Can't bear to part with that well-worn copy of Windows 7? Microsoft might let you keep it updated an extra year With Windows 7's official retirement less than five months away, Redmond is offering some business customers a way to squeeze a bit more life out of the beloved OS. A recently unearthed provision in the Windows 7 and Office 2010 end of support FAQ notes that companies running Windows 10 Enterprise E5, Microsoft 365 E5, …
My right to privacy & control what happens on *MY* computer are worth far more to me than any benefits Win10 might claim to bring to the table.
Turn off (entirely, not merely pause it) telemetry, remove all the crap & cruft (or allow me to do it, yknow, on *MY* computer), & reinstate your QA department so you release code at least giving a passing nod to stability, and maybe then the price of Win10 will come down.
Telemetry we can't control, crap & cruft we don't want/need being forced down our throats, updates that break things that would have been obvious had anyone from quality assurance had any say in the matter, & shit that routinely cripple the machine?
That's not a stable, reliable, ready for prime time, fit for purpose product.
The cost of non-Win 10 will be far higher when the support ends and patches are no longer issued. This is the thing about buying software: at some point, the support ends and you're left picking up the pieces. For apps like Photoshop CS6, it just means you don't get the latest and greatest... for an OS, it means the underpinnings of your system are on shaky foundation.
By all means, stay with whatever you want. But if you want to stay in the Windows ecosystem, things have moved on, like it or not. If you can, go to a different OS to run your system and make your code work there. But other than your dollars, you don't have any say over what MS decides to do with their OS.
I understand that I can only vote with my wallet, that's why my wallet is refusing to downgrade to Win10.
I've tried & am trying to move off the Infinite Microsoft Treadmill(TM), but I keep hitting hurdles that are entirely artificial in nature & wouldn't be there in a Just universe.
I try to go to Apple & they sell me crap that doesn't work. Fuck 'em.
I tried to go to a Chromebook in the hopes their accessibility is up to snuff. Wind up having to take the machine back _three_fekkin_times_ because they either can't get the sound to work (and stay working) or their vaunted screen reader insisted I speak Cantonese. Yes, Cantonese. I'm in the States not China, thus that was not exactly a problem I could live with. Kick Chrome to the curb.
I wound up buying an HP with Windows on it, paying to have it Nuke&Paved to Linux, and am currently teaching myself how to use Orca (the screen reader) so I can get shit done. It's a slow process, I keep smashing into walls, but I *am* making progress to my eventual goal of ditching Windows all together.
The screen reader requirement is what prevents me from just grabbing a bleeding edge bit of hardware, swapping the HDD for a fresh blank one, slapping Linux on it, & giving MS TheFinger. Since I can't see to do it myself that means I have to pay someone else to do it for me. The folks at BestBuy refuse to touch Linux for some dumb reason. I had to make a two hour each way trip to visit an actual LUG to get the machine reformatted. I still have to teach myself how to use it, I can't afford the constant trips back & forth to attend classes for hands on tutelege.
If I could still see then I'd be running Linux. It's that simple. Since I can't see I'm forced to use what lets me get shit done.
Unfortunately (for now) that means Windows. =-(
"You realize Windows 10 is free, yes?"
I don't realize that. Win 10 seems very expensive to me. The cost just isn't money.
"As long as you have an activated installation of Windows 7 Microsoft will give you a free digital licence to Windows 10"
If you have Win 7 and haven't already downgraded to 10, it's probably because you've already determined that 10 costs more than you're willing to pay.
Officially yes the offer ended. But the upgrade does still work for free. Sidegraded 2 Windows 7 Ultimate machines in the last week. Fully activated with digital licence. I am working on uninstalling all the crap. I shouldn't have too. I liked those little check boxes in 95 & 98 and Windows 2000 lean install. Still using Windows 7 on this machine. It just works and looks so much better.
Same here. Bought a tablet that had Windows 8 on it. Used the 8 key on my desktop, which I have a Windows 10 install on that I occasionally use and was tired of the unregistered watermark. No problem, a flawless Windows 10 pro activation, fully legitimate. Tablet now runs an x86 Android variant (though it also did let me upgrade that too, but Windows 10 is junk on tablets)
I called Apple & ordered a new machine. Not through their site so they could claim a miscommunication, not through the brick & mortar store where it might have gotten lost, but a direct call to the Apple sales line.
Give them the specs of the machine I wanted, paid the price through gritted teeth, & waited for the machine to arrive. They were given *explicit* instructions that the screen reader was to be configured to be running immediately on power on- not after via a manual trigger, from the moment the OS loaded it needed to talk to me & let me know it was ready to go.
The machine I received not only did NOT speak when I turned it on, nothing I could do would make it talk at all. I knew the keyboard shortcut to turn the reader on, I tried it far too many times, to no avail.
I had a sighted person examine the screen to try & determine if it may have been muted somehow. They said the little speaker icon claimed it not to be so, that the volume was reported at 50%, & that there did not seem to be any explanation for the Mac not to be producing sound that worked elsewhere. (The speakers are the ones connected to my Windows machine, I just swapped the headphone extension cord from one machine to the other.)
