My reaction: 
Great Caesar’s bleeding hemorrhoids… it seems like only yesterday when Sarah Hoyt’s husband upgraded me to Windows 10 (which I’d thus far refused to do, mostly as a reaction to the constant nagging every time I restarted my laptop).
But Dan got Very Stern with me, and refused to let me leave the house with whatever operating system I was still using (XP? Vista? I have no idea). So I said, “Only if YOU do it, and it has to look EXACTLY the way it was, and all my files and bookmarks have to be exactly where they are right now.”
So he did, and they were.
Frankly, given that the sum of my computer use is blogging, email (not using MS’s poxy Outlook even) and searching for topless pics of Salma Hayek on the Internet, I fail to see why I need to change anything.
But I know I’m wasting my time, because all too soon I’ll get those unsolicited nagging messages every five minutes again, and then MS will say that they’ll no longer be “supporting” Win10 (like they ever did before ha ha), and then one day my laptop will refuse to start (just like Outlook Express did), and I’ll start the long drive up to Redmond with a rocket launcher, flamethrower and a thousand rounds of AK ammo to take care of the survivors.
And no doubt someone will have a problem with this.
So when the blessed event does finally occur, I’m going to need one of my tech-savvy Readers living within a few miles of my zip code to rally around and do it for me, mostly because I don’t want to drive all the way to Sarah’s house (Colorado? Kansas? Idaho? who knows?) to have Dan Hoyt do it all over again for me.
And by the way, Microsoft? I don’t need a “new” Start button, Mac-style features, or Android apps on my desktop.
What I really need is to get to the range…
I’m with you, Kim. I’m the IT guy for the firm I work for and I look after about ten desktops and a server at any given point in time and I say a pox on all of them. Microsoft, Adobe, Autodesk, Intuit can all go pound sand. They all want you on the cloud and all my time is spent combating that trend. I only moved us to Windows 10 last year.
If you saw Mr Hoyt then you saw Mrs Hoyt. And they blew right by Lawton to see you. I’m having a sad. Although since we don’t have a Waffle House I can understand their trepidation…Just joined the garand collectors whatev so I can have an M1 mailed to my door in due course from the CMP losers.
I still think a reliable provendor of wildebeest meat could make some cash…keep the waidblatt, I gots me a 2.5″ swiss army knife, kneel before me in fear! The local county court house did…worthless losers…
Torvalds smiles.
.
That’s not something you’ll have to do this year, for sure. I’m leery of this stuff, ever since I found a service named WAAS running on my computer – “windows as a service” I’ll be damned if I’m going to need to pay a vig every year for my OS.
That said, I get this stuff for free, so let me play with it a bit and see if it screws any of my machines up. I can report back and tell you if it’s worth it at all. I’m guessing not. I’ve yet to have an upgrade go well. I did it twice for windows 10, and both times the performance hit was so bad, I simply replaced the hard drive with an SSD and re-installed everything.
I can say that I probably won’t upgrade the machine I’m on now. I’ll simply replace it, since it’s an old i5.
Still on XP and 7.
I REFUSE to ‘upgrade’ until I simply have no choice. Postponing having and installing every
new gee-gaw that comes out helps.
The’re not upgrades as much as they are ‘bundled fixes’ to errors in the last lousy ‘release’,
along with changing &/or complicating common functions you already mastered so
that you now have to ‘re-learn’ them. It’s a never ending cycle.
You are aware, aren’t you, that you are now, and have been for some time, simply a
beta tester for the next release !
Take a look at what John Deere is doing to their customers regarding software updates,
fixes and trouble-shooting for equipment already bought and paid for ! Customers
are finding out that there are now on going fees in order to keep their equipment running !
Peloton just removed a ‘feature’ from one of their $4000 treadmills –
( due to a lawsuit where a child was killed if memory serves ) so that now, the owners will
have to cough up $39 / EVERY MONTH for a ‘subscription’ so that they can actually USE
the treadmill !!!
2 questions –
Who the hell pays $4000 for a treadmill ?
and
HOW did Peloton just ‘remove’ a ‘feature’ ?
Let me guess. The damn treadmill is connected to the internet. Right ?
Good God What the hell is going to have a ‘wi-fi’ connection next, my toilet paper roll ?
For those who remember how book keeping used to be done. I’m buying new elastic
arm bands and a green tinted visor to be ready for the day my Intuit software goes
belly up.
It’s a simple task to put a ‘time bomb’ in software – been done frequently on main frames –
so that after a certain date, the software simply no longer functions until you do
‘something’ – enter a code or codes, pay money, slay a goat over a keyboard, something.
You ain’t seen nuthin’ folks. Just wait and watch
and hang onto your wallet if you still have one .
Turn the clock back on your machine(s) BEFORE the bomb detonates.
You can do that on your lap/desk top, for now, maybe, IF you know the bomb exists and the time/date it is set to act.
On large systems that run 24/7, no. Far too many time/date stamp
dependencies within applications that are also dependent on each other
as well as the system ‘clock’.
