Windows 10 - Deeper Impressions

[dencorso]

4 hours ago, NoelC said:

@JorgeA, my heart goes out to you. 

Ditto!

[JorgeA]

16 hours ago, bookie32 said:

What do you mean by "wants to...." they already have....

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

[JorgeA]

14 hours ago, NoelC said:

Somewhere part way into all that I'm sure you began to wonder whether carrying around a smart phone was at all worth anything like the trouble it was causing and time it was wasting.  And THAT is a pertinent question.

Virtually EVERYONE is having trouble, wasting time, and spending hard-earned money on portable tech.  You may feel a portable electronic device makes you better informed, and thus able to make better decisions that save you time, but what good things could you have done if you didn't have that wasted time and endured that stress?  Not to mention how much it costs each and every month.  The impact to society is not insignificant!

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

[JorgeA]

9 hours ago, dencorso said:

Ditto!

Thanks, den!

--JorgeA

[NoelC]

11 hours ago, JorgeA said:

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. 

I might so far as to say "COULD have some benefits, if only it worked".  But the ROI is just too small.  When it's critical - when you NEED that traffic update or whatever bit of info, it just doesn't deliver fast enough (see next month's model and next year's network). 

Even when you want to surf you're confronted with update notices or whatever.  What should be something that helps us at our beck and call becomes something that enslaves us.

My son, a college student, runs an App that uploads his GPS location to a cloud server in real time, then I can watch a map when he drives to/from home.  It's reassuring for a parent to see the dot moving.  Trouble is, the App just fails sometimes (that's being kind, it fails at some different point in EVERY use).  So what could be a comforting process for a parent monitoring a trip changes to an "OMG, has he had an accident?" worry.  Then I have to consider a phone call - which at the very best would distract him from driving.  And I sure don't want him fooling with the App to try to get it going again.

This to me that sums up the whole "mobile tech" experience.  The reality never *quite* equals the promise.  And all for a healthy fee.

Nowadays, programmers (can't in good conscience call them software engineers any more) think "almost right" is good enough.  That's part of the problem - and certainly why we're here talking Windows 10 and its ridiculous Apps down.

But I do agree with your "dressing room" comment...  Portable tech DOES seem to be best at distracting us from other things.

-Noel

[bpalone]

WE ARE MICROSOFT, YOU WILL ASSIMILATE, RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!!!

Well, it looks like they are really, really, really bent on total destruction.  Check out the following:

"Microsoft Replaces Command Prompt with PowerShell in Latest Windows 10 Build"

http://news.softpedia.com/news/microsoft-replaces-command-prompt-with-powershell-in-latest-windows-10-build-510328.shtml

Have never used powershell, so can't make comparison, but is certainly a slap in the face for those that like CMD.  Sure am glad I only use OLD versions of their stuff and then only on limited terms and time.

[NoelC]

To be fair you can still easily run CMD, and I've read that there's a place you can configure it to use CMD by default still.  That preference may go away, though, in the future.

But I'm with you on whether it's desirable...  Dyed in the wool geek here, and I still only use PowerShell when I absolutely have to.

-Noel

[rn10950]

8 hours ago, NoelC said:

20 hours ago, JorgeA said:

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. 

I might so far as to say "COULD have some benefits, if only it worked".  But the ROI is just too small.  When it's critical - when you NEED that traffic update or whatever bit of info, it just doesn't deliver fast enough (see next month's model and next year's network). 

This is exactly why I haven't got rid of my landline yet and likely never will.

[xpclient]

Let me give you one example of why PowerShell is s***: In cmd: dir <press ENTER on keyboard>

In PowerShell it is:  Get-ChildItem | Select-Object -ExpandProperty FullName

WTF PowerShell, die already. It's like they replaced an end-user facing command line tool with a programming language. Sure it's powerful but is that what command line users want? Again, Microsoft has no focus, no idea of what they are doing. id***.

Edit: Okay, it looks like the dir command is aliased in PowerShell but hopefully you got what I meant. Cmd.exe and PowerShell don't need to be mutually exclusive as in one doesn't replace the other. They complement each other. But Microsoft is now forcing the harder to use PowerShell and unleashing more arcane cmdlets on us, not building equivalent and easier to use console tools/commands. An end user wanting to do something easily? He can't without learning PowerShell and its extremely elaborate C#-like syntax and having to import a dozen modules and cmdlets and what not if they don't already exist. It's anything but easy for CLI n00bs like me.

Edited November 22, 2016 by xpclient

[Dibya]

1 hour ago, xpclient said:

Let me give you one example of why PowerShell is s***: In cmd: dir <press ENTER on keyboard>

In PowerShell it is:  Get-ChildItem | Select-Object -ExpandProperty FullName

WTF PowerShell, die already. It's like they replaced an end-user facing command line tool with a programming language. Sure it's powerful but is that what command line users want? Again, Microsoft has no focus, no idea of what they are doing. id***.

They should go to a doctor who can fix their head.

[Dibya]

@JorgeA Windows phones are two step ahead in giving pain than android . I own lumia  . Not more than  receiving calls from my parents when i am out side otherwise it also lie around. In most cases windows phones have more worse software bugs than android ios.

[NoelC]

2 hours ago, xpclient said:

Let me give you one example of why PowerShell is s***: In cmd: dir <press ENTER on keyboard>

In PowerShell it is:  Get-ChildItem | Select-Object -ExpandProperty FullName

WTF PowerShell, die already. It's like they replaced an end-user facing command line tool with a programming language. Sure it's powerful but is that what command line users want? Again, Microsoft has no focus, no idea of what they are doing. id***.

While I agree with you that PowerShell isn't the most desirable command language, in the interest of accuracy (and unless it's changed in the latest pre-release Windows build, which I haven't bothered with) I have to point out that a dir command does work in PowerShell, though it produces output that's formatted differently than what CMD users are used to seeing...

But regarding the rest of it...  Who has the mental bandwidth to remember commands and script names that are so long?

It's as though Microsoft wanted to bring objects to the world, and the world didn't want objects.

-Noel

EDIT:  It looks as though I have a dir executable as part of the GnuWin32 toolkit I've installed.  Never mind.

Edited November 19, 2016 by NoelC

[jaclaz]

On sabato 19 novembre 2016 at 3:38 PM, NoelC said:

But regarding the rest of it...  Who has the mental bandwidth to remember commands and script names that are so long?

It's as though Microsoft wanted to bring objects to the world, and the world didn't want objects.

-Noel

EDIT:  It looks as though I have a dir executable as part of the GnuWin32 toolkit I've installed.  Never mind.

The output you posted seems to come from Powershell allright (note the "length" instead of "Size"), the dir is a "standard" Alias, as well as ls, list and gci, of Get Child-Item, you can check the Aliases via Powershell, it is simple and easy to remember :
get-alias | where-object {$_.Definition -eq 'Get-Childitem'}

 

jaclaz

Edited November 21, 2016 by jaclaz

[NoelC]

I stand un-corrected. 

Thank you jaclaz.

-Noel

[Tripredacus]

Let's hope their choice of changing 'cmd' to run Powershell prompt doesn't screw with anyone's scripts or programs that call CMD to perform specific things, such as installing programs. On this new build, is the ComSpec environment variable changed as well?