Veteran game designer Raph Koster wrote an epic post about his experience with a new Windows 8 tablet. His first sentence says it all: “Oh boy, are there teething pains.” You should certainly read the whole thing if you’re thinking about buying such a device. Raph’s is a Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro 700T which he describes and compares in an earlier post. This is one of the first Windows 8 tablets to support a Wacom digitizer stylus, other than Microsoft’s own Surface Pro.
More pertinent to this weblog, however, is his attempt to find a good setting for Windows display scaling. This is finally becoming a general necessity as small high-resolution screens gain in popularity. Using my page High DPI Settings in Windows as a guide (thanks!), he noticed that the check box “Use Windows XP style scaling” doesn’t stick in Windows 8.
Sure enough, I could reproduce this bug on my Windows 8 desktop installation. Checking the box does correctly disable DPI virtualization, but the box itself is mysteriously unchecked next time you open the dialog. I updated my page with information on this confusing bug, and once again exhort everyone to stay far away from the terribly immature Windows 8 if you don’t actually need it.