Call up Apple tech support, explain the problem. They make me jump through hoops before even BEGINNING the troubleshooting process. When they finally agreed there might be a problem, they told me to take it to my nearest Apple store so an Apple Genius could take a look.
Take it to the store. They make me jump through hoops to prove the machine is still under warranty. I told them the damn thing was less than 72 hours in my hands, it had better still be under fekkin warranty. They agree to take a look for free. They figure out that the sound subsystem is malfunctioning & offer to replace the machine... But since it's a customized machine it'll take two weeks to get my new one to me. Two. Fekkin. Weeks. I asked why they couldn't just take a normal one off the shelf, slap in the extra RAM that made it a custom unit, verify it worked, & let me leave the store with a working unit. They say they can't. I told them they could either hand me a working machine to take home or they could refund my money.
I went home with my purchase price back in my account. Apple couldn't even sell me a working computer when the sale was through their own sales line, so I have *zero* faith they'll sell anything better via any other avenue.
I know their accessibility is second to none, but evidentally they're too poor to quality check their own crap before shipping it.
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Be pleased you can hear well. I need braille and don't understand the synthesizers on the Mac or Chrome. Orca is crap in both speech and braille. Chrome is crap in braille. I'm going to have to run Windows 7 in a VM on linux so as to have some sort of reasonable accessibility. No matter how much I respect the people, many of them very devoted, who work on Linux, I want to do actual work, not fiddle with accessibility. I realize I'm not important at all, so only complain to get it off my chest, there's nothing I can do. Fortunately, I suppose, I haven't seen a real feature in Windows 10 that I want, which I suppose is some sort of consolation. Also, your and my individual wallet don't matter at all. You know, I used to be pleased when new tech came out, it improved my life. How did we get here?
Obviously, but many people are clinging onto Win7 as long as they can - and will move to Window 10 only when forced to, if they have no alternatives.
It's not a surprise many people didn't upgraded despite the upgrade being free for a lot of users. For many, Windows 10 wasn't moving on, but a big step back, in usability (they are still slowly reinstating features they should have never removed), user interface, and especially privacy. Let's hope they will be hit hard by GDPR soon and have to backpedal quickly.
And that's what users see every day, underlying technical improvements may not matter much when you are confronted with issues that makes your "experience" far worse than before.
Microsoft can only thank Apple for being so expensive many users can't afford it, and Linux being so fragmented and so fixated on open source to keep away most commercial software. Otherwise Windows market share would have reached already the Windows Phone one.
"things have moved on" - not because the customers WANTED it to, but because *THE MONOPOLY* *MADE* *IT* *SO*.
Two major reasons:
a) stranglehold on OS pre-installation from places *LIKE* 'Best Buy'
b) newer hardware not supported by 7 and earlier
It's like a TRUST from the late 19th century, when a single company owns EVERYTHING from resource procurement (mines and wells) to distribution (refineries and factories) to end (gas pumps and cars and trains and railroads and ...)
guess what happens to prices, quality, and customer satisfaction?
I haven't tried anything with a 2.0 kernel lately but what I have found is that I could install new versions of Linux on very ancient H/W. Subsequently used than ancient H/W & Linux combo talk to and set up a brand new printer that the user's W10 infested laptop kept trying to set onto a sub-net that the laptop itself wasn't on. So new gadget worked better with Linux & old S/W rather better than with new W10.
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The cost of non-Win 10 will be far higher when the support ends and patches are no longer issued.
Not really, no.
If you're NOT running an enterprise version of 10 and thus have the telemetry stuff on, are a Dr's office or hospital or... and your OS is sending even just fragments of documents to MS (and their "advertising partners" if I recall the EULA correctly), then you're breaching privacy laws in several countries.
Over here our privacy law is being updated, and AIUI the per-breach fines are going from $1k to $10K. That may not be a lot to a large enterprise, but to a small business which probably doesn't update much anyway, maybe has decent AV and a relatively small attack surface, that will be life-threatening.
If they have reasonable perimeter defences (OK firewall, AV and reasonably set up router with separate "guest wifi" and main network) and decent staff who only browse non-work stuff using the guest account on their own device (which is the majority of businesses I know), the chances of a flaw in Windows being a problem are minimal.
If someone gets ransomware into their machines, they face at the extreme $20K to get things fixed. Other malware, might be a $couple of hundred depending on the quality and regularity of their backups.
But if they have 100 customers, and get found to have leaked the customer's name and phone number to MS via W10, they face a mere $1Mill in fines.
And the more W10's data leakiness gets known, the more companies have to start paying someone to work on mitigation, costing more. It's cheaper to keep W7, keep the perimeter defences strong, and teach your staff properly.
Have an amen from me also. I'm a one man very minor operation and damned if I can see going to Win10 with all the BS. I don't want to be their "free" tester nor do I want their telemetry and other BS.
Viva la revolution against Win 10 and all the BS.
Also get rid of the abortion of a UI nailed to the front of it: Give me a Start button that displays a menu with everything - and I do mean everything - neatly displayed in a logical and coherent list. You know, like in Windows 7. I don't want to have to do a fucking search to find basic shit which should just be there!
Unfortunately, I've come to the conclusion (some time ago I might add) that MS simply doesn't care. Windows 10 is an object lesson in MS doing what they want and to hell with what the customer wants.
