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I decided to check to see if it would support my programs. It didn't take long to hit a roadblock.

Requirements for Office 2013 - http://office.microsoft.com/en...

Hardware acceleration Graphics hardware acceleration with DirectX10 graphics card

According to http://www.intel.com/products/... , there's no Directx10 support from this board.

(Which won't be for a long while because of all the old computers out there that have either no or insufficient IPv6 support.)

Windows XP can support IPv6 - probably configured when their ISP adds its setup to the installer CD they mail to new customers. Every modern OS supports it natively and decently.

The migration will suck for dumb embedded devices that can't be upgraded, but most of those are probably reaching EOL anyway. I'd absolutely, 100%, not buy any new devices that don't support native IPv6 today.

Visual studio doesnt even work with Powershell

It does now, though this is a third party extension (albeit based on Microsoft's own Python Tools - yay open source).

Liar.

http://windows.microsoft.com/e...

Sarcasm aside, who honestly expects a company to support non-products ? I dont.

Windows 7 SP1 doesn't go End of Life until 7 months and a week from now. Yes, I expect it to be supported.

Richard Stallman is full of crap if he is claiming that Windows is endemically, technically less secure. Anyone remember the Pwn2Own games? Anyone remember what OS fell first every time? Thats right, fully patched OSX (think that changed ~2012). This could turn into a debate lasting days, but suffice it to say that from a technical level Windows is pretty secure.

You totally misunderstand Stallman's point. Stallman is not arguing that open source leads to better quality software. That would be Eric Raymond. Stallman is arguing that you can't trust Microsoft. More of an Auguste Kirchhoffs interpretation. And I don't see what OSX has to do with free software.

Stallman objects to closed source philosophically, and Windows especially. In addition to being proprietary, Stallman is arguing that Windows has features to report your use of Microsoft software and potentially lock you out (Windows Activation), to add or delete software without warning (Windows Update), to track you across any device around the world (Microsoft Account), and to keep you from using the computer in inappropriate ways (Protected Media Path, Driver Signing, Secure Boot). I don't see how he's wrong.

Somebody in the Chinese government seems to have noticed, and is now trying to get Windows banned there.

My hope is that all who take this like will grow up and abandon their zealotry before they enter the workforce.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." - George Bernard Shaw

Richard Stallman is full of crap if he is claiming that Windows is endemically, technically less secure. Anyone remember the Pwn2Own games? Anyone remember what OS fell first every time? Thats right, fully patched OSX (think that changed ~2012). This could turn into a debate lasting days, but suffice it to say that from a technical level Windows is pretty secure.

You totally misunderstand Stallman's point. Stallman is not arguing that open source leads to better quality software. That would be Eric Raymond. Stallman is arguing that you can't trust Microsoft. More of an Auguste Kirchhoffs interpretation. And I don't see what OSX has to do with free software.

Stallman objects to closed source philosophically, and Windows especially. In addition to being proprietary, Stallman is arguing that Windows has features to report your use of Microsoft software and potentially lock you out (Windows Activation), to add or delete software without warning (Windows Update), to track you across any device around the world (Microsoft Account), and to keep you from using the computer in inappropriate ways (Protected Media Path, Driver Signing, Secure Boot). I don't see how he's wrong.

Somebody in the Chinese government seems to have noticed, and is now trying to get Windows banned there.

My hope is that all who take this like will grow up and abandon their zealotry before they enter the workforce.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." - George Bernard Shaw

Richard Stallman is full of crap if he is claiming that Windows is endemically, technically less secure. Anyone remember the Pwn2Own games? Anyone remember what OS fell first every time? Thats right, fully patched OSX (think that changed ~2012). This could turn into a debate lasting days, but suffice it to say that from a technical level Windows is pretty secure.

You totally misunderstand Stallman's point. Stallman is not arguing that open source leads to better quality software. That would be Eric Raymond. Stallman is arguing that you can't trust Microsoft. More of an Auguste Kirchhoffs interpretation. And I don't see what OSX has to do with free software.

Stallman objects to closed source philosophically, and Windows especially. In addition to being proprietary, Stallman is arguing that Windows has features to report your use of Microsoft software and potentially lock you out (Windows Activation), to add or delete software without warning (Windows Update), to track you across any device around the world (Microsoft Account), and to keep you from using the computer in inappropriate ways (Protected Media Path, Driver Signing, Secure Boot). I don't see how he's wrong.

Somebody in the Chinese government seems to have noticed, and is now trying to get Windows banned there.

