Tuomo Valkonen
2010-10-27 21:32:44 UTC
Since I put up a new site with an archive of my software, a few have
asked me to return the non-blog online as well. I don't think that
will happen. I can't be arsed to start blogging again; it's a waste of
time. I shortly entertained the idea of combining the good/essential
material into a longer “Goodbuy, suckers!” anthology, but... even
pissing on Linux (desktop *nix) is a waste
of time. Ignorance is a bliss, and I'm much happier ignoring it all
and sticking to Windows. Windows 7 is, in fact, not that bad at all.
Yeah, I have been using Windows 7 for some weeks now. It's
surprisingly good, far more keyboard-usable than previous releases of
Windows.. let alone popular Linux DEs, which have always been inferior
to Windows. Of course, I'm looking at everything through the
Trackpoint-glasses; I probably would find W7 far less usable if I only
had a normal mouse or, *shudder*, or had to rely on the shotgun err..
touchpad.
One reason for the improved keyboard-usability is the integration of
search into Windows 7. No more browsing of endless menu and dialog
hierarchies (esp. control panel and startmenu), just search. No need
for third-party launchers, which never worked very well on XP; just
hit the Windows key and start typing. In a way, this is a partial
return to the command line interface. Maybe there's still a trace of
sanity left in the world.
Windows 7 even supports proto-tabbing and proto-tiling. By "pinning"
an application/shortcut to the taskbar, you can use Win+number to
cycle through instances of that application. (The visual indication of
the chosen instance when cycling is too weak, though; the currently
focussed instance is much more strongly indicated.) And with
Win+left/right arrow, you can
throw a window to the left or right side of the screen, which is
almost the only layout I ever used in Ion, aside from full-screen (and
Ion4, if I had started working on it, would have been more based on
restricted layouts like this). I just wish you could adjust (maybe you
can) the widths of windows thrown this way, as in the "split-float"
tiling mode of Ion, where frames could partially overlap each other.
On a small laptop display, most windows are simply too narrow without
some degree of overlapping. In any case, the ideas introduced in PWM
and Ion seem to be catching on, at least in diluted forms.
My first gripe is that it still doesn't have a sensible "safely
remove" feature. Still a fly-crap-sized system tray icon... which is
even hidden by default, an otherwise excellent feature for all that
annoying crap that everyone wants to put there. That or opening
explorer (which is the only way by default to even mount anything on
the POS OpenSUSE at the office...) And even with all the other
improvements on keyboard-usability (after you enable the display of
accelerator keys, which is idiotically disabled by default) the fact
remains that the choice of keybindings suck, a lot of things depending
on poorly-accessible cursor keys etc., instead of something closer to
the typing position.
Fonts... difficult to say, because the display on the
Thinkpad X201 is so awful -- the worst I've ever come
across -- that the constant shifting of everything on the display in
reaction to minute movements of the head is more annoying than the
blurring that W7 almost insists upon. (You need to do a lot of work to
replace the semi-hard-coded Segoe UI everywhere, to get rid of the
blurring.) That said, the blurring on W7 seems better than on any
other OS... depending on the font of course, and the fact that the
display has so crappy contrast. I should try to get around to trying
it on a semi-decent display. But all desktop displays have so horrible
DPI that any kind of blurring immediately induces uncontrollable
vomiting. It really sucks that there are no decent displays these
days: desktop displays have shitty DPI, although you can get IPS, and
laptop displays are too shallow and generally el cheapo
TN-film crap, although the DPI is somewhat more reasonable. (But most
smartphones have even better DPI... and have higher-quality displays
too, with far better viewing angles than laptops.)
Yeah... I finally gave up on trying to run Modern Bloatware(tm) on the
aging T43 (with its splendid although a bit dim IPS panel), and got a
new laptop. I'd have preferred a desktop computer with an IPS panel,
but since a desktop display is difficult to lug when moving around the
world, that's presently no option for me. And the low DPI would make
my eyes bleed anyway. I was also not going to buy a big laptop with a
shallow display, so a netbook or an ultraportable was the only option.
Preferrably a cheap netbook, as I wouldn't want to pay much for the
crap that you get as laptop displays. But netbooks are not
significantly more powerful than the T43... so X20[01] it was, as I
need the pointing stick. Fortunately you can get a little-used demo
machine on Ebay for a somewhat more reasonable price than the list
price. For idling use - random web surfing, etc. - even the 12"
shallowscreen dimensions suffice, but viewing PDFs is painful as
expected due to the lacking vertical dimensions of the screen. And no
photo-editing, etc., can be done thanks to the piss-poor quality of
the display. At least my ears love the computer with its SSD, when my
eyes don't...
