Windows 10 updates?

[Garth Wilson]

(07-31-2015 01:31 AM)Bill (Smithville NJ) Wrote:  

(07-31-2015 01:05 AM)Garth Wilson Wrote:  Windows 10 may be free, but it comes at a huge price to your privacy

Windows 10 automatically shares your Wi-Fi password, blowing a hole in enterprise security, experts warn

The Sky is Falling!! The Sky is Falling!!

It's not a catastrophic thing, but more like the frog in the kettle. It has been happening and continues to happen.

[Gerson W. Barbosa]

(07-31-2015 02:32 PM)Thomas Radtke Wrote:  

(07-31-2015 12:01 PM)Bill (Smithville NJ) Wrote:  After I wrote "The Sky is Falling", I realized that there may me some here that may not know what I was referring to.

I was reminded of the chief from the Asterix comic books. What was his name? Majestix?

German: Der Himmel wird uns auf den Kopf fallen.

Yes, Majestix, Abraracourcix, Vitalstatistix...

[Jim Horn]

Lots of good points, above. As mentioned, Win 8.1 can be set to boot directly to the desktop, have a classic Start menu, etc. and generally be set up to look like Win 7 but faster and more robust (the new Universal API for software development and execution with its built-in sandboxing and such does look like a real improvement over the decades-long accumulation of layers in Win 7 and earlier).

All that said, my Surface Pro 3 installed 10 just fine. The only minor bug so far is that it no longer knew it had any internal sound capability - only Bluetooth. When I turned Bluetooth off and rebooted, it rediscovered its sound system and speaker and re-installed the drivers. Bluetooth works, too. But overall, when set up properly it's just a minor update on 7 (I consider 8.1 to be 7.2; this seems like 7.3).

Since the SP3 is a recent machine direct from Microsoft, its success with 10 is assumed. Success over the enormous range of other machines over the last decade or so is where the real questions lie.

Best to all!

[Pierre]

The question is not to know HOW to install a version of Windows 9+1 but WHY install the nth crap of Micro$oft ?
For technological progress ?
Where is the evolution? Surely in the "start" button...
Each time, users who install a new version, are testing for the others and each time, later, the SP2 is announced as a stable version... (and immediately the correctives arrive numerous on the Micro$oft website)
Is Micro$oft would have invented the word "Vulnerability" ?
Seriously !

For professionals who want to have control of all the components of their system, the new versions of Windows (Vista, Seven, 8, 9+1 ...) are only regressing about the ability to customize, improve and optimize itself its own system.

With my XP Optim V4.8 (an unofficial release of XP, optimized without the unnecessary bullshits of the original system), I have customized all my system and I use dual boot with several different Linux (Debian, Fedora, Slitaz, OpenSuse...) and my privacy is not raped, and my safety is guaranteed (with a lot of added security tools...).

Since XP, nothing really new appeared, except a few cosmetic gadgets (and the usual vulnerabilities...).

So why install Windows 9+1 ?

[eried]

(08-01-2015 06:51 PM)Jim Horn Wrote:  Lots of good points, above. As mentioned, Win 8.1 can be set to boot directly to the desktop, have a classic Start menu, etc. and generally be set up to look like Win 7 but faster and more robust (the new Universal API for software development and execution with its built-in sandboxing and such does look like a real improvement over the decades-long accumulation of layers in Win 7 and earlier).

All that said, my Surface Pro 3 installed 10 just fine. The only minor bug so far is that it no longer knew it had any internal sound capability - only Bluetooth. When I turned Bluetooth off and rebooted, it rediscovered its sound system and speaker and re-installed the drivers. Bluetooth works, too. But overall, when set up properly it's just a minor update on 7 (I consider 8.1 to be 7.2; this seems like 7.3).

Since the SP3 is a recent machine direct from Microsoft, its success with 10 is assumed. Success over the enormous range of other machines over the last decade or so is where the real questions lie.

Best to all!

Task View / Multiple Desktops is a long awaited feature no old Windows had. That and the new Windows Snap (try snapping an app in the most top corner) feature alone should worth the upgrade.

