I'm Depressed About Windows

[JorgeA]

 

Yes, they're being devious and predatory IN ADDITION TO being incompetent.  It's an inescapable conclusion.

 

-Noel

 

 

Not surprising with the xbox one practices and some of the horror stories I read of people using xbox live and the cloud, then getting royally screwed by MS automated stuff. (Like being banned from all ms accounts for uploading family pics that the filter caught as child porn and then being auto reported to the feds) They were just pics that had children in swimsuits in some of them in that case.... MS never admitted any wrong and the people were still banned from all of their ms accounts and their cloud stuff was deleted (Or so was said) during the "investigation"

 

 

A real "selling" point for the SkyDrive and Office365 style of computing: store your vacation pics and end up unable to get your work done!

 

This sort of incident needs to be shouted out at all and sundry. Enough of it, and the cloud computing model will be stopped in its sleazy little tracks.

 

--JorgeA

[Tripredacus]

Sky/OneDrive is the perfect place to upload memory dumps!

[NoelC]

LOL, overwhelm their servers with Windows crash data.  

 

-Noel

[JorgeA]

LOL

 

I'd be afraid of leaving that stuff in the cloud...

 

--JorgeA

Edited November 12, 2014 by JorgeA

[DoubleSAnimations]

 

Like this guy says:

 

0

Sign in to vote

> There is no way to "convert" a Microsoft account to

> a Local account on Windows 8.1. You can do this on

> on Windows 8, which has the "Switch to a Local

> Account" option, but Winodws 8.1 does not have

> it, and that is by design. Microsoft wants you to

> sign in to its account every time you log into Windows.

Man I hope the FTC opens an investigation on Microsoft business practices. If this were examined in detail, I bet this would violate antitrust due to the illegal tying of services. (And you can't opt-out of the ad programs that are piled onto these "features" - you can only "personalize" the ads).

 

• Edited by Jeffrey Walton

 

 

 

Actually when you go to your PC Settings, then accounts, when you view your "Microsoft account" underneath your name there's a "Disconnect" option that allows you to switch back to a Local Account

[Kelsenellenelvian]

That's one of my points though, I have decided that in no way will I use a OS that requires me in any way to sign in with a account online (Even if I can change it later) I view it as condoning and accepting the behavior...

[NoelC]

What's scary is that they're starting to snare intelligent, inquisitive people with their deception.

 

I'm imagining Microsoft management, pondering things over coffee...

 

"Well, because of the management changes and layoffs destroying the culture, we just don't have the talent to actually engineer anything serious any more, to make customers joining the cloud seem attractive, so we have to do SOMETHING to suck them in or we'll all just get laid off."

 

Their mistake was EVER listening to Marketing.  Some things (such as engineering a good, viable computer operating system) only geeks can do.  Did I actually HAVE to say that?

 

 

-Noel

Edited November 18, 2014 by NoelC

[smeezekitty]

I have a feeling that Windows 7 is going to be around for a LOOONG time

[pangoomis]

Just like XP is still to this day...the King is dead, long live the King!

[ROTS]

Noel you sound like an human person. Considering I would prefer a turkey over and Eagle. However

1. Windows is full of anti-privacy crap.

2. Microsoft is pushing out Vista users. Microsoft is probably reading the scans of Vista users from the actual cable providers.

3. They want everybody on board with the random upgrade, and no privacy things.

4. Devers and programmers at MafiaSoft do not like their job at all. They probably know the story a lot better then you or I. They know Windows is already good enough the way it is; and it is just about pushing Vista out of everybodies lives.

5. Vista is the new 98??? 95??? and what is Windows VII???

6. What more is their to say. We have been lied to and that is it. Lies and more lies. Maybe Windows 10 is for the rich and famous people and we are a bunch of poor paycheck to paycheck credit card using morons.

Edited December 28, 2014 by ROTS

[NoelC]

You should probably go easy on the hallucinogens, ROTS. 