The result is I've stuck with Windows 7 for as long as I could, but I have to admit that unfortunately a change will soon be required. Windows 10 can be made relatively usable, it just requires a shitload of faffing about and 3rd party utilities to fix. Hence, as I slowly (and sadly) begin to downgrade computers in the house to Windows 10 (sorry Linux fans, I just have too many games/apps that don't like Linux - although I do use it on a couple of systems where possible), here's my list of remedial actions to beat Windows 10 into shape:
1) Install Windows 10 LTSC. No feature updates, up to 10 years of security fixes, plus a lot of the bloat and crap such as Edge, Cortana, Store etc. is absent. Upgrading to new builds of LTSC is actually quite easy - but you have full control if you decide to "upgrade" or not. If you want to remain fully legal or use Office 365, then this isn't an option of course because MS refuses to sell LTSC to normal folk and deliberately hobbles O365 not to work on LTSC Windows 10 builds.
2) Install ShutUp10 - allows you to bin all the telemetry and other spyware you don't want. My advice after configuring it is to save a copy of the settings you've applied, then create a scheduled task to run at every start-up which silently re-applies the settings. Useful in case MS ever try to sneakily revert any of them when you install security updates.
3) Install OpenShell - it's a fork of ClassicShell and gives you a Windows 7 oriented Start Menu which is far more user-friendly than the Windows 10 crap.
4) Install ONE (OldNewExplorer) - allows you to bin the ribbon from Windows Explorer, add the status bar back, switch to classical grouping of drives, basically makes Explorer much more Windows 7-like.
5) Install WUMgr (Windows Update Manager) - basically adds back a proper GUI for Windows Updates so you have full control of when and where updates are installed, and allows you to hide any you don't want.
6) Install WinAero Tweaker - optional, but allows a lot of easy control over the Windows GUI, such as setting colours for inactive title bars (no more white, white, white), plus a lot more.
7) Copy over the Windows\Media folder from a Windows 7 machine to banish all the irritating "bongy-bingy-bong" sounds that Windows 10 introduces. Of course if you don't like Windows 7's default sounds, replace with a sound theme you like.
Of course, it is a lot of faffing about that shouldn't be necessary, but the result is a Windows 10 that I do feel reasonably in control of and which is far more user friendly than MS likes it to be...
I am aware, hence it depends on how a person is feeling here. On my machine that I've done this with, I have a legal Win 10 Pro license (acquired it during MS's "free upgrade" offer), its just that I prefer to use a build of Win10 that suits my needs, rather than what MS decrees I must use. But each to their own here of course.
while I'm fully with you on the least worst option (LTSC), etc, you get no moral absolution for the "I have a license for Window 10 so I can and will run any version of Windows 10 I want, any way I want". You paid for (or rather, got for "free") one variant of a product, but this gives you NO entitlement to any different variant of the same product - unless you pay for it, or unless the owners allow such "upgrade". MS being cunts doesn't absolve you (or me, for that matter) of being, morally and legally a "pirate".
p.s. actually, I don't run a pirated LTSC at the moment, but I did, briefly, to see what it's like, went back to W7, fuck them.
You paid for (or rather, got for "free") one variant of a product, but this gives you NO entitlement to any different variant of the same product
Now lets assume for a minute that I did pay for a home version of Win 10.
Wouldn't I be entitled to expect that said software was reasonably functioning, didn't contain in-built spyware that could conceivable collect information on my children (which, without proper consent procedures, is highly illegal in many countries), would continue to function largely as it was when I purchased it, would respect my privacy (not just that of my kids) and would also respect the laws of the land?
Wouldn't I be entitled to a purchase that is fit for purpose, remains fit-for-purpose without removing or adding features unless I agreed (your 5-speed manual 4WD car doesn't suddenly become a 2-speed auto that can barely get out of the garage under it's own speed just because the makers thought that's what you might want rather than what you purchased - why expect the same of an OS?).
The product, to stay on the right side of many consumer laws, should remain largely as it was when purchased, not having things added or removed post-purchase to the detriment of the owner at the whim of the maker.
When MS respects the law of the land, they can expect others to show them some respect. Until that day, I consider using their product against the terms of their license to be quite morally acceptable. Though I usually subscribe to "Treat others as you would have them treat you", in MS's case it's "Do to them what they do to others."
Back when I was a teen, I decided to turn my Windows XP install into a copy of Star Trek's LCARS system. It looked cool, but let's just say it was not a good idea.
Turn to a decade or two later, and Windows 10 is out. Seems MS had the nostalgia goggles on, but no common sense.
Give me a Start button that displays a menu with everything - and I do mean everything - neatly displayed in a logical and coherent list.
Um, *everything*? The Start Menu folder on my laptop has 715 items - if they were all displayed in the menu itself, then it would be a UI nightmare.
If the counter-point is that items should be grouped, filtered and prioritised - that's exactly what the 10 Start Menu does.
Of all the things to dislike about Windows 10, ranting about the Start Menu seems the most stick-in-the-mud like.
The Win10 Start Menu has a number of annoying flaws (even if you ignore how ugly it is):
1) Annoying flashy tiles by default that serve little purpose other than to be very distracting.
