Windows 10 Creators Update: Clearing the mines with livestock (that's you by the way) Microsoft's big Windows 10 Creators Update platform release is now available if you want it, but the long-promised UX makeover and People Experience feature will wait for a future update to Windows. Probably this year, but possibly not. The release schedule is complicated. The Creators Update build becomes the default Windows …
You are right, Linux development is fragmented. And all OSS developers are thousands of miles apart and think for themselves. Yet almost every single developer is aiming at the same target and coding to the same ethos.
I find it awesome that thousands of disparate entities can produce a fathomable whole that is far greater than the sum of its parts.
I also find it unbelievable that a single concentrated entity cannot see its ass because its elbow greed is in the way.
Some people can't see outside the box, some people don't see a box, some people see a box and ask wtf is that for? And others see the box as a place to piss.
Anyone who's topped up their mobile data bundle on the go only to find the data swallowed up by background sync processes in minutes – as happened to your reporter recently – will be glad to find that OneDrive is now more aware that it's on a metered connection.
OneDrive stops wasting pennies but updates that MS considers sooo important now get pushed down metered connections. Not sure if this is an improvement, at least it was your data before.
If you set the startup type of the Windows Update service to disabled then windows updates will not occur until after you have re-enabled the service (disabling the Background Intelligent Transfer service can stop other unwanted data usage as well). Note - just stopping the service is not enough - the startup type has to be set to disabled or windows will restart it.
Here in Canada an $80 a month wireless plan will generally include 1 gig of data. Increasing that will push the monthly spend over $100.
Just last week I deleted a very, very nice newspaper app because it had gobbled 150+ megs in less than a month.
The people who design software like this really need to get out of Silicon Valley and try using their products in the real world, while paying out of their own pocket.
The Windows 10 machine in our household is an endless source of irritation, with no indication that the design team has ever used Win10 to do an honest day's work. 3D is the last thing that should be a priority.
>3D is the last thing that should be a priority.
There's two aspects to this. One is that using 3D in the GUI offloads work to efficient GPUs, so MS will want this for mobile (on Android, I suppose).
Secondly, they know they are losing the home market and perceive gaming as a strong point in that area. However, a very large number of games are coming out with Linux support. Croteam are even backporting Serious Sam to Linux and providing it free to those who bought the game on Windows. That kind of behaviour should worry Microsoft a lot.
MS have themselves to blame. Desperate to be seen as a leader, they are pushing to the cloud in the enterprise space and abandoning their lower-end user- and developer-base. The lower end of the market doesn't care so much about software roll-out because their user-counts are so low. Often the application only needs installing on one machine. If you're applications are cloud-based the client doesn't matter, so more people will look at OSX (or rather, robust unibody prestige products)... so cross-platform is key. Once you've gone to that place, the dev's themselves are likely to be using Linux for work and you're into a self-defeating spiral.
As usual, it comes back to the contortions product licensing pushes vendors into. They have to make themselves look good against Amazon's cloud, to be seen as a "winner" when what they should be doing is improving their OS to include all the nice things cloud provides. Rather than enabling the tech departments, they are pitching directly to managers.
"The people who design software like this really need to get out of Silicon Valley and try using their products in the real world, while paying out of their own pocket."
Yes, this, upvoted!
We old timers have been saying this for years. When free local phone calls were more or less ubiquitous in the USA, the rest of us were complaining about stuff only working when on-line, or games built to run only on the latest, biggest and most expensive GFX cards and double the RAM that most people had.
re: metered connection
So does this new build do the sensible and allow me, the user, to default to ALL (current and new) network connections being metered and only those I specifically denote to be unmetered? If not Win10 still isn't ready for primetime with truely mobile workers...
Except this bit...
The CU release will warn the user when they're switching from an unmetered connection like Wi-Fi, to a potentially metered connection
Both ethernet and wi-fi can be on a metered connection, especially when it comes to moving gigs of data, if either of those is just to your household router.
