increasingly minor variation on the original, a fact reflected in the decline in sales.
Well here I post from my shiny new Windows 8 Installation.
It was a bit of a bitch to set up:
Initially it would not see the partition I had created on a new drive. I tried all sorts, three partitions, two partitions, one partition, still no joy. I removed all other drives. Still no joy. I removed all partitions and then tried to get the installer to create a partition. No joy. So I removed all other drives, got the installer to create one 600gb partition on the drive, but before proceeding further shut the computer down, connected all other drives up, and re-started the install process. That way W8 has a chance of seeing the other partitions and Windows so it may quadruple boot with them. Eventually after all this installation began.
Then, during the installation it messed up the DMA pool during a reboot and hung there. Then when I removed the W8 Sata drive and booted W7, then put the W8 drive back in and it booted properly into the w8 drive to continue the install.
Then on readying devices phase , it hung at 95%. Until I switched of my USB printer.
Then it installed. It seems to have worked ok, except that like Windows 7, it would not take my Wirelsss Adapter card due to the drivers not being signed. It's really annoying that as once you override the 64 bit version driver signing they work without error. Annoying huh.
Still it looks pretty, but as ususal things are now in even more illogical places than they were in Vista and W7. For example, the control panel how would one get to that. Well not though the settings charm option oh no, but though the search option??!!? WFT. How would one get to the device manager. Through the charm option labelled devices? Nope that only lists one of my monitors, with a confusing message above 'nothing can be sent from the desk top' What??!!?? No the device manager is accessed though the control panel. So what is the devices charm option for?!? who knows.
BTW if you don't know charms are a floating sub menu of options that appears when one puts their mouse top right on a screen.
So first opinions, now its on my own machine. Pretty, feels quite responsive, but meh it would confuse the heck out of non techies like my mum and dad.
Now if only I could figure out how to turn it off??!!??
Now if only I could figure out how to turn it off??!!??
Interesting - It took my misses who is very IT literate over 30 minutes to find that. First time I used it I shut it down via task manager. Good to know its not just us pair that found that one a bit obtuse.
I just hold the start menu key plus "I" and then shut it down with two clicks. For my friends, family and customers who want an easier way, I add shutdown and restart shortcuts to the start menu and to the classic desktop.
Well I found a shut down option in the settings charm. However, although labled shut down in reality it tried to make my PC behave like a laptop.
What I mean by this is, the OS shut down, the screens and keyboard lights went black, but all the fans kept whurring.
Pressing the power button caused it then to go into post, and boot into windows a little more quickly. So apparently if I want the shut down to behave in the more traditional way I have to go though a series of configuration options. Crazy!!??!
Just playing with a new compaq laptop with windows 8. Screens keep jumping around and the charm bar coming and going seemingly at random.
Turns out, the left side of the touch pad acts like alt-tab, switching screens and the right side pulls out the charm bar. Unless you keep your finger right in the middle of the touchpad, its virtually impossible to use. Time to plug in a mouse.
Please microsoft, bring out an update to allow us to turn off the touchscreen/fullscreen bodge-up.
@guesser: Yes, I know it's terrible. It's also sad to think that after all these years, we still need to use start on a Windows PC to get it to shutdown. :grin:
@Moriarty: I've seen that before, and it's not 100% Microsoft's fault. It has to do with the touchpad driver which is developed by the touchpad's manufacturer, not HP/Compaq nor Microsoft. If you go to the control panel and then to the mouse option and find the last tab you will find options for full control of the touchpad's features. You will probably want to turn off all gestures except for tapping, which some people like to use instead of the left double-click. Tapping also helps extend the life of your touchpad buttons btw. Most touchpad gestures are useless. Some touchpads now also have the ability to use the right side as a mouse scroll button, which may or may not be useful to some.
But that's also what's deeply frustrating about it, because it just doesn't improve in any notable sense either. Similar problem with the iPhone, which is looking increasingly less interesting as the new versions become an increasingly minor variation on the original, a fact reflected in the decline in sales.
What decline in sales? Q1 2013 is their highest iPhone sales *ever* despite Q1 2013 not actually being over yet, and their sales have trended upwards since launch.
What decline in sales? Q1 2013 is their highest iPhone sales *ever* despite Q1 2013 not actually being over yet, and their sales have trended upwards since launch.
Quarter 1 can be the first quarter of a calendar year, or of a fiscal year. A fiscal year can start at any time, it rather depends on where in the world the company is based.
UK companies usually start on April 1 as that's the start of our tax year whereas in the US it starts in October...
