How do you like dem Windows, Apple? July opening for Microsoft's first store in Blighty Microsoft will open its first bricks and mortar store in the UK on 11 July, located in London's Oxford Circus – just a short walk from Apple's shiny Regent Street boutique. The store will cover nearly 22,000 square feet over three floors and feature interactive zones, "immersive video walls", an Answer Desk and a community …
... as I understand it ...
A DLL is loaded into the context of a running process whereas an EXE creates a new one. Multiple programmes (EXEs) can use the same libraries (DLLs in this case) and this increases code maintainability.
A DLL can't be 'run' though, because it has no 'entry point' where execution would start --- so windows services, which are effectively DLLs (so that they can share elements of their functionality) have to be loaded into an actual executable (which allows them to be started and stopped etc.). That executable, designed to run windows services, is svchost.exe
Why are there so many? Because there are so many windows services. Although a single svchost.exe could run all the services, a misbehaving service could take it down and all the other services it was running would terminate as well. So the many windows services are grouped into related functions and each group is run by a separate svchost process.
They could all be separate processes, except that processes have a lot of overhead, so they bundled them together to run potentially hundreds of services inside just dozens of processes.
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/larryosterman/2005/09/09/shared-services/
There are a lot more in Windows 10 than there used to be, but that's still the general idea.
The services are also bundled according to the permission levels they require, LocalSystem, NetworkService, etc. so specific services are only granted the rights that they actually need for the job they are trying to do, which potentially protects against new exploits.
I saw a good explanation of svchost.exe here, a while back now..
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/larryosterman/2005/09/09/shared-services/
TL;DR;
Bundling services together into fewer processes saves system resources
Separating services according to their required permissions improves security against exploits.
Separating services improves resiliency since a rogue service can take down the entire process.
Windows 10 has a lot more background services than Windows XP had.
Microsoft's investment in physical stores dates back to the Windows 7 era, with a shop opened in Scottsdale, Arizona, in October 2009, the day Window 7 launched
ROFL...
No it wasn't. They had stores long before that. Try a couple of decades earlier. Still a place where tumbleweed blew around due to the number of customers. They had one store that was either in the Mall of New Hampshire or one of the many Malls dotted along I-495 or Rte 128 around Boston. It was around the time DEC also had a few stores. As a DEC employee at the time and on a visit to the US, I went to look at it and the MS one almost next door.
The 2009 opening was from memory their third attempt at running stores.
From a non-specialist non-expert punter point of view, many more are needed. At least with an iThing you can just take to the "local" store and get your broken iThing unbrokened. MS's "proposition" is more prone to breaking and a lot harder to get fixed and the local laptop repair shop isn't going to be able to unbroken a Surface since MS have out-Appled Apple on repairability there.
At least with an iThing you can just take to the "local" store and get your broken iThing unbrokened.
If you hand it over, wait x hours, listen to them tell you the motherboard needs replacing, pay half-75% of the device's value consumer protection laws be damned and come back a week later to pick up something refurbished that will probably die in a year, yes you can.
"...OEM PCs were notorious for cramming in shoddy bloatware that damages the user experience..."
This is so true. I have a Windows 10 PC here and it's just crammed with utter crapware straight out of the box - Candy Crush Soda Saga, Dolby something-or-other, March of Empires, Minecraft, some racing game, and about half-a-dozen other pieces of sh*te that pollute the start menu. Some scammy background process keeps popping up to tell me "<XXX> just got installed! Check it out!".
What's more annoying is that it's the Pro version of the OS. If only I'd had the chance to do a clean install of Windows 10 and avoid all that, eh Microsoft?
Can’t agree with you more. Aside from being a dog-lover, I hate PUPs and unfortunately that’s all W10 is; a menagerie of some over-inflated tools coupled with lots of bloated garbage coding and ‘support’ apps, with a dish of chopped telemetry in every possible corner, nook and cranny. Compare the experience of opening the Windows 7 calculator and then the Windows 10 calculator, there’s a good example of bad/bloated coding.
Everything is so tightly wound to a series of dependancies not unlike SystemD in many regards. For instance, take that PoS regurgitated gender-bending pseudo-clippy assistant Cortana. Can you remove it without affecting multiple other services and functions? No.
You can try this: C:\Windows\SystemApps\....Cortana...’gibberish’ rename the folder name suffix from ....Cortana...’gibberish’ to ...Cortana...’PoS’. You have to first stop the Cortana service, have the folder rename ready to ‘Try Again’, make it quick and then it’s officially stopped and can’t start again.
You won’t notice at first, but after a restart, explorer.exe becomes even more buggy and less responsive as a result. You can make some augmentations like installing ‘Everything’ for a true indexed search manager, but the start menu simply, well... fails to start on the first click. The second click, yes. But the first click, no. It will be irritating to the point where you wondered why you stopped Cortana in the first place. So you re-enable the Cortana systemapp, and within a few minutes disable it again.
Can we have our cake and eat it too? Not on Windows 10.
The shell can be changed to something other than explorer.exe, like blackbox or bblean by changing a setting in the registry, but by this stage you start to really question why you bought that high-priced Windows 10 Pro laptop only to receive something similar to a ReactOS experience; i.e. something which is a cool concept, has a thriving community of developers, but one which is still classed as an unfinished product.
I moved to Linux for my work laptop, soon after my threshold for annoyance reached critical mass. There have been many challenges, like screen-res, high DPI and alignment, auto-low powered Bluetooth detection, but I am no longer frustrated to anywhere near the same level and I can apply updates within a few seconds and return to find no change to my carefully orchestrated sysadmin profile.
