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Windows 10 - Deeper Impressions


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OS X is possibly the most realistic alternative to Windows, but going with Apple does have its downsides.  They don't put much effort into compatibility, for example.  And their focus is decidedly on selling you things again and again.  So if you're not one who wants to be spending, say, $1000+ a year every year for hardware and software, switching to Apple might not be that attractive a proposition.  And the "walled garden" of "these are the only things we're going to allow you to run" might feel a bit extreme to folks used to the kind of control we've had with Windows.

update_for_your_computer.jpg

Never having tried to apply OS X to real work myself I'd have to say at first blush OS X just seems too dumbed-down to me - but then so does Windows right out of the box.  I'm sure that since OS X is Unix under the covers, one could probably get pretty geeky with it.  But then it's just Unix, and as has been pointed out most of us have already had the opportunity to use Unix and have passed it up before...

Just between us chickens, that I could move to a Mac Pro seems somehow comforting in light of what Microsoft's been doing, er, not doing.

-Noel

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9 hours ago, JorgeA said:

From a vigorous Win10 defender, an interesting tidbit about the perceived value of mobile apps -- and, by extension, about the value of the whole Windows 10 model. Discussion starts at 30:42:
 

--JorgeA

From the nested quote that the forum software left out: 25% of users install an app and only use it once. I wonder, what percentage of those users are doing so not because they don't like the app, but because another app gave them incentive to try it? I personally use very few apps on my phone, but one of them has microtransactions. The in-game currency is coins. You can get these coins by signing in every day, winning contests, buying them, watching ads or trying some other app. I doubt that this is uncommon. So I wonder how many people are just doing the bare minimum required (it varies) in order to get the coins or whatever they need for the game they are playing.

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3 hours ago, Tripredacus said:

From the nested quote that the forum software left out: 25% of users install an app and only use it once. I wonder, what percentage of those users are doing so not because they don't like the app, but because another app gave them incentive to try it? I personally use very few apps on my phone, but one of them has microtransactions. The in-game currency is coins. You can get these coins by signing in every day, winning contests, buying them, watching ads or trying some other app. I doubt that this is uncommon. So I wonder how many people are just doing the bare minimum required (it varies) in order to get the coins or whatever they need for the game they are playing.

That's a very good question, the answer to which I wish I knew.  :)

It doesn't speak very well for the marketing strategy (or for the UWP apps) if people are enticed this way to try them but then never go back to them.

BTW I suspect that microtransactions are the way that the Web ultimately will solve the issue of how to support websites. Instead of subscribing for $25 a year or whatever to a news site, and instead of putting up with obnoxious ads, maybe the solution lies in a workable system for paying pennies or even fractions of a penny for each time you read an article.

--JorgeA

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And even if they had exclusive content, on the internet, everything is plagiarized, nobody credits the source or copyright. Unfortunate but true. We don't have internet law or police.

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The only thing that people end up resorting to is public shaming, but most websites do allow some contact with an author. I've sent emails or Twitter messages in the past to inform article authors of corrections needed for articles. You could say that the readers shouldn't be responsible for that and you wouldn't be wrong.

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If Web users are not willing to enter into periodic (e.g., annual) subscriptions to support the websites they visit; and if they are not going to provide micro-payments for when they do visit websites; and if in addition they block the ads that the websites display in order to defray their costs -- then how are websites going to stay afloat long-term?

--JorgeA

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Thinking about root causes for a moment...  Does the internet NEED to be monetized to be good? 

Ask yourself...  What parts of it are good?

In my opinion the best thing coming from the internet is the sharing of experience - such as we find at this forum.

Someone might ask, how is the owner of the hardware supposed to make enough to pay for the gear, pay for the internet connection, and run the forum? 

My knee jerk response to that:  Not my problemThe people contributing their expertise - the real, valuable CONTENT that makes forum sites worth visiting - are not being paid to do so.  I see no reason those doing the hosting shouldn't expect to contribute as well.  IMO, making money off other people's contributions is not a legitimate business, and those trying to do so should be ashamed of themselves.

Look around...  Monetization has bred huge amounts of crap online.  I block some 50,000+ servers and domains, and the list could grow to 4 times that if I were actually incorporating ALL the blacklists I can find.  Those blacklists are freely shared by people out of the goodness of their hearts.  That's 50,000+ servers bent on distributing malware, invading privacy, and/or trying to make money by pumping ads.  Why are they out there?  Why do they exist?  What useful, positive things could those people be doing instead of setting up their garbage websites?

