I'm just up late working on... a document. I got the latest version of microsoft word (first time in since ~2009 I have used microsoft word I think?). I thought maybe it would be better, but in an hour of using it I already found a huge annoying bug. Specifically when inserting a table cell it kept adding like a quarter-inch of padding to the top of the entire row. And the padding wouldn't go away. I went into the cell properties and it said there was 0 padding/margin all around. So WTF?

Well it turns out there's another way to get into a different cell properties pane. Instead of going through the ribbon, you right click in the table, go to table properties, then click on the cell tab, then click another "properties" button and you're back at an almost-identical "cell properties" pane as you get with the ribbon... but on this one it was showing... yep .15" of cell padding at the top of every newly-inserted cell.

It drove me to ****ing google docs. Ugh. I swear this 2016 or 365 or whatever I'm using version of office is actually worse than the old versions I used to use on windows XP or windows 98. I actually had to ****ing log in with my xbox account to use microsoft office... uggghhhhhh.

This is all after spending so many hours getting windows 10 working ok. I'm not totally happy with it and it takes way too many settings to disable all their ads/crapware/spying/etc. (and I can't disable it all because I don't have the enterprise version)

The only reason I got this computer preloaded with windows 10 is because the dell I ordered (that comes with some linux) kept getting delayed and I can't work on this document on my work-issued laptop without stirring up trouble. Urgh. By the time I'm done the dell might actually show up.

Ok all that said there are a couple of things I like about this thing. It's some lenovo I picked up at Costco and it came with an "active pen" which allows me to draw all over the screen. It's cool because you can just start some app and start marking up whatever windows/programs you already have open and then save them as images. Using the pen is a lot easier than using a mouse. Definitely not earth shattering. What else... it somehow boots in only a couple of seconds. Even from a full shutdown, I hit the power button and in only 2 or 3 seconds I'm at the login screen. The windows subsystem for linux doesn't completely suck. I can finally start bash and generate an ssh key and log into remote linux servers without using stupid ass putty which has to be one of the worst programs ever written. I haven't used this too much but it was relatively easy to install and I haven't run into any issues yet.

They finally have a semi-working virtual desktops setup that doesn't completely suck, but then they nerfed it by not allowing me to set hotkeys to jump straight to a specific workspace; I have to cycle through them all... wut? Seriously?

Anyway, I'm done. If the dell ever shows up and if it doesn't suck, I'll probably give this thing to my daughter.

I know you said you were going to give it away, and I also couldn't agree more that Linux is the superior choice, but: have you ever used AutoHotkey?

A quick Google search turned up an AutoHotkey script that does what you wanted: directly switch to a workspace by number.

That said, I totally agree that this feature should be built in.

On Linux, I use the excellent dwm window manager, which is both a tiling and a floating window manager. But, lo and behold, someone has ported it to Windows, as an AutoHotkey script! Haven't tried it, but the GitHub page is current, with the most recent update just 9 days ago.



(dwm users will notice right away their beloved workspace switcher on the top left.)

Good luck with the documentation, Brian

Uh, couldn't you just install Linux or at least Libre Office and be done with it?

Yeah, I'm not too big of a Minecraft fan either.

Indeed, I did find and try that. Autohotkey is pretty cool. Unfortunately this one isn't quite working well enough (with the default of caps lock). I did edit the script to use ALT instead and it's... just ok. The thing is if I keep holding down ALT and hitting the number keys to jump to other desktops, it stops working. I have to let go of alt between each jump for some reason. There's gotta be a way around it but after an hour or so of fiddling and reading I really had to get to what I really needed to... get to.

Autohotkey is actually pretty cool. Quite a number of years ago I had a contract to compare a bunch of anti-virus programs. Everything from startup speed, run time, quick scan time, full scan time, and how well they actually caught viruses. I used autohotkey scripts to automate and time them all. The funny thing was (and I have probably mentioned this here a number of times), and it's been so long the numbers are fuzzy in my head, but I think none of the big AV companies caught more than 40% or 50% of the viruses we threw at it. The viruses were collected by our custom web site screening software. So for example it would detect things like drive-by-downloads that just popped up as you were browsing, or sites that infected you just by visiting, usually through vulnerable plugins like flash, realplayer, adobe reader, etc., but also through vulnerable IE.

I should have. It turns out it's quite a pain on this particular model because the bios is locked down, but it's possible. I was just trying to get this document done But I will definitely not be switching to windows. I had previously been using a thinkpad x1 carbon with linux on it and it was working well for years until a semi-recent ubuntu upgrade slagged it (I think I wrote about it in a different thread). Since I wasn't super happy with the screen on it I decided to just order a new laptop and I gave that one to my wife (put the factory windows 8 back on it and it upgraded itself to windows 10 and she doesn't seem to mind it).

I still use Microsoft Office 2010. For better or worse.

I continued with google docs and it's working fine. The problem now is fitting everything I want on 2 pages :| I had to make a lot of cuts. Still not done but this is not a technical issue.

Google docs is sloooooow on a machine without much RAM.

Ah, I realized why windows 10 is "booting up" so quickly. It turns out when you "shut down" nowadays microsoft actually "hibernates" instead of actually shutting down. I don't know if there's actually a way to fully shut down.

I'm not having a problem with google docs, but like I said this is only a 2 page document. I use google docs at work, too. Although I guess both of these machines have 16gb of ram. The dell I ordered only has 8 (because they don't have a 16gb version with the regular HD screen as opposed to the UHD screen and I didn't want to mess with all the scaling issues that are apparently still present in linux with a UHD screen). Hmm.

You're probably fine, but on older machines with less RAM than that even (4gb or 2gb), various Google pages (plus, groups, docs, but not Gmail or maps) were slow from the beginning (except for the old, non-JS version of groups). Of course it's not much of a problem now since I don't have to use such crappy computers anymore, but I get the feeling that Google employees are not so sensitive to the requirements of low-end machines because they all develop on top of the line workstations.

if i remember correctly, you have to hold down shift when you click the shutdown button or something like that

Cool, thanks. I don't mind it, I like the fast start up, I just remember on older versions things would get wonky fast if you didn't shut down and do a full reboot every so often.

The other weird thing I'm noticing is that if I put the computer to sleep, it sleeps for a while, but then after some period of time it stops sleeping and maybe auto-hibernates? I'm having a hard time finding more info on this. But when it's actually asleep I can hit a key on the USB keyboard and it will wake up (and the external monitor will wake up and let me start using it again, even if the laptop itself is closed). But if it's hibernating and I press a key on the USB keyboard nothing happens. I actually have to open the laptop and press the power button and then close it back. I'd prefer it to just "sleep" forever until I tell it to stop.

It reminds me of the new version of ios; when I turn off wifi it magically comes back on overnight... yeah... no. I really did mean it when I said to turn off the wifi. So dumb.