Windows 10: Thoughts on win10 customisation options?

I distinctly remember being able to alter not just the sound scheme, cursors, and background on my earlier windows systems (Win98SE in this case) but also the fonts, default icons and border/window colours.


Think M$ should get their head out of their proverbial behinds and focus on bringing back system wide customisation in an easy to use menu or do you think they've screwed the pooch so badly they had to lock things down to keep them from breaking?


Or do you have some other opinion?

:)

 

Activation options for Win10 with instant clones

We have a secure (no internet access) lab environment setup to test and validate a VMWare VDI deployment of Win10 clients.

Our issue is activation of the Win10 clients as they require re-activation every time we logoff and back on because we are using instant clones.

Does anyone have any suggestions on the best way to resolve this? Here are the options we are considering and issues as we understand them:

• Setup a KMS server
  • Requires a Volume license, which is doable
  • Documentation says we must have a minimum of 25 hosts, we don' have that in our lab
• Use our MSDN account
  • No support for Win10 KMS license
  • No support for MKS activation
• Manually activate each time
  • Gonna spend a lot of time on the phone
  • Win10 has no grace period so machines are crippled w/o activation

Anyone have a thought or suggestions? I'm hoping I missed something.

Thanks

 

Start Menu Customisation


I like having a decent list of most used apps on the start launch list in W7. I would change to [not] 'large icons' in the start customisation options, then set the start menu size to (say) 20 apps.
Shaun posed a great solution to restoring the 9879-type 'resizable' start menu on 9926 (thanks!), but tinkering with the registry entries that controlled the icon sizes in W7 doesn't seem to work in W10TP.
However, there is clearly some mechanism that configures the 'all programs' list to use small icons
Anyone have any suggestions to change the main start list to small(er) icons?

I suppose what i'm wanting is the W7 desktop back - and that's probably not far from the truth; for a desktop user, the W7 Aero presentation was smart, nice to look at, and more productive because it had better delineation between content and functional zones that the Playschool (is this to become the new name for it?) UI doesn't seem to have (for me).

Retain the options to allow the users the options to configure the UI presentation the way they are happiest with, and perhaps then do the analytics to see what everyone chooses?

 

Desktop Customisation Thread

I noticed that although TPU has a lot of space devoted to the customisation of PC's, it has very little in the way of customisation when it comes to the actual software, therefore, i have created this thread so that people can share and discuss the ways they customise the software of their PC.

This includes Desktop backgrounds, Themes, Rainmeter set-ups, even customisations of specific programs, basically customising software in general.

I don't have too much to work with at the moment, but by the end i hope to have a thread full of instructions on how to do just about any modifications or customisation to your software, starting with basic's, all the way over to stuff that should only be considered by the most skilled people.

1)Desktop backgrounds
This is a list of sites containing many great desktop backgrounds, for now these are just recommendations i got from kierend but if anyone else has any sites just post or PM me and i'll add them

• Imageboard Scraper
• http://wallbase.cc/start/
• http://www.4walled.org/

2)themes
Just the one for now

• Placebo
  [*]

3)Rainmeter
I will have a more in depth walkthrough later, but for now he're one i did on the UK clubhouse, it shows you how to modify the omnimo theme so instead of the full theme you just get a catalog of gadgets and tools on your desktop

Spoiler: Walkthrough Download this --> http://rainmeter.googlecode.com/files/Rainmeter-2.0.exe, run the installer, select either 32bit or 64, it doesn't matter

download this --> http://www.deviantart.com/download/...o_4_0_for_rainmeter_by_fediafedia-d2mhn7l.zip --> unzip it --> run the setup file

--> the omnimo theme will start, but it will configure your PC in a windows phone 7 like fashion, just select the correct screen resolution, weather code etc, and let it set itself up

Important bit now, right click one of the panel, and go through the menu to :\WP7\background, and click 'BG.INI' to disable it

you will then have a load of free panels floating on your desktop, you can now move them remove them, and somewhere on your desktop will be an arrow in a circle, click this and it will give you a load of new panels to add, which will do a large variety of different features
Overall, here is a short list i have composed, more will follow later
Omnimo UI for Rainmeter --> Very customisable, you can do or make basically any desktop you want
http://rainmeter.net/RainCMS/?q=Suites_Gnometer
http://rainmeter.net/RainCMS/?q=Suites_Enigma
http://rainmeter.net/RainCMS/?q=Suites_ABP

More will follow soon (probably tomorrow as i don't have much time for now, but if anyone wants to add anything please post and share it with us*Smile )