Re: Lost XP product key - before install.


"Justin C" <justin.0507@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:4151.42fe83c2.72aa0@xxxxxxxxxxx

> For the love of God. It's late Saturday night (for me), I'm tired and
> half-cut. Explanation (brief - and in short words): The Windows
> is so bad... I can't do this briefly.
>
> Windows UI short-comings:
> * No virtual desktops.

Do I need one of those? I've managed fine for years with one monitor, and
one monitor's worth of info displayed on it. When I want to use a different
"workspace" I click on the minimised app on the taskbar, to restore it.
Works fine for me, and for every other home user I know.

> * It's *really* logical to click Start to stop

No difference to the KDE UI I had a look at over the weekend. And I prefer
not to have yet another cluttering button on the taskbar just so I can turn
the PC off once every 7 or 8 days.

> * The fact the background apps can steal focus

That's a pain, but a very very minor one. And doesn't happen at all often on
my system.

> * Zip folder are displayed like real folders but you can't do "real
> folder" stull, like send to.

That has pissed me off a bit, but then most of the time I want to unzip the
whole thing anyway. And I can always just copy out a single file, although
most of the time I just want to open it, which can be done just like any
other non zipped file.

> * Clicking an icon twice to launch is an inate sense

As in natural? Yes, I agree. Once to select, again to use. Clicking it once
to select it, then finding the bloody thing is trying to open is a right
pain in the arse.

> * The screen gets eaten vertically cutting down the space for
> documents leaving space at the sides of the screen when most
> documents are long and therefore the sides of the screen are wasted.

??? The screen I'm looking at has about 1/3 an inch of taskbar at the
bottom, same for the title bar at the top, and everything is perfectly
readable. Unless you want to rotate your desktop and put your monitor on
it's side, I can't really see how that can be improved a great deal. In
fact, when I tried Linux a couple of years ago I had to either keep hiding
the taskbar, or put up with it covering the bottom of windows, taking up
three times as much height as the MS one...

> * I can't rename the recycle bin

Shockingly, I don't really want to. I could call it Susan I suppose, but
it's still going to do the same job.

> * I can't find anywhere, other that the command line, to instruct it
> to permanently set up a network printer (must be an symlink for
> LPT1)

I run a 2 PC home network, and have printers on both PCs. They can bother be
seen and used by either computer, anytime, and I never once had to resort to
a cli to get them working.

> * Want to allow all staff access to the files, some get write access,
> some get read-only - it's still harder than "chmod 754 *"

Are we talking home or commercial use here? Because I have no staff, and no
need of group policies or whatever the terms are. The only time I need to
"chmod" is when using FTP, and then my app has a nice little UI that allows
me to put ticks in boxes, instead of remembering the right code.

> * Icons/links to same programs in four places (four! I ask you) -
> Desktop, quick launch, "recently used" (or whatever it's called) and
> Start/Programs. How much clutter do you want? Don't worry, Windows
> can give you all you need.

I don't tend to have shortcuts on the desktop, quicklaunch is ideal as I put
things I use most often there, so I can launch them quickly (one click, no
menus), recently used I never look at, and whatever's left is in the
Programs list.

> * "Your time-zone has changed from BST to GMT do you want to change
> the clock?" of course I don't, I really want to have no idea what
> the time is.

There's probably a reason for it asking, and it's all of one click twice a
year. Hardly a huge fail for MS.


> The learning curve of the command line may be steep but once it is
> conquered it is much, much faster than any GUI. We communicate with
> the written word, a mouse is superfluos and, in many instances gets
> in the way. For PhotoShop it's indespensable, for text editing it's
> a waste of time. Consequently, the command line is my choice of UI (I
> only have a windowing UI so I can have several text consoles open at the
> same time.

For web browsing, email, media and basic office work both a mouse and
keyboard are needed. It's goot to be able to sit back and look at websites
without having to use the keyboard, it's handy to be able to open apps and
files within them without having to use the keyboard. In fact, for a typical
home user there's next to nothing in the daily run of things that's easier
with some alien non-descript cli than with a GUI with descriptive and
helpful guides and buttons. You have to think why GUIs are so popular and
why the mouse is such an integral part, and it's not because of MS' world
domination. It's because a point and click interface really is more
intuitive and easier/ faster to learn and use. We don't all want to make an
effort scripting and bashing away at keyboards, some of us just want the PC
to work!

> The bottom line is: you really, really don't like it, that's fine, no
> one is asking you to use it - yet.

I really really don't like MS' business ethics, security flaws, opinions of
customers, or much else behind the UI. But I can't fault them for the
interface. I would like to change, but I don't think I can.

I installed Xandros on my other PC over the weekend. I say over the weekend
because it kept going into a remove CD and restart loop, which in the end
seems to have been down to my CD drive. Nothing told me that was the case
though, I had to work it out myself. This is after having to burn the disc
again as for some reason 52x CDRs recorded at anything over 4x didn't
work...

Once I got into the OS, which takes a hell of a long time to load, I
couldn't find out how to setup my mouse buttons. No a big deal though.
Firefox would open links in tabs using the middle button, but wouldn't close
them using it, couldn't spot how to change that either.
These aren't big issues, but then I wanted to get my AIW 9000 working. I
could watch divx straight away, but I always have the card set to theatre
mode in Windows, so the TV shows fullscreen whenever there's something
playing. I couldn't find anything like that, so I went off to ATIs site. Got
a .run file, had to use the cli. Already not happy, but did as it asked.
Some very odd looking boxes came up, nothing like the ATI site they would
be, and then it told me to run a conf of some sort. Did that, didn't know
what the hell it was on about, and afterwards nothing had changed with the
TV out, but the desktop had a slight glitch when dragging icons. Downloaded
an rpm, the thing chugged it about, but nothing seemed to actually change.
Looked at how to use the TV tuner on the card, gave up, and plugged the Win
XP drive back in.

I don't want to be told to buy other hardware to use this operating system,
I buy IBM compat stuff as that is what it should be. I don't want to use
buggy alpha or at best beta software to use my hardware either, my AIW is
used to capture things for permanent storage. And I don't want to resort to
alpha software that requires a god knows how long session of learning what
all these bloody terms are and editing files just to get it to sort of work.
Much though I dislike MS, I can buy something, plug it in, and bugger me,
after a short download and three clicks it just works!

Linux may be a great OS for people who want to spend their spare time
learning/ tweaking it, but I don't. I want to turn my PC on and use it as a
tool to communicate and relax. Haiku/ Zeta is actually far far closer to
doing what I need (short of java and most USB drivers, ATI drivers not
perfect but nearly there) and that's based on an OS that sold out five years
ago!


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