Windows 10?

[Ernesto75]

Originally Posted by Stroking_it

Victims of Microsoft? Victims?? Microsoft offered Windows 10 as a free upgrade. They didn't put a gun to anyone's head, they offered an incentive, and a free OS these days is a pretty big incentive. However that doesn't absolve anyone of their responsibility to really have a good hard think about whether they really should upgrade.

OK, the marketing was bloody pushy, I'll admit that. The nag screen was annoying until people learned how to disable it and at times MS did appear to be deliberately targetting the less PC literate to accidentally upgrade, but I don't buy any of these stories about machines upgrading to W10 all on their own at all. Not for one second.

So, for you Microsoft are nice people.
Well, everybody is entitled to his opinion...

Originally Posted by Stroking_it

In case you hadn't noticed, people want computers to be easier to use.

Really, you discovered that recently?

Originally Posted by Stroking_it

OK, so you won't object to me posting the counter argument

Not at all, please do.

Originally Posted by Stroking_it

and telling people that as long as they read the small print its still OK to apply Windows 7 updates? I mean, you've basically just said that you've done a similar thing and also come to the conclusion that it all should be OK, but you are still not going to simply because you don't trust Microsoft any more?

I may have gone too fast there.
I meant I seriously studied what was said on Microsoft's website in order to decide whether or not doing the upgrade.
I especially wanted to take into account Buttsie's advice not to upgrade (his advice and Woody Lehonard's too).
I found only "cosmetics things" on the various upgrades but none that I deemed serious.
So I decided not to upgrade for the moment.
My distrust of Microsoft comes from their commercial attitude especially since Satya Nadella has taken the reins.
Before that I went to their seminaries; that means I spared precious time to go.
I must say I am impatient to get a really good update because my system can't be deemed really stable.

Originally Posted by Stroking_it

Most of the stuff in this thread is CTRL-C CTRL-V from other websites, anyway. And it is the same few names thanking each other on most of the posts. I wouldn't overestimate how many people go looking for computer advice on a porn forum This thread could contain good advice if it hadn't just degenerated into a steady trickle of "look what the evil people at Microsoft are doing now" posts.

Ok, point granted.
You think this thread is not technically elevated enough for you.
Nobody prevents you to participate.

Originally Posted by Stroking_it

Well, now you're just being nasty...

Not at all, simply joking.

[beutelwolf]

Originally Posted by Stroking_it

Victims of Microsoft? Victims?? Microsoft offered Windows 10 as a free upgrade. They didn't put a gun to anyone's head, they offered an incentive, and a free OS these days is a pretty big incentive.

Not really - generally you have an OS on your PC. Why would you need another? Generally, the risk outweighs the benefits.

Updating without backing up your data? Crazy.
Updating without having a valid install disk and code for your previous OS that you can roll back to? Crazy.
Updating your one and only business PC that you absolutely rely on to make money without having some kind of disaster recovery plan or backup PC? Absolutely double crazy with a cherry on.

The thing about W10 is that "crazy with a cherry on" is their default modus operandi, to the extent that your backup PC would need to run a different OS. Because: if it runs W10 it will update without asking you, and if you keep it off-line to prevent that from happening, it will stop booting eventually.

However we are now being told that if we want to play with the newest toys ware going to have to trust that someone knows better than we do about what is best for us. Its like being a child again, living at home and filtering our life choices through our parents.

Not a prospect I cherish. And I don't want to play with the newest toy anyway, I want a tool I can use and I'm in control of. This we-know-better-than-you attitude was always a pain for me when using MS products, e.g. auto-correct in MS office has driven me around the bend on numerous occasions, and then there are these occasions when you want to enter some text in an Excel spreadsheet and the thing decides to read it as a date.

I'm not one of those geeks who really want to configure their PC in every which way they can. I want something that is easy to use. I used to have automatic updates from MS, because it was convenient; but then the W10 nag screen appeared.

It feels like moving from cars to driver-less cars. Not much of an issue if you don't enjoy driving, but when the driver-less car decides for you where you should go then you have a problem. Sometimes it might just drive you to the shops, because those shops paid the software provider...

Most of the stuff in this thread is CTRL-C CTRL-V from other websites, anyway. And it is the same few names thanking each other on most of the posts.

Not that much different to other threads - the people who are subscribed to the thread anyway.