My hope is that all who take this like will grow up and abandon their zealotry before they enter the workforce.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." - George Bernard Shaw

Richard Stallman is full of crap if he is claiming that Windows is endemically, technically less secure. Anyone remember the Pwn2Own games? Anyone remember what OS fell first every time? Thats right, fully patched OSX (think that changed ~2012). This could turn into a debate lasting days, but suffice it to say that from a technical level Windows is pretty secure.

You totally misunderstand Stallman's point. Stallman is not arguing that open source leads to better quality software. That would be Eric Raymond. Stallman is arguing that you can't trust Microsoft. More of an Auguste Kirchhoffs interpretation. And I don't see what OSX has to do with free software.

Stallman objects to closed source philosophically, and Windows especially. In addition to being proprietary, Stallman is arguing that Windows has features to report your use of Microsoft software and potentially lock you out (Windows Activation), to add or delete software without warning (Windows Update), to track you across any device around the world (Microsoft Account), and to keep you from using the computer in inappropriate ways (Protected Media Path, Driver Signing, Secure Boot). I don't see how he's wrong.

Somebody in the Chinese government seems to have noticed, and is now trying to get Windows banned there.

My hope is that all who take this like will grow up and abandon their zealotry before they enter the workforce.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." - George Bernard Shaw

Richard Stallman is full of crap if he is claiming that Windows is endemically, technically less secure. Anyone remember the Pwn2Own games? Anyone remember what OS fell first every time? Thats right, fully patched OSX (think that changed ~2012). This could turn into a debate lasting days, but suffice it to say that from a technical level Windows is pretty secure.

You totally misunderstand Stallman's point. Stallman is not arguing that open source leads to better quality software. That would be Eric Raymond. Stallman is arguing that you can't trust Microsoft. More of an Auguste Kirchhoffs interpretation. And I don't see what OSX has to do with free software.

Stallman objects to closed source philosophically, and Windows especially. In addition to being proprietary, Stallman is arguing that Windows has features to report your use of Microsoft software and potentially lock you out (Windows Activation), to add or delete software without warning (Windows Update), to track you across any device around the world (Microsoft Account), and to keep you from using the computer in inappropriate ways (Protected Media Path, Driver Signing, Secure Boot). I don't see how he's wrong.

Somebody in the Chinese government seems to have noticed, and is now trying to get Windows banned there.

My hope is that all who take this like will grow up and abandon their zealotry before they enter the workforce.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." - George Bernard Shaw

Richard Stallman is full of crap if he is claiming that Windows is endemically, technically less secure. Anyone remember the Pwn2Own games? Anyone remember what OS fell first every time? Thats right, fully patched OSX (think that changed ~2012). This could turn into a debate lasting days, but suffice it to say that from a technical level Windows is pretty secure.

You totally misunderstand Stallman's point. Stallman is not arguing that open source leads to better quality software. That would be Eric Raymond. Stallman is arguing that you can't trust Microsoft. More of an Auguste Kirchhoffs interpretation. And I don't see what OSX has to do with free software.

Stallman objects to closed source philosophically, and Windows especially. In addition to being proprietary, Stallman is arguing that Windows has features to report your use of Microsoft software and potentially lock you out (Windows Activation), to add or delete software without warning (Windows Update), to track you across any device around the world (Microsoft Account), and to keep you from using the computer in inappropriate ways (Protected Media Path, Driver Signing, Secure Boot). I don't see how he's wrong.

Somebody in the Chinese government seems to have noticed, and is now trying to get Windows banned there.

My hope is that all who take this like will grow up and abandon their zealotry before they enter the workforce.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." - George Bernard Shaw

Except that Microsoft has promised to support Windows 7 until January 2020.

Er, there is a patch for those IE flaws, and it was released prior to full disclosure: https://technet.microsoft.com/...
Theyre also only vaguely sort of issues "in Windows 8.1", in the same way that a safari bug is a flaw in OSX.
The WMF bug was patched 8 years ago.

Hopefully, nothing will keep people interested in developing for Silverlight, given that Silverlight is dead. This isn't the beginning of the end -- the beginning of the end was when Microsoft announced that Silverlight 5, released three years ago, was going to be the last version of Silverlight released. I'm not saying "Silverlight is dead" as hyperbole -- it's officially a discontinued product.

References:

http://social.msdn.microsoft.c...

http://social.msdn.microsoft.c...

It will continue to be supported by Microsoft until 2021, but nothing new's happening with it.

Hopefully, nothing will keep people interested in developing for Silverlight, given that Silverlight is dead. This isn't the beginning of the end -- the beginning of the end was when Microsoft announced that Silverlight 5, released three years ago, was going to be the last version of Silverlight released. I'm not saying "Silverlight is dead" as hyperbole -- it's officially a discontinued product.

