* Posts by Woodburner

7 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Nov 2015

Windows 11 growth at a standstill amid stringent hardware requirements

Woodburner

Re: Why move to Windows 11 ?

Totally agree the hardware requirements for Windows 11 are ludicrous. I have a three year old Core i7 Gen 6 laptop with 8GB RAM that doesn't meet the hardware requirements. Yet Windows 11 upgrade has been offered to (and refused by me) a crappy Pentium N4200 laptop with 4GB RAM that runs dog slow with Windows 10. WTF? Are Microsoft actively seeking to push folk to Chrome OS, Linux or Mac? I'm reducing the number of Windows PCs in my estate to the absolute minimum and re-purposing any "older" PCs with Ubuntu. I'd do the lot if Photoshop and a few other applications were available natively on Linux!

Microsoft claims it has spun up a top-five AI supercomputer for its pals at OpenAI – but won't reveal the full specs

Woodburner

285,000 CPU cores and 10,000 GPUs

Just testing the minimum hardware requirements for the next version of Windows.

Creators Update meets its maker: It's 1903 or bust for those clinging to Windows 10 1703

Woodburner

Re: Do it our way or not at all

Go for a Long Term Support (LTS) release of Ubuntu and you will not be bothered by unnecessary feature updates for a few years. You still get kernel, security and hardware updates but these take a few minutes to install with minimal impact on system resources. You get a nice, secure, stable, familiar, OS for 3-4 years. I'm still a Windows fan and need it to run certain applications, but the current 6 monthly major release update cycle and the brutal amount of bandwidth and system resources it uses drives me mad. There is just no need. An annual cycle would be just fine, maybe even 18 months. Please Microsoft, stop fixing things that ain't broke. I only use Windows on machines I use for photo and video editing now. Any other PC's used for basic productivity and "consumption" are on Linux and I buy barebones machines wherever possible. I reckon I've saved over £500 on Windows licences in the past three years!

Are you a Windows 1 in 10 (1809)? Or a mighty 80 percenter (1803)?

Woodburner

Re: Not sure about all the hate for W8.1 and W10.

"My main concern recently is the broken W7 update thst screws network sharing."

That really annoyed me too! It has now been fixed. See the post here: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/kb4480970-no-networking-invalid-handle-error/00d87fe8-876a-45d9-beb9-2c2fd9fff0aa

We put Huawei's P20 triple-lens snapper through its paces

Woodburner

Where's the shutter button?

If phone makers are serious about the imaging capabilities of their phones, why do so few have a dedicated shutter release button on the side? This one feature improves phone camera photography quality no end by providing a much better, more stable grip. It used to be a standard feature on many Nokia phones but seems to have disappeared from all handsets recently. The lack of a "shutter button" is the one thing that makes using a phone as a camera awkward for me. Along with weak flash units. Generally though, the sensors and optics on modern phones are good enough for family snaps and general photography. They have more than enough resolution.

Microsoft offers pay-as-you-go data SIM for Windows 10 devices

Woodburner

Re: PAYG Data?

3 don't allow the use of 321 SIMs in tablets, dongles or MiFi units. I've tried and it doesn't work. I've asked them repeatedly why they do this but have never had an answer. They seem to be shooting themselves in the foot. It would be a perfect solution for the casual data user.

Pause Patch Tuesday downloads, buggy code can kill Outlook

Woodburner

Re: And that ain't all

...and the unbelievably bad idea of pushing out third party hardware driver updates that Microsoft clearly have not tested in any shape or form that pretty much kill legacy AMD graphics cards. You can opt out but need a utility to do so or you need to blanket ban hardware driver updates through Windows Update in advanced settings. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3073930. Why should a normal user need to dig around on Microsoft's support site to find a utility that delivers functionality that should be (and used to be) in the bloody OS? Nonsense. The Windows update process for consumers is frankly appalling. And as for QA on Windows updates........