Monetization has even reduced the level of professionalism and ethics of companies like Microsoft, Google, and Apple, precisely because in this culture of "anything goes" they can get away with it.

Don't get me wrong, I don't expect monetization to somehow vanish.  That's of course ridiculous; the whole idea is moot given the real world.  Sites will continue to try to be ad supported.

I have no problem allowing ignorant people, who choose not to spend the time/effort to develop the smarts to block ads - or those who really want to see ads because they just can't think of enough stuff to spend money on all by themselves - bear the burden of seeing them.  Any site that limits my access because I won't allow ads isn't worth visiting in my book.  I learned that Forbes, for example, tries to block access to its articles if you block their ads.  Can I live without ever reading an article at forbes.com?  I think somehow I'll scrape by. 

I'll tell you this:  I'm not influenced to buy something by seeing an ad online, and I never will be.  I certainly don't want to switch to an ad-supported operating system!

-Noel

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The trouble is, gathering and reporting on the news requires having people who do it for a living. It takes time to develop not only a website, but also the knowledge of the industry and (crucially) the variety of sources who'll share what they know, on and off the record. A reporter needs to know both what to ask and whom to ask it of. Developing this knowledge, these contacts and these skills is a job. And that requires having a source of income deriving from that work in order to justify continuing to do it.

The newspapers and news magazines are in a deepening crisis because readers have flocked to the Web for their news and fewer of them are paying for print editions. If news organizations can't find a way to make a living from what they put out on the Web, then they will go the way of the farrier and the player-piano roll maker.

The same goes for tech news sites. We can't reasonably expect someone to spend their days and nights benchmarking hardware or pumping people for information at zero pay: were they foolish enough to persist in such a project, they would soon starve to death.

I can hear the cynical cracks already: so what, we're being fed B.S. anyway, who believes them in any case, etc. etc. That's all well and good, but imagine how abysmal our ignorance would truly be if we had to rely for our news on the tweets and press releases of companies and politicians.

--JorgeA

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1 hour ago, JorgeA said:

The same goes for tech news sites. ""We can't reasonably expect someone to spend their days and nights benchmarking hardware or pumping people for information at zero pay: were they foolish enough to persist in such a project, they would soon starve to death.""

Microsoft reasonably expected the Win 10 Insiders to do just that.  Perhaps you're right.  It does seem to be a little foolish to spend so much time on the Win 10 Insider project.  However, starving to death doesn't seem to be a problem.  But the return on investment doesn't seem to be there.  Thanks for pointing out my foolishness.  At least this forum gives one food for thought.  Hard to get mind hungry here.

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On 6/20/2016 at 9:43 AM, NoelC said:

OS X is possibly the most realistic alternative to Windows, but going with Apple does have its downsides. 

Never having tried to apply OS X to real work myself I'd have to say at first blush OS X just seems too dumbed-down to me - but then so does Windows right out of the box.  I'm sure that since OS X is Unix under the covers, one could probably get pretty geeky with it.  But then it's just Unix, and as has been pointed out most of us have already had the opportunity to use Unix and have passed it up before...

Just between us chickens, that I could move to a Mac Pro seems somehow comforting in light of what Microsoft's been doing, er, not doing.

-Noel

Had to stop and think about the Apple work station (iMac).  MS Office 2010 vs Office:Mac 2011:  Both stable, however Apple hardware is more durable.  Skype vs Facetime:  Facetime winner with user friendliness.  Facetime just works on both the iMac and the iPhone.  IE doesn't run on Apple.  IE 11 works on some Win but is being replaced by Edge.  Apple has several browsers that just work.  Mail programs that just work.  Other office software that just works if you don't want Office:Mac.  Five year old iMac with hardware technology beyond new PCs on the shelf today and the OS software just works.  Major updates that just work and cost $20 or are free and are not forced into the iMac.  Yup, the list goes on and on.  The Apple just works.  When an update is chosen, it downloads and installs in a fraction of the time that Win stuff requires.  It just works.  Thanks for bringing out the reason why the production computer is not a Win machine.  Sometimes I forget how easy it is to use the iMac compared to the Win PCs.  I guess that the Win PCs are there for fun and to provide source issues for this forum.  I gave up on the MS Insider forums because they became not fun.  This forum provides fun mind challenges that happen to be about computer stuff.