Plus if you want to develop to Win10-Tablets-Xbox-Phones-small embedded (like the raspberry pi) devices now they all will share the same unified kernel, hence unification and popularity of this version will be a plus for developers:

Quote:We already knew Windows 10 was going to be popular. So much so that Microsoft reportedly purchased as much as 40 Tbps of bandwidth from content delivery networks (CDNs). The company was already hitting 10Tbps on July 28, when the update was only available to Insiders. Now, it seems that Windows 10 has gained even more users, with an estimated 67 million users as of 8AM this morning.

A previous blog post by Microsoft put the number of updates at 14 million in 24 hours and it seems that the rate at which users are upgrading their systems has only picked up, with a report claiming that the upgrade counter hit 67 million at 8 this morning. That's almost five times the number of upgrades compared to the first day of the launch.

http://www.neowin.net/news/windows-10-is...cs-already

[Sukiari]

(07-31-2015 12:45 AM)Katie Wasserman Wrote:  I'm following this thread with interest because I feel no need to upgrade to Windows 10 at all. Given that many (all?) of us are into old technology that works well I'm baffled at the desire to mess around with the latest and buggiest technology out there.

I have a lot of computers, many still running WinXP, I'm of the mind to let Windows 10 get debugged by everyone else and waiting until I have to install it. While I can enjoy beta-testing a calculator I want a computer I can count on and that works with all the "stuff" I have plugged into it.

Usually I see the interest in exploring many of the same things that other people here find interesting, but in this case I fell exactly the opposite. What am I missing out on?

I am with you. I still don't know what Windows 10 is supposed to do for a person.

Anyway I am too busy with HP-41s and Apple IIGSs to make time for a new operating system. I have everything right how I want it anyway.

[Tugdual]

I'm not going to install because I'm not sure I'll find drivers for my motherboard, I will definitely not find my external soundcard drivers and I spent enough time fixing windows 7 issues to have a nice latency (I play music on the PC).
As many mentioned, this version doesn't add any real benefit, I'll consider a move only the day my system is too old and all software providers have move ahead. Way too early now is just pioneer time.

BTW for those fed up with the MS permanent troll, check this out.

[Bill (Smithville NJ)]

(07-31-2015 12:45 AM)Katie Wasserman Wrote:  Usually I see the interest in exploring many of the same things that other people here find interesting, but in this case I fell exactly the opposite. What am I missing out on?

Hi Katie,

You're not missing out on anything.

Like any large group of people that may share a common interest (in this case HP calculators) there will be sub-groups that have a common interest in a different subject (in this case Windows 10).

For myself, I installed Windows 10 on a secondary computer, mainly so that I could learn what problems might ensure. I'm the local person that all my friends call on for their computer problems. So I usually try to stay up to date so that I can help them.

I may end up never upgrading my production computer. Or at the very least, wait until next year. Even then, I'll probably install a new hard drive and do fresh install while keeping the current hard drive for a backup in case anything goes wrong.

Just sit back and enjoy the conversation and then decide when you feel like it whether to upgrade or not.

Bill
Smithville, NJ

[Bill (Smithville NJ)]

(07-30-2015 06:04 PM)Namir Wrote:  Has anyone on this web site updated from Windows 7, 8, 8.1 to Windows 10? Did the update go smooth?

Namir

Hi Namir,

This weekend I did my second upgrade to Windows 10 and it went very smooth.

A few months ago, on a whim, I bought one of Micro Center's cheap Windows tablet. They are selling these for less than $100, so I thought it would be an opportunity to check out the Windows touch interface on a tablet. (All my tablets/phones are Android.) I ended up with the Winbook TW802, which is an 8" tablet with 32 GB drive, 2 GB memory, and Windows 8.1).

I played with it and quickly decided it was not really useable for me. I was mainly wanting to use it with regular Windows Desktop programs, and these really only work well with a mouse.

This weekend, I decided to see if it would upgrade to windows 10. The upgrade went great, took a about 1.5 hours on Wi-Fi. All the correct drivers loaded with no problems. After playing with it after the upgrade, it has now become a usable tablet. Windows 10 loaded a much better display driver that gives many more features than the original Win8.1 did. Under Win 8.1, I couldn't scale the desktop; with Win 10 I can scale the desktop 125% which makes the programs much easier to use with my fat fingers.

All in all, I am very pleased with Windows 10.