References:

http://social.msdn.microsoft.c...

http://social.msdn.microsoft.c...

It will continue to be supported by Microsoft until 2021, but nothing new's happening with it.

It's useless for any reference types (so all collections), since it makes just the reference itself readonly.

But .NET does have true immutable collections with functional updates these days.

The performance hit and need for the runtime is a big problem in many ways. Compiling to native code is the right path to jumping those hurdles. For C#, .NET Native is quite interesting. I can think of so many ways MS could ruin this, but the prospect of a stand-alone exe compiled from C# is exiting.

Oh, we're Sooooo sorry you don't know how to engineer and need code that holds your hand.
Here, maybe this is your speed:
http://office.microsoft.com/en...

and set a new value for an existing index of an array doesn't mean the arrays state will change. hence immutable.

Seriously, though, this discussion was about PC operating systems.

Yet Microsoft is trying to confuse the public by calling Windows RT devices "PCs". (Source)

all new windows apps don't need to be.

only if you're targetting windows phone 7/8 or windows RT. if you're targetting those you either live in Finland or for some reason care about 3% marketshare and already have ios and android versions too and it's not that big of a hit on your budget(or alternatively MS just gave you a chunk of money to do it).

also what I heard is that qt is working on winRT support.

anyhow, simplest way to do desktop(x86) and windows-store apps at the moment seems to be writing them for directx 11.

(anyhow, you can use c++ for store apps, http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-u... )

For that matter, you can write native "Metro" apps using Javascript (link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-u...)

There is no requirement to use C#.

meh, get yourself the portable version of Firefox which will run on anything

How so? The "Software Restriction Policies" feature of Windows (branded AppLocker since Windows 7) lets the administrator configure the computer to refuse to execute any executables not on the administrator's whitelist.

. So if any of your users use Internet Explorer on Windows Vista, you're stuck on IE 9. And if IE 12 doesn't come out before January of next year, Windows 7 users will be stuck on IE 11.

You are not stuck if you don't use IE.

IE 11 already supports some of WebGL.

Microsoft stops porting new versions of IE to a Windows version for which "mainstream support" has ended, which happens roughly two years after the following major version of Windows comes out. After that, all users get is "extended support", which means five years of security updates for the existing versions of IE. So if any of your users use Internet Explorer on Windows Vista, you're stuck on IE 9. And if IE 12 doesn't come out before January of next year, Windows 7 users will be stuck on IE 11.

Except most Windows 7 editions doesn't support Bitlocker - only Enterprise and Ultimate.

I'm wondering who the fuck trusts MS enough to use Bitlocker. I don't.

The US Government?

Except most Windows 7 editions doesn't support Bitlocker - only Enterprise and Ultimate.

I'm wondering who the fuck trusts MS enough to use Bitlocker. I don't.

Except most Windows 7 editions doesn't support Bitlocker - only Enterprise and Ultimate.

The exact words (my emphasis) go:

All x86-based Certified For Windows 8 PCs must meet several requirements related to Secure Boot:

They must have Secure Boot enabled by default.

They must trust Microsoft’s certificate (and thus any bootloader Microsoft has signed).

They must allow the user to configure Secure Boot to trust other bootloaders.

They must allow the user to completely disable Secure Boot.

why don't you use the 64 bit compilers and linkers? Linking is usually where I see the 2GB memory hit with insane numbers of static libs, and I have seen people go well beyond this with the 64 bit linker instead of using the x86_amd64 cross compiler/linker tools. I think you have to install them separately so you may have missed them. way back in vs 2010 here is a thread about it: http://social.msdn.microsoft.c... but you should be able to find the 64 bit toolset and info elsewhere.

And the analogue triggers?

You might also want to look at this, where Microsoft admits that Xbox 360 controllers have problems with DirectInput. In my previous example of San Andreas, for example, the triggers don't work correctly and the right analogue stick doesn't work at all.

Office for Mac always had differences from the Windows versions.The dates functions in Excel were always a problem since the epoch on Windows was different from the one on Mac OS. http://support.microsoft.com/k...

The only real push Microsoft made was to unify the file formats, which happened with Office for Mac 4.2. The Mac version also lacked a proper Outlook client between Office 2001 and Office 2011, you got that Entourage program for mail and contacts instead.

Stop with this tablet crap, nobody wants it.

What do we want? the REAL surface.

Give us a 40" desk surface like you guys demonstrated over 5 years ago.

So, the Samsung SUR40? http://www.microsoft.com/en-us...

