GWX - it just keeps getting worse

On Sat, 16 Jan 2016 16:09:01 +0100, edevils wrote:

On 16/01/2016 06:08, . . .winston wrote:
...
Marketing is marketing...intended to promote or sell product. Nothing
more. Complaints about marketing are futile.

Marketing is worse than futile if it leads to mass complaints.

The computer *user* segment of the market is less than a percent of the
total market MSFT are selling into that even if we, all to a man, were to
vociferously complain by the million or so, MSFT would still consider it
a too insignificant fraction to take any notice of.

--
Johnny B Good

Euclides Zoto wrote on 01/16/2016 9:55 AM:
On 1/14/2016 4:06 PM, . . .winston wrote:

Try adding something of value. I might even include your multiple nym's
giving MSFT the impression that it was mentioned by more than one
individual. As noted, you've no clue, nor will you ever, on what I
feedback to the Team in any MSFT sponsored Program Group Interaction or
private listserv.


Your remarks show clearly an arrogance.
EZoto


Lol...think you deserve better ? Good luck with that.


--
...winston
msft mvp windows experience

On 01/16/16 10:16, . . .winston so wittily quipped:
Euclides Zoto wrote on 01/16/2016 9:55 AM:
On 1/14/2016 4:06 PM, . . .winston wrote:

Try adding something of value. I might even include your multiple nym's
giving MSFT the impression that it was mentioned by more than one
individual. As noted, you've no clue, nor will you ever, on what I
feedback to the Team in any MSFT sponsored Program Group Interaction or
private listserv.


Your remarks show clearly an arrogance.
EZoto


Lol...think you deserve better ? Good luck with that.



interesting how you snipped the x-post to alt.hacker [it was my intent
to carry the discussion in both newsgroups]. I re-added it along with a
full-quote.

we who frequent alt.hacker know how to deal with trolls.

On 01/16/16 08:15, Johnny B Good so wittily quipped:
On Fri, 15 Jan 2016 15:59:21 -0800, Big Bad Bob wrote:

On 01/15/16 08:01, . . .winston so wittily quipped:
the majority of complaints are centered on making Win10 more XP/Win7
like...some addressed but it would be a pipe dream to expect a
regression to the past o/s GUI, feature set, telemetry approach and
privacy - those last four pretty much some up the majority of
complaints

YES, they DO sum up the majority of complaints, don't they?

Seen the marketing info on W10 lately? Just curious.

You'd think that Microsoft would treat CUSTOMERS in a way that GIVES!
THE! CUSTOMER! WHAT! HE! WANTS! instead of **ARROGANTLY** **DICTATING**
to "the masses" that THIS! IS! WHAT! YOU! WILL! TAKE!!!

This has been exactly their strategy since win98 and then, in the NT
line, winXP.


It's a RECIPE for DISASTER.


Apparently not (at least up to now). The response to winX in this NG is
no guide to the response from MSFT's target market, the great unwashed
consumer, which is the only market segment that counts in their view.



consumers won't just swallow the coolaid. MS's bad attitude about who
their customers are WILL come back to bite them in the ass.

Big Bad Bob wrote:

On 01/15/16 14:16, Euclides Zoto so wittily quipped:

snip

we who frequent alt.hacker know how to deal with trolls.

Didn't really intend to do that. In the chess newsgroup we have this one guy
named Sam Sloan who when you respond to his post he will crosspost it to
politics, lawyers, etc etc. What has that got to friggin do with chess?!?! I
had to respond to that guy. It is this utter arrogance that has hurt the
consumer. When Bill Gates went through the trash I wonder if he did it for
revenge against IBM or give access to the people as a good cause. I like to
use the line in Last of the Mohicans movie when DDL faces the Huron chief
Sacheem. Mogwai's (Bill Gates) heart is twisted. And he would make himself
into what twisted him.


true, and I was just having a bit of fun.

[actually we deal with trolls by playing with them until it becomes
boring, but Gandalf was always especially good at engaging them]

I just found out here that Gandalf passed away. I posted a goodbye to him. He
seemed to know more than anybody.

EZoto

On 15 Jan 2016, "Ant" wrote in
alt.comp.os.windows-10:

No! Target Windows 2000 (or even NT4) as the minimum. Win2k was
the fastest most stable OS MS ever released and I'm still using
it.

