I have 8.1. There are some dumb bits. But if you ignore Metro and the app store and lack of start menu, it's not bad on the desktop. I prefer it to Windows 7 in several ways, and it doesn't have all the telemetry, requirements to have Cortana & Edge, forced updates, and other W10 idiocies. Microsoft apologized, a rare event, for Windows 8 in regards to the UI and removal of start button which are basically cosmetic goofs, improves in 8.1, but then turns around and doubles down on stupid ideas in W10...
It's a somewhat recent Microsoft pattern as they've stopped being the only 500 lb gorilla in the room. They see other companies making money and then try to catch up very late to the game, without knowing anything about the field they're determinted to dominate, and ending up failing and being laughed at. The Zune to catch up with the iPod music player boom; Bing to catch up with Google; Windows Phone to catch up with iPhone and Android; the Win CE devices to catch up with Palm; the whole Media Edition fiasco; etc. (They did succeed with Xbox I think, which was either a fluke or else the corporate office wasn't interfering.) So now they're again trying to do catch up with being yet another ad revenue based company, a phone-like applet based company, and yet another misguided attempt to make tablets no one wants. They have not been a leader in technology for a very long time.
Those casual people appear to be the ones that Windows 10 is focusing on, what with the new metro apps and app store, etc. The spyware however affects everyone not just the home users who are leaving. The forced updates is definitely focused on the dumb users. Even in the small business side they're being treated like the dumb users; you can't get the ability to delay updates for a significant time unless you're an Enterprise user.
I agree that Exchange server is still a big lock in the corporate world, but more things are able to talk to it as long as the corporation isn't using Exchange specific features (like sending forms to be filled out). Phones can read email and calandar from exchange server. I do see more corporations using other stuff, especially on the tech side where Windows doesn't offer much if you're not a Windows developer or doing hardware (though more more Linux capable EDA tools now).
This is normally true. However they already have customers leaving Microsoft in droves. They don't need Windows to read email or check twitter, the phones do that now. And the corporate people are now starting to move a bit more to Linux, OSX, web-applications, etc.
But what do you type into the boxes that pop up? I type path to application and it often doesn't work. So I end up duplicating an existing menu/desktopicon, the modifying that. Windows I make a shortcut to the application.
Actually clicking it doesn't accept. The "x" just gets rid of the window. The upgrade is already pre-accepted and scheduled and the user has to take positive action to undo the scheduled upgrade. What's wong is that the "Accept" button at the bottom doesn't do anything really, it just closes the windows the same as the "x" does. They're fooling the user into thinking that by not clicking "Accept" that the upgrade is not yet accepted.
Engineer is not the same as IT flunky (who are generally brainwashed into loving Microsoft anyway). It's like saying "you're a scientist, how come you don't change your own engine oil?" Never mind that doing the IT accepted practice of allowing all recommended updates (which I do not do) is what got the machine upgraded in the first place.
This is *exactly* what this article is about, users are tricked into accepting the upgrade without clicking on "accept". They are NOT voluntarily asking to be upgraded. So why are you defending Microsoft here, why do you still insist that Microsoft would never stoop to dirty tricks, why do you insist it is still the fault of the users despite evidence to the contrary?
The problem is trying to get the user base to move forward. That by itself is hostile to the customer. It is an attitude that the customer is wrong. Then they take is further by forcing the customer to move forward against their will. What other corporation can succeed by insulting and abusing their customer base? Its like an automaker refusing to fix airbags in last year's model in order to force customer's to buy this year's model.
Microsoft should NOT be moving ahead without the customers. There is no reason to do so. There is no mandate to have newer incompatible versions of Windows! The customers have a product that works, a product that is supported for many more years, and they're happy with it. Microsoft should stop and look at what customers like about Windows and what customers dislike about Windows, and Microsoft has NEVER done this as they constantly make changes against what customers like.
Microsoft apologized for Windows 8, but now they are making the same mistakes and doubling down on it.
How do they get left behind? They're still a monopoly in the corporate world. They could have stayed with Windows 7 (or XP) forever and the corporations would have kept with it forever. Instead they are taking an active step to discard their customer base in a vain attempt to attract phone and tablet users, get a piece of the app store pie, and get a piece of the advertising pie. They will lose here. Existing customes will migrate away in disgust, and new customers will not show up.
