Posted on 05/01/2018 2:47:01 PM PDT by dayglored
Or dance on their graves, whatever flips your pancake
The Windows 10 April Update has begun seeping out from beneath the Redmond bathroom door. As an antidote to the excitement of the new, let us take a moment to mourn the passing of the old.
First on Microsoft's roll of honour was Groove Music Pass. The music service, which was loved by a niche of users, got a Spotify-shaped knife through the heart back in 2017. With the April 2018 Update, Microsoft has formalised the arrangement. The Groove app will now only play music on a PC or stream from OneDrive. If users want to source music elsewhere, well, there's an app for that.
Another victim of April's cull was HomeGroup, arguably the last vestige of Microsoft's PC-based home media and network strategy. Introduced in Windows 7, HomeGroup was intended to allow a group of PCs on a home network to share files and printers without recourse to servers or complicated authentication rules.
Unfortunately, HomeGroup came just as Microsoft began a long retreat from its attempt to fill the home with PCs. The latest release saw the networking solution that nobody used totter off into the sunset, following Windows Home Server and the much-missed Windows Media Center.
The final notable absentee from Windows 10 1803 onward was the venerable XPS viewer. Built into Windows Vista, the technology was intended as an alternative to PDF. With the April 2018 Update, users desperate to use the unloved format will have to manually download a viewer when using a fresh copy of Windows 10. Upgrading users should be able to ignore the viewer as before.
Other features not quite dead, but not receiving any further love from Microsoft, include the little-used Phone Companion and the Windows Help Viewer. With roots going back to the Windows 3.0 helpfiles of 1990, users could be forgiven for being surprised to learn that WinHlp32.exe was still a thing. With all Windows documentation now online, Microsoft has been determined to kill it once and for all.
So pause a moment while tearing off the wrapping paper from today's new Windows 10 toys and ponder which will survive the test of time. ®
Oldie, but goodie:
“A helicopter was flying around above Seattle when an electrical malfunction disabled all of the aircraft’s electronic navigation and communications equipment. Due to the clouds and haze, the pilot could not determine the helicopter’s position and course to fly to the airport. The pilot saw a tall building, flew toward it, circled, drew a handwritten sign, and held it in the helicopter’s window. The pilot’s sign said “WHERE AM I?” in large letters.
People in the tall building quickly responded to the aircraft, drew a large sign and held it in a building window. Their sign read: “YOU ARE IN A HELICOPTER.” The pilot smiled, waved, looked at his map, determined the course to steer to SEATAC airport, and landed safely.
After they were on the ground, the co-pilot asked the pilot how the “YOU ARE IN A HELICOPTER” sign helped determine their position. The pilot responded, “I knew that had to be the Microsoft building because, like their technical support, online help and product documentation, the response they gave me was technically correct but completely useless.”
What about those “cloud” services when the internet is down?
That's gonna be one big boodle of suck for everybody who depends on the cloud.
I use cloud services when they are the best option, such as searching services, mapping, and a few servers I have in AWS.
Otherwise not. People who do everything through cloud services are skating on thin ice, IMO.
And I keep my data on the ground, thank you.
I told my wife that joke at dinner tonight. She laughed. :-)
You sound like me... another old fart who's interested in getting something productive and/or fun accomplished. :-)
Stop Microsoft Windows 10 Spying & Forced Application Installs. How to Take Back Control of Your PC.
That must have been before my time with Windows as my first desktop had Win95 and I don’t remember seeing boob or Bob.
yes that’s the name Clippy. Even the name was retarded. Good riddance for that stupid crap.
I liked Windows 7 Pro.
It even ran well on my wife’s Dell netbook (Atom processor).
Then one day it upgraded itself to Windows 10 and ever since spends more time installing patches and updates than actually allowing work.
Thanks to the update, I now have "user.000" in addition to "user".
It's affecting my OCD...
And applications looking for the directories formerly in "user".
Morons.
I still use Windows 7 as my default browser, though my hard drive is dual booted with W10.
I’ve been meaning to ask you, since I lost 90% of my bookmarks/favorites in Edge, is there any way to save Edge favorites on the computer?
I’ve spent the last few days taking inventory, and I was pleased that I still had my IE bookmarks physically on my computer. But the biggest loss was the 80 or so bookmarks from the footnotes of Ayaan Hersi Ali’s white paper, “The Challenge of Dawa,” all of which were collected on my Surface. Only seven of those bookmarks survived, but I do have PDFs of the information at those websites. The links to referenced books are, of course, gone.
Being mainly a Firefox, Chrome, and Safari user, I had to google it. This looks promising:
"...
It increases my paranoia,
Like looking in my mirror and seeing a police car.
..."
-- David Crosby, "Almost Cut My Hair"
I hear ya. Cr@p behavior, leaving turds around like that, is more than just annoying, it's overtly offensive to one's sensibilities and sense of order.
Well color me shocked. I thought that was for importing only. You’re a wiz! Thanks!
I got the update today but since I already uninstall a lot of the unnecessary programs and configured W10 to NOT silently install the garbage programs, those programs weren’t reinstalled and the silent install is still turned off.
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