Posted on 04/06/2015 8:03:32 AM PDT by dayglored
Late last month a mysterious patch suddenly appeared as an Optional entry in the Windows Automatic Update chute. At the time I wrote:
Conjecture at this point: It's somehow related to the ability to upgrade directly from Windows 7 or 8 to Windows 10. But of course, the official documentation doesn't say anything of the sort.
The crows have come home to roost and, thanks to a German researcher named Gerard Himmelein at heise.de, we now have a more thorough understanding of exactly what Microsoft's dishing out (a Google English translation of the post is available). Yesterday Jan Willem Aldershoff at Myce posted an analysis in English, with a Dutch-language screenshot, and this morning Vlad Dudau at Neowin gave us an English-language shot.
Microsoft provides an explanation -- of sorts -- in the KB article:
This update enables additional capabilities for Windows Update notifications when new updates are available to the user. It applies to a computer that is running Windows 8.1 or Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1).That's the entirety of the official explanation.
Analysis shows, though, that KB 3035583 is a shill for Windows 10. As poster rugk on the "eset Security Forum" says, it's "an adware/PUA/PUS/PUP for Windows 10 upgrade."
...
(Excerpt) Read more at infoworld.com ...
;D)
Can I upgrade with only two gigs of ram; would it use virtual memory?
2GB of RAM is considered pretty small by today's standards. It'll run, but you'll be severely limited in how many applications you can have running at one time, how many browser windows at one time, etc.
You don't want to rely on virtual memory. Yes it'll save your bacon in a pinch. But it's slow -- "virtual memory" means "save the overflow on the hard disk". And reload it from the hard disk when you want to access it again (called "swapping"). And back and forth. SLOOOOOOOOOOW doesn't begin to describe the performance hit.
That's true for all virtual memory, BTW, not just Windows.
You can improve the swapping situation somewhat if you're using a solid-state disk (SSD), but you'd be better off getting another 2 or more GB of RAM, than a SSD, at least at first. OTOH, if your computer can only hold 2GB RAM max, then an SSD will improve things over a rotating hard drive.
So the answer I'd give you is, Yes you can upgrade with only 2GB of RAM, but you'll soon wish you had at least 4GB.
Thank you for your reply.
I use my computer to compose long emails and post to Facebook and Twitter. I use my 8.1 phone to do short emails and post to Twitter and FR. I use the computer in the living room to watch t.v. shows on the Samsung. I just miss having the One Drive folders on my desktop, not to mention all my bookmarks are there, although I can access them on my phone. So I really look forward to being able to upgrade and, if Windows 10 will be free, all the better.
Thanks again.
I’m on Excede satellite internet with 27 gig per month. It’s un-metered between midnight and 5 am. So I don’t need to have a 7 Gig download happen in the middle of the day.
Also, I’ll do a fresh install from DVD media but not an upgrade.
Given the distribution of the Technical Previews as .ISO files, you should be able to do that. But I don't know if they plan to make DVDs available for retail. Have you heard about that?
won’t they be able to disable the technical preview iso’s when they release the real thing?
Well, they have a disable switch in the Technical Preview operating system such that it won't run past the date they set, and since it has to be in touch with the Mothership over the internet, you can't just "set the clock back" on your own computer and fool it.
The ISO itself doesn't get disabled, per se, you'll always be able to burn a DVD from it, install from it, etc. but the resulting installation of the OS won't run past that disable date.
So that’s how that works
No, I haven’t.
Thanks. Understand what you meant. I actually love the cloud given all the years of infrastructure support I’ve had to do: backups run, restores failed, servers ruined, overheat, worry about power, hardware go belly up 2 days after warranty, software installs causing already installed software to fail, etc., etc.
Not having to worry about all that and make it Microsoft’s (or Amazon’s or Google’s) fault is a blessing! This is mainly a corporate issue.
As you say, at home; not so much... Unless you are a home user like either one of us—and then you have servers and VMs and all kinds of configurations to deal with at home as well as the office!
today I brought up my Windows Technical Preview vm on Azure... It expires on 15 April! Seems like MSFT hasn’t got the 10000 build in Azure yet....
It took me longer than I care to admit to understand what you meant by 10000. It’s going to take some time to get used to seeing that. I’m so used to typing 9600 or 6.3.
I couldn’t agree more that cloud infrastructure is the best bet for corporations. It’s putting storage administrators out of work! But then EMC is going to continue to charge outrageous money for their storage, and it’ll continue to be necessary.
And yes, my home network is very robust if not a little overkill, but then I wouldn’t be a good tech nerd if it wasn’t. I have over 20 TB of storage in my home with most of it being redundant across multiple storage arrays and several Hyper-V hosts acting as infrastructure for my personal email server (I can do that too, Hillary!), DNS, etc. I just don’t want an OS that’s going to force me into the cloud. I initially thought Win8.1 was going that route, but they pulled the nose up.
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