 

-Noel

[JorgeA]

As much as I'd like to be able to keep using Vista forever, IMHO it's not being "pushed out" as a specific strategy. Rightly or wrongly, the vast majority of people who had the chance to buy and use Vista decided either to stay on XP or to wait until Windows 7 came out. Now you can't buy Vista anymore (except for the odd remainder sales here and there), so over time the usage will slowly dwindle down to Windows 95 levels as people replace their computers.

 

Although they're much better at supporting their OSes than the non-profit Linux folks, Microsoft never promised to support Vista (or any other OS) forever, and we now have just over two years left on Extended Support. The clock is ticking...

 

--JorgeA

[NoelC]

Thing is, Vista represented the best of what Windows could become, after the dust settled. 

 

I happened to put it on a good workstation, and because I waited until most of the initial problems with such a big change were over, I actually found Vista good to use.  I had it on one of my systems, which became mostly a server, until last year when the caps failed and the system would no longer run, and it was stable for months on end.  To this day the software I create works on Vista and above (I've left XP support behind).  Why?  Because it provides all you need for a good desktop application experience.

 

Other than refinements, has anyone noticed that there's really been nothing fundamentally new since Vista?  Right now I do substantially the same (productive) things with my desktop that I did with Vista, which were mostly the same things I did with XP and before that NT.

 

But of course I've paid extra to allow Microsoft to screw up the OS and remove features and make it necessary to seek 3rd party software in order to do almost all those same things with Win 8.1.

 

Bottom line is that Microsoft thinks they won't really make gargantuan piles of money selling new operating systems if they just keep making refinements (and the funny part is that they're wrong).  No, someone decided they have to do something - anything, no matter whether it makes sense at all - and keep calling it "new". 

 

After the year 2000 geeks like those of us who frequent this site were deemed toxic (remember the transition?  It was palpable), and the marketeers and executives decided they'd "take it from here".

 

They're taking it all right.  Getting rich while simultaneously diving the plane into the cold, hard ground.  Regardless what we passengers can see through the portals, the captain is on the intercom telling us everything's great.  Thus, there's nothing we can really do but ride it in.  Might as well watch the movie.  It will dull the anticipation of the crash.

 

-Noel

[jaclaz]

Other than refinements, has anyone noticed that there's really been nothing fundamentally new since Vista?  Right now I do substantially the same (productive) things with my desktop that I did with Vista, which were mostly the same things I did with XP and before that NT.

Well, you are missing a logical step in your reasoning.

Sure there were a few "new" things in Vista , but you miss to enumerate which ones were "fundamentally relevant" and among them which ones were actually "better" (in the sense that allowed to do more (productive) things on Vista than what you could do on XP (or even on an earlier NT system)).

 

jaclaz

[JorgeA]

I can think of a number of new things in Vista that made it easier or more convenient to use, or that improved functionality, or that enabled new or more productive tasks. In no particular order:

 

• The embedded scroll-down All Programs listings in the Start Menu, as opposed to the fly-out style that spread across the monitor screen. This occupied less screen space and (by not obscuring them) made it easier to follow complicated instructions elsewhere on the screen.
• The window thumbnail previews that appear when you hover over a Taskbar item. This increased the amount of information available about open files/programs without having to select them.
• Aero Glass transparency, making it easier to tell what's behind the current window, which is useful in certain circumstances. Again, this provides more information without having to resort to clicking and selecting.
• Search integrated into the Start Menu. Don't need to click a separate item there to do a search, nor do I need to specify what kind of file to look for on my computer. Just easier and more convenient all around for me.
• Run a program from the Vista Start Menu search box. Again, fewer actions involved than selecting Run in the XP Start Menu, then typing the program's name, then clicking OK to run it.
• Windows Media Center, a fantastic but tragically neglected program. I can (and do) record TV news shows and documentaries off the air and store them locally for later use. (Yes, I know that there was an XP Media Center edition, but IIRC that was available mainly on specialized -- and way overpriced -- PC models.)
• The Show Desktop feature, which again comes in handy in certain circumstances.

 

--JorgeA