Questions about the "end of Windows 7"

On Sun, 3 Mar 2019 14:05:23 -0500
Stan Brown wrote:

On Sun, 3 Mar 2019 11:30:15 -0700, Bill in Co wrote:
Mark Lloyd wrote:
[quoted text muted]
using on Windows). I've done over 90% of that change. There's no
need to make it complete, when you can keep Windows for when you
need it.

BTW, most things I heeded help with on Linux, have solutions on
the web.

I know. But what's the point? What does Linux give you that you
miss in Windows, except for something to just play around with for
kicks? If the latter, then I understand.

Freedom from spyware, at least from spyware that ships as part of the
OS. Freedom from forced updates (usually buggy, these days). Freedom
from ...



From Microsoft. You don't own your Windows operating system, Microsoft
does.

I have done my taxes online using Turbo Tax for the last five years,
and feel much safer than using Windows. I shop online and bank
online.

In message , Char Jackson
writes:
On Sun, 3 Mar 2019 18:01:01 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote:
[]
(What was it you were wanting to _do_ in IrfanView that you found so
frustrating? What _do_ you normally use instead to do that?)

I need just a couple of things, and I want just a couple of additional
things.

Needs:
1. Quickly open and display a photo.

IV does that, of course, if you associate filetypes with it.

2. Easily and intuitively move forward and backward through a series of
photos.

See below.

Wants:
3. Easily rotate left/right. Auto-save the results.

R for right, L for left, H for horizontal flip, V for vertical flip.
Hard to get simpler than those.

If you want to save the results, if it's a JPEG, J (that's shift-j)
followed by R, L, V, or H (or A for auto-rotate using EXIF data if
available).

4. Ability to delete the current photo.

Er - Del key? (And you can set it to delete completely or via recycle
bin, as you wish; the default is via the bin.)

IV does #1, fails at #2, and I didn't get as far as checking how to do
#3 and #4. What does IV use to move through a series of photos, J and K
or some such? Is there a modifier involved? I don't remember, but I
figure if he can't get that part right, then it's not for me.

You _gotta_ be kidding! Space and backspace. Space is the easiest key to
hit!

I use the built-in Windows Photo Viewer. It loads and displays a photo
in less than a second, navigation is via the cursor keys (!), rotation
and or deleting can be done via the keyboard or mouse. We have a winner.

I'd say IV loads in a lot less than a second unless it's quite a large
image. Navigation _within_ the image is via the cursor keys for small
amounts and PgUp/PgDn/Home/End for larger jumps. You _can_ rotate (image
menu) and delete (toolbar) with the mouse if you wish, I just find the
keyboard easier.

[]

--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Q. How much is 2 + 2?
A. Thank you so much for asking your question.
Are you still having this problem? I'll be delighted to help you. Please
restate the problem twice and include your Windows version along with
all error logs.
- Mayayana in alt.windows7.general, 2018-11-1

"Bill in Co" surly_curmudgeon@earthlink wrote

| This is why I recommended you grab a copy of the older version of Kingston
| Office, which is instantaneous upon start up, unlike OO and LibreOffice
and
| all the rest, and is only 50 MB And no registration is required.
|

Yes, but where. I found v. 2013. I unpacked the installer.
It says it's spyware. From 2016 it's adware. I found
2012. I wasn't able to unpack it entirely, but an ini file
for setup had this:

PopPay14Days=1

It's not clear which version is actually free, honest
software. I'm guessing I'd want the version from
before it was sold to the Chinese? I'm not going to
just keep trying out whatever installers turn up.

On 2019-03-03, Stan Brown wrote:
Freedom from spyware, at least from spyware that ships as part of the
OS. Freedom from forced updates (usually buggy, these days). Freedom
from ...

Freedom from licensing restrictions, freedom from product activation
issues, freedom to choose your GUI (or if you even want one), freedom
to inspect and modify source code, freedom to run across a broad spectrum
of hardware ... basically, freedom in general, both as in beer and as
in speech.

