back to article As one Microsoft Windows product hauls itself out of the grave, others tumble in

As much of the Microsoft world packed up and headed for Ignite, new builds and a surprising resurrection filled a busy week in Redmond. Windows Insider build pace hints at imminent release, if not for that pesky Task Manager The gap between releases for fast and slow Windows Insider rings continued to narrow last week as build …

  1. Greem

    Wileyfox...

    ...could really do with concentrating on their Oreo codebase and working out why Swift 2+ devices never go into deep sleep. I've gone from having a phone that lasts all day with moderate usage to one that lasts about 12 hours between charges.

    1. M man

      Re: Wileyfox...

      Wileyfox is back

      yaaaaaaa

      Making windows phones

      booooo

  2. Scott 53

    Wait until the last sentence

    I use the Snipping tool almost daily. Are Microsoft about to break it?

    1. WolfFan Silver badge

      Re: Wait until the last sentence

      Of course they are. It took 'em literal decades to get close to what Apple had since day 1 on Macs (hint: command-shift-3 for the entire screen and command-shift-4 for a window, with really difficult to learn sub commands like hitting the spacebar to select a specific window) and so they must tweak it. And break it. Because they're bloody Microsoft, and the'M' stands for 'Mighty' and the 'i' stands for 'incompetent'. Three guesses as to what the 'c' stands for.

      1. MyffyW Silver badge

        Re: Wait until the last sentence

        Three guesses as to what the 'c' stands for.

        Is it the speed of sheep in vacuum (measured in linguine per unit second)?

      2. Lorribot

        Re: Wait until the last sentence

        Print screen and Alt-Print screen do the full screen and current window snapping. Those with OneNote installed also had the Win+Shift+S to get a box to draw on the screen, there was also the the OS clipping tool, these have been around for as long as I can remember. A bit disparate but all there.

        Now the OneNote clip tool has been replaced by a new Windows tool that is launched with the Win+Shift+S combo and offers both box, freeform (to draw around something on screen) and full screen clips, Alt+Print Screen is still there.

        Unfortunately the default setting at first was free form and it wasn't obvious how to change it which was immensely annoying for someone who does a lot of screen clipping of both desktop and RDP sessions.

        The clipboard now stores multiple clips as well rather than just the last thing.

        Also OneNote also has built OCR which is handy....

        Is the Collectables? Constipation? Cauliflowers? I give up.

        1. Chavdar Ivanov

          Re: Wait until the last sentence

          Or if one is after a screengrabber on steroids, one could bother oneself to install shareX (which happens to be GPL, if that matters to one)...

      3. JLV

        Re: Wait until the last sentence

        on the Mac, the you can then fire up Preview.

        Command-N pastes your clipboard as a png. Preview then provides an annotation mode allowing you to quickly draw arrows and text - good for quick and dirty UI notes.

        And the screengrab function also has a terminal command, ‘screencapture’.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Wait until the last sentence

      Are Microsoft about to break it?

      No. It's in the list of "Features we’re no longer developing" - which is a good thing (for now).

    3. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Meh

      Re: Wait until the last sentence

      snipping tool - is that anything like irfanview? Some people used to swear by that application...

      As for "removing features" - wait until Win32API is removed and then EVERYTHING MUST BE *UWP*!!!

      "Because, We're Microsoft and *WE* *CAN*!"

      (what, you think they don't WANT to do this? And aren't waiting for an opportunity to LOCK EVERYONE IN to the UWP 'new, shiny' [slurp, track, ad] model? HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!)

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Wait until the last sentence

        snipping tool - is that anything like irfanview? Some people used to swear by that application...

        Sorry, not even close to what Irfanview does. It's my goto tool for lightweight handling of images and even videos. Tons of plugins, it can even make use of Photoshop and similar plugins as well. I've been using it since the very first beta.

    4. N2
      Trollface

      Re: Wait until the last sentence

      Let me guess, it was useful but now it's out of fashoin and has to go.

      We have useless new ways to do familiar things.

  3. hopkinse
    Joke

    schrodinger's browser...

    "if a browser tab crashes, but no one ever uses it, did it really crash?"

    1. doublelayer Silver badge

      Re: schrodinger's browser...

      What if it's one of those wonderful tabs that, when they crash, manage to take the browser or, if they're ambitious, the entire OS, down with them? Is that what quantum entanglement is like?

      1. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
        Windows

        Re: schrodinger's browser...

        Quote : What if it's one of those wonderful tabs that, when they crash, manage to take the browser or, if they're ambitious, the entire OS, down with them? Is that what quantum entanglement is like?

        No, sounds typical M$ browser behaviour over the past 20 odd years to me..... especially when it takes down the OS too

  4. Kubla Cant

    Who would want such a thing?

    My wife has a Nokia Lumia that runs Windows, and I'm afraid she absolutely loves it. The hardware's gradually failing, and I don't know what we'll do when it gives up the ghost entirely.

    She tried an Android phone recently, but in a couple of weeks her SIM was back in the old Nokia. I was sufficiently desperate to take her into an Apple store on Saturday, where I was surprised to find that the IPhone UI is more-or-less indistinguishable from Android.