2) No way of pinning common applications without using the aformentioned grid of tiles. And you have to have big tiles if you want the name of the program visible, plus a grid of icons makes it harder to find things than a nicely organised list.
3) No "commonly used programs" list
4) It insists in showing alphabet headers for each item in the "all programs" list - no way of turning this off. I'm more than capable of reading the first letter of something to see where I am without 26 extra entries bloating the list.
5) The icons in the "all programs" list are way too big, so there's always tons of scrolling if you want to find anything.
6) Smooth Scrolling cannot be disabled. It gives me motion sickness, and "metro apps" ignore settings in the accessibility centre.
7) Keyboard shortcuts are a huge pain. To shut down Windows 7 (assuming it is the default option) is Winkey+Tab+Enter. On Windows 10, it is Winkey+Tab+Down+Down+Down+Enter+Down+Enter. On machines with extra icons such as "People" visible, it may be even more keypresses. Oh, and "Lock" and "Sign Out" are in a different part of the menu as well, rather than all in the same place.
Interestingly, search for solutions for lots of these things and MS just recommends using Search. In short, this is an admission that navigation in Windows 10's Start Menu is a failure when the solution is just to ignore the menu and search for everything...
That notification popup sliding in just when you are about to click on an icon in the taskbar next to the clock pushes my blood pressure up to record levels.
Win8's notification was in the top-right corner, some bright spark decided it is better to appear just above the clock. GAH.
Keyboard shortcuts are a huge pain. To shut down Windows 7 (assuming it is the default option) is Winkey+Tab+Enter. On Windows 10, it is Winkey+Tab+Down+Down+Down+Enter+Down+Enter.
I just press Winkey+D, then ALT+F4 to get to the shutdown menu.
I'm more annoyed by the new settings menus, hiding of the old Control Panel and so on. I'm sure they're easier to use with a touch screen but they're making things harder with the keyboard warriors.
Oh, and "Lock" and "Sign Out" are in a different part of the menu as well, rather than all in the same place.
Winkey+L has locked the desktop since W2K. And C-A-D+Enter has worked since at least NT4 to lock and the C-A-D menu also contains the sign out option.
Once again, I'm more annoyed by the change of "log out" to "sign out" in the shutdown menu...
Interestingly, search for solutions for lots of these things and MS just recommends using Search.
The start menu search from Vista onwards has been very handy. No need to navigate the menus for something, just start typing e.g. 'notepad' and on my Windows it immediately suggests Notepad++ and Notepad after the first letters.
"The start menu search from Vista onwards has been very handy."
I find it the opposite of handy. The problem is that if I use the application frequently, then I don't want to have to type a bunch of keys to find it. If I don't use the application frequently, then I have to remember what it's called -- which often requires looking through the menu anyway, to remind me.
The search Menu in Vista and onwards worked/works. With the exception of Windows 10.
It's not even a joke anymore, it's a tragedy. Look up/test for yourself on the absolute success previous Windows versions have, and the failure 10 has, to do simple searches. What is so funny, is in 10, it was advertised as a "new" feature.
The start menu search from Vista onwards has been very handy.
Provided you use the 'right' search term(s)...
The number of times I searched for a command and search has been unable to find the relevant command and instead asked to perform a web search, which finds an article which tells me to use the command I had asked search to find..
> I just press Winkey+D, then ALT+F4 to get to the shutdown menu
Winkey > Tab looks to be quicker and easier to me...
> Winkey+L has locked the desktop since W2K....
Indeed, I use Winkey+L and have done for some time, but splitting the options into two different menus for those that prefer the GUI option makes it messier and less user friendly. Plus, doesn't help if you want to log out (and I agree with the change of term being unhelpful).
> The start menu search from Vista onwards has been very handy
Never said it wasn't, and I do use it. However the point still stands that when people complain about the usability and your response is to use search, it is an admission that the navigation and usability of your tool has failed. People shouldn't have to resort to search if they don't want to in order to find things that used to be clear and obvious.
> The Start Menu folder on my laptop has 715 items [...] items should be grouped, filtered and prioritised
You're right, but that grouping, filtering and prioritizing should be left to the user. Back when I still used Windows (Win3-Win7) I always created Start Menu folders and sub-folders according to my daily work flow: Constantly used programs on top, immediately accessible, everything else more or less deep down the folder tree. If I needed something I very rarely used, I didn't need to remember where I had put it or search for it, it would be in the sensible place I would expect it to be.
This was easy to do and very efficient till (including) WinXP, where you could easily configure your ("classic") Start Menu to just 2 immediately accessible folders like "Stuff I use" and "Everything else". This was removed in Win7, which lost the "classic" Start Menu (too user-friendly?), leaving you with the composite "Start Menu" panel already requiring one click to show you "All Programs". But at least you still could organize that "All Programs" list to fit your requirements and turn the endless list of random items into a couple themed folders (like "Work", "Leisure", "System", or some such).
Now somebody will retort that this "classic" Start menu customization was only done by (and accessible to) "power users". Well, it's true, but then again the "powerless users" didn't ever use the Start Menu, they just used the nice icons every installer helpfully placed on their desktop.
(Sorry for the rant. One of the many things which made me quit Windows for Linux many years ago, despite having been with Microsoft since DOS2...)