--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Roger Blake (Posts from Google Groups killfiled due to excess spam.)

NSA sedition and treason -- http://www.DeathToNSAthugs.com
Don't talk to cops! -- http://www.DontTalkToCops.com
Badges don't grant extra rights -- http://www.CopBlock.org
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

On 03/03/2019 18:01, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:

IMHO, the poster
child for bloated software is IrfanView. In the various Windows groups,
users defend and promote IV, so every couple of years I dutifully
download and install IV to take a look. A few minutes later I uninstall
it because its UI is such a mess. Others proclaim that IV can do
everything, which perhaps it can, but where in the sam h*ll is the stuff
that I want it to do? So to me, it's bloated beyond belief. I don't care
about disk space or any of that other stuff. The program itself is
bloated to the point of being entirely unusable.

Now there, I disagree completely. Not only is it small (to the extent of
it being the poster child for compact software - and I still feel it
works perceptibly faster because of that), but to do what I used to do
with a version from several years ago, I still press the same keys.
(Unlike, for example, Word, where the commonest question type is "where
has xxx gone?") Because all (or nearly all - there may be _some_ that
have changed, but I can't think of any) its functions are where they've
always been, any extra functionality that has been added _isn't_ intrusive.

I have IrfanView installed on all my machines, and originally it was
going to be the main image manipulating/light editing program for my W7
PCs, if only because the old version of Paint Shop Pro that I have, 8.1,
crashes its GUI in W7. However, I've had to install an older version of
PSP, 6.02, which behaves in W7, because using IrfanView to crop an image
seems to be so difficult. In Paint or PSP, one selects an area of the
image by dragging with the mouse, and then clicking crop in the former
or the crop tool tick button in the latter. Can IV *really* not do it
like that, or is it so obscure that simply I haven't been able to find
out how to do it?

To expound on the wider discussion about various definitions of bloat, I
think it's partly most of the things that have been mentioned, but for
me most particularly disk space, RAM consumption, and unnecessary features.

My standard XP build, which has a lot of software, will fit on a 32GB
partition, but my standard W7 build, which although it has quite a lot
of software has a much smaller number of programs than the XP build,
will only just fit on a 64GB partition, and, considering that W7 doesn't
do anything that XP can't, most of that extra 32GB must be considered bloat.

My standard XP build when idle on the desktop with no programs loaded
has about 21 or 22 processes running, but my standard W7 build double
that or more, and by the same reasoning as above, most of those must be
considered bloat.

In W7, there are both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of many bundled
programs: IE, WMP, etc. Why the need for both? More bloat.

But also the GUI of both OS and programs have become ever more cluttered
with bloat.

For me, ribbons = bloat.

User pictures on the logon screen = bloat, the more so because listing
the users on the logon screen is less secure than someone having to type
in, and therefore know in advance, the correct username. And having a
user management console and the user control panel, and some jobs can
only be done in one, and some only in the other = bloat.

Rt-click My Computer, Management and in the left-hand navigator go to
Services. Like most management consoles including and since XP, the
default view is now Extended, but this is merely the same as Standard
view but wasting at least 25% of the available window real estate, and
consequently shows you less of what you *need* to see than Standard
view, again it's utterly useless bloat.

The dialog to set file permissions also changed in XP, and now takes 2
or 3 more clicks to accomplish the same as W2k = bloat. Worse still,
in W7 when you select more than one folder, you don't get the Security
tab at all, so you have to change each one individually - it's not
bloat per se, but nevertheless it's disastrously inefficient.

In W2k & XP, Control Panel was available in a single column 'Details'
view, but now there is only an icon view - people never seem to
understand that searching a 2D array of icons de ipso facto is less
efficient than searching a 1D list, because you have to keep moving your
eyes/head from side to side and then down to scan down an array of
icons, but only have to move your eyes/head in one direction down a
single list. The more so in that people of my age were bought up with
newspapers, telephone directories, and other printed material, where you
scanned down the first column, before going back the to top of the next,
whereas with icons you have work across the top row and then move back
to the beginning of the next, etc, and this is counter-intuitive to
anyone used to reading printed material. For me, icons = bloat.

