Samsung: Don't install Windows 10. REALLY Samsung is advising customers against succumbing to Microsoft’s nagging and installing Windows 10. The consumer electronics giant's support staff have admitted drivers for its PCs still don’t work with Microsoft's newest operating system and told customers they should simply not make the upgrade. That’s nearly a year after …
It's more of a proof to never buy a Samsung computer, since it won't invest a penny in the lifecycle of its products.
Microsoft isn't responsible to develop all drivers for all materials, and if a PC makers refuse to invest in the maintenance of their drivers and applications, they sure should choose standard components from company that have an history of maintaining their drivers.
Kind of reminds me when ATI never updated their graphic drivers, condemning their customers to super bad performance and compatibility issues, when NVIDIA did the opposite.
I don't see why Samsung should spend craploads of money just to support Microsoft's insistence on foisting beta-grade software on people who really don't need or want it. I don't know how old on average we're talking about here, but the NP-R590 mentioned in the article is seven bloody years old; at some point, you are going to have to deal with the fact that ancient machines are going to stop getting driver updates.
"I don't see why Samsung should spend craploads of money just to..."
Seriously? So the worlds most popular desktop operating system has been out a year, and you think it's fine for SAMSUNG to not bother updating their drivers for it..? Then who should?
Additionally, I'd wager £10 that the chipset has a driver, but sammy hasn't gotten around to repackaging it with its latest crapware application yet.
Put W10 on a 7 year old Dell Latitude that shipped with Vista. Drivers worked fine out the box, other than SD slot. Used the Vista driver and.... It worked!
It worked because it was just a driver, written properly.
There's few drivers that were certified against Vista, 7 or 8.x that won't work on 10 - same driver architecture. Seems that Sammy haven't written them properly in the first place (they look for a particular version of NT kernel for example), or they package drivers with 3rd party apps that they haven't updated yet.
I'm a firm believer in vendors writing drivers properly, and do not contain applications.
Additionally, I'd wager £10 that the chipset has a driver, but sammy hasn't gotten around to repackaging it with its latest crapware application yet.
I had no idea it was this hard to either visit the AMD, or Intel Website, install a quick javascript package (YIKES!), and let it sus out the the Drivers for you.... At least this is how I used to do it, before I slipstreamed such 'Drivers' onto my Install Media (e.g. a USB Stick), Graphics Hurr durr that'll either be AMD, nVidia, or zark forbid Intel again I'm fairly sure the Sound is likely as not coming from some Realtek AC97 Chipset as not... The Touchpad? Likely either a Synaptics, or an Alps. Isn't this what Device ID's are for?
Its 2016, and, I can Google for my Drivers boo hoo hoo!
Except for when that doesn't work because despite being a perfectly normal AMD/Intel/Nvidia chip that may well work with the chipset OEM's driver, the hardware IDs of the chipset have been slightly altered so that they aren't included in the driver INFs from the chipset OEM.
In some cases, such as AMD and Nvidia graphics drivers this can be worked around by adding the correct hardware IDs to the INF, but this can be a bit fiddly to get right.
With Intel you're mostly stuffed as their chipset setup utility doesn't actually contain and drivers and just downloads the ones it decides you need, which with altered hardware IDs is none at all.
"Its 2016, and, I can Google for my Drivers boo hoo hoo!"
Why do you need to Google for your drivers? Don't they just come with your OS? And are updated via your OS's central update system?
Linux user for 8 years now, mildly amused by all this driver business with Windows that seems to involve downloading random executables from the Internet!
Seriously? So the worlds most popular desktop operating system has been out a year, and you think it's fine for SAMSUNG to not bother updating their drivers for it..? Then who should?
Did the world finally succomb en masse to the Nagware known as Windows 10? Methinks the troll doth protest too much.
"I'm a firm believer in vendors writing drivers properly, and do not contain applications."
And Santa
And fairies.
And unicorns.
And honest politicians.
Reality is... Even with new hardware. The chances of updating Windows and still having full functionality is NOT GUARANTEED. Never has been. Never will be.
NOT A NEW PROBLEM!
So tell me.
Who do you think causes the need for new drivers to exist?
Well I have upgraded an Asus EEEpc 1008HA (from mid 2009) to Windows 10, no problem. I just upgraded a 10 year old Core 2 Duo (P965 chipset) as well, no problem.
Certain device makers are just terrible at updating drivers. Broadcom has been pretty bad. Samsung is terrible (just look at the pathetic state of their tablets, which hardly ever get any of the updates they promise).
Of course if you want to avoid support for your hardware going away, best bet seems to be running Linux. Strange how we got to that state.
Several ASUS and no problem. [Not even THAT UEFI problem].
Betting on firmware problems. Motherboard &/| Devices.
Just as Microsoft has a grip on the Upper side of the Boot Stack. PC|MB Manufacturers should have TOTAL control on firmware images below the OS I/O.
A firmware should be true to identity with a 'witness' provided by the manufacturer, on committing the update.
[New-System|User to personalize later, through the OS, preferentially].
If Samsung not co-working on the issue, then those machines should be dismissed from the Update Program.
The user updating|refreshing the BIOS|UEFI to the latest use to help a lot.
Damaged Peripheral Firmware is just a nightmare -as is now, for every OS-!
On the other hand, my Asus G51 gets locked into a perpetual reboot and can't find any storage media during the Win 10 upgrade. I really don't expect them to release new drivers and BIOS for a six year old machine. I wish MS would stop trying to push the upgrade because their compatibility check obviously isn't taking the BIOS into account.
"...my Asus G51 gets locked into a perpetual reboot..."
THAT'S the UEFI problem.
Update UEFI, trough their own tools.
Never there. But my guess is that Windows Update will continue after this firmware UPD.
Helpful also to enter UEFI setup and Set to 'Secure Boot' and Unset the 'Compatible-Mode'. Clean, refreshed BIOSes don't have this problem.
"Well I have upgraded an Asus EEEpc 1008HA (from mid 2009) to Windows 10, no problem. I just upgraded a 10 year old Core 2 Duo (P965 chipset) as well, no problem."