But heres how i see it. If MS cut the footprint of windows by half and tidied it all up it would be a good upgrade, but nearly everyone would complain, because it is not a new version. So MS have two groups pulling them those who want an smaller tidier OS and those who want bells and whistles. Its kind of tough. Programming to demand can be stressful. I think they should do a new version no more often than once every five years. We ask too much of them. Just my take on it
This is a public apology to anyone I have ever recommended Windows 8 to.
Yesterday I decided to play some music off my network PC... Easy? No.
The x-box player plays *nothing* - no video or music has passed through that app yet, so I go to windows media player.. only it can't index the drive for music (although I can select individual tracks with no problem.
So, I have to create a media folder on my win8, then delete it (I don't know why either), then go to command prompt and link my network folder to the deleted folder. Yay! I can see the files!
Media player then ignores all MP3 tags and dumps the tracks into a single folder...
Today, it has taken 90mins to turn the PC on - installing updates, wait for the update to fail, roll back, reboot, install more updates, wait for them to fail, etc....
But heres how i see it. If MS cut the footprint of windows by half and tidied it all up it would be a good upgrade, but nearly everyone would complain, because it is not a new version. So MS have two groups pulling them those who want an smaller tidier OS and those who want bells and whistles. Its kind of tough. Programming to demand can be stressful. I think they should do a new version no more often than once every five years. We ask too much of them. Just my take on it
But that is how it should be - you get a base install which has a nice, fast, tidy system and then as a user I can choose what extra bells and whistles I want installed - and t.b.h MS is very good on making installing stuff easy (which is whay virus spread is sooo prevalent in windows ).
Where MS has fallen down i.m.h.o is trying to do everyhting for their vision of a default user - and there is no such beast.
But that is how it should be - you get a base install which has a nice, fast, tidy system and then as a user I can choose what extra bells and whistles I want installed - and t.b.h MS is very good on making installing stuff easy (which is whay virus spread is sooo prevalent in windows ).
Where MS has fallen down i.m.h.o is trying to do everyhting for their vision of a default user - and there is no such beast.
and their belief that an OS should be experienced rather than simply utilised.
It takes longer to start up the metro music app than it does the OS.
I run a dual screen setup and when I have a metro app in one screen, the other is unable to launch any apps. Despite shortcuts on the desktop and the start menu.
Oh wait, yes it does. The music app must have taken up so many resources that apps would not launch. Now I have some 20 browsers.
Also why do the metro apps not appear on the task bar.
Comments
Chromebook works offline.
It works offline with the efficiency and effectiveness of the government.
Microsoft Office is a case in point - office 97 was and is perfectly usable for any of todays office task's ( i'm not including outlook in this ). Word and Excel certainly haven't been 'improved' by any of the later revisions.The basic function remains the same.
Although, I hated the new ribbon, it does allow me to stylise documents with more ease. So now I can put together very well styled and consistent reports with properly headed sections, figures, and tables very quickly. All those features were in previous versions like 97, but they are much easier to use.
However, all these iterations of word and they still have not fixed the bug in image positioning. However I don;t like as much the new versions of Excell all the handy wizards have gone. I mean why did they take the chart wizard away.
Shirley Word can still show formatting marks can't it? it always used to be able to.
I've been using OpenOffice and then LibreOffice for years now so I don't know just how broken MS Office is these days :)
[EDIT] ah, I see. Wordperfect's format was more like HTML, so could display the opening and closing tags of its markup.
You will buy it coz it has a Crapple on it...
:lol:
It was a bit of a bitch to set up:
Initially it would not see the partition I had created on a new drive. I tried all sorts, three partitions, two partitions, one partition, still no joy. I removed all other drives. Still no joy. I removed all partitions and then tried to get the installer to create a partition. No joy. So I removed all other drives, got the installer to create one 600gb partition on the drive, but before proceeding further shut the computer down, connected all other drives up, and re-started the install process. That way W8 has a chance of seeing the other partitions and Windows so it may quadruple boot with them. Eventually after all this installation began.
Then, during the installation it messed up the DMA pool during a reboot and hung there. Then when I removed the W8 Sata drive and booted W7, then put the W8 drive back in and it booted properly into the w8 drive to continue the install.
Then on readying devices phase , it hung at 95%. Until I switched of my USB printer.
Then it installed. It seems to have worked ok, except that like Windows 7, it would not take my Wirelsss Adapter card due to the drivers not being signed. It's really annoying that as once you override the 64 bit version driver signing they work without error. Annoying huh.
