Reserved Words

Windows 8 – two months on

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microsoft technology windows windows 8

So I’ve been using Windows 8 RTM for 2 months now, it’s probably a good time to reflect.  Prior to installing Windows 8 I had grave reservations about the Metro UI. While I was keen to try I knew that it was going to be a disruptive user experience until I got used to the new world order. I thought Microsoft were mad for trying to have a unified experience across PCs, tablets and phones. The goal of trying to have developers only write code for one platform and have it available across all thos…

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MacBook Pro, Boot Camp and Bluetooth mice in Windows

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bluetooth hardware macbook macbook pro technology windows 8

When I bought my MacBook Pro I thought I’d treat myself to a new mouse as well, so I picked up a Logitech M555b Mouse. It worked great with OS X but under Windows 8 using boot camp it was unreliable and flaky. The cursor would lag and be jerky – this wasn’t consistent, it would usually start off OK, but then degrade after 10 or 15 minutes use. Recently I stumbled across a fix for this and now my mouse works fine in both Windows 8 and OS X. The fix involves changing an advanced setting for the wi…

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Resize Boot Camp partition for free – Windows 8

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boot camp macbook macbook pro technology windows 8

When I originally set up my Boot Camp partition I just picked a split of 50% for each drive – 256GB for OSX Mountain Lion and 256GB for Windows 8. After settling into Windows 8 and not really being very interested in OSX I wanted to allocate more space to the boot camp partition. I thought it would be simple and in the end it was, but the first things I tried didn’t work. The following steps worked for me: In OSX shrink the ‘Macintosh HD’ volume using the native Disk Utility. Reboot into Windows…

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Windows 8 annoyances

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technology windows 8

I’ve been pretty negative about Windows 8 in the lead up to it’s release. I think the goal of trying to have one platform to rule PCs, tablets and phones is highly ambitious and likely to be a disaster. I think that’s a bit harsh and it will all work out, but having been hands on with it I have mixed results. I’ve been running Windows 8 RTM for only 2 days now. I will admit some parts of it are better than I expected and there’s a lot of potential. But there’s a lot of annoyances that are going…

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