I just tried that tonight on Asus EeePC, an X101CH. Windows 10 refused to install because Intel didn't supply upgraded video chipset drivers. At least now I know I won't get hoodwinked into an unintended "upgrade" by closing a requester window and finding close means yes instead of no.
In light of this, I'm a little surprised at the existence of this story. Surely the Windows 10 "upgrade" should refuse to install if there's not a full set of compatible drivers available, especially network drivers.
Same issue on a (whisper it) Mac Mini.
Disabled the Intel driver, installed at a ridiculously low resolution, when it came back it seemed to have magically found an updated driver, reset the resolution.
Made sure to select custom install, disabled the "phone home" options - the ones that are user settable at least. Was still dismayed that Microsoft decided that it should delete Minesweeper and XP Mode.
"Of course if you want to avoid support for your hardware going away, best bet seems to be running Linux. Strange how we got to that state".
Speaking as a lifetime Unix user, and an occasional Linux device driver writer, and as sometime who recently had to take a hammer to his wife's computer after it announced that it was going to 'upgrade' to Windoze 10 in 5 minutes...
Not quite. Keeping up-to-date with kernel changes is a major, major, PITA. I did a PCIe driver a few years ago, which was originally for 2.4.7. There were significant or major changes in so many kernel versions that I lost count - 2.4.10, 2.4.17, 2.4.22, 2.6, whatever, not to mention the whole v3 and 4 thing. The only way to keep on top of it is to select a major distro - something like RHEL6 - and try to support that.
The kernel people will update a few selected drivers (which I've never heard of) when they make a change, but the rest of us are on our own, with little or no usable documentation.
I was wondering why Linux hadn't "conquered the world", seeing as we have, decades of Windows tepidity. Displacement Activity has given a first hint. Direction.
I might add the eternal baseline advice: if things seem to need changing, it might really be MS working your brain. They want you to think that their technology is worth emulating.
My EeePC 1015PX initially upgraded to Win10 OK (from Win7 Starter), sans webcam/mic and Asus specific Power Management nonsense.
Unfortunately six months on, and after the last Win 10 upgrade, it now locks up completely and spontaneously at random intervals - something to do with the Wifi I think as I sometimes notice it'll lose WiFi connection a few seconds prior to lock up and if I slam the lid down and get it to hibernate in time, it is sometimes good for a little while and I don't lose all my work when I open the lid again and save what I can.
I've tried quite hard to like Win10, but I think this little netbook is destined for Mint or Lubuntu...
I thought maybe this might mean buying a Samsung was a good idea, though I'd been thinking of a Lenovo "retina" style screen laptop.
I'd probably put Linux Mint on whatever new laptop I buy, unless MS brings out a new OS with the best bits of NT3.51, XP and Windows 7.
Trouble is, you (almost always) have to pay for Microsoft's malware whenever you buy a new machine, before you can throw it away and install a decent OS. I wish I could build myself a new laptop as easily as I can build a new desktop. That would help my anger management no end.
I seem to recall that somewhere in the fine print, the license agreement says "If you are not going to use or do not want or in any way are not satisfied, you can return the software license for a full refund of the software price.
Microsoft says:
How Can I Return a Product for a Refund?
•Return the product within 30 days of purchase date.
•Provide a copy of your original sales receipt, credit card statement, or canceled check.
•Provide complete contact information, including your street address (sorry, no PO boxes), city, state or province, ZIP or postal code, telephone number, and e-mail address (if applicable).
•Uninstall the software product from your computer and any storage devices and delete any backup copies.
•Include all related media and manuals.
•Provide the name and location of the retailer from which you purchased the product.
•Explain briefly why you want to return the product for a refund.
•Send the product, its original packaging, and all related materials via traceable means to our Return Center. For tracking and security reasons, all returns must be sent by FedEx, FedEx Ground, UPS, DHL, or insured U.S. mail with delivery confirmation.
Disagree.
I own an ageing RF710 (one of THE first core i7 laptops).
Its had: a new battery, new CD rom. new speakers ( i vacummed dust off and sucked the paper out of the speaker!) new ram upgrade, new intel wifi / bt card and last month, fresh from Sammys own UK parts distributor a new top chassis including keyboard and glide pad and all the associated electronics.
Thats pretty decent spare availability AFAIAC.
Its never skipped a beat. Best laptop i've ever owned.
This, milord, is my family's axe. We have owned it for almost nine hundred years, see. Of course, sometimes it needed a new blade. And sometimes it has required a new handle, new designs on the metalwork, a little refreshing of the ornamentation . . . but is this not the nine hundred-year-old axe of my family? And because it has changed gently over time, it is still a pretty good axe, y'know. Pretty good.
-The Fifth Elephant
(Sorry, your post just reminded me of this)
It's more of a proof to never buy a Samsung computer, since it won't invest a penny in the lifecycle of its products.
Agreed. As much as I usually find Microsoft is to blame for these sorts of problems, this is an occasion where Samsung seem to be the ones suffering from Cranial-Rectal Insertion. As if my experience with their products hasn't already convinced them to put Samsung on my do-not-buy list (abandoning the Note8 tablet well before it's end-of-life, deciding to sit on warranty repairs for 3 or so weeks before they even look at them, and the shoddy engineering of their flat-panel TVs or at least the ones I've had the misfortune to set-up and troubleshoot), this will definitely make me avoid whenever possible. Would probably be better to buy a cheapass Hisense product, since it won't be any worse in quality while being loads cheaper.
My Note 4 is more computer than phone, so I'm not OT. Works perfectly, regular OS updates, excellent build quality. And gets the inevitable question from fanbois, "It's got a pen, too?" Yep, and it talks to the machine if you leave it behind. I'm OK with Sammy stuff.
I can understand that a company the size of Samsung must really struggle to write drivers for it's hardware 10 months after an Operating System has been released. Clearly this has nothing to do with profit motive and Samsung would just love their customers to upgrade to Windows 10 for free than buy a new PC.
OK, if they'd just brought out a new version, Update at your own risk, maybe.
If they'd tried to help punters with ACCURATE lists of supported hardware, maybe.
