#125

Quick things I’ve been using lately in w10. I’ve been a windows game developer for 20+ years by day and a win audio producer by night for about the same time length. Windows 10 is by far the best version of Redmond’s long in the tooth os.

Multiple desktop support has become very robust.

Win + tab will bring up an environment overview that allows you to add as many virtual desktops as your machine will handle. I use these modally (one for dev, one for art, one for communication) and I can switch between them without my hands leaving the keyboard. I am a long term supporter of tiled windows mangers (I contributed to WMI on Linux back in the 90s) and win 10 is getting closer to the perfect dev environment for me.

PowerShell/Linux support.

This is still a bit green but they have gone all in. PowerShell had gone from an awkward .net scripting language front end to a good shell mimicking bash. On top of that their goal of running a virtual Linux machine has been more successful than I thought it would be. It’s still rough, and I don’t use the actual bash shell daily, but doing apt-get on my Windows box bright a smile to my face.

Visual studio python support

This has been a game changer for me. Being able to have multiple python environments for all the different DCCs we use and building python modules aimed at each had been historically hard on Windows, and again in the last year or two things have turned around. Plus I hear the free version of visual studio is actually really good.

3 Likes
#126

I keep forgetting the Snipping Tool exists. I tend to use Greenshot for a more full featured screenshot capturing tool, but for 95% of my usage, I could just use Snipping Tool.

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#127

And in last months update it got way better. Like an order of magnitude better.

Win + shift + s is love.

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#128

I didn’t know about the snipping tool despite using Windows since forever. However, Win+shift+s didn’t work for me so I looked around a bit. If you go to Settings > Ease of Access > Keyboard there’s a setting to make the Print Screen button use the snipping tool. Much easier!

Edit: and once I turned on Print Screen for screen snipping, Win+Shift+s started working for me too (previously it went to some speech app I didn’t care about).

4 Likes
#129

We are constantly on the latest versions due to sdk requirements. Ill post the build I’m on when I get into work.

Edit: We are on 1809 (17763.437). So about a month old.

1 Like
#130

Since we are chatting about useful utilities…

I concur with Greenshot, which is so handy for doing screenshots of my videos or other work. Instant PNGs that I can tuck into presentations or spam online. :laughing:

Both the Windows File Manager and Mac Finder are terrible. I cannot live without MultiCommander for organising multiple file views.

TeraCopy adds several essential tools to file copying, another thing no OS gets right.

Color Cop is a simple colour picker that is handy for UI and other graphic design work.

PDFlite means I don’t have to install Adobe cruft.

By now everyone knows about OBS Studio for screencasting and recording, Handbrake for file conversion, and VLC for video playback.

I still use CDex to rip the occasional CD, and Foobar to play back audio. I don’t use other audio utilities since I own Reaktor, Max, Samplitude, etc. which do simply everything.

#131

Yo, Windowz folkz. Any favorite Twitter clients? I find that twitter.com in my Firefox browser sometimes burps if I’m working on a thread, and I lose everything. Thanks.

#132

Is there anything better than tweetdeck? Anyone I know use this.

1 Like
#133

I was really missing the clean functionality of my Apple keyboard and trackpad (both Bluetooth), and @naxuu hipped me to magicutilities.net, which works great with facilitating both. Fortunately, my Huawei laptop and the Apple keyboard both have four extra keys to the left of the spacebar and two to the right, so the alignment works especially well.

1 Like
#134

I’m looking to build a new Windows workstation in the near future. I haven’t done a custom build in many many years.

I’m wondering if anyone has any suggestions specifically for attractive-looking cases. Maybe one that has front mounted USB-C ports?

#135

I’ve been pondering such a thing for VCV Rack. Let us know what you select.

#136

Unfortunately there aren’t that many cases with USB C on the front for some reason

Heres a few

Most of them look pretty “gamer-y” but a few like the meshify line from Fractal Design look pretty good.

Now is a good time to build a workstation though, the ryzen 3000 lineup just came out and its got crazy good price/performance.

I have been thinking of building a new workstation too, since my 4690k is starting to chug a little bit.

#137

Some of those cases look attractive, depending on your definition of attractive, of course. But just a reminder, if you’re selecting a new case and you have cats in the house, make sure the power button is not on the top of the case!

2 Likes
#138

This Intel NUC has front panel USB-C. Also extremely small: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/boards-kits/nuc/mini-pcs/nuc8i7hvkva.html

#139

For my work, I need something that will fit a huge GPU. Since it seems so rare, I think I can live without front-mounted USB-C and this case seems reasonably priced and good-looking: https://www.nzxt.com/products/h500i-matte-white

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#140

One option would be an external GPU. There are a bunch of options now that support Thunderbolt 3.

Semi-related: I ended up buying an Alienware m15 a month ago, as they were clearing out the previous model to make room for the newest m15 (and I’m dealing with the realities of new parenthood with the inability to cloister myself in one room for work, so desktops are not too doable at the moment). This worked out well for me, as the newest m15 doesn’t have a 1TB storage option. I was able to score an m15 with a 6-core i7, an NVIDIA GTX 1660 Ti, 16 GB of RAM, and 1 TB SSD for $1800 shipped. So far, this laptop completely annihilates my 3-year-old desktop in compilation times and video game performance. There will probably be more closeout deals on this model soon.

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#141

Hi, folks. Anyone have a recommendation for a dependable Windows 10 application that can manage multiple Google calendars? I’ve been using One Calendar, but lately it hasn’t been working very well. Thanks.

Update: At @jasonw22’s suggestion, I have Windows Calendar another try, and it worked well. Key thing for me was turning off email sync. It defaults to downloading email, and for now I’m fine with webmail.

#142

Hey gang - apologies if this has been well covered before/is common knowledge, but was wondering if anyone could share some wisdom or advice w/r/t inter-application routing on Windows?

I know JACK seems like the obvious go-to, but I’ve been having migraines trying to do ‘simple’ things like sending out several tracks from Ableton ->> Max/MSP spatializer/Spat~ ->> MOTU hardware multichannel out.

Seems like having audio engaged with multiple programs, combined with using ASIO drivers for the interface is a high-stakes operation on W10 - I miss the days of rigging things up with a click in Soundflower on my old Mac!

Would be super grateful to hear success stories, sanity checks or any other pointers - thanks a bundle!

mg

#143

(Wasn’t sure what the best category for this was, please move if appropriate).

I currently have my digital music collection in nested folder structure as a legacy of using iTunes. This seems to be causing some issues with 3rd party apps & back-up services I’m using. I therefore want to ‘flatten’ this. So go from:

old%20structure
old%20structure757×288 24.8 KB

to

new%20structure

It’s ~400 albums, so I’d rather find an automated method if possible. My search didn’t come up with anything, but I was likely using the wrong terms. Any help appreciated (even if it’s what I should be Googling…)

#144

You can use foobar2000 for this

3 Likes