Really? I am running win10 pro, and after running some extra privacy enhancing tweaks, I get no advertising, only the occasional update (long release schedule, so not the "latest and brokenest") and near as I can tell no telemetry actually getting out to Redmond.
Check again... you can somehow minimize telemetry on a Pro, but you can't completely get rid of it unless you block all the endpoints on an external firewall. See for example:
https://www.softscheck.com/en/privacy-analysis-windows-10-enterprise-telemetry-level-0/
Maybe advertising is not enabled on the Pro - but AFAIK you can't avoid it in the Home edition.
It is possible that MS will be forced by GDPR to back down on many telemetry settings, but I'm sure it will attempt to sneak in as much telemetry as possible until caught. In 20H1 release it looks the wordings in the telemetry group policies have changed, but it's hard to tell if it implies the underlying telemetry has changed.
@J. R. Hartley
For work I moved to linux ages ago because it suited the situation better (not knocking windows there, just easier to use linux) but for games I kept my win7 system. I have no intention of 'upgrading' to win10 so will probably bin the partition and give it to linux. Thanks to steam and wine I have got most of my games working.
I am not willing to pay for what I dont want.and I have been setting up friends and family members with linux so there wont be any issues for them.
Why yes, I am using a flip phone.
Let us compare phones shall we?
My phone has a headphone jack, removeable battery, MicroSD card slot, enjoys a WEEK between charges, and cost me all of $40 out the door, no contract, no subsidies, no hoops. Just pop off the back, slip in the SIM, reassemble, & out the door with a working phone.
Versus a SmartPhone that costs several hundred dollars, may or may not include the headphone jack, probably has a notch, is unlikely to have a removeable battery, the SD slot is dependant on if the manufacturer decided to include one that day your phone was built, is lucky to last a day on a single charge, & probably required you to jump through "account activation settings" before you could make calls on it.
Sure my "dumb" phone can't surf the web, but then my pseudo dumb phone is smart enough to have a working screen reader where the pseudo smart one can't be arsed to even let me answer an incomming call. (Tap swipe shout, beep of missed call. Fuck you Apple!)
Don't knock a basic, feature phone of either candy bar or flip variety. Just because it doesn't have all the bells & whistles doesn't mean that's a bad thing, it means never having to worry about requiring an OTA OS update to stay secure.
*Hands you a pint to take the sting out of my post*
So I assume you're still using a flip phone (or no phone at all) because both Android and iOS are massively worse than Windows for telemetry. Windows even allows you to turn it off.
A phone without internet can still act like a phone. Can still do SMS, I'm guessing MMS (if that still exists?), and phone calls. Windows without internet seems to get a bit uppity, in my very limited experience with W10.
But personally, I use the dumbest phones I can find. I have laptops and tablets if I am out on the road and wish to do anything. I have a dedicated GPS hard-mounted on my bike and a block of wood glued to the dash on my car - I sit a tablet on the ash tray, and the instrument panel on one end and the block of wood on the other keep it nicely in place - if I have a rare need or desire for GPS (offline maps via "Navigator")
I value battery life and reliability in a phone. Done the first-at-accident a couple of times and thankfully never needed to do anything more than basic scene control and a very basic health check (only one case where someone needed an ambulance) - in those circumstances I really value the phone having plenty of talk time, plenty of signal, and nothing else to interfere with my concentration. Also done the "stuff it, I'm going bush for a few days" thing a couple of times, and it's nice to know my phone will last a week.
A dumb phone with a USB connection so I can tether it if I am really desperate for a net connection is all I want. Anything else quickly becomes a hassle. Oh, and my last smart phone got dropped and broke the screen - once that happened it was useless. If the screen had broken in an accident and I was needing to call myself some help.... Whereas I've twice broken the screen on dumbphones and guess what, the keypad still works fine and I can still dial out easily.
The good news is that unless you are paying customer, the end of support to Windows 7 means fairly soon, MS telemetry wont be the only data exfiltrating your PC.
I get people have issues with MS and the way they run Windows 10 but then surely you should have migrated off Windows 7 to Linux or a homebrew OS to fit your needs. Complaining about an offer MS have opened up to give the Win7 laggards more time with patches seems oddly pointless if you arent an MS customer.
The good news is that unless you are paying customer, the end of support to Windows 7 means fairly soon, MS telemetry wont be the only data exfiltrating your PC.
Decent firewall and AV does far more to protect your system than anything MS has done.
Hell, a basic NAT router (one that doesn't have open-by-default open-to-world telnet/HTTP etc interfaces) on its is more protection than any MS update ever.
didn't we go through all this with XP ffs ?
keep whatever OS you have by all means, but be prepared to maintain your systems above and beyond anything you are already doing, bearing in mind that in the world outside El Reg readers, not everyone has a cyber security head on, let alone skillset.
didn't we go through all this with XP ffs ?
Yes, and here we are missing yet *ANOTHER* opportunity to have gotten behind ReactOS. If some indeterminate percentage of those people complaining about the impending demise of WinXP/Vista/7 had put their resources, money and effort behind making ROS fit their needs, it wouldn't matter WHAT bullshit MS is pulling.