All of the windows apps I want Windows for are win32 and the widgets are un-usably small on 1920x1080 on a 10" screen. Try using Outlook 2010 for example.

Go here and read the item titled "Make text and other items larger or smaller".

And yes, it does work just fine with Outlook 2010.

Microsoft: if you are listening - ADD THE ABILITY TO ZOOM INTO THE CLASSIC DESKTOP

Consider it done. Win-+ to open Magnifier, Win-Esc to close.

Oh hush! How can they blame their lack of knowledge on someone else if you point it out to them? It completely undermines their arguments. It's like the people who whine about the "start" menu - you'd think hitting Esc or the windows key again didn't make the "bad man" go away, or that the touch interface somehow disabled the keyboard.

At their core, (almost) all of these complaints boil down to this guy:
"I want better products for free", which is the end result of this guy's argument:
I want a smaller, lighter tool with a bigger screen and keyboard, at higher res, with a longer battery life, less weight, and cheaper price.

Me? I want a car that seats 8 comfortably, does 0-60 in 3 seconds, doesn't need gas or to be plugged in, just runs for a year on an oz of water and folds up to fit in my pocket so I don't need a place to park. Don't tell me why I can't have it, just make it happen. Oh, and it should cost less than a used Honda, because it fits in my pocket so it shouldn't cost that much.

They still sell those: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us...

Microsoft: if you are listening - ADD THE ABILITY TO ZOOM INTO THE CLASSIC DESKTOP

Consider it done. Win-+ to open Magnifier, Win-Esc to close.

Posted the wrong link.

Spec file here.

Specs and prices are available in this file: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2014/may14/05-20surfacepr.aspx.

Unfortunately at no price point will they go above 8GB RAM.

I'll pay more for 16GB RAM! I guarantee other people are out there waiting for the 16GB model. Please MSFT, manufacture a 16GB RAM model.

... which is getting progressively less open, as more and more things move from the OS proper to Play Services (which is both closed and heavily license encumbered.)

Utter bull. Play store is included with AOSP. THe service itself is hosted, and most certainly not a "part of the OS" (particularly as you are able to side load and install third party stores, like Amazon's).

The Blink rendering engine was forked because it was being developed by Apple with a lot of apple-specific stuff, like the Safari-only JS engine (which chrome never used), and it made zero sense to continue to be tied down. Blink does, however, remain open source, so im not clear what your beef is.

... which is a meaningless phrase, since it's just as "open" as every other functional e-mail service

No, not even remotely. Try exporting your email and contacts out of AOL or Verizon. Google has always been one of (if not THE) best in terms of getting your data out of their systems. As a general rule, they tend to actually follow standards, and when the existing standard isnt working, they tend to make a new one and release the specs.

You mentioned Outlook: lets have a look at exporting data from them:
Export Outlook items to an Outlook Data File (.pst)

Yea, thats super open. A PST file: a proprietary, poorly understood format that requires Outlook to pull data from. Compare to Google, where you can get a zip file of all of your data to be used with whatever you want.

Started Linux with RedHat in the mid 90's I gave up in disgust when I couldn't create the "partitions" or split up the hard drive as required. I've been doing the same for a while with Mint over many installations, this one time I let Mint select it's placement, as it's never put itself where I've suggest it to.

When Grub was my bootloader the problems really started, of all the things that doesn't have a GUI it's grub; I've complained recently that everything was GUI. Linux is a learning process to many (myself included) nothing to put on-line blind (while a firewall is available it's off and has zero settings, not even examples.

I knew Mint would claim the boot but also expected EasyBCD (NeoSmart Technologies) to fix it, as it's been very good at that.

I've always had a dual boot system, having Linux Mint available would work just fine. Yet working with Grub is no easy task. Some don't even mess with Grub they just select the drive from the BIOS when their computer starts. http://community.linuxmint.com... this one creates two grubs - I don't see it
http://www.howtoforge.com/dual... Just saying many avoid Grub, in one way or the other.

I had to be at the computer when it started to select windows, or have to reboot; playing around with Mint and having to use it are two different things; EasyBCD was of no help...

So I reinstalled Win7; I had been planning to reinstall Win7 as it was showing signs that it was time. It's no big deal (normally) C:\ drive is my Win7 Drives D,E,F,G,H,I,J,K,L (total of three drives) are support, another OS, or storage. I just format C drive, reinstall windows, the drivers and my favorite programs; 2 hours time I can be up and running with my base system.

Now here's where I came across Microsoft messing with those who use Linux; once a MBR has been touched by Linux, Windows won't have anything to do with it, and it's a damn pain.

