10 things I want from Windows 8

[clifford_cooley]

10 things I want from Windows 8

This article was written by Thrax. I enjoyed it and thought must of you would too.

Please leave a message for Thrax telling him how much you enjoyed it. These are things he would like to see, so don't leave a message stating how much you disagree.

Loved the article Thrax

 

[faun]

?! I read that! i had no idea our own thrax wrote it though! bloody hell. Hes like a celebrity to me now. haha

 

[danperteet]

great article!

 

[Thrax]

Haha, thanks guys. Windows 7 has been the love of my electronic life as of late, but there are little things that bother me. I certainly don't think any of my changes need to be made on the surface, but having the option to change them -- even if buried -- would make me happy.

 

[Kougar]

Hm, speaking of butchering there's some Flash 10 script on that page that locks Opera, I have to wait until I get an Adobe Flash 10 player warning before I can kill it and get my browser back. Works peachy in Firefox at least. :dontknow:



My biggest peeve is who at Microsoft decided that it was more important to forcibly reboot hundreds of thousands of computers to finish an update that most of the time only applies to some minor unimportant fix?

I've personally lost hours of work on computers that rebooted themselves, either because the data was outright lost or because I didn't find out the machine rebooted until two or three days later. Now I have to remember to disable this on every OS install I make, and I don't always remember.

The idea behind the premise of forcing restarts on computers to apply an update is to ensure security vulnerabilities get fixed. But I wonder if it ever occured to Microsoft that a very large number of users simply disable Auto-Updates outright so they don't have their computers rebooting on them, thereby leaving their machines even more vulnerable and less updated than they would have been beforehand?

I can't begin to put a number to all the people I've met, talk with, or good friends of mine that have done exactly this because Windows Update forced them to OK a reboot in the middle of their work, videogame, or whatever they were doing at the time. Would it really be the end of the world if they could choose to reboot when they wanted, or when they turned in later that evening rather than a mandatory 4 hours from whenever the auto-update occured? That's something I'd like to see changed, and it doesn't have to wait until Windows 8 to happen either.

 

[clifford_cooley]

My biggest peeve is who at Microsoft decided that it was more important to forcibly reboot hundreds of thousands of computers to finish an update that most of the time only applies to some minor unimportant fix?

I don't mind the automatic updates but hate the forced reboots. I for one reboot frequently anyway but at a time of my choosing.

After all shouldn't a warning be sufficient anyway. I mean do the parents really look at the little stickers on the toys for specific age groups? They can't be forced into buying the appropriate toy for their kid. They can only be warned.

 

[Sycthus]

I loved the article, top-notch.

I argee with pretty much everything, but I have 2 questions:

1. I've never had the blue screen of death. Is this rare?
2. When you talk about "Application settings storage", are you suggesting we go back to .ini or something more complicated? I'm not disagreeing, but I can't see anything wrong with the registry. Isn't a virtual registry likely to have just as many problems as a physical registry?

 

[clifford_cooley]

What Thrax is suggesting if I followed correctly. Is for each program to store their own settings in their own folder rather than in the registry. It doesn't have to be in the form of an ini file. With this approach the programs can store their own setting in which ever format they choose. This would allow less errors and clutter in the registry.

 

[Sycthus]

Ahh, so what would the difference to .ini be then?

 

[clifford_cooley]

An ini file is a simple text file and can be read by any text editor and changed without any problems other than the ones you create because you edited the file if you dont know what you are doing.

 

[Thrax]

I fully admit that my solution is a glorified version of the INI file, but the difference between my implementation and Windows 98's implementation is that Windows 98 used INI files for everything. I think everyone can agree that having full portable Windows apps would be an amazing thing, and that's why I feel programs need to store their settings locally.

Microsoft can do whatever it wants with OS settings.

 

[Sycthus]

Ahh, I think I see what you mean: Windows can have it's OS registry, but apps are portable because all their settings are stored inside their own folder? That would be amazing! Copy and paste games... you've got me drooling!

BTW: I haven't had any registry errors before. Is there nasty I should look out for and I could prevent?

 

[clifford_cooley]

Sycthus many people dont even realize they have registry errors. This is one of the many reasons PC's tend to slow with age. These error seem to be in greater numbers with machines where people are always installing and removing software. Removing registry errors is a routine mantinance for me with all machine's I work on.

If you have never run a registry cleaner program you should try out a freeware program to see what is found on your PC. Who knows you may decide to purchase a registry program afterwards.

I use two different freeware programs. RegSeeker 1.55 and EasyCleaner 2.0 seem to work fine with XP, Vista, and 7.

 

[Veedaz]

RegSeeker is a great app, used it for years across XP, Vista and Windows 7 its on all our Computers and never had a problem with it.

 

[Sycthus]

I will try out Reg Seeker on XP, as I was un/installing loads of stuff in my prep for 7. My only concern is, I made a small registry modification which means I automatically log in. I followed the official Microsoft instructions, but will Reg Seeker pick up the strings I added and delete them, which could de-stabilise my system?

 

[Veedaz]

Hi Sycthus

In the bottom left corner of RegSeeker tick Backup before you commence a clean or make a system restore point, it don't hurt to do both, you can also add or remove in Exclusions within RegSeeker.

 

[Sycthus]

Okay, I turns out I have... two-thousand, one-hundred and forty-seven. 2147. Ouch.

Do I delete all of them? There are quite a few "Extensions not used", lots of "Unused open with entry", but some of them I'm not sure about. E.g., one of the "Unused "Open with" entries" is "Applications\explorer".

How can I tell what does need deleting and what doesn't? I have ticked backup before deletion, so should I just delete all of it, and then back some up if it all goes wrong?

 

[Veedaz]

Yes tick backup and make a restore point if you want then delete.

 

[Sycthus]

Done. Nothing important different, but I made a system restore point in-case anything went wrong.

Thanks!

 

[Veedaz]

OK, if your anything like me and tend to like testing new software you may come across and also upgrading things like (eg - Java) with installing / uninstalling you will build up dead reg keys so just run RegSeeker every few days