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BudwS - You nailed it.  I had doubts about running linux and thought software would not work and I would not be productive.  But I tried anyway and was extremely pleased.  I opted for debian.  The OS started as a commandline and added packages to make a desktop environment of my choice along with various programs I liked.  I have equivalent programs that work with my important data files.  Libreoffice isn't ms-office, but then again libreoffice doesn't have a ribbon that takes up half my working space.  Linux means no phoning home either.  What's nice with linux is that you can choose what type of software you want.  Do you want stable applications?  Bleeding edge applications?  Well, I don't like crashes so I opt for stable which have programs that are a bit older.  No big deal.  Bleeding edge?  Well, Win10 seems bleeding edge reading through the threads on this forum.  Need a newer software?  Run a few commands to compile it.  Desktop environment?  Pick your own and modify accordingly if you do not like the default settings.  Using linux opened up a whole new world of possibilities, things I never dreamed of.  And the kicker of it all?  The not so computer literate wife prefers linux over windows. 

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In a recent episode of What the Tech, Paul Thurrott lays hard into Microsoft for what he calls its "dishonest" practices pushing Windows 10 on users. The discussion then ranges out into the apparent inability of some folks to understand that their own experience with Windows 10 is not necessarily what others are experiencing with Windows 10.
 

Quote

PT: I've been a vocal opponent of Microsoft's overly aggressive stance on getting people to upgrade to Windows 10. They've really ratcheted things up over the months... Some of the more notable things they did was secretly downloading Windows 10 in the background so that it'd be really easy to install it if you chose to do so --

AZ: Or, even worse, as Mary Jo Foley and I have both experienced, where you just woke up one day and you had Windows 10 on your computer without even clicking on anything.

PT: Yeah, they added it to the "Recommended Updates" section of Windows Update a couple of months ago, thus ensuring that it would be auto-downloaded and installed (after a couple of prompts) on millions and millions of computers. There's kind of a "social engineering" quality to the advertisement window that pops up where a giant "Install Now" and no other button for "don't install" and that kind of stuff.

AZ: Yeah, you have to know to hit "X," right -- is that how it is?

PT: Oh, but see, that's the Upgradegate: you have to know to hit "X." Well guess what: they've made a change, and when you hit "X" now, you've agreed to install it.

AZ: Really!?!

PT: Yeah. That's the problem.

AZ: Oh, you're absolutely right, because it gives yo a thing saying, "I want to delay this." Like, it's very hidden... Is there an actual button that says, "I never want to do this stupid thing"?

PT: No.

AZ: OK.

PT: What you can do is cancel an automatic upgrade -- because it's automated now through Windows Update -- but that won't cancel it forever, and if that dialog pops up and you just don't want to install Windows 10, in the past if you closed the window by hitting that "X," which is the "close window" box, you would cancel it. For a while; it would always come back, but you could kind of cancel it. Now, if you close that window that way, it will install.

AZ: Oh, my God.

PT: Yeah.

AZ: Terrible.

PT: Now, Microsoft defenders -- I'm sure they're out there -- would explain to you that there are still some prompts that occur. Fair enough, but I mean, this is social engineering. The point of this is to calm you down enough that you don't pay attention to what's happening. This isn't designed for people that want to make a decision that is in their own best interests, it's designed to fake you out. You can try to defend this all you want; this is indefensible. This change happened with no announcement, with no understanding this was happening -- it's just that a bunch of people started complaining and this is what we figured out this is what's happening.

AZ: This is a major problem. Not because Windows 10 is bad and you're gonna have a terrible --

PT: Windows 10 is awesome!

AZ: It's not that it's not honest; I'm trying to find --

PT: No, it is dishonest.

AZ: It's dishonest, and it's really sleazy of a way to do it.

PT: You go to a car dealership and you're like, "I'm looking at a brand-new car." What do we do to get you in this car? And you're like, "I'm just looking. I'll come back later, I need to look around a little bit." And then you go home and the new car is sitting in your driveway and your first bill has arrived in the mail. You bought it, even though you told them you weren't going to buy it.

AZ: No no, you told me you're thinking about it.

PT: Yeah.

AZ" I'll come back next week, maybe I'll look at it next week.

PT: Yeah.

AZ: I had this problem with a -- I was in California we have a studio there, and I turned a computer on and -- I'd had a weird issue, there was a Windows Update that did something and it just triggered the UEFI BIOS to tell me that I don't have a hard drive, so I had to go into the BIOS and reset everything... But when I turned the computer on, I got a popup, and it was Windows 10. It said, "Your Windows 10 [upgrade] is scheduled for" it was that night at 8PM.

