Questions about the "end of Windows 7"

"pyotr filipivich" wrote

| That is has been. Is long story. Short form, the West got
| isolated by the fall of Rome / Western Half of the Empire (the Eastern
| part held on for another thousand years), the invasion by the Goths
| and then the Franks. Differences in Church polity, etc, lead to split
| formally in 1054, and irreversibly in 1204. Messy. Main issue was
| the "Latins" deciding that ultimate authority resided in one
| individual (the Protestant Reformation just expanded the franchise)
| instead of the collegial process which had been the practice since The
| Beginning (and still is, the fireworks from Council of Crete in 2016
| are still going on.)
| When I'm being non-confrontational, I point out that for most
| people (e.G. Western Europe (England) ) the Orthodox church is not
| seen as being in their theological family tree, much as Babylon is not
| in "our" cultural heritage.

Thanks for that explanation. So there's no
absolute spiritual monarch in EO. I didn't know
that. I suppose that always has mixed blessings.
In the west, the only true spiritual practice seems
to be under the Catholic church, despite corruption.
The monarchical leadership seems to help to
maintain a continuity that supports an "ecosystem"
of monastics, such as benedictines, cistercians,
franciscans, trappists, etc.

On 2019-03-04, Paul wrote:
So you're saying you don't believe that the FFMPEG package
is not using all the NVidia-offered materials for Linux ?

Since it is not something I use I have no interest in it. Likewise I
do not use and have no interest in Microsoft Office, so the fact that
doesn't work on Linux is of no interest to me and has no bearing on my
choice of operating system.

If Windows works better for what you need to do, by all means use it.

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On 2019-03-04, pyotr filipivich wrote:
And the manual was very useful for forms with "carbons". I could
eyeball alignment and fill it out. Really helpful for temp assignment
Time Sheets.

Although I no longer use a typewriter, I do have a pretty ancient
Panasonic KX-P1124 dot matrix printer for use with multipart forms.
I actually bought it for use with a Commodore 64 what seems like
a lifetime ago. I'm continually amazed that it still works.

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On Sun, 3 Mar 2019 19:30:40 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote:

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!

Ugh! That's even worse than I remembered. Although I *can* physically
reach Space and Backspace at the same time, it's not at all comfortable.
I'll let you guys stick with IV and I'll stick with the built-in viewer
until something better comes along. It does exactly what I want, and not
a bit more.

--

Char Jackson

On Sun, 3 Mar 2019 13:56:01 -0500, Stan Brown
wrote:

On Sun, 03 Mar 2019 09:41:13 -0800, pyotr filipivich wrote:
As I've observed befo most computer users have no idea what is
happening behind the screen. Save to hardrive makes as much sense as
"save to the cloud". ("How can it save tot he cloud when the sky's
are clear?")


In their defense, every new version of Microsoft software, both
Windows and Office, makes it significantly harder to _know_ what is
going on behind the screen. I remember the whole Libraries stuff that
was introduced in Windows 7, so that we could no longer know where
files were being saved.

That's not really true. Right click on the library, select Properties,
find the default save location in the list of available locations. It's
literally two clicks, plus whatever you want to do while you're in
there. I've always wondered about the resistance toward libraries. I
like the idea and use them countless times every day.

--

Char Jackson

On 3/3/2019 3:51 AM, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , Mike writes:
[]
If you have a SSD and use sleep instead of shutdown, boot time is a
non-issue.

If you use sleep instead of shutdown, does it matter whether you have an
SSD?

Benchmarks say yes, but systems and benchmarks get tuned for maximum sales
impact.
For a typical user, most of us here aren't typical, doing web browsing,
watching videos, email, etc. I've found that the perceived perkiness of
my systems are dramatically improved by moving from 5400RPM to 7200RPM to
10,000 RPM drives. The improvement FEELS far greater than I expected
from the numbers.

After it gets booted, my SSD doesn't FEEL all that much faster than
a defragmented hard drive.

I have a win10 laptop that takes seven minutes to get to the login
screen then several more to startup Comodo and all the background stuff.
A SSD makes that a LOT faster. I don't have a number because, while a lot
better, it's still too slow for my liking.
After boot, the SSD improvement factor doesn't justify the $70 cost of a
SDD for a $5 laptop. Bottom line is that computer is in a drawer somewhere.

Part of that may be due to the fact that I don't have any systems made
this decade. The disk function is limited by the SATA channel, the buffering
system and probably lots of other stuff.

