Why I love Chrome

Another flaw with Internet Explorer confirms my preferences for all my clients to avoid using it if possible. Doing a little IT still I have found that by removing IE from the picture along with locking a user's account down to basic rights has a dramatic effect on the change in the number of support calls required. Admittedly the latter is the main cause of the change but running IE has been a bad idea for a very long time. I would suggest being comfortable in the big 4, Chrome, Firefox, Opera and IE then ideally use Chrome with the ability to fall back to the others if a flaw is found in Chrome.

Why Chrome? To me it is simplicity for the user. No admin rights are required so users will always have the latest version, even on a computer where the user has no admin rights. Also, the Flash player is integrated into the browser, this means that the user has the latest version (nearly) of this bug ridden bit of cruft. Finally it also include a PDF reader, this again means the user has the latest/patched version of something to read PDFs with without requiring administrator rights to keep their version of Adobe reader updated (which also downloads and installs extra software unless you are paying attention!).

So whenever someone asks me what browser to use I always say Chrome. Until the other browsers can integrate the main two plugins (flash/adobe reader) that users require, set it up so admin rights aren't required and run as fast as Chrome I have to vote Chrome. But don't forget user access permissions!

Just a note on Windows 8, todays bugbear is that when in the 'Metro interface if I try and scroll to the right and my finger starts to the left of the touchpad I go to the desktop. In a way this is a good discovery, but I was trying to 'immerse' myself in the experience that is Metro but I kept leaving it without meaning to...! Another annoyance... Oh well. Seems to run jolly fast though.

Windows 8 - first impressions

Having tried an in place upgrade to Windows 8 (after a full system image backup thankfully) I had to revert to Windows 7 due to a 3 minute boot time that no one seemed able to resolve (I tried a number of online forums, Microsoft support) so with that and a number of software incompatibilities that meant I couldn't actually do any work I restored from my system image and went and bought a separate hard disk to install Windows 8 onto. So my first impressions were very poor, an in place upgrade was not possible for me despite the press and Microsoft assuring me this would be a painless process from Windows 7... My advice is if you are thinking of upgrading, make sure you have a full system image backup (not just data) so you can go back to where you were.

Anyway, having wasted about 6 hours of my life on my first attempt I had a go with my nice new Samsung SSD hard disk (lovely) for a clean install. I did a data backup to an external hard disk, made sure I had all the software installation files, serial numbers etc, deactivated anything from Adobe, put in the new disk and installed. It was a painless affair that I ran from a USB drive and ran pretty fast. My only quibble was that leaving a USB installation to itself it ended up always booting to the USB stick so after the install it rebooted and went back to the installation screen. The trick was to remove the USB drive and restart but I would argue this isn't idiot proof...

So... I now have my operating system! Everything installed easily and quickly, some experience of Server 2012 helped with IIS setup but it all went smoothly and I was surprised to have a fully functional system in only a few hours. Having Gmail as my email client was a big help (rather than moving .pst files and setting up all my email accounts again...).

What do I think of Windows 8 then? Not a lot to be honest. The task manager is better and I prefer the file copying dialogue (interesting coloured graphics showing actual progress). However, I dislike the metro interface because I don't know what I am meant to do with it. My life is spent in a browser (like everyone else?), why would I want a full screen app for my calendar/weather that is impossible to find my way out of? I just open a new tab in Chrome and click on my preferred weather shortcut/app, surely? People aren't going to use a different email/calendar solution in business, they're all going to stay in Outlook (or possibly Google Apps), Facebook works better on their mobile apps or even their website, avid tweeters will be using their mobile devices, possibly the website.

For me my metro interface now has ~100 icons that I don't ever want to look at because for each app I have installed there are 3,4 or even 5 extra links to things like uninstall, configuration settings, read me file etc, so with 20 apps installed I have 100 links to stuff I don't want to see. I could tidy it up but why should I?  It should only have the primary apps on it, or things I have chosen to add, not just dump the whole lot.

The charms bar is equally mysterious, why do I need quick access to the device manager? Am I going to be installing new printers every day? The share button is there but nothing can be shared from the desktop so why keep it there or let me click on it? It is difficult to get it to show consistently (it appears/hides easily with gentle mouse movements), I don't know why I would want to use any of the items and it comes up whenever I try to close an application (moving to the top right corner activates it...). Unbelievably irritating. Maybe I'll get used to it but to be honest I would give Windows 8 a bit of a wide berth for now unless you have a touch screen!

So, the Waxwing rating? For standard desktops/laptops I would give it 1/10 and suggest users stick with Windows 7. For anything with a touchscreen I might go up to 2/10... I'll write back again over Christmas once I've been 'immersed' for a couple of weeks, as long as I haven't smashed my laptop to bits because Windows 8 is so annoying....