Bill
Smithville, NJ

[HrastProgrammer]

(08-03-2015 06:14 AM)Tugdual Wrote:  I'm not going to install because I'm not sure I'll find drivers for my motherboard, I will definitely not find my external soundcard drivers and I spent enough time fixing windows 7 issues to have a nice latency (I play music on the PC).

Among other things, that's one reason why I am sticking with Windows XP/32 on my i7-2600K @ 4.4GHz and with Windows 7/64 on i7-4770K @ 4.4GHz audio/DSP workstations ... A perfect stability (no crashes, no BSODs, turn on in the morning, turn off in the evening), very low latency (exhaustively checked with DPC latency checker) both for audio and MIDI, lack of E-MU 1820M drivers on newer Windows, etc. I don't plan to change this setup for at least the next 10 years - I bought spare audio interfaces, spare CPUs, spare motherboards (3 PCI slots per motherboard is essential to me and newer boards usually come without PCI), etc. so I don't have to think about hardware, OS and drivers anymore - I just need the system which works as I want it to work, without nasty surprises.

On the other side, I plan to assemble a separate Windows 10 machine which I will use for business applications development/testing, this is not connected to the above.

[Jim Horn]

Great to see the wide variety of systems used here - but not surprising, considering the level of expertise shown by those on this forum!

While my Surface Pro 3 went to Windows 10 on opening day, our desktop PC will stay with 7 and my other three laptops will stay XP (one, for compatibility) and Linux (the other two - XUbuntu 12.04).The laptops are all circa 2005 single-core CPUs that newer OS versions refuse to use, so this works for us. All five are seriously tweaked and customized. Isn't that expected here?

Best to all!

[Tugdual]

(07-31-2015 12:45 AM)Katie Wasserman Wrote:  I'm following this thread with interest because I feel no need to upgrade to Windows 10 at all. Given that many (all?) of us are into old technology that works well I'm baffled at the desire to mess around with the latest and buggiest technology out there.

I have a lot of computers, many still running WinXP, I'm of the mind to let Windows 10 get debugged by everyone else and waiting until I have to install it. While I can enjoy beta-testing a calculator I want a computer I can count on and that works with all the "stuff" I have plugged into it.

Usually I see the interest in exploring many of the same things that other people here find interesting, but in this case I fell exactly the opposite. What am I missing out on?

For some younger generations, old technologies might as well be a discovery just like windows 10.
As I'm getting close to half a century, I'm less attracted into new things especially since I haven't recently seen dramatic breakthrough but when my musical equipment was blasted a couple of years ago and I had to fund new equipments, I have to confess I was impressed how things were easier now.
For the rest you're right, windows 10 is far too fresh but I might consider it one day.
This thread could also evolve toward a discussion about compatibility of all existing PC software's, such as development kits, emulators etc...

[Didier Lachieze]

Has anybody tried to flash a WP 34S with a Win10 PC?

[Claudio L.]

(07-31-2015 02:40 AM)Dave Britten Wrote:  I've upgraded three machines so far. The two Asus systems had an issue with updating the touchpad drivers (which are awful to begin with)

Same issue here with Synaptics touchpad. Spent a couple of hours looking for a way to disable automatic updates to keep the 2013 driver version that was working on that machine.

(07-31-2015 02:40 AM)Dave Britten Wrote:  So in a nutshell, I like it so far. But if you do upgrade, make sure you dig through ALL the privacy settings and turn off all the stuff that has no business being on by default.

Done. No MS Account, no Cortana, no sharing of any kind.

After a few hours digging through the settings to set it up properly it works just as well as Windows 7, so I gained... nothing. Looks different, that's all, unless you unleash the new features that will compromise your privacy, which I'm not planning to do.
The fact I had to tinker with the drivers reminded me of a Linux installation. It had been a while since I had to mess with drivers on a Windows machine. I guess it's a more even playing field now for OS's.

I only update my machines between big projects, never in the middle just in case something goes wrong. Telling your clients you missed a deadline because "my computer had a bad update" is not very professional. I personally don't like the automatic updates, so I'm going to wait on my 2 production machines. I think the complaints about drivers will force MS to bring back the choice of updates, at least for power users.

Regarding programs...
VirtualBox didn't start anymore (no error message, just did nothing). But I was overdue to install VBox 5.0 anyway, and installing the new version made it work fine.
All my development tools kept working well, and I noticed no other problems.

