Windows 10

[Tetge]

I downloaded the evaluation copy of W10 and installed it on my secondary computer last night. It installed easily and quickly as I burned the .iso to a USB 3.0 pendrive. Overall, it appears to be an improvement on W8/8.1 since it reinstates some aspects of the older desktop features that they removed from 8/8.1, but, I still am not a fan of it. It works but, I want to have the look and feel of W95, as I have always done with every new version of Windows ,and with NT, from way back. And, this is not possible, as far as I can determine. I particularly dislike the fact that they removed the ability to fine tune how Windows and boarders and headers and all that look. So one is stuck with defaults that sometimes are ugly and sometimes difficult to see. And, I do not like the way that the file explorer is set up. These may seem like small quibbles, but, they are important to me since I have spent years using near identical desktops and utilities. Hell, I even make Linux Mint MATE look like W95.

So, I will restore my backup of good old W7 now that I have looked at W10. As I said, W10 is better for me as a non touch screen user, but, I still am not happy with it. I also will not take the time to see how various software works with W10 since I am not going to switch to it.

[SonicVenum]

I finally got rid of my old, dual-core Intel box a few months ago, which was running W7 Pro, in favor a new, pieced together, quad-core i5 box with an SSD in order to run AutoCad better. I was forced to run W8.1 Pro because my uncle's W7 Pro disc did not want to properly load/install on the new box. There are definitely things I hate about 8.1, like having to go through and change a bunch of settings just to have permission to install or run certain programs. The first week or so was a headache, but after daily use, I'm used to it, and don't really have problems. I work from home, so I'm on this thing pretty much all day, and it works great for my purposes. I may check out W10 because I don't have much to lose. I like W7 a lot better as well.

New box specs for those interested:

Intel i5 2400 Quad-core 3.1 GHz CPU
Gigabyte Z68 MB
16 GB PC3-10700 DDR3 RAM
Samsung 250 GB SSD
Western Digital 1 TB HD
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti GPU

It runs AutoCad like butter, boots up in about 20 seconds, and shuts down in about 15. I'm happy.

[03_SONIC_BLUR]

Juan

Classic Shell on W8X

Done

[Tetge]

Juan

Classic Shell on W8X

Done

Classic Shell helps but it still doesn't fix all my issues. W10 has a start button of sorts that makes it easier to use, and, W10 senses what hardware you have so if you have a non touchscreen desktop, it boots to the more or less old traditional desktop automatically. It is still a beta build, and I still have it installed, so, I may play with it a bit more, but, it still is not there, for my purposes. I am betting that those who have a nicely configured W7 setup will not be in any hurry to adopt the newer version of Windows.

Linux Rant:

Meanwhile, I am still getting more refined and fully configured for all my needs, distributions of Linux. By the time that W7 is churned out, Linux may be truly ready, and, of course, one could still run W7 in a sandboxed, virtual, environment under Linux, if Windows was at all important to a person. As it stands, with Wine and DosBox, I have imported the few Windows programs that I have always kept on my machine, such as FreeCell and Irfanview and Notepad. They work fine as does the DOS version of the original SimCity (not that I play this since the graphics are not all that great). I also tried other programs with Wine, and some worked as well. So, at this point, I could switch to Linux if I had to, but, Win7 works and there are still more open source and freeware programs for W7 than there are for Linux. Also, utilities that come with some hardware, such as Corsair Link which works with my liquid cooling, still do not have Linux versions. So, Windows still is useful to have.

[SonicVenum]

Thanks for the tip, John. I wish I would have known about it when I first got 8.1. I'm pretty well settled now. All my programs are up and running, and I've got the hang of it.

So, how does this beta W10 work? You get a trial version of it, but do you get any other benefits? A discount when the full boogie release comes out?

[Brakelate]

Juan

Classic Shell on W8X

Done

My thoughts exactly.

Enough said. Thread Closed.

[Tetge]

Thanks for the tip, John. I wish I would have known about it when I first got 8.1. I'm pretty well settled now. All my programs are up and running, and I've got the hang of it.

So, how does this beta W10 work? You get a trial version of it, but do you get any other benefits? A discount when the full boogie release comes out?

You get to try it and that's about it other than the fact that you agree to let Microsoft snoop in real time on everything you do. It is said that there is even a real time key logger in the code. But, Microsoft says that you shouldn't worry as they are secure and you can trust them. I just installed it to take a look and I had a link to the .iso so I did not have to create a Microsoft account to get the software. in fact I created a local account when I installed it and I am not sure how much info my install is gathering. But, I put it on a secondary computer and I will take it back off soon, as I looked sufficiently to see that I still did not like it. I own a legit copy of W8/8.1 which I purchased and installed and which I then backed up when I reverted to W7 after I decided that I couldn't find happiness with W8/8.1.

[SonicVenum]

Juan

Classic Shell on W8X

Done

My thoughts exactly.

Enough said. Thread Closed.

I feel like that so often. When you guys talk about all the cool riding spots... I know just enough about computers to stay out of trouble, and yet somehow I ended up my company's go-to IT guy. Thank goodness we don't need much tech support, and our work isn't very computer-heavy.

[Tetge]

I played around with W10 a bit more, and then I restored my backup of W7. W10 even made this difficult as It makes some hidden partitions on the HD and hides its boot manager in them, I think. I had to delete all the partitions and restore the MBR from W7 to get it to restore properly. I did not try to see if Classic Shell works on W10, but, the freeware utility that takes the ribbon off of the File Explorer in W8/8.1, worked for W10. Even then, it is not possible to get a clean, traditional looking, tree view of the files on the hard drive(s). And it still bugs me that I can not configure the way that windows look, including their borders and the font used by them, etc. In W7, "Change Window Colors and Metrics" allows a lot of control over all kinds of details. This function was removed from W8 on.

[jhwalker]

I read a thread like this and I am proud of you guys. And amazed. After starting in computers in 1967 and grinding forward until 2003 making a living with them, my use of computers is very simplistic now. Over a year ago, when I switched to the Surface Pro 2 and Windows 8.1 I decided to see if I could function with it "as is". And I could. Truth is, I do email, word, and excel. and some google earth for exploring. And access the internet. Don't play ANY online games -- just don't want to make the time available. I never get everything planned for the day done during the day.

Have been trying voice recognition off and on for 16 years and it still is not there for my voice which changes daily it seems. The fact that we still fat-finger communicate with our devices in 2014 seems like a MASSIVE failure, and I look forward to the day that some kid says "look how they used to spell stuff out with that thing called a keyboard." I do like my stylus - and panic about 20 times a day when I have misplaced it... And I don't even remember the W7 look.

I have some friends down here who have automated their houses and now spend way too much of their time trying to find out why the automation is not working, re-booting servers, etc. I held off on thinking about automation (knowing shit real-time that is of no relevance real-time) for our casa until they had their 'fun' and now FOR SURE will not add any more complexity to my casa systems. I check the amount of solar energy we create each day one time a week, my water usage weekly, the cisterna levels weekly, the LP tank levels weekly. Actually, Guillermo checks them weekly and brings me the log book... I throw them into the Casa/Casita spreadsheet and look for strange deltas. The term "luddite" comes to mind but is not really accurate. I am worse than a Luddite.