Tried updating a Lenovo Yoga S 12 from Win 7 Pro to Win 10 last week and it was a complete disaster.
Loads of drivers missing, software telling me it won't work any more and even my Bluetooth mouse wouldn't connect. It would have taken hours to get the machine in a workable state again and that's not on for most people. I took an image beforehand just in case and I definitely needed it.
It may be fine an a brand new machine, however until they get the basics of upgrading right I wouldn't hold out much hope for the rest of Win 10.
Yes. Because it's Microsoft's fault that Lenovo/the hardware manufacturers haven't sorted the drivers out.
OK, I'll bite.
I have a PC here running Windows 10 b1607 that has been a PITA from day one. Let's run through the sad litany of issues:
- Sleep/resume will randomly turn into a complete shutdown/wake - I have a dozen windows open, close the lid, and maybe 20% of the time when I open it again the machine will boot from cold, all windows (and unsaved work) gone. I am getting VERY familiar with the Excel/Word "document recovery" pane.
- Wifi doesn't detect changes of location after a sleep/wake cycle (i.e. if I am at work connected to SSID "corp_wifi", close the lid, then wake the PC at home - it will still "see" corp_wifi, still think it's connected to it, and the only way I can get it to connect to home_dlink_wifi is to go to Airplane mode, count to 10, then turn off Airplane mode again. Same issue when I go from home to office the next day.
- Mouse pointer keeps changing size. The PC has a high DPI screen - so to avoid my mouse pointer being the size of a gnat's todger, I use the "Extra Large" cursor scheme. Randomly (sleep/wake? clock has ticked over to a new hour? I opened a new window?) it will reset back to standard size, although it "thinks" it's still on the Extra Large scheme. I have to go to the control panel and toggle scheme from EL->standard->EL to restore it.
- Occasional hard lockups. I finished a meeting on Friday at 6:30pm, and left the laptop sitting there in Outlook. Came back to it 2 hours later - mouse pointer wouldn't move, and the clock was stuck at 6:37pm. So for almost 2 hours it had been frozen solid. Had to do a full power cycle to get it back.
And those are just the ones I remember.
OK, ArrZarr, you're right, it's unfair of me to blame Microsoft's OS for all this - they can't possibly test every combination of hardware out there. It's clearly the fault of the OEM who made the laptop and didn't bother to do the most basic validation testing. So who do I shout at about this machine?
By the way, it said "Surface Book" on the box, if that helps.
I beg to differ.
Windows 1 0 is supposed to be the very best, the cutting edge, the bees knees of OS products. Sleep mode has had trouble since it was introduced in the previous millennium - you'd think MS would have had the time to iron out the kinks by now. Vendor drivers are unstable and can crash the OS ? It's Windows 1 0 - you'd think the OS would be robust enough to have the code to not crash from a bloody driver. And it's not like nobody else manages either.
The OS is made to run programs and interface with the hardware. It has been since its inception. An OS that crashes because of a program (or driver) is NOT an OS - it's a POS.
"- Sleep/resume will randomly turn into a complete shutdown/wake - I have a dozen windows open, close the lid, and maybe 20% of the time when I open it again the machine will boot from cold, all windows (and unsaved work) gone. I am getting VERY familiar with the Excel/Word "document recovery" pane."
Windows sleep / resume seems very sensitive to hardware.
Try setting the close lid option to hibernate instead.
any upgrade i have done for other people (when you could get the update from w7 free) is followed by a wipe, format and fresh install then a check of system to manually find any missing drivers. then reinstall of software and personal accounts and data.
long way around BUT the only way to get a (sort of) stable system.
I still run 7 and will continue to until there is a viable option. without telemetry and forced updates ( Im a dreamer i know )
There are just eleven "editions" (Pro, Home Enterprise etc) or fifteen if you include the N versions which do not automatically include Microsoft's media software.
Then there's the Windows Insider Preview Branch, Current Branch, Current Branch for Business and the Long Term Servicing Branch.