For a big file transfer, it starts out fast, but when the buffer fills up,
it slows down due to other system limitations.
For small file transfers, it seems that it takes longer to establish
the destination than to move the file.

Web browsing gets limited by the ISP and the cascade of crap
and ads on each page.
Speedtest shows 30Mbps, but the meter showing actual transfers
during web browsing shows mostly nothing while waiting for
DNS and all the crap to connect and queue up.


If you have an old laptop with 2GB of RAM and a 5400 RPM hard drive,
don't even bother trying.Â* My experience suggests that boot time is
longer than battery life. ;-(

Bottom line...INEVITABLE, good enough for reasonably powerful hardware.
Urgency depends only on whether 7 still does what you need.

It does. (3G RAM - and I don't think of it as that "old".) Though maybe
I should think about getting a machine in case this one fails - another
7 machine, that is.

Memory is cheap. Adding more might help.
I had 32-bit 7 with 4GB of RAM.
Every update to the browser seemed to suck up more memory.
It got to the point that Opera and Firefox kept crashing with
out of memory error, even though task manager showed there had
been a gigabyte or more free.
I changed to 64-bit 7 and a total of 8GB of ram. The Browser
problem went away.
Since I'd already found 64-bit hardware drivers and needed to reinstall
all the software and had been proactive about getting the free digital
entitlement, the jump to win10 became the best option. I'd been
saving a garage sale SSD, so that too went into the mix.

Turns out that I seriously underestimated the effort required to coax
my ancient software into win10 compatibility. Took about three months,
but it's mostly working. I would do it again, because it's INEVITABLE.


[]
Under the current rules, the penalty for running an unactivated
windows 10
is miniscule.Â* You can't do some drive encryption stuff and there are
minimal restrictions to what desktop customization you can do via the
GUI. That may change at any time.

I'd be using Classic Shell (or the other one) anyway.

I'd recommend against that. Back at the beginning of 10, I tried that
stuff.
Just bite the bullet and use the existing tools to tweek it a bit.

This was my windows 7 user interface page:
https://i.imgur.com/pU7d724.jpg

It's just a window with a bunch of links to stuff I use. The only thing
windows explorer has to do is manage the window and respond to the click.

For win10, I just dragged links from there into the start page like this:
https://i.imgur.com/RHkZ0tR.jpg

Takes the same number of clicks to get to exactly the same result.
The user interface does not have to be an issue.
Once you decide to just quit whimpering about it and do it, it's no more
difficult than what you have now.

Fire it up when you're bored and learn.Â* You WILL be switching to it

I'm never bored for periods long enough for them to be worthwhile for
such sessions.

eventually.Â* I cannot imagine a scenario where that is not the case...
well...maybe if you die soon.

I fear you're right. But it's like many other things - the switch to
electric-only vehicles (or the removal of individual mobility
altogether) seriously looks like another one here. One can only plan for
so many things ... (-:

That's another fun topic. There's a Tesla dealership at the local mall.
Several times, I've seriously considered just buying one, but the leadtime
was more than a year.
Last visit, the salesman said, "We've got these three available TODAY!
Let's go for a test drive."
As luck would have it, I was on the way to the bank and had, in my pocket,
sufficient funds.

That put a different spin on my aspirations. I had to fall back on the
math that says there's no possible logical analysis that leads to me
buying an electric vehicle.

I ran away ...as fast as my bicycle would go...
I haven't been back to the Tesla store since.

Linux zealots please don't argue until you have a VIABLE alternative.

(-: (-:

On 3/3/2019 9:11 AM, Mayayana wrote:
I have a good example of that close to home: My most
popular download currently is an MSI unpacker. It unpacks
MSI installer files. The only other program I know of that can
actually do the same thing is called Less Msierables. All
other programs I know of that are claimed to do the job
actually can't. (They run an admin install or maybe, like
7-Zip, they can extract a CAB file. But they can't actually
unpack the installer.)
Got any links for MSI unpacker?
I found MSI_Unpacker_v1.5.msi
Claims to be portable, but the zip download is nowhere to be found.
7zip won't unpack the msi.
I did find a zip for v1.3. It runs but does nothing to unpack v1.5
It's suspicious that a program can't unpack itself.
I didn't risk letting it install.
I tried to unpack MSIunpacker with lessmsi and that failed, but to be fair,
I let comodo block conhost whatever that is.

Anyhoo, 7zip does most of what I need, but occasionally, it would
be nice to have a tool available for the ones that don't.

