Windows 8 Review: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

The Good:

Windows 8 does seem to run better on lower powered hardware than Windows 8. I have an ATOM based Nettop computer that seem to be faster with Windows 8. I can see they did some performance tuning.

The Bad:

The biggest complaint with Microsoft is they are moving choice. It has been a long-standing unwritten rule that there are many ways to do thing in Windows. Another unwritten run is allowing users to customize Windows. Windows 8 breaks both of those rules.

1. You can't choose which desktop you want to boot into, the Windows or Windows RT.
2. The Windows desktop is crippled because of no Start Menu.
3. Microsoft won't let you by default change the picture on the back of the Start Screen. Nor the application button colors, nor the images displayed for an application.
4. There are no common programs for both desktops. What I mean is if you launch IE in Windows and then go to Windows RT, IE isn't also available there too, already running in the exact spot your Windows desktop view of the application is at. Instead, Windows RT has a different IE, and there is no way to make them the same. I had hoped that an application could be accessed from either desktop and depending on the desktop you are in, is how the application would be presented to the user. Now there are two different and unequal applications.

(As a side note, I've noticed that Windows 8 desktop crashes are a lot harder to get through. I've had Explorer.exe crash, and back in Windows 7, the OS would start a new Explorer and the desktop will come back. In Windows 8, not only does Explorer not restart, but I can't pull up anything that will allow me to start an Explorer. I usually have to click the power button and have the laptop shutdown. I'm not sure why Windows 8 desktop is less stable than Windows 7, but I hope that gets fixed.)

The Ugly:

The Ugly is that users will have to deal with all these problems until a better alternative is made. I don't know if it will be Linux or third party vendor creating a Windows shell that gives the users what they want (which means is configurable).

I can see businesses and desktop/laptop users will still need a Windows 7 like desktop, a desktop mainly designed for high interactivity. There are also tablet uses for Windows that require low interactivity. Each is good for that it is designed for and bad at the other.

Bolting touch onto Windows 7 probably wouldn't have worked out too well, like wise needing to type and draw with precision doesn't work well only using touch.

I hear Microsoft isn't going to give users a Start Menu in Windows 8.1, but I guess we all can hope in Windows 9 the Windows desktop of Windows 7 will be restored. Also, the two desktop will be fused so only one application is needed, and depending on your view, is how you will see it.

Lastly, I guess I would have to put the Windows RT desktop under the ugly column. The irony isn't lost upon me where Microsoft wanted us to upgrade our machines to computers with stronger GPUs so we could have this pretty Aero Glass interface. Not Aero was removed from Windows 8 and not only does the Start Screen look ugly but now the Windows 8 desktop as well. It is sad that the start menu uses flat colors (no gradients no curves, no 3D tile look, no shiny gloss finish) and makes no attempt to look beautiful. Also sad is how the Windows RT designers say the removed all the chrome and only show content. However the Start Screen is full of buttons, and the layout of information in apps do break into lines. The "designers" in Windows 8 need to realized they may have renamed things but they are about the same. Everything they claim to have gotten rid of and can found in the new interface. (For example "wasted space by having the chrome", if you look at a Window RT application, there is plenty of space in applications that is not used. Some applications do a better job than others, but many of the default templates waste screen space.) Personally, I will be glad when the Metro/"Modern" interface gets improved into something that not only looks good but is also more useful.

git-flow for Windows

Figure from
http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/
Post Title: A successful Git branching model
Published: January 05, 2010

Found a good post on how to install git-flow on Windows.

http://xinyustudio.wordpress.com/2012/03/26/installing-git-flow-in-windows/

Also found a good site explaining git-flow usage.

http://yakiloo.com/getting-started-git-flow/

If I can get this down and works, I think this will help at work.

Acrobat Reader X Poor UI Design

One of my big pet peeves is forcing the user to accept your application they way someone else thinks it should be.  Nearly every UI change in the last few years had not been helpful for the power users, or those that don't fit the programmer’s idea of a "typical user".

Vista, Windows 7, and the soon to be Windows 8 are bad enough, but I see Adobe not to be left out decided to get on the band wagon.  I have been avoiding using Acrobat 9 Pro on most of my machines, which is fine.  But I keep bumping into one machine I have Acrobat Reader X installed.

The thing I can stand about the UI is the eat up my smallish laptop screen pixels and give no value by forcing me to display options I would never use, and can't remove.  In the right third of the toolbar (which can only be one row high) I can't find a way to hide these "tools" and make room for something useful.

UI designers should never restrict the users to one row of toolbars, and then also restrict them to have mandatory items show.  I do have more tools selected, and it isn't like these tools are filling unused space.  I actually have more tools that one row would allow, but for some reason Adobe decided for everyone that we should have these pixels reserved for what the typical Acrobat Reader user would need.  In my opinion, Acrobat Reader users want to read and navigate the PDF.  If they wanted to do more, there is an Acrobat Pro.

Anyway, I don't normally like to make negative comments, but I think someone needs to stand up for the user and the answer that is never wrong is "give the user what they want", which means the flexibility to customize things as they wish.

