More Microsoft Madness.... - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: imidis
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 04, 2018, 07:56:32 am
content: Just, what the hell, seriously?!https://www.pcworld.com/article/3252103/windows/microsoft-making-windows-10-s-default-with-new-versions.htmlQuoteCause yeah, windows home needs 5 versions...

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 04, 2018, 08:31:40 am
content: Yet another reason why after Windows 7 is no longer usable/feasible, I'm switching to Linux.I've already stopped using Microsoft Office since they insisted on ramming bullshit cloud features down your throat with Office 365.

author: donotdespisethesnake
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 04, 2018, 08:48:13 am
content: I think everyone knew that when Microsoft said "Windows 10 will be free" that was total bullshit. Clearly, the plan was to lock people in with the free version, force them into upgrades, then introduce subscription options.

author: Howardlong
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 04, 2018, 09:06:13 am
content: I got caught woth O365 the other day, it refused to open Excel unless I updated it. Now bearing in mind I was on a low bandwidth tethered connection at the time, I was in no mood for that.

author: Electro Detective
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 04, 2018, 09:18:26 am
content: Did the older licensed versions of Office from 2010, and others dating back to 97, stop working? or uninstalled themselves?

author: amspire
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 04, 2018, 09:28:10 am
content: Quote from: donotdespisethesnake on February 04, 2018, 08:48:13 amWindows 10 was never free. Windows 10 upgrades were/are free. Windows 10 Home currently costs about the $100 mark. Pro around the $200 mark. Definitely not free.Microsoft have never hidden their plans. I am not sure how this can be "bullshit".Windows 10 mainstream support ends late 2020. You will be able to use your Windows 10 upgrade for free till the longterm support expires on the 14th of October 2025.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 04, 2018, 09:37:58 am
content: Quote from: Electro Detective on February 04, 2018, 09:18:26 amNo, but file formats and operating systems moved on, so they no longer work on modern hardware. Of course it's still possible to use MS Office 10 at the moment, but for how long? It's better to change to an alternative now, than wait any longer. I haven't had MS Office installed on my home PC, since Office 97. In the early 2000s a new PC came with MS Works, which was quickly replaced with OpenOffice.org and now I use Libra Office.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 04, 2018, 09:59:10 am
content: You can still buy office 2016 and license it that way. Costs a lot though. I use my MSDN copy therefore circumventing all that faff and cost as someone else paid for the MSDN sub.Important stuff I do on pen and paper though. I have considered investigating in an IBM selectric as well. Seriously our dependence on technology and software is scary these days. I say that as a software guy. When your butcher is a vegetarian you have to wonder if you should be eating his meat

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 04, 2018, 10:04:22 am
content: Quote from: Electro Detective on February 04, 2018, 09:18:26 amNo, however, those that required activation to work, no longer activate. This pissed me off as I was more than happy to run the older versions. They did everything I needed and read pretty much every file format I work with.

author: abraxa
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 04, 2018, 10:09:04 am
content: Quote from: Halcyon on February 04, 2018, 08:31:40 amAt home I only run Windows in a VM when I really need it, otherwise I'm using linux. At work however, I'm forced to use Windows (currently 7, soon 10) and soon also Office 365 because Microsoft successfully convinced the board of directors that this is the next best thing to sliced bread. Heck, they even installed an evangelist in our company who does nothing (!) else than promote those new amazing cloud-based features and spits out blog posts and announcements on our intranet all the time to try and brainwash everyone into loving this piece of turd. Needless to say, I'm not looking forward to having to use it. Cloud-based mindset aside, the UI is so horribly designed that I want to kick the person in the nuts who came up with it. It's really amazing how people think it's a good idea to force you to guess where you can click and where you can't because of this "flat design" bullshit.Sorry for the rant, it's just extremely frustrating to see how Microsoft has such a firm grip on the corporate world and no one's stepping up to change that.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 04, 2018, 10:14:54 am
content: Quote from: abraxa on February 04, 2018, 10:09:04 amI'm in the same position. I was on the evaluation team for a number of different products (including Microsoft Office 365) and to give Microsoft a bit of credit, their product wassignificantly better than the other 2-3 we evaluated.It still sucks though.EDIT: Microsoft's product was the least shit of the other 2-3 we evaluated.

author: Twoflower
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 04, 2018, 11:17:54 am
content: I'm also phasing out Windows. To get a smooth transition I started to use a VM to look at several Linux distributions to see which one it will be. Now I'm running a dual boot Win7 and Manjaro (not recommended for Linux beginners).My recommendation to people who thinks to go to Linux after the end of Win7: That's too late. Start now to give yourself enough time to find alternatives for your applications. Either a dual boot or in a Virtual Machine. And just try several alternatives as it's usually very easy to install and remove software.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 04, 2018, 11:22:39 am
content: Quote from: Twoflower on February 04, 2018, 11:17:54 amGood advise! I took a couple of years to transition to Linux. Nowadays I run Windows XP in a VM to use CAD tools, MS-Office and compile Windows applications. I could to the latter on Linux too using a cross compiler but I'm too lazy to set it up.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 04, 2018, 03:12:54 pm
content: Quote from: Halcyon on February 04, 2018, 10:14:54 amWhat were the other products? Was there an option to suggest something completely different to what you were given?

