Progress Report

Housekeeping

I thought I’d just give y’all an update on the new laptop, which came preloaded with all sorts of shit from Microsquish that I neither wanted nor needed, and most of which has been banished to That Great Trash Dump In The Ether.

Sadly, one of the preloads was Windoze 11, which is a pestilence on the face of the Earth and whose creators deserve to be flayed alive and dunked in boiling oil.  Fucking hell, talk about “counterintuitive operations”.  It’s like learning a whole new program, and the easy functionality of #10 (which took me almost no time to learn lo those 8 years ago) has turned into a nightmare of different buttons to push and strange, inscrutable ways to see what’s actually on my system.

And WTF is “OneDrive”?  If I wanted to store stuff on the Cloud or whatever it’s called, I’m perfectly capable of doing so by myself and by my own choice, thank you, instead of having it forced upon me.  Needless to say, it’s been uninstalled (I think) but every so often I get to see yet another of its multitude of folders, which needs deleting each and every time.

Thankfully, the meme- and smutty pics files (i.e. the important stuff) are intact, which is more than I can say for my bookmarks, may the developers of Firefox join those of #11 in the boiling-oil cauldron.  (I followed the “Save All Bookmarks” routine — as explained in Mozilla’s [no-]HELP section — to the letter, and yet only a few bookmarks made it over to this machine.  Which means I have to re-create a shit ton of them by hand.  Don’t get me started.)

Then there are the MS programs which I use constantly, like Paint and the snipping tool, which have changed for no good reason I can ascertain (and not for the better, let me tell you).  I also like to have my Active / Open Programs tool bar running vertically on the right hand side of the screen rather than strung along the bottom of the screen, but apparently #11 doesn’t have that facility, FFS.  Why is this important?  Because my nice new wide screen has room to house said RHS toolbar, which would leave more visible vertical space to hold text articles;  but as it can’t, I find myself having to scroll up and down more often.  Fortunately, I could afford to buy a brand new Logitech ERGO mouse so that, at least, is less onerous a task.

On the other hand, it’s rather nice to have an “o” key which responds to a light finger touch, and the battery which lasts 6 hours instead of 30 minutes.  And yes, at last I could permanently disable the horrible touchpad (unlike on the old HP laptop), and I no longer have to duct-tape the power cord to the system to keep it from falling out like some post-coital limp penis.  And I can actually close the screen without all those dreadful creaking and snapping noises from the chassis and hinges.  And the keys are backlit so I don’t have to have the light on whilst I type.

All good stuff, that last paragraph.  Although I do miss having a DVD player in my laptop… but I have a spare multi-format DVD player which I can hook up to the system when New Wife is watching Great British Bake-Off  and I feel like (re-)watching Casablanca  or Foyle’s War  instead of plucking my eyeballs out.

Anyway, the migration process continues apace, and should be more or less completed in a week or so.  Next up:  installing Thunderbird for my email.  This should be fun…

There are (a very few) times when I enjoy using new technology.  This, however, is not one of those times.  It’s like having to buy a new car because the old one conked out, only to find that the pedals have been switched around and the steering is now performed by some new-style gaming controller instead of the familiar old steering wheel.  I know that in time one gets accustomed to the New Way Of Doing Things, but why the fucking fucking fucking hell should I when the Old Way worked perfectly, for nearly a decade withal?

I’m just hoping that this is the last laptop I’ll ever have to buy before I Shuffle Off This Mortal Coil;  but then again, I thought that about the last laptop I bought, and look how that turned out.

Rude good health, it seems, does have its drawbacks sometimes.

28 comments

  1. The latest incarnation of MS, can get sodomized by bikers in hell. From its foul “Subscription” model, to its H1B visa employees, to its shitty and unnecessary re-do of “notepad”, the less said about its “Cloud” the better.

    But hey, at least Bill got to fuck a few kids along the way.

  5. As I type this, my PC monitor sits atop our original Win-95 era Universal Computer Power Controller. It is a one square foot metal box with six illuminated rocker switches across the front, red master and orange auxiliaries. Matching power outlets across the rear. Yes, still running Win-10.

    Up until recently, OneDrive sat quietly in the corner. Now, it pops up on every start up reminding me that I am not signed in. No shit. That’s why I have a perpetual subscription to Acronis and a stand alone 6TB Seagate hard drive connected to the Aux 1 switch.

