84% of Bullshit

There is an article in Washington Post saying that Windows 8 is 84% less frustrating than Windows 7. It probably comes from same world where 98% of all statistics are manufactured or “adjusted”.

I will admit outright that I have small sample size of 2+. One is me (yes, I am running Windows 8 again) and my wife is second (running Windows 8 on her netbook). Plus signifies anecdotal frustration evidence from friends. For purpose of this article I will disregard all troubles I already menioned and stick to single one: Fitts’s law.

When working at desktop people are used to having significant things in corner. We have close button in upper-right, application icon in upper-left (double-click functions as close here), we had start button in lower-right and show desktop in lower-left. With Windows 8 left side of deal got broken.

When I try to close application by double-clicking its icon, I never manage to do it. Stupid task switcher pops out and brings me in another application. Starting first application in taskbar has same issue. It is just too easy to switch with mouse (and especially with trackpad) to start screen.

Even if you try to stick to new Windows UI you will get into trouble. Regardless of how significant new UI was to Microsoft, they haven’t bothered to transfer all internal applications to it. You cannot work more than 5 minutes on anything without being thrown back into a desktop. And all those context switches are exhausting.

Best thing that Vista brought was search from within Start menu. We have same thing in Windows 8 but segregated into Apps, Settings and Files. Yes, now you need to know where thing you are searching is. And start screen soon becomes unwieldy mess because every single application gets it icons there. Yes, applications did the same to Start Menu in Windows 7 but I didn’t need to look at it the whole time.

I will not even get into picture viewer that makes it impossible to view next image or mail application that shows first mail and selected one upon clicking. Most of applications in the new UI are probably designed by bunch of non-supervised interns since their basic functionality is usually not working. And good luck finding alternative in Store that is as deserted as church on Friday night.

I agree that on tablets this all works and Windows 8 will probably be 84.07692307692308% better on them. I will also agree that insides of Windows 8 make it most powerful system out there. However, I don’t recall one person saying that something in Windows 8 does not frustrate them. And, mind you, these are users that had Windows 8 for couple of months now.

It just tell that as soon as you assign percents to satisfaction, you are just being a jackass.

Virtual CloneDrive - Installation Failed!

After fresh Windows 7 installation and some initial setup I came around to install programs on top of it. I find Virtual CloneDrive perfect companion for this job since most of software I have is in form of an ISO image.

This time I stumbled upon a problem. Every time I tried to install it I would get “Installation failed!” followed by “Completed!” and setup asking for restart. And CloneDrive would just end up as Unknown device in Device Manager. Every time before this program worked perfectly, why it would not now?

After short analysis I managed to find a problem. As part of install driver is extracted in user’s temporary folder (AppData\Local\Temp). Then system is invoked in order to install it.

Just after Windows install I have enabled encryption on my user profile. When system attempted to install driver it was accessing file in context of another user. Thus it was unable to read encrypted files.

Solution was simple - I just turned off encryption attribute for directory and started setup again. This time everything went in perfect order. After having similar issues with multiple programs, I permanently removed NTFS encryption on temporary folder. It seems that lot of programs use this folder during installation of system components and it was just too annoying to keep it encrypted.

Real solution would be for programs with system components to use Windows\Temp as temporary folder. However, you cannot control what other people do…

Windows ME, Take 2

I have followed Windows 8 from developer preview all the way to the RTM. I was never really taken away with UI, but I thought it bearable. And I was determined to give it fighting chance - I’ll work for at least a month and then judge.

Well, month has passed and judgement is here - I will delete it and bring Windows 7 back.

I have endured idiotic interface, I have endured disk repair every time I boot between it and Windows 7 (although they are on different physical drives). I have endured inferior store applications. I have endured image viewer from hell (who needs move to next image?). I have even endured a hard crash during startup. Straw that broke my back was Visual Studio.

I have installed Visual Studio 2012 on fresh Windows 8. Both being flagship products of this year I didn’t think that there will be problems. Well, I thought wrong. First day after install, during 2010 solution load, it somehow forgot all his editors (including one for text). Just to be safe I reinstalled both Windows and VS. And than it happened again day after. This time I just did VS repair. And than again. And a few times more…

Same Visual Studio under Windows 7 loads solution without any issue.

After some time (and possibly some updates) I haven’t had same issue. In order not to miss reinstalls too much I got new error: “An error occurred saving the project file. The specified file could not be encrypted.” Why the hell would it want to encrypt this file I have no idea. Project is on exFAT drive and it works fine until I make changes.

Same Visual Studio under Windows 7 saves project without any issue.

Visual Studio 2012 is not a saint. It is slower than 2010 and its form editor crashes whenever it rains in Redmond. But those are relatively small issues and I haven’t even come close to uninstalling it. That is, if it runs under Windows 7.

I had every version of Windows since 3.11 installed at one time or another. And there was only one version that I skipped - Windows ME. Now it is joined by Windows 8.

P.S. To be fair there are two things I will miss: file copy dialog and removal of Aero UI.