If they'd even offered a "check my hardware for compatibility" maybe.
If they'd offered a trial live DVD, even a download of the same, maybe.
BUT THEY DIDN'T, DID THEY? THEY'VE PUSHED AND CONNED AND MANIPULATED IN EVERY WAY THEY KNOW HOW TO GET PEOPLE TO "UPGRADE".
I'd say they've MADE themselves responsible.
Off topic - anyone know how many feet Slurp have left for target practice?
I was pestered into upgrading our Sammy to win10 and it kept on blue screening. It was then that it dawned on me that perhaps, just perhaps, computing is still in the dark ages when it comes to actually working easily. Checking the samsung website told me that I couldn't upgrade my specific model. So, quick uninstall later and I'm left with the incessant requests to upgrade to win10 - aarrgh - I hate computers !!!!
Was the message my laptop displayed to me over the weekend. Needless to say I shut it down immediately and used the other (Linux) laptop to Google for what the virus was I'd somehow installed.
Turns out the virus was called Windows 10 and this was a 'normal' update message from it upon unsleeping, having downloaded some updatey crud...
Utter wankery.
Edit: Not a Sammy lappy, an ASUS Gamer Republic one I recently got for audio work with Reaper, etc
I asked for the upgrade on my PC nearly a month ago and finally gave up waiting to receive any notifications or a download of the update and had to go to the MS site and kick it off manually.
The upgrade went without a hitch and was done in about an hour (excluding the download).
So, as ever with this sort of thing, YMMV...
"You could do what I did... uninstall windows 10 and went back to Windows 7.
This was on my wife's work machine.
I use a Mac and Linux boxes... ;-)"
Exactly what I've just done. I have a relatively average spec Dell Inspiron laptop (yeah, I know...) so I thought I'd use it as the W10 upgrade guinea pig. Learned a lot from the upgrade, like how the Realtek audio applet in Control panel (not the driver, surprisingly) causes Explorer to crash every 5 seconds. But the main thing I found out was that the laptop ran like a dog. I eventually gave up this weekend, flattened the drive and put 7 back on. Apart from 24 hours waiting for Windows Update to actually find anything, followed by another 24 hours while it downloaded and installed 230 updates, things went smoothly and I am now back to a nice snappy Windows 7 installation. Never10 has been used to disable the 10 update and I will keep it on 7 until 7 runs out of support in 2020, or probably sooner if I get bored with it.
And then? Well, I ran Mint off of a bootable USB about a month ago, and it was pretty behaved. Both fast and stable. So I think my laptop's future is secured.
Another thing I learned (if anyone's wondering) is that at the moment both Windows 7 and Windows 10 will still activate on this laptop (10 when i upgraded and 7 when I reinstalled). What happens after July 29th, when the free upgrade expires, I don't know (though I'm wondering if MS will extend the free period...).
> What a prehistoric company microsoft is!
Microsoft is a modern company, and that's the problem. Prehistoric is buying an OS, and getting updates for 5-10 years.
Or as Google said about not having SDcard on tablets, (transferring) local data is from the neolithic age.
Having control of your own OS and data doesn't fit the cloud / SaaS narrative, so it has to be trashed in the tech press as old fashioned. In this new era, nobody is going to write some software and sell it to you honestly. Now it's all about collecting rent.
"Or as Google said about not having SDcard on tablets, (transferring) local data is from the neolithic age."
Yes, I noticed that Android 5 is supposed to have gotten rid of Gallery in favour of some cloud assisted G+ photos rubbish.
Samsung updated my S5 Mini to lollipop over the weekend and kept it remarkably like kit kat, including thankfully SD card access and Gallery for local photos.
I see that someone of very limited memory has down-voted me for stating a fact about Sammy borking Linux installs on some of their kit. Let me refer to an article published here at El Reg with the wonderful title:
"How to destroy a brand-new Samsung laptop: Boot Linux on it"
http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/4/2013/01/31/ubuntu_uefi_bricking_samsung_laptops/#c_1712857
Sammy does not want you installing anything that they are not happy with. They certainly do not want you installing the latest Windows iteration on a older device of theirs when they want to sell you a shiny new one. A tactic that they use across the whole range of their devices. I have in fact a considerable respect for a good deal of their engineering. I do not, however, have any time for their "customer support" policies.
Want to sell you a shiny one....
Ahh but, that's kinda the problem there though isn't it? I mean its kinda difficult to procure said "Shiny", when said OEM has since up, and taken its Ball home with it. What it been, like Two Years ago now?
"Sammy does not want you installing anything that they are not happy with."
I will second that, buddy. I shot off the most vitriolic phone call I've ever made when I rung up Samsung and demanded answers as to why they had failed to include support for a Logitech Bluetooth keyboard that my wife depends on for her Note Pro 12.2 when they did their schtick with Lollipop (of course the Samsung branded keyboards worked just fine).
Blood threatened to splurt from my eyes when they feigned ignorance.
It took a month but they fixed it, the fuckers.
"IF you carefully hand-pick all your components to be Linux compatible."
Certainly used to be true. Back when people used desktop computers, the big brands liked to order motherboards with a couple of power pins swapped over and power supplies to match. They could then charge triple for replacement power supplies and mother boards, and sell complete new computers to people who didn't know they had been tricked. The modern equivalent is to incorporate undocumented parts with odd interfaces or protocols. This makes updating to drivers challenging and forces purchase of a complete new laptop.
Buy from some no-name manufacturer. They do not have the resources to get odd components to work at all, so they go for generic standard chips with documentation that does not have an NDA requiring you sacrifice your first born if anyone reads it. These days, Distributors Own Brand is available with no installed OS - the secret code for 'we know you are going to install Linux, but someone would cancel marketing support incentives if we said "all the required drivers have been in the main line Linux kernel for years".'
If you are not that brave, just buy a Pi. The new ones run libreoffice fine.
In recent years I really haven't had to put much effort into buying / building a Linux-compatible computer. It's all pretty much just worked.
The only exceptions I can think of are: (a) needing a little 3rd-party magic to upload firmware to a USB WiFi adapter, and (b) very disappointing scanner drivers for a Brother all-in-one.
