JorgeA

I have some catching up to do with Win10-related news. Here's one: Paul Thurrott takes the clear-eyed side on this issue: Microsoft Cheapens Windows 10 with Ads The only sour note in that whole writeup is that "yes, I love Windows 10, but..." disclaimer that seems to be obligatory nowadays if you don't want to be cast as "opposing change," a "hater," blah blah blah. Otherwise, it's dynamite stuff: And it gets better from there. Yes, he did call the other side "apologists." And he anticipates a variety of new arguments against his position. Well done, Paul. --JorgeA

That's exactly what I was thinking. --JorgeA

Woody Leonhard's take on 14971 is that it's "a real snore". What's your impression of it? --JorgeA

Weird. The Board works in mysterious ways! --JorgeA

Thanks, den! --JorgeA

Good points, Noel. I shudder to think how much income I would have brought in if I'd spent all those hours getting productive work done instead of troubleshooting a phone. There's no question that portable tech has some benefits. You can make a phone call if you're running late, or get an update on the traffic for the route you're taking, or surf the Web while waiting for the wife to come out of the dressing room at the department store. But yes, episodes like this one do worsen the cost-benefit ratio of this stuff, and this one brought it right to the edge of its not being worth the trouble anymore. After all, I still view the smartphone as a toy -- a glorified toy, but still a toy. And you know what happens to toys when they start giving too much grief. --JorgeA

They've been working on it since 2012, but resistance continues and it remains widespread. I've never been to the Windows Store, but I'm told it's pretty much a wasteland over there. --JorgeA

Has there been a change recently in the board software or on the MSFN server? E-mail notifications, which had suddenly resumed some weeks ago, have once again stopped sometime in the last week. --JorgeA

All right, here's the promised report... We use Android smartphones. Last Wednesday, my wife wanted to install a health app on her phone. But first, for safety, she wanted to install an AV app. Piece of cake, right? Just open the Google Play app and go into the store, do a search, and download+install the two apps. Except that she could not enter the Google Play Store, it kept telling her that it couldn’t communicate with the Google servers. So she turned the phone over to the family techie. I verified that she couldn't use the Google Play app to get into the store, so I tried going into the store via the Chrome browser. No dice. I could go everywhere on the Web that I tried, but not into the Google Play store. Time to go into "device doctor" mode. I ran through the usual fixes and troubleshooting steps, deleting the cache and clearing the data for Google Play and for Google Framework Services. Nothing worked and the situation slowly mushroomed. Here I was, sitting at the kitchen table with this stubborn piece of hardware in front of me and, behind me, a wife muttering increasingly dark thoughts about technology. (She is not blessed with an excess of either patience or persistence, which is what high-tech problems require.) Next step was to call Google. They suggested most of the steps that I had already done and then offered to do a factory reset. A frightening prospect, as it would erase everything she had on the phone. So I called Samsung tech support. Similar steps, similar (lack of) results. They suggested updating the OS. It had like 1.3GB worth of updates to download, so I connected the phone to her PC and used Samsung's Smart Switch application to download the updates in order to install them in the morning. Next morning after installing the Android updates, when I tried to enter the Google store, I could not even get on the Internet at all, let alone into the store. And Google Maps was now showing our location as a blue dot on an otherwise completely blank map. If I entered a destination, it would show me the route and an alternative way of getting there -- and no other roads or streets. It was as if we were living in a void and the world would be revealed to us only as we moved through it. So back to Google tech support. I reported all that had transpired until then, and they told me we were out of options: We needed to try the factory reset. I consulted with wife, and after some weak, demoralized resistance she agreed to the reset. That's when I learned how to get Terminal on an Android device. A while later, the reset was finished and we tried going into the Google Store for the friggin' apps, as this is the only friggin' way to get them. And wouldn't you know it -- we still couldn't sign into Google Play. After entering her Google Account e-mail address, it simply would never get to the point where she could type in her password. By this time, wife was loudly announcing the impending need for both a new phone and a new kitchen window (meaning, after she threw the phone through it). Over to Samsung support a second time. The tech support guy recommended that we take the phone to the store where we bought it so that they could "reflash" it. That, we did on Saturday. The Samsung rep performed the reflash, and -- lo and behold! -- he got us into the Google store right there. We went home feeling relieved and delighted. Sunday morning we eagerly went to download the two apps... and we could not get into the Store. Same old sh*t. More talk about the need for a new window. That night we went to a different branch of the big-box store where we purchased the phone. Somehow he got it to work; I think he uninstalled Google Play and Google Framework Services and then reinstalled them. Took the phone home feeling relieved, went to install the apps -- and the thing once again wasn't working!!! At some point I managed to get into the store and even to find the first app, but then it would not complete (or perhaps not even start) the download, all we got was a spinning round arrow. After some eight hours on the phone (a landline phone ) with various tech support people, hours driving to and from stores, and more hours researching the problem on the Web, all to no avail, I was almost ready to give up. Then I recalled that the phone seemed to work fine at the store when the guy connected it to his own phone's Wi-Fi. (Yes, we changed the Google password via wife's PC as soon as we got home. And then I had her sign out of Google on the PC.) So I created a Wi-Fi network on my computer and connected the phone to it. (In or out of the house, we use only our mobile data plan to connect to the Internet, as she fears the health effects of Wi-Fi while I consider it an inherently insecure technology.) At long last, we git to download and install the apps. (And I stopped the WLAN service on my computer.) Everything finally is working now (or it appears to be -- fingers crossed). Bottom line: I suspect that this whole nightmare would not have happened, were it possible to simply visit the software company's website and directly download their app to the phone. I have no doubt it was all due to some bu!!$h/t having to do with Google's servers, or with its app, or with the d*mned Google Store. Just like we have always done it in the Windows ecosystem. And now Microsoft wants to turn Windows into the same sh!t model as Android with the Google Store. --JorgeA

