JorgeA

Oh yeah, what you did there is so much better! About the volume controls: I don't understand why they would relegate the mixer to the context menu. One of the neat things about Windows has always been the multiple ways that you can get to the same place. They did add troubleshooting to the context menu, but OTOH they removed the speaker icon (at the top of the pop-up) that takes you to the speaker/headphone properties. Is there only a fixed number of lines of code, such that in order to add one feature (troubleshooting) they need to remove another (properties)? Finally, the left-right orientation of the volume slider is less logical than the previous version up to and including Windows 8. It's intuitive to associate "higher" volume with moving the slider "up," and "lower" with "down." Left-to-right requires more mental processing in terms of setting a volume. --JorgeA

Maybe this VMWare audit clause was made for the case of virtual machines running not licensed versions of Windows, since one should have a licennce for each of 'em. Just guessing, can't think of any other explanation making a smallest bit of sence. Not that this makes this much of it... Your guess is as good as mine! We'd have to go into the VMware EULA to see if they require you to use it on a properly licensed copy of Windows. --JorgeA

The newest not-for-the-public build reportedly includes some additional customization options for the Start Menu: Windows 10: Start customization improves with quick links Ah, but therein lies the rub. The genius of the 95/98/XP/Vista/7 Start Menu is that it lets you do these things on the right-hand panel, while reserving the left panel for programs that you have used recently (thus saving on clicking and scrolling to get to them). It is all very logical and handy -- as well as discreetly and elegantly designed. Now the right-hand panel is cluttered with comparatively gigantic squares and rectangles that clash visually with the items on the left panel, suggesting the esthetics of a four-year-old. And what's the deal with these category headings for the tiles -- "Play and Explore," "Life at a glance"? Why do I even have to think whether my video player is for play or for work? How is that relevant?? I might use it to watch a music video or I might use it to see a scholarly presentation for my research. Having to decide (and remember) in what category to put an application, merely adds cognitive load, more pointless things to think about as I try to get stuff done on my PC. --JorgeA

"Y'all", maybe? Then again, there's nothing like "Ud." (= "Lei", in Italian or "o senhor / a senhora" in Portuguese). IMHO "y'all" is indeed the leading candidate for that role. Here in the States it's used extensively in the South, but we're hearing it more and more in other parts of the country. It just makes logical sense, although no doubt there are other plausible choices. Wouldn't y'all agree? --JorgeA

Thanks for filling in the gap, NoelC ! Yup! And while they (sort of) returned the Start Menu, they took away even more from elsewhere in the OS, while adding stuff that we neither need nor care about. --JorgeA

For me, the takeaway from the podcast conversation is the news (to me) that the folks at Microsoft actually realized that Windows 8 was a disaster in the making. I'd suspected that this must be the case, that they must have known, but this is the first time I remember seeing that theory supported by a knowledgeable source. Paul seemed to be on the verge of explaining why they couldn't just put the process on Pause, but unfortunately Andrew interrupted him with a question. Also, Thurrott's explanation for why some people supported Sinofsky didn't come out clearly in the audio; maybe someone else can figure out what he said there and tell us. --JorgeA

The ONLY difference I can see is that the titlebar text in one window is gray and black in the other. I'm assuming that the active window is the one with the black type. Man, you could make a case that whoever's in charge at Microsoft is trying to make Windows as annoying and difficult to use as possible! --JorgeA

As discussed in another thread , the answer is because it's less and less "My" Computer anymore, it's Microsoft's computer that we are paying for the privilege of using. --JorgeA

Sure , the abuses we are subjected to are far less subtle (and BTW - generically speaking - we have not a Declaration of Independence and a Constitution as liberal - in theory - as the US one), I would say that we have a greater number of what one could perceive as abuses that are not at all abuses (as a matter of fact they are perfectly legal). But on the other hand English (and this most probably is part of the reasons why it became an "interchange language") lacks the subtleties other languages have, the "you" as "singular informal" thou and the "you" as plural/courtesy ye are the same, while we have a rather neat distinction: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T–V_distinction jaclaz Yeah, English currently lacks a proper second-person plural. --JorgeA