That was not my experience. I ran Win98, NT, 2000 and XP in succession
on the same hardware. Each one was more stable and less crash-prone on
that hardware than the previous OS. I've run XP and Win7 on a more
recent computer - Win7 is more stable than XP.

"Johnny B Good" wrote:

On Sat, 16 Jan 2016 01:23:55 +0000, Ant wrote:
No! Target Windows 2000 (or even NT4) as the minimum. Win2k was the
fastest most stable OS MS ever released and I'm still using it.

Well said! :-)

I should also say I like the small footprint (lack of bloat).

I try to make anything I write (which isn't much) compatible with Win95
and NT4 onwards. I use an old compiler but add a manifest resource to
make the program play and look nice on a modern OS.

It's interesting that you include win95 (presumably osr2 - the *real*
deal rather than the rushed to market RC1 version).

I don't know! It came with an old PC someone gave me so I'll have to
check next time it's booted up. Actually, I've probably got different
variants of 95 on old kit (in various states of working order) lying
around here. I refer to an old copy of MSDN which covers NT4, 9x, W2k
and XP when checking for API compatibility. So far, I've not seen
mention of differences between versions of 95.

The blatant pandering to the great unwashed consumer at the expense of
the needs of computer *users* didn't kick in until those execrable
versions, win98 and winXP, were foisted on a gullible public. And, it's
been a rapid plunge downhill since then.

Perhaps you mean WinME rather than Win98. 98 made improvements on 95.

Otherwise, I tend to agree. I mainly use computers for computing but
these days the general public use them for socialising and shopping.

"Nil" wrote:

On 15 Jan 2016, "Ant" wrote in
alt.comp.os.windows-10:

No! Target Windows 2000 (or even NT4) as the minimum. Win2k was
the fastest most stable OS MS ever released and I'm still using
it.

That was not my experience. I ran Win98, NT, 2000 and XP in succession
on the same hardware. Each one was more stable and less crash-prone on
that hardware than the previous OS. I've run XP and Win7 on a more
recent computer - Win7 is more stable than XP.

I will defer to your greater experience. I've run Win2k on only one
box and it's been rock solid apart from when experimenting with dodgy
software/drivers. I can't remember the last BSOD. I run XP on a laptop
and although I've tried to reduce the running services and background
processes to a minimum it's slow in booting and general operation
compared to the Win2k running on an older PC. The only experience I
have of later OSes is when fixing other people's systems.

I like the lean and mean feel of Win2k. It was the last of the NT line
not marketed to the general public.

Big Bad Bob wrote on 01/16/2016 1:48 PM:

interesting how you snipped the x-post to alt.hacker [it was my intent
to carry the discussion in both newsgroups]. I re-added it along with a
full-quote.

You'll have to carry that yoke on your own.

--
...winston
msft mvp windows experience

On 01/15/16 14:16, Euclides Zoto so wittily quipped:

snip

we who frequent alt.hacker know how to deal with trolls.

Didn't really intend to do that. In the chess newsgroup we have this one guy
named Sam Sloan who when you respond to his post he will crosspost it to
politics, lawyers, etc etc. What has that got to friggin do with chess?!?! I
had to respond to that guy. It is this utter arrogance that has hurt the
consumer. When Bill Gates went through the trash I wonder if he did it for
revenge against IBM or give access to the people as a good cause. I like to
use the line in Last of the Mohicans movie when DDL faces the Huron chief
Sacheem. Mogwai's (Bill Gates) heart is twisted. And he would make himself
into what twisted him.


true, and I was just having a bit of fun.

[actually we deal with trolls by playing with them until it becomes
boring, but Gandalf was always especially good at engaging them]

On Sat, 16 Jan 2016 21:15:40 +0000, Ant wrote:

"Johnny B Good" wrote:

On Sat, 16 Jan 2016 01:23:55 +0000, Ant wrote:
No! Target Windows 2000 (or even NT4) as the minimum. Win2k was the
fastest most stable OS MS ever released and I'm still using it.

Well said! :-)

I should also say I like the small footprint (lack of bloat).

I try to make anything I write (which isn't much) compatible with
Win95 and NT4 onwards. I use an old compiler but add a manifest
resource to make the program play and look nice on a modern OS.

