Search results for 'app:weblogs' matching tags 'My Opinion', 'Vista', and 'Windows 7'

Windows 7 – It works..

mikehall — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 05:00:00 GMT

I have been using Win 7 since it was released to techs and, apart from the substantial annoyance of no classic menu, it is very much the same experience as using Vista, XP, W2K, ME, 98, 95, 3.1, 3.0. What I am trying to say is that it is just an operating system. I don’t use or like gimmicks, e.g. Aero Shake or the open source Compiz-Fusion, and my two new widescreen monitors do not have touch capability, so no three finger painting for me.

It starts up faster than Vista did, but I don’t have as much starting up as I did. This is partly because I have not yet found Win 7 compatible stuff. The widgets definitely appear faster on the uptake, but I am still careful in what I select to appear. My computer is still single core, AMD powered, and running cheap value memory, albeit 4gb.

All of my hardware works: an aging HP 5150 printer, an aging Canon Lide Scanner (courtesy of Vuescan), external drive, MS headset, and Win 7 does not have the ‘waking from sleep’ issue if the external USB drive is powered up. Windows Live Mail occasionally balks and holds stuff in the outbox for reasons all of its own, and if I try to resend them, it claims to have lost the messages. Windows Mail never did this.

I can’t say that I am over the moon with it because Vista worked well for me right from the start too, but I will say that the ‘out of the box’ experience has been easy. Apart from the look of the main taskbar, and the fact that I can’t take advantage of features like ‘touch’, it doesn’t really feel any different to Vista, which I do not think is a bad thing at all.

I still believe that ‘touch’ capability should have been a downloadable add-on, especially as touch screens are aways off of being the ‘norm’. And for this reason, I don’t believe that the taskbar and Start Menu should have been optimized for the touch experience. Maybe something for Windows 8, but definitely not for Windows 7.

Conclusion: It does appear to be less problematic for many people than ever Vista was, but remember that Vista laid the foundation for Windows 7.

Classic menu revisited – Part Two

mikehall — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 05:00:00 GMT

Apologies for the gap in transmission. Like some early OEM Vista installations, I have been working but maybe not as well as expectations. In fact, at one point, I screwed everything up so bad to the point where I was considering starting over. Messing with start menus should only be attempted when firing on all cylinders, as it is easy to lose some application icons completely.

OK, assuming that you are alert as you will ever be, you have to find the location of the start menus which form what you see when you click on the ORB. There are two locations, and I suggest that you create shortcuts on the desktop for both of them. You will have to UNHIDE system and hidden files before you start this.

The preliminaries

First location and the main one.. c::/ > Program Data > Microsoft > Windows > Start menu – create a desktop icon and label this one START MENU

Second location.. c:/ > Users > (name) > AppData > Roaming > Microsoft > Windows > Start menu – create a desktop icon and label this one START MENU 1

Right click on the ORB and select PROPERTIES. In the Privacy section, check both boxes. If you don’t, you will end up with a nasty unused white space in the Start Menu. Click on the CUSTOMIZE button and decide what you want to see listed on the right side of the Start Menu. Also, set the Start Menu size to ‘20’ items shown (both boxes).

Now click on the TASKBAR tab and check USE SMALL ICONS. While in this part, if like me you use a double height taskbar, you may as well customize the NOTIFICATION AREA and set all icons to show 24/7.

You will need to enable Quick Launch.. comprehensive instructions can be found here..

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-7/add-the-quick-launch-bar-to-the-taskbar-in-windows-7/

It is also a good idea to create a USER PINNED toolbar too..

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/9305-taskbar-pin-unpin-folder.html

Sorting it all out – Five easy steps..

Make a list of program genres based upon what is installed on the computer. Obvious groups are Graphics, Office, Multimedia, Peripherals and General
Click on your desktop START MENU icon. This is the main feed for the Start Menu as you see it after clicking on the ORB.
Create the new folders, and then drag program icons and folders to the appropriate new folder.
Then create a folder inside each of the new ones and call it something like ‘Info’.
Drag the program folders into the Info folder, and by the time you have finished, you should have a neat collection of usable folders which just show program icons and a folder called ‘Info’.

The second Start Menu contains one or two program icons which you will want to incorporate into your tidied up ‘All Programs’.

Once completed, copy the new Start Menu to a safe place. In the event of future problems, a re-install for instance, it can be copied back which will save a lot of work. It will also help to remind you of what was installed before the crash. Anything that you install in the future can be easily transferred by opening the Start menu from the desktop icon, and dragging the new stuff from ‘All Programs’ straight into the appropriate group.

Please note that the above will not create a classic view, but it will leave you with a much neater and more usable look. I did promise to do a piece on this which included diagrams, but I am really not up to doing it presently. However, I will endeavour to produce a more graphical piece in the future.

Lastly, Quick Launch has always been useful, and is especially so for small things like Character Map, Calculator and stuff like scanner and other peripheral hardware control programs.

Classic menu issue revisited – Part One

mikehall — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 05:00:00 GMT

I think that I am beginning to understand one of the reasons why the Windows 7 Start Menu/Taskbar defaults to the way it is.

Touch screen usability

The oversized, widely spaced icons on the taskbar and in the Start box all point to ease of use on a touch screen. OK, fair enough, but how many computer users have touch screens? Are you considering the purchase of a touch screen anytime soon? Maybe if you are buying a a high end laptop where touch screen is part of the spec, but what of the desktop users? Many still use and prefer large CRT monitors which give excellent clarity and are pretty much ‘small grandchild proof’. Are these people likely to rush out and buy touch screens for $$$$$?

In time, all manufacturers will supply only touch screens with new computer systems, and all monitor manufacturers will only produce touch screens, but that is NOT the case presently. When I first heard about ‘touch’ being part of Windows 7, I thought that it was a good idea, but I would have preferred to see it as a free optional add-on complete with a ‘touch’ desktop shell rather than be presented with a desktop which is geared for touch by default.

Re. the Classic Menu

Reading through the various replies to criticism of the lack of a Classic menu in Windows 7, I think that some are missing the point entirely. The Classic Start Menu in XP and Vista was not about reverting back to the old look of Windows 2000, because that was called CLASSIC VIEW.

Just to make it clear, if one right clicked on START and then selected CLASSIC MENU, the two column Start box disappeared, and the items which would have been on the right side of the box would now appear as desktop icons. Items which were on the left appeared as a single column. From an operational standpoint, just making the change from XP/Vista menu to the classic look did not make any difference. It just changed the look of the Start Menu, not the look of the taskbar or window borders.

I agree entirely that the Programs/All Programs format is unwieldy and cluttered, especially if the computer user adds lots of programs, but the great thing about the Classic Menu was that it could be tidied up to provide a single column of program ‘genre’ folders with a second column just showing the program icons appropriate to each genre. Accessing a program in this way was a two click process which did not involve huge amounts of program folders opening out and filling the entire desktop.

As it stands now, clicking on ALL Programs still produces a listing, but it is squashed into a small box and most of it will not be in view unless you scroll down. If you want to see more than the default view, you have to go into the Start Menu ‘customize’ function, and increase the amount of items on view and set the icons to a small size. Hardly conducive to touch screen use, eh.

Quicklaunch

I don’t ever remember the Quicklaunch toolbar being enabled by default., but single click access to programs of the users choice was really useful when running programs in full screen. Even with the advent of larger monitors, I still see most computer users running stuff full screen, and Quicklaunch still has value. I find it ironic that, at a time when many are now using widescreen LCD monitors, Quicklaunch still isn’t a default and has actually been buried deep enough that many will never find it.