(Well, ok, that turned out to be some kind of substitute
for a new non-blog entry, and a waste of time. Just to show you
suckers that I'm sticking to Windows.)
asked me to return the non-blog online as well. I don't think that
will happen. I can't be arsed to start blogging again; it's a waste of
time. I shortly entertained the idea of combining the good/essential
material into a longer “Goodbuy, suckers!” anthology, but... even
pissing on Linux (desktop *nix) is a waste
of time. Ignorance is a bliss, and I'm much happier ignoring it all
and sticking to Windows. Windows 7 is, in fact, not that bad at all.
Yeah, I have been using Windows 7 for some weeks now. It's
surprisingly good, far more keyboard-usable than previous releases of
Windows.. let alone popular Linux DEs, which have always been inferior
to Windows. Of course, I'm looking at everything through the
Trackpoint-glasses; I probably would find W7 far less usable if I only
had a normal mouse or, *shudder*, or had to rely on the shotgun err..
touchpad.
One reason for the improved keyboard-usability is the integration of
search into Windows 7. No more browsing of endless menu and dialog
hierarchies (esp. control panel and startmenu), just search. No need
for third-party launchers, which never worked very well on XP; just
hit the Windows key and start typing. In a way, this is a partial
return to the command line interface. Maybe there's still a trace of
sanity left in the world.
Windows 7 even supports proto-tabbing and proto-tiling. By "pinning"
an application/shortcut to the taskbar, you can use Win+number to
cycle through instances of that application. (The visual indication of
the chosen instance when cycling is too weak, though; the currently
focussed instance is much more strongly indicated.) And with
Win+left/right arrow, you can
throw a window to the left or right side of the screen, which is
almost the only layout I ever used in Ion, aside from full-screen (and
Ion4, if I had started working on it, would have been more based on
restricted layouts like this). I just wish you could adjust (maybe you
can) the widths of windows thrown this way, as in the "split-float"
tiling mode of Ion, where frames could partially overlap each other.
On a small laptop display, most windows are simply too narrow without
some degree of overlapping. In any case, the ideas introduced in PWM
and Ion seem to be catching on, at least in diluted forms.
My first gripe is that it still doesn't have a sensible "safely
remove" feature. Still a fly-crap-sized system tray icon... which is
even hidden by default, an otherwise excellent feature for all that
annoying crap that everyone wants to put there. That or opening
explorer (which is the only way by default to even mount anything on
the POS OpenSUSE at the office...) And even with all the other
improvements on keyboard-usability (after you enable the display of
accelerator keys, which is idiotically disabled by default) the fact
remains that the choice of keybindings suck, a lot of things depending
on poorly-accessible cursor keys etc., instead of something closer to
the typing position.
Fonts... difficult to say, because the display on the
Thinkpad X201 is so awful -- the worst I've ever come
across -- that the constant shifting of everything on the display in
reaction to minute movements of the head is more annoying than the
blurring that W7 almost insists upon. (You need to do a lot of work to
replace the semi-hard-coded Segoe UI everywhere, to get rid of the
blurring.) That said, the blurring on W7 seems better than on any
other OS... depending on the font of course, and the fact that the
display has so crappy contrast. I should try to get around to trying
it on a semi-decent display. But all desktop displays have so horrible
DPI that any kind of blurring immediately induces uncontrollable
vomiting. It really sucks that there are no decent displays these
days: desktop displays have shitty DPI, although you can get IPS, and
laptop displays are too shallow and generally el cheapo
TN-film crap, although the DPI is somewhat more reasonable. (But most
smartphones have even better DPI... and have higher-quality displays
too, with far better viewing angles than laptops.)
Yeah... I finally gave up on trying to run Modern Bloatware(tm) on the
aging T43 (with its splendid although a bit dim IPS panel), and got a
new laptop. I'd have preferred a desktop computer with an IPS panel,
but since a desktop display is difficult to lug when moving around the
world, that's presently no option for me. And the low DPI would make
my eyes bleed anyway. I was also not going to buy a big laptop with a
shallow display, so a netbook or an ultraportable was the only option.
Preferrably a cheap netbook, as I wouldn't want to pay much for the
crap that you get as laptop displays. But netbooks are not
significantly more powerful than the T43... so X20[01] it was, as I
need the pointing stick. Fortunately you can get a little-used demo
machine on Ebay for a somewhat more reasonable price than the list
price. For idling use - random web surfing, etc. - even the 12"
shallowscreen dimensions suffice, but viewing PDFs is painful as
expected due to the lacking vertical dimensions of the screen. And no
photo-editing, etc., can be done thanks to the piss-poor quality of
the display. At least my ears love the computer with its SSD, when my
eyes don't...
(Well, ok, that turned out to be some kind of substitute
for a new non-blog entry, and a waste of time. Just to show you
suckers that I'm sticking to Windows.)