anyone used windows recently?
 

i was recently asked to carry out a task on my friends windows xp pc. i felt like i came from a different planet and didnt know what was going on.

just name one thing that you love about mac that you think would be weird if you didnt have anymore...

mine has to be hot corners. absolutely love them!

Gosh, when I installed boot camp... I still remember the first time I tried to use expose to get at my other windows. It took me a few seconds to figure out why hotcorners was "broken".

And then their is the lack of quick silver, along with my perpetual desire to click on the upper left corner to close windows. And I keep trying to access spotlight... Yeah, good thing I only use XP for games...

I recently had to set up a broadband connection for someone who had just got a brand new laptop with Vista Home Premium on it. This was my first ever hands-on experience with MicroSoft's latest offering.

I was quite impressed to begin with (no more fruit salad themed UI - yipee!), but within 20 minutes was close to throwing the thing out of their third-floor window...

As Zalister mentioned, there are no hot-corners, or exposé. I kept mousing to the bottom-left corner and getting nothing.

<RANT>

But the most infuriating thing is Windows' insistence to tell you absolutely everything that is going on:

"Windows has detected a USB device"
I should damn well hope so, I just plugged it in.

"You are connected to the wireless network ..."
Thankyou. I always wondered what happens when I click on "Connect to Network...". And that little icon that shows a wireless signal, is so confusing.

"An executable program has been launched"
Really?!? Even a goldfish would remember double-clicking the icon one second ago.

"A USB device has been unplugged"
That'll be due to me unplugging it then.

And each one is accompanied by a very annoying "bong" sound.

PLEASE JUST LEAVE ME IN PEACE TO DO WHAT I WANT TO DO WITH THE COMPUTER.

I almost expected it to pop-up a dialog every 5 minutes saying "You are still using this computer".

And please don't get me started on the AV program. It was just as nagging.

</RANT>

As someone once said (possibly on this forum), Windows likes to tell you when it has done something right, whereas Macs tell you when something has gone wrong. Which is rarely.

It's the peace that I like.

Actually, there are more quicksilver clones for PCs than there are for Macs. I use Launchy on my computer at work. I also use WinExpose to do a somewhat poor but manageable job of emulating Expose, have themed my windows to look like Tiger and have hidden the Start Menu. The only thing missing is the menu bar!

Admittedly, it is a complete waste of computing resources to cloak Windows as a Mac wannabe. However, I prefer to be in my comfort zone and since I can't have a Mac at work, I choose this instead.

Yeah...I think I agree to an extent. But all the QS clones I've seen on Windows don't impress me. And besides, I don't want to be tempted to try and use Windows as a work station, it would just make me angry...

For the moment I'm happy with just running games in there. If I ever have to do some serious work with Windows I'll run Parallels...

When in parallels, and winxp, often using winword, I'll automatically press command + Q, shutting down parallels rather than winword. Luckily, relaunching parallels brings me right back to where I'd been, and then I can click on that large red X in the upper right corner.

I had a friend who set his XP computer up in such a way that he actually had a 'Dock' with the apps all sitting pretty on it. I laughed as he bagged macs yet his PC had dock, expose, and countless other mac-isms

That's what I don't get.

A lot of PC-heads i know like to have their computers look like Macs. They have a Mac-dock, Mac windows theme, etc., yet they hate macs themselves.

It's the gaming culture. They'll come around when we have more games (and isn't that just the best reason?)

For me its just how Mac OS handles text input. I do a heck of a lot of typing and it's the little things that matter most. Like when typing in a text box, if I hit the 'up arrow' it goes to the start, and the 'down arrow' takes me to the end. I use Windows all day at work and I really miss that!

We just got a new table for our computers, peripheral devices, etc, and of course it necessitated unplugging all the wiring-spaghetti, rerouting it all, then plugging it back in.

The external hard drives, of course, were unmounted from both operating systems and then powered down before unplugging.

I forgot about stupid brain-dead Windows and how it is about printers though, and didn't shut down the Pee Cee before unplugging the USB cable by which the little Dymo label printer is connected to it.

Dong-ding! A device has been removed! Oh f?¢#, forgot about that...

::I go on to reroute all the wires, etc, eventually replugging the printer::

Ding-dong! Pop! A new device has been detected! Pop! A USB printer has been detected! Pop! A DYMO label printer on USB 2 has been detected! Pop! The driver for your DYMO label printer on USB 2 has been installed!

Open the label printing software. Try a test print. Nope, nothing happening. Open the Printers Setup, or My Little Printers, or whatever MS calls it nowadays. There's the DYMO Printer plain as life. Get properties. Everything seems correct and normal. Try test print. Pop! Your printout has been sent to the printer! Pop! Printing failed! Raseen frazzen frickle lizard... Delete printer. Go to My Computer. Right-click My Computer. New Hardware. Auto-detect. A printer has been detected. Windows has drivers for this printer, use default drivers? Yeah sure. Your printer has been installed, what shall we call it? Dymo USB LabelWriter. Test print. Pop! Your document has been sent to the printer! Pop! Printing failed! Delete printer. Shut down Windows. Unplug printer. Boot Windows. Plug in printer. Pop! New hardware has been detected. Pop! A new DYMO label printer has been detected! <etc> Test print. Pop! Your document has been sent to the printer! Pop! Printing failed! Delete printer. Auto-detect. No, I do not want to use the default driver. Vary this. Vary that. Delete. Reinstall. Reboot. Unplug. Somewhere around the 237th time, all of a sudden, Zz-zzzz-zzzzt, out shoots a label.

