imi wrote on 2021-01-19, 21:02:

oh yeah... that's definitely a hated trend of mine... automatic updates.

"nice system you got there, everything is running fine? ...let me change that"

Truer words my friend.

dr_st wrote on 2021-01-19, 19:28:

imi wrote on 2021-01-19, 18:43:

my main PC is in a black bland big tower without a window... does have a blue power LED though (that is covered x3 because it's annoying)

OK, I have to confess.

My main PC is a blue LED.

Somehow, blue LEDs always make me think of Blue Light specials at Kmart . Memories and nostalgia are strange that way .

imi wrote on 2021-01-19, 21:02:

well hdd access indicators are pretty useless in modern windows systems anyways, back then they used to indicate that your drives are busy loading something or still writing data... nowadays your drive is always busy because windows thinks it needs to index this and that and shuffle around it's page file a bunch or preload updates to install them in the most untimely moment...

oh yeah... that's definitely a hated trend of mine... automatic updates.

"nice system you got there, everything is running fine? ...let me change that"

Automatic Updates are another one - a HUGE one. But it's really only Microsoft Windows updates that specifically grind my gears.....

On my Linux System, you can do a sudo apt-update or run the updater (I use Mint Cinnamon 64-bit) - I just throw in my sudo password (admin password in Windows terms) and it does it's thing in the background while I save all my stuff or even get more work done.

On my iMac, same deal, notifies me of an update, installs in the background.

And all of those are on time, and rarely break anything.

But Windows.....hoo man....

I could write an entire book on poor experiences with every version of Windows updates going back to the BBS hosted stuff for 3.1. Everything from being hosted under the wrong file name, errant documentation, or just the nightmare of downloading a 10mb update over a 56K Dial-up connection for 98 SE.

But Windows 10 is a whole new nightmare, expecially with COVID-19. Everyone working from home has to rely on VPN to connect to the update server for their work computers, and I can imagine support everywhere is going bald from tearing their hair out over this. Because on one hand, automatic updates don't always come over your home network, users do things to computers that prevent it from updating, and so fourth - and that is the professional nightmare of WIndows 10 Automatic Updates - they don't always work or don't always apply, or when they do, it takes like....20 minutes to 2 hours to install depending on if it's some huge security stack update or if it's a Feature update. And you know full and darn well they are further making things insane by surfing Netflix and downloading crap.

But it's even bad as a personal user. I've come home to Windows 10 bricking my at-home PC's no less than six times in 7 years through an automatic update. Meanwhile they remove things, change settings specific to your home LAN (like one-way TCP 1.0 for my old boxes) because they just assume anyone using Windows is too dumb to actually tune their computer the way they want and keep it secure.

Also, another rant - Microsoft Security has always been terrible. I have 3 personal e-mail accounts: Yahoo! which I've had since 2001, Microsoft which I've had since 2001, and Gmail which I've had since 2005. Well, I've had hotmail/outlook hacked twice (once per provider name) - the first time it spammed my boss and my former room mate - -these count as the only virus-like-issues I've ever had, and all of them were on a Microsoft hosted service. That's why I NEVER use anything Microsoft for anything personal or in very limited amounts. Meanwhile, I've had Yahoo since since I first got internet at home - never been hacked, never been compromised, never had any security woes. Same with Gmail. With a track record like that, I consider it proof Microsoft is one of the least secure choices you can make. Surfing over unsecure WiFi on a 30 year old NEC using Links in FreeDOS seems to be more secure than Windows/Outlook/Hotmail!

This is a big reason I'm so vocal about FreeDOS and Linux for the things I do. I just have not had problems with either of those.

^^^^
Zerg Spore Colony detected massive anti-Microsoft cherry-picking. 🤣

it took me almost a month once to figure out why a program we used at work wouldn't work anymore on some PCs until I realized a windows update broke it, I didn't even know an update was installed because while transitioning offices the new IT did a "test install" of the update on one PC... and then one updated by itself... and only after the update ran on my PC automatically I realized that was the reason it stopped working, well and that was it, the program will no longer work from there on out, only on windows 7.

dr_st wrote on 2021-01-20, 20:46:

^^^^
Zerg Spore Colony detected massive anti-Microsoft cherry-picking. 🤣

well there's a lot of cherries to pick there :p

creepingnet wrote on 2021-01-20, 19:48:

I've come home to Windows 10 bricking my at-home PC's no less than six times in 7 years through an automatic update.

Security through bricking. It's our best weapon against the botnets 😜

creepingnet wrote on 2021-01-20, 19:48:

Meanwhile they remove things, change settings specific to your home LAN (like one-way TCP 1.0 for my old boxes) because they just assume anyone using Windows is too dumb to actually tune their computer the way they want and keep it secure.

Everytime I see an article on Slashdot about the latest ruinous Windows 10 update it just further cements my intention to stick with Windows 7 (audience gasps).

dr_st wrote on 2021-01-20, 20:46:

^^^^
Zerg Spore Colony detected massive anti-Microsoft cherry-picking. 🤣

Nope - just honest real-world experiences. Nothing I mentioned was not based not something I've been through.