Daylight savings time is a good headache of an example. In the fall, you cannot just set the system clock back an hour. If you do, you can bet on problems within application programs where data, records, and events are date/time
dependent, sequential and interdependent and cannot deal with record B
having an earlier and/or duplicate date/time as record A. From the computers ‘viewpoint’ you are living over the same hour that already happened ! Not good.
Easiest solution for the fall time change, and in some cases this takes an extraordinary amount of effort to convince ‘management’ that it IS necessary and the safest, easiest approach, is to ( horrors ) shut the system down for an hour !
Because, software doesn’t ‘wear out’ there has to be a mechanism or method of getting the customer/user to continually ‘buy’ the product over and over. Normally, for years, the method was new functions, fixes, patches. Now, forcing you to buy those and other things is becoming the norm.
‘We will now MAKE YOU buy the upgrades, or support or whatever, otherwise ……’
Over 40 years with them was very good to me but as their proliferation
increases and they become more and more intrusive and controlling in
our lives, I have slowly come to the unalterable conclusion that computers,
as a whole, may very well be the worst and most dangerous ‘thing’ to ever ‘happen’ to the human race.
30 year history here with Microsoft products, 25’ish as a paid professional. I personally maintain about 200 Microsoft workstations and a bunch of servers.
When I hear Microsoft execs blather on about “emotional connection”, their special rounded window corners, and other touchy-feely words to describe their changes instead of, you know, actual hard benefits… it makes me think the company is headed towards a cliff edge. I watched the video feed and I kept asking myself when Microsoft managed to clone Steve Jobs.
I generally like Win10, but I spend so much time blocking and shutting down crap we don’t need in my company. We need a workstation that is focused specifically on what we need the employee to be doing, and nothing more. But they keep adding crap that I have to figure out how to remove or block (like the update this month that added a weather app to every taskbar for some stupid reason). I’m getting tired of it. I shouldn’t have to fight the darned OS so much.
I just had a side project last week using Linux, and I have to say it has come a long way in the past couple of years. The learning curve would be pretty steep but I’m thinking of making the switch. I’m even considering a work project to see if I could get a desktop configured for work that meets our needs. Microsoft is forcing me to look at these options because they care more about the sweet money they pull in from consumer dollars pushed to cloud services than they do for companies that need rock solid and basic workstations. You combine that with the super annoying Microsoft audits that happen every couple of years and Linux starts looking pretty attractive.
Plus every time they make an OS user interface change my support tickets go up because users get confused as hell. Really pisses me off. That alone makes me want to avoid Win11 as my users just aren’t going to make that transition easily and I see nothing but pain on that horizon.
I really wish I could get a Microsoft VP in range for a good long rant session. But they probably wouldn’t care anyway.
RainGeek,
If you figure out how to remove that weather app, Please post how to do it. I’ve tried every which way and can’t seem uninstall it or turn it off.
It pisses me off that new weather, news, shopping, BS app. was installed without my permission.
Right-click the taskbar
In the menu that opens, hover over “news and interest”
When the submenu opens, select “Turn Off”
Thank you VERY much.
Certified MS Developer here. I was totally underwhelmed by the Win 11 Presentation. Lots of focus on the new MAC OS lite interface and very little information any real substantive changes — Seems like they are trying to replicate the mistakes of “VISTA” . I recommend waiting for at least 11.2 before upgrading. ( assuming they get that far before abandoning Vista II ).
I miss the old days of the Microsoft OS Roll out’s – 3 day Road Show Tech conferences with 1,500 attendees in Boston alone – Lots of MS Branded SWAG and Demo software plus 2 days solid instruction after the 1st day of Marketing BS compete with breakfast and Lunch.
Don’t worry, Kim. The requirements – DX 12, TPM, and other alphabet soup – mean that you probably can’t run it anyway. Don’t worry, though. You’ll undoubtedly get it with your next PC / laptop / whatever.
What I really need is to break up Microsoft and confiscate all of Bill Gates wealth.
It’s looking like his (Bill Gates) messy divorce is going to take nice chunk of it.
So no free markets if you don’t like the person benefitting from those free markets?
And oh, Bill Gates hasn’t been involved with Microsoft (except maybe indirectly as a shareholder) for over a decade now.
You’re just jealous of his success, that’s why you want to steal his money.
If they can make Windows work as reliable and stable as MacOS, I’m all for it.
I’ve nothing against either Windows or MacOS, I use them both professionally and privately and each has its good and bad points (hence using both for different purposes).
I never liked the looks of Windows XP, too “gamey” and “cute” for my taste. Windows 7 was good, 10 is good too, stable and reliable in my experience running it since day 1.
We’ll see what 11 brings when it brings it. At least they’re not making the mistake they did with 8 and design the user interface for a technology that looked like it was going to take over when the design was started but ended up not taking over at all by the time the product went to release (touch screen computers, talking about you here. And yes, I own one and rarely use it, nice gimmick but too heavy to replace a tablet and too cumbersome to replace a laptop).