Star Dock ModernMix

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This looks interesting

http://www.stardock.com/products/modernmix/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/08/modernmix_saves_windows8/

Has anyone tried this?

I don’t have Windows 8 installed anywhere anymore, but if I did, I think I would give this a try.

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Previously posted: http://winsupersite.com/windows-8/windows-8-tip-run-metro-apps-windows-desktop

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My copy is on life support too even though I have ModMix and Start8 Prescott; I need to find some good use for going through all the extra rigmarole!!!

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I don’t understand this refrain of “extra” this or “extra” that. I’ve got my start screen arranged so that the programs I use most frequently are positioned so I don’t have to scroll for those. One click and a program will start. I can get straight to the desktop from the start screen just by pressing “Enter”. How is this any more effort than all the effort I’ve seen about customizing Windows 8 to act like Windows 7? I’ve gotten accustomed to my system booting faster (on the infrequent times I need to boot). I’ve learned the new keystrokes to make life easier. In the desktop environment I’ve pinned my most frequently used programs to the taskbar. I’ve added a very few shortcuts to the desktop. I’ve gotten to the point that when I use a Windows 7 machine I really don’t like the start menu.

Joe

--Joe

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I don’t understand this refrain of “extra” this or “extra” that. I’ve got my start screen arranged so that the programs I use most frequently are positioned so I don’t have to scroll for those. One click and a program will start. I can get straight to the desktop from the start screen just by pressing “Enter”. How is this any more effort than all the effort I’ve seen about customizing Windows 8 to act like Windows 7? I’ve gotten accustomed to my system booting faster (on the infrequent times I need to boot). I’ve learned the new keystrokes to make life easier. In the desktop environment I’ve pinned my most frequently used programs to the taskbar. I’ve added a very few shortcuts to the desktop. I’ve gotten to the point that when I use a Windows 7 machine I really don’t like the start menu.

Joe

Joe, more power to you running this way. Personally I still like Classic shell because it gives me one click access to a global search of Apps and Control applets, a control panel flyout for the rare occasions I have to hunt for a control applet, and the ability to disable those annoying (to me at least) hot spots. But we both have what we want. But as john said, we’re straying from the original topic. No sense starting another war on the right way to use Windows 8. There is no single right way, just user options.

Jerry

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I don’t understand this refrain of “extra” this or “extra” that.

Joe,

This is very different to the various utilities which boot Win8 in desktop mode, restore the start button and disable the charm icons. This one runs Metro apps on the desktop in windows complete with minimise, maximise and close buttons.

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Joe,

This is very different to the various utilities which boot Win8 in desktop mode, restore the start button and disable the charm icons. This one runs Metro apps on the desktop in windows complete with minimise, maximise and close buttons.

I understand what the program does. I was responding to FUN’s post #3.

Joe

--Joe

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Maybe not such a great idea though…unless I run them essentially as desktop gadgets or other strict consumer-oriented purposes, they seem all but useless since I can’t really use them on a XP and NAS mixed home network…at least I can’t figure out how. I mean, I can figure out how but I’m not going to contort the rest of the network to comply with those kinds of restrictions.

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Ya I like having everything in one place including metro apps that can’t justify full or two thirds of a large screen. It was more the hour or two I spent trying to get a metro app to work with a non-homegroup network. Got so close with a symbolic library link; except the file won’t actually display; and if it had worked, the idea of setting up symbolic links for all the network locations I wanted to access left me nonplussed to say the least, especially when its so simple otherwise. If that’s the future of Windows….oh boy.

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Stardock’s two programs, Start8 and Modernmix, help older users moving from XP, Vista, or Windows 7 to Windows 8 with the “learning curve”.At our computer club, we have assisted several seniors who bought new laptops or desktops with Windows 8 installed. Generally, these are light-duty users who use their computers for email, internet browsing, word processing, etc. The Stardock programs and others mentioned in this forum permit an easy entry into the Windows 8 world. These new users do not feel overwhelmed (frustrated) and that allows them to adapt to Windows 8 at their pace. I rather like Start8 and Modernmix myself, especially the ability to pin my favorite Metro apps to the desktop taskbar.