Synology DS1511+ Review

I've had the Synology DS1511+ for a little while now so here is my review:
Advantages:

• more powerful hardware means faster performance
• expandable up to 15 drives with two expansion units
• can server & transcode some media it serves via DLNA
• uses EXT4 (vice EXT3)
• can use mixed drive sizes
• web UI is clean, and has lots of features
• iSCSI target installed
• quiet
• dual gigabit NICs (which can be setup in different configurations, and have good throughput)
• firmware actively being developed
• can add extension
• rsync
• can mount external shares & ISO files

Disadvantages:

• Expanding volume doesn't seem to work with smaller drives (I have 4 3TB drive and 1 500GB hard drive.  I can't find a way to make the 500GB drive part of the volume that the 3TB drive are.  It wants to make it a new volume.  Hopefully when I install another 3TB drive in the 500GB slot it will let me join the existing volume.)
• even though there are third party extensions, they aren't as easy to install as the Synology developed extensions.
• There is a backup app, but I don't believe it does snapshots, and I've had trouble getting it to work without manually managing things.

Wishlist:

• I wish there was a ZFS option native in the choices of file systems.  (Also, that the ZFS would be the latest release because all the features it has.)  As is, I have to use the Synology as an iSCSI target for computer that can use ZFS.
• If you replace an existing drive with a larger drive, using all the space of the new drive shouldn't be a two step process (first repair the volume, then expand the volume) you should have the option to have it repair and expand at once or immediately following the repair completion.

Overall, there are a lot of features (way more than mentioned) packed in the little box, plus it is expandable.  The price is about the same as the ReadyNAS NV+ back in the day.  I would recommend the Synology DS1511+.

Why quotas are important with ZFS?

I learned the hard way that you need to put a quota on you ZFS volume because you risk fulling up the volume.  Because ZFS is a copy-on-write file system, a full drive means you can't delete any files.  Also, the zpool list command may tell you there is space remaining, but zpool list doesn't always tell you the whole story.  My zvol became filled with about 30GB for space available.  I believe this space had something to do with the dedupe and compression settings and snapshots I had.  Now when I looked at the available property of the ZFS volume, it did show that I have zero available space remaining.

The things I learned is, first set a quota that is just below you maximum space.  This will leave you enough room to delete files.  Second, if you want to know how much space is left, use the available property, not zpool list.

Now, if you find yourself in the situation that you do fill the zvol, then you can zero out a file by using the command :> {filename}

With the file set to zero length, now there should be enough room to delete the file and then allow you to delete other files.

If you are luck enough to have some extra snapshots laying around, then you may be able to free up space by removing the snapshot and not truncating any files.

After you free up enough space, it would be wise to set a quota before you accidentally fill up the drive again.

Dell 4 beeps

I have a Dell Inspiron 530 with a bad BIOS.  Every now and then, it will run the fans at max and beep four times, over and over.  This usually happens sometime after I forget how to fix it from the last time.

I had to remove the BIOS battery because it was saving bad settings.  Loading the BIOS defaults is a good way to corrupt the BIOS as well.

The fix is removing the power from the power supply and wait for the residual charge to dissipate (or press the power button with the power supply unplugged).  The remove the connections from the power supply to the motherboard.  There is a large 24-pin connector, and a smaller 4-pin connector.  Wait for a while for the motherboard to dissipate any charge it may have.  Then plug in the 24-pin connector, next the 4-pin connector.

If you miss the 4-pin connector (as I did), the beep code will change form 4 beeps to 1 beep repeating.  After removing all connections from the power supply to the motherboard then the BIOS will be cleared.

After power is restored, the machine will boot-up, usually unsuccessfully.  If you get the orange light, just hold the power button down until the computer shuts down.  Then power on the machine.  A message about the BIOS will appear.  Press F2 to go into the setup.  In the setup, DO NOT load the default settings (if your BIOS is corrupt like mine).  Just reset all the settings (date/time, floppy or no, boot drives) and save.

Then the machine would boot normally.

Not sure how the BIOS got corrupt, but this saved me from junking the machine.  If you put the machine on a UPS, then as long as the UPS powers the machine, it should remember the settings.  (No BIOS battery in my machine)

Save space on your hard drive with hard linking

If you have massive collections of things (pictures, music...) you may have duplicate copies of files.

Windows (among other operating system) can store data once on the hard drive and have it referenced by multiple directories, this basically is hard linking.

The two programs I like to use for hard linking is Dupemerge and CloneSpy.
Dupemerge is a command line program which once given the argument will proceed until the task is complete.

CloneSpy is a graphical user interface program that can either work automatically or can allow the user to select which files to be hard linked. CloneSpy also has the ability to make shortcuts, but I believe hard links are superior. Especially when used with Link Shell Extension . Link Shell Extension adds an overlay to Windows Explorer that places a green arrow over icons that represent hard links. This arrow kinds of looks like what a shortcut would have, except it is green. Link Shell Extension also adds a tab to a file's properties to show if it is a hard link and if so how many links share the same data and where they are. It also adds to the right click context menu to drop a file as a hard link.

Hard links not only can be a good space saver if you have common files, but they can aid in you organization because now you can store one file in multiple locations. This will allow you to have your pictures or music in all the directories you would like them in without using additional space. The downside is if the data gets corrupted or edited, all the copies are changed. In the case of an edit, this may or may not be a desirable effect. In the case of corruption, this could be catastrophic. So follow the old computer rule, "Backup only the data you don't want to loose".

Hard linking is suck a useful capability in Windows I hope in the next version(s) this will be added as a standard feature and wouldn't require third party tools.