Start application maximized from Start Menu in Windows 8

There are occasions when you want to start an application maximized.  This is easy in Windows 7 as you can easily find the shortcuts for an application in Start Menu, and change its settings to maximize itself when it starts.

Since Windows 8 revamped the Start Menu, things simple as maximizing an application when open is difficult.  To do this, you need to go to Start Screen, then press the Down Arrow to show all applications.  Right click the application you want to change.  You should see more option at the bottom of your screen.  Select the option of Open File Location.  Now you should see the Shortcut behind the button appears on your start screen.  From this point forward, you can do the same thing you can do with previous version of Windows.  You can make the application start maximized, run as Administrator etc.

From Public To Private

Windows 7 has predefined a set of network locations, namely Home, Work and Public.  The aim of these locations is to alter the protections offered according to the selected locations.  To change from a location to another location is simple in Windows 7.  You simply click on the location, and select a new one, and that is you done.

However, this has changed in Windows 8.  In order to make it more "finger" friendly, Microsoft has changed the location setup to just two locations, namely Private and Public (On and Off), and placed it under network settings (Charm -> Change PC Settings -> Network).  In there, you will the network you are connecting to.  If you click the network icon where you are connecting to, you will see a switch controlling the sharing, i.e. on (Private) and off (Public)

However, there is a catch!  Most of the tutorials I found does not mention a very minor but a very important detail which is this switch is only shown if your Account Control Settings is not set at the highest level.  Since I have my Account Control Settings set to its maximum, I COULD NOT see this options till I found this article: http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/9837-network-location-set-private-public-windows-8-a.html

If you are like me, like a bit of extra security, and have set the Account Control Settings to its highest level, then you may want to dial it down temporary to see this switch.

Getting My S2W 3300U to work

I have been trying to retire my last Windows XP machine at home.  One of the reason I was keeping it is my scanner, Benq S2W 3300U.  It is a good scanner but is not supported by anything beyond Windows XP.

Today, I got a work around for it.  I run it from my Linux virtual machine following the instructions on

http://zoffix.com/other/Installing-Benq-SZW-4300U-Scanner-on-Ubuntu

In short, in download the firmware from http://zoffix.com/snapscan/u176v046.bin and put it at /usr/share/sane/snapscan

Then use pico to update the /etc/sane.d/snapscan.conf file

I looked for the line

firmware /usr/share/sane/snapscan/your-firmwarefile.bin

and replace the path with the path where I stored my firmware, e.g. /usr/share/sane/snapscan/u176v046.bin

That's it.  The scanner just work in SimpleScan! Hurray!