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~ 8.1 Rants Or Raves ~


DosProbie

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- starting refresh prompts for installation medium. uh, fine.

- instead of copying files it needs so that an installation medium isn't needed, it actually relies on it - contraintuitive, but ok

To be fair, this scenario is only one of a few different ones. Whoever made your computer is to blame for your PC only having that type of recovery.

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That would be me. I simply applied the install.wim to the SSD partition using imageX, because installing win8.1 from USB nags me to create a microsoft account without the usual way to make a local one. Also, it forces you to enter the key, and I get my keys digitally (MSDNAA), so I always forget to write it down before formatting/installing.

Also, the point was not that it needs an installation medium, but the fact it doesn't copy the required files so that you won't need it again. You can't insert the stick, start the refresh, eject the stick and insert it into the next PC you need refreshed.

And the fact it still goes through an activation cycle means it's virtually useless to use it - best way would be to just make an acronis image of a freshly installed & activated system and restore to that should the OS go south.

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Where is the rant thread about Opera 18/20? No more tiled browser tabs, the new engine is a blatent ripoff of chrome!!

its not ripoff of Chrome, it IS Chrome !

I actually like the new Opera. Not necessarily the lack of customisation offered by the old one, but I like it better than Chrome. It's faster and lighter than the latter while offering basically the same functionality (except for synchronisation between different devices but it's going to be fixed once Opera Link has been reimplemented).

Edited by tomasz86
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I don't know about being faster/lighter, it's currently pretty much barebone, so of course it will be lighter than a more feature-rich version. What I don't like about the new opera is that it gets stuck in an infinite redirect loop between the mobile and the desktop version on some sites, because apparently the sites see it as a mobile browser. I don't really see a reason to use it, tbh. It had its uses back when it was a bundle of mail+irc+torrent+browser in one, now about the only reason to use it is out of principle of not wanting to use google's product.

Or you could just use Windows Backup. It's still capable of making System Image backups in Windows 8.1.

-Noel

I'm not a fan of it, to be honest. It's way too restrictive on what it lets you to choose, I have a friend's laptop with a recovery partition, which only contains the PE that won't ever change. The backup routine insists on backing it up, and the most retarded part is, instead of writing the system image directly to the backup drive, it first creates a copy on the partition to be backed up - failing with a cryptic error message, because the size of the partition is not 2x of the data on it. Just wasted an hour trying to figure it out, because this laptop doesn't have a "system reserved" partition and all google results were only pointing to a problem related to that.

Edited by Soukyuu
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I don't know about being faster/lighter, it's currently pretty much barebone, so of course it will be lighter than a more feature-rich version. What I don't like about the new opera is that it gets stuck in an infinite redirect loop between the mobile and the desktop version on some sites, because apparently the sites see it as a mobile browser. I don't really see a reason to use it, tbh. It had its uses back when it was a bundle of mail+irc+torrent+browser in one, now about the only reason to use it is out of principle of not wanting to use google's product.

I haven't experienced the issue (yet?). I find the Chrome's UI significantly heavier than Opera. The browsing engine is the same so there shouldn't be any difference there. One clear advantage of Opera is the Off-Road mode which can be extremely useful if you've got to rely on a limited data plan.

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@ tomasz86

its a resource hog just like its clones

I didn't say it wasn't a resource hog :P I just think it's lighter and slightly faster than Google Chrome.

How about the other mainstream browsers though? The old Opera is definitely much lighter when it comes to RAM consumption but it's no longer developed. Firefox is lighter but the difference isn't very big (and its UI is very laggy compared to Chromium, especially when trying to do something while websites are being loaded at the same time). IE is no alternative as it lacks decent addon support and synchronisation, and is available only for one OS.

I've tested several alternative browsers inspired by your other thread but in the end there were always problems with some sites in each of them :(

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The old Opera is definitely much lighter when it comes to RAM consumption but it's no longer developed. :(

which doesn't mean surfing is dead

the only disadvantage that older operas like 10 and 11 have is that they don't support 3D models on HTML5 crap

as far as CSS 3, with opera 11 I haven't come across a site that shows it all, therefore its again ok as v11 supports about 90% of CSS 3

while v12 supports even more things than v11

and those sites that refuse to make you enter with that horrid message "your browser is obsolete, upgrade to ...." is BS

I have hex edited my Opera 11.52 string that now shows Firefox 25 and all those sites let me in now and work just as normal

------------------------------

on another story regarding win8 rants, MVPS HOSTS (winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm)

have changed their localhost number from 127.0.0.1 to 0.0.0.0

explanation:

Important Note: This update contains a change in the prefix in the HOSTS entries to "0.0.0.0" instead of the usual "127.0.0.1".

This was done to resolve a slowdown issue with the new Win8.1/IE11 and the HOSTS file.

Edited by vinifera
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That 0.0.0.0 change solves another problem as well... If you're on a system that actually has a web server running it would try to retrieve pages from the local web server. 0.0.0.0 does not.

-Noel

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  • 4 weeks later...

on another story regarding win8 rants, MVPS HOSTS (winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm)

have changed their localhost number from 127.0.0.1 to 0.0.0.0

explanation:

Important Note: This update contains a change in the prefix in the HOSTS entries to "0.0.0.0" instead of the usual "127.0.0.1".

This was done to resolve a slowdown issue with the new Win8.1/IE11 and the HOSTS file.

I see no reason why anyone would want to rant about an actual... improvement?

That's not new information and nothing to do with Windows 8. It's been out there since XP. Its just that MSVP just woke up and decided to change it, and, NOW, it's a huge victory for him and other sheep in his stable, it's like they're all drinking the same cool-aid or something. The 0.0.0.0 information has been out for YEARS!

That 0.0.0.0 change solves another problem as well... If you're on a system that actually has a web server running it would try to retrieve pages from the local web server. 0.0.0.0 does not.

-Noel

That's why there is DNS, lmhosts ;)

Anyway, 127.0.0.1 caused system hang ups, during boot, with large hosts files. The usual fix was to change the loopback to all 0's or slim down your hosts file. Another plus changing the loopback to 0's shrinks the hosts file, too.

Edited by epic
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