Had my brother claim Windows would never do this, and he's a Microsoft hater. The knee jerk reaction is just to blame the user (must have clicked somewhere accidentally), because it's unthinkable that a major corporation would release the poison voluntarily.
Linux really needs to start standardizing and not completely changing how stuff works ever few years. I used to know how to do everything in Linux but now it's too complicated. Even simple actions like adding an icon for the desktop to do a custom command is complicated and undocumented. Worse is you can't google for it, it'll show you ubuntu if you're using xubuntu, or ubuntu 15 if you're using ubuntu 16. VMware insists on breaking every time you update the Linux image (such as time refusing to sync with the host computer). It's a never ending learning curve, great for techies who use it everyday and who's focus is on Linux itself, but annoying as hell if you just wanted to get some work done.
I would. The only thing keeping me on a PC are games. And that includes a lot of older games in the closet. New Steam stuff won't solve that (and it's yet another company saying "please trust us implicitly", also with mandatory forced upgrades). WINE won't solve all of it either. What I can do is when support expires I can disconnect the computer from the internet and keep it going that way.
Malware authors don't have PR specialists on staff. Microsoft does. And the PR people probably suggested that at least allow the victims to click a button first so that MS can claim they didn't install anything without permission.
Just look at the naive excuses Microsoft gives out, even with this latest fiasco.
"Based on customer feedback, in the most recent version of the Get Windows 10 (GWX) app, we confirm the time of your scheduled upgrade and provide you an additional opportunity for cancelling or rescheduling the upgrade." (it's what customers wanted!)
"With the free Windows 10 upgrade offer ending on 29 July, we want to help people upgrade to the best version of Windows." (they're being helpful!)
""Customers can choose to accept or decline the Windows 10 upgrade." (so it must be the customer's fault)
I agree, the whole Windows obsessed IT magazine market have never said anything even remotely bad about Windows or Microsoft except for the occasional nit place far down in the column (after the 99 reasons to upgrade now). They barely acknowledge the existence of competitors, and have served as apologists for Microsoft constantly (after all you have to upgrade someday or you'll go to jail, so they're helping you!). Of course, they'll all paid from Redmond.
It's like the 70s again, where "no one got fired for buying IBM", only with more religious fervor.
Hi, we replaced your car with a Yugo while it was in the shop. This should provide you with a better driving experience. After all you're going to have to upgrade eventually, so we made it easy for you.
The thing is, their core bread and butter is the corporare office, not the home users. And yet they are completely alienating the corporate world, the developer world, and any professional who uses Windows. The only traction they get in the corporate world is because of brainwashed IT staff who take orders from Redmond. They really can't be so stupid that they would shoot their golden goose, and yet it seems they have.
I can't imagine what internal developers at Microsoft are thinking, they're probably in a state of depression or trying to make their resumes look good without having the word "Microsoft" appear.
There was also policy not to show too much skimpy attire in advertisements, meant to block your typical Budweiser beach bikini ads (drink our beer and these girls might talk to you!). Facebook should have just stuck with that reasoning from the start, or maybe say "our robot filters were confused by the skin to bathing suit ratio" here.
The Dell I last purchased came with a chiclet keyboard, same as the external Apple keyboard only black. I don't mind them myself, I got used to it and can type as fast or faster than I could before (touch typist), and the office is much quieter with those types of keyboards. No one seriously uses the laptop's own keyboard on any model of laptop if there's any real keyboard nearby.
I don't like the MacBook air, they trimmed out too many features, fewer ports (so you can plug in stuff to make it more usable), etc. My current MacBook Pro at work is fine enough, which it had more disk (for vmware). But if they remove the function keys then that's pretty stupid, this is the "PRO" laptop not the "I'm just a dumb exec" laptop.
I had one outage. My data cap is actually increasing. Price has stayed the same. And it's internet only.
Oh, my netflix subscription went up too, but that's fine with me since prices always change and they gave existing users a year at the old price anyway, but that didn't stop slashdot users from complaining about it.