    Win-11. New and improved. Right. I remember a cartoon from one of the old coffee table magazines (“Look”, “Life”, etc.). The scene is an R & D lab. Two guys in white lab coats have just pitched their latest to their boss in the three-piece suit. The caption is his reply to them: “Bullshit! I want something that rhymes with whiter and brighter!”.

    1. If you value your data, a couple things

      1 – have 2 backup drives if you do backups off line (not in the cloud. Also the cloud is just a server somewhere Else. The infrastructure is maintained by someone else) not a bad idea to email yourself or backup online to services like one drive things like a backup copy of your vehicle insurance and registration etc. be careful with super sensitive stuff.

      Anyways back to the point. Sea gate fucking sucks balls. Also they used to have a brand around named Maxtor also junk.

      I like western digital. Not saying western digital stuff doesn’t fail but I’ve seen a fucking shitload of seagate and maxtor fail compared to western digital.
      That’s with the old fashioned spinner drives

      For solid state a reputable brand like western digital or Sandisk. Less apt to fail than spinners. Might be a litter smaller than 6 tb but 1 tb is around 100 bucks. Very affordable.

      Stay away from pny brand usb drives and ssd. Junk

      But again. Please. If you value your data. Have a 2nd non seagate drive. I have a seagate drive. Just one. But it’s a backup of a backup of a backup. (2 is 1). My most valuable stuff goes on Sandisk or western digital or I email a copy of stuff to myself. Or both.

      Good luck.

  6. I am an Old F*rt, proud of my years and concrete-set in my ways. I HATE computers in general, believing them to be a plague from the depths of hell, and I HATE pretty much everything that ever issued from the diseased minds of Microspit and the evil spawn that ever wrote even one character of code in their products.

    Still, like lawyers and enemas, sometimes you just have to have one. So it is with Microspit computers. I try to keep my use of them to a minimum, but what I do have on my “magic box”, is important TO ME.

    Recently, I found myself needing to replace my box. That was back in late August. I am still trying to find and recover information that was supposed to be “safe” in the cloud and transferred to my new computer. I share your grief. Never again. Next time it takes a dump, I’m going back to yellow pads and No. 2 pencils.

    1. You sir, are a man after my own heart. When I am asked if I have my data backed up, I reply, “Yes, and I can read it with a candle”.

  7. Glad to hear you’re making progress.

    To avoid the Win 11 interface, take a look at Open Shell. I have it installed on the Win11 PC I used at the VFW post and am running a (mostly) Win 7 interface. (I’m also running a Win 7 interface on my windows 10 machine at home).

  8. Pro-tip for migrating Firefox: Trust nothing. Back up then migrate your entire profile.

    Computer-wise, choose one:

    WinBloze: I literally don’t understand how people use that shit.
    crApple: Be prepared to sell a kidney.
    LinUks: Do you have a 14 year old hacker nephew?

    1. For work I prefer pc. Most office stuff is Microsoft office and windows users and apps

      For home I use a mac mini. I’ve had 2 now. Best computers I’ve used. Never ever had a blue screen. Ever. Mini is bring your own mouse keyboard and monitor. I use a Samsung monitor and a Logitech keyboard and mouse.

      The mini itself is very affordable. Way more so than many pcs. And it just works

      After a long day of doing it work at the work place the last thing I want to do is troubleshoot a computer. My Mac just works. And it cost the same or less than many pcs.

      And no I don’t think technology is the solution to everything. Sometimes a physical list is the way to go. I write a list on paper for shopping on the weekends. I think modern cars have way too much technology

      At the same time there are also lazy and stupid dumbasses than can’t do basic shit on any type of computer and won’t bother putting in the effort.

      Finally. If I ever go to a sit down restaurant and all they allow is ordering via an app I’ll get up and leave. So far this hasn’t happened but I bet it’s coming someday. I’ll tolerate the apps for fast food to get deals but the day that shit comes to a sit down place count me out

  9. I feel you pain. I tripped over my power cord on my 7 year old Dell. It landed on the power cord breaking the port and it bounced cracking the screen. I have a new Acer with Win 11 which sucks. It will not boot off of a usb drive. I am going to pull the HDD and put it into my print server laptop and co-load Zorin Linux on it via the CD-ROM boot. It is a backasswards way of loading but a laptop that will only boot from the hdd this is the only option I see. From what I have found out Microsoft has a chip on Intel machines motherboard to keep them Windows only booting just from the HDD. The by-pass is to load Linux via another machine where a duel boot Linux will skip the windows chip on boot. My Zorin print server has a desktop on it that is like Windows 7. It is very simple to use.

