Microsoft → Re: Yes I do hate Microsoft

Thanks for that advice Brian.

I cannot decide if you are defending MS or also annoyed and exasperated by it. ??

This ISP forum is not entirely the forum that I was looking for, but I needed reaction to my rant from any hit relating to my 'I hate Microsoft' theme. I would like to find a forum of reasonably power users who all come up against Win8.1 issues and collectively come up with real solutions, not trivial MVP responses.

If I had the time to search I might find such a forum, but this Win8.1 and Office 2010 'upgrade' has wasted so very much working time that I need to get my head down, my mind right and focus on what I still can do in this new new working environment.

Not a problem. Always glad to help out a fellow user of the site.

On a site note, you may want to consider registering with the site. It only takes a few minutes, and it will allow you access to a few features as well, including private IM's between users.To be honest, I'm not defending MS at all. However, I'm also not annoyed either by what they did with Windows 8.0. Personally, I feel that Microsoft wanted to try to get a piece of the mobile (Tablet, Smartphone, etc) market, which, prior to Windows 8, they really did not have a part of. Instead of creating Windows 8.0 for Smartphones and Tablets, and Windows 8.0 for Laptops and Desktops, they created Windows 8.0 for all devices, yet "pushed" the tablet side of things to try to be like apple.

As we now know, that did not work out as well as they had hoped, and a lot of enterprise users, as well as home users on Desktops and Laptops were very annoyed with the changes that Microsoft brought with Windows 8.0.

I really feel that the changes that Microsoft made were needed to help get them into the mobile marketplace. However, to do that at the sacrifice of the desktop, laptop, and enterprise users may not have been the right choice. I've always said that if Microsoft would have allowed the choice of things from the start, things could have turned out a lot better for Microsoft then they did. By choice, I mean things like allowing the end user the ability to select either the new Windows 8.0 interface (start screen) or allow users to select the well known Start Menu from Windows 7 and prior. Most of the items that Microsoft has put in Windows 8.1 as well as Windows 8.1 Update 1 should have been there from the beginning of Windows 8.0.

With all that being said, I'm also someone who is willing to work with a new OS, and take the time needed to research it, figure it out, and see what changes are there, and how to get around and do the tasks I need. I may take things to an extreme level for a home user, but I actually have a text document that contains the steps that I do when I install Windows 7, and now Windows 8.1 Update 1. Here is a small sample of that document for the install of Windows 8.1 Update 1

4) Modify the Time Zone to be (UTC-06:00) Central Time (US & Canada)
 
5) Unpin all items from the taskbar
 
6) Modify the Taskbar Properties
Taskbar Tab
Taskbar buttons: Never Combine
Notification Area: Always show all icons and notifications on the taskbar
 
Jump Lists Tab
Uncheck "Store and display recently opened items in Jump Lists"
 
7) Open Windows Explorer, and rename "This PC" to "Computer"
 
8) Modify Windows Explorer (View / Options / Change folder and search options)
General Tab
Show favorites (uncheck)
View Tab
Display the full path in the title bar (check)
Show hidden files, folder, and drives (check)
Hide empty drives in the Computer folder (uncheck)
Hide extensions for known types (uncheck)
Use Sharing Wizard (uncheck)
 
9) Disable Hibernation by going to a command prompt, and typing powercfg.exe /hibernate off
 
 

That one contains 82 steps that I do.

So, when I was installing Windows 8.0 for the first time, I used my Windows 7 document as a guide to see what changes I made. I then took the time to see if the change was still something I wanted to do, or if it no longer applied, as well as if there was any new changes to the OS that I would like to make. I probably installed Windows 8.0 a dozen times or more before I had the configuration that I wanted.Actually, you are posting this in the Microsoft Forum of the site. This is by far the best place to post questions like this. You can also search this forum for other issues and questions in regards to Windows 8.x. I know there is a lot of posts out there regarding this version of Windows, as well as a lot of real solutions to issues that other members of the site have run into.