It's interesting that you include win95 (presumably osr2 - the *real*
deal rather than the rushed to market RC1 version).

I don't know! It came with an old PC someone gave me so I'll have to
check next time it's booted up. Actually, I've probably got different
variants of 95 on old kit (in various states of working order) lying
around here. I refer to an old copy of MSDN which covers NT4, 9x, W2k
and XP when checking for API compatibility. So far, I've not seen
mention of differences between versions of 95.

The blatant pandering to the great unwashed consumer at the expense of
the needs of computer *users* didn't kick in until those execrable
versions, win98 and winXP, were foisted on a gullible public. And, it's
been a rapid plunge downhill since then.

Perhaps you mean WinME rather than Win98. 98 made improvements on 95.

No, I *meant* win98/win98SE. WinME for all but a small fraction of its
users was very unstable and any problems with networking required either
a full or a repair install, unlike its predecessors which only required
uninstall/re-install of the networking components to resolve. It was well
'nicknamed' by the press pundits as "Monumental Error".

Obviously, I must be in a minority of users who *will* attempt to clear
out the thousands of farty little temp files (or a few gigabytes worth of
larger rubbish data - I was never able to determine whether it was an
either/or or both conditions) which would trigger a non-responsive state
in Explorer which could last from minutes to indefinitely before it
eventually became very sluggishly responsive to user input.

This wasn't due to an ongoing and protracted deletion process of
thousands of farty little temp files - that part of the process, whilst
it might take a few minutes to complete was just the preamble to the
whole go slow act. Eventually, after experiencing this win98 problem
several times, I took to installing and running WinTop before embarking
on a large deletion job (Wintop *had* to be started *before* running the
big delete because it was impossible to start it afterwards - that was
how bad the lack of system response was!) to see what was so
comprehensively 'hogging' the CPU.

You can imagine my surprise when it turned out that *nothing* was
hogging the processor! - 99% or better cpu idle time. The only conclusion
I could make was that MSFT's developers had incorporated a "Punishment
Algorithm" to discourage the consumer from trying to delete large
quantities of data in their efforts at maintaining system performance.

It turned out that there was a simple work around whenever this
punishment algorithm was triggered. It was simply a matter of logging out
and then straight back in again. A relatively minor inconvenience no user
of win95 ever had to face but an effective way to end win98's go slow
behaviour after deleting "Too much data".

One might be kind to MSFT and accept this behaviour as being simply due
to rather weird and obscure coding bug that had failed to show up in
normal testing but, imo, that would be far too kind a view to take,
especially in view of the fact that there was no hogging of the cpu
involved and, istr, it was present in both 98 and 98SE.

However, curious deletion bug aside, there was the damaging effects of
changing the 'style' of the folder windows so that they needed to be
sized to the full width of an 800 by 600 pixel display window in order to
still be able to view the status information (a trick also used by winXP
in its transition from win2k).

Both win95 and win2k, were able to show all useful folder window status
information in a more compact form that didn't demand ridiculously wide
window settings. Indeed, win2k had an intelligent auto-sizing algorithm
(on freshly opened folders that hadn't already been manually resized by
the user) which made the "Open each folder in its own window" view option
a positive joy to use compared to winXP's lobotomised version where the
sizing algorithm was a braindead open folder windows (that hadn't already
been resized) to occupy two thirds of the screen real estate, masking out
previous folder windows in the most comprehensive way possible.

These counterproductive changes were the first obvious hints from MSFT's
policy of degrading the end users' control of the wintel product. From
the off (back in the days of windows 3 at least) we can see their use of
file fragmentation as a means to artificially induce 'Arthritic'
behaviour to reduce the system performance over a relatively short period
of months to give the gullible the impression that their wintel product
was suffering from 'old age' in their efforts to upsell yet more wintel
product.

This trick of 'recruiting' the fragmentation effect to 'age the system'
is revealed by the presence of nonsense settings for the pagefile
algorithm whereby it defaults to a 'dynamically resizeable pagefile'
which then simply produces several hundred pagefile fragments spread
right across all of the disk tracks to fragment the free disk space to
reduce the chances of writing a large unfragmented file, a process
aggravated by the file churn generated by all those endless windows hot
fixes and security updates.