Similarly with the Start Menu, that now has two columns, and therefore
it takes longer to find what you want in it. As for W10, its Start Menu
is an absolute disaster, because it makes the user start with the mouse
to click something, then move a hand back to the keyboard to type
something, then back to the mouse to choose one of the choices that
comes up. This is completely unergonomic and awkward to do, and thereby
disastrously inefficient. And if you say put the commonly used items as
icons in the menu, we're back to a relatively inefficient 2d array of
icons again. For me, modern Start Menu = bloat.

For me, the only version of Windows that had a GUI that even came close
to meriting being described as 'professional' was 2k - it wasn't so
out of the box, because like every other it defaulted in everything to
icon and not list view, etc, but by dint of some time well spent when
first installed, it could be made acceptably professional. With each
version of Windows since, it's taken longer and longer to achieve even
an acceptable result, and even then it's not as professional as 2k.

"Char Jackson" wrote

| What does IV use to move through a series of photos, J and K
| or some such?

Arrows on the toolbar. Welcome to the 21st
century. If you don't like using the mouse you
can use the arrow keys. It's in the help. Can't
be bothered to read help? IV has a good help
file. It's worth using.

On Sun, 3 Mar 2019 11:29:17 -0600, Mark Lloyd
wrote:

On 3/2/19 2:01 PM, Ken Blake wrote:

[snip]

1. I've got way too much invested (*knowledge* wise) in Windows at
this point. I'm not interested in starting from scratch to learn
something new to me.

2. There are undoubtedly a number of programs that I run on it Windows
and are important to me that are not available for Linux. Quicken is
one, but other come to mind. (Yes, I know there are Linux alternatives
to Quicken, but I'm not interested in making the investment of time to
learn them and find whether they are just as good for me).

Some (usually simpler) Win programs run in WINE. I do regularly run one
program that won't, it's in a virtual machine running Win 7.


Even if you take away this point, the other points will keep me away
from using Linux.



3. There is much more Windows software to choose from.

These are also the main reasons I'm not interested in Apples. I don't
claim that Windows is better. Might Linux or Apple Operating systems
be just as good as, or even better than Windows? I don't know. Maybe
they are. But I'm not going to take the time and trouble to find out.

I would never change to an unfamiliar OS all at once. Keep the old one
for what you need it for.



Almost certainly, I will keep the old one forever. I have no intention
of changing, neither gradually nor all at once. And I'm not interested
in running two operating systems.

In message , Java Jive
writes:
[]
I have IrfanView installed on all my machines, and originally it was
going to be the main image manipulating/light editing program for my W7
PCs, if only because the old version of Paint Shop Pro that I have,
8.1, crashes its GUI in W7. However, I've had to install an older
version of PSP, 6.02, which behaves in W7, because using IrfanView to
crop an image seems to be so difficult. In Paint or PSP, one selects
an area of the image by dragging with the mouse, and then clicking crop
in the former or the crop tool tick button in the latter. Can IV
*really* not do it like that, or is it so obscure that simply I haven't
been able to find out how to do it?

In IV, select by dragging with the mouse, then either Edit|Crop (mouse)
or Ctrl-Y (keyboard). Or Ctrl-Shift-J for JPEG lossless crop, if you're
working on a JPEG.
[]
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"The wish of the lazy to allow unsupervised access [to the internet] to their
children should not reduce all adults browsing to the level of suitability for a
five-year-old." Yaman Akdeniz, quoted in Inter//face (The Times, 1999-2-10): p12

On Sun, 03 Mar 2019 12:47:23 -0600, Char Jackson
wrote:

On Sun, 3 Mar 2019 18:01:01 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote:

In message , Char Jackson
writes:

Well, I did say people defend IV. ;-)


I use it and like it a lot, so I guess I'm one of the people you're
talking about.



