The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Windows 8

A couple of days ago, I decided I would give Windows 8 a try and installed the Consumer Preview on VirtualBox. In fact, I am writing this post on Windows Live Writer 2012 on Windows 8.
Here are my initial thoughts about Windows 8 after spending a few hours with it.
The Good

• Desktop UI (User Interface) is very similar to Windows 7. The glass taskbar from Windows 7 is still present.
• Integration of Microsoft products. In order to sign in, you need a Microsoft (or Windows Live or Hotmail) ID. Once you enter your Microsoft ID, your calendar, mail, pictures and other data is automatically populated.
• The task manager has been redesigned to give you tons more information about processor, network and hard drive usage.
• The Windows Explorer has gotten it’s biggest makeover since Windows XP. Like many other Microsoft products, it is equipped with the new Ribbon interface. It gives you the ability to perform many functions with only a few clicks.
• The Desktop UI is only slightly different than Windows 7. There are no rounded corners, only square edges. Overall it’s not much over a change, but still nice to look at.

The Bad

• In order to install the touch friendly Windows 8 apps, you need to use the Store tile. I tried it and it was slow and painful to browse. Thankfully you can still download the latest version of your favorite program and run it like before in the desktop.
• Windows Media Player no longer has DVD playback support, so you cannot play DVDs out of the box. However, you can download VLC to enjoy your films.

The Ugly

• Microsoft announced that you will not be able to boot directly to the desktop. This means that every time that you boot up, you are forced to see the new Start Screen covered with multicolored tiles.
• As far as I know, there is no way to turn off the Start Screen. For computers that do not have touch enabled screens this will become annoying very quickly. To understand what I mean, make all the icons on your screen an inch square.
• No Start Button. This is my biggest gripe. Hitting the Start button pulls up the Start Screen, which is a pain to use.

Conclusion
There are some nice features in Windows 8, but there are also some real pains. I think that Microsoft spent way too much time trying to make Windows 8 touch and tablet friendly by default. These features should be optional to desktop and laptop users. It is almost like they are forcing touch technology on you. Since I just installed Windows 7, I will not be upgrading anytime soon and I would not recommend that anyone rush out and do that either once Windows 8 comes out in the Fall. Wait for Windows 9 to see if they come to their senses.

TweetDeck, The Story of a Maligned App

In today's technology and communication heavy world, it is important to have a presence in a wide range of social networks, from Facebook to Twitter to Tumblr to FourSquare and so on. If you want to submit a single message across all of these different networks (or even across multiple accounts on the same network) it is nice to only have to do it once. That is were a social media manager or dashboard can come in handy. There are several applications out there that can do that for you, but I want to talk about one in particular: TweetDeck.

As part of my job I have to manage the company's social network presence. I tried several apps, web-based and Windows-based. I tried HootSuite, Seesmic and others, but my favorite was TweetDeck. To put it simply TweetDeck had everything I wanted. It had among other features:

• the ability to look at multiple accounts across multiple networks
• use Bit.ly to shorten links
• a neat feature called Deck.ly that allowed users to post messages longer than 140 characters to Twitter

TweetDeck had a web version, an Adobe AIR version (which would run on PC, Mac or Linux) and a iOS version. All in all, I was very happy with it.

And then, Twitter bought it...

At first, I had great hopes for the purchase by Twitter. I expected great new feature to be added. I was wrong.

Shortly after purchase, Twitter released a new version of TweetDeck that was no longer written for Adobe AIR, but was now OS specific.(I imagine that this makes it harder to write.) This new version looked much plainer. This new version dropped support for LinkedIn, Google Buzz, Foursquare and MySpace and killed the Deck.ly feature.

I have the uneasy feeling that eventually, TweetDeck is going to be renamed the Twitter Manager (or something else with Twitter in the title). It's already been changed to TweetDeck by Twitter.

Even the logo has been changed to look more like Twitter.

I guess what I'm saying is that I'm very unhappy that Twitter bought a program I like and messed it up. I wished they would have kept the features and improved them. But I get the feeling that Twitter is trying to boost their own product line to the detriment of some customers.

In the end, I still use TweetDeck, albeit, the pre-acquisition Adobe AIR version. The only thing that does not work is Deck.ly, so I'll need to find something else for that.

On another topic (but one very similar), Twitter has recently purchased another product that I use: the blogging platform Posterous. Twitter says they are not going to do anything to Posterous at the moment, but rumors are flying that they just bought Posterous for the talent. Lifehacker even had a article on how to switch your blog from Posterous. We'll see what happens next.

How to Search Your PC Instantly

    Have you ever been in a hurry to find a file?  Ten minutes minutes before the meeting and you need to find the video clip you were going to show.  If you use Windows, you would pull up Windows search, type in the title, and wait for it to search through all the files on your computer.  Depending on how many files that you have, this may take quite a while. 
    There is a small, powerful alternative to Windows Search that will find what you are looking for in a matter of minutes.  It is called Everything.  This program is less than 400 kilobytes in size.  It installs quickly and indexes you computer in a matter on minutes.  Whenever you create an new file, the index is complete.  It works on Windows 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, 2008 and 7.  (Since Vista and 7 have an improved search function build into the Start Menu, it is ideal for any pre-Vista Windows OS.
    One of the drawbacks of Everything is that it only searches the file and folder names, not their contents.  But if you remember a little bit of the title, you can probably find it.
    So, go ahead and use this tool.  You can download Everything here: http://www.voidtools.com/.