Not So Live

Last night I decided to do a big step - I wanted to update wife’s HP mini 5101 to Windows 8. It was nice Atom machine to start with and I further upgraded it to 2 GB RAM and 120 GB SSD. With relaxed graphic card requirements on Windows 8 it seemed like a perfect fit.

New Windows 8 interface is a bit controversial. Lot of people hate it, most users just bear with it and there are even some poor souls that actually like it. I was very curious in which group will my wife belong.

Well, involuntary haters it seems. Whichever tile gets selected, same greeting follows: “This app cannot open. The screen resolution is too low for this app to run.” Bummer.

And this is fantastic example how Windows 8 is botched. It is not one big wrong decision, it is bunch of small ones. One team makes decision that tiles will not be supported at certain resolution. Nothing wrong with that. As a developer I can only greet it.

But then another team makes decision that you cannot boot directly into desktop. Nobody can say with a straight face that this is technical issue. It is just some dickhead deciding that everybody wants this new stuff. And that idiot of course forgot to take valid technical issue into consideration - not all users can use it.

Why do you show these tiles to me? It is doubtful that monitor will grow with time. If tiles cannot be used, I do not want to see them. Allow me to boot directly into desktop interface and deal with tiles only when I can (e.g. on external monitor). Until that time, do not fill my screen with unusable clutter.

Technically Windows 8 might be best Windows so far. I dare to say that even backtracking on their Aero UI is correct step. However it seems that Microsoft lost their designer’s compass. Whole OS looks like unfinished alpha build. There are lots of potentially nice features but none of them got proper polish.

Lets hope that Windows 9 beta is right behind a corner.

Fingerprint Logon in Windows 8

As I installed Windows 8 I was very happy to see that my Authentec AES2810 fingerprint reader got installed by default.

My happiness didn’t last too long. As I went to record my fingerprints I was greeted with “The selected fingerprint reader has no management application installed”. In Windows 7 that application got installed via Windows Update alongside reader’s driver. In Windows 8 they decided driver alone is enough. Which idiot arrived to that conclusion is left for discussion. In any case, my fingerprint reader was useless.

If everything else fails, go to manufacturer - AuthenTec was kind enough to offer their Protector Suite 2012 for download. Installing it allowed me to use fingerprints once more. It is not ideal situation since that program is limited version (unless you upgrade) and it includes way more than one needs for simple logon. But it does work.

Windows 8 and Product Key

Windows 7 had beautiful trial mode. Upon installation you just skip key entry. That forces Windows 7 into trial mode and it will work like that for 30 days. At any point you can decide to enter product key and, voila, you have normal Windows.

I don’t recall that I ever entered product key during installation. When I install fresh Windows I run them as trial until I am happy with how they work. Then I enter product key (copy/paste from text file). If I need to reinstall or I need different edition, I just go for it.

Windows 8 team decided that it is to useful a feature. So they removed it.

Windows 8 requires key upon every install. As I was setting up Windows 8 installation I was reinstalling them every half an hour until I had them set up as I want them (yes, I am weird, and yes, some things should be set properly from start). And for every install I had to enter 25-character product key. And I had to do it by copying it from paper instead of just copy/pasting like I would do in Windows 7. Annoying!

When someone complains that my program does not work on German Windows 7 Home Edition, I would just perform clean install without bothering to enter or retrieve product key. I install, reproduce, fix, test and virtual machine is gone. For Windows 8 I would need to enter product key for each of these temporary installations. Annoying!

Yes, there is an evaluation edition available but only for enterprise edition. You cannot have evaluation of any other edition (e.g. to see whether all features are present before actually buying it). You cannot convert it to any other edition by entering product key. You cannot even keep it after evaluation ends. Instead of just entering product key, you need installation from scratch. And, don’t forget to activate it in 10 days. Annoying!

What was the reasoning behind this? My guess is that some wanker manager decided to cut this feature because of “fight against piracy”. Guess what, pirated copies will still be there. Only paying customers will be annoyed. It is sad when I can install pirate version with less effort than official one.

To summarize: Annoying!

[2013-09-17: Well, it turns out that you can install it without product key.]

No More Metro

Those who are annoyed with Metro UI can rejojce. Microsoft will not use Metro interface for Windows 8.

Just joking, there is no real change here. Somehow Microsoft managed to step into trademark turd and now it is backpedaling out of it. I can imagine some poor guy going through all documentation, all articles and God knows what else (Windows 8 manual maybe) in order to replace any mention of Metro with “Windows 8-style UI”.

Windows Mobile related documents will get same treatment. With one stroke of a pen it will get it’s “New User Interface”. A bit stupid name for second iteration of same UI, but I guess that happens when lawyers crash the party.

While it might be funny to see Microsoft fry a bit, I do wonder why there is trademark issue here at all. Is the world going crazy?

[2012-10-05: Lately Microsoft started to refer to interface as Modern UI. Strangely appropriate since I feel like I am in Modern Times while using it.]

