Removing useless Windows 10 preinstalled apps

Based on https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/1408834-removing-windows-10-apps-gpo, with the additional refinement of a filter that removes only Store apps and not system apps or frameworks, using PowerShell:

1. List the apps that would be uninstalled.

The -AllUsers flag requires an elevated PowerShell run on an administrator account. Omit the -AllUsers flag if running as a nonadministrator for the current user.

Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers | where-object {$_.IsFramework -eq $false -And $_.name -notlike "*store*" -And $_.name -notlike "*calc*" -And $_.SignatureKind -eq "Store"} | select Name

On a 1711 newly installed VM, this resulted in this list:

Name
----
Microsoft.MicrosoftOfficeHub
Microsoft.Microsoft3DViewer
Microsoft.ZuneVideo
Microsoft.WindowsMaps
Microsoft.WindowsFeedbackHub
Microsoft.BingWeather
Microsoft.Messaging
Microsoft.MicrosoftStickyNotes
Microsoft.XboxIdentityProvider
Microsoft.XboxSpeechToTextOverlay
Microsoft.Print3D
Microsoft.GetHelp
Microsoft.WindowsSoundRecorder
Microsoft.Getstarted
Microsoft.WindowsCamera
Microsoft.3DBuilder
Microsoft.Xbox.TCUI
Microsoft.People
Microsoft.RemoteDesktop
Microsoft.XboxGameOverlay
Microsoft.Office.Sway
Microsoft.Windows.Photos
Microsoft.MSPaint
Microsoft.SkypeApp
Microsoft.XboxApp
Microsoft.DesktopAppInstaller
Microsoft.WindowsAlarms
Microsoft.OneConnect
Microsoft.Wallet
Microsoft.ZuneMusic
Microsoft.Office.OneNote
microsoft.windowscommunicationsapps
Microsoft.MicrosoftSolitaireCollection

2. Actually uninstall them.

Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers | where-object {$_.IsFramework -eq $false -And $_.name -notlike "*store*" -And $_.name -notlike "*calc*" -And $_.SignatureKind -eq "Store"} | Remove-AppxPackage

Certain apps that cannot be uninstalled might be listed in the output.

New fonts in Windows 10

Arial Nova in Windows 10?

Did anybody else notice this?

Update: Rockwell Nova also.

They’re hidden away in the optional features (“Pan-European Supplemental Fonts”), but easily installable from Settings -> System -> Apps & features -> Manage optional features.

Pan-European Supplemental Fonts in Windows 10

Most of these are a refresh on classic Windows fonts like Arial, Georgia, and Verdana, but they should come as a welcome surprise!

Georgia Pro Condensed Italic
Georgia Pro Condensed Italic

Happy prerelease testing!

Update: upon request, here are side-by-side comparisons of the new fonts. A subset of available weights/variants is shown in each case. Note that, in most cases, the “Pro” versions add new variants (e.g. Condensed, Light, Semibold, etc) but do not differ significantly in the Regular/Bold/Italic/Bold Italic weights from their ancestors.

Arial vs. Arial Nova
Arial vs. Arial Nova
Georgia vs. Georgia Pro
Georgia vs. Georgia Pro
Gill Sans MT vs. Gill Sans Nova
Gill Sans MT vs. Gill Sans Nova
Verdana vs. Verdana Pro
Verdana vs. Verdana Pro
Rockwell vs. Rockwell Nova
Rockwell vs. Rockwell Nova; in this case, the Nova font also has different metrics
Arial vs. Neue Haas Grotesk Text Pro
Arial vs. Neue Haas Grotesk Text Pro

Incoming college freshmen: Campus Backup Service is a ripoff

Campus Backup Service marketing letter

If you’re a freshman at Penn or many of the other universities that are raking in revenue from freshmen beyond tuition and fees, you may have received e-mails and letters offering all sorts of wonderful things. The one that caught my attention was something called “Campus Backup Service”.

It’s a cleverly marketed service that tries to leverage the anxiety of freshmen and parents to sell you something you don’t need — or rather, something you need, but not from this company.

Campus Backup Service marketing letter
They use the same scare tactics to market the service that are used by scammers. Don’t fall for it. Scan courtesy of Hannah C.

There’s a disaster scenario — a student without backup suffers a virus infection on her laptop and… “her sleep, her composure, and her GPA all suffered… it was horrible”. There’s an alternate scenario — someone uses this company’s service, and avoids the disaster.

Yes, college students need a convenient and viable form of backup, just as all computer users do, but not from this company. This is almost a scam (but not quite). (Notice how they target “parents of incoming students”, who might be less tech-savvy than college students?)

Vinay Dinesh and I are both Information Technology Advisor Managers (ITA Managers, for short) at the University of Pennsylvania, and we are writing, as individuals, to help you find the right backup solution, whether it’s as simple as copying files to an external hard drive, or syncing files to the cloud. But Campus Backup Service isn’t right. (See our upcoming collaborative post to see how you can back up your files the right way.)

