windows 10 – Page 2 – Kev's Development Toolbox

August 23, 2015

‘New’ Windows 10 features inspired from other OSes

Every time I hear or read about one the ‘new’ features introduced in Windows 10, I can’t help but think ‘hang on, hasn’t [Linux|OS X] already had that feature for years?

The past few OS X releases have been minimizing the visual window decorations to have borderless windows and minimal icons, and Ubuntu 14.04 has done the same too (since it was released over a year ago). Seems to be the current fashion. I’m not a historian of UI design, but I had to dig back to around 2011 when OS X Lion I think introduced borderless windows, although windows in OS X have had this look n feel for long enough now that I’ve taken it for granted as normal.

One the features I’ve always missed in Windows that 10 now has is multiple virtual desktops, because this is something I always use in OS X and Linux – it seems like it’s always been there, and again, one of those features you take for granted. I like to keep related windows for one task on one desktop and windows for another task on another. Anyway, welcome to 1990’s, Windows 10.

If you want to see some more examples, itsfoss.com has a comparison of other ‘new’ Windows 10 features that have been borrowed from Linux.

August 10, 2015

Concerned with data privacy on Windows 10? Here’s a list of settings to turn off.

If you’re concerned about Windows 10 ‘phoning home’ to Microsoft with all your keypresses, keyclicks, and commands to Cortana (“Microsoft vacates moral highground for the data slurpers cesspit“), then here’s a few articles with suggestions of what settings you need to change from their defaults:

August 9, 2015

Windows 10 Activation Issues on Mac Parallels 9 and 10 for Bootcamp VMs

Parallels has a neat feature to allow you to create a VM from a bare metal install of Windows in the Bootcamp partition (rather than having it installed to a file representing a virtual disk on the host). This allows you to either natively boot straight from the Bootcamp partition, or boot in a VM running on a Mac OS X host.

For Windows 8.x, this worked fine even though Windows Activation saw the bare metal install and when running in the VM as two different installs. Previously one would activate as normal, and the other would require a call to the Microsoft number to get a new activation code. Once you had activated both, then you could boot either and both would be activated from one license.

On Windows 10 however, it looks like which ever you boot second, it sees the activation code already used on one of your Windows 10 devices, and then refuses to activate. This is discussed in this Parallels forum post here. So far it seems if you leave Windows 10 booted for ‘long enough’ eventually it will activate itself? I’m having this issue, so leaving my unactivated native boot up and running for a while to see whether it activates or not.

July 31, 2015

What real users are saying about Windows 10

The Control Panel. Yes, the Control Panel. How is it possible for a final, shipped product (8, 8.1, and now 10) to have multiple versions of a single app (the Control Panel) where some options are in one version and other options are in the other? And the UIs of each are completely different.

At least the Control Panel vs Change PC Settings options are now no longer shown together in the same pop open Charms menu as they were in 8.x. I suppose at least in 8.x they put one at the top of the menu and the other at the bottom of the menu, like there was some discussion to keep them far apart because, oh I don’t know, because having two different links to two different Control Panels in the same menu might be confusing to users.

Anyway, so the bizarre charms menu is gone. The Metro Change PC Settings app from 8.1 is replaced with a new app in 10 with some snazzy looking icons. But wait.. the Windows 7 style Control Panel is still in Windows 10? With the the previous Windows 7 UI style? Wait, what? So there’s still 2 different Control Panels in 10? Microsoft please, get your design teams in the same room!

More other bizarre observations and pet peevs in this post over at The Register.