Labor Day - A Few Quick Notes

Hopefully everyone is enjoying their unofficial "Last Weekend of Summer." Just wanted to post a few quick items before I go back to watching baseball and golf while eating grilled meat.

Windows 8 - Assign Default Programs

A few days ago I mentioned that Windows 8's handling of the default programs assigned to different filetypes was a little weird. If you've got multiple options for opening something like a picture or video, this window pops up:

Media files are opened in Metro apps by default, which is pretty annoying. Luckily there's a way to edit the programs assigned to each filetype en masse. Open the Start page and type in "default programs" - the resulting Control Panel options let you switch things around.

Windows 8 - Antivirus Programs

Another thing I touched on the other day was the fact that MSE is basically baked into Windows 8 in the form of Windows Defender. That sounded great to me since I already use MSE in Windows 7, but I wasn't sure if a conflict would arise if you were to use a separate AV program. To see what would happen, I downloaded and installed AVG Free.

After installing AVG, everything works as expected - Windows Defender is turned off and AVG takes over all of the protection detail. After uninstalling AVG and restarting, I checked the status of Windows Defender; the program told me it was still disabled. A couple of minutes later Windows finally prompted me to re-enable virus protection. Everything looks good here.

Windows 8 - Tips, Tricks, and Customization

Throughout the past few days I've stumbled across several articles that had some pretty useful tips and tricks for Windows 8.

• PC Mag: 10 Ways to Customize Windows 8
• Maximum PC: The Big Guide: 20 Tips and Tricks to Get The Most Out of Windows 8
• Tom's Guide: 20 Windows 8 Apps You Can Download Now

Unfortunately the "bypass the Start screen and boot directly to the desktop" workaround doesn't work in Windows 8 RTM. You're still only a Windows key away (or a mouse click if you prefer) from the desktop, but it's still mildly annoying. No one boots into Windows 7 with the Start menu open by default.

Black Mesa Source

In the Weekend Reading a couple of days ago I linked to a Polygon article that talked about the Black Mesa project, a community remake of the original Half-Life inside a modern engine. Yesterday, the team gave us a release date - sort of.

The team at Black Mesa is releasing a major chunk of the game on September 14th. This first installment apparently equates to around 8 hours of gameplay and covers basically the first 3/4 of the game. Considering they've been plugging away at the project since 2004, it's good that the game is finally seeing the light of day. I hope that this isn't an effort to just release what they have finished before they give up; hopefully they see the project through to completion.

Labor Day Deal Alert

Green Man Gaming has Borderlands 2 available for pre-order for $49.99 today. There's a 25% off promo code floating around that takes the total to $37.50. Apparently both GMG25-LABOR-DAYGO and GMG25-1BW0K-K1A3G give you the discount.

That's it for now - enjoy the rest of your Labor Day.