NoelC

Cort who? Does this pass for real engineering now? What would make my day would be even ONE THING that makes Windows more powerful or easier to use for an adept user. -Noel

A Server OS with a decent UI would be a nice system for serious computing. I'm interested to hear how things work out, though I suspect there will be serious limitations. -Noel

Can't say I'm having any problems with Win 8.1 networking. You just have to know what you're doing and which "new" features to deconfigure (e.g., Homegroup Networking), but not everyone needs or does the same things. -Noel

If they never promise anything, they can't be accused of breaking promises, eh?If they don't claim to fix something, they don't have to admit things were broken.Think of the money saved by being able to hire illiterate people to write software. Now, for the grand finale: They don't believe skimping on documentation will affect the rate of their failure. -Noel

Regarding loss of performance info while debugging... Windows symbols load okay from online symbol servers (provided i allow the addresses through the firewall).I'm able to do source code breakpoints.I can see the call stack and watch variables.I get little elapsed time notes on screen when I step through the code. I've noticed no loss of function so far, but I am but an egg regarding doing performance measurement in Visual Studio as I rely on some pretty sophisticated instrumentation and logging built into the code itself for that. The reason I chose to try to read- and execute-protect the code vs. delete the folder is so that a future update might have a chance of working. But probably an installer would still balk at the way I've protected the folders. So it will likely be an ongoing hassle no matter what way you do it. Yes, I'd prefer a "high privacy" setting available in the Options. But alas, that's not the way of the future. Edit: Blocking instantiation probably refers to some kind of blocking of executables, possibly by process name. I've no experience with that, but it seems to me someone else mentioned something like it in a recent thread on privacy here. -Noel

Read the link I put up. No communications attempts are made after those components are blocked from running- and that's with VS 2015 Community Edition. Try not to overgeneralize; not every part of the software is bad. -Noel

Thing is, anyone savvy about software engineering could easily answer the question and espouse all the positives, while avoiding the obvious nefarious motives (such as drop-loading ever more intrusive changes into your computer, sight-unseen)... A system with all the updates is designed and tested to all work together. A system that's been partially updated has components not developed together and possibly never tested to work together. Thus your Windows system will be more reliable. Your system in its entirety will be exactly what the engineers have worked with on their own desks, not mix and match. Cumulative updates, in light of the new strategy, ensure that any problems encountered in the update process that leave a system in a non-updated state have a better chance of being resolved during the next update cycle. They also facilitate a delaying process whereby conservative users will not be presented with the updates that inadvertently break things, as reported by the masses. Considering that users don't have the Windows source code, they cannot fully vet updates nor execute proper judgment about which updates to hide, and we're of course not going to expose the source code. Just as you've trusted us to deliver a working operating system to you, you'll have to trust us to keep it working better and better. Considering that Microsoft will no longer be providing detailed information about what updates do (and they could justify this as a security risk), it's impossible for people to make good decisions about what to allow and what to hide. -Noel

See this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/31452435/how-do-i-disable-vshub-exe-in-the-system-tray/32282345#32282345 Also, have you considered using Visual Studio 2015 Community Edition? It's free and quite capable. -Noel

Some things to check: See if your system still passes an SFC /VERIFYONLY check. See what errors you log when starting up. With Cortana removed one sees at least one for the failure to start searchui.exe, which implies -Noel

Not more usable than with Classic Shell, though. Anyone struggling with Windows 8.x's lack of Start Menu at this point is just ignorant if they've been unable to find one of the many good start menu replacements out there, some of which are of infinite value. -Noel

Pretty much sums up computing now. Leave it to Marketing people to turn computing into... Just think of the long-term effect of this... Only stupid or technically un-savvy people will end up seeing ads. Anyone with any sense has already blocked them. Then things will be designed only for stupid or technically un-savvy people, as the smart ones have exited the marketplace, right? So... Systems will become less and less sensible for smart and technically savvy people. Nah, that wouldn't happen, would it? -Noel

A fellow small block V8 aficionado. Cool! Mine's been apart for far too long... Got to go find some time to wrench on it soon. I wasn't being critical, or even particularly philosophical. Practically speaking, I do what I suggested and I find managing a smaller number of hardware systems easier than a larger number, even though the software systems inside the VMs do require attention - but of course none of us has the same needs or uses for our computer gear. I do have a dedicated server separate from my workstation, so I also fully understand that there are real needs for hardware systems. -Noel

You may have been able to run an older OS forever, but that was then. The New Microsoft is a whole new ballgame; past performance is no guarantee of future results. They're BANKING on people assuming things will be like they were in the past... But they've already proven they're not. They're using up every bit of the entire reputation their company has built for immediate gain. -Noel

And when it stops working because it hasn't had any updates? I don't know for a fact that it will do this, but there are hints... -Noel

Are you seeing thumbnails of JPEG files? Please post a screenshot showing what you DO see. Just to be clear, Windows only comes with codecs for a few image types - e.g., JPEGs and a few others. If you want to be able to see thumbnails for (or show previews for) most types of images, for example raw files from your camera, or other less common image types like .psd or whatever, you NEED to add a codec pack. That being said, I think that at one time Microsoft and/or camera makers had released raw file codec packs (that would display, for example, Canon .cr2 image thumbnails). Whether those are available for Windows 10 I do not know. As I mentioned, there are commercial codec packs (FastPictureViewer, Ardfry, and possibly others), and there's at least one free (I think) codec pack out there called Sage Thumbs (if memory serves). This is what I see in Windows 10 with the commercial codec pack I mentioned: -Noel