Slashdot Mirror
I have 8.1. There are some dumb bits. But if you ignore Metro and the app store and lack of start menu, it's not bad on the desktop. I prefer it to Windows 7 in several ways, and it doesn't have all the telemetry, requirements to have Cortana & Edge, forced updates, and other W10 idiocies. Microsoft apologized, a rare event, for Windows 8 in regards to the UI and removal of start button which are basically cosmetic goofs, improves in 8.1, but then turns around and doubles down on stupid ideas in W10...
It's a somewhat recent Microsoft pattern as they've stopped being the only 500 lb gorilla in the room. They see other companies making money and then try to catch up very late to the game, without knowing anything about the field they're determinted to dominate, and ending up failing and being laughed at. The Zune to catch up with the iPod music player boom; Bing to catch up with Google; Windows Phone to catch up with iPhone and Android; the Win CE devices to catch up with Palm; the whole Media Edition fiasco; etc. (They did succeed with Xbox I think, which was either a fluke or else the corporate office wasn't interfering.) So now they're again trying to do catch up with being yet another ad revenue based company, a phone-like applet based company, and yet another misguided attempt to make tablets no one wants. They have not been a leader in technology for a very long time.
Those casual people appear to be the ones that Windows 10 is focusing on, what with the new metro apps and app store, etc. The spyware however affects everyone not just the home users who are leaving. The forced updates is definitely focused on the dumb users. Even in the small business side they're being treated like the dumb users; you can't get the ability to delay updates for a significant time unless you're an Enterprise user.
I agree that Exchange server is still a big lock in the corporate world, but more things are able to talk to it as long as the corporation isn't using Exchange specific features (like sending forms to be filled out). Phones can read email and calandar from exchange server. I do see more corporations using other stuff, especially on the tech side where Windows doesn't offer much if you're not a Windows developer or doing hardware (though more more Linux capable EDA tools now).
This is normally true. However they already have customers leaving Microsoft in droves. They don't need Windows to read email or check twitter, the phones do that now. And the corporate people are now starting to move a bit more to Linux, OSX, web-applications, etc.
But what do you type into the boxes that pop up? I type path to application and it often doesn't work. So I end up duplicating an existing menu/desktopicon, the modifying that. Windows I make a shortcut to the application.
Actually clicking it doesn't accept. The "x" just gets rid of the window. The upgrade is already pre-accepted and scheduled and the user has to take positive action to undo the scheduled upgrade. What's wong is that the "Accept" button at the bottom doesn't do anything really, it just closes the windows the same as the "x" does. They're fooling the user into thinking that by not clicking "Accept" that the upgrade is not yet accepted.
Let me guess, you can't uninstall those things, despite the EU ruling that doing that with Internet Explorer was illegal...
Engineer is not the same as IT flunky (who are generally brainwashed into loving Microsoft anyway). It's like saying "you're a scientist, how come you don't change your own engine oil?" Never mind that doing the IT accepted practice of allowing all recommended updates (which I do not do) is what got the machine upgraded in the first place.
This is *exactly* what this article is about, users are tricked into accepting the upgrade without clicking on "accept". They are NOT voluntarily asking to be upgraded. So why are you defending Microsoft here, why do you still insist that Microsoft would never stoop to dirty tricks, why do you insist it is still the fault of the users despite evidence to the contrary?
The problem is trying to get the user base to move forward. That by itself is hostile to the customer. It is an attitude that the customer is wrong. Then they take is further by forcing the customer to move forward against their will. What other corporation can succeed by insulting and abusing their customer base? Its like an automaker refusing to fix airbags in last year's model in order to force customer's to buy this year's model.
Microsoft should NOT be moving ahead without the customers. There is no reason to do so. There is no mandate to have newer incompatible versions of Windows! The customers have a product that works, a product that is supported for many more years, and they're happy with it. Microsoft should stop and look at what customers like about Windows and what customers dislike about Windows, and Microsoft has NEVER done this as they constantly make changes against what customers like.
Microsoft apologized for Windows 8, but now they are making the same mistakes and doubling down on it.
How do they get left behind? They're still a monopoly in the corporate world. They could have stayed with Windows 7 (or XP) forever and the corporations would have kept with it forever. Instead they are taking an active step to discard their customer base in a vain attempt to attract phone and tablet users, get a piece of the app store pie, and get a piece of the advertising pie. They will lose here. Existing customes will migrate away in disgust, and new customers will not show up.