IF you carefully hand-pick all your components to be Linux compatible.
Yup. Every machine I've picked up with my hands has been Linux compatible (although on occasion I've had to choose a different version to what I might've preferred) - is that "hand-picked" enough for you?.
I still have not once seen Linux re-install drivers simply because I plugged my mouse or kb into a different USB port, unlike windows where I might need to sit and wait for some minutes for my machine to be accessible because windows still can't figure out that it already has the drivers and doesn't need to install them, let alone spend ages faffing around trying to download them. I'm screwed if I turned off the wireless before I moved the port.
I still haven't once seen Windows install all the hardware for a very common/basic laptop (eg Dell Latitude) - you'd think with all the shills like yourself promoting MS's supposed great driver support that they might've actually done something about having driver support by now..
I've yet to see Linux take more than an hour to install and update a machine, and you can use your machine while you're installing the system with most Linux distros (at least most I've tried). I've yet to see Windows take less than 3 hours to install. And updates? Forget using your machine for the first day if you want to use one that is as updated as you can get it.
(must remember to sleep before typing...)
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"And you can confirm they have 100% driver support?" TBH, I'm trying to remember the last time I had any trouble with any OS automatically finding a driver for a device! Must be a good few years now. And that's Linux, Unix or Windows, they've all become pretty good at it, which makes the Samsung situation even more shocking. When we tested Win10 on its release it was boringly reliable to install on current kit, so much so we actually tried doing stupid tricks like loading it onto twelve-year-old PCs and old laptops we dug out of the back of the cupboard. To our surprise, not a single failure, covering Lenovo/IBM, Dell, HP and Fujitsu kit. TBH, Samsung's tardiness is very surprising given their image as a quality brand.
Most of the boxes I've hit with the official Win10 distro have installed cleanly, with only a couple needing drivers hunting down.
Doesn't mean it's bug-free though. A couple of laptops have "certified" wireless drivers (included in the distro) which work only about 10% of the time. For some reason, the built in "troubleshooter" actually resolves this, when a clean boot doesn't. Restarting, or even just logging off, returns you to the non-working state.
Presumably, "certified" just means that the driver compiled without errors in the listing.
"Perfect time to upgrade to one the many wonderful Linux distros available for free download :)"
Yes and then when you go tell people which wonderful distro you installed you get told 18 times in 2 minutes --
"Oh you installed the wrong distro mate!"
I'm not wrong am I, let's be honest here.
<quote>Once you do that you're no longer afraid of anything that Linux might throw your way.
Except maybe systemd :)</quote>
Oh, yes, Poettering's vision of the Windows registry foisted upon Linux.
$DEITY help us all.
(As an aside, wasn't HE the one who 'created' PulseAudio??? Another clusterfuck!)
Linux is mixed news W.R.T. drivers.
The Linux community does change device driver models from time to time, but they cover that off by updating all the drivers in the kernel tree so almost no one notices.
The trouble comes when you're using a driver that the community hasn't (for whatever reason) adopted, and you're then left dependent on someone else bringing their code up to date.
The policy that the kernel's internals should not be considered stable is a real nuisance sometimes! Of course that's all fair enough - they're doing things the way they want to, and we're all grateful for their generosity.
If one needs a real time OS and is writing one's own drivers the question arises, "Is Linux the best thing on which to base this system given that the kernel internals aren't stable?". The answer to that is irrelevant, because Linux is about the only OS out there that gets thoroughly updated to exploit Intel's latest and greatest and has a real time version available (PREEMPT_RT).
Don't know if it still holds true but Solaris/opensolaris was the best I've seen for cross-version driver compatability. Next would be Linux and BSD communities which at least try to support the old stuff. Way down the list comes Windows, I'm not sure why they need the driver-churn but it must be keeping some QA people on their toes.
Mine's the one with the DOS boot disks with tuned config.sys autoexec.bat driver setups in the pocket.
"Broadcomm Virtual Wireless Adapter" covers a multitude of actual devices for which there is still no driver support - drop outs and other problems are legion with their attempts so far - same issue with more than a few Dell Inspiron.
While it's a Broadcomm issue - it's ultimately the genius at Dell/Samsung who decided to save a dollar a unit shipping crap from Broadcomm instead of a decent supplier - problems with Broadcomm Wi-Fi drivers are hardly news as any Linux user will testify.
Intel wireless aren't all that hot either. Suffering from random failures to connect to known networks. Not sure how much is driver, how much is windows, and how much is the selection of wireless routers that I connect to (not exactly bulletproof high quality router at home or at work).
Mine worked perfectly under XP and 7, but 10 just claims that it is unable to connect. When I run the "troubleshooter", 10 works, but then I have to jump through hoops to get the GPOs applied. One laptop is HP, the other Lenovo. Both have Intel WLAN.
Hardly end-user territory.
Support is poor for these chipsets which makes Linux largely unusable on machines with their hardware.
Better not tell this machine that, it might decide to stop working! Oh, wait, it runs Linux fine. Can't upgrade to 10 despite only being 3yrs old (well, WiFi won't work with it for a start), but that's Linux driver support for you - vastly superior to what that other crowd offers.
I got one of those, it worked fine after upgrade, and then I disabled it as the login reliability was just as pathetic as it was under W7,W8 and W8.1. It's quicker just entering a password than multiple finger swipes then followed by a password as it eventually fails.
I've never had that issue. I have an 8 year old Asus laptop with a fingerprint reader, and I've used the machine heavily. Reader still works on the first attempt 90% of the time, same as it ever did, and I've used it a lot.
The laptop came with Vista, but it has also run XP (for 7 years) and 10 (about 4 hours), and the reader worked under both of those too. It's now on 7, and the reader works there too.
Microsoft, knowing that the 'upgrade' to MS 10 will not work, will presumably not push the automatic upgrade out to Samsung machines. Or, maybe, if it does then MS will pay for someone to downgrade the machine again.
Oh, I thought not.
So: when we were told ''you are better off with Microsoft for their support than you are with Linux'' - what did they really mean ?
Remember when Samsung destroyed Android user's phone perfromance because they thought that any old filesystem would do on the Galaxy S?