On 3/3/2019 7:25 AM, Mayayana wrote:
"Mike" wrote

| Why do people get so turned off by registration or email?
| Create an alias.
| Safe surfing is a good idea, but email and phone are a non issue
| if you plan for it.
|

Again, you're projecting your preferences to others
and insisting people should think your way.

You're overreacting. I'm not insisting anything.
I'm disclosing a simple method to prevent malicious websites
from doing malicious things TO ME.

The phone number I give them is active.
The email I give them is active.
It's my right to not answer the phone or read their emails.
Little of the junk mail I get comes not from the entity
I dealt with. Those are easy to block.
It comes from the spammers with different credentials each time
to whom that entity sold my email. Blocking those is futile.
You get the junk whether you actually used or bought anything
from that vendor or not. And once you get on the list, it spreads
like cancer.

If you've ever deleted an email without reading it, or read a newspaper
without reading ALL the ads, you've engaged
in the same willful denial of their wishes.
Advertising is a percentages game.
Chillax.

Registration means being added to a marketing list.
Using an alias means lying and deliberately tricking
the company.
Yes, I am avoiding their future intrusion.
You suggest I should stoop to being a
lying sleazeball in order to try out a product?

It's your choice whether to run out in front of a
truck that will likely hit you. I merely suggest that
you do what you can to prevent intersection.

That junk email is gonna go somewhere, so it costs them nothing.
That junk email isn't gonna be read by me either way, so it benefits
them nothing.

No. The
whole thing is not honorable.
That's a bit of a stretch.
You're lowering yourself
to their level before you've even downloaded.
Yes, if that's what it takes.
They
scam you. You scam them.... The story of the Internet.
I wouldn't use those words, but I agree with the concept.



Anything you say or do will upset someone. It's their
right to be upset. It's my right to inhibit people making
me upset.

On 3/3/2019 9:11 AM, Mayayana wrote:
Take a look for yourself. Avidemux and Audacity, pro-level
video and audio software, are only 45 MB each on my system.
The program I use more than any other, Notepad, is 67 KB.
The Sysinternals programs are all small and dependency-free.
Sumatra PDF reader is 11 MB, while Adobe Reader was something
like 120 last I saw. IrfanView, a beautifully-made image viewer
that borders on being a fullscale image editor, is about 3 MB
without the plugins. I show it using 5 MB RAM to sit there,
while Pale Moon is using about 150 MB... just to sit there!

That mess adds up. Mike was just talking about how one of
the reasons he thinks he needs Win10 is because browsers
are so resource-hungry.

That's not what I meant to communicate.
I need more MEMORY because browsers are hungry.
I need 64-bit windows to get more memory.
Once I get to the point that I have to reload everything,
it's prudent to make the inevitable
leap to win10. It's the shortest distance to where I'm
gonna end up anyway.

How did we get to such an absurd
point, where modern hardware -- multi-core CPUs and
multiple GBs of RAM -- can't handle the software load?
Sloppiness and bloat. The space was there, so people
used it. They got sloppy.

I can't remember the name, but there was a freeware developer
who was very proud that he wrote all his windows programs in
assembler.
They loaded, literally, in the blink of an eye.
There were times that I sat there waiting for the screen to change,
not realizing that it had changed when I blinked.
That was a benefit back then.

Today, it's not at all about the speed or size or functionality
of a program.
It's all about CASH FLOW.
It's about first to market, biggest lure for the clueless masses,
shortest design cycle, lowest cost, highest profit.

Computers are so fast that speed ain't that much of an issue.
Back when it was runtime difference between half a minute and five minutes,
efficiency mattered a lot.
Today it's the difference between a millisecond and 10 milliseconds.
Nobody clueless cares. And that's the target audience.
The same reason you probably
have 5 rusty old fans in your attic. Hopefully you don't
buy a toboggan that you need to store.

My hobby is buying stuff at garage sales, fixing it up nice and storing
it in the attic.
We probably wouldn't get along...
If I need something, I probably already have it. Finding it is another
story.

Mike wrote:
On 3/3/2019 3:51 AM, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , Mike
writes: []
If you have a SSD and use sleep instead of shutdown, boot time is a
non-issue.

If you use sleep instead of shutdown, does it matter whether you have an
SSD?

Benchmarks say yes, but systems and benchmarks get tuned for maximum sales
impact.
For a typical user, most of us here aren't typical, doing web browsing,
watching videos, email, etc. I've found that the perceived perkiness of
my systems are dramatically improved by moving from 5400RPM to 7200RPM to
10,000 RPM drives. The improvement FEELS far greater than I expected
from the numbers.

