What I like of Windows 10

I go between Windows and Linux often on my home systems and one reason is that neither Linux nor Windows has everything I like 100%. There are many aspects that I like of each, and a number of detractors. If I could merge what I like about both into one system it would be "perfect" (not really), for me at least.

So I figured I would start out with looking at what I like about each of the systems.

One may look at these features and say "yeah, but Gnome (or KDE) has that too", and that is fine.  They can both have a feature that I like (means I REALLY like that feature, I guess).  This isn't what I like about one that the other doesn't have, it is what I like about one.

In this case, it is what I like about Windows 10.

Clock/Calendar

I like being able to click on the clock and see a calendar and list of events for the day selected.  I have both Google and Outlook.com accounts that I use for different purposes and whichever calendars I select in the Calendar app will show up in the agenda.

I use this often during work because I join video meetings from the host system (not work's virtual desktop).  So I duplicate meetings from my work calendar to my Outlook.com calendar including the Zoom or GoToMeeting links.  Having it listed in the Agenda, alongside my personal agenda items, gives me quick and easy access to the link.

Sound Output Selector 

 For video meetings I have a headset and at the same time I have speakers plugged in for ambient sounds and music.  The ouptput selector when you click on the speaker volume control makes it so quick and easy to switch from one to the other without unplugging or having to go into a separate window. 

I am grateful, too, that it remembers the setting for the volume of each output because my speakers are soft, but my headphones are loud.  I don't want to blow out my ears!

Edge Apps

Some people like it, some people hate it.  I like it .  The ability to pin websites as if they were applications to make them open in their own window. Especially websites that do not need to open new tabs or navigate away (calendar, my web comics, google docs, etc.). 

It gives me quick and easy access to these sites and not have to worry about which browser window it opens in, or accidentally closing it while closing the window while on another tab.

Chrome has the advantage of allowing you to choose whether it opens as its own app window, or just as a new tab on any existing browser windows.   This is cool, and I like the options but Edge does it easy, the browser is quick to open up.  It shows up so I can easily pin it to the Start menu.

Start Menu / Tiles

This has been a controversial part of Windows since before it came out.  When I had my first phone, a Lumina 650 Windows 10 phone, I liked the live tiles. Their shapes, groupings and colors helped me know where the icon I was looking for was at a glance.  I guess I am a visual person.

In my start menu I do a couple of things to make it useful for me.

• Turn off live tiles for most applications except the few I want to be able to see updates at a glance (calendar, tasks, weather, and photos)
• Frequently used apps are sized larger than most of the other apps. This makes them easier to see and select while the others are still accessible.
• Photos is larger, Wide in this instance, because I want to see the pictures rotating. (I have an issue with the Photos app, but that's for another post)

I group them somewhat.  Like all of my work-related apps (web apps as well as local apps) are in one group, while multimedia (pictures and video) are in another, web apps are together, etc.

Snap Windows

Using the Windows key and an arrow, being able to easily "snap" it to one side or the other, and then having another app snapped to the other side, is a very handy and often used feature. 

This is great when I am doing web development (browser/code) or research (browser/note taking app) where I can see both at the same time.  Even more helpful with the larger monitor (27").

Part of the benefit is being able to resize both apps at the same time. By grabbing the line between the two apps and moving it to one side or the other, it resizes both apps accordingly (one shrinking and one growing).  

OneDrive files on demand

File storage apps (OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.) will synchronize your files locally to their cloud. OneDrive does one better.

I don't have to have the files taking up space on my local hard drive if I don't need it. However I still see and can interact with the files through the file manager as if it were.  

When I want to open the file, I double-click on it like any other file.  OneDrive then downloads it and opens it.  Yes it takes a few moments or longer, depending on the size of the file, waiting for it to download first but comparing the handful of files downloaded to the gigabytes of disk space saved is worth it.

So if I go between multiple machines, I don't have to wait for everything to be synchronized before opening any file, or if I had a portable machine like Surface Go, I don't have to fill up the disk space with files I'm not going to open on the smaller machine. 

I think this is a killer feature of OneDrive. 

WSL (Windows Subsystem of Linux)

Edit: I forgot about WSL!

WSL is Windows Subsystem [of] Linux which is really cool way of running Linux in Windows. It's command-line only, which suits me fine, and it scratches my Linux itch.

I use it for running a webserver and do web development which is simple to set up and run. Since any deployment will be on a LAMP (Linux Apache MariaDb/MySQL and PHP) it works out perfectly.

The feature I really love that makes it easy to develop with WSL is that I can mount the /var/www/ directory to a folder in Windows. This way I can manipulate the files in Windows Explorer and use development tools easily.  