For Users, familiar with the basics of OS operations, this mechanism can
be defeated by choosing a specific pagefile size and using this value in
both the min and max manually selected pagefile options immediately after
installation of the OS. Ideally, such an important system file (virtual
memory space on disk) aught to be a dedicated partition space rather than
simply a special file within the working partition space where it then
has to take its chances with the rest of the working files.

Admittedly, even modern Linux installers provide a swap file alternative
to a dedicated swap partition but that's more a way to simplify the
partitioning on a multiboot system than an endorsement to remove the
desirability of a dedicated swap partition. AFAIK, there aren't any
nonsense settings for a 'system managed' or dynamically resized swap file
in any of these 'modern' linux distros (BICBW- Please tell me I'm right,
I can't bear the thought that any of the kernel devs could be such
arseholes).


Otherwise, I tend to agree. I mainly use computers for computing but
these days the general public use them for socialising and shopping.

That's the reality, all the consumers are interested in is, well,
"consuming" (as witnessed by the popularity of, firstly laptops, then
tablets and now smartphones over the use of a desktop PC).

The consumer market consists of people who merely want to consume
'content' or use basic communication services such as email then facebook
and twitter - the more 'social' the communication media, the better as
far as the dumb consumer is concerned.

To them, the enabling technology might just as well be a 'magical
device' imported from Terry Pratchett's "Discworld" for all the
understanding they have. Indeed, win7 showed the first signs of denial
that it was merely a collection of sophisticated computer *hardware*,
susceptible to developing faults when it elects to "Carry on regardless"
without so much as an error message pop up, despite bad blocks on its
disk drive making it respond extremely slowly in a manner not unlike the
effect of a serious malware infestation.

I discovered this incredible behaviour after spending almost a whole
week trying to track down a non-existent malware problem on a customer's
win7 laptop a few years back. The symptoms were so atypical of a hardware
problem that I was mislead into assuming it was some sort of software
(possibly malware) related issue. It was only after I'd reached the stage
of attempting a second factory restore that the truth of the matter was
finally revealed.

The plain fact is that once the User market had been milked to fund
their attack on the vastly larger and more profitable consumer market,
MSFT lost all interest in making user orientated advancements,
effectively discarding the User market as one would a used Kleenex. I'm
afraid that, as far as the User is concerned, win95 and win2k is the best
we're ever likely to see from MSFT.

Unfortunately, the *nix Desktop Environment developers have rather
dropped the ball on this one, so, notwithstanding the graphics driver
issues, the *nix alternative is nowhere near as good as it damn well
could have been by now. Luckily for *nix, Users tend to take a more
pragmatic approach to problem solving so are more willing to accept
compromises.

The only reason *nix has any appeal at all is simply because the latest
MSFT OS products are a magnitude or more worse again (at least as far as
those with higher ambitions than a mere consumer are concerned). Plus, of
course, there remains the saving grace of being able to run VMs of the
more usable versions of windows in relative safety to overcome the
impediment of a 'windows only' system requirement imposed by the 'Must
Have' software for which no reasonably equivilent *nix version exists.

Having damned *nix by faint praise, I have to say *nix does have more to
offer the User than simply a safe refuge from the clutches of MSFT and a
means of virtualising a minimal version of MS windows to carry on using
windows only software. It'll never appeal to the typical unambitious
consumer (and long may this be so AFAIAC) but it will certainly serve the
honest to goodness user community far better than the horrors that MSFT
seem to have in store (IMHO).

--
Johnny B Good

On Sat, 16 Jan 2016 21:50:05 +0000, Ant wrote:

"Nil" wrote:

On 15 Jan 2016, "Ant" wrote in alt.comp.os.windows-10:

No! Target Windows 2000 (or even NT4) as the minimum. Win2k was the
fastest most stable OS MS ever released and I'm still using it.

That was not my experience. I ran Win98, NT, 2000 and XP in succession
on the same hardware. Each one was more stable and less crash-prone on
that hardware than the previous OS. I've run XP and Win7 on a more
recent computer - Win7 is more stable than XP.