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 04, 2018, 05:11:20 pm
content: Quote from: Halcyon on February 04, 2018, 10:04:22 amThat's what cracks are for... if you already paid, you don't have to worry. I don't think MS cares either way.

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 04, 2018, 05:45:37 pm
content: At the moment I am using Windows Server 2016 as a desktop OS, and if you have access to an Imagine or MSDN subscription, I would readily recommend it. It has all of the good ideas Microsoft made, and skimps on the bad ones. There is UWP, but no Windows Store (all apps must be sideloaded for UWP). It has perfect WinAPI compatibility, all of your desktop programs (with a few exceptions) work perfectly. For the rare thing that doesn't work (like Macrium Reflect) there are often alternatives, sometimes even included in the OS.As for Linux, I dual boot Arch Linux, and I must stress this as hard as I can, if you are planning to transition to Linux, use Arch Linux. While a lot of people might be turned off by starting with the CLI and having to install the bootloader yourself, trust me, there is an amazing amount of documentation, and after I did it, I had a really great understanding of how the Linux ecosystem works. Installing Mate and all the other packages I needed, I knew how it all works, and I think that's invaluable when working with something as complex as the Unix ecosystem.This, however, is typical Microsoft, and doesn't surprise me. To Microsoft, if they have made a feature their consumers don't like, don't take the reasonable choice like improving it or discontinuing it, what they do is take the feature and RAM is down people's throats. They make sure that to opt out takes hours of your time, and the entire process before and after you are blasted with this shit all the time. It's been time to make the Unix/Linux ecosystem dominate in the home PC industry just like it does in literally every single other. I'd love to sing the heralds of the Not Tolerable kernel's downfall to the delight of a thankful tech community, and maybe this will be Linux's chance to swoop in for the kill, but worse news has been born before, to no change.

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 04, 2018, 06:16:26 pm
content: Quote from: blueskull on February 04, 2018, 05:49:40 pmEncouraging the dumbing down of users is never a good thing. Especially since it removes the impetus for some of them to become future engineers/developers.

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 04, 2018, 06:25:42 pm
content: More a source of continuous income for MS, rather than getting the single hit from the OEM on manufacture of the computer or other device from them, and getting all the small dribbles of money as a continued source of income. As the computer market pretty much is saturated, with little room left to grow market share any way ( one or more computers per person worldwide is not going to get much more than that) by new sales, the siphoning of money by having 6 monthly renewals for the effective rental of the OS is an irresistible idea, and slowly locking the users into the pay pay pay system while slowly increasing the price till they get to the too much kickback point.

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 04, 2018, 07:07:32 pm
content: I'm no expert, not even a novice, at LibreOffice.Does Code Behind Forms (CBF) work? How about Visual Basic for Applications (VBA)?I can't imagine using Access for anything without VBA. I don't use it often with Word but I have used it with Excel. In fact, the data came in as a spreadsheet, the code behind parsed the column names (which inconveniently changed on every evolution, there was a translation table) and dumped the data into the database. There were coded forms to select subsets of data for review.If these things work with LibreOffice then it is a competitor for Office. If not, well, it's pretty much worthless - to me...Recognizing that Linux powers a humongous 1% of the world's desktops after 25+ years implies that a lot of people don't want to be bothered with it. There are plenty of reasons for this and the biggest is hardware drivers. Install difficulties have been ironed out and distros like Debian and Ubunto just do the right thing. Unless proprietary drivers are required... Printer installation varies from a web page on a port (which port?) to something nearly as good as Win 10.Then we have the shear arrogance of the Ubuntu bunch where they not only moved the system buttons to the wrong side of the window, they removed the ability to put them back on the correct side. I used to like Ubuntu, a couple of generations back. I won't use it any more. Debian is the definitive distribution on which most others are based. The problem with them is they want to be pedantic about open source. Getting proprietary drivers, if they are even available, is a pushup beyond most people's ability or attention span. It should be automagic!One thing about Microsoft, when it installs, it works. Drivers exist and Microsoft automatically installs most of them. There is very little searching of the Internet required for Win 10. There may be a need for a lot of upgrades to catch up with the current configuration but the system works.I have Linux on 3 machines and I use it from time to time but it will never replace Windows. It's not even close!

