Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Back very soon...

I'll be back very soon. For various reasons, I have decided that the time has come to give both Windows 8 and Photoshop CS6 a try. Right now, I'm installing -- oh, gosh, lots of stuff. It's one of those days.

So far, Windows 8 has three big drawbacks:

1. It is weirdly difficult to shut down the computer.

2. No Chess Titans!

3. At this writing, I can find no free firewall that is Windows 8 compatible. The only free antivirus that works with 8 is Avast. Fortunately, there are several "for pay" security suites which do work with 8, and you can take each of them them out for a month-long spin, gratis. Presumably, within a month or two, there will be a free firewall up and going.

Microsoft took away the beloved Start button. Happily, you can get the button back if you use the free "Start8" app from Stardock. With this arrangement, you'll be able to avoid the Metro interface. Metro has no business on a desktop computer, although I have no doubt that it will be just dandy on a touchscreen tablet.

My printer, scanner and Wacom tablet work well with 8, even though I am using the Windows 7 drivers. The two gadgets I like best (CPU usage and weather) work fine on 8.

I'll let you know how it all turns out -- but only if you promise not to give me any lectures about the following forbidden topics:

1. "Get a Mac!"
2. "You know, you can do anything on Linux that you can on Windows..."
3. "But Larry Silverstein said 'pull it'!"
4. "Actually, Ayn Rand's philosophy is the most moral system ever developed..."

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