And just as there's a lot of people using Photoshop who need nothing more than Gimp (or MS Paint even), there are plenty of people who could achieve everything they need on Linux. Sure, there are various games that can't run under Wine (may Roblox be forever cursed to the furthest depths of hell), and some specialized hardware control systems can't manage with anything other than bog-standard WinXP; these are the places where we should be pushing ReactOS (personally, I'd rather see fixes in Wine for better hardware passthrough, and whatever graphics fixes are needed for any games *other* than Roblox).
Is an Eldritch Abomination.
How did we allow things like "Candy Crush" to get downloaded, corrupting our precious bodily fluids?
Not least the number of times I've gone to upgrade a previously working system and found that (1) the CPU is no longer supported, (2) some other piece of hardware now won't work because the manufacturers won't pay to fix it, or (3) it just stops booting entirely possibly related to uEFI but in a way that can't easily be fixed without TAKING THE FRELLING HARD DRIVE OUT !!!!!!!!!!!!!! Not easy on unibody laptops.
Microsoft need to be told by the US and EU "Either play nice or get the banhammer".: Locking the CPU so we can't install anything else is a cowards game.
And people wonder why I ask specifically "will it run Linux AND 10?" If no, no buy.
Still using 7 on many machines, never had a single problem linked to malware as of yet.
I have it on good authority that the reason for locking out non WIndows OS's as most chips will run 8 initially and microcode is "upgraded" at uEFI level to then prevent downgrading, is for security reasons.
That said it is possible to get a system into a state where hardware has to be removed before it will be recoverable: in some setups even this won't work. Its possible that desoldering and replacing the uEFI chip might work if the setup can't be accessed any other way.
Incidentally putting a drive from one 10 system into another ie after a hardware failure can set it off, had this happen here eg AMD-Intel or Intel-AMD especially from an unbootable system like the infamous "flashing cursor of doom".
But yes antitrust comes to mind. There should be no possible way a system is "bricked" if say the HDD fails and is replaced it should always be possible to recover to a working state.
My hatred for UEFI runs deep. Having it absent (best), or being able to disable it entirely is a bare-minimum requirement for any machine I buy.
Really, we should have been on MicroChannel rev.5.x by now. Had IBM been a bit more clever, and less determined to steal the market back for themselves, they should have opened the MC spec, freed up the licensing, and instead made their money on chipsets and consultation/implementation services.
To answer your question: I believe that one can still run Windose XP and 7 machines if they are safely disconnected from the Internet. And I can still use all of my favourite applications.
I've been using MS Office 2003 since it came out, and Audacity, and Photoshop CS, and a raft of other very usable stuff - without Internet. All the cruft and vulnerability exposing shite which normally runs on these OS'es can be switched off in Services without affecting performance, or usability.
When I need to use the Internet I have a sacrificial Debian (9) Linux box just for the job. Latest browsers, FTP and eMail clients, etc. Of course Debian Linux does many other jobs very well, (apart from Accessability stuff) and I have a handy USB memory stick for transfering data over the air gap, so I can still use very capable hardware and a familiar desktop.
My only gripe with Debian Linux being that infuriating Libre Office software that won't let me install Apache Open Office.
No. when you need to be able to update the applications too - which you may need to do for different reason - sometimes technical, sometimes legal, etc. When the OS is EOLed, usually the applications drop support for no longer supported OS.
Of course that's different if the application doesn't need to be updated, and probably hasn't for a long time, and does work only on a given release.
"My only gripe with Debian Linux being that infuriating Libre Office software that won't let me install Apache Open Office"
Easy way to avoid clashes is to run the other application in a VM. Virtualbox is free and you could use it on the Debian machine to try out Debian 10 and put OO on that. Remember to tick the copy'n'paste boxes so you can copy between and you can even use the same document store.
My Kubuntu 18.04 LTS also runs Windows 2000 in a VM for some really ancient legacy stuff and to remind me of the time MS knew how to produce a really neat low footprint OS with a nicer GUI. It's never run faster or better. Bit sad more recent Windows only apps turn up their nose and refuse to run.
"My only gripe with Debian Linux being that infuriating Libre Office software that won't let me install Apache Open Office."
1. I've never come across that one. Really? I've had LO & OO on the same box in the past with no problems.
2. You do know you can remove S/W you don't want, don't you? Although I run LO myself it's the version from the LO site, not the distro version which I removed.
3. OO is still a thing?
not if you run 7 in a VM... in MOST cases, a _MODERN_ arch (let's say Ryzen) processor running Linux or FreeBSD as a host for virtualbox (or some other virtualizer) can run your old windows in that VM [which becomes portable, now - think about that] and whatever windows application you need [with some limitations].
No updates required. Whole system backups become trivial
and I *suppose* you could have Win-10-nic as the virtualization host, but why would you WANT to?
I have noticed that Ryzen virtualizes WAY better than the older 'Core' processors did. It makes the case extremely well, to virtualize windows 7 images instead of booting into windows, even for GAMES. And you'll be running them on the newer processor.
I'm sorry but this is a load of rubbish. My Win XP PC is connected to the outside world and is still running as fast as ever and the applications are all working fine thank you. (I need to use some very old hardware & software that will not run on anything newer than XP). My Network, of course, is properly firewalled, as everyone's should be.