After it gets booted, my SSD doesn't FEEL all that much faster than
a defragmented hard drive.

I have a win10 laptop that takes seven minutes to get to the login
screen then several more to startup Comodo and all the background stuff.
A SSD makes that a LOT faster. I don't have a number because, while a lot
better, it's still too slow for my liking.
After boot, the SSD improvement factor doesn't justify the $70 cost of a
SDD for a $5 laptop. Bottom line is that computer is in a drawer
somewhere.
Part of that may be due to the fact that I don't have any systems made
this decade. The disk function is limited by the SATA channel, the
buffering system and probably lots of other stuff.

For a big file transfer, it starts out fast, but when the buffer fills up,
it slows down due to other system limitations.
For small file transfers, it seems that it takes longer to establish
the destination than to move the file.

Web browsing gets limited by the ISP and the cascade of crap
and ads on each page.
Speedtest shows 30Mbps, but the meter showing actual transfers
during web browsing shows mostly nothing while waiting for
DNS and all the crap to connect and queue up.


If you have an old laptop with 2GB of RAM and a 5400 RPM hard drive,
don't even bother trying. My experience suggests that boot time is
longer than battery life. ;-(

Bottom line...INEVITABLE, good enough for reasonably powerful hardware.
Urgency depends only on whether 7 still does what you need.

It does. (3G RAM - and I don't think of it as that "old".) Though maybe
I should think about getting a machine in case this one fails - another
7 machine, that is.

Memory is cheap. Adding more might help.
I had 32-bit 7 with 4GB of RAM.
Every update to the browser seemed to suck up more memory.
It got to the point that Opera and Firefox kept crashing with
out of memory error, even though task manager showed there had
been a gigabyte or more free.
I changed to 64-bit 7 and a total of 8GB of ram. The Browser
problem went away.
Since I'd already found 64-bit hardware drivers and needed to reinstall
all the software and had been proactive about getting the free digital
entitlement, the jump to win10 became the best option. I'd been
saving a garage sale SSD, so that too went into the mix.

Turns out that I seriously underestimated the effort required to coax
my ancient software into win10 compatibility. Took about three months,
but it's mostly working. I would do it again, because it's INEVITABLE.


[]
Under the current rules, the penalty for running an unactivated
windows 10
is miniscule. You can't do some drive encryption stuff and there are
minimal restrictions to what desktop customization you can do via the
GUI. That may change at any time.

I'd be using Classic Shell (or the other one) anyway.

I'd recommend against that. Back at the beginning of 10, I tried that
stuff.
Just bite the bullet and use the existing tools to tweek it a bit.

This was my windows 7 user interface page:
https://i.imgur.com/pU7d724.jpg

It's just a window with a bunch of links to stuff I use. The only thing
windows explorer has to do is manage the window and respond to the click.

For win10, I just dragged links from there into the start page like this:
https://i.imgur.com/RHkZ0tR.jpg

Takes the same number of clicks to get to exactly the same result.
The user interface does not have to be an issue.
Once you decide to just quit whimpering about it and do it, it's no more
difficult than what you have now.

I took a look at that start menu in your Windows 10 jpg. Is that what you
call a good and usable start menu?? It's just a bunch of silly tiles to me.
So I gather that's what Windows 10 is all about - tiles up the kazoo. Why
would any rational person want that, over the much simpler and more
descriptive text menu entries for their programs?

The *only* way I could see these tiles being useful is if you are using a
touch screen tablet, but even then, the mini tiles are still lacking any
labels, but yes, I know you could probably just remember what they are for,
but, why bother with such a dumb GUI in the first place? Unless it's for a
touchscreen tablet, perhaps, which is what I think Windows 10 seems to have
been (in large part) also designed for. MS wanted an OS that could serve
"double duty", and as such, not do either one, very well. But C'est La
Vie, I guess.

On 3/3/2019 9:21 AM, Char Jackson wrote:
I agree with all of that last paragraph, and I apply it to a program
that has feature-bloat. When a program is feature-bloated, it'll have
endless menus and submenus, with tons of keyboard shortcuts that make no
sense, and a GUI that has a hard time showing me what I need to know.
There are different kinds of bloat, but that's the kind of bloat that I
object to. Not disk space.

I believe that you're technically correct.
Problem is not technical.
Developers maximize profit.
Profit may be money or street cred or whatever turns them on.
You 'profit' by being the bestest to the mostest.
If a competitor has a feature that people want, you MUST add it.
And you can't remove features that most no longer want or need.
The result it bloat.
The landscape changes FAST! Shortest development time is far more
effective than smallest code.