    2. “ I have a new Acer with Win 11 which sucks. It will not boot off of a usb drive.”

      Go into your bios and check the boot devices to be sure usb booting is enabled and set the boot order also.
      Likely the boot device (usb) is either disabled or happening so fast it doesn’t see the usb and boots to the internal drive. Or the internal hard drive is set to boot before the usb so it could be ignoring the usb

      You also could have the usb formatted wrong. Check if it needs to be ntfs or fat 32. Maybe even exfat. In addition many not all usb boot drives have to be 8 gb or 16 gb max.

      At work typically network pxe boot is used but when usb drives are used they have to be 8 or 16 gb in size for certain imaging programs or computers

      Finally – if you are into Linux check out

      – Linux mint
      – Linux Ubuntu
      – Google Chrome flex os (android which is similar to Linux.

      1. The 8 Gig jump drive will boot up on my wife’s computer. I have gone through the BIOS on mine. It has Secure Boot in the BIOS that locks in the HDD boot only. I haven’t figured how to disable Secure Boot yet. What I have read on the Ubuntu web pages does not work on my Asus. I have used Mint and Zorin on some older laptops after Microsoft stopped supporting their OS. Zorin is basically an Ubuntu derivative that take very little resources to operate.

  10. Oh! I had to do this a couple years ago, and felt much the same way you do. However, you WILL be facile with the new UI in about 3 days, 4 tops.

    However, like you, I am completely perplexed by OneDrive. I have one regular Desktop with a Temp and Garbage file on it (self-explanatory), and also a OneDrive Desktop with said folders. I get confused between them.

    In a fit of pique one day, I uninstalled OneDrive and lost the larger of the Garbage files, but no problem, that’s why it’s labeled Garbage. But … I also lost a metric fuck-ton of CPAP machine recorded data, about 3 years worth. I did not like that at all.

    So I reinstalled it and, luckily, my CPAP data was still on OneDrive and I got it back. But it still perplexes me, I find it really confusing. NOT the convenience they undoubtedly thought it would be.

    One of these days, I’ll take the time to learn how to work with the damn thing.

    JC

  11. OneDrive is passed off by Microsoft “to save space on your computer and for data security”.
    I need to free up space on a 1 TB drive? And Microsoft will keep my data secure?
    Riiiiight.

    The more dangerous thing is as noted by JCinPA above. After copying your files to OneDrive, Microsoft then deletes them and puts in filename links on the local computer, pointing to your files on OneDrive. When you click on filename to open it, the file is downloaded from OneDrive. Thus you are tied into Microsoft because you no longer have your files on your local machine. Coming soon, subscription model to get access to your data?

    Microsoft claims it is to save space and for data security. However, it’s actually to use your data to train their AI, and you agreed to this with a new version of the EULA they released some months ago. [Personal & business confidential info issues with training Microsoft’s AI?] Training their AI allows them to complete with the other AI vendors. Additionally, having trained the AI, you will be “helped” by their ‘CoPilot’ (Clippy Pt 2), getting in the way of whatever you are trying to do.

    Lastly, remember to check periodically that OneDrive hasn’t reinstalled & turned itself back on. Microsoft has a bad habit of this where the monthly security patch does that. “It’s for your security you see.”

  12. If there’s one thing that will turn me into a total ragehead, it’s onedrive.

    Makes me nuts that on my work laptop and my home desktop it hijacks my files. I’ll be working on something, have to leave, so I go to save, type a filename, and save. Then when I go to find it, it’s gone. I have to hit the recent link, find it, and save it where I intended.

    It’s not a trivial exercise to find where they put the option, even if there is one, to make that shit go away. Here’s the deal, I have a network storage device – 4T, I have dropbox on my machines. My desktop has iCloud, because iPhone/iPad. My work machine has carbonite, because we eat our own dog food (the company I work for owns it). I don’t need or want onedrive.

    I’m lucky, in a sense, that my desktop has been deemed incompatible with Win 11. don’t know why, it’s an i7. Maybe only one core, I’m thinking. No matter. My laptop runs Mint Linux. I’ll go buy another SSD and dual boot linux on this one eventually.

  13. I used to do desktop support for a living, and I still help a few elderly relatives navigate the Windows 11 interface. Honestly? I don’t hate it. In fact, I rather like it (to a point), and have learned how to tame its worst annoyances.