Thurrott: Windows 8 will be "the release that never happened" In a recent episode of the "What the Tech" podcast, Paul Thurrott offers a revealing analysis of the Windows 8 debacle. Start at 42:19 to get the context; make sure to catch Andrew Zarian's telling anecdote at the 43:21 mark. The "meat" starts at 44:36: --JorgeA EDIT: typo

Thanks for the tip. If I end up going for NoelC's idea of putting Win10 in a virtual machine, I'll check them out. --JorgeA

Can't say that I have, but then every time I see that name in a headline my eyes go elsewhere. The bottom line for me is this: as far as I'm concerned, there's no good reason even to ask for audit rights in a license for unpaid software. (If MSFN had a "one-finger salute" emoticon, I'd be inserting it here. ) The fact that it was there showed either carelessness on management's part or a wish to keep the option for whatever unspecified reasons. And then when people inquired about it (I wasn't the only one to ask on their forum back then), they were met with deafening silence. --JorgeA

^^ What bothered me was that they left this audit clause in place for what supposedly is a free product (VMware Player). That suggests to me either a lack of attention to detail or a wish to retain a right of harassment, neither of which inspires much confidence in VMware's operation. If they really have no interest in or desire to audit users of their free software, then for heaven's sake take that audit clause out of the EULA for that free software. The lack of response when I inquired about it, lowered my opinion of them even further. About Microsoft, it's been a long time since I read the EULA for any of their products. But for Windows itself, I'd imagine that this Windows Genuine Advantage thing is enough for them; I haven't come across reports of Microsoft knocking at people's doors demanding to inspect their usage of Windows or the state of their license. --JorgeA

The explanation for this may lie in the vastly increased number of malware infections floating out there, waiting to affect vulnerable systems. Continuing to use made-up numbers , if in 2004 there were 10,000,000 viruses, trojans, and whatnot lurking in cyberspace, and in 2014 there were 100,000,000 such pieces of malware, then the 90% protection that MagicAndre cited would, indeed, result in your anecdotally getting about as many reports of infections from your demented friends as before. When dealing with the absolute number of infections, in addition to the increased effectiveness of protective measures we also need to account for the increase in available malware packages. --JorgeA

^^ WHAT??!!!??? Birthday and telephone number??? If that's the case, and there's no way to run the OS without providing that information, I just may be done with Windows 10. It's none of their g*d*mned business. --JorgeA

That double X looks weird. You'd think that's the sort of basic thing they would have taken care of before sending out a new build. And why would the problem show up now after so many other builds. Are you in the fast ring or the slow ring? (I'm wondering how soon to expect 10122.) --JorgeA

While we're on the topic of mobile, check out Demerjian's hard-hitting piece on Microsoft's clusterf**k: Microsoft just Palmed itself out of the mobile market While he's at it, Charlie touches on PC Windows: --JorgeA

My gosh, you're right -- I forgot that the future of the Web lies in animal videos and Facebook pics. Who needs to read, anyway? It's too hard. --JorgeA

This article provides good background material for our general discussion of desktop vs. mobile interfaces: Mobile Content Is Twice as Difficult Smartphone fans who smugly predict the demise of the desktop might want to take this into account. --JorgeA

Good to see you again, welcome back! About that Windows Explorer issue: I use both Vista and 7, so I could see easily what you were saying. Hmmm. Unless there is some kind of Registry tweak, I'm afraid that @NoelC is right and there's no way to bring back the functionality that;s so useful to you. --JorgeA

