I am a future switcher. Right now, I have two Windows machines. I've had at least one for about eight years. I've been trying to streamline my experience with Windows for about half that time. Here I'll offer advice for someone coming to it from a better OS, as well as general Windows tips. If you've never touched a Windows box before, then this will all be Greek to you, and you should come back after you've poked around XP for a few hours. Switching won't be easy, I imagine, and it might feel like you've been demoted to garbage detail or something, but here's my tips for a smooth transition.
1. Do NOT use that garbage that gives you a top-of-the-screen menu bar and a dock looking thing at the bottom. The menu bar is difficult to configure and it devours precious system resources, and it isnt as good as the Mac OS one since theres still a one-pixel barrier between it and the top of the screen. The dock thing is even worse about eating CPU cycles, and there's no replacement for system tray icons on it.
2. Windows XP tweaking. I won't go into registry hacks or anything like that here, but there are some things you must know.
- Indexing Service: go into the search box and disable this monstrous system hog. Get rid of that annoying damned dog while you're at it.
- msconfig: Type 'msconfig', without the quotes of course, into the run box, click the Startup tab, and you can get rid of any **** that might be running in the system tray in startup.
- GUI effects: Or, how to turn them off. The fades and slides that menus and buttons do here look cool for about 10 minutes to a former 98 user. Then they start to get annoying. They can be turned off in System properties, which you can get to by right clicking on My Computer and hitting properties. Then click the advanced tab and look for the visual effects options.
Might want to skip this next bit if you're a completely new PC user. If not, then install
TweakUI, a free XP 'Powertoy' from Microsoft. Powertoy means this is a cool thing we made, and you can use it, but don't come crying to us when you break your machine. The other powertoys that don't suck are Open Command Window Here, Image Resizer, and the Power Calculator. I'm also told the Virtual Desktop one is decent, but I have no need for that. Install the ones you'll use.
In TweakUI, poke around and see what you'd like to change. I recommend General - Focus, and making it where other apps like AIM can't steal focus from what you're looking at. Most of the other settings are user preference. I always customize the places bar (the thing with My Computer, Desktop, etc in open and save dialogues) to be a static set of folders and locations so I can get where I need to go quickly. I also always use this to change "My Music", "My Pictures", etc, to just Music, Pictures, etc. Of course they're mine, they're on my damned computer!
3. The best non-included apps. I dont exactly know what you need, so thisll be an exhaustive list. Your company will probably provide a version Office and Norton Antivirus to you. Office obviously has a decent word processor and Outlook isnt a bad mail client. Norton is, well, Norton. The de-facto standard. If they dont give you Office, get OpenOffice and use webmail. If they dont give you Norton, use webmail religiously, dont download any dodgy ****, and pray you dont get a virus anyway.
Avant Browser - better than Safari in my opinion, though they both have strengths and weaknesses. Avant is basically a new frontend for the IE rendering engine, so badly designed pages won't look wacky under it like they might under Mozilla or something else. It's got plenty of options, though the most jarring for someone used to Safari is the lack of multiple instances. Just tabs here. Of course, it has popup blocking. The UI here is completely customizable, including skins. It's fairly stable and very fast. (Faster than IE by a mile.) It can also stay open in your system tray so the browser doesn't have to load each time you go to use it. It's free, too.
AIM 4.8 and
AIM+ - as a heavy AIM user, I hate the bloated, ad-filled newer AIM clients. AIM 4.8 has less features than newer versions, but it's nice and fast, and AIM+ streamlines it even more with cloning, logging, and UI tweaks. It does transparency, but it mostly comes off as a gimmick to me. If you use an old version like that you may have trouble with more advanced AIM features like direct connections and file transfers, but the compromise is worth it to me.
iTunes PC/Quicktime - duh.
BSPlayer - A good, fast, skinnable video player.
VLC - You already know about this player, probably. It's good on the PC too.
FTP - I always seem to move between
CuteFTP and
FlashFXP. XP has built in, sucktacular FTP support. Avoid it.
Ad-aware - Being a Windows machine comes with the liability of getting spyware, which is **** that gets in through various places and causes additional pop-ups, crappy 404 replacement pages, and general system decay. Ad-aware removes it. Scan often, you pick this **** up just browsing the web. Ad-aware scanning is basically like your PC taking a shower.
Daemon Tools Creates up to 4 virtual optical drives, and can be used to mount image files. I thought you might want to know the Windows equivalent of this since OS X does it natively.
4. Tips in using Windows.
Save often: This OS crashes. It can crash a lot. Dont let yourself get screwed over by it.
Internet Explorer: When those BS Would you like to install this application from Blahblahblah Software? dialogue boxes appear, 99% of the time, you want to say no.
Alt-tab: This is your friend. In OS X, its used for switching between running programs. Here, its used for switching between both programs and documents that are on the taskbar.
Windows key + R: Just about anything is a few keystrokes away with this. Solitaire? Type sol. Calculator? calc. Word? winword. Excel? excel. Another useful 'command': iexplore <insertURLhere> will open a URL in IE. 'telnet <address>' does the same for telnet windows. 'cmd' will open a DOS window, and all DOS commands will run from the run box, though they don't pause so you can see the results. The run box will run any shortcut you place in the Windows directory, too.
Windows key + E: Windows Explorer
Windows key + S: Search
Windows key + M: Minimize all/show desktop
Windows key + break: System properties.
Screen real estate: Apple has the right idea in not letting apps use the entire screen unless it's completely necessary, like games or something like iMovie, and you can still get at the area on the sides of the dock if you need something off your desktop. Windows apps like to run maximized. Don't let them do it, and don't get used to this. It's much easier to use the OS when you can get at your desktop at all times, or the app that's inactive behind . Adobe apps are the worst in this respect, because they hang onto the floating toolbars from the Mac world and just fill the screen with dead gray space. Worthless, I say. Worthless!
File types: When you install new apps, they often can steal your file type associations away, and change icons on files. In any folder, hit Tools, then Folder Options. The file types tab can be used to reign in control over what opens you files. You can also change basic file associations by right clicking on the file type youre concerned with hitting Open With Choose Program, and once youre in there select the proper program and check that Always use this program box.
- Desktop icons: Get more stuff on your desktop by clicking "Customize Desktop" under the Desktop tab in Display properties. My Computer should be there, no questions asked.