author: guido
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 04, 2018, 07:38:00 pm
content: I got a new laptop, because the other one started to age (Vista out of support). Came with Win10, drama. Last thing it did was loose all the standard apps like calculator and notepad. Had to go to the app store to download them again. So if you don't have an M$ account... Also some troubles with updates.Now running Mint without any problems, no more win10. I installed win7 in a virtual box. Works great too. But it's not allowed to talk to the outside world

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 04, 2018, 08:07:01 pm
content: Quote from: TwoOfFive on February 04, 2018, 05:45:37 pmFor most people, computers are an appliance. They don't want to know how the OS works, they don't even care how it works and they certainly don't want to have to spend the time to figure out how it works through countless expeditions to Google. Having to use the CLI to add yourself to the serial port group is something most people would rather avoid. What? I have to use sudo to add myself to a group so I can use miniterm? And then only after spending quality time at Google? Nonsense! What if I'm not a sudoer? I see another Google expedition...udev rules? What's that about? And, no, I don't want to spend time on Google finding out.A really good system wouldn't require any documentation. It would do the right thing by automagic.

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 04, 2018, 10:16:36 pm
content: That comment was directed largely at the audience of this forum, one that has a large number of people who enjoy tinkering and going on google expeditions to learn things. Yes, some people don't have time for that, and I can understand that, but my personal recommendation is Arch Linux.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 04, 2018, 11:36:52 pm
content: Quote from: amspire on February 04, 2018, 09:28:10 amIt wasn't free then either, you had to trade in a perfectly good paid for Win7 or Win8 license for it.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 04, 2018, 11:38:24 pm
content: Quote from: blueskull on February 04, 2018, 05:49:40 pmIt's Windows RT all over again, and will lead to the same confusion. People buy a PC that comes with "Windows" and then realize it won't run any of the Windows software they already own.

author: amspire
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2018, 12:02:52 am
content: Quote from: james_s on February 04, 2018, 11:38:24 pmI think it is a waste of time criticising the Windows 10 replacement that will come by 2020 when we really do not know what it will be like. It will not be anything like Windows RT.The Windows S could be a pointer to the approach. You get a notebook with Windows S. I think in 2020, you will have to pay a subscription for the more powerful Windows replacement that comes out then. If you stop paying, perhaps the notebook reverts to Windows S. Who knows? In the mean time, all the Windows 10 releases only have around a 1 year end of life. Around 2020, there will be a final release that has a 5 years end of life. As I have regularly mentioned before, a new Windows replacement can be far more compatible then any old Windows if they implement containers - which they have been working on. They have had a strategy that they have been working on ever since they ditched Windows 9 after the Windows 8 disaster and they still have a couple of years to go yet.If you have a free Windows 10 upgrade right now, Microsoft will happily let you use it for free till 2025. No underhand tricks. No sabotages. That is what they promised from the start and they will honour that promise.However, what I expect is that the Windows replacement around 2020 will have features that will make Windows 10 look like it is from the stone age. Many people in this forum will actually choose to pay a few dollars a month for the Windows 10 replacement, in spite of all the current grumbling. The actual architecture will be a leap forward. Techies will look at it and say "Wow! Why wasn't it always done like this".

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2018, 12:13:44 am
content: I'll believe it when I see it. I remember the promises of what Vista was going to bring. I remember the promises of what Windows 8 was going to bring. Microsoft has a long history of promising the moon, delivering a turd, and then a year or so later following up with something passable but still lacking most of the amazing new capabilities initially promised.Whatever the case I've already migrated most of my stuff over to Ubuntu with Win7 in a VM. My primary PC will remain Win7 until it breaks and then whatever replaces it will likely run Linux unless MS offers something really compelling to win me back. The ball is in their court and they're going to have to work hard to regain some of the trust they threw away almost overnight by abusing Windows Update in order to foist Windows 10 on everyone. It's their job to win me over, not my responsibility to bend to their needs. Until they realize this they will continue to struggle with adoption rates.

