Saturday, April 27, 2013

Computers and motorcycles......

It would seem that no one is much interested in our old man's luncheons on the motorcycles as we had fewer hits on the blog than the day with the technical computer stuff.....  I just looked and we have only had 65 readers since it was posted last night....

And that was from all sources including Google Plus...   I'm certain that nothing that really happens here is all that interesting, but I do enjoy going out and about on the motorcycle...  The city part on the in town freeways isn't all that fun...  And yesterday we had a bunch of Brown delivery trucks out on the roads....  Being intermingled with them at 65 mph in close quarters is more scary than fun...

But the ride thru the countryside with not too many folks around you, or on the old deserted almost abandoned road next to the riverbank along the stately Missouri river conjures up visions of Huck Finn...  I wouldn't trade it for the world...

Perhaps spending time late at night with photos and writing the story is not in my best interest...  who knows....?

But just as Thursday was sunny and beautiful, today turned back overcast rainy and cold...  We never made the mid 50s all day....  Its in the 40s now...  I spent the day with the computers again..

I installed the programs that I use to sniff out wifi connections....  I used to use this all the time when we were camping, as we had various campgound  hot spots and it would tell me if they were secure and needed a password...  But now days seems like almost everyone uses security and open connections are a thing of the past....  So I probably wouldn't need that anymore...

Its a windows 7 program called Vistumbler...   And it did install, but I had to go back to the classic desktop to agree to the EULA and push the buttons to answer their questions.   But after that, it didn't put an icon on any of the menus...    So it was installed but I couldn't find it to start it...

I had to search the entire C:\ drive to find the dot exe file...    Once I found it, a right click allowed me to pin the file to the start screen...  I can see where folks that were not completely at home with windows and how it works, would be in fairly big trouble right off of the bat....

Perhaps Windows 8.1 can't come fast enough....  This is called Windows Blue, which is probably a project name rather than an official title...  It is rumored that Blue will put back our revered Start Button.......  as users aren't exactly enamored with its demise....  The start button has been around since it was introduced in windows 95..   So it has been common since then...  The people at Microsoft thought that folks were pinning their applications to the task bar, rather than using the start button, but evidently we don't know what we are missing until its gone....

Even though the start button might return, rumors have it that it may not be as powerful as it was in windows7...  And aftermarket programmers are making some plugin utilities to fill in the gap....  I have had start 8 recommended to me, but haven't done that research yet....

There I go again, talking about motorcycles and computers....... well that fairly much so sums up my life here in cold Kansas....

I wrote this a while ago, but since then I downloaded Start 8 and installed it on the first button of the task bar on the traditional W8 desktop........  Do it!!!!  Its just like old times are back..................!!!!!

Retired Rod

3 comments:

  1. Well I guess I never really missed the Start button anyway, but a couple of days ago I decided to take a walk on the dark side and picked up a MacBook. Boy is that different, some things I like, others I detest, but it was time to stretch the old brain a little.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for the tip, Rod. Ever since I installed Windows 8 back last Fall, I've seen all sorts of ads for programs to add the Start button back to Windows 8. I just never got around to looking at them because I really didn't miss it all that much. However, Paulette did. So, I'm going to install this little free program on her laptop - she'll appreciate your tip very much.

    ReplyDelete

Anonymous comments had to be eliminated.... For the most part this has removed unwanted responses.. If you can't post your comments, please email me and we will make other arrangements...