Windows 10 is periodically updated. The next refresh will be called Windows 10 Creators Update. The one after will be called Windows 10 Random Words.
If you type WINVER at a command prompt, you'll get enough enough information to know which kernel is running. To know which edition, you have to look in the control panels or registry.
How did the PC end up running Windows 10 -- a clean build or a version-over build from Windows 7?You have to admire Windows software developers. For them it must be like writing a BASIC program that runs on an Apple II, Commodore PET and C64, Dragon and lord knows what.
>If you type WINVER at a command prompt, you'll get enough enough information to know which kernel is running. To know which edition, you have to look in the control panels or registry.
However, I've yet to find a method that gives me details of which programs have grandfather rights and so won't install if I have to do a clean reinstall...
Of the top of my head stuff that gets grandfathered into an upgrade.
Windows Media Player
Windows Movie Maker & the other programs in the Windows Live bundle
Windows Media Centre
Zune
SkiFree32 (I may have installed that myself)
Most of this stuff has also been removed from public view on the MS website
And it as far as I can tell it leaves the Windows XP VM that XP Mode uses but uninstalls Windows Virtual PC
I had the misfortune yesterday to have a friend bring in their win 10 laptop because they wanted to use a mouse rather than the trackpad.
Yuck! What a mess.
Scroll bars that don't even if you can find them. Program windows that merge into the background and are glaring white all over. No easy way to get at hardware settings.
Thank all the deities that I don't use windows everyday.
The full set of Windows 10 release editions is:
- BOATI - Bend Over And Take It - the standard consumer edition.
- OBNF - Old Bugs Never Fixed - the slower moving corporate edition.
- IBIO - Installed By Idiots Only - the fast track beta channel edition.
- LINUX - (not an acronym) - the stable edition that people should actually be using.
Its not microsofts job to give you a computer - despite their beliefs otherwise.
Its your job, or your employers, to provide the computer.
microsofts job is to provide a system that lets you use it. Enjoying doing so may not be within the scope.
They seem to have confused their job, with their mission, which would be some HR wankfest version of "take over the world, crush our enemies/competition, and listen to the lamentations of their women"
So Microsoft have spent thousands of manhours on lots of useless new shite, but have not bothered to do bug fixes for the old stuff ?!
AGAIN ?!
e.g. Long File Paths are still not supported in File Explorer !
How many decades, Microsoft ?!
re: Long path names
However, that was Windows 10 Anniversary Update (build 1607), given the way MS have been introducing and removing features between Win10 builds there is no certainly whether the Creators update will or won't support long paths and whether Explorer does or doesn't support long path names.
"...allowing the user to see which apps have access to each capability such as location or microphone, and block them. Data that Microsoft stores in the Cloud can be deleted much more easily now."
Its not enough!
Who wants to play Facebook / Google privacy whac-a-mole every other week fighting the OS. No thanks!
The Russians had penal battalions, essentially unarmed "soldiers" who had somehow pissed off the Communists. They used them for unpleasant tasks, like heavy labor and clearing a minefield -- by marching them through it. (If they refused, they were shot on the spot.)
If one considers using a beta operating system to be punishment (which I do), then it looks like: "Welcome to the MPB (Microsoft Penal Battalion), Comrades!"
Ironic that there is so much emphasis on 3d applications when the Windows 10 GUI is flatter than a witch's tit.
A new update to my local Chase ATM has married piss-poor design worthy of web 1.0 with bug-ugly flat GUI aesthetics, no doubt as a result of migrating it to embedded windows 10. Slow response and cancellation tags waiting on the next screen so an irritated *third* tap to get the fucking thing moving started on screen one but actually made contact on screen two and cancelled the whole affair.
The net result is that a five minute trip to the bank to check balances and transfer funds accordingly turned into a twenty five minute visit. Five minutes struggling with the useless redesign, no minutes throwing my hands up in despair and giving up, and twenty minutes getting my exact feelings on the change fed back to corporate by a very nice young manager.