I wouldn't overestimate how many people go looking for computer advice on a porn forum This thread could contain good advice if it hadn't just degenerated into a steady trickle of "look what the evil people at Microsoft are doing now" posts.

Well, for some of us VEF is our "Facebook", just less intrusive. We talk here about football, poetry, politics, whatever.

I think the reason we have these persistent "evil MS" posts is that we have a few IT professionals around here who look after OSs for a living, to make other people's computer use a piece of cake - and who are in a constant battle whether the cherry goes on top of the cake or a piece of crazy, and who see the control MS takes away from them as a disaster waiting to happen some steps down the line.

[Ernesto75]

Just professionnal whining.

While looking for informations on the last upgrades I came on this remarks.

I reproduce them totally because I adhere to them at 100%.
For the sake of anonymity I have occulted the author's name.

I am surprised by the text's quality and synthax.
Visibly the author is no beginner.

Windows 10 fails to excite because -- if you'll pardon the expression -- the "emperor has no clothes."
It is part an parcel of changes in the technology industry that should cause all of us to question long
standing assumptions and practices.

We used to upgrade religiously primarily because we hoped the next version would add missing basic
functionality or fix serious problems.
In the early days, products were often incomplete and buggy -- failing to provide basic functionality
that potential users had to have, and routinely failing to live up to marketing promises; or just plain
failing.

We needed Moore's law to work so that there was some possibility PC's would actually live up to the hype
within our lifetimes.

Those days are long gone.
I haven't seen a significant* new functionality (* meaning useful to the majority of the user base) in any
application -- mass market or niche -- in nearly a decade.
The Win 10 UI is a particularly egregious example of moving things around without any functional improvement.

I argue that trying to create a touch-centric interface when nobody has, or will have in the near future,
touch PC hardware, is beyond stupid and shows a real disconnection from real users.
Then there's the forced update problem.
They want me to subscribe to this? Get real.


For the same reasons I am a dissenter on the current over-use of the "cloud."
It does not represent new functionality, just a reallocation of resources to suit vendors.
Sure, FTPish intermediaries like DropBox are useful, but represent little more than a friendlier face on
old technologies.

When you can carry 64 gigs of data in your pocket on a memory stick, why would Microsoft set the Office
installer to default to storage on their cloud, representing a diminution of the convenience and security
of your data (their self-serving assertions notwithstanding)?

What we are witnessing is an attempt to change the business model into something that resembles vampirism.
Even old-fashioned advertising revenue isn't enough - it's all about capturing user transaction streams now.

They have nothing to offer that doesn't involve invading your privacy or inserting themselves into and
skimming the cream from yours and other people's ordinary interactions and transactions.

Now that its out true functionality in the open, I'm no more going to let Cortana into my house than I would
Amazon's Echo.

Microsoft, Google, Adobe et al see it as their right to stick their hand in your pocket and pilfer.
Truthfully, they just can't figure out any other way to function because none of them have had a real new
idea in a long time.
When we see tech companies getting into the automobile business, that is a clue that as a class they have
lost their way.
God save stupid Tesla owners who actually use the self-driving software; here the consequence of buggy code
is death.

IT people have a long history of being technology cheerleaders.
I see the usual cheer-leading all the time, and it makes less and less sense.
Today's responsible IT person should see what is coming and respond.
The response should be a lot different from the responses of the past.
The broader user community does not know or understand as we do, and are easily sucked in by fads and marketing.

We need to do the math on subscription services Office 360 (and soon Windows itself) and show them how the
cost is triple the cost of the stand alone versions, instead of just succumbing to the used car dealer's
monthly payment ploy.

We owe it to them to be the front line of resistance to unacceptable business practices in an industry that
still has the potential to change things for the better.

For the record, to-day I had to upgrade a machine on Apple's website and the 30 minutes it took (including the backup) were not lost in vain.
A real pleasure.

[lagerlout]

Originally Posted by Ernesto75

Just professionnal whining.



They have nothing to offer that doesn't involve invading your privacy or inserting themselves into and
skimming the cream from yours and other people's ordinary interactions and transactions.

Now that its out true functionality in the open, I'm no more going to let Cortana into my house than I would
Amazon's Echo.

Microsoft, Google, Adobe et al see it as their right to stick their hand in your pocket and pilfer.
Truthfully, they just can't figure out any other way to function because none of them have had a real new
idea in a long time.