Rich

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I haven’t even looked at Modernmix. I have my PC set up the way it works best for me. Many of the discussion we see here are ardent people on one side trying to convince ardent people on the other side of a “better way of doing it”. There IS NO better way of doing it if what you have set up works best for you.

I have tried various different ways of doing things, tried different apps, different browsers, etc., etc., etc. Know what, my PC is now set up exactly as it was with Win 7. It looks and feels the same as it did. This is what I like, so this works best for me.

If someone asks me to set up a PC for them, then I will set it up the way mine is set up, and I will point them to info that will show other ways of doing things and let them decide for themselves what works best for them.

If I read about something new, perhaps I will try it, and perhaps not. If I decide to try something new, I will be sure I have an up to date image to get my system back to what I like if things go terribly wrong. After all, nothing works for every system out there.

I guess my parting thought is that please let’s not let this discussion drop back to the same old pro / con discussion we have seen repeatedly throughout these forums. We just do not need that again!

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I haven’t even looked at Modernmix. I have my PC set up the way it works best for me. Many of the discussion we see here are ardent people on one side trying to convince ardent people on the other side of a “better way of doing it”. There IS NO better way of doing it if what you have set up works best for you.

I have tried various different ways of doing things, tried different apps, different browsers, etc., etc., etc. Know what, my PC is now set up exactly as it was with Win 7. It looks and feels the same as it did. This is what I like, so this works best for me.

If someone asks me to set up a PC for them, then I will set it up the way mine is set up, and I will point them to info that will show other ways of doing things and let them decide for themselves what works best for them.

If I read about something new, perhaps I will try it, and perhaps not. If I decide to try something new, I will be sure I have an up to date image to get my system back to what I like if things go terribly wrong. After all, nothing works for every system out there.

I guess my parting thought is that please let’s not let this discussion drop back to the same old pro / con discussion we have seen repeatedly throughout these forums. We just do not need that again!

Then the moderators and administrators should stop trying to steer us in that direction!! :rolleyes:

I’ve only been talking about functionality and bending over backwards trying to get some things to work, having some success but having more unsuccessful endeavors because I keep trying to figure out how this will ever work if the desktop vanishes completely. Sure, it would be a lot easier if I could just ignore that half of Windows 8, but I want to know, what is it good for in a home desktop environment and is it usable in lieu of a desktop? So far I can’t even open data files on a NAS using a standard file system and I know that if I can’t find solutions to these problems, the only way I can ignore the lumps in my porridge is to pull the plug.

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Then the moderators and administrators should stop trying to steer us in that direction!! :rolleyes:

I’ve only been talking about functionality and bending over backwards trying to get some things to work, having some success but having more unsuccessful endeavors because I keep trying to figure out how this will ever work if the desktop vanishes completely. Sure, it would be a lot easier if I could just ignore that half of Windows 8, but I want to know, what is it good for in a home desktop environment and is it usable in lieu of a desktop? So far I can’t even open data files on a NAS using a standard file system and I know that if I can’t find solutions to these problems, the only way I can ignore the lumps in my porridge is to pull the plug.

Although some visionaries have already proclaimed the death of the desktop, I seriously doubt that will happen, at least in any realistic calendar. I would think Metro is more likely to go the way of the dodo than the desktop. Metro is very incipient and it will need some iterations to become a full usable interface paradigm on the pc side (Metro on the phone is an altogether different and more mature thing).

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Getting back to the original subject, I installed a trial version of Modernmix but don’t think I’ll keep it. It seems to work as advertised but the only apps I found interesting were a couple of games and I can easily visit Metroland when I want to use them.

Jerry

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I don’t have Windows 8 installed anywhere anymore, so I installed the free trial of ModernMix on Windows Server 2012 Standard Evaluation. The problem is that I didn’t identify an app that opened in the Metro Window before I installed ModernMix, and now I don’t know what app I can use to test it. Now of course everything opens in a window on the desktop.