    Is there such a thing as a Windows emulator for Android?

    1. The Original Steve

      Re: Who would want such a thing?

      Forget what you know about Windows 10 on the PC, I standby my view that Windows Phone / Mobile actually is really rather good for all by Millennials / those who want lots of 3rd party apps.

      Not being one for Snapchat, Twitter, Starbuck, Uber and all that crap, I was more than happy with my £300 flagship 950XL so long as it had Outlook, Skype for Business and Barclays Mobile Banking.

      Interface was clean, and it sipped the battery wonderfully. Camera is to this day one of the best you can find.

      My mum now has it and I'll end up moving her onto this when her hardware packs in. (She loves the clean and easy to use interface too)

    2. Waseem Alkurdi

      Re: Who would want such a thing?

      There was a launcher called Launcher8 that was a semi-perfect rendition of the Windows Phone homescreen/lockscreen/notification shade.

      But it's gone now, though you might find an APK.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Who would want such a thing?

      I am one of several people I know who love their Windows Phones (I have a 640XL after having first had a 720) and I was very sad to see them die. If Wileyfox really do have some for sale I am very tempted to get one (and their website suggests that they do).

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Who would want such a thing?

      Could you soldier on by picking up a second hand Nokia/Microsoft Lumia?

      For me so long as the key apps don't disappear (lost a banking one the other day - but it wasn't necessary for my usage) I figure I could pick up a secondhand Lumia (eg from an online purveyor like the one named after a black and white corvid) for a modest price.

      Or, going by the offspring's experiences with phones, it'll be a Moto of some kind for me.

    5. Charlie Clark Silver badge

      Re: Who would want such a thing?

      You can probably get a theme that comes close and MS did release a launcher for Android.

      There are also some settings for tweaking and simplifying the interfaces that manufacturers of phones for older people, like Doro, take advantage of. Shrink the display area, add a couple of widgets and it should be good enough. Apple has been playing catch up on the UI for the last few years.

  5. mark l 2 Silver badge

    I suspect that the new owner of Wileyfox ended up with an inventory of Windows phones as part of the deal. I am guessing their plan will be to sell of all the remaining stock before, announcing new handsets (probably with Android as the OS)

  6. Steve Knox
    Facepalm

    "Flash elements crashing an Edge browser"

    Why do Microsoft continue to support such buggy software when the rest of the world has moved on?

    Tsk, tsk...

    ..And putting Flash on it, as well!

    1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

      Re: "Flash elements crashing an Edge browser"

      For Netflix: the world may have moved on but rightsholders haven't.

      FWIW, most browsers apart from Safari come with builtin support for Flash even though, for a while now, virtually no website uses Flash on their homepage.

  7. Ubermik

    I thought that was unfair to suggest nobody uses the edge browser, pretty much EVERYONE uses it......to download a decent web browser on a clean install. So take that back you cad :)

    To be perfectly honest re the edge browser, for me and a few other people I know its stupid unnecessary things that killed it

    Not being able to select "open in new window" from favourites bar items for example and not being able to select "close current window" when you click the global window close gadget

    And that's pretty much it for me to be totally honest, those two seemingly quite minor things annoy the heck out of me so much I wont use the browser

  8. BongoJoe

    When you get to hear from them...

    The Register contacted Wileyfox to find out how long this stay of execution might last but has, as yet, received no response.

    If you ever hear from them, could you ask them why they are still refusing to pay our promised rebates from when we bought our Swift phones years ago?

  9. russmichaels

    As much as I liked Windows Phone and preferred it over both iPhone and Android, I don't see how WileyFox are going to make any money from another Windows Phone, the number of customers is minute and even Microsoft have given up on it and are killing of the phone OS and nobody is making apps for it anymore.

    A better idea would have been to build an Android phone that looked and worked like a Windows phone.

    1. Nunyabiznes

      Upvote, but the fork of Android that would have to be done to make it work as well as Winphone on the backend would be hard slogging.

      I quite liked the 3 winphone based handsets I had/have (I know I am in a very small subset of mobile phone users!) and they did everything I needed in a mobile and did it better than the competition. Good battery life, good camera, good call quality.

      Of all the things that MS do to piss me off, wrecking their phone division ranks right up there with everything Windows except 98, XP, and 7.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I've got an iPhone

    Windows don't mean shit to me.

  11. Potemkine! Silver badge

    Edge: the quantic browser

    It's here and isn't here at the same time. You know it's on your computer but never have really experienced it.

  12. Chronos

    Wile E. Coyote

    The Register contacted Wileyfox to find out how long this stay of execution might last but has, as yet, received no response.

    That's you, me and everyone else who bought a Storm who is waiting for them to stop twatting on Twitter and get back to us. So far, nobody has had any luck.

    We need a Wile E. Coyote icon, preferably one of him off the end of one of those desert rock formations looking resigned to his fate and holding a sign which reads "BYE!" A very apt metaphor for companies which tit about too much on social media rather than concentrating on things that matter like getting the design right, not putting the magnetometer near a power rail and giving the LEDs enough copper surface to dissipate heat.

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