Remember when Samsung's smart TVs stopped using YouTube because they shipped with a player app that was using a protocol that was already deprecated, and Samsung never bothered to provide an in-field update?
Remember when Samsung told angry customers that it was only required to support devices for two years from date of product launch, not date of sale, despite it keeping devices like the GalaxyS4 on market four years after launch?
Remember when Samsung "forgot" to encrypt user's audio commands for its voice-activated TVs, and remember when someone discovered that they were always listening too?
Remember when Samsung interfered with the Windows Updates application installed on its laptops to countermand user requests for updates, and thus prevent users receiving ANY software updates, including security patches?
Remember when Samsung's cack-handed modification of SwiftKey's auto-updater left a back-door malware installation vector on 500 million devices?
Remember when simply installing Linux on a Samsung laptop turned it into a paperweight?
Yes, I can see this being all Microsoft's fault, alright...
Samsung is what is wrong with South Korea all wrapped up in one mega corrupt conglomerate. After all if you don't get good enough grades (ie if you dare sleep enough) to get a job with one of the dozen basically government ran conglomerates its suicide for you.
"Samsung is what is wrong with South Korea all wrapped up in one mega corrupt conglomerate. After all if you don't get good enough grades (ie if you dare sleep enough) to get a job with one of the dozen basically government ran conglomerates its suicide for you."
You sure you're not thinking of your own country AC?
>>"Samsung is what is wrong with South Korea all wrapped up in one mega corrupt conglomerate. After all if you don't get good enough grades (ie if you dare sleep enough) to get a job with one of the dozen basically government ran conglomerates its suicide for you."
>You sure you're not thinking of your own country AC?
Nah my own country has a much stronger entrepreneurial bend which is what it usually takes to really get ahead. Also individualism being much more important than silly eastern family honor in my culture is a huge difference. Sure crony capitalism is a bit of problem even in my own culture but that seems to be fairly prevalent in most western countries sadly but still no where near the degree of say South Korea.
So: when we were told ''you are better off with Microsoft for their support than you are with Linux'' - what did they really mean ?
We mean: ''we are better off with Microsoft for you support than if you are with Linux'' - I still can't believe that hasn't always been completely obvious to everyone! lulz
Suckers!
--Billy
Samsung budgeted the product lifecycle to cover windows 7 or 8, and didn't bargain on Microsoft changing tactics and "offering" (smashing customers in the face with the install CD, repeatedly) a free upgrade.
Request to upgrade drivers in response to complaints came in, senior staff looked at it and said "Bugger off, they can buy a new laptop we've designed to work with W10"
Simple
Given my experience trying to run various versions of Samsung's horrendous Kies software,
Had completely forgotten about Kies, yet another reason to avoid Scumsung in the future. Luckily I run Linux, so I don't run their abomination.
If it weren't that I'd hate to completely brick my brother's Note8, I'd be flashing it with one of the much better CyanogenMod firmwares for it. I might be doing that with my Barnes&Ignoble Tab4 Nook soon.
I was thinking something along this line as well, but more along the lines of "Will Samsung be reimbursing its users that wanted to make the change to Windows 10, but cant because of there crap drivers?" or "Will Microsoft still allow Samsung customers to upgrade to Win 10 when the drivers are fixed, even if the offer has officially expired?"
Whatever you might think of Win 10, Samsung have had a whole YEAR to solve the problems. It's been clear for a year that Win 10 isn't going away, so to still not have fixed the problem reeks of a complete lack of desire to do the right thing by your customers (i.e. they've already sold the hardware, so they don't feel the need to maintain beyond that). Very much standard Samsung behavior it seems (judging by plenty of other articles I've read recently)...
Sammy just can't be assed to certify older versions with Windows 10 and issues this statement for all older models. Even though really old R728 is officially not compatible it upgraded and works without any issues.
And yeah, if you don't like Broadcom wifi card just buy Atheros or Intel off eBay.
But surely it's easier to whinge on forums than spend 20 dollars to fix the issue.
Can't believe you're getting so many downvotes for stating the obvious. I also have Windows 10 running perfectly fine, including all the laptop special function keys, on a NP-RF511 though officially not supported.
And yes I've swapped out crappy wi-fi modules on a number of laptops over the years, even a PC World Tech Guy should be able to do it.
And yeah, if you don't like Broadcom wifi card just buy Atheros or Intel off eBay.
… and install the drivers from where?
I did this years ago with a Toshiba laptop (P4M 2GHz, so 2004-era) that originally shipped without WiFi. Linux sees the Intel WiFi Mini-PCI card just fine. Windows 2000 and XP both refuse to talk to it.
1. WTF have Microsoft done/needed to do at the driver layer to make Windows 7 drivers break in Windows 10? Does the Windows driver layer really need more fiddling with?
2. Samsung has form when it comes to crappy, bloated and badly written software. I think Samsung's advice says as much about their own driver quality and development process as it does about Microsoft's latest offering.
While Samsung often produce great hardware their device support rarely extends beyond the original driver or firmware available at the time of purchase. Based on their support of Android for Galaxy devices, I'd argue the chance of dedicated Windows 10 drivers ever materializing is rather slim: it isn't like Samsung laptops are that common either... They would rather you spend money on some of their newer hardware instead ! "Would you like a Samsung S Tab to replace that ancient laptop you have there ?"
Having said that your point 1. is spot on.
You know, laptops are not in any shape or form similar to SoCs used in tablets and phones, they use same off-the shelf components as other manufacturers and can use same drivers, so there's no need waiting for Samsung to repackage Realtek driver for you, generic Realtek will work just as good.
Well, OK then. If it is a third party generic component, then Samsung should direct the customer to said component manufacturer to obtain an updated driver.
If it is Samsung's own components then it is their responsibility for issuing updated drivers.
In both cases, just pointing the finger at Microsoft isn't terribly helpful, unless MS buggered the driver layers in Windows 10 so badly that neither generic drivers nor Samsung's work any longer.