Is anybody here using Windows Server 2012, and can you recommend an app to test ModernMix?

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Then the moderators and administrators should stop trying to steer us in that direction!! :rolleyes:

In their defense, I don’t really think they are. In fact, my impression is that some of those who seemed originally rather prone to defend Win 8 against criticism have now better understood the specific nature of the complaints and are making a real effort to present both their own likes and dislikes about it to provide more balance.

Joe may well have been responding to your very generic complaint in post 3 without having read (or just not remembering) the specifics which you had described elsewhere (and later described in more detail here in posts 6, 9, and 13). And I saw no indication in his post that he was responding in any official capacity rather than as just another member with an opinion in this area (the observation ‘moderators are people too’ comes to mind, though the differentiation is not always a clear one).

As one who has myself been prickly about the pro/con wars I can honestly say that I join with Medico in hoping that they’re now passed and that we’ll all give each other more benefit of the doubt when it seems that they might be rearing their heads again. Joe asked a specific question: “How is this any more effort than all the effort I’ve seen about customizing Windows 8 to act like Windows 7?” There are several reasonable answers one could give:

1. It’s more effort to learn a different behavior and have to remember to apply it every time one uses the system (especially if one is also using other systems that operate in a more traditional manner) than to fix it once to exhibit the behavior one has already learned and is comfortable with.

2. It’s annoying to be forced to learn a different behavior for no good reason, and thus an understandable personal preference to fix the problem instead.

3. There are cases (such as your recent experience trying to get Metro apps to play nicely with standard networking) which just don’t work.

4. There are specific cases in which additional clicks are indeed required if one is not interested in learning keyboard shortcuts that one never had to learn previously in order to work efficiently (keyboard shortcuts being a radically different interface approach than point-and-click mechanisms, e.g., by not being at all intuitive).

That’s just off the top of my head – I’m sure other reasons exist. As Medico observes whether any or all of these reasons matter is purely a matter of personal preference rather than a matter of factual debate, as is whether any or all of the changes in Win 8 sufficiently qualify as ‘improvements’ that might serve to offset such complaints (e.g., some here prefer the clear traditional distinction in observable behavior between hibernation and shutdown, even if startup may be a tad slower as a result, while others consider this change to be a positive feature).

So while I’m hardly a poster boy for chilling out, in my more reflective moments I do think under the current circumstances that it’s a good idea to try to respond to what people say rather than to what you think they may mean. Feel free to quote these words back at me the next time I forget them.

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I understood perfectly, problem is, I’m already past that and want help in actual usage, instead of, and excuse me for the terminology, more diatribes about customization and how I set my system up and I don’t see what the big deal is and on and on; because I see one point further on…the fact that this thread has now lost its purpose and focus.

In fact, for those of you who see post 17 before it is removed…I agree totally with sjar4623! I think he said something about keeping a secret while reclining in a Barcalounger.

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And one of the worst (and apparently most persistent, since you’ve alluded to it before) is the tendency of some moderators to delete posts in their entirety rather than selectively edit them: among other things, editing forces a moderator to think about just how offensive the details of the post may actually be rather than use a cleaver rather than a scalpel in what all too often is a knee-jerk manner.

Unfortunately, I only had a chance to glance at what used to be post 17 on my way out the door, so I may have missed something truly outrageous. Then again…

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Seriously, Bill, you think we should salvage something from a spam post written in Vietnamese?

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Seriously, Bill, you think we should salvage something from a spam post written in Vietnamese?

Mea culpa: as I said, I was (literally) rushing out the door when glancing at that post and FUN’s reference (which I did not at the time realize was in jest) managed to make me confuse it with another that had barely registered somewhere else. FUN has referred to other disappearing posts recently, which had bothered me, and I managed to conflate those with this one.

Thanks for jogging my memory: I would indeed like to think that indiscriminate post-elimination is a problem of the past, so I’m glad this was not an example of it.