This X100

[ragapart]

The comment about Tesla drivers is interesting, because even so far they have an accident rate considerably lower than hand driven(if you will forgive the phrase), something like 1/2 or 1/3. Bearing in mind that it is new software that is actually quite impressive

[Rick Danger]

Seeing email traffic on the Patch Management mailing list that I am having trouble confirming.

Apparently the management tools typically found in the Windows Professional versions to help administer a small to medium network are NOT available in Windows 10 Pro. Thus, system admins will have to spend extra money to run Windows 10 Enterprise to gain access to these tools.

If true, small to medium Windows shops are facing increasing costs. The apparent rationale is that Microsoft is seeing declining revenues from Windows licenses and are therefore attempting to squeeze extra money out of the franchise wherever they can.

[Misrule]

At this stage, everyone who wants to avoid Win 10 has done so and those who wanted it have it. Given that the update methodology from Win 10 is increasingly being applied to Win 7 and 8.1, it would be very interesting to hear from people who are using Win 10. What are its good and bad points? How does the updating process work out? And so on....

We haven't heard much from Win 10 users, but the thread is called Windows 10.

[Jenny48549]

Originally Posted by Rick Danger

Seeing email traffic on the Patch Management mailing list that I am having trouble confirming.

Apparently the management tools typically found in the Windows Professional versions to help administer a small to medium network are NOT available in Windows 10 Pro. Thus, system admins will have to spend extra money to run Windows 10 Enterprise to gain access to these tools.

If true, small to medium Windows shops are facing increasing costs. The apparent rationale is that Microsoft is seeing declining revenues from Windows licenses and are therefore attempting to squeeze extra money out of the franchise wherever they can.

Local Administrative tools are the same on Win 10 Pro as Win 7 Pro. Remote Server Admin tools for Win 10 Pro are available as a free download from MS.


I've been running Win 10 Pro since it was released as a free upgrade. I installed the Anniversary update as well. I have all the "reporting crap back to MS" disabled and I've done this all on a 3 year old machine.... all I know is that I haven't had a single hiccup since I installed it. It's quick, it's stable, all my software works and it does what I want it to do.

[beutelwolf]

Originally Posted by Misrule

At this stage, everyone who wants to avoid Win 10 has done so and those who wanted it have it. Given that the update methodology from Win 10 is increasingly being applied to Win 7 and 8.1, it would be very interesting to hear from people who are using Win 10. What are its good and bad points? How does the updating process work out?

Well, I'm running W10 on two machines, both new ones that came with the OS.

One is my work PC. This got infected very early on with a virus, malware removal tools could not get rid of it - so the hard drive was wiped and everything re-installed. Otherwise, the update process seemed to work OK. I managed to get rid off most of the bloatware, though that was a bit painful. One thing I could not get rid off was "skype for business", because we have a campus wide MS-Office licence, and the thing is deeply embedded into Office.
There were some compatibility issues with a piece of software we use at uni to video record lectures, but I managed to overcome these eventually.

My other W10 machine is a small laptop I use only for travel - more a tablet with a proper keyboard. The update process was fairly smooth, but this laptop is really a bit too flimsy to support the OS, lack of disk space. After the last update it nudged me into removing the earlier OS version from it (so no going back), simply because of lack of disk space. An hour before I was supposed to give a presentation at a conference, the thing decided (was I asked? No!) it was time for a massive update, one of those "please do not switch off your computer" moments. Luckily for me, it did not happen an hour later.

[Ernesto75]

Originally Posted by ragapart

The comment about Tesla drivers is interesting, because even so far they have an accident rate considerably lower than hand driven(if you will forgive the phrase), something like 1/2 or 1/3. Bearing in mind that it is new software that is actually quite impressive

Yes, but I remind you that this comment was not directly mine.

Like I said at the beginning of the post I reproduced the remarks made by this person, adding that I adhered to his ideas.
But concerning Tesla drivers I am not involved: so I reproduced the part with the rest of the remark but it is not mine.
This considered, I think he might be right: it is better for the moment to stay with more classic pilots.

Personnally I used various external disks from various (good) companies.
The disks finally all became unreliable.

So for the moment I use several external disks that are made by LaCie.
LaCie is a small company that sells classy products.
But I never put only one copy of anything on it: allways two or three copies on different disks.
So in the event one disk fails there is aways another version which is still available.

There is a drawback: this solution costs more and it takes more space.

The line which is called "Rugged" at LaCie's has one major advantage (for me): it is mounted on shock-absorbers so you can go anywhere with them.