I will defer to your greater experience. I've run Win2k on only one box
and it's been rock solid apart from when experimenting with dodgy
software/drivers. I can't remember the last BSOD. I run XP on a laptop
and although I've tried to reduce the running services and background
processes to a minimum it's slow in booting and general operation
compared to the Win2k running on an older PC. The only experience I have
of later OSes is when fixing other people's systems.

My experience is similar in that I have only ever run win2k on *one*
box. However, that *one* box has gone through several hardware upgrades
since I belatedly discovered the joys of win2kSP4 back in 2004 when I was
finally forced to abandon my beloved win95osr2 due to the 1GB or larger
ram bug when I upgraded from a BX440 chipset slot one MoBo and P2/350 o/
c'd to 467MHz with Voodoo 3 3000 AGP graphics adapter and 768MB of PC133
ram to a Socket A MoBo with Athlon Barton cored XP2500+ cpu and 2 or 3GB
of DDR2 ram.

I knew by then that winXP was *never* going to be a contender and the
"bugs" in win98SE and the damaged explorer interface were going to be too
much to bear as an everyday working OS (winME had no chance of getting a
look in!) so it was with little expectation that I tried win2k as a last
resort before going over to a *nix based distro.

When the win2k install booted to the desktop for the final time, I
nearly fell off my chair in utter surprise at seeing a desktop with the
familiar clean lines of windows 95. I've never looked back and only gave
it up in April last year when yet another hardware upgrade finally made
win2k unviable due to lack of hardware driver support by the new MoBo.
Only then did I finally take the plunge and convert my dabblings with
Linux and VirtualBox VMs into my every day host OS.

I can't say I'm at all impressed with the rather retro and klunky File
Manager Desktop Environment combinations on offer as an alternative to
win2k's classic desktop. Unfortunately, try as I might, I haven't found a
*nix variant that comes close to the usability of win2k so I just have to
make do as best I can (at least it's little worse than what the post winXP
windows versions have on offer).


I like the lean and mean feel of Win2k. It was the last of the NT line
not marketed to the general public.

It certainly explains why the daft consumers seem so fixated on the
wrong benchmarks of look and feel (usually win98SE or ME) by which to
claim winXP as the best version of windows NT. For Christ's sake, winXP
was only a fractional version jump (NT5.0 to NT5.1) over win2k.

I can see why MSFT 'buried' win2k with such indecent haste after they'd
created its Franken-win 'replacement' in order to avoid embarrassing
questions as to why they'd lobotimised a perfectly good windows version
and blinged it up to the nines in order to fool the great unwashed
consumer masses into thinking this was a direct successor to winME of
"Monumental Error" fame.

You know you're dealing with a computer illiterate consumer when they
mention widows 98 and windows XP in the same sentence and confuse any
mention of windows 2000 with windows ME. It's usually at this point that
I remind myself to hold my own counsel and leave my customer to his nice
cosy (but distorted) world view of Microsoft's customer relationships and
get on with collecting a more detailed description of their computer
problem(s) before showing them off the premises in order to deal with the
problem in relative peace and quiet.

Thankfully, I'm now retired from the PC repair business and can say what
I like to any friends or family who might prevail upon my expertise in
the matter of desktop or laptop computer related problems. :-)

--
Johnny B Good

On 01/17/16 09:23, Johnny B Good so wittily quipped:
Admittedly, even modern Linux installers provide a swap file alternative
to a dedicated swap partition but that's more a way to simplify the
partitioning on a multiboot system than an endorsement to remove the
desirability of a dedicated swap partition. AFAIK, there aren't any
nonsense settings for a 'system managed' or dynamically resized swap file
in any of these 'modern' linux distros (BICBW- Please tell me I'm right,
I can't bear the thought that any of the kernel devs could be such
arseholes).

I know that in FreeBSD I can configure multiple swap files/partitions if
I want, even as individual files. removing them from swap usage would
require making sure they're not being used at all, first. I expect
Linux would have similar capabilities. Seriously, though, with the
price of RAM these days I would expect not have to have a swap file at
all...

Normally it's just a matter of altering the startup sequence to
pre-configure a Linux or BSD system to do 'whatever'. The beauty of the
open source OS world is that you have complete control over it, if you
want. COMPLETE transparency and configurability!