This time the Win7 install claimed "Setup was unable to create a new system partition or locate an existing system partition" (a new one for me) I was able to continue on, it gave me a 100K boot partition, and Win7 partition, this screwed up my drive arrangement (my drives are named Drive_D, and so on). I formatted the drive again using Hirens boot disk 14 and Win7 install format both. This time I couldn't install Win7 at all, there's even a "FAST PUBLISH" "as-is in response to emerging issues". Support.microsoft.com/kb/2272294 claiming the partition the BOOTMGR is located must be in 4K clusters (NTFS is 4K clusters).

Searching for the problem, the accepted fix is to disconnect all drives except the one to hold Win7. I did that, no big deal as it's how I installed Mint without Grub loading Win7; and it worked, but there were problems. Win7 wasn't acting right, things weren't working as they should if at all.

So I started over, all this time the MBR seemed to be the problem but with Win7 formatting it before the install it should of been taken care of that, as well as my using Dart (Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset) http://www.microsoft.com/en-us... to repair the boot structure; specifically the "Bootrec" command. I had every reason to assumed it had been taken care of.

It was only when I specifically wrote the Win7 header to the MBR did everything start working. This was three days into the fiasco.

Until I learn Grub I'm not going there again, and Grub isn't all the friendly.

SCCM supports Linux and OS X clients, but as far as I know it does not support the deployment of task sequences to such clients. A task sequence is what you need to deploy an operating system using SCCM. So, the Linux and OS X boxen were likely spared (unless, by any chance, they deployed it for boot media in addition to SCCM clients and the user happened to insert and boot from SCCM boot media during this time, I guess).

I've created a several Access applications, plus several LAMP-based Internet applications. I've interfaced a lot with non-technical people. They don't GET databases. They don't understand normalization or foreign keys or indexes. They don't understand SQL or joins. It's not their area of expertise. They do the actual work of the charity or the company so I'm not in the least bashing them - but they just don't understand databases.

My experience is that after brief training, they'll get spreadsheets. They understand tables very quickly and easily. Explain to them the concept of worksheets. And there's no complexity in opening an Excel file. You just double-click and you are immediately there, looking at the data. Heck, with some thoughtful use of the individual worksheets in an Excel file, you can even get a hint of normalization. Like putting different geographical regions in different worksheets in a single workbook. Having multiple Excel files (workbooks) for different larger groups. People kind of naturally understand that tree-like data structure.

Many people think Access is a toy. But it's still a database and it uses database concepts and SQL. And that is beyond the ken of non-technical types. Spreadsheets are simply much more understandable to them. And ultimately - much more maintainable. And maintainability and understandability is the key here. The charity is going to be here, on the ground, doing their work, long after you've moved back to the States.

There is a fraction of the learning curve with spreadsheets than there is with any relational database, regardless of whether it's a file-based system or a client-server system.

FYI, here are the Excel load limits.

Try techsoup.org for low-cost MS products (and many other items of interest to tech-deficient non-profits.

Also, there is a free version of SQL Server called Express - it has a 10 Gig limit on each database, but that may suffice.

http://office.microsoft.com/en...

Granted, that's just Office 365. But I would have thought everyone knew there are legit ways to get free or very low cost licenses for every MS product for Non-Profits?

SQL Server Express http://www.microsoft.com/en-us...

Use Access for the forms as the frontend.

You meant SQL Server Express.
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us...

And you may as well say why - it's free and it's SQL so it'll be widely supported in case they need help after you've left.

LibreOffice's Base fulfils the same role as Access. just as good, not as expensive.

Star/Open/Libre Office are shit for anything more than the bare basics.
If that works for you, great. But it's not going to work for anyone trying to do anything moderately complex, and to recommend it as a solution for a use case you know nothing about and will not end up testing or supporting is just wrong.

SQL Server Express is free and comes with limitations, but it should easily handle what they need. It's SQL so it's widely supported. And if they do end up outgrowing the free version they can parlay with an MS reseller for a discounted paid version that does what they need.
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us...

Why do people still pay money for software performing most basic tasks like Word 365? Nowadays, they have millions of alternatives.

I'd be hard put to name ten credible alternatives to the core components of the MS Office suite.

MS Office remains the gold standard for clerical work.

Full time staff. Part-time job. Office temp. Senior Volunteer. It doesn't matter. If you have MS Office skills, you are employable anywhere south of the Artic circle.

If your employer supports Microsoft's Home Use Program, Office Professional Plus 2013 is yours to download for $9.95. Take Office home for just $9.95. Software Assurance Home Use Program

You should look at XAML