STUPID! FREAKING! Operating system! Yeesh!

Create label: "Unplug me and die". ZZ-zzzz-zzzt. Attach label to label printer.

See, that's what sucks about Windows. There's loads of programs, sure, but a good lot of them are crap. Same with hardware. There's a good load of it, but a lot of it may be crap.

With Macs, we don't worry so much. The stuff that generally is released to Mac is mostly good quality.

EDIT: I'm actually on a Windows PC right now, and I noticed something: Windows doesn't come with a half-decent word processor at all.

I had to use an old copy of Word 2000 to even get this out and working with Firefox/IE:
http://phorium.files.wordpress.com/2...s-strategy.txt (Strategy for GameFaqs)

Why? Because WordPad NOR Notepad insert linebreaks automatically. Looked fine in the programs themselves, but try to view them in good ol' Firefox, and it's pretty broken.

TextEdit never did this, and it had more than enough features to tide me over for High School/any kind of writing.

I've just started using firefox on a usb drive via portable apps, at my winbox at work.

I'm missing the command key! Yes, the CTRL key will act as the command key, but it's inconveniently located for closing windows in conjunction with the W key. I've become so accustomed to thumb on command key, and middle finger on W, that having to migrate further for the ctrl key is becoming annoying. It's just unergo enough to be frustrating.

:(

One of these days Apple will just include iWork with your Mac (like iLife) and Microsoft will be forced to curl up into a little ball in a corner and cry itself all the way to bankruptcy...okay, that's a bit dramatic. But it won't bod well for Microsoft, let's say that.

i don't thing they would, or if they did it would be like a really basic version.... anyway i heard from lots of places that the new iworks is just neooffice except it costs money? so why pay when we can get it for free :)

I'm not ecstatic with neooffice. It's fine for viewing basic Word docs that come through your computer, but it's rather slow to start, especially on my G4 mini, but also on the new mbp.

Lately I've been having to view a lot of Word docs that have been done inside tables. Meeting minutes, strategic plans, junk like that. Neooffice has difficulty keeping the formatting straight. Text entered in some cells will appear to have over-written text in other cells.

Neooffice is also unwieldy in having to navigate through its menus. So, I find when creating or working with documents like that, I need to use winxp vm in parallels, and Office within that.

As I've been too stingy to shell out for using iWorks so far, I don't know if Pages would fare any better at viewing Word tables than neooffice. Keynote now looks so good, I'm probably going to get the iWorks, so I'll be able to see if Pages is able to manage. Even MS Office for mac on my old G4 running 9.1 had trouble managing complexly formatted documents. Probably something squirrely about MS's underlying code?

dictionary.app
 

Another thing which I miss when I'm at work using winbox:

dictionary.app

Now that my mind is so old and feeble, I'm relying more upon dictionary as I write emails, documents, and yes, posts in forums. I've got dictionary app set up with hotkeys on our macs, but at work, I automatically hit those keys and nothing happens.

I've got dictionary.com bookmarked in firefox from portable apps, but it isn't as quick as dictionary app.

Having used both I think I can rather easily say "Um...no, not at all". If you don't believe me, try this link.

It is true that both NeoOffice and iWork '08 can cover for a lot of the functionality of MSOffice, but the similarities end right there abouts. Saying iWork is just NeoOffice is kind of like saying OSX is just BSD with a pretty shell. You may be somewhat right, but it's a gross oversimplification.

As soon as I get some money in for the semester I'm totally getting iWork '08, I'm totally sold on it.

Cell content spilling over in NeoOffice?
 

I think you are seeing the text in a cell spill over to the next column. I view it as a feature, that you can see what's in the cell as long as it doesn't interfere with the rest of the content.

From the OOo forums:
If a cell's contents is too long for the width, you'll see a red arrow on the right. Click the arrow to see the rest of the contents. OR, you can put a single space in the otherwise-empty next column to force the overflow.

I've been pretty happy with NeoOffice as a replacement for Excel so far, I agree the menus are harder to deal with and the help could be better, but the forums generally feature real answers to coherent questions.

Darryl

Thanks Darryl. I'll look into it, but I don't believe it's a situation of overflow. The overwriting is to cells below, not lateral, the way that excel will handle text in a cell. I believe I understand what you were mentioning about text spilling into the next lateral cell's space unless there was content in that cell. I think winExcel does that? In the instance about which I'm referring, the text had obliterated the text contents of cells below. I'll check the sources you mention, though. Thank you.

usb drive not ejecting
 

And yet another thing which annoys me about having to use windows at work. Clicking on that little icon to eject the usb drive upon which I've firefox via portable apps, often calls up a warning box which says that the thing is still in use, despite me having exited all apps, and assuring that windows explorer isn't pointed at the drive.

Sometimes that Safely Remove Hardware icon works, and sometimes it doesn't. I miss being able to just click on the eject symbol adjacent to the drive name in finder. Then the drive just disappears. Very nice.