I have just concluded several DAYS' worth of focusing, to the exclusion of almost everything else, on a certain tech problem that highlights the problems inherent in the direction in which Microsoft wants to drag Windows users. I am dog-tired and badly need some sleep. Suffice it to say for now that what happened to us demonstrates the idi0cy of the model that Microsoft is promoting. More details tomorrow after I get some rest. --JorgeA

Microsoft starts showing ads for Edge browser in Windows 10 Hah -- and the fanboys on the Windows Insiders forum smugly assured us that this was a bunch of FUD and that Microsoft wouldn't push ads on Win10 users. --JorgeA

Microsoft delays Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit support cut-off to July 2018 In the last sentence of her post, Mary Jo says exactly what I was thinking as I read the post: Fortunately, there are alternatives to EMET that provide a very similar (and some would argue superior) type of protection, including Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit and HitmanPro.Alert. So there is indeed a push, but nobody need feel pushed. --JorgeA

Very interesting. I'll have to see if I can track down what "famous website" it was where the commenter said they'd posted the information. --JorgeA

Did you ever get folded, spindled, or mutilated? --JorgeA

Very cool, you own a piece (several pieces) of history. --JorgeA

An intriguing bit of information from a frequent contributor to Woody Leonhard's blog: This would at least enable users to avoid the snooping aspects of Windows 10 by setting the telemetry level to 0. --JorgeA

While we're on the topic of Win10's aggressive reboot policy following the installation of updates, here's what happened to an undeniable computing expert (emphasis added): --JorgeA

Not only a great quote, but a pretty good article all around from the editor-in-chief of ExtremeTech. This part sums it up: --JorgeA

Windows Update is a mess: 3 things Microsoft should do to fix it Good and informative rundown of the problems with WU in Windows 10. Also, good recommendations for fixing WU. Love that image for a proposed configuration menu. --JorgeA

Yeah, they really need to "leave it alone already" for a good while and let users take some breaths. Who's running the show over in Redmond, a bunch of ADHD sufferers? --JorgeA

If they did do something like that, it's a good question what to do then. I would consider accepting the SP2 -- right after applying @NoelC's techniques for squashing the telemetry, beginning with a hardware firewall where all those MSFT snoop-servers would be blocked. Of course, the server addresses can and do change, which is why I didn't say that I would definitely accept that SP2. First there would have to be some way to keep the lid tight on the telemetry. --JorgeA

May I remind us all here that one of the reasons that this thread and its First/Deeper Impressions predecessors have been so successful over the last several years, is that we have managed to discuss important broader issues connected to Windows/Microsoft and to high-tech generally (such as NSA spying) without getting into political partisanship. To mix metaphors, I urge us please to avoid that can of worms like the plague. --JorgeA

The new figures from NetMarketShare are in: [source] Windows 7 usage has been creeping upward since July and is actually higher than it was back in April, while Windows 8.1 is above June levels. Windows 10 share is lower than it was two months ago. Not exactly setting the world on fire. --JorgeA

Anybody care to comment on the info at this page? How legit/complete/useful does it seem to you, and especially to those who have researched the matter in depth? --JorgeA

Í'vé hád to lêàrn tó úsë the ÂLT kèy. --JorgeA