Again, I would encourage you to become a member of the site, so that you can take advantage of everything that is offered here. Membership is free, and only takes a few minutes.

--Brian

The post was originally made in »Rants, Raves, and Praise - and moved here to the Microsoft Forum because of the last word in the Original Post:

dbmaven - that change of forum did confuse me.

Brain - pleasant to find someone else who documents and presumably plans an OS change. I currently have 17 A4 pages of handwritten notes on this conversion to 8.1. I have found few people who can appreciate that, probably because they do not spend at least 12 hours a day at the keyboard, they don't have as many applications, and they either don't need to streamline for productivity or don't know how to. The amount of time I have had to spend on setting up the new PC, encountering bugs and inexplicable changes, googling for answers (and finding many others in the same sad boat) does not make business sense. But what can I do? I am unwillingly a captive of the MS enslaved corporate world.

I would love to know how many settings I make in an OS over a two year period - which is about as long as I can ever run a Win OS without it starting to wobble. I would not be surprised if the number is in many hundreds, perhaps touching a thousand.
What astounds me about MS is that the basic operation of an OS changes so much each time. I wonder if it is the same programming team or company which wrote the previous OS, whether they are writing completely new code. This conversion to 8.1 and to Off2010 (from XP and Off2003) has felt to me as I have felt when trying to become familiar with linux (which I never have done completely due to being forced back to the MS environment).

Now - I have another reason to hate MS. OUtlook 2010 folder arrangement is erratic. The order is not always the same. I am not given an option to change them. I am regularly having to look up and down the list to find a folder. I have 3 accounts and the order of the common folders is not the same. Explanations?

The responses to queries about this are that this is simply how it is! There is no appreciation of the annoyance it creates, nor that this was not the case in previous versions. Does this not show either incompetence, a care less attitude, a lack of attention to detail, insufficient beta testing and plain arrogance?

The PATH problem - besides finding out that the only way to change the PATH was via an administrator command prompt, the annoyances I have described in this thread have not been answered. If I were being a complete idiot and had an obvious solution pointed out to me in each case - well that would make me the broken cog. No - MS is the broken cog and Yes I do hate Microsoft.

Thanks for all your help.

Every OS has its own oddity. There are things in OS X that baffles the hell out of me.

Also for outlook go to File then Account settings and you can change the order in that Email tab. Is that what you're looking for?

dave, you still on 7? Get with the time.. 8 > 7

I have real work to do.

The reason I document the install process like I do comes from the job that I used to have. I worked in IT, and our group was responsible for the creation of the corporate image.

Back then (probably 2005), we were using Norton Ghost to drop the image onto a system. So, when we would create that ghost image, we had to do it by hand (we had not found an automated solution yet, like Image Ultra). In order to make sure that each time we did the install and configuration exactly the same, I was tasked with the job to document each and every step of the install process, complete with pictures for Windows XP. I don't have the word document anymore, but it was something like 200 pages long when it was all said and done. To make matters worse, we actually had 2 documents: One for a desktop install, and one for a laptop install, as there were differences in drivers and software. The idea was that if there was an issue with Ghost, the deployment team (the people who would actually run the ghost process) could use the manual steps and end up with the exact same install.

My boss always said that if I was ever hit by a bus, someone else should be able to pick up the document, and be able to install (at the time) Windows XP the exact same way that I was doing it. How does one do that? Short of doing a video of the install, we did the next best thing. Document each and every install step so there would be no confusion on the order, setting changes, etc.

The other good thing with this is that if later on issues arose due to an in-house application (as far as it not installing), we could go back and show the development team what we changed from a default install of the OS. It helped troubleshoot things as far as permissions, settings, missing dependencies, and so on.

As I said, Sysprep and the like was available, we just did not know about them at the time.

Because of that work, I took it upon myself to document my own install process. This way, if I was ever working on my systems, or friends and family, I could do the install of a given OS the same way. That allowed me to remember what I did, so if said person came back 6 months later, and said something was broke, I knew how I set up their system to begin with!

--Brian