OT - more Wndows 10 issues (updates)

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I've got dual boot on my PC. Win7 and XP - XP for some stuff that won't work on Win7. Do the same for Win10 / Win7?

[Huge]

Apple are not exactly covering themselves with glory with macOS Sierra right now.

[Huge]

*applause*

[Huge]

[10 lines snipped]

Not quite pointless. I can't believe I'm about to defend SmallNFloppy, but they have been criticised for many, many, years over the number of unpatched Winblows machines polluting the Internet, and this is partially an attempt to rectify that.

[Zephirum]

It certainly does for me and I reiterate that I have never seen hide nor hair of Cortana on this new and recently updated laptop.

[Tim Streater]

Why d'ye think I'm still on Mavericks?

[The Natural Philosopher]

Indeed. Cartoon of the day:

[Brian Howie]

In message , Lobster writes

I got the notorious "Anniversary" update on the laptop. I lasted about an hour. E-mail client Agent stopped working. Even the button to power down had disappeared. I rolled back to a previous install and disabled updates. Cortana is eavil. Having said that I find W10 pre anniversary better than W8.

BTW this machine ( the main-frame) is still running XP, ok I can boot to W7 or Linux, but XP is the real deal.

Brian

[The Natural Philosopher]

THis machine is running MInt. But it can run XP as well. It runs XP in a VM better than the old hardware ran it natively.

If I need Rhino CAD or Corel draw I fire it up.

[polygonum]

Again, in some ways, encouraging maintenance might be a good thing. But even with an enterprise version people are finding their machines can update unexpectedly. And with unexpected impacts.

Yes - wsusoffline is very, very useful. Especially for computers that are intended to never be allowed to connect to the internet in any way, ever. But it is a ridiculously long way round to have to go. I really meant it should be super-easy and provided by MS directly as an optional approach.

[Huge]

You and me, both.

[T i m]

I have Windows and Linux dual booting on most of my machines. I think one defaults to Linux.

Same here, now. When I was looking to move from XP I gave Linux a pretty good go but there were simply too many things it couldn't do (or I couldn't make it do) or it simply didn't do well enough. Like Pan *is* a pretty good clone of Agent (as it is meant to be) but it doesn't work as fast or well as Agent does, even Agent V2 on XP!

Same here now ... although I do often install it alongside Windows for others in the hope they might give it a go or it could be used as an emergency tool, should something go wrong with Windows. That said, I've removed more of the Linux installs for people who preferred the space back for Windows than I have installed Linux for people who wanted it.

About the only thing I can think of is Gparted because most of the cross platform programs (like Libre Office or Firefox / Thunderbird etc) are just that, x-platform.

Even then, (I'm told because I don't use ...) LO Writer simply isn't Word and Gimp isn't Photoshop. I'm not sure there is even a Linux version (equivalent) of Irfanview and I've not found anything as simple (or reliable) as ImgBurn (and of course I'm talking GUI, not some MSDOS CLI 1980' throwback). ;-)

Cheers, T i m

p.s. What I also find funny is all those vehemently defending the lack of in-situ version upgrades in say Linux Mint ... even from Clem ... and now it does it. The next thing I hope to see change (to the frustration of the Linux geeks) is a Windows-alike 'automatic updates' (GUI) option. At least that way *I* wouldn't have to update every Linux install I go near ...(because the users never seem to)!

[John Rumm]

Get used to the new world as OS "as a service". It has pros and cons. It does mean that the OS vendor can take care of keeping security patches up to date, which is something that many end users are poor at. That will benefit the herd if not the individual user. It also means they will bugger stuff up from time to time, and users will be forced to put up with a certain amount of change.

It means there will be no new versions of OS to upgrade to - you will just slowly migrate as you go when new capabilities are added.

Windows to an extent is only catching up with the crowd - Android, chrome OS etc already follow a similar path - at least for minor updates.

And the anniversary edition adds a complete Bourne shell complete with a full compliment of unix tools running natively. Which will be a big draw for systems admins, and developers.

[Lobster]

On 06 Oct 2016, Bod grunted:

(OP here) This one is 5 years old, and likewise, and as I mentioned, upgraded to W10 with no problems at all... It was only when applying this anniversary update that the scanner driver stopped working - seems particularly bizarre to me that this happened after an *update* rather than after the full O/S upgrade.

[rick]

If you need scanner software - get Vuescan Far better than your basic drivers

Trying to fight MS will only get you frustrated .... if you need to use Windows then just accept it.

[T i m]

Quite.

There really isn't a problem with Linux and I've seen it improve in leaps and bounds (well, 'improve' anyway ) over quite a few years now (my first installation was Slackware V0.9 from 3 x 1.4M floppy disks). The problem is ... as it always is, 'fanatics' insisting it's the best thing since sliced bread when you often have to slice it yourself ... and it's more like a Beigel than bread as you would soon find out when you tried to use one in an 'ordinary' toasted sandwich maker. ;-)

That's not that there is anything wrong with Beigels and in many cases they can be a perfectly adequate and compatible 'alternative' ... or even as your first choice, it's just that it's not 'bread' as most would know, use or expect (and just as the Beigel advocates would want it of course).

But luckily, few are naive enough to try to suggest that *everyone* would be better off with Beigels ... and of course the old 'no one needs toasties (just because they can't) ... and if they did we would consider them to be the nutters they obviously are! ;-)

Or do what most normal / reasonable people do and use what works for you (and / or your lifestyle choice / crusade) best but try the other stuff so at least you know what it's all about (and *if* it might serve you better all-round or just for the odd thing).

If someone asks my advice re a new PC I will (and do) consider all the options, inc OSX and Linux (as choosing OSX also determines the hardware). For most (but not all) Apple is out for the outright cost (and they wouldn't spend that on a non Apple solution either), and Linux is often out as soon as they say the *need* the likes of iTunes, specific non-Steam games or MS Office (not LO / OO etc), as the primary OS at least.

Cheers, T i m

[whisky-dave]

ndows or MAc it's doesn;t run on the ZX81 or linux.

There are if it doesnt; run what you want it to.

My fisrt version of Mac ran on a 400K floopy.

sliced bread was nothing special now ring pulls on beer cans now ya talking about progress.

I can;t get a hot dog roll in my toaster either.

I;'ve found that if I want a decent bagel you have to go to a bagel sop the res a good one in hackney those you buy in supewrnarkls aren;t quite as goo d in my in my opinion, btu I'll realey make a specail trip to the shop in f act I've never made a specail trip to the shop.

they aren't even part of my 5-a-day unlike chip butties and a bounty bar

First yuo need to know what you're doing then you work out what ssoftware a nd hardware would best achieve it.

That's note usualy the sort of thing peole do now. They know what hardware they want.

Unles they want to run 3 OS's

You can't get a PC that will run Mac OS X. So if writing apps for Apple a PC and linux are useless.

No they wouldnlt a similar thing with cars.

You see enoguh posche lamboginas lotus and many other high ened super cars on london stretes were they are 20 MPH speed limits.SO why buy a car that c an do 0-60 in under 3 seconds and a top speed of 220MPH what's the point. I can get pissed on a bottle of thinderbird for £4.99 or spend ? ?100s if not £1000s on a better wine.

Lots of people now prefer to play their games on smartphones and games cons oles.

[John Rumm]

If you turn off the public sharing capability, then that bit is actually quite useful where you have a few machines - it means only one external download and then its automatically shared with other machines on your network.

[John Rumm]

Alas they have been tweaking features out of pro to try and edge business users toward volume licensing versions...

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Really? Very odd then that my Win7 machine *only* installs them when I go to power it down.