Continue reading “Incoming college freshmen: Campus Backup Service is a ripoff”

Windows Live Essentials Wave 4 — Messenger

Happy New Year!

It’s the end of another year and the end of a ground-breaking decade. Let’s look back at what’s been accomplished in the years of 2000–2009, focusing on technology.

Technology

Windows has entered a new era

The decade—indeed, the century—began with Windows 2000, which I consider the first great version of the operating system. XP was the version that brought widespread success, and people just seem to refuse to upgrade; even today, almost three quarters of the computers on the net are on XP.

Despite the dismal failure of Windows Vista, it too brought change, which was followed by the enhancements of Windows 7. Compare my desktop today to the ugly screens of a decade ago:


Microsoft Store
Windows 98 desktop screenshot

Apple deserves an honourable mention for the ground-breaking work they’ve done on the Mac, elevating it to a newly trendy status.

Portable media players have completely changed

A decade ago, CD players and tape-based Walkmans were still the norm for ‘portable’ audio players. The iPod, launched in 2001, entirely changed the game. (I suppose this and the iPhone were the “comeback of the decade”.) It was no longer a device that played removable media. That was followed by thousands of other portable media players, to which the public generally refers inaccurately as “MP3 players”, reflecting the popularity of the 15-year-old MP3 format that has also been notorious for illegal file sharing (see below).

Cell phones and mobile devices have become ubiquitous

These devices used to be ugly, huge and heavy objects. As we move into 2010, cell phones have become more compact (usually this means thinner and lighter) and more powerful.

In China, about 739 million people have cell phones; that’s more than there are Internet users in China (which is about 360 million).

Mobile devices have become truly powerful. The iPhone, purportedly the most popular cell phone of 2009, is one of the biggest platforms for software development. And it has a touch screen. RIM’s BlackBerry, initially launched in 1999, is the most popular smartphone among business users.

Ordinary people begin to embrace ultra-portable netbooks for lightweight computing. The move to mobile is probably the most noticeable trend in end-user gadgetry in this decade.
Continue reading “Happy New Year!”

Office 2010 Technical Preview: Part 2

Office 2010 Technical Preview: Part 1

This is the first part of my posts about Office 2010. Last night, I received an invitation to the Office 2010 Technical Preview, and today, I am attempting to install it on my Windows 7 RC machine.

Legal notice: since this isn’t a private beta, I am allowed to discuss the preview and my experiences with it. However, I am not allowed to share product keys, installer files, and documents to which I have access by virtue of the invitation. The contract that binds me with reference to the technical documentation quotes as follows:

You […] agree: (a) to refrain from disclosing or distributing the Confidential Information to any third party for five (5) years from the date of disclosure of the Confidential Information by Microsoft to Company/You; (b) to refrain from reproducing or summarizing the Confidential Information…

Thankfully, there’s a public pressroom for Office 2010 information, from which I was able to get equivalents of the stuff in the confidential documents. Here’s some information for you.

System Requirements

Office 2010 is designed to work on computers with very limited resources; after all, many businesses were concerned that they would once again need to upgrade their hardware. Office hasn’t really necessitated hardware upgrades in the past; Office 2003 ran very well on old Dell OptiPlex machines on Windows 2000, and Office 2007 ran quite well on older XP laptops.

The specific details are in the FAQs document.

Office 2010 System Requirements; click to see full image
Office 2010 System Requirements; click to see full image

The installers are rather compact; the Technical Preview 32-bit/64-bit installers for Office 2010 Professional are no more than 600 MB each.

64-bit editions

I’m currently on Windows 7 RC 64-bit edition, but I resolved ultimately to install the 32-bit edition of Office 2010. This is due to the following reasons:

  • The 64-bit edition of Office 2010 does not support most add-ins.
    Users of software with add-ins in Office programs will find that most of them do not work with the 64-bit edition of Office 2010. Software vendors are expected to release newer 64-bit add-ins, but users must use the 32-bit edition for compatibility with older add-ins.
  • One cannot upgrade Office 2007 to Office 2010 64-bit.
    According to the technical documentation, “2007 Office system cannot be upgraded to native Office 2010 64-bit.
  • I don’t work with spreadsheets greater than 2 GB in size.
    The documentation listed a number of benefits of using the 64-bit edition. The central point was being able to open large Excel spreadsheets. Since I don’t do this, the benefits of the 64-bit architecture are insignificant when it comes to Office 2010.

Screenshots of my installation will come in the next installment of these posts. That is, after I manage to install it. At the moment I’m getting the following error with the 32-bit installer, after customizing the install and even going through a few minutes of the installation progress bar.

The error I'm getting with the installer
The error I'm getting with the installer

If this persists with the 32-bit installer, I may have no choice but to try the 64-bit installation.

Update: the installer has now succeeded. More will be coming!

Finally, I've managed to install it.
Finally, I've managed to install it.

Update: Part 2 is here, with screenshots and commentary on interface improvements!