{"id":2121,"date":"2004-04-18T15:24:08","date_gmt":"2004-04-18T15:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/?p=2121"},"modified":"2004-04-18T15:24:08","modified_gmt":"2004-04-18T15:24:08","slug":"how-i-made-windows-usable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/how-i-made-windows-usable\/","title":{"rendered":"How I Made Windows Usable"},"content":{"rendered":"

Microsoft Windows increasingly annoys its users with pop-up notices, childish treatment, intrusive “features”, and a difficult GUI. In keeping with other such resources online as Mark Pilgrim’s How to install Windows XP in 5 hours or less<\/a> and Michael Heilemann’s It’s all about the Bling Bling<\/a>, and in case I ever need to install Windows on my machine again, here’s a running list of the things I turn on, turn off, install and remove from Windows to make it worth using.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Turn on text smoothing – Microsoft’s tool<\/a>, something OS X has on by default.<\/li>\n
  2. Replace the GUI windows and toolbars with Freestyle – Instructions for enabling visual themes<\/a>, a better way<\/a> (software needed<\/a>), Osiris Media XP Freestyle Theme<\/a> (zip file)…for Windows XP SP2, use this tutorial<\/a> if you’re having problems<\/li>\n
  3. Install Approcket<\/a>, the LaunchBar<\/a> clone for Windows. Even more necessary on Windows than OS X, because of Microsoft’s crazy file structure.<\/li>\n
  4. Install Avant Browser<\/a>, which uses IE’s rendering but adds tabs and autosave layout abilities.<\/li>\n
  5. Install Mozilla Firefox<\/a>, and set it as the default browser.<\/li>\n
  6. Visit Windows Update<\/a> and update with all their patches.<\/li>\n
  7. Install Ad-Aware<\/a> and Spybot<\/a>, use their “update” functions to get the latest detections, and run a scan to find and protect against spyware and tracking cookies hidden on the machine.<\/a><\/li>\n
  8. Download TweakUI and follow most of Mark’s tips<\/a> #67-102. This is how you stop Windows from constantly bothering you with those little pop-up windows (“It looks like you plugged in a camera. Can I help you delete all the files on it?”)<\/li>\n
  9. Get nicer OpenGL screensavers, like Flurry<\/a>.<\/li>\n
  10. Since most Windows OpenGL drivers are terrible, install something like SciTech’s GLDirect<\/a>, which uses the better DirectX drivers to do the rendering.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    More to come as I remember and discover them…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Microsoft Windows increasingly annoys its users with pop-up notices, childish treatment, intrusive “features”, and a difficult GUI. In keeping with other such resources online as Mark Pilgrim’s How to install Windows XP in 5 hours or less and Michael Heilemann’s It’s all about the Bling Bling, and in case I ever need to install Windows…more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[273],"class_list":["post-2121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-design","tag-make-windows-usable"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9wjHJ-yd","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2121\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}