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Is XP really that good?

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40hz:
The only real knock I have on XP is its desktop.

I'd truly love it if you had a little more choice in desktop management. Especially since all the 3rd-party desktop replacements I've seen are even worse than what Microsoft came up with.

I wish I XP provided an option to get rid of all the desktop junk and icon nonsense in favor of a blank screen with a pop-up on right-click menu arrangement like Xfce provides. Combine that with a Quake-type dropdown terminal window (i.e. command prompt) like Yakuake and I'd be in heaven.

mrainey:
I wish I XP provided an option to get rid of all the desktop junk and icon nonsense in favor of a blank screen with a pop-up on right-click menu arrangement like Xfce provides.
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I use a combination of no-icon desktop and well-organized Start Menu.  Works great.

nontroppo:
I don't know about you, but I prefer Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 ;D-Lashiec (November 30, 2008, 06:35 PM)
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 8)  :-*

Oh well, it got much better since then, I'm sure. Probably you used some of the first versions, which even by Nick's own admittance were terrible in the toolbar department. And with the new changes coming in 2.8, things are like these UI-wise. Personally, I prefer this kind of interface to the lean one used by NetNewsWire (not to mention this one seems to lack the newspaper-style to show the feeds).-Lashiec (November 30, 2008, 06:35 PM)
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Thanks for that blogpost by da man himself, nice to see things are getting better. I still think that is indicative of the XP-centric design philosophy (UI design comes later if at all), and sadly many programmers simply fail to bother the subsequent refining part as Ray did.

A pinnacle of XP UI?  ;)

HA! I knew you were going to mention Pixelmator ;D. There's a lot of software for the Mac that looks great, but it always baffled me that most of it it's payware, and not exactly cheap. When considering the initial price of a Mac, and the extra you have to pay for most software, the design-advantage starts to feel smaller :-)-Lashiec (November 30, 2008, 06:35 PM)
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Come on, spending money stimulates the economy ya skinflint!  :P

Seriously, there is lots of free software out there too (and most of the *nix tools are available for OS X too, e.g. Gimp in this case). But you know, when FeedDemon came out there were lots of free RSS readers too for XP (I used just about all of them), and FeedDemon cost $$$ back then; but it was simply better software. Again it is probably the distinction between "good enough" and "wonderful".

tomos:
A pinnacle of XP UI?  ;)
-nontroppo (December 01, 2008, 07:51 AM)
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I prob going a bit further off topic here -
I havent used that renamer, certainly looks a bit daunting - but I could imagine once you get to know it, you have all options at your fingertips.
I love a good looking programme (dont call me superficial yet!) and find myself often frustrated with interfaces of (windows platform) software, difficulties finding stuff/unintuitive, [requiring 20 clicks to do something that could/should be two] etc.

guess the point I want to make is that if I had to choose I'd choose functionality before beauty, but true, why not have both ;)

cranioscopical:
if I had to choose I'd choose functionality before beauty, but true, why not have both
-tomos (December 01, 2008, 09:21 AM)
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Good point! 
So often choices are presented as either a or b when the possibility exists for a or b or a+b

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