Cheaper Windows

Next version of Windows will be cheaper. At least that is how I understand it after Windows 8 engineering team brought us nice DVD playback guide.

DVD playback has it’s cost. And that cost was shared among all versions of Windows. Microsoft stated that $2 will get you MPEG-2 decoder. And frankly that is probably everything you need since PCM codec is available on every DVD for your stereo. Since Dolby codec is nice thing to have, let’s say that it costs additional $2 (Microsoft didn’t state cost).

My expectation is that next version of Windows will cost $4 less than Windows 7. If you are among those Windows users with lot of legacy MPEG-2 based media, you can upgrade your Windows for $5 (additional $1 is for covering distribution cost). I think that everybody wins!

And I am taking bets.

Who really thinks that Windows will be cheaper and that you will be able to buy DVD playback option for $5?

Who Uses Serial Mouse?

One pet project of mine is random number generator. It is actually quite simple: PIC generates random number from noise and then uses FT232RL to transfer it. On micro-controller side it is standard USART and to Windows it looks like it is USB-to-serial converter. To get random number, program just needs to read a byte from serial port. How hard can it be?

I tried device under Windows 7 and computer suddenly started shutdown. Not a crash mind you, proper shutdown. I checked event logs and everything pointed just to normal shutdown. I plugged device again and my mouse went wild. It started clicking, moving, re-sizing, cursing (ups, that was me). As soon as I pulled device out everything returned to normal. I plugged device back in and found no issues. For a while. And then mouse started going wild again. My guess is that it was this what did shutdown in first place. Mouse was just at the right place at the right time.

If I would open serial port as soon as device was plugged in, everything was normal. However, if device was left for a while, mouse dance would commence. I did remember that PS/2 could cause some similar issues but it didn’t quite match what I was seeing. What I was seeing seemed a lot like reports of serial GPS devices being treated as mouse. Actually it seemed totally same.

It seems that Windows will sample bytes from any connected serial device to check whether it is mouse on other side. Exact heuristics are not known to me but I bet that it checks whether data is sent all the time (like I do for my device) and whether data changes (like random numbers tend to). If both these requirements are satisfied it will search for some byte sequence to be sure. Since random number generator will (given enough time) create every sequence there is, I was fooling that check also.

Actual fix is rather simple. Under HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\sermouse we change property Start from 0x03 to 0x04. That causes service start option to be changed from manual to disabled. That also means that there is no support for serial mice on your computer. That is, if you manage to find one anywhere…

As for my device, I have no idea what to do. Forcing everybody to change registry in order for it to work does not seem user friendly. Putting it in readme.txt seems like sure way for nobody to even know about issue. Waiting for command before generating random number kills simplicity. Converting all to hex kills bandwidth, simplicity and I cannot be sure that problem will not resurface later…

There is probably no ideal solution but I will not let small thing like that prevent me from trying to find it.

P.S. Registry file for disabling serial mouse is available for download.

A Two Weeks With Windows 8

I have forced myself to use Windows 8 at home for previous two weeks. And best way to describe them would be as tablet OS.

Best example of tablet-centric behavior is seen if you search for “Computer”. You will get known “Computer” icon on which you might want to do right-click (in order to get context-menu). If you do this, context menu will appear but at bottom of the screen. So you need to take your cursor all the way down the screen. Pointless. And it is annoying that you cannot use keyboard to do that at all. Pressing context-menu key brings menu for text box and not for currently selected item. You first need to use arrow keys to go up/down and only then you can use keyboard properly. Unpolished to say the least.

Search that worked perfectly in both Windows Vista and Windows 7 is lacking. You cannot search for Printers, Devices, Programs… all those items that resided in start menu are not easily accessible by search. Yes, you can go and CLICK on Settings bellow, but that is solution that is more oriented toward tablets and guys using mouse. If you want keyboard you can get it with Win+W (very logical indeed) but at cost of time for switching. It gets even worse when you are not sure where something is.

Windows SmartScreen technology helps to annoy user further. It checks each file downloaded over Internet and, if not enough users downloaded that application through Internet Explorer, it will force you to jump through hoops to run it.

As network goes, Windows Vista/7 hid everything behind one more click than it is really necessary. However, if you had network connected, that network was shown in notification area (aka tray). In Windows 8 it shows state of whatever adapter it wants. Chance will have it that it is not adapter that you are using currently. So you can have icon with exclamation point while your network works perfectly. To show it you need to click on icon with warning.

Those were the things that I hated the most during regular work but they weren’t only ones. I think that almost every single feature of Windows 8 was unfinished and it was very obvious. I understand that it is not fair to compare beta (or consumer preview) of Windows 8 with finalized product that is Windows 7. However, I remember Windows 7 beta. I had no reservations to start using it immediately. There was virtually no downsides to it. Comparing two betas, it feels like Windows 8 was rushed…

Single excellent thing about Windows 8 is their ability to boot off the USB. And it is fortunate that they do since I am erasing them from my hard drive.