OK, computer

[venta]

Recently at work, I got a new laptop. The "ooh, shiny new hardware" is slightly offset by the usual round of tweaking all the settings to make it behave how I want. Not to mention a few days worth of installing software and copying data off the old machine. Of late, instead of actually working, I've been repeatedly running the Cygwin installer every time I discover another package I forgot.

This is the first machine I've significantly used that runs Windows 7. So there were lots of new settings to find. Turning off Aero, turning off Snap... all those things which are trivial to solve once you've discovered what the particular "feature" that's winding you up is called. Plus all the fun of discovering that the updated driver for one of your peripherals has removed your favourite feature (I'm looking at you, Logitech).

I am trying not to turn things off for the sake of it. I have to use Outlook for work email, and did find myself busily re-arranging the layout to make it look like my previous Outlook, before realising that this one might well be a better use of space. Different doesn't necessarily mean worse, Venta.

Grrr, mutter, don't like change.

That and learning that half your software has to be explicitly run as administrator to make anything work.

I have finally won the mouse battle. I want my touchpad to have its left and right buttons reversed (ie right is click, left is context menu). I want my trackball to be the same. I want my USB mouse to have its buttons normal way round (no, I'm not just awkward for the hell of it - the USB mouse is for passing guests who freak out at my reversed buttons and, on occasion, confusedly push my trackball round the desk).

And I think I've run into my first real accessibilty issue. My new laptop has quite a high res screen, which means teeny tiny text. Particularly with my work set up, where I have a separate keyboard[*] and so on, the screen is quite a long way away and hard to read. Easy, boost the display size up to medium - which would be great if applications bothered to respect that setting. Skype is a particularly bad offender, there - sure you can manually tune the font for the chat windows, but can you change it for your contacts list? Nope. Firefox copes a lot worse than I expected, too - though whether that's FF's fault or individual sites' faults I'm not sure. Things interact in strange ways, too. Turn up the font size in FF's settings, and the BBC news site turns into a compressed horror. Leave the font as it is and zoom instead and it's fine. Bah. Doubtless I will learn.

Anyway, I think I'm more or less finished now, and might actually get some work done. Except...

I have yet to work out how to turn off the stupid miniature pop-up windows which appear whenever you go near the taskbar. I'm perfectly happy for others to have them if they want - I emphatically don't. They serve no purpose for me and - because of the way I lay out my desktop - frequently pop over the thing I'm trying to read. Any ideas? (Don't tell me to run gpedit, it doesn't work on Windows 7. I can increase the time delay on them, which is what I'll doubtless end up doing, but would really like to nuke them completely.)

[*] Just as well, really. The new laptop has (unusually) a full size number pad like a real keyboard. Which is great, but means the actual business bit is heavily offset to the left of the machine. Since I don't look at the keyboard when typing, I keep failing to notice this and typing things that ;ppl ;olr yjod.

Comments

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

Reinstalling cygwin a meeeellion times is a requirement isn't it?

The part that REALLY annoys me about display setting faffdom is that you have to log off and on again for them to apply. BOO AND HISS.

You may or may not have discovered yet that developing in C:\Program Files or C:\Program Files (x86) can cause hilariously annoying things to happen? Above and beyond it having spaces in the name and therefore being a nuisance anyway.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I did discover that a whole bunch of our makefiles (not written by me :) only look in C:\Program Files, which was a bit of a problem :) Even Windows itself sometimes seems a bit confused where to look. Spaces in the names are at least no more annoying that they were before.

The thing that threw me more than anything at first is that when installing software, Windows pops up a thing asking "do you want to allow this to modify your computer". Which is fine, except it turns the screen black for 3-4 seconds first.

So... get new computer, download exe, try to run, screen goes completely blank... not at all worrying...

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

ISTR the thing causing the largest number of ARE YOU SURE?! alarming prompts was on Vista, and involved swapping a dll in the system folder. IIRC (this was 2007, so I apologise if I misremember) it asked me when I tried to access the folder, when I was running regsvr32 both to unregister and to register (which I can't remember but have a sneaking feeling had to be admin, so probably involved some ARE YOU SURE?! faff to do), and when I was deleting the old one and when I was adding the new one.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm quite pleased I managed never to interact with Vista.

And however much I'm fighting with 7, it's nothing compared to the howls of anguish coming from the other side of the room where a colleague has Windows 8.

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

I managed to avoid having a work vista machine entirely as well :-). After having had one at home, I succeeded in refusing point blank to have one at work as well on the grounds of reduced productivity. By the time I next needed a new machine, I got a windows 7 one.

[lnr]

I've avoided vista too though mike had it for a while. On balance I quite like 7 - though recent Office (2010?) has taken more doing to get my head round.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Now you mention it, I haven't had to open anything in Word, Excel, etc yet so maybe I have that joy to come. Certainly switching to Office 2007 was a total nightmare because all the menus had moved round and most useful stuff was hidden under a giant button that didn't look like a button. I believe this is called "Ribbons".

Think I'll put off interacting with Office 2010 until I have to :)

[lnr]

Right click on the task bar for settings there including whether apps windows are grouped together and I think whether the previews are shown when hovering. If that's the popups you mean.

[venta.livejournal.com]

You're correct that that batch of settings includes grouping together windows (I turned that off, too :) but as far as I can tell, there is no setting to turn off the miniature previews there.

[lnr]

Drat! Am on iPod at moment so can't poke mine and see if I can find it.

[venta.livejournal.com]

No worries, thanks anyway :)

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I've not yet found a way to turn them off. My tactic is to try and avoid putting my mouse pointer down there and enlivening them, which is neither convenient nor satisfactory :-(

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

That and learning that half your software has to be explicitly run as administrator to make anything work.

This really annoys me. Nobody on Linux has to run everything as root, so why - 30-odd years later - can Windows still not get this right?!

As far as thumbnails go:

1) Run GPEdit.msc
2) User Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Start Menu and Taskbar
3) Local Group Policy -> Turn off taskbar thumbnails

(I think. It's my laptop that runs Win7, but this is what my notes say.)

[venta.livejournal.com]

OK, that sounds like the instructions I had before. Either I've misunderstood, or I don't have that option.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Ignore that. Brief outbreak of idiocy.

What I meant is, I do have the "turn off taskbar thumbnails" option, and it's already set to "enabled".

It just didn't make any difference.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Well, I can't see from the screen shot because "Turn off" will be under 'T', but if it's not there then it's not there and you have my permission to make sad face.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I was having a mad moment and looking for "Local..."

However, see above comment... the relevant option is present, it just doesn't do anything.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

the relevant option is present, it just doesn't do anything

Sorry, I should read more carefully.

Also: poop.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I suspect you read my first comment, and I was talking about my second :)

Thank you, anyway.

Also: what kind of crazy UI designer makes you choose:

Turn off taskbar thumbnails: Enabled

to switch them off, anyway?

What's wrong with:

Taskbard thumbnails: [on|off]

!?

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

What's wrong with:

Taskbard thumbnails

I'll just copy and paste that and you can write your own joke. ;-)

[venta.livejournal.com]

face > desk

[qatsi.livejournal.com]

Turning off Aero (it's somewhere in the display settings - possibly "themes" I think) disables quite a lot of the excessive graphical bits and pieces in Windows 7.