As with any software, you have to use it a bit to learn where things
are; I note you don't tell us what you use to do what IV does, but I
suspect if you did I'd find it just as non-intuitive as you find IV (and
I bet it'd be slower to do things, too).

(What was it you were wanting to _do_ in IrfanView that you found so
frustrating? What _do_ you normally use instead to do that?)

I need just a couple of things, and I want just a couple of additional
things.


Comments on each follow.


Needs:
1. Quickly open and display a photo.


Right-click and Select Open or Open With


2. Easily and intuitively move forward and backward through a series of
photos.


Use the left and right arrow keys or scroll the mouse wheel. Both are
very easy and intuitive, as far as I'm concerned.


Wants:
3. Easily rotate left/right. Auto-save the results.


Press L or R. You have to save it if you want it saved, but to me,
that's an advantage. I wouldn't want it autosaved; I'd much rather
have to confirm that I want it saved.



4. Ability to delete the current photo.


Edit, Delete.


IV does #1, fails at #2, and I didn't get as far as checking how to do
#3 and #4. What does IV use to move through a series of photos, J and K
or some such? Is there a modifier involved? I don't remember, but I
figure if he can't get that part right, then it's not for me.

I use the built-in Windows Photo Viewer. It loads and displays a photo
in less than a second, navigation is via the cursor keys (!), rotation
and or deleting can be done via the keyboard or mouse. We have a winner.

[]

On Sun, 3 Mar 2019 11:08:32 -0700, "Bill in Co"
surly_curmudgeon@earthlink wrote:

Ken Blake wrote:
On Sat, 2 Mar 2019 21:35:27 -0700, "Bill in Co"
surly_curmudgeon@earthlink wrote:

Mayayana wrote:
"pyotr filipivich" wrote

So far, I have found one thing Word does, which WP doesn't: break
a large brochure up into signatures. But all the rest, - ?ave you
ever tried to track down where the style change was made which is
screwing up the document?"

You lost me there. I used to use WordPro from a magazine
CD. Then I switched to OO and now Libre Office. But I
only use it a bit, to write out receipts, contracts, bills, etc.
I made the template files years ago, so I've never really had
to master office programs.

Did you ever consider the much leaner Kingston Office (aka WPS Office
now), or Softmaker Free Office? They are both a LOT less bloated then
either OpenOffice or LibreOffice, but may not have everything you need,
not sure. Just wondering.



It's very common for someone to complain about some particular program
being "bloated." What they mean by that, I assume, is that it consumes
a lot of disk space.

My personal view is that that's nonsense. Back when I got my first
computer in 1987, it had a 20MB disk drive, and the space a program
used was very significant. But these days it means nothing. Word and
WordPerfect each use about 1GB of disk space. At today's disk prices,
when a 1TB drive costs around $50 USD (less per GB, for bigger drives)
1GB of disk space is about 5 cents worth. If my quick look at the
amount of disk space each uses was wrong, multiply the numbers by 10
if you like, and make it 50 cents each; I still wouldn't care.

I have two 2GB drives on my computer, and they cost around $60 each.
That lowers the cost of the disk space each uses to around 3 cents.

We should be concerned with what a program does, whether it meets our
needs, how stable it is, how fast it is, how easy it is to use, how
comfortable we are with its GUI, etc., not with how much disk space it
uses.

Your assumption was only partially correct. By bloated, I mean hog wise in
terms of resources used and responsiveness.



Also not an issue with modern computers, as far as I'm concerned. I
don't run or know of know any program that runs too slowly for me.


So mostly that, but in
addition to the filesize, which is only secondary. And yes, I am concerned
about what the program does, and how much extra junk has been added in there
to dull down my experience of using their program (like needless eye candy,
or extra baggage functions of little use, such as (you want a good one?
social app crap access)


Yes, there's some of that in some programs. I wouldn't call it bloat,
but I agree with you there.