I was only making the point that Samsung cannot be bothered with updating firmware for their own SoCs in their own (flagship) phones/phablets/tablets that they produce themselves. That shows they have hopeless after sales support for even their best products. The complexity of the product is irrelevant: if they make it, it is their responsibility to support it.
To answer question 1. MS has told us the sorts of changes they've made between Windows 10 and Windows 7. Obviously these changes are going to affect the usability of drivers that were always poorly written, and probably even well written drivers for complex things like video cards.
(a) Improved utilization of multi-core CPUs.
(b) Power savings for portable devices.
(c) Memory usage reductions.
(d) Reductions in hard drive usage.
So MS had good reason for making its changes.
The thing is, MS should have detected that compatible drivers were not available before suggesting the upgrade.
Samsung may have a software issue but the fact is, this is only a problem because of forced W10 updates.
If they say "don't install W10 on this generation of laptops" the users should be able to say "OK, I won't" without MS shoving it on there anyway.
It may be inconvenient but it's not entirely unreasonable for Samsung to say "these laptops only support W7 and 8.x, sorry"
The Windows 10 nagware typically states "your computer is compatible" in amongst the various green ticks and marketing waffle. Hence, MS need yet another kick up the backside for wrongly stating something is compatible and then borking it via an "update" which shouldn't have been applied in the first place.
Of course, Samsung also deserves some scorn for atrocious driver support as well...
Of course, Samsung also deserves some scorn for atrocious driver support as well...
Hold on. The apps I bought to run under OS A may not run under OS B. Is it up to the app developer to rewrite the app and give it to me free?
I thought not. Samsung may be a crappy company in some respects but they are doing the correct thing for their shareholders. That's capitalism, and if you don't like that, go and live in North Korea or Venezuela.
"this is only a problem because of forced W10 updates."
No this is a problem on Samsung's Android devices too, and MS has nothing to do with those.
MS is at fault of nagging people to do the update more than once a month. MS is at fault for not checking that compatible drivers are available. But most of the problem here is Samsung's greed.
I think it depends on what bargain basement parts have been fitted to the machine. I had a Lenovo with an old intel wireless card. Had to mod the fecking bios to install a different card as they locked it down. Now Windows 10 runs like a dream. I would imagine Samsungs problem is they used cheap parts and their 2 man team for software updates for the entire company are a little over worked.
I wonder why they've changed the driver model yet again. A search suggests it was to support Windows Phone:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/drivers/develop/driver-model-convergence
"To make your device work on Windows and Windows Phone releases before Windows 10, you probably needed to write two separate drivers, for example one for Windows 8.1 and one for Windows Phone 8.1. In Windows 10, in most cases, you can write one driver that will run on any Windows 10 version. This topic describes convergence plans for device driver interfaces in Windows 10 and provides details when there are version-specific differences."
What use is a legacy OS if it doesn't support legacy devices? Microsoft, you're going to be toast when Google delivers on Android on the Desktop... assuming Pichai stops faffing around with his Chrome baby and lets the Android developers storm Microsoft final stronghold.
You can't even make minor tweaks without breaking your userbase.
You honestly believe Chrome on the desktop is going to be compatible with every possible combination of hardware out there?
And to make Android a shining example of backward compatibility? Really?
Good luck getting an app designed for 5 to work perfectly on Android 3 with no major modifications.
@"You honestly believe Chrome on the desktop is going to be compatible with every possible combination of hardware out there?"
I don't care, I think Chrome is a distraction from Android.
@"Good luck getting an app designed for 5 to work perfectly on Android 3 with no major modifications."
So you designed an app to run on Android v5, and then try to port it to an older Android v3 and having difficulty? Bullshit, you just use the Android Support Library, it gives you the v5 specific APIs on older versions of Android.
https://developer.android.com/topic/libraries/support-library/index.html
If you'd written it for v3 it would run on v5 out of the box without even that step. Your FUD works about as well as your drivers do.
...I'd have a Intel wi-fi card slipped in there no problem.
Just be careful as HP locks the wi-fi card to the machine for some Nazi reason. Most others can be fully upgraded.
That or just install the Windows Vista/7/8/8.1 driver for that Broadcomm card.
A lot of the old soundchips in PCs work running 10 with the old Vista driver.
With old kit you just have to get a little creative. It's not impossible.
No they don't. In the past ten years only HP have given that error.
I regularly upgrade older Dell/Toshiba/Lenovo etc. laptops with newer wi-fi cards.
My current Dell has had three over the 8 years I've had it. I swapped a atheros wi-fi card for an Intel in a Lenovo for my Gf last week to make it better for the Kali linux distro she wanted to use to learn some hacking techniques.
This post has been deleted by its author
Why is compatibility suddenly an issue? How much of the kernel did Microsoft change for Windows 10?
Work on Windows Vista began in early 2001. It was released late 2006. Vista took 5 1/2 years to make it out the door. Some things were scrapped and that slowed development. And even then Vista needed service pack 2 before it was a solid product. SP2 was released in early 2009. So it took 8 years before Vista was really good to go. On proper hardware, Vista was not a bad OS after SP2. We expected Vista to have some compatibility issues because we were told Microsoft made radical changes for security.
The point is simple: Look how long it took Vista to be really good. It took 2 1/2 years after release just be a good product. What changes did Microsoft make to the kernel of Windows 10 to make compatibility such an issue? It had to be some major ones seeing at all the compatibility issues that exist. P.S. I have also seen some programs that worked happily in Vista, 7, and 8 suddenly not work in 10. A perfect Windows would have been the GUI of 7 with the performance enhancement of 8, except with F8 returned. Two established platform would have required little work and Microsoft could have easily merged the two and easily re-enabled F8 by default. It would be cheap to develop and people would gladly pay a king's ransom for it; I know I would have.
SatNad is book smart but not wise. His mind is filled with buzzword loving jargon like "cloud" and "relevant advertising". In typical Microsoft fashion, they take someone else's idea on how to make money, and they copy it. In this case, Microsoft wants to convert people from a one-time fee to the tablet/phone model of making a fixed percentage of every program sold for it. Such an idea is fine on a tablet/phone where people are not used to buying apps anywhere else but an app store. It won't work on a desktop/laptop where people are used to getting their programs anywhere they want. The book smart, but not real world smart, CEO thinks this is the future and wanted to get there by force. That apparently required a radical redesign of Windows.