I'm sure there will be queues outside... of people with Windows 10 devices that were borked by the latest update - certainly not there to shop anyway. If these stores are anything like some of the US Microsoft outlets, when MS better get an order in now for a few boxes of tumbleweed, as those stores spend long periods devoid of people even in the shops, let alone buying customers!
I'd gladly pay to have somebody merge all of my proliferation of Microsoft accounts into one for personal and one for business without losing anything valuable. Similarly I'd probably pay to have my lad's XBox gamer tag moved from a bogus email to a real email - both of these things it seems are currently impossible, which means that Microsoft currently have, and always will have the fluffiest clouds.
I'd gladly pay to have somebody merge all of my proliferation of Microsoft accounts into one for personal and one for business without losing anything valuable.
You might want to really avoid that shop then. I suspect what wanders around there will probably not be of much use (also because control for what you mentioned is unlikely to be delegated to those shops). The sales people will be of a level that can sell a fridge to an eskimo, but I would keep the very aura of the people there away from anything you value until we have evidence that Microsoft learned from the last time they did this.
If experience is any guide I would keep my expectations on the low side..
Definitely design - why waste all of Apple's effort in finding locations with the highest footfall of freespenders? And there's always the Covent Garden branch just round the corner..
Its always been said that imitation is the best form of flattery - and Microsoft are experts at imitation, not innovation.
My windows 10 enterprise laptop is STILL full of bloatware, Cortana, Groove being two examples that cannot be removed..
" It is common to observe throngs of eager customers at Apple locations, compared to the sedate atmosphere of Microsoft alternatives"
This is spot on correct. I used to work near the Pentagon City Mall where there was an Apple and Microsoft store in proximity of each other and the Apple store was always bustling with customers compared to just a few souls wandering around the Microsoft one - usually the staff outnumbering the customers.
Other than Surface, and I suppose Xbox (do they have that in their stores?) they are pretty much a software company. Makes sense that not a lot of people are going to want to stop by without much of anything to hold in your hands and try out.
I imagine if Google tried to set up a retail store they'd have the same problem, because other than a Pixel and that in-home spying unit they don't sell much in the way of hardware either. In order to see the real products on offer at a Google store, they'd have to put up a mirror.
Looking forward to it, I am sure that a Microsoft-specific store will allow me to buy some of their more useful products such as:
- A physical copy of Windows 2000
- An original Sidewinder gamepad
- A physical copy of Visual Studio 6
... oh wait, you say that they are just going to fill the whole building with identical Microsoft Surface 2 notebooks in slightly different colors? Hah, yeah right! Why the hell would anyone do that?!
.. will they post BSOD posters in the windows?
I am betting they won't have any screens showing in the windows by order of the PR department, because it will take at most microseconds before any BSOD is spotted and uploaded to Twitter/Youtube/etc etc.
Anyway, Microsoft yet again trying something that *others* have managed to do successfully, and it will go the same way as that famous always "winning" US "business"man* went with his casinos: bust.
* He's taken the same approach to the US presidency, which now has the whole country going in the same downhill direction..
What a joke that will be. I've looked at several m$ stores in the US, including San Francisco, Austin, New York.
They all tell the same story....more staff than customers. This afternoon, I walked past the m$ store on 5th Avenue in Manhattan at about midday, and again at 4:00pm. There were at least 20 staff in those pastel colour T shirts....and zero customers. Zero.
In contrast, the several close-by Apple stores are mobbed.
M$ is over as a consumer brand because w10 sucks dead bears out loud.
The Sydney Store seems to get a few punters, and a few of my students and I have gone down there in the holidays to do a course.
My only other experience with one Is the Palo Alto store about 6 years ago. Wanted a Kinect Developers edn, which I couldn't get online with the educators discount I needed to go to store, which I did on my one & only trip to the USA. To be fair they knew what I was looking for and had zero knowledge of the 10% to which I was entitled, but gave it me when I showed it to them on the website. All I had to do was show a valid education id - funnily enough they did not accept an id supplied by employer, but did accept my union card - sigh!
Observing that shops are busy or empty is called observing the truth.
If you want them busy, go and round up your windows fanboy friends and go to them.
In the meantime, we will just take the piss out of another Microsoft failure.
As a previous poster said, Windows is done as a consumer product. Corporates are moving away too. Everything new is Linux based and uses open standards, no more lock in. Most devs use Macs as their machine of choice. Many others do the same.
It’s time for you to catch up too, open the windows, go outside and see for yourself.
So I can lug my desktop, an ASUS 270-P board based machine round there and there gurus will magically fix the May Update that prevents my PC from booting?
I have had to de-install it three times now, as their tool tool to hide a borking updates is made to fail by Microsoft's determination to force feed it.
I can just imagine... the effort of explaining this issue..
Not really a fan bois of any sort and a genuine question but apart from Surface and maybe Xbox what other 'stuff' will MS offer? I really don't know and haven't googled.
Apple sell 'stuff' that people can 'play with' or touchy feel the shines and thus perhaps offers the chance for lots of people to pop in to their store.
MS may have to do some creative advertising to get people in to their store to 'see' and, erm, play with their 'stuff'.
Unless the whole idea is just to annoy Apple or something.
That's nice, I can go to the Microsoft Store to look at a load of nice-looking Surface-book things (that I can't afford) and crash when you first turn them on, then mosey on down to the Apple store to look at a load of nice eve more unaffordable computers that work straight out of the box, and top it off with a walk down to the Nespresso 'boutique' where I can get a free sample of coffee that I can barely afford but I buy anyway.
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