I am also glad there is a WSL extension for Visual Studio Code that makes it easy to connect to WSL for development.  This will come in handy when I start making my own Modules and Themes.

This suits me fine because I use WSL for running Linux servers for developing and exploring web development. It's great because if I publish the website or code it will be on a Linux server anyway.

It is easy to set up, get into a work with WSL and in addition to letting me get my Linux fix, I map a drive to somewhere on my Windows computer so I can get the files

Peripherals

It's no doubt that most peripherals will work with Windows.  Unless you use another system where you have to question "will it work", this is easily taken for granted.

Not only do most peripherals work, plugging them into a USB hub or the CPU the new device is usually auto-detected and the system goes out and gets drivers for it automatically.  I assume they are generic drivers, but enough to tell the device is recognized.

Conclusion

So Windows 10 has some features that I like, and use regularly.  Some of these features are available in Linux, and this doesn't mean that there are not parts that I do NOT like.  But if I were making a 'perfect' computer I would want these features to be included.

What are some of your favorite features of Windows 10. Only positives (things you like), negatives will come later.

The Windows 10 Store Apps challenge

Inspired by the article Experiment: Using Windows Store apps exclusively for a week I have been thinking of trying this sort of challenge myself.

The idea is pretty simple; can I do everything I currently do but only with using Windows Store apps.  This is similar to the challenge I gave myself so many years ago when I was starting to use Linux except this time it is Windows Store apps and just Windows apps.  I already know there are a few apps or games that I am using that do not have a corresponding Windows Store app to use, so I'll have to concede those but that doesn't mean I cannot try and avoid using those or alternatives.

Now if anybody knows me, they know I am a pretty cheap bastard.  So you  won't find me using Microsoft Office 365 and gaining the ability to edit in the mobile versions.  On the other hand, I will do everything I can to avoid using the LibreOffice suite I have installed.  Instead, I'll be planning on using the web version of Microsoft Office, Google Docs or Zoho (since I'm using the web version, any of these are game so long as they do what I need).

I really don't think it will be the difficult because I have already some experience in not having access to the proprietary versions since going into Linux.  Now, Linux has such a wide breadth of applications that cover 99% of what anybody would want to do, I really don't miss the Windows programs anymore.

The other thing working in my favor is that ever since I received Google's original Chromebook, the Cr-48, and decided that to get the most out of the device by "buying in" to the concept, I can pretty much do what I need via the cloud.  Ever since there, whatever Linux distro or platform I use, so long as I can use the browser and get online, I can be functional.  This is further emphasized by being able to take advantage of this cloud-centric focus while at work where I cannot, and do not want to, install programs on my work computer.  Have browser, will be productive.
And there is no time like the present to start using Store Apps only.  So I installed this Windows Store app called Net Writer.  I was about to use the Windows Live Writer I have installed, but then realized when I opened it, that it is the former Windows Live applications and not a Windows Store app.  Unfortunately, I would have preferred to use Windows Live Writer.

I've only used it for a short time, basically just to write this post, and I now know I am going to look and see what else is available.

The interface itself is not bad.  Fairly basic, but does is not too bad.  It does the basics like connecting to my blogger site here and allows me to do basic text editing. I can add pictures and it includes the options for changing the size to one of 3 preset sizes (small, medium and large) as well as a custom size.  Unfortunately there is nothing about wrapping the text or controlling the flow over it. 
I guess the couple of things that do get me is first off, I cannot save a draft.  Or rather, I can but only after I pay for the "Pro" version ($7.99 for 1 year, $16.99 for lifetime).  Like I mentioned before, I'm a cheap bastard so I am not inclined to shell out that money and am definitely not interested with such a limited application. 

It's too bad the Windows Live Writer is part of the now-defunct suite of applications that was great on Windows 7 and no equivalent Windows 10 Store Apps match it yet.  At least as an "all-else-fails" I can still use Edge to access my blog and type up drafts there, or can use the email client's formatting capabilities and email my blog entry to be posted.  Yet, neither of these give me the experience of surviving in a Windows Store App only environment (the web being my fallback).
So I'll be looking for other Windows Store apps and if I find one that works for me, I'll let you know.  I'm hoping to highlight those apps I end up using and what ones don't.
Let me know if you have any Windows 10 Store apps you are fond of, or have found to work.  If it's free, I'll give it a try!

Now, let me see if this app can actually publish like it says it can...

Ok, first try failed.  Seems it requires you to save the picture in a Google Photo album named 'NetWriter'.  So that's what I did.  Well, seems it cannot find it for some reason. So I deleted the picture and will try to Publish this and then if I want, I can add the picture back in via the web browser.

Final word: I ended up having to copy-and-paste this into a Blogger draft via the browser.