I also had only a 10 GB HD back then too. Actually, I didn't have a hard
drive at all, with the original IBM PC, and was swapping out 5.25 floppy
disks for a "large" program to run, until some friend came over and gave me
a 10 GB HD, and I then was in heaven. No need to swap out floppy disks for
some program to run anymore!



Yes, I remember those things too. The world has changed! And it will
change more tomorrow.

Roger Blake wrote:
On 2019-03-03, Stan Brown wrote:
Freedom from spyware, at least from spyware that ships as part of the
OS. Freedom from forced updates (usually buggy, these days). Freedom
from ...

Freedom from licensing restrictions, freedom from product activation
issues, freedom to choose your GUI (or if you even want one), freedom
to inspect and modify source code, freedom to run across a broad spectrum
of hardware ... basically, freedom in general, both as in beer and as
in speech.


Freedom from stuff that works :-/

If there is ever something which is covered by NDA
or is delivered as a binary blob, "you can't have it".

This is why, right fricken now, I *cannot* have
a copy of FFMPEG with a working NVenc in it. No distro
will ship a copy of FFMPEG, with dynamic loading
of NVidia materials "if they happen to be lying around".
Which would be the intelligent way to handle this.

I've tried several times to build such a Linux FFMPEG, from
source in Linux, and it simply doesn't work, because
some joker ****ed up some header files. I can successfully
build ffmpeg without NVenc in it, and I tested such
just to see that I had the skills to do that much.

Is this any way to run an Army ?

No.

Can my TV Tuner card, work under defaults in Linux.

No.

Why ?

The firmware file (something you extract with ZIP from
a file on your TV Tuner card CD), cannot be shipped from
a package manager. Doesn't matter what Linux distro
I boot, I see in "dmesg"

cannot load firmware for hauppauge tuner card

or equivalent. I took a Ubuntu DVD and remastered it,
and stuck the appropriate file into /lib/firmware,
and... it works.

If you love aggravation, you're going to love Linux.

It's not that you can't do this stuff. It's that
you will have a *million* *****ing* *stupid* *things*
*to* *fix*.

I've had video editors in Linux, that crashed within
the first 10 seconds of running. Before I could even
get the File : Open to even so much as sniff a file.
Now, how much time would *you* spend, debugging
software that died in your lap like that ? My
answer was... *zero* time.

Linux is like a Tesla Model 3. It looks like a car.
But it has gaps around the doors and windows. It's
like the factory has some fit and finish issues.

Anything which requires as much manual labor to assemble
as an OS+apps does, this is bound to happen. Several
hundred humans are involved. They get tired from
doing the same things over and over again (release
after release). It's understandable stuff like
this happens. But if someone else makes a car
with fewer gaps between the doors and windows,
somebody will buy it. That's how the market works.

Paul

On Sun, 3 Mar 2019 13:47:20 -0500, Stan Brown
wrote:

On Sun, 03 Mar 2019 09:04:46 -0700, Ken Blake wrote:
It's very common for someone to complain about some particular program
being "bloated." What they mean by that, I assume, is that it consumes
a lot of disk space.

Maybe "they" do. :-)

"Bloated" to me means that it has a lot of features that I'll never
use in a million years. A very personal definition, obviously.


OK, we have different definitions.

But almost every program has lots of features and almost nobody uses
them all. We're all different and although I don't use feature A, you
use it all the time. And I use feature B, but you don't.

To me that's good, not bad. Even though our needs are different, we
both get the features we want. I have no problem with a feature that I
don't use being there.

As a single example of what I mean, I use Forte Agent as my
newsreader. Agent also has a built-in e-mail client, but I never use
it. However lots of other Agent users do. That's fine with me. Those
who use it and those of us who don't are both happy. Other than its
taking up a tiny amount of disk space (probably less than a penny's
worth), as far as I'm concerned there's no disadvantage to its being
there.

