Miscellaneous Operating Systems/Hardware

Okay, I got a new laptop just to do WIndows Phone 8 development on..

The first incredibly stupid thing I did was do "express setup" of Windows 8 Home. It was late, I was tired, I just wanted to install the Windows Phone 8 SDK and go to bed.
Because of the express set up, I had a network or live account or something and no administration rights. Installing the SDK and it completes with the message "Can not add user to Hyper-V group".
I upgraded Windows 8 Home to Windows 8 Pro, fine. Then I changed the account from network to local and then it goes and starts doing the exact same updates again, or at least it appeared that way, half a Gb, a hundred Mb or so and so forth.
I tried to download a Windows Phone 8 sample but when I attempted to open it, that too failed. Couldn't find some sub file of the project. Creating a default project and attempting to debug it fails because the emulator can not be started... Because of the Hyper-V group issue. Every time I attempt to debug something, I have to "Retry" in the message box for the first time after starting Visual Studio.

I started using this laptop without a mouse, moving the pointer across the screen really quickly using the track pad kept getting interpreted as gestures, I kept getting switched between apps and the "start" screen even though all I wanted to do was click on something on the top corner then focus back to another part in the opposite corner. Okay use a mouse and live with it... Track pads are useless with Windows 8..

I woke up this morning and I just pulled the machine out of sleep mode, first thing in the morning, from last nights session, I have at least 20 tabs open in both Chrome and IE-10, Visual Studio open, Blend, and heap of other stuff and a blue screen appears with something like "Will restart in 14 minutes XX seconds to install some important patches, save your work or restart now", so I start closing tabs and emailing myself urls or stuff I might want to read later, another blue screen, 4 minutes XX seconds and the seconds are ticking down... So I am busy trying to close tabs, thinking about what I should do about what is in Visual Studio and time runs out... No option to pause or extend the session a few minutes longer and it just restarts. I am pissed off enough to post this on a Mac before logging back into the Windows8 phone dev machine with out checking what the state of my session is. Just when I was beginning to feel burnt out on this iOS app and in the mood to do some Windows Phone 8 work...

I am going through MSDN on stuff about Windows Phone 8 SDK and other parts and there are 404s and there are pages that tell you nothing useful but direct to something else which in turn puts you in a loop of equally useless pages and stuff like that all over the place. A lot of pages will not work unless you are using Internet Explorer, I can not have some stuff open on the Mac and be working on WIndows8 beside it.. I have to switch back and forth on Windows8. You can only have one Microsoft identity on the machine at one time. It used to be that You can log into say hotmail in one browser with the first account and then log into hotmail with the second account in a different browser. But no, logging into something on IE resets your Chrome session and then on Chrome when you switch from say inbox to sent you get the wrong email sent box. Only one identity at time on WIndows8 , just have the other session open on a Mac for stuff that will work outside of IE. Documentation and developer support is shambolic and you are trapped in a straight jacket working only in IE and having to switch accounts back and forth if you have separate accounts for for different things and it is all tied together through the "identity" .. the developer console, email accounts just for dev work, personal accounts from back when hotmail ran on BSD, logins to training and tools site, etc. God help you if you try to work with any of them as separate IDs.

A real Microsoft faniboi I used to work with a poker machine company suggested an app called Start8, It drops you straight into Desktop mode by passing the "Start Screen", gives you a start button or something in order for you to make it look like Windows7 or something. ... And this from a guy who worships in the direction of Redmond.

I've heard people whine about WIndows8 but man... I am wondering what happened to Microsoft. Seriously.



R.

Addendum: I just checked and it restored the Visual Studio, Phone Emulator and IE session but my Chrome session never existed. To be fair that might have been a Samsung update that got pushed, I saw a "Samsung update blah blah wants to make changes to your machine".. But still... No, option just for a few minutes grace, just bang reboot as you are trying to save stuff. WindowsXP used have a "Restart Later" button and you could delay things for another 15 minutes..

I can't even get it to install or upgrade from Win7

I wound up doing a clean install to take advantage of UEFI fast boot and flipped the registry bit to avoid the upgrade-only restriction afterwards.

Count your blessings

Did a fresh install and it locked up tighter than a frogs ass

If I get food poisoning at some restaurant, I don't go back. You guys are such optimists, I have to applaud you

That happens often?

I picked up a copy of Win8Pro for my work desktop and installed it with a local account and basically shut off all those "connecting-to-the-internet" functions, but haven't played around with it further. Given that I really don't care so much how messed up my work desktop is I figured I dual-boot that with Win7 Pro for now until I either decide for or against Win8 and then think about what I will do with my laptop (on which I use Ubuntu 12.04 most of the time anyway), as on that I have chemical visualisation software which I already wonder about in terms of "compatibility".

More often than I would like, yes

Contrary to popular opinion, China already had late-stage capitalism. That's why the Qing dynasty was such a failure.

We are in the process of returning to that situation. The lowly worker population is nothing and worth nothing, just hire the cheapest "labor" you can for any task. Hence the total ignorance of any concepts of food safety in the restaurant kitchens of modern China. But the owners make a profit !

That's what counts, right ? Until someone who just spent the night blowing it out both ends finally snaps and breaks the faces of the stinking ignorant job creators, anyhow.

At least Windows 8 isn't that bad. You can just ignore it. I'm surprised you guys waste your time on these false hopes.

To do Window Phone 8 development you need Windows8 Pro on a machine with second level address translation (ie an i3 to i7 or whatever) for Hyper-V which runs the emulator. I wrote a book on bada and it almost disappeared as a platform, see what happens with Windows Phone. I've missed the boat too many times, I thought the web would never replace wias, gopher, archie, veronica, etc. I never got web 2.0 or social media...

These days I hold my nose and give everything a shot.



One wonders how that is measured, PSI, KPa, and quantified?

R.

I've never done it myself, you understand, but I'm told you have to use a sensitive measuring probe

Some keyboard shortcuts that will make your Windows 8 experience on a Desktop or Laptop much better:

Windows Key + X - Brings up a nice shortcut for Control Panel, Command Prompt etc
Windows Key + C - Brings up the slide out as if you were to move your mouse to the top right of your screen and then down
Windows Key + I - Brings up your settings options including the Power Button to Shutdown or Restart (although a Windows Key + D and then Alt + F4 will bring up the "standard" shutdown box)
Windows Key - Will bring you back to your "Windows 7" view.

On the "Tile" aka Metro View, you can just start typing the name of the app, like notepad for instance and hit enter before the search result even appears if you know it is the only app

Definitely group your apps on the main view, by clicking the "minus" icon in the bottom right, right clicking on a "column" of tiles and then clicking on the "Name Group".

For me I never really used the Start Menu since XP, I always just pinned my apps to the Taskbar or left a shortcut on my desktop. So now instead of leaving the less used apps on my desktop I have them pinned to the "Metro View" instead, leaving my desktop free and clear.