PC Tech Thread

With 10 you can see the weekday by hovering over the date. With 11 you have to click it. This is no good.

I'm holding out for as long as i can on W10. If i start 'suffering' becuase W11 offers something im missing desperatly I'll change, but I doubt it.

Hi,
Do the quirks show up for a non-pro user?
I'm essentially using this laptop for not much more than emails, browsing, and some word processing.

Compulsory "Have you considered cycle training Linux" comment.

How often do you need to check what day it is?! Explorer Patcher takes care of that as well, it pretty much just gives you the w10 taskbar (and start menu if you want) back.

@mespilus only real quirk is that after the system's woken from sleep, the taskbar often refuses to show on top of other apps. Restarting explorer takes care of that easily enough though, and explorer patcher lets you do it with a couple of clicks.

I like the improved Task Manager in Win 11, I really miss not being able to search the running stuff on my Win 10 work laptop.

There is also some neat Android emulator but I've not tested it yet
https://www.androidauthority.com/how-to-run-android-apps-on-windows-11-3048569/

Overall though I have barely noticed a difference between them.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/08/windows-11-has-made-the-clean-windows-install-an-oxymoron/

How often do you need to check what day it is?

All the time! Have installed Patcher, much happier, thank you very much!

Thanks,
my first journey to GitHub.
Took a while to find where I could click to download Explorer Patcher.

Then, I found that the taskbar was 'full',
too many open windows and Libre Office documents.
Closed a few down, so I could click'n'drag the Taskbar to the top of the screen.
But, despite it being the option I've chosen in Settings, there is no 'autohide'.

How would I make the Firefox windows 'stack', as previously?

How would I make the Firefox windows 'stack', as previously?

Set this option as required.

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That's very good of you to offer this tech service.
Taskbar now auto-hiding,
and
Firefox windows are now stacked.

I notice an option for 'Secondary taskbar (s) alignment '.
What might one put in a secondary task bar?

The secondary taskbars are the ones on your non-primary monitor when you have 'show my taskbar on all displays' enabled. That's a standard windows option, think it's on by default.

You don't have any options over what's on them, they're just duplicates of the primary one.

Thanks for the explanation.
This laptop has never been connected to a secondary screen, so I've never encountered the option.

Had my eye on Thunderblade for ages - fast, quiet, small, attractive, portable:
https://www.megamac.com/products/owc-32tb-ssd-thunderblade-owctb3tbv4t32
But has previously been a bit more than I'd like to pay.
This is 36% off and much more appealing.
But is there a reason I'm missing that it's cheaper other than it's older / shifting stock?
I know Softraid is switching to a paid update plan which I don't love the sound of.
I want something that I can take on set so portability/comes in a custom peli is a big point here.

Would likely stripe it RAID 10 but maybe 5/6. Running between Windows at home and Mac on set.

They're great units. OWC always have good support.
The G-Raid Shuttle is more common to see in high-end applications, but a bit more expensive.

Why you would want to mount it on Windows as well as Mac is beyond me, maybe you have some extremely boutique pipeline that needs it?

I have a G-raid studio (not the ssd shuttle) but TBH I'm a bit done with big black boxes and want to nvme all the things with minimal power draw.

Really want a 21:9 ultrawide but no closer to knowing which one. That LG is enormous. I think 34 inches would be my sweet spot.

few days using that LG - doesn't feel silly tbh, I'm pretty much used to it. Think I prefer it to the two 27's before even though I had more pixels there

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Some form of tiling window manager or tool is very useful indeed when using Ultrawide.

A bonus if you can configure it to add side "gutters" when you have only one window open.

Another thing that looks cool but I've yet to setup with mine is the ability to split rhe ultrawide into a pair of virtual monitors that the OS sees as multiple physical displays. To be honest with a pure tiling WM, such as i3, there isn't a huge amount of use to this. On Windows I could see it being very handy.

I tried i3 (and sway wm) on a couple of occasions specifically because I have an ultrawide, but I could never get into it. The tiling stuff is very cool, but I prefer gnome in pretty much all other regards.

Are you using i3 as your daily driver?

Another thing that looks cool but I've yet to setup with mine is the ability to split rhe ultrawide into a pair of virtual monitors that the OS sees as multiple physical displays.

This is something I keep meaning to look into for screen sharing.

Are you using i3 as your daily driver?

Yep, been on it full time for a couple of years.

Once the keyboard controls become muscle memory, and you get a stable config and decent bar setup, it's amazing. It's all learning curve, isn't it?

This is something I keep meaning to look into for screen sharing.

Yep, that's probably the main use case that still remains even with a tiling WM. I don't do it much.

At least on my monitor there is another bodge in that it can run Picture in a Picture so you can connect a second cable from laptop to monitor and run a second screen on the same monitor at 1080p.

Bit of a faff though so if I'm screen sharing I normally just drop my monitor resolution down to 1080p but that isn't ideal.

Looks pretty convincing tbh...

@mashton these gutters you speak of... presuming the monitor isn't 'off' on the areas outside the main part? Just wondering if you'd see any performance gains running a game in 'guttered' mode versus full screen when certain games don't have ultrawide res options.