It took 8 years for Vista to be ready. Assuming Microsoft learned from the design mistakes on Vista, I expect Windows 10 to finally be a stable OS by 2021. Maybe by then Microsoft will see the light and stop with this UWP nonsense and release a proper desktop/laptop OS.
Of course, the sinister side of me thinks that compatibility problems might be by design. I can't prove it, but I can see why Microsoft would want to. "Sorry, Office 2003 is not compatible. But Office 2016 instead!" I also believe that Microsoft is slowly going to try and force us to buy all our programs through their app store, for our "protection", of course.
"Sorry, Office 2003 is not compatible. But Office 2016 instead!"
Office 2003 is compatible with Win 10. Unfortunately the Office 2003 installer is not. This means that getting Office 2003 on to a Win 10 machine is not a trivial task. You have to really want to do that. As the Office 2003 installer wasn't compatible with Win 8 either, the best way is to install Office 2003 on a Win 7 machine, do an in-place upgrade to Win 8, do another in-place upgrade to Win 8.1, and then do yet another in-place upgrade to Win 10. Doing one in-place upgrade of a Microsoft operating system is asking for trouble. Doing three in a row is a death wish.
LibreOffice offers performance similar to Office 2003. Install that, instead.
Took my Office 2007 [First dual .xls/xlsx archive format (adding upwards compatibility patch)] to w10 without a sweat drop [dropping]. Loading from swap as fast as always [and with a little more RAM headroom].
No, no publicity. Not my OS. And will wait some months until seeing stability and resilience at my wife' system(s).
Nahhh, it's old hardware, and they just can't be bothered when there's all this shiny new they want to sell.
Won't ever buy a Samsung smart TV again because I don't trust them to post the fixes for the security flaws that are undoubtedly in their software or fix the bugs for that matter.
# St*pid editor makes me indent with _
upgrade_to_win10 = True
for hardware in enumerate_hardware():
__ if hardware not in win10_supported_hw:
____ upgrade_to_win10 = False
____ break
if upgrade_to_win10:
__ #upgrade_to_win10 = input("Upgrade to win10? [y/n] ") == 'y'
__ upgrade_to_win10 = True # Satnad sez "F*ck the users"
if upgrade_to_win10:
__ do_upgrade()
I doubt the commentards will even let this get through, but I will try anyway.
Does it really take a year to get drivers working with a laptop like this? I mean pretty much everyone else has, even Sony was able to get their drivers sorted by December last year.
Also, this was a free upgrade offered by MS. Now Samsung has popped up after a year and said, sorry you can't have that upgrade because we couldn't get it working, just before the deadline looms. Are they going to offer their customers a free version, should they want it, after the MS offer has expired?
If it helps, replace MS and Windows 10 with whatever you like.
I have a number of non-Samsung desktop and laptop systems here, several of which shipped with Win 7 and were auto-updated to Win 10 for various reasons. (And some of which are running XP and will not be updated under any circumstances because of certain hardware we need to run for which there are no working drivers beyond XP. There are no drivers because the vendor which made that hardware no longer exists. We do have replacement hardware specified, but given the price of that hardware and the fact that what we have is still working, we are avoiding buying new hardware until current hardware dies. That hardware has been running since 1995 and shows no sign of collapsing any time soon. There might be a reason why the vendor died.) In all but one case everything, including all drivers, worked from day one. In that one case, we had to hunt down drivers at the hardware vendor's site. Then it worked. Those machines which were updated to Win 10 were all updated before the end of August last year. This means that Samsung can't match the performance of even small specialised hardware vendors, who either had proper drivers delivered to Microsoft in time for Win 10 launch, or had proper drivers on their site on time or at least close to the time of product launch. This tells me all I need to know about Samsung policies, and that we will not be buying products that Samsung has to support. Samsung-produced products which someone else supports would be an entirely different beast; several vendors buy things from Samsung and use them in their products, but most of those vendors provide their own drivers, which it would appear don't come from Samsung 'cause Samsung appears to not support their hardware.
Apparently "Samsung's drivers don't work with Windows 10" so its assumed that Samsung has to 'fix' the drivers.
But they were not broken, they worked OK before Windows 10. So its more accurate to say that "Windows 10 doesn't work with Samsung's drivers". This mirrors peoples' experience with other platforms. Win 10 broke the video driver and bluetooth in my Lenovo all-in-one; I can sort of live with it but the experience post-Win10 is definitely negative; I had a quite usable machine running Win7 until it got "improved". (Disclaimer -- I 'upgraded' because someone had to sacrifice a machine to see what we were getting into. I drew the short straw. I'd scrap the machine and get another -- except the damn thing would have Win10 or Win8andabit on it.)
The way I understand it, your licence for the previous version isn't revoked when you upgrade. If you're past your easy downgrade month period, go to Microsoft's site and get an ISO for your previous version and go back. You may have to backup/format/restore, but that's what you get if you're past your 30 day post-install period.
On the US side of the sammy website are instructions on how to do a Win 10 upgrade, which unfortunately is what Google threw up for me when I searched after MS said my machine was suitable for upgrade (Well I wasn't just going to take their word for it was I). Even more unfortunately they fail because inexcusably the post upgrade Sammy s/w that needs installing is signed by a cert that is over two years out of date, and persuading win 10 to ignore the revoked certs is not something I have yet achieved.
One can't but help feel that once Sammy have your cash, they're not really interested in you any more.
Dear El Reg commentards,
We're sorry to hear of the problems you're experiencing. We'll fix them soon. However, our resources are currently dedicated to improving the user experience for our LED TV users. Once we've made sure we've annoyed the hell out of each and every one of them by disguising ads as apps in the menu of their TVs, we'll get back to you.
Sincerely yours,
Samsung Support
http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/30/11814706/samsung-smart-televisions-new-menu-bar-ads-european-expansion
My recommendation:
Go Apple if you want forever support -my Macbook Pro from 2007 still running, now tricked out with SSD and max RAM, works great.