Windows 10's startup, on the other hand, seems to involve a lot of
public network I/O that I'm not too happy about, and leaves a bunch of
stuff running on bootup that consumes 100% CPU for a while "in the
background" [which, given the priority inversions, stutters the UI
response for a few minutes]. W10 *LACKS* any form of transparency and
does things I don't like. [7 does this too, but not as bad. XP
doesn't, from what I can tell]

When I did a re-config of my virtualbox VM to test IPv6, on the initial
bootup I noticed W10 connected to what appeared to be akamai servers and
microsoft servers via IPv6, both SSL (443) and port 80. But those were
just the ones I happened to notice. I didn't think to wireshark it on
the first run but if I attempt this again, I definitely will. [since
the key parts of my network run FreeBSD, I can wireshark capture
*EVERYTHING* if I want to, not just what an OS "lets me see" - no hidden
things]

On Sat, 16 Jan 2016 10:54:03 -0800, Big Bad Bob wrote:

On 01/16/16 08:15, Johnny B Good so wittily quipped:
On Fri, 15 Jan 2016 15:59:21 -0800, Big Bad Bob wrote:

On 01/15/16 08:01, . . .winston so wittily quipped:
the majority of complaints are centered on making Win10 more XP/Win7
like...some addressed but it would be a pipe dream to expect a
regression to the past o/s GUI, feature set, telemetry approach and
privacy - those last four pretty much some up the majority of
complaints

YES, they DO sum up the majority of complaints, don't they?

Seen the marketing info on W10 lately? Just curious.

You'd think that Microsoft would treat CUSTOMERS in a way that GIVES!
THE! CUSTOMER! WHAT! HE! WANTS! instead of **ARROGANTLY**
**DICTATING**
to "the masses" that THIS! IS! WHAT! YOU! WILL! TAKE!!!

This has been exactly their strategy since win98 and then, in the NT
line, winXP.


It's a RECIPE for DISASTER.


Apparently not (at least up to now). The response to winX in this NG
is
no guide to the response from MSFT's target market, the great unwashed
consumer, which is the only market segment that counts in their view.



consumers won't just swallow the coolaid. MS's bad attitude about who
their customers are WILL come back to bite them in the ass.

I too once held the rather fanciful belief that the consumers would see
through the fraud that was winXP. However, I'd over-estimated the
computer literacy of the consumer and under-estimated the "Snow Job"
perpetrated by MSFT's marketing and PR teams in swiftly removing all
traces of win2k from the public perception.

With every new 'insult' perpetrated by MSFT in each new version of
windows, it seems to me that they've been pushing the envelope to
breaking strain (and then some). It has left me amazed at just how well
they've thrived, let alone just simply having "got away with it". I guess
their market research department's assessments of their target customer
base are far more reliable than mine.

You may be right but I wouldn't bet the farm on such an outcome.

--
Johnny B Good

.. . .winston posted
this via :

That's what I said.

WRONG! You are almost ALWAYS wrong... because you are a wrong-thinking
moron with daddy and mommie issues. And you wear the generic geriatric
diapers with the pink ruffles on the back becasue you don't read the
labels, especially the part that says "for leetle gurls". Except, you ARE
a leetle gurl, so it's probably legal in your state... the state of
st00piditty!!!

Seen the marketing info on W10 lately? Just curious.

Marketing is marketing...intended to promote or sell product. Nothing
more. Complaints about marketing are futile.

WRONG! Some marketing is intended to convince you to vote or not to vote
for someone or something; and some marketing is to just make you aware of a
thing or situation - such as "Don't smoke cigarettes" or free coupons for
stuff - like cigarettes. Plus, you can sue them for false advertising and
get a bunch of money and your own private airplane and lots of fancy cars
and stuff... just watch those lawyer advertisements on TV all the time for
all the proof you need!

You'd think that Microsoft would treat customers in a way [...]

Preaching to the choir.

WRONG! You are NOT a "choir". You ARE a "cacophony"! All by yourself...
Or, more correctly a "poo-poo-ophony"... but that word was just invented...
by ME!!! LOL! If "poo-poo" were snow, you'd be a veritable BLIZZARD. Or,
more correctly, a "BLIZZTURD"... but that word was just invented... by
ME!!! ROTFLMFAO!

--

I AM Bucky Breeder, (*(^;

"Laissez les bons temps rouler!"

.... and I approve this message!