Maybe trash everything and get a super duper dual E7 Xeon workstation motherboard, populate it with monster resources, then run everything else in virtual machines? Kind of a quality not quantity thing... Good on whatever perpetually-licensed OS you put on it well into the future... Just thinking out loud... -Noel

What kind(s) of images? You can of course get a commercial codec pack that will render thumbnails for any kinds of images. I use (and like) the FastPictureViewer Codec Pack. It's not free. -Noel

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/174415-aero-glass-for-win81-141/ -Noel

Is it? That IS funny! -Noel

Another week and my projected curve for Win 10 adoption is still frighteningly on target... My original predictions from the original post in this thread are shown in in light colors. Win 7 isn't faring as well as I thought it would... I apparently didn't anticipate as many people moving off Win 7 and onto... OSX (the purple line). Perhaps these were people on the fence, waiting to see whether Win 10 was any good... -Noel

Well, to be fair I want nothing to do with Cortana or the native Start Menu, so that's kind of a plus - as long as it doesn't break things like Settings or the Notification Center. Wouldn't even want those if there were alternatives. -Noel

Arthur Zey (and all who would push ads) can bite my... Those I can't block with my knowledge of the craft, I don't get because I refuse to partake in the source. In other words, if I can't watch a video without a preceding ad, I don't seek to watch the video. There are other, better things to do. I've mixed feelings about sharing how to technologically accomplish an ad-free existence (which is wonderful, by the way)... On the one hand, if everyone effectively blocks 'em, there won't be any money in it and the industry will abandon the practice. That would be the best possible outcome. On the other hand, they'll more likely just develop more intrusive ways to push them, that are harder to block. That may well be what Microsoft is doing with Win 10 - I don't think we've begun to see what it's capable of yet. Bravo! Me too! And Twitter! -Noel P.S., my 93 year old mother-in-law is glued to the TV, which is often on commercial stations. Gawd that's hard to be around. It's about 75% commercials, and 25% shows not worth watching any more. Idiocracy is really here.

Thinking long-term here... Ask yourself, why does _______ still work on Windows __? In my case, I might substitute ("Visual Studio", Photoshop", "Subversion", and any number of tools/utilities that facilitate my work) for the first and "(7, 8.1)" for the second. Others might just care about 7, and still others might say XP. You, of course, have tools YOU rely upon and can fill in your own blanks. So why is using these tools on these versions of Windows still viable? The answer is: Because what I can do with ______ on __ is valuable to someone. A secondary answer is: Because Windows __ is still in use by hundreds of millions of people. A tertiary concern is: Because Microsoft has always considered compatibility important. Now think about where we are, and why the above answers are changing (long term): Microsoft - good idea or no - is actively deprecating the desktop and thus at some point will be leaving behind compatibility with everything that has come before, even though they don't have anything new that replaces it all. They certainly have the manpower to have created a Windows 7-like theme and to have polished the Windows 10 desktop into being second to none in usability. They chose not to. They don't want us doing computing as we have done. In fact, for anyone involved in the pre-release program, it's clear they barely decided to revive the desktop for Win 10 at the last moment. Put bluntly, Win 10 build 10240 might run your ______ today but Win 10 build 12xxx almost certainly won't. Our skills and knowledge are being thrown away, whether we like it or not. The user base of the "old" Windows system is eroding. Not by terribly fast, and if we're lucky the usage will stay in the hundreds of millions for some years to come. But make no mistake, Microsoft is actively working - presumably without stepping over clear legal boundaries - to change what people feel is valuable. Fortunately, it takes a lot of talent to do that, so they haven't succeeded wildly just yet. They have decided to force people down their chosen path going forward. It's not by accident or by any engineering limitation that they have locked down the Windows Update process. They know they can't get everyone to upgrade on the merits of a newer, better system, so they're trying to dupe everyone into "up"grading to whatever they actually CAN build. Once locked in, you really will be faced with "stay on the bandwagon" or "jump to a different bandwagon". There will be no "lagging behind". Today we can put build 10240's balls in a vice and control Windows Updates - barely. It's not hard to imagine a version where that's impossible. Also, our "old" Windows __ systems are being actively degraded by Microsoft through Windows Updates. Today we can *just barely* separate updates we want from those that further Microsoft's goals to make you hate Windows __. That's not going to keep. And regarding what we're already running... Think carefully about this: What have they already drop-loaded in there? They've been thinking up this strategy for most of a decade now, and we can't see the source code. What if your system became slower and slower and more and more buggy? That used to be "tin foil hat" talk, but today? What does this all mean? No less than this: We're seeing the beginning of the end of the ability to continue as we have been. It will come to an either/or decision, well before we want it to - because "the dark side only deals in absolutes." -Noel

What have I been told so far - by other citizens? If you have nothing to hide then why are you worrying so much about privacy?You're just a stick-in-the-mud old guy who is growing paranoid in his old age.You and the other tin-foil-hats, stop with the conspiracy theories already.Haters gonna hate. ...And I think I hold a pretty moderate view about Windows 10. Who would have anticipated the brainwashing would reach the level where the other drones would parrot the demeaning dismissals? If you're not with me, you're against me! -Noel

I've considered alternatives as well. But here we are, still running Windows. We do not easily give up all the knowledge we have gained and become a newbie again. Our computers still work. I even bought a brand new one 5 months ago that was able to take a Windows 7 install. All I'm saying is that that's not going to keep. At some point we will be forced into a choice that does not include doing nothing. Microsoft is actively working to make that happen. -Noel