Like you I had read that insiders who had installed the pre-releases would be granted a full, licensed copy when it comes out. Seems to me they're getting away with a lot by vaguely implying things, then later "clarifying" them. That's modern Marketing. Those people are evil. I recently took the opportunity to install Win 10 on a brand new standalone system, a Dell PowerEdge T20, as at the time I had only the internal backup HDD and not yet the main SSDs I was going to ultimately run it from, so to do initial testing I figured what the heck and installed Win 10 build 10074 from a thumb drive made from an 10074 ISO, which in turn was made from the WIM file provided by Microsoft. By the way, I've since gotten the SSDs and installed the OS I had intended for it to run - Win 7 x64. I did comparative Passmark benchmarks and in almost every way Win 7 came out significantly more efficient. One of the very few things Win 10 did better was the "Graphics 2D Image Rendering" test - by scores of 742 (Win 10) to 702 (Win 7). But other important things, such as "Graphics 2D - Windows Interface" it did worse - by scores of 95.6 (Win 10) to 116.0 (Win 7). This says that Win 10 should feel more sluggish, and in fact it does. This system uses the Intel HD Graphics GPU that comes in the Haswell Pentium G3220 CPU. -Noel P.S., Jorge, do you have enough computer power to run a virtual machine? Virtualization is a great way to test Windows 10. I like VMware Workstation for the job, but I believe you can actually run Win 10 under VMware Player, which is free. Those are intriguing test results. Curiously, they imply that people should be using more powerful hardware rather than putting Win10 on mobile devices. What do you think accounts for 10 being slower than 7? About using a virtual machine: some years ago when I moved from Windows 98 to Vista, I looked into virtualization technology as a way to run some of the software I needed that was not compatible with Vista, and VMware was my leading candidate. However, I dropped the idea of using them because of an onerous clause in VMware's EULA that gave them the right to come into my office and audit my use of their software. I tried calling VMware back then, but nobody had a straight answer as to whether this applied to VMware Player, and eventually they stopped taking my phone calls. I tried posting the question on their forum but no one provided a satisfactory answer. It was a total stonewall. So not only did I decide against their software, but -- in view of this experience -- their operation was so unimpressive that I'd never advise anybody to use VMware products for anything. (Since then, I always inspect any prospective new software's EULA for "audit rights" and refuse to install any that have a similar provision. I stopped an installation of AVG Free antivirus from an XP system when I discovered that they, too, had this language.) Ultimately, a couple of other factors came into play that made the whole thing moot. First, Microsoft sent out a Windows Update improving Vista's compatibiity with older programs (yay!) and, second, I found out that my new PC couldn't handle virtualization anyway. I'm sure that the laptop where I have Win10 can do virtualization, but the VM application will have to be from somebody other than VMware. In any event, I just visited WMware's website looking for the EULA to link to, but I didn't see any reference any more to a free version of VMware Player. --JorgeA EDIT: typo

He's cropped off the right side of the screen grab. Note that there's no system tray or clock showing. If you resize the image to the 1440 vertical pixel count he touts for the LG 34 inch ultrawide monitor, the image is only 2455 x 1440 - it's missing nearly 1000 pixels. It might be a leaked version that he's not supposed to be running and writing about (but of course he wants the scoop), and what's over there in those deleted pixels is the message that someone will be drawn and quartered for leaking it. I can't quite make out what the two icons he's got up in the trees near the upper right say. One might say "Microsoft" EDIT: I developed a forensic image enhancer that employs anisotropic filtering some time back and just tried it... That worked well. The two icons quite clearly say IMG_7790 and IMG_7788. The thumbnails resemble images of phones or tablets. -Noel Nice work! What (if anything) do those icons suggest to you about the TP build he's using? I do wonder if it might be a newer build where they expanded customization options for the Start Menu. Otherwise, is it possible to figure out how he might have removed the tile panel from the TP Start Menu? Or maybe he simply Photoshopped what he would like the menu to look like. --JorgeA

--JorgeA

Thanks for running these trials and reporting them, NoelC -- this knowledge could come in very handy for anybody who dislikes Windows 10 but needs to switch to it for business or other reasons. Just one question: in the paragraph reporting on running Win10 with local account and UAC enabled, what do you mean when you speak of Please forgive my ignorance. Thanks! --JorgeA P.S. I've been experimenting with turning off various connections to Microsoft in the Windows Firewall, but have yet to identify the ones that add Web search to the Search function (Start Menu and/or taskbar search icon), including the one(s) that put news headlines in the Search pop-up. That would be one way to restore local-only Search. Will keep looking.

After reading the following article and the comments -- Windows Insiders will need a valid license to upgrade to Windows 10 RTM -- I am actually less clear on the situation than when I started reading. I thought that I'd seen somewhere that people helping Microsoft with the beta test were going to get a free copy of Win10 RTM. But now it sounds like they are going to get the exact same thing that Microsoft is trying to push on Win7/8.1 users, which is a free "upgrade" from their current OS. In other words, nothing special for all the effort they've put in. Mind you, I'd never install this POS standalone on a computer, but if I could get the license in exchange for my testing time I probably would dual-boot Win10 just to see how it continued to degenerate develop. --JorgeA