[Dave Britten]

Well this is rather interesting. My laptop just downloaded an update for the touchpad drivers from Windows Update, and it looks like a stock Elan driver package, rather than the horrid mess that Asus puts together. Seems to be working better, and even has more features than the Asus version.

Going to pull out my other Asus laptop/tablet and see if it gets the same treatment...

[rprosperi]

(08-04-2015 02:06 AM)Dave Britten Wrote:  Well this is rather interesting. My laptop just downloaded an update for the touchpad drivers from Windows Update, and it looks like a stock Elan driver package, rather than the horrid mess that Asus puts together. Seems to be working better, and even has more features than the Asus version.

Going to pull out my other Asus laptop/tablet and see if it gets the same treatment...

Good news Dave, thanks for the note. One of my W10 machines is also an ASUS notebook with Elan touchpad that has been somewhat flaky under W10. I read that MS was monitoring for troublesome driver issues and would be responding quickly. Good plan, I thought, but looks like it's true. I'll go look for updates tomorrow. Did you prod it, or did this just download by itself?

[Dave Britten]

(08-04-2015 02:30 AM)rprosperi Wrote:  

(08-04-2015 02:06 AM)Dave Britten Wrote:  Well this is rather interesting. My laptop just downloaded an update for the touchpad drivers from Windows Update, and it looks like a stock Elan driver package, rather than the horrid mess that Asus puts together. Seems to be working better, and even has more features than the Asus version.

Going to pull out my other Asus laptop/tablet and see if it gets the same treatment...

Good news Dave, thanks for the note. One of my W10 machines is also an ASUS notebook with Elan touchpad that has been somewhat flaky under W10. I read that MS was monitoring for troublesome driver issues and would be responding quickly. Good plan, I thought, but looks like it's true. I'll go look for updates tomorrow. Did you prod it, or did this just download by itself?

Looks like it installed completely by itself. It's actually a Toshiba driver for some strange reason... I recall experimenting with alternative drivers a while back, just because Asus SmartGesture is so horrible (my next laptop definitely won't be an Asus, and it's almost entirely because of SmartGesture). I wonder if there were some tiny pieces left, and Windows Update spotted them and pulled a newer version. Whatever the case, I uninstalled the Asus driver so the good stock ones hang around!

Now I'm trying to find a comparable package for my T100 tablet. It's a removable keyboard dock, so I don't know if the bus is different, and hence needs a very different driver.

EDIT: Yup, the T100 is an Elan, but it's an I2C bus (whatever that is). Not having any luck finding other laptops that use the same kind of touchpad. Let me know if you guys know of any.

[Anderson Costa]

I have upgraded my laptop to Windows 10. I love the program compatibility. All the HP Virtual Calculators worked very well.
Windows 10 seem like a truly successor to Windows XP for me. Windows 8.1 make me learning easy because I have a Lumia smartphone, but Windows 10 is more easily to dominate and learn.
But Microsoft is giving away this OS for all....And I enjoyed this fact!

[Tugdual]

(08-05-2015 01:29 AM)Anderson Costa Wrote:  I have upgraded my laptop to Windows 10. I love the program compatibility. All the HP Virtual Calculators worked very well.
Windows 10 seem like a truly successor to Windows XP for me. Windows 8.1 make me learning easy because I have a Lumia smartphone, but Windows 10 is more easily to dominate and learn.
But Microsoft is giving away this OS for all....And I enjoyed this fact!

Are you saying that some old applications that no longer worked on windows 8 might be executed on windows 10?

[eried]

(08-05-2015 11:31 AM)Tugdual Wrote:  Are you saying that some old applications that no longer worked on windows 8 might be executed on windows 10?

Which one didn't worked to you?

There hasn't been core changes since Vista on how the apps execute, the biggest "environmental" changes happened between XP/Vista transition:
-UAC, old bad programmed apps accesing admin stuff would fail if not run as admin
-New sound model (sound per app, not system-wide)
-Window compositor (old apps that used somewhat a direct screen drawing could fail or work slowly)

Windows 10 only tweaked stuff in the sound model so besides clear Windows-version dependent stuff like antiviruses should work exactly the same since Vista.