My Windows 7 connected PC is, and will continue to, work perfectly well next year, next decade. Hashtag Never10
"Fantastic, could you just direct me to the Mac or Linux versions of all the software we need to actually run businesses in the real world."
You mean your business didn't see this coming years ago and start migrating to web-based tools?
Web-based tools are OK for the simplest task. There's a lot of tools that are simply a nightmare to code in Javascript and even worse to use. And when you got a dual-Xeon workstation you hope to run something better than a browser - which if you use Chrome has the same slurping issues of Windows 10.
"You mean your business didn't see this coming years ago and start migrating to web-based tools?"
Having helped a number of organisations move away from web based tools, they are far from being the answer for everybody, no matter what the salesmen say.
Just like outsourcing.
Yeah, from the article:
"to allow businesses a bit more time to iron out their plans for migrating to Windows 10 from Windows 7"
In my opinion, it's more time to keep a mass migration of windows users from saying "*FEEL* it" and migrating to LINUX or even CHROMEBOOK, instead...
The only thing holding back a Linux revolution is THE APPEARANCE of a lack of available software for Linux. Those of us who use Linux _KNOW_ this is NOT true. However, marketeers from Redmond have DUPED people into *FEELING* (not thinking) that this is the case. Too many people these days *FEEL* instead of THINK, and as a result, they're subject to WHATEVER WHIMS THE MANIPULATORS WANT THEM TO FOLLOW.
THAT is what WIndows 10 is all about. Seriously. People talk about being "woke" but the ones doing that are A MAJOR PART OF THE PROBLEM. To *REALLY* be "woke" you have to realize that you're being MANIPULATED by EMOTIONS and *FEEL*. THEN, stop fearing what you do not understand, gain some knowledge, ask the questions, and get REAL answers.
At that point Linux starts to look very, very good. "That one IT guy" that insists on running it... spend about 5 minutes with THAT guy asking about Linux.
The only thing holding back a Linux revolution is THE APPEARANCE of a lack of available software for Linux. Those of us who use Linux _KNOW_ this is NOT true.
And those of us getting paid to support business know that it is true, unfortunately. Do you really think that we like windows? Most of us hate it with far more passion an intensity than you because we have to deal with all of it's problems on a daily basis. We put up with it due to receiving quite a lot of money for supporting it.
The big problems aren't finding a replacement for Office or emails. The big problem is that you literally cannot find business software for it. And by that, I mean the specialist productivity software to run a factory, law firm, doctors, dentists etc etc etc.
You simply can't run a business without Windows, or without accepting that the software available for Linux is so inferior that you need to hire six times the number of staff to do a job as compared to the market leading productivity software that is only available on Windows. And this is why people run windows, not because they actually like it. You choose the best productivity software first, then the OS afterwards.
"You simply can't run a business without Windows"
This is simply untrue, as demonstrated by numerous businesses that don't use Windows. It may be true for many businesses, but the blanket statement that it's always impossible is false.
Ok, you can run a micro to small scale business with nothing more than pen and paper. So yes, you can also run that on *nix, or an iPhone. You are however deliberately missing my point which is that the specialist software required to be competitive in practically every industry is only written for windows, and therefore you can't run a competitive business without windows in any reasonable scale business.
Fuck knows if you could we'd have done it a long time ago.
Now say "but if you want the software you could write it". Go on. It's what the linux crowd always come out with when suggesting that business spend 10 years developing a bit of software at the cost of tens of millions that is ten years obsolete at the point of being finished, instead of just paying a tiny percentage of that sum in licensing fees and getting a better product that is continually developed.
Won't it be great not to have to wait and watch your system reboot virtually every time you log in? If there are any holes left in W7 after that, at least they will be shared so we can be aware of them, but seriously, what can possibly be left after the gazillion updates MS have issued. If things get too bad,Linux awaits.
When you're NOT trying to control everyone (aka being an *EVIL* *OVERLORD*) you think of and actually implement things *like* what you suggested.
In Micro-shaft's case, I think they *ARE* trying to be *EVIL* *OVERLORDS* and as such, can't fathom the possibilities of DEVIATING FROM 'THE PLAN'.
that being said, a few years back MS made a "Windows on Mac" extension that ran on OSX that allowed you to run WINDOWS APPLICATIONS NATIVELY. It was a bit like Wine yeah.
They should do EXACTLY THAT for Linux. Let people have their LINUX DESKTOPS, but then use MS's "layer" to RUN WINDOWS APPLICATIONS.
Except, they don't WANT that. THey want you to run *CRapps* from "The Store" that use 2D FLATTY McFLATFACE FLATSO FLUGLY "UWP" INTERFACES.
And if you do *NOT* they will find ways to *PUNISH* you, like convincing EVERY developer out there to NOT develop for ANY OTHER PLATFORM *EXCEPT* UWP on WIn-10-nic.
And they're trying. Hard. SERIOUSLY hard. Fortunately I think it's not working so well as they'd like.
Use whatever version of Windows necessary (use Windows 3.1 if you need to) but keep it offline and connect it directly to your Linux / BSD workstation via serial (or ethernet).