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 05, 2018, 12:16:04 am
content: I am happy for others to be pathfinders.I am happy for others to explore the bleeding edge.I am happy with the Win 7 I have at the moment - it does all I need. If and when that changes, I will look at what is on offer .... but I am not about to change just because it is "old".The only thing I will trust Microsoft to do is look after their bottom line. If users of their products are looked after, then that's a bonus.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2018, 12:23:35 am
content: Quote from: amspire on February 05, 2018, 12:02:52 amWith the greatest respect, I disagree. Operating systems are not meant to have "features", they are meant to sit in the background, out of the way, and let you run your applications. Everything that has gone wrong with the last few versions of Windows is that Microsoft has attempted to turn the OS into a foreground application, adding ever more "features" and "capabilities" to it. This has resulted in more stuff that people don't need, more stuff to go wrong, more stuff that needs patches and security updates to fix it.So if the Windows 10 replacement attempts to do more of the same then it can only be worse.

author: amspire
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2018, 12:38:06 am
content: Quote from: Brumby on February 05, 2018, 12:16:04 amThat is fine. It is exactly what people said about Windows 3.11 when NT3.5 and Windows 95 came out. Autocad was still running in DOS then because they thought Window 3.11 was crap!It is the same thing people said about Windows 2000 when XP came out. People like Steve Gibson of "Security Now!" was using XP for years after Win7 came out - XP did everything he needed. Steve is of course now using Windows 7.However. Microsoft has had a crippling problem. Up to now, the main Windows people are using is 5 to 10 years old. That is a nightmare for a software company. Come 2025, like it or not, the main "Windows" people will be using will be a few months old at the most.Also the whole architecture of Windows is unsustainable. It is breaking at the seams. It is impossible to attempt to secure. Programs are installed using administrative rights - absolute bonkers! Updates are a nightmare. Linux and OS/X also have major architecture problems because they are built on foundations that go back to the 1970's. There really are great new ideas, but it takes a major project to make it happen. Windows 10 is not that project - it is just the putty in the gap.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2018, 12:41:12 am
content: Quote from: amspire on February 05, 2018, 12:38:06 amThat's not my problem, that's their problem. I am not a charity with the purpose of sustaining Microsoft's (or any other company's) business model. I refuse to rent software, period, end of story, this is not negotiable.

author: amspire
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2018, 12:44:59 am
content: Quote from: IanB on February 05, 2018, 12:23:35 amYou are thinking about the fluff like Cortana. That is nothing to do with what I am talking about. I am suggesting the new Windows will have a far superior core architecture that will give many fundamental improvements in you quest to have a solid platform on which you can safely and efficiently run your Windows applications.For some unknown reason, people seem to think a change like this means less programs will run, when it can easily be that more programs will run. It may be easier for companies to run their VB6 Access DB based business programs which no longer run on Windows 10 or for the military to run their Windows 3.11 FA-18 fighter plane routines.

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 05, 2018, 12:55:47 am
content: Quote from: amspire on February 05, 2018, 12:44:59 amAbsolutely, categorically, definitively false!I have a program that runs with particular hardware. A workflow has been developed around it, which has taken some time to refine.I am not in the position to "upgrade" the hardware - but, more specifically, I do not have a pressing NEED to do so. HOWEVER, the program runs on XP. It does not run on Win 7.My solution is to have XPmode set up - and I have to fire that up whenever I want to use the hardware. I did not blindly upgrade to Win 7 and hope that the program would work. It was a key part of the decision process for a move to Win 7 that I confirm I could run this program.If Mircosoft comes up with an O/S that will support this old program again, then I might reconsider ... but what I have, works.

author: Electro Detective
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2018, 01:01:47 am
content: Quote from: james_s on February 05, 2018, 12:13:44 amWell, Vista did bring us Win 7 to bail everyone out of the crapperFWIW once the BS dust settled on both of those operating systems, aided by a service pack or two and or some updates,plus a tweak or two to disable unnecessary resource hogging background processes,both of these MS offerings still work quite well and not that much different to Win 7If they run the software without drama or sludge performance, I'm not fussed if it's Win 7, 8 or VistaSP1/SP2,especially on a licensed OEM pre installed PC supplied with Recovery MediaI'll probably give Win 10 a go once that BS dust settles and Win 12 comes outand OEMs will be doing deals on Win 10 boxeswith free Win 12 upgradesoh yeah and **** renting software BS, I either buy/own it or I DON"T NEED IT,or try some freeware and hope to get luckyor hit on recommended author supported shareware that works and worth forking out,yep...end of story I think

