Re: Full-screen DOS Prompt on Vista (was I want to go geek .. and VPC?)

[J R FOX jr_fox@xxxxxxxxxx]

--- "Patricia M. Godfrey"  wrote:

> But I do vigorously object
> to the whole "you
> dumb end-users don't need to know about that"
> attitude. And this
> particular error message didn't just NOT tell us
> there was a way to
> tweak it; it said (in any but a tortured parsing of
> the sentence) that
> there wasn't.

The vast majority of users -- who may know little,
care less, and readily take 'No' for an answer -- will
likely stop right there. Nevertheless, these things
aren't always 'Absolutely, Positively, and Chiseled in
Stone.' And I don't even mean that the uber-techies
can often find some way around it. When I started to
use AutoPatcher.Com on that test hard drive with XP, I
was startled to discover all the annoying UI crap you
could just make Go Away, along with picking up all
your security hotpatches and software updates in one
clean shot. (They're under headings like Tweaks,
Addons, or Powertoys.) And they've made it as easy as
choosing "one from Column A and one from Column B."
Say Goodbye to the oh-so-cute animated "Fetch Pup"
that replaced the file or folder Search box in W2K,
the annoying update Nag Screens coming from the System
Tray, and some other objectionable aspects of XP's
dumbed-down "Fisher-Price" interface.

And now I see that some of these easily implemented,
advanced-user-control thingies have begun to migrate
down to the W2K AutoPatcher collections, which is
pretty neat. For example, MS used to tell you that
you can't have their MS Movie Maker in 2K; it is
supposedly for XP only. Not anymore. If AP can work
out such things, maybe they will yet crack the 'Bart
PE creation requires XP' business.


 Jordan