Posted on 08/01/2018 7:17:07 PM PDT by dayglored
On September 30, 2014, Microsoft announced Windows 10, thus changing the firm's operating system as we know it. Windows was going to be serviced, rather than being refreshed every few years. We've learned since then that this means biannual feature updates, along with monthly (sometimes more often) cumulative updates.
Indeed, Microsoft was done competing with itself with new versions of Windows. On July 29, 2015, Windows 10 launched, and it was promised that there would never be a Windows 11. Here we are, exactly three years later, when we would normally see the next version of Microsoft's flagship OS.
Since then, there have been five feature updates, including versions 1511, 1607 (the Anniversary Update), 1703 (the Creators Update), 1709 (the Fall Creators Update), and 1803 (the April 2018 Update). Much has changed, and a lot of the OS looks completely different from when it started out.
I decided to take a look back, comparing the original version (1507) to version 1803. Most of the changes are good, although some aren't. A ton of features have been added, such as the Windows Subsystem for Linux, Windows Ink, and more.
(Excerpt) Read more at neowin.net ...
Biggest problem keeping the legacy O/S running is memory.
Browsers are looking for endless memory in a machine. Every version steals more.
Few websites care about being backward compatible.
So the industry conspiracy is ...
Make webpages that wont work on older browsers, you have to keep the newest browsers (memory hogs)
Add memory, oh you cant activate XP with more memory too bad.
Buy new o/s =- oh wont run without more memory, buy new hardware.
ITS A SCAM.
btw: My XP still lets me run a spread sheet program ... who members Quattro Pro ? still great since ‘93
The CPUs are 1000's of times faster, we have 1000x the RAM, 1000x the disk speed and capacity.
And yet, despite the fancier graphics and drop shadows and animated menus, other than raw number-crunching, we are not much more productive, overall.
Last weekend I spent 2 hours fighting with a stupid problem, that kept me from doing 5 minutes work, that in the past would have taken me 15 minutes but wouldn't have cost me the 2 hours. Where's the improvement?
Nadella is keeping Microsoft alive, and for that we are thankful -- we all need Microsoft to stay active in the marketplace, to some extent or another. And he's steering the company in a useful direction, for the sake of the stockholders (that's his primary responsibility), and he's doing a good job.
Microsoft's relevance, however, is increasingly debatable. They lost their way with Windows 8, and they have yet to find their place in the rapidly-evolving modern techno-cultural landscape.
Windows 10, for all its good points, is a solution in search of a problem. It's faster and more secure, but in terms of the user, it doesn't do anything useful or good that Windows 7 didn't already do. Visually, it's just embarrassing. The tech world today moves faster than Microsoft's focus groups can grasp, much less respond to.
Nearly all the Windows users I know, at work and privately, on this forum and others, were perfectly content with Windows 7 (and many with XP). They hated Windows 8, for good reason. Microsoft could have produced Windows 10 with a Classic Windows theme, and people would have been thrilled. Instead they stuck with the Windows 8 theme (slightly improved).
Nadella will take Windows into "the cloud", and it will just be another cloud-app "platform" like ChromeOS, and perhaps that's Microsoft's destiny.
But I remember the Good Ol' Days...
I did have a typo in my last post... the first XT clone I built and still own, had an Intel 8086 processor with 29,000 transistors running at 4.77 MHz. This was 879 transistors per square millimeter. This was an incredible accomplishment. Intel processors these days have up to 2 to 3 Billion transistors and run at variable speeds up to 5 GHz. This is over 20,000,000 transistors per square millimeter, nearly 23,000 times the density. The new processors have multiple cores, built in GPUs, cache memory, and many other support features.
To me it feels like this massive amount of capability has been largely squandered as far as productivity goes. Our cell phones... in some cases our watches have far more capability than desktop computers of old. The massive increase in processing capability in desktops, laptops, tablets, phones and other devices has been mostly used for entertainment purposes.
I personally feel threatened by “cloud” services. I use them for sharing photos etc... but the security issues of having all of your files and info backed up in the cloud is prohibitive for me.
I currently have a large collection of vintage computers. But we are moving soon, so I will be getting rid of most of it.
Some minor but annoying issues. Office 365 at work is generating many calls as the installs fail (win7 or 10) or the file associations do not work (win10). Repair is an answer but that is 20mins if everything works which is not always the case. Change default programs in Win10 is an easy fix. The text is too small displaying the email headers like Subject, From etc. at 8pt. You can change but you have to do it for every folder. No global setting. I do not know how to change the text size on the left side where the Inbox, Sent folder etc is. The .pst files (offline email on pc) either are there or not. Can import them if not.
Microsoft gives you just 4 color themes...Colorful, Black, White, Gray.
During the upgrade we have people calling in as their screen resolution changed from 1920 to 1024 scattering icons everywhere and or if they have 2 monitors that files saved end up on the wrong screen.
The Sharepoint (the cloud) the company is using will generate calls too due to not syncing.
Description:
https://technologyadvice.com/blog/information-technology/sharepoint-vs-onedrive-for-business/
The only things I like are Windows 10 boots up to the desktop in 30 seconds. The start menu is not bad but creating a simple shortcut from the Programs have you do extra steps.
Too many other annoying issues. I really hate Microsoft updating and changing the look and also the spying and soon the monthly charge for using Windows.
#63 that is because the Russians are uploading your secret files : )
Sounds like a scheduled task. In the course of exploring my company-issue Win-10 machine I discovered that, even though my laptop is equipped with a SSD (solid State Drive), it was running defrag. Defrag is useful for conventional drives but shortens the life of SSD’s.
I brought this to the attention of one of the sysadmins but he just shrugged it off. We’re already seeing premature HDD failures. But not on my machine.
“I told you so...” ;’}
I’m sorry you’re having trouble w/ SharePoint and OneDrive for Biz. I run about eight Win 10 machines for my little business, and while we’ve had issues w/ syncing in the past, it’s been at least a couple years. SharePoint, OneDrive... all good since then, and Tech Support was very responsive. My only issue over the past year was getting double billed for SharePoint storage after moving primary storage to OneDrive. MS made good on it, even though it had been going on a year.
Also, tech support has been helpful, which is a huge benefit of Office 365 licenses. Hope it works out for you going forward.
Just make sure your stuff is backed up to something physical and don’t trust One Drive.
And back up your bookmarks.
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