author: amspire
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2018, 01:30:27 am
content: Quote from: Brumby on February 05, 2018, 12:55:47 amWith container technology, it is possible for you app to think it is actually running on XP. I am not talking about a compatibility mode which only sometimes works.And this can all be on a Windows core that is not only Windows XP incompatible - the core can be incompatible with all programs! You probably will not be able to run any driver or application on the core under any circumstance. Windows put the drivers and graphics in the kernel simply due to the fact that the PC's of the 80's and 90's were too underpowered for decent performance any other way. Even the slowest PC today is several magnitudes faster then a PC of 1990. With a good architecture, you could take the graphics out of the kernel with no loss of speed - maybe an increase. As long as the program still thinks the graphics is still in the kernel, it does not matter where it actually is. There is no reason for the kernel to be directly accessible by the software running the Ethernet/WiFi ports at all.I think this is where Microsoft wants to go, but will they do it by 2020? I have no idea. I think this is where they will be by 2030.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2018, 07:36:13 am
content: Quote from: Electro Detective on February 05, 2018, 01:01:47 amWhile generally excellent, even Win7 never got several significant features that were promised in Vista. There was supposed to be a whole new filesystem, I don't recall what else but there was a whole list of stuff.Whatever the case, "legacy" Windows software is virtually the only reason people run Windows. If they succeed in killing that off and driving everyone to a mix of web based and proprietary walled garden app stores then Windows will lose most reasons to exist. Apple and Google absolutely dominate the walled garden app market and the operating system is irrelevant to the web based stuff.

author: Towger
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2018, 08:05:26 am
content: Quote from: james_s on February 05, 2018, 07:36:13 amThat fokes is the core of the existence of Windows.From past experience I would not put it past MS to shoot them self in the foot.There is a long list of products they have dropped, which were the 'best thing since sliced bread' only the year before.Many developers have no trust in them any more. Fine if you write custom software and your customers have buckets of money to rewrite apps from scratch every few years. Hold on, these are the same customers who can afford to rewrite for Linux...

author: amspire
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2018, 08:44:26 am
content: Quote from: Towger on February 05, 2018, 08:05:26 amSo they will not do it. They just won't.It doesn't stop them from replacing the whole core of Windows, as long as a programs see the DLL's and system calls that look like Win XP/7/8.1/10 or any other version of Windows. If the compatibility is not built into the core at all, you can have compatibility layers for as many versions of Windows as you like. It is the current structure of Windows that is killing Windows.Wine has proved you can run Windows programs on a non-windows core, but you can do it much better when you have the source code to every DLL ever in Windows, and you can design a new core solely to run the comparability layers on. And of course if you can have a budget probably over $10 billion and 6 years of development time - that helps.There is a new management at Microsoft, and they have been hiring really switched on people like Mark Russinovich of Sysinternals. He is the CTO of Azure, but he has been central in developing the container technology that I believe will end up in Windows. People like this are not drenched in some kind of old fashion Microsoft way of doing things, and they are not idiots. Definitely not suicidal enough to make a new non-compatible O/S.Windows 8.0 development was started back in 2009 and it was released in 2012. Satya Nadella took over in 2014 and the whole direction of Microsoft changed. Windows 8.1 development stopped, and Windows 9 was canned. Windows 10 came out a year later with the statement it was the last ever version of Windows. I cannot see how anyone could think that all this is to release Metro MarkII or some other crap. No one knows better then Nadella that this would be totally unpopular.He has to release something that is undeniably better then Windows so that people want to pay for it. It has to be so much easier, save so much more time, so much more secure, so much easier and quicker to update and be so much more reliable that for most people, paying for it is a no-brainer.

author: imidis
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2018, 05:37:40 pm
content: Microsoft wants to have their cake and eat it too, so to speak. They want to have an app based store system for them to milk money off of and yet charge for their OS.I really only use Windows for games and some software that will only work on windows. Next upgrade will be IOMMU compatable, for the few scenarios where I need it.I will never purchase a Microsoft product again.

author: IanMacdonald
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2018, 06:06:54 pm
content: I can see this hitting the retailers really hard. It will be like the Vista days when PC World had shelves of Macs and printers, and not much else. Once word gets round that they 'aren't proper computers' sales will drop to zero. Then, prices will be slashed just to get rid of them.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2018, 09:09:38 pm
content: Quote from: amspire on February 05, 2018, 08:44:26 am

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2018, 10:37:35 pm
content: Quote from: amspire on February 05, 2018, 08:44:26 amYou mean Linux?

author: amspire
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2018, 11:02:10 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on February 05, 2018, 10:37:35 pmNot a silly thing to say. Look at Azure today. Open source and Linux everywhere. Docker. Kubernetes. Microsoft has joined with a swag of open source committees. If the new Windows can run containers, it may be able to run Linux based containers as well as Microsoft ones. Why not? All you need is a Linux Kernel based VM running as part of the core, and you can run Linux containers on Windows PC's without a problem.What Docker and Linux most definitely do not do at the moment is make it simple and seamless. That is what Microsoft can do.

author: amspire
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2018, 11:55:08 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on February 05, 2018, 09:09:38 pm