And the purpose of the visit was completely voided.
I've no doubt the programmer thinks he did a bang-up job, and equally sure he never uses an ATM for any purpose other than to get cash.
"I've no doubt the programmer thinks he did a bang-up job, and equally sure he never uses an ATM for any purpose other than to get cash."
Are you sure about the last part of your comment?, as from your comment using the ATM to get cash wasn't on your to do list and hence we don't know if that was actually possible...
Since cash dispensing was the only activity that could be easily accomplished without paging back and forth across multiple screens and provided a printed record request button, yes, I'm just about certain.
Should have mentioned that I got my start designing manufaturing systems data entry UIs in the late 70s, before the programmer could just lazily delegate it all to the O/S, and add that if I'd ever have turned in such a waste of cpu cycles to my chief programmer she'd have broken my fingers one by one and slowly as public entertainment for the rest of the office.
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I managed to download this so called "Creators Update" before MS pulled the link.
Installed it on a separate solid state drive and played with it for a while. Can't see what all the fuss is about? Apart from Paint3D (which I'll probably never use) and changing a few things around as usual (like making Control Panel a bit harder to find by removing the link when you right click the Start button - it's down the bottom of the Start menu under Windows System) the whole thing doesn't look much different to the Anniversary Edition.
What a waste of time and effort. Back to Linux Mint (in a dual boot with a non Internet facing Windows 7) I go...
Running Version 1703 now and there is a noticeable improvement in stability and responsiveness from 1607, for me at least. Problem with the start menu greying out and being unusable but that is trivial since I use Start Menu 8 from IOBit. Can't stand the Windows 10 start menu!!
As far as the telemetry, I still disable diagtrack and related services. I don't believe for a second that Microsoft has reduced it a bit. Cortana is also disabled! The update as a whole is more under the hood improvements, very little change on the surface.
Various problems such as Onedrive, Cortana, Microsoft Store and the Microsoft Cloud will magically go away.
Of course some further tweaks are required to disable telemetry and data mining.
But not using a Microsoft account is the most important first step if you're dipping your toes into Windows 10.
It fails to make using it more intuitive,or easy to organise for personal preferences ( like organising the start menu into types of software and preventing programmes creating their own start folders). There's no mention of bug fixes to be able to do simple things like changing the recycle bin icon without having to edit the registry and add the mysterious ,0 to the end of icon names; and give us what?------ 3D pictures. Whoopee. Bring out the ticker tape, start the parade, organise the street parties and rush to get it downloaded.
OneDrive updated? It's just ****ing application (or should be anyway), therefore what does this matter with regards to a Windows OS update? Will the next Win10 update be squawking about improvements to Word? If it's not just an application, then there should be questions asked regarding competition.
As for other changes - frankly I can't see much to get excited about. Improvements to Windows store - whatever. Until this can be supplemented or replaced by an in-house store (or application deployment system) it's of no interest whatsoever. Until then it's mostly populated by tumbleweed and wholly entirely ontrusive and unwanted - no, I don't want ****ing CodeWriter, similarly for "Get Office", "American News" (or whatever it's called), a pitifully under-featured version of PowerBIDesktop or any of the other crud that is forced, unwanted onto every user on every new login. Edge? Meh, it's useless because for "consumer" browsing everything else is better and for corporate use only Internet Explorer works "properly" with many Microsoft services.
I've yet to see what it's called "creators update", it may as well just be named arbitrarily.
I am no geek, although family and work colleagues think I am, but W10 is the only OS I have had to reset back to original settings on several computers at work and home.
If they could get me to not fear another update that makes my network printer settings go completely haywire; or make it so that updates will update; or....etc. THEN I could maybe anticipate some of the more exotic pleasures of Creator or whatever stuff tey want me to dream about. I've spent tens of hours beyond my paygrade and capability fixing and bodging things up. W95 come back all is forgiven.
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