I evangelized the heck out of Windows 10 when it first came out. I had access to use the beta. When it came out, it was great. It was stable as a rock, it never crashed, the early updates were high quality - they even had a "Experience Portal" where you could submit bugs and issues and request features - and they LISTENED to it. Windows 10 was shaping up to become the best Windows O/S of all time - but it's fallen hard since then.

The problems really started to begin with the first Feature update. In our org, we had almost EVERY Computer in the department get "Bricked" by the update - aka, something changed in Bitlocker, and more than half of those machines needed to be re-imaged because the update did not complete properly. There's a wonderful youtube video about the move to VMs for testing - and why it's not good. Those first two yeas of feature updates were a nightmare - 50+ tickets in the queue, nothing we could resolve until the engineers figured out what was wrong with the O/S, and a bugfix was sent. So we were putting in work arounds, and I got to the point I had to do some pretty amazing hardware and registry-fu to get things going for people.

It used to be that Microsoft had labs full of machines - if you've ever opened p a box for WIndows 3.1 or Windows 3.0, there was a list of "compatible" devices it worked with, listing basically every model of desktop and laptop computer it would work with on the market at the time from a major manufacturer. These days, it's all done using VM's. The problem with VM's is they don't provide enough variation with hardware that having multiple models of machines from multiple OEM's causes. I think the biggest mistakes the tech industry is making currently is that they assume that all PC's are 100% alike - they are not.

A fine example is I have 3 old laptops - to stay with the forums subject at hand - an IBM ThinkPad 755, a NEC Versa M/75 (surprise surprise), and a NanTan built Duracom 5110D - all three are 486 DX4-75s, all three are running on a 25MHz system bus, all three have NiMH batteries, all three have 540MB HDD, and all three have a sound card - but the ThinkPad is the most stable, the NEC is the fastest, and the Duracom provides the most features - because the ThinkPad has XX graphics chipset, the NEC has a C&T, the Duracom has a slower CIrrus chipset, the ThinkPad has MWave audio, the NEC a Crystal WSS chipset, and the Duracom an ESS688. The ThinkPad is revealed to have an incompatibility with the O/S on some level, so they release a bugfix, and then the NEC starts crashing, so they take the bug reports from it, using what they know about the 755 to not break that one, then the Duracom breaks - so that's fixed - next thing oyu know, you have a stable, hardy O/S with no issues.

But with a VM, you have an emulator. My experience with VM's has been that they tend to pick one graphics card, or a handful of types to emulate multiple generations like DOSbox does - you're only tasting a small percentage of what that software will run like on actual hardware. Lenovo might have something different in their notebook that gives it extra speed but makes it unstable with your O/S, or NEC might have a device that requires a Driver that interferes with another O/S function - that's where the problems I think stemp from. Too much of a homogenous view of hardware.

And I'm not saying LInux or any O/S is perfect either. I fight with FreeDOS to get U7 to work, there are times that dependencies on LInux are either removed or mapped on the repository different from how the O/S is expecting (a reain PITA). Heck, I still get mad when I have to dig out a 12 year old floppy to find out I just installed Windows 3.1 over the WIndows For Workgroups 3.11 file manager - and that's my bad. I'm just saying, that Windows 10 has been a real problem for me on all levels since some time into it's time as the primary O/S - maybe they'll fix it and Windows 10X will be better - maybe it'll be worse. Only time will tell. Heck, Mac O/S can be quite annoying being as I am used to LInux, DOS, and Windows - and have to get used to a one button mouse and different keys - but they all have plusses and minuses - that's a part of why I use all of them - to get a feel for what's out there beyond the PC Windows lexicon and gain some perspective.

Big Pink wrote on 2021-01-20, 21:31:

Everytime I see an article on Slashdot about the latest ruinous Windows 10 update it just further cements my intention to stick with Windows 7 (audience gasps).

7? I stick with 2000/XP 🤣. I never liked Vista, I almost threw up with 7 (never liked the Aero Glass theme), and I kicked the butt of Windows 10 out of my PCs.

Although I don’t like XP either - but it is actually usable when you disable the colorful theme and use the classic Windows 9x UI. Just because 2000 (my favorite “modern” Windows) now is a no go for most apps without BWC KernelEx. I have a 98 VM that is doing very well without any sort of KernelEx patches.

So my hatend trend is - automatic updates. I disable them all on everything I use - including iOS. I want to do it manually to make sure it works.

Touch screens in everything. Especially new cars. Ergonomics and usability takes a back seat to what 'looks' cool now. Not to mention how poorly these systems will age.

they don't want you to drive your own car anyways anymore

I don't want to drive my own car anymore - bring on driver-less I say

creepingnet wrote on 2021-01-20, 22:45:

I evangelized the heck out of Windows 10 when it first came out. I had access to use the beta. When it came out, it was great. It was stable as a rock, it never crashed, the early updates were high quality - they even had a "Experience Portal" where you could submit bugs and issues and request features - and they LISTENED to it. Windows 10 was shaping up to become the best Windows O/S of all time - but it's fallen hard since then.