Had my brother claim Windows would never do this, and he's a Microsoft hater. The knee jerk reaction is just to blame the user (must have clicked somewhere accidentally), because it's unthinkable that a major corporation would release the poison voluntarily.
Linux really needs to start standardizing and not completely changing how stuff works ever few years. I used to know how to do everything in Linux but now it's too complicated. Even simple actions like adding an icon for the desktop to do a custom command is complicated and undocumented. Worse is you can't google for it, it'll show you ubuntu if you're using xubuntu, or ubuntu 15 if you're using ubuntu 16. VMware insists on breaking every time you update the Linux image (such as time refusing to sync with the host computer). It's a never ending learning curve, great for techies who use it everyday and who's focus is on Linux itself, but annoying as hell if you just wanted to get some work done.
I would. The only thing keeping me on a PC are games. And that includes a lot of older games in the closet. New Steam stuff won't solve that (and it's yet another company saying "please trust us implicitly", also with mandatory forced upgrades). WINE won't solve all of it either. What I can do is when support expires I can disconnect the computer from the internet and keep it going that way.
Malware authors don't have PR specialists on staff. Microsoft does. And the PR people probably suggested that at least allow the victims to click a button first so that MS can claim they didn't install anything without permission.
Just look at the naive excuses Microsoft gives out, even with this latest fiasco.
"Based on customer feedback, in the most recent version of the Get Windows 10 (GWX) app, we confirm the time of your scheduled upgrade and provide you an additional opportunity for cancelling or rescheduling the upgrade." (it's what customers wanted!)
"With the free Windows 10 upgrade offer ending on 29 July, we want to help people upgrade to the best version of Windows." (they're being helpful!)
""Customers can choose to accept or decline the Windows 10 upgrade." (so it must be the customer's fault)
I agree, the whole Windows obsessed IT magazine market have never said anything even remotely bad about Windows or Microsoft except for the occasional nit place far down in the column (after the 99 reasons to upgrade now). They barely acknowledge the existence of competitors, and have served as apologists for Microsoft constantly (after all you have to upgrade someday or you'll go to jail, so they're helping you!). Of course, they'll all paid from Redmond.
It's like the 70s again, where "no one got fired for buying IBM", only with more religious fervor.
Hi, we replaced your car with a Yugo while it was in the shop. This should provide you with a better driving experience. After all you're going to have to upgrade eventually, so we made it easy for you.
But what's worse? Ransomeware trojan from visiting an unsecure site, or ransomeware Windows 10?
The thing is, their core bread and butter is the corporare office, not the home users. And yet they are completely alienating the corporate world, the developer world, and any professional who uses Windows. The only traction they get in the corporate world is because of brainwashed IT staff who take orders from Redmond. They really can't be so stupid that they would shoot their golden goose, and yet it seems they have.
I can't imagine what internal developers at Microsoft are thinking, they're probably in a state of depression or trying to make their resumes look good without having the word "Microsoft" appear.
They tested with barley, or were they imbibing barley while testing?
But Microsoft says it's ok, and we all love Microsoft here, right?
There was also policy not to show too much skimpy attire in advertisements, meant to block your typical Budweiser beach bikini ads (drink our beer and these girls might talk to you!). Facebook should have just stuck with that reasoning from the start, or maybe say "our robot filters were confused by the skin to bathing suit ratio" here.
The changes in society being a younger generation that thinks stealing is ok if the product costs more than they want it to?
The Dell I last purchased came with a chiclet keyboard, same as the external Apple keyboard only black. I don't mind them myself, I got used to it and can type as fast or faster than I could before (touch typist), and the office is much quieter with those types of keyboards. No one seriously uses the laptop's own keyboard on any model of laptop if there's any real keyboard nearby.
I don't like the MacBook air, they trimmed out too many features, fewer ports (so you can plug in stuff to make it more usable), etc. My current MacBook Pro at work is fine enough, which it had more disk (for vmware). But if they remove the function keys then that's pretty stupid, this is the "PRO" laptop not the "I'm just a dumb exec" laptop.
I had one outage. My data cap is actually increasing. Price has stayed the same. And it's internet only.
Oh, my netflix subscription went up too, but that's fine with me since prices always change and they gave existing users a year at the old price anyway, but that didn't stop slashdot users from complaining about it.