Windows 8

Three Reasons Why Hatred of the Windows 8 UI is a Good Thing

by

There seems to be a lot of negative sentiment about the Windows 8 user interface (the interface formerly known as Metro). It might be counterintuitive but I think this is ultimately a good thing. First, mainstream OS user interfaces have stagnated, and I like that Microsoft is thinking about what the next steps might be. I also like that they’re thinking about it in a different way than other OS vendors, especially not emulating Mac OS’ ridiculous skeuomorphism. Trying to maintain some common interface elements between desktops, laptops, and mobile devices seems like a good idea, too. They’re obviously not done thinking about the problem, otherwise they wouldn’t have left the desktop in Windows 8. That’s the main problem people …

Read More

Impressions of Windows 8

by

I’ve spent about 20 hours now with Microsoft Windows 8 release running in VMware Workstation 9. I’d looked at the developer preview months ago but not exercised it very much, figuring things would change. Some things did, for the better, but the UI changes, by far the most controversial, stayed pretty much the same. Windows 7 was called the successor to the wildly popular Windows XP but in my mind Windows 8 only succeeds the star-crossed Vista. It’s really too bad that all the seriously cool things — the new task manager, Storage Spaces, all the personalization updates, File History, the task bar improvements, several billion other tweaks — are all being overshadowed by the interface. Desktop PCs are not tablets. …

Read More

How To Disable Teredo IPv6 Tunneling in Microsoft Windows

by

Greg Ferro’s post about how Microsoft Teredo is a suboptimal networking solution made me think it’s time to update my old post on how to disable Teredo in Windows 7 and in Windows 8. For the record, I agree — I’ve had serious problems with it conflicting with my native IPv6 connectivity. 1. Open a command prompt with administrator privileges (Start->Accessories->right click on Command Prompt, choose Run as Administrator): 2. Issue the command: netsh interface teredo set state disabled 3. You may need to reboot, depending on your version of Windows. If you wish to re-enable Teredo at some point you can issue the command: netsh interface teredo set state type=default