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.]

Finally

Both Windows 8 and Visual Studio 2012 are finally available to MSDN subscribers.

I already got leaked versions from the torrents so this was just great opportunity to check whether SHA-1 matches. Guess what, it does. :)

Since everybody is trying to download these images right now, torrent also gives better experience.

Same general slowness and server crashes are nothing new for MSDN site (remember Windows 7). Maybe Microsoft should just embrace torrent network as distribution media instead relying on its own (obviously inadequate) infrastructure…

Is It Dark Yet?

Themes are quite popular thing under Windows and it is very hard to make an application that would look decent regardless of user-selected colors. It is somewhat easier when you can cover all your needs with predefined theme colors. but sometime you just need a few more in order to emphasize an element.

As an example we can take simple highlighting of an error. Changing offending text to dark red works really nice on white background. If user has dark background, dark red text is probably not as visible.

Easiest solution (and I fear most often used one) is to ignore this issue. If user has such stupid theme, it is his problem. Needless to say, this is very rude. If user wants to have black background, user should have it. Lunatics should not be restricted!

Other solution is to find colors for every combination expected in wild. Given customization possibilities this is probably not a path worth taking. However, we can divide all possible theme choices into subsets and work from there.

I usually just fit everything into two color buckets - light and dark. If I detect that background is light, I use one color, while I use another if background is dark. This simple solution works almost always.

Function looks something like this:

bool IsColorDark(Color color) {
    var y = 0.2126 * color.R + 0.7152 * color.G + 0.0722 * color.B;
    return (y <= 160);
}

It just calculates luminance of a given color (0-255). All colors with high luminance are considered light and all those with low luminance are dark. Somewhat arbitrary cutoff point value used here is 160. I found that it works quite well for my needs.

To check whether color belongs on dark end of spectrum we just place it in function call:

if (IsColorDark(myColor)) {
    //do something for dark
} else {
    //do something for light
}

Why the Wait?

I am MSDN subscriber and I am currently paying for it myself. That gives me privilege of being among first ones to download newest Windows and Visual Studio.

For example, Windows 8 went RTM on August 1st and I can get it on August 15th; Visual Studio 2012 went RTM on 3rd and I will get it on 15th. Public usually gets things few weeks afterward.

I am more than annoyed by the fact that it takes Microsoft two weeks to make RTM available for download without any good reason. Image is ready, pirates already have a copy. Why not release it for download? What is there to lose?

Way I see it, MSDN customers are either big companies which will probably install your new stuff in ten years or enthusiasts that want download now. Early release does not mean much to companies but it means everything to an enthusiast. If pirates can get software sooner, why bother paying MSDN?

Sometime I just feel like a money-wasting idiot…

Elusive CONFIG3H Setting

For toy project of mine I wanted to test PIC18F13K50. Nice fast PIC, lot of RAM, some ROM and USB connectivity. All that while working on good old 5V.

First order of business was to set configuration bits. Code should be familiar to anyone who used XC8:

#pragma config HFOFST = OFF
#pragma config MCLRE  = OFF

Unfortunately that did not work. I could set all bits other than those in CONFIG3H. And thus I could not make MCLR pin behave as normal input. Since PCB was already done, I could not just opt to use other pin. I had to have it my way.

I also tried to use:

__CONFIG(_CONFIG3H, HFOFST_OFF & MCLRE_OFF);

Hell, I even tried

 __PROG_CONFIG(3, 0x00);
```]

Nothing worked.

And than I noticed a curious thing. This PIC has CONFIG2H register followed by CONFIG3H. There is no CONFIG3L. Could that be an issue?

On a hunch I went to edit `18f13k50.cfgdata` (in `C:\Program Files\Microchip\xc8\v1.01\dat\`). There I added single line (highlighted) just before CONFIG3H declaration:

```plain
CWORD:300004:00:00:CONFIG3L
CWORD:300005:88:88:CONFIG3H
CSETTING:8:HFOFST:HFINTOSC Fast Start-up bit
CVALUE:8:ON:HFINTOSC starts clocking the CPU without waiting for the oscillator to stablize.
CVALUE:0:OFF:The system clock is held off until the HFINTOSC is stable.
CSETTING:80:MCLRE:MCLR Pin Enable bit
CVALUE:80:ON:MCLR pin enabled; RA3 input pin disabled
CVALUE:0:OFF:RA3 input pin enabled; MCLR disabled

With that simple change all was well and configuration bits were set.

And it works!

P.S. This workaround is valid for all other 18F family PICs that have CONFIG3L missing (e.g. PIC18F1220, PIC18F14K50…).

P.P.S. This should be solved in XC 1.10. Let’s hope. :)

[2012-08-11: As of XC8 1.10 this issue is fixed.]