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Sorry, I had to tease a bit, couldn’t help it :).

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@-bill,

Note that my original post was #4. So, I could not have been commenting about those which were not yet written. Whether or not I remember something from other threads is not germane to my point. The OP and others reading this thread may not know or remember any of the specifics in other threads.

1.) Yes, it is an effort to learn something new. To me that is the way it is with computer systems. At work, I support two different OSes each of which have two different SKUs and therefore different feature sets. Also, three different desktop OSes with a total of five different SKUs. I know about having to adjust from system to system. But, I certainly would never want to go back to the XP way of doing things even though time wise it is the one I’ve been with the longest.

2.) I understand that when anyone (including myself) does not see the reason behind a change we are resistant. Or if we see the reason but do not think it is good enough we resist. But our peception is not necessarily always correct. It could be our peception is the problem. Then again it could be our peception is correct.

3.) Perhaps the apps in question are just not intended to be used with local networking. Last week I started “playing” with the Easus FileManager start screen app. It seems to work fine with local networking. Trying to make an application do something for which it was not designed is a sure recipe for failure. Are there some significant shortcomings in the Microsoft supplied Start Screen applications? Absolutely. Many need significant udpates/upgrades. The Bing related apps, news & finance are two, OTOH are pretty good.

4.) Keyboard shortcuts may not be intuitive but I know of many people who would much rather use them than leave the keyboard to use the mouse. I’d like to know what some of the specific cases are of extra clicks. Perhaps, there are ways around the extra clicks.

Joe

--Joe

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When I post something as in post #4 that is in a personal capacity. I’m just commneting as an other user. I’m not trying to push anyone in any direction. If those are taken as any sort of “official” statement I apologize as they should not be.

Almost all the time, when I communicate with someone as an Admin it will be by PM. Sometimes, I feel I must say something as an Admin in a thread but I try to keep those comments very general though pointed enough that the point gets across.

Joe

--Joe

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Nothing to apologize for either Joe, I was/am mad at the Windows 8 Apps, not at Windows 8 and I felt the discussion was leading right back to defending/attacking Windows 8 itself, no matter how benign Ted’s and your posts were overall they did not stick to the distinction that was being made and allow others to pick up the ball with those types of posts and run with it.

SO, in the intervening time of more self-propelled research I’ve discovered that all Apps are most definitely not created equally and under some umbrella of restrictive network use. As it turns out, perhaps the most awful Apps on the planet are Microsoft’s own, and in particular, ankles and shins beneath those, the Photo app…the one I started with. I found and installed a tool called Win Library Tool and whether it was that or just a better functioning app, the video app was able to find the NAS, navigate it and play a video.
Better yet, and as mentioned, some apps seem network-capable but the navigation to the menus is not intuitive in the least and I’m not sure if the apps were just able to see mapped network locations and “Win Library Tooled” locations or if it was the whole network. I’ll need to put the OS back on a fast drive so I can use it full scale before determining more, but the two photo apps from the Store that I was trying definitely could see and open files from a non-indexed mapped drive, so that would be perfectly acceptable if it is limited in that respect. Throughout every test and click crazy frenzy, the Microsoft Photo apps remained completely useless!!

So the upshot of all this now is I went from thinking windowed apps were a great idea, to thinking jwitalka was probably right in that if these apps are all self contained programs that only communicate in the “new age” way, they are all but useless on the desktop anyway so why have them there for the very few that would hold any attraction as such, and now I’m back to thinking this windowed desktop app idea (which Patrick Norton and I (not that we’re connected in any way other than my listening to the TWiCH podcast) had almost from day one) is a fantastic one. Of course that thinking is largely dependent on the capabilities of the app but it was almost as good as the feeling one gets when relieving a full bladder when I could toggle a competent app from full screen to restore size or even minimize it or…the coup de grace, snip the X with one stable, immobile click….ahhhhhhhh.

Now if any of you want to get back into the other “stuff,” just let me know, I’ve got enough ammunition stored up to keep two 50 cals red hot all day!

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