The problems really started to begin with the first Feature update. In our org, we had almost EVERY Computer in the department get "Bricked" by the update - aka, something changed in Bitlocker, and more than half of those machines needed to be re-imaged because the update did not complete properly. There's a wonderful youtube video about the move to VMs for testing - and why it's not good. Those first two yeas of feature updates were a nightmare - 50+ tickets in the queue, nothing we could resolve until the engineers figured out what was wrong with the O/S, and a bugfix was sent. So we were putting in work arounds, and I got to the point I had to do some pretty amazing hardware and registry-fu to get things going for people.

It used to be that Microsoft had labs full of machines - if you've ever opened p a box for WIndows 3.1 or Windows 3.0, there was a list of "compatible" devices it worked with, listing basically every model of desktop and laptop computer it would work with on the market at the time from a major manufacturer. These days, it's all done using VM's. The problem with VM's is they don't provide enough variation with hardware that having multiple models of machines from multiple OEM's causes. I think the biggest mistakes the tech industry is making currently is that they assume that all PC's are 100% alike - they are not.

I think I know which video you're talking about. The problems it describes are unfortunately very true.

The answer to this is to delay feature updates as much as possible, and let all the early adopters work things out. This is what most big corporations do, essentially. They have an IT department that controls and administers the updates, and they do their own in-house testing before mass deployment. A smaller org may not be able to do that, but they should probably still postpone the updates.

As a private user - you should run Win10 Pro (which is needed to have control over automatic updates), and schedule the updates yourself.

This is essentially the same advice I would give anyone, in the past as well - don't jump on the early bandwagon of OS upgrades. I think what some folks are confused about is that they don't realize that the Win10 milestone updates are essentially OS upgrades, like installing a service pack, or upgrading Vista to Win7, or Win8 to Win8.1.

or... or... get this, let the user decide if they want a "feature" update or not.

afaik there is still no way to get security updates without feature updates in windows 10

imi wrote on 2021-01-21, 11:34:

or... or... get this, let the user decide if they want a "feature" update or not.

afaik there is still no way to get security updates without feature updates in windows 10

Security updates are offered for a specific version for 18 months; after that, if you don't upgrade to a newer version ("feature update"), you may no longer get security upgrades. Unless you are on a long-term service branch, which I'm not 100% sure how to get on to in the first place.

You should still be able to manually hunt for any updates you want and install them. It is definitely more complicated than it used to be.

I can understand what Microsoft wants to achieve with the new rolling update policy, and I can understand what they want to achieve with the forced automatic updates. I generally support the former, and very much object to the latter.

I just can't understand why Microsoft does not make available as a single download from an downloads page. I very much prefer to shut down automatic updates completely and choose religiously what I want to update or not, whenever I want, not when they want me to. I stripped down a Windows 10 VM (needed for a very few reasons I can list in just one hand) with many tweaks to shut down data collection as much as I could, and (censored) shut down the automatic updates as much as I could. So far I wasn't given any unwanted surprises, but to be fair I do not use that VM daily.

Here's another trend: Widescreen monitors vs old-style squared monitors, for both desktop and notebook pcs? Which one people prefer?

Now every screen (computer/tv/mobile devices) are widescreen. This is nuts.

Bruninho wrote on 2021-01-21, 19:51:

Here's another trend: Widescreen monitors vs old-style squared monitors, for both desktop and notebook pcs? Which one people prefer?

Now every screen (computer/tv/mobile devices) are widescreen. This is nuts.

I adore my 32:9 monitor for modern gaming. It's also phenomenal for productivity.

But for anything pre-2006 or so, I prefer 4:3.

mh nah widescreen displays are a trend that I don't hate, would old games support widescreen (with actually wider viewing angles, not just cropped) I'd prefer that.
the issue is that they're getting too wide now x3 and often are not tall enough anymore for how wide they are.

imi wrote on 2021-01-21, 20:13:

the issue is that they're getting too wide now x3 and often are not tall enough anymore for how wide they are.

https://apple.slashdot.org/story/21/01/21/153 … 69-aspect-ratio

I'm clinging to my 16:10 Asus VK266H monitor I bought in 2009 despite the fact it's not in the best health after 10,000 power cycles. A 16:9 monitor to me would feel like the 21:9 monitor Techmoan has https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_4nsUL4MRw

I'm fine with modern widescreen monitors. My 1440p 27inch Acer Predator XB271HU has served me well through out the years, hell I actually kinda wish it was a bit bigger at 32inch or something tbh.

Now curved monitors on the otherhand? Nah. The warped, curve effect on the screen image just makes me go insane. Especially when gaming. I dislike those non flat CRT televisions for the same reasion.