    Whenever setting up a Win 11 box, amongst the first acts I perform is to surgically excise each and every trace of OneDrive, and remap the default save location on my PC. It’s not that I don’t like cloud storage, I just viscerally despise OneDrive. I have a paid Dropbox subscription that has not only never caused me a minute’s grief, but has saved my digital life more than once.

    I also have a four-drive NAS (Network attached Storage) device on my network to which my system is backed up daily (differential scheme) and weekly (full backup). The only things I don’t put into the cloud are anything financial-related; those are stored securely offsite. But my life’s work, my correspondence, my various and sundry hobby-related precious files, and even my highly-curated and decades-old smut files are preserved on my NAS and Dropbox, as a device theft or drive loss of those would make life considerably less interesting.

    My bookmarks and so on are saved in the cloud in my Firefox and Google Chrome accounts; when setting up a new device I just sign in and it’s as if I never moved. It all shows back up in seconds. I also have use a password manager to store the complex 24- to 32-mixed character passwords I use, that would otherwise be impossible to remember. That uses AES-256 encryption (i.e. undecipherable).

    If you’d like some remote assistance I’d be glad to lend a hand.

    One thing I will warn folks about, if you use Microsoft Outlook for emial, be prepared for an unimaginable quantity of suck that will be foisted on you in the coming year. The new Outlook is hideous beyond belief and I’m putting off migrating to that as long as humanly possible. Since, to my knowledge at least, Thunderbird doesn’t work with my Exchange server, I’m otherwise married to Outluck. YMMV, however.

    1. 99.9 percent of all non business users are fine with using webmail interface. (Gmail, Yahoo, etc). Even many business users are good with Webmail these days.

      No matter what machine they login to, their preferences (profile) stays the same.

      Most important over interface is to turn on MFA / 2FA (Multi Factor / 2 Factor) – something you have (text message on phone or code from auth app) and something you know (password)

      You can use text or an authenticator app but use something. That way if someone gets your email password they can’t get into your email with that alone.

      MFA is not fool proof. But it’s one more barrier in the way of someone getting into your account

      Lots of email take overs and with cell phones sim swapping and port out fraud

      In terms of helping with IT “you’re a better man than I”. Outside of work I don’t help most people with IT

      1 – my skill is worth something. Can’t tell you how many people say oh you’re an IT guy you can fix this for me. Fuck no I won’t. But it’s easy. Ok if it’s easy you fucking do it.

      Maybe next time I see a dermatologist at a gathering I’ll say hey I have a wart growing off of my ass sideways can I drop my pants and you take a look for free? Bet that’s a hard no.

      Now if my immediate family or say the host of this site Kim Du Toit need help sure.

      Otherwise – cough up money or fuck off.

      I see this attitude people have with IT workers – thinking our jobs are easy and not wanting to put in effort.

      If a non young guy like Kim can run an amazing site like this – and figure most things out with a little help here and there – then anyone should be able to put some effort into learning computers.

      Kim is proof that even mature people can put in effort. I have immense respect for him.

      1. C-Man, your respect is laudable, but misplaced.

        Frankly, without WordPress this would be a stream of text with no pictures, and most of the time I just stumble and fumble around like a blind man in a maze built on a swamp.

        1. Kim. You actually work. And produce something of value. You are awesome.

          Do you know how many state govt employees call for help to just login to their email daily?

          You are a Mensa member compared to the piles of rocks for brains of people in govt.

          Thank you for the site. Best site on the web. Rock on!

  14. I’m not sure Firefox and Thunderbird will be around at this time next year. The Mozilla Foundation got taken over by wokies who were redirecting much of the money that was supposed to go into supporting software instead into leftwing causes, and some ridiculous percentage (90%?) of their revenue came from Alphabet/Google paying them to set Google as the default search engine. The courts have convicted Google of being a monopoly, and it is almost certain that Google will not be allowed to pay web browser companies to make them the default search engine when the penalties come down. So the Mozilla Foundation is going to have basically no money coming in. And yet they’re spending money on things such as flying their staff to a Zambian resort for a “Feminist, Decolonial, LGBTQIA+, Climate Justice using Al” event.

  15. “I’m not sure Firefox and Thunderbird will be around at this time next year.”

    Then I’ll just use another browser and another free email service. More shit to learn [le sigh].

    1. i exported them to an HTML page, just like the man said I should. Then I copied the page over to the new laptop, and imported them.

      About two-thirds weren’t saved, and about half of the rest were duplicates.

      Fortunately, the very important ones (banking, rent pay etc.) were more or less okay, and required just a little jiggling to fix.

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