Then glue that old PC to the actual hardware you use and treat it like a bit of extended firmware (or Lights Off Manager).
Then you can SSH, RDP, VNC to interact with the old hardware through the old Windows and use it in a safe and secure manner.
Quite a lot of scanners and printers are going this route these days too.
from the article (quoting a Kaspersky rep)
"The reasons behind the lag in updating OS vary depending on the software in place, which may be unable to run on the newest OS versions, to economic reasons and even down to comfortability of routinely using the same OS,"
*WRONG* (well not totally but missing the boat on most of it)
Reasons for NOT switching to Win-10-nic:
a) IT support costs [for businesses] - all those licenses, changing everything around - ok that's economic but it's only a small fraction of it all
b) *DOWNTIME* due to *FORCED UPDATES* on *THEIR SCHEDULE* (and not IT doing it overnight or on a weekend when it's convenient FOR THE BUSINESS)
c) re-training costs since "rules" changed between 7 and 10 for no damn good reason except "they felt"
d) 2D FLATTY McFLATFACE FLATSO FLUGLY vs 3D Skeuomorphic. who WANTS the FLAT ??? And don't EVEN get me started on end-user customization...
e) the "start thing" - so full of CRAPP that's HARD to GET RID OF (CRAPP keeps re-installing itself)
f) Adware, spyware, Cortana
g) "The Store" in general
h) "Microsoft Login" aka "spy on you at work as well as at home" and uniquely identifying you WHEREVER YOU ARE ON THE WEB. Oh yeah. didn't you know?
i) why must _I_ change to MICRO-SHIT's NEW (read: inferior) WAY of doing things? I liked it better BEFORE
j) why is my hard drive light blinking whenever the system is idle? WHAT the HELL is it DOING? And don't get me started on how much POWER (and/or bandwidth) all that is wasting...
and so on. yeah, they missed THAT bit of info, didn't they?
a) depends on whether you can get an Enterprise agreement
b) yopu can disable/defer updates and do them as and when, even w7 updates are rollups now....
c)rules always change, even within an OS tree, atleast MS only change them every 5 yrs or so, CISCO have done a flip flop 3 years in a row once.
d) if you work with the customisation, you can get it all working usefully and looking close to win7 (oh and its deployable and lock downable that way too)
e) see c
f) most of it is killable with group policy, you can turn cortana off (mostly) and sinkhole the telemetry (if the higher ups dont buy in to the shuiny dashboards)
g) Store can be disabled by group policy
h) MS login is not required, but its not an easy job to work without one.
I) adapt or die, the entire world is using it, so be interoperable or be irrelevant
j) search is indexing, power is configurable, and telemetry is restrictable, also its probably sharing updates, which you can turn off.
/advocatusdiaboli
Why is it that not one of my microcontroller programming tools will run correctly on 10?
It works fine on 7, 8, 7 x64, 8 x64, Ubuntu, Lubuntu, DSL.. But not 10.
Get massive problems even in XP compatibility mode, in the end did find that running it on a single core partially worked but not sure why.
Perhaps someone can shed some light on this?
Serial port USB dongles seem to be dead as a brick on 10, can sometimes get loopback working,nothing else will change state but the read side will.
Even tried using Bluetooth serial but the thing refused to work, port state sticks etc.
Can't access memory with SPDTool either, yet it worked before.
relevant: https://alxndr.info/blog/2016/03/03/downclocking-ram-with-spd.html
Enough with Satnav Gnutella's wet dream OS, "Windows 10" already! Aren't there enough sane developers left at MS to do a proper upgrade of Windows 7 to Windows 9 for all the ordinary folk who have real work to do on not the latest hardware. Windows 10 is a warmed over, phone-interfaced GUI spyware abomination.
When the time comes to move on from Win 7, barring miracles, I will be migrating boxes to Linux Mint; tried ReactOS, nice but no where near finished.
Yesterday I helped an elderly neighbour with his Win10 box. He had taken the free "upgrade" option but it was slow as hell. It took 10 minutes to boot up and Opera about 5 minutes to load. In short, unusable!
I eventually got it to shutdown and booted Linux Mint from USB stick. When I tried to mount the HDD an error message said that the drive had the Hibernate flag set. So I booted back into Windows and checked that Hibernate was disabled, it already was. Under that option is something like "Wake from alerts" and I disabled it. Then used the disk utility to shrink the Widows partion by about half of the unused space. That created 45GB of unallocted space.
Installed Linux Mint in the free space and not only was Mint super fast but Windows was now working as expected on a dual core machine with only 2Gb RAM.
How did that happen?
My problem with Win 10 and why there's an additional cost is privacy. When you turn off as much reporting back to MS as you can, Win 10 becomes Un-activated and you start getting pop ups that it's not a legit copy even though 10 minutes earlier and before you turned off everything, it was fine.
I've been using Linux Mint on my Lenovo W530 laptop and it games pretty decently. Steam works on it fine but it doesn't run most games as they were written for Windows. Wine works for the most part but still, it's slower then running it native. Linux forums on Steam though is so negative and so anti-gaming on Linux it's kind of odd. The true die-hard Linux folks don't want an influx of gamers to the Linux OS so I don't know if we'll get a different OS that can really take on Windows and none of them have privacy in mind.
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