Paul wrote:
Roger Blake wrote:
On 2019-03-03, Stan Brown wrote:
Freedom from spyware, at least from spyware that ships as part of the
OS. Freedom from forced updates (usually buggy, these days). Freedom
from ...

Freedom from licensing restrictions, freedom from product activation
issues, freedom to choose your GUI (or if you even want one), freedom
to inspect and modify source code, freedom to run across a broad spectrum
of hardware ... basically, freedom in general, both as in beer and as
in speech.


Freedom from stuff that works :-/

If there is ever something which is covered by NDA
or is delivered as a binary blob, "you can't have it".

This is why, right fricken now, I *cannot* have
a copy of FFMPEG with a working NVenc in it. No distro
will ship a copy of FFMPEG, with dynamic loading
of NVidia materials "if they happen to be lying around".
Which would be the intelligent way to handle this.

I've tried several times to build such a Linux FFMPEG, from
source in Linux, and it simply doesn't work, because
some joker ****ed up some header files. I can successfully
build ffmpeg without NVenc in it, and I tested such
just to see that I had the skills to do that much.

Is this any way to run an Army ?

No.

Can my TV Tuner card, work under defaults in Linux.

No.

Why ?

The firmware file (something you extract with ZIP from
a file on your TV Tuner card CD), cannot be shipped from
a package manager. Doesn't matter what Linux distro
I boot, I see in "dmesg"

cannot load firmware for hauppauge tuner card

or equivalent. I took a Ubuntu DVD and remastered it,
and stuck the appropriate file into /lib/firmware,
and... it works.

If you love aggravation, you're going to love Linux.

And can I respectfully add, Windows 7 (to some degree), 8, 9, 10, 11 ...
:-)

On Sun, 3 Mar 2019 18:21:46 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote:

In message , pyotr
filipivich writes:
[]
Was talking with The Wife this morning. If I had the mad skillz,
I'd write a word processor called "My Typewriter." Times Roman or
Courier as default, bold, underline or italics as options. Basic
editing. She said "Typewriters don't have bold and italics!" well,
yes, but ...

I think some fancy ones did - bold by overtyping with slight offset, at
least. Italic would have meant switching in a different
golfball/daisywheel, at least before the ones that weren't really a
dot-matrix printer (basically a word processor for those who "didn't
want a computer" [I _think_ you can still get those]).


I used to own a very fancy typewriter--an IBM Selectric. Soon after I
got my first PC, I gave the typewriter away.

On Sun, 3 Mar 2019 11:27:35 -0700, "Bill in Co"
surly_curmudgeon@earthlink wrote:

pyotr filipivich wrote:
"Mayayana" on Sat, 2 Mar 2019 23:52:36 -0500
typed in alt.windows7.general the following:
"Bill in Co" surly_curmudgeon@earthlink wrote

Did you ever consider the much leaner Kingston Office (aka WPS Office
now), or Softmaker Free Office? They are both a LOT less bloated then
either OpenOffice or LibreOffice, but may not have everything you need,
not sure. Just wondering.

Sounded interesting but I jut went to check them out.
WPS - website's a mess, mostly embedded in javascript.
Not much to see otherwise. The source code looks like
they require an email address.
Free 2018 - Website not much better. XP not supported.
No sign of older versions. Requires registration.

Was talking with The Wife this morning. If I had the mad skillz,
I'd write a word processor called "My Typewriter." Times Roman or
Courier as default, bold, underline or italics as options. Basic
editing. She said "Typewriters don't have bold and italics!" well,
yes, but ...
Then I got into feeping creatures. Typewriter clicks when you
press the keys, and a Ding! at the edge of the screen, or the Enter
key. an option to have random capital letters entered as bottom half
the capital above and top half of the lower case letter below.
Control H backs up, overstrikes the next key typed.

Oh well.

Typewriter??? What is a typewriter? LOL.



You say it as a joke, but there are probably a lot of kids these days
who don't know what it is.

My grandson is 22. I don't know whether he knows the word, but he's
probably never seen one.