PT: Yeah.

AZ: Why?? The computer's been off! It's been off for, probably, two months. How would I have possibly put that I want an update? So, in my case, I had to update that machine to Windows 10. I had no problems with that. But I had proprietary software -- and this is a rarity, and I'm one of these people that uses special drivers for special hardware -- and I turn the computer off, I leave my office, I come back and I have Windows 10 and I can't run this stuff: that is a major problem. I don't care that thing does that "driver check" that tells you that it's going to work: it did the driver check for me also, and I've had it not work for certain drivers.

PT: Yeah, you're not the only one on that one, too.

AZ: So, that sucks.

PT: The whole thing sucks. By the way, imagine that Microsoft was the Microsoft of the past, 'cause they're not, right? ...They're just a deceptive company. We all know this, it's the way it is. And they do this, and you would say, "OK, well that's just they way they  are, those bastards at Microsoft." But they're actually better than this these days, for the most part. And Windows 10 is awesome. It's just that you can't force it on people. People have their own reasons for sticking with Windows 7; it could literally simply be fear, because they upgrade process is so fraught with problems -- it could fail, you could get a Windows 10 install that doesn't work properly, you could go to roll back and that doesn't work properly. You know, your data is on there, your applications are on there. Most people don't know how to do backup and restore and all the things they could do to protect themselves. It's just horrible.

AZ: I think the problem here is that Microsoft has a little too much faith in the install process of Windows 10.

PT: This is the engineers who are driving an experience and say, "Well, our telemetry shows that ninety, you know, whatever percent is working out great. That's neat.

AZ: Historically, Windows has been a difficult thing to install for most people. We're not most people. People listening... are not most people. Most people upgrade operating systems based on buying a new computer.

PT: Yeah, this requires you to look outside of yourself.

AZ: So, when you see it's for free, when you see "Hey, you want to upgrade to Windows 10?" you say, "Yeah sure!" And what happens when -- I have a great example: I have a Dell that cannot do the upgrade. I have to do a clean install. It goes into an endless loop, and then it freaks out and goes, "Oh, crap! Something is wrong, we're just going to revert right back to Windows 7, don't worry about it." But I still get this updtate from Windows 10. What happens if, when it reverts back to Windows 7, something is wrong? What am I going to do then? Who am I gonna call? Am I going to go to Microsoft and tell them to fix it?

[...]

AZ: I deal with this on a regular level. We have proprietary software and hardware that we use to get this going. And I talk to the engineers and I tell them, "Listen, we have this as an issue," and they go, "Why would that be an issue? I use it and I don't have that issue." Yeah, but you don't use it on a regular basis. You're an engineer, you're not actually using the software in real-time usage. You're testing it and you're implementing features, you're not using it like a real person. I've had such a difficult time -- I had that problem with Skype, I had that problem with one of the [unintelligible] companies that we use... where I send a video to you and the video freezes, so I have to toggle it on an off. I explain this to them and they go, "I don't have this problem." But you don't use it with Skype, of course you don't have that problem!

PT: Your inability to see a problem doesn't mean it doesn't exist. This is a frequent feedback loop that I get on Twitter especially, where you complain about something. "Well, that doesn't happen to me!" I wrote about when you upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 your computer [unintelligible] registered on this cloud database so that if later you do a clean install, it will automatically activate. I have heard from dozens and dozens of people, and I have myself now twice experienced, the fact that this doesn't always work. When I write about stuff like that, I hear from -- one guy said, "I updated a hundred machines in a lab, I never had that problem." That doesn't mean it doesn't exist. People assume that their anecdotal information is evidence of something -- you know, that "because this happened to me, it happens to everyone." And that's just people; when Microsoft does it institutionally, that's a class-action lawsuit. What they're doing is patently wrong. It's just wrong.

[emphasis in original]

--JorgeA

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Would these two images infer something?

First one is lab results by MS:

browser-power-consumption-tests.png

 

Second one is what they got from telemetry on BILLIONS data point:

browser-power-consumption-telemetry.png

 

Source is here:
https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2016/06/20/more-battery-with-edge/

To me it seems like their laboratory testing provides results COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from the BILLIONS datapoints.

This might mean that they suck (big) at designing lab experiments OR that the Surface burns LOTS of mW! :w00t::ph34r:

And they do have the guts to write that "The billions of data points from these devices are consistent with the lab results,"

jaclaz


 

Edited by jaclaz
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