Thought Flow

Tag: Windows

  • The Notepad trick

    There is a good reason Notepad has survived through all iterations of Windows. It is the best tool for clearing formatting!

    For example, copying text from a webpage to Word will often keep the formatting (color, size and so on) but copying it to Notepad first and then re-copying it to the other editor clears the formatting completely.

    I call this “The Notepad Trick” and I use it all the time so I thought it would be a good idea to pay homage to good ol’ Notepad.

    Here is a direct copy between two Google Docs documents:

    Google Docs copy text

    Notice how the headline is the same size. Sometimes one might not want this. Here is the same copy with Notepad as a middle step:

    Copy with Notepad as middle step

    The formatting is all cleared, yay!

    By the way, the trick is also described elsewhere.

  • Unix tools on Windows

    The other day, I set out on a journey to get many of the wonderful Unix tools running on Windows in something that resembles a terminal. In case you did not know, you can come a very long way by installing msysgit. It includes a terminal called Git Bash and all the common Unix tools such as sed, grep, awk, perl, find and so on. It also includes an ssh client and curl. I have been using this for about a year now and it is quite convenient when you are forced to work on a Windows machine. I know Windows has Powershell but… I just do not like it.

    Git Bash

  • Licenses continued

    Well, kudos to Microsoft for their Bizspark program. It is intended to help small business by providing free Microsoft products. It’s a good way to try and get developers to start using their products. Thanks to that, I now have access to Windows and Visual Studio for free. Our intentions are still to use all open source tools by the end of our first year but for now we are forced to work in the a-bit-too-feature-rich-and-slow Visual Studio.

    That’s life.

  • Why is Windows so expensive?

    I am not sure that anyone can answer the question “why is Windows so expensive”. After all, most people get Windows when buying a new computer where Microsoft has a strong hold on the market.

    First, how expensive is Windows exactly? Currently, I am looking at the US prices where Windows 7 Professional costs $200 for an upgrade and $300 for a full version. To compare, I have downloaded Ubuntu Linux three times within the last year for $0 but have donated $10 every time, just to make myself feel a little less guilty.

    I understand that nothing comes for free and there are obviously many bright people at Microsoft that have high salaries. While being a student, one also enjoys the benefits of downloading tons of Microsoft software for free. But now, while starting my own business, $300 for just one Windows license is really a lot of money. And that is only the operating system. I won’t even get started on products like Visual Studio, SQL Server and so on.

    There are two solutions:

    1. Use open source. Yes, I would like to do that, especially because there are excellent alternatives to proprietary Microsoft software. The problem is that Visual Studio is needed in certain situations.
    2. Swallow the bitterness and pay.

    I would like to see Microsoft doing different pricing schemes on their software in the future. Until then, I will just have to pay.

    Edit: The third option is to enroll in Bizspark which we did. See the next blog post