Another reason why Windows 8 is so much better than Windows 7

Microsoft is desperate that your computer runs Windows 8 so that it can spread its monopoly from desktop to laptop to tablet to phone and to XBox. The Gatesian fantasy of "a [Windows] PC on every desktop" is no longer enough.

Here is another reason to switch to Windows 8. Sometimes, you have to set the default printer in the operating system, because in certain instances the application cannot do it itself. Here are the steps to doing this in Windows 7:

1. On the Windows taskbar, click the Start button.
2. Choose Devices and Printers. 
3. In the Devices and Printers dialog box, click on the icon of the printer you wish to make the default.
4. Right-click the printer icon, and then choose Set as Default Printer from the shortcut menu.

So, four steps. That's pretty cumbersome. Let's switch over to Windows 8, the one that Microsoft boasts is so much faster and better-est. Here are the steps for doing the same thing in Windows 8, as listed by the Microsoft support site:

1. Swipe horizontally from the right edge of the screen.
2. Choose Search. (Choosing Devices does not work!)
3. In the search field, type “Devices and Printers.”
4. Press Enter.
5. Select Settings.
6. Select Devices and Printers.
7. From here, the process is the same as with Windows 7: In the Windows 7-like Devices and Printers dialog box, click on the icon of the printer you wish to make the default.
8. Right-click the printer icon, and then choose Set as Default Printer from the shortcut menu.

So, changing the default printer uses the identical dialog box as in Windows 7, but it takes four more steps, plus doing a bunch of typing. The power user, of course, would install Start button replacement or drag the Devices and Printers item into the Windows 7-like desktop as a shortcut.

The aspect that boggles my mind is that there is a Devices option listed when you do the swiping thing. But Devices doesn't do anything except list the name of printers -- and lets you remove them. Which explains why Microsoft has to have the smartest people in the world working for them.