I generally avoid Samsung tablets now after being burned twice with tablets that never got Android updated. The laptops are beautiful but there again, they just want you to buy a new Windows 10 laptop! and will achieve this goal for many in Asia who don't think twice about dumping their laptop after a year of use.
If you can't afford Apple, then Linux Mint is wonderful and will run on a just about anything.
Go Apple if you want forever support -my Macbook Pro from 2007 still running, now tricked out with SSD and max RAM, works great.
I have four Macs of varying vintage[1]; none of them are usable with any Apple software[2] that could even vaguely be considered "current".
Vic.
[1] One of them is *so* old that I can hardly expect anything to run on it. But the other three are younger than most of my computers.
[2] I did get Fedora running quite nicely on one for a while - but I haven't used it in ages, and I don't know the current state of that Fedora spin.
This post has been deleted by its author
This would be one of many reason that when I decided to upgrade all the TV's in my house, the Samsung's went out and the LG's came in. Samsung used to be a great product at a fair price, now, after getting big, they are subpar and over priced. I had Windows 10 drivers the same day windows was released for my MSI computer. Samsung has had 10 months and still cant get it done.
I'm running Windows 7 from the olden days on an old skool HP Elitebook 8440p which I bought off t'Bay. 8GB RAM and a decent SSD fitted. Don't have a Gobi, so can't tell you if it worked in Days Of Old.
It runs all the software I want to run (no Linux distro does), and I am NOT moving it to Win10.
Probably sound advice. Windows 10 is not an upgrade unless you want to be spied on, have bsods aplenty, and a flugly UI. Linux Mint is far better if your hardware will run it (which most laptops do rather well). I have windows 10 running on virtual box on linux mint for the couple of programs that don't work on mint.
Wow, does this imply that Samsung uses different hardware that requires different drivers than the other manufacturers' kit? If so, shame on Samsung. If not, shame on Samsung anyway for being too damned lazy to go to the hardware vendors and get drivers for Windows 10.
But, wait! Didn't Samsung withdraw from the computer biz in the EU? So there is no motivation for Samsung to provide drivers when they no longer sell computers.
One final comment: Give me a Samsung lappie sold with Windows 7 or 8, and I will bet that I can find and install the drivers needed to make Windows 10 work right. Well, unless they chose some really oddball hardware, that is.
I fail to see why Microsoft makes new Windows versions which are incompatible with previous drivers. The hardware hasn't changed. There is (or should be) a standard interface between Windows and drivers. Why change it? If Windows has added support for new features then it could do that without messing up the interface for devices which don't use or have those features.
Can somebody please explain?
I have the same laptop - Almost.
I obviously plumped the extra few quid for the one with the high end intel wifi card instead of the one mentioned in the story.
And it's been the best damn laptop I've ever known. In the time I've had it, one of my friends has been through two Dells, two Acers, a Sony Vaio, a MSI and is currently using an Asus.
WIth the exception of the MSI and his Asus, the rest all died of various hardware faults.
My little Samsung is still going strong, a bit weak on the gaming front these days, but that's it.
I have had no problems with hardware compatibility, but then I don't use any Samsung products. I have used Windows 10 since the first insider build. I had some sata drive issues and some sd card performance issues during the insider program beta stage. On official release this was resolved for the large part. I even tried a few laptops and business desktops and they have upgraded with all drivers installed out of the box. Which was a big improvement over Windows 7 where drivers had to be installed. It is still recommended to install the drivers from your motherboard or laptop manufacture. However the generic drivers seemed to be better than in Windows 7.
"In other news: Linux kernel 4.1.8 supports more hardware out of the box than kernel 2.6.28"
And probably a lot more than Windows 10 too.
Windows 10 is so spectacular that I'm browsing El Reg for the first time now from Linux (Mint w/Cinnamon), and I have to say, I can see myself going the way of those people who have a dual-boot with Windows (as I do now) who say they find themselves spending less and less time in Windows.
The Windows version I dual-boot is 7, which I like a lot, and it has quite a few more good years left in it, but I've gotten so disgusted by Microsoft's behavior that I've begun to feel antipathy towards anything Microsoft. I'll still have to go into Windows to do some things for which there is no Linux alternative, but for most of what I do, I simply do not need Windows.
I've finally made the plunge and put Linux on my main PC and given it a fair shot as a day-to-day OS, and it's all thanks to Microsoft! Maybe I'll buy you a Tux the penguin hat, Satya.
They'll be fine as Samsung would have picked the hardware for Windows 10 compatibility. Its their older kit that was never designed with Windows 10 in mind that will be the problem.
Chalk one up for OEMs doing "funny things" to their hardware that unwittingly introduce compatibility problems later on.
Yes, this Samsung laptop with Broadcom wifi issue was not resolved when the free update period ended. I worked around it by replacing my wifi card (the Broadcom card must be removed).
But perhaps Samsung have a point: my relatively high spec. Samsung RC710 laptop c. 2011 is simply not powerful enough to run Windows 10 at usable speeds - Windows 10 is a resource hog! I have double the RAM from 4GB to 8GB which helped but not much - I will need to replaced the harddrive with an SSD or SSHD to make this a usable PC once more.
Well, this Samsung laptop/Broadcom wifi card/Windows 10 upgrade issue never was resolved before the free Windows 10 upgrade offer expired :(
However, perhaps that is just as well. I worked around the problem by replacing the offending Broadcom wifi card (it has to be removed*) but my fairly high spec. Samsung RC710 laptop (c. 2011) struggles to run Windows 10 - which is a resource hog! Talk about bloatware. I have doubled the RAM from 4GB to 8GB which helped but not much. I will need to replace the harddrive with an expensive, fast SSD drive or cheaper SSHD to get this laptop back into a usable condition.
Windows 10 is not as stable or reliable and Windows 7 yet. It feels like the UI has been vandalized/randomized.
*More information (lots more information) on this issue here:
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/insider/forum/insider_wintp-insider_install/i-can-not-install-windows-10-on-a-laptop-samsung/8ea46dea-b77f-42f7-b22f-6fcdfe080b26?page=1
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