Still it looks pretty, but as ususal things are now in even more illogical places than they were in Vista and W7. For example, the control panel how would one get to that. Well not though the settings charm option oh no, but though the search option??!!? WFT. How would one get to the device manager. Through the charm option labelled devices? Nope that only lists one of my monitors, with a confusing message above 'nothing can be sent from the desk top' What??!!?? No the device manager is accessed though the control panel. So what is the devices charm option for?!? who knows.
BTW if you don't know charms are a floating sub menu of options that appears when one puts their mouse top right on a screen.
So first opinions, now its on my own machine. Pretty, feels quite responsive, but meh it would confuse the heck out of non techies like my mum and dad.
Now if only I could figure out how to turn it off??!!??
Interesting - It took my misses who is very IT literate over 30 minutes to find that. First time I used it I shut it down via task manager. Good to know its not just us pair that found that one a bit obtuse.
D.
I can't remember the last time I owned a PC that didn't shut down cleanly when pressing the power button...
shutting down, just use the power switch but it doesn't log you off.
What I mean by this is, the OS shut down, the screens and keyboard lights went black, but all the fans kept whurring.
Pressing the power button caused it then to go into post, and boot into windows a little more quickly. So apparently if I want the shut down to behave in the more traditional way I have to go though a series of configuration options. Crazy!!??!
Well that makes perfect sense... Fancy anyone not being able to guess that :smile:
Turns out, the left side of the touch pad acts like alt-tab, switching screens and the right side pulls out the charm bar. Unless you keep your finger right in the middle of the touchpad, its virtually impossible to use. Time to plug in a mouse.
Please microsoft, bring out an update to allow us to turn off the touchscreen/fullscreen bodge-up.
@Moriarty: I've seen that before, and it's not 100% Microsoft's fault. It has to do with the touchpad driver which is developed by the touchpad's manufacturer, not HP/Compaq nor Microsoft. If you go to the control panel and then to the mouse option and find the last tab you will find options for full control of the touchpad's features. You will probably want to turn off all gestures except for tapping, which some people like to use instead of the left double-click. Tapping also helps extend the life of your touchpad buttons btw. Most touchpad gestures are useless. Some touchpads now also have the ability to use the right side as a mouse scroll button, which may or may not be useful to some.
What decline in sales? Q1 2013 is their highest iPhone sales *ever* despite Q1 2013 not actually being over yet, and their sales have trended upwards since launch.
http://www.statista.com/statistics/12743/worldwide-apple-iphone-sales-since-3rd-quarter-2007/
Not to dispute that Apple are continuing to rake it in, but Q1 2013 is actually October-December 2012. It's a fiscal year, not a calendar year.
UK companies usually start on April 1 as that's the start of our tax year whereas in the US it starts in October...
I love this place! :-)
I use windows XP still.
But heres how i see it. If MS cut the footprint of windows by half and tidied it all up it would be a good upgrade, but nearly everyone would complain, because it is not a new version. So MS have two groups pulling them those who want an smaller tidier OS and those who want bells and whistles. Its kind of tough. Programming to demand can be stressful. I think they should do a new version no more often than once every five years. We ask too much of them. Just my take on it
Yesterday I decided to play some music off my network PC... Easy? No.
The x-box player plays *nothing* - no video or music has passed through that app yet, so I go to windows media player.. only it can't index the drive for music (although I can select individual tracks with no problem.
So, I have to create a media folder on my win8, then delete it (I don't know why either), then go to command prompt and link my network folder to the deleted folder. Yay! I can see the files!
Media player then ignores all MP3 tags and dumps the tracks into a single folder...
Today, it has taken 90mins to turn the PC on - installing updates, wait for the update to fail, roll back, reboot, install more updates, wait for them to fail, etc....
But that is how it should be - you get a base install which has a nice, fast, tidy system and then as a user I can choose what extra bells and whistles I want installed - and t.b.h MS is very good on making installing stuff easy (which is whay virus spread is sooo prevalent in windows ).
Where MS has fallen down i.m.h.o is trying to do everyhting for their vision of a default user - and there is no such beast.
and their belief that an OS should be experienced rather than simply utilised.
I run a dual screen setup and when I have a metro app in one screen, the other is unable to launch any apps. Despite shortcuts on the desktop and the start menu.
Oh wait, yes it does. The music app must have taken up so many resources that apps would not launch. Now I have some 20 browsers.
Also why do the metro apps not appear on the task bar.
It's a mess.