Be glad that computers have increased many orders of magnitude in
capability.
If you really care about it, stick with an old version you like.
I use MSOffice 2000.

pyotr filipivich wrote:
....
Interesting report, that a company decided to go with "quiet"
keyboards, and the productivity slacked off. Not being able to hear
the _other_ typists wasn't giving the feedback, and "why type so
fast?"

This is why I need and use clicky keyboards like old school Model M
types. In the past, my co(lleague/worker)s hated my loud fast typings
that sounded like a machine gun. I told them I won't be productive if I
can't type fast with those soft silent keyboards! :P
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easy. No, revenge is a dish best served cold. I'll bide my time until...
Oh, what the hell, I'll just crush him like an ant." --Mr. Burns, The
Simpsons ("Blood Feud" Episode 7F22)
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( )

Mike wrote:
On 3/3/2019 9:11 AM, Mayayana wrote:
Take a look for yourself. Avidemux and Audacity, pro-level
video and audio software, are only 45 MB each on my system.
The program I use more than any other, Notepad, is 67 KB.
The Sysinternals programs are all small and dependency-free.
Sumatra PDF reader is 11 MB, while Adobe Reader was something
like 120 last I saw. IrfanView, a beautifully-made image viewer
that borders on being a fullscale image editor, is about 3 MB
without the plugins. I show it using 5 MB RAM to sit there,
while Pale Moon is using about 150 MB... just to sit there!

That mess adds up. Mike was just talking about how one of
the reasons he thinks he needs Win10 is because browsers
are so resource-hungry.

That's not what I meant to communicate.
I need more MEMORY because browsers are hungry.
I need 64-bit windows to get more memory.
Once I get to the point that I have to reload everything,
it's prudent to make the inevitable
leap to win10. It's the shortest distance to where I'm
gonna end up anyway.

I don't see why you need more memory. I'm doing just fine over here with 1
or 2 GB of RAM, and the browsers have been no problem.

I am *guessing* the only reason you "need" more memory is you are running
several memory intensive programs all at once. Or some Adobe software,
perhaps.

How did we get to such an absurd
point, where modern hardware -- multi-core CPUs and
multiple GBs of RAM -- can't handle the software load?
Sloppiness and bloat. The space was there, so people
used it. They got sloppy.

We haven't gotten to that point, if you're judicious in your software
selections. :-) However, the newer OS's are indeed more bloated, just
like the latest editions of much software, that few really need. So from
that point of view, maybe "we" have.

Mike wrote:
On 3/3/2019 9:21 AM, Char Jackson wrote:
I agree with all of that last paragraph, and I apply it to a program
that has feature-bloat. When a program is feature-bloated, it'll have
endless menus and submenus, with tons of keyboard shortcuts that make no
sense, and a GUI that has a hard time showing me what I need to know.
There are different kinds of bloat, but that's the kind of bloat that I
object to. Not disk space.

I believe that you're technically correct.
Problem is not technical.
Developers maximize profit.
Profit may be money or street cred or whatever turns them on.
You 'profit' by being the bestest to the mostest.
If a competitor has a feature that people want, you MUST add it.
And you can't remove features that most no longer want or need.
The result it bloat.
The landscape changes FAST! Shortest development time is far more
effective than smallest code.

Be glad that computers have increased many orders of magnitude in
capability.
If you really care about it, stick with an old version you like.
I use MSOffice 2000.

Same here!! But I'm surprised, given what you've been saying. Actually,
Office 2003 would have been ok, too. It went to pot with Office 2007 and
its sequels. And that stupid ribbon.

On 3/3/2019 9:23 AM, Sam E wrote:
On 3/2/19 1:43 PM, Bill in Co wrote:

[snip]

I tried Linux (Cinnamon Mint, etc), but found it's just not worth all the
hassle, at least to me.Â* Plus I've got way too much invested (program
wise)
in Windows at this point.

There is no rule that says you can't use more than one OS (different
computers, dual boot, or a virtual machine). You don't have to give up
Windows to try Linux.

You don't, but why?
Microsoft has some interest in making windows a cohesive system.
Despite running aground at every release,
they do manage keep the ship afloat.

You can't say that about the chaos that is linux. Never has, never will
be a viable alternative for those non-guru users who just want a result
on their single user desktop computing platform.
And FREE is not an incentive when it's so hard to buy a computer, new or
used,
that doesn't already have windows installed.

But linux is a hobby that I enjoy when I'm bored. I hope to get back to it
now that I have win10 working well enough.