Questions about the "end of Windows 7"

"Mayayana" on Sat, 2 Mar 2019 22:58:10 -0500
typed in alt.windows7.general the following:

"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, - ¿have 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.

I got started doing "brochures". Two pages front and back on "B5
Japanese" size paper. One thing leads to another, and now I've got
one master document, two main subdocuments (Morning and Evening
prayers), and several sub docs. I figure, why retype "boiler plate"
prayers?
WP handles all that and it is 12 sheets (iirc). I take the
printout, fold it nicely, and then trim it on the book plane. (Yeah, I
do some bookbinding on the side. Another long story.)
I _could_ take the text from final WP file, paste it into Word,
then have Word print it as two 6 sheet signatures. "neater".
But not for a five hundred page document, which I intend to print
out "some day".

All of which is probably far more than you cared about. B-)
--
pyotr filipivich
Next month's Panel: Graft - Boon or blessing?

"Mayayana" on Sat, 2 Mar 2019 22:55:42 -0500
typed in alt.windows7.general the following:
"pyotr filipivich" wrote

| How much coffee do I need for the French press? I'm sorry, I
| haven't weigh things in grams since the lab.

I use an old Chock Full of Nuts scoop for that.
One scoop per cup. I think it's 2 T. Or maybe just
1. I keep forgetting.

Probably. I'll look it up/work it out "some day".

In the mean time 1 cup grounds- fill up, let steep over night.
Cold Brew concentrate.

--
pyotr filipivich
Next month's Panel: Graft - Boon or blessing?

"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.

"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.
|

I did find a link for WPS Office. What a mess. Not
small. Over 300 MB. The license seems to say it
was either a trial or a personal-use-only version.
UI is kiddie-Mac-style with a panel for "cloud".
They want you to link to their services. Four separate
programs tried to sneak through my firewall. Two were
stil runing after I closed the program.
So much crap software these days. That one is
Chinese, so it's even worse that they want me to
allow spyware and "cloudiness".

"Mike" wrote

| A couple of relevant things are missing from this discussion.
| There are multiple versions of win10.
|

And a couple of relevant points the The version
keeps changing every 6 months and if you don't
let it update you lose support.

| It's widely reported that HOME is far more difficult to tame
| than PRO. I don't have any HOME systems, so can't comment further.
|
As I understand it, Home doesn't allow control. Pro
does, allow some control, but limited, and I'm not
sure if even that's possible without corporate licensing.
Either way, I wouldn't be paying an extra $100 to get
the option to hold off on updates. To my mind Pro
is pure scam.

| IT is possible to largely decouple yourself from the OS.
| My win10 machine operates very much the same way that my win98 did.
| It ****es me off that they keep downloading Candy Crush et al.
| to my system, but if that's the worst issue in my life, I'm
| truly blessed...

Candy Crush? They're installing games without asking?

"pyotr filipivich" wrote

| WP handles all that and it is 12 sheets (iirc). I take the
| printout, fold it nicely, and then trim it on the book plane. (Yeah, I
| do some bookbinding on the side. Another long story.)
| I _could_ take the text from final WP file, paste it into Word,
| then have Word print it as two 6 sheet signatures. "neater".
| But not for a five hundred page document, which I intend to print
| out "some day".
|
| All of which is probably far more than you cared about. B-)

It's beyond my expertise. I'm more intersted in the prayers.

Mayayana wrote:
"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.


I did find a link for WPS Office. What a mess. Not
small. Over 300 MB. The license seems to say it
was either a trial or a personal-use-only version.
UI is kiddie-Mac-style with a panel for "cloud".
They want you to link to their services. Four separate
programs tried to sneak through my firewall. Two were
stil runing after I closed the program.
So much crap software these days. That one is
Chinese, so it's even worse that they want me to
allow spyware and "cloudiness".

The older version, Kingston Office Free 2013, was 50 MB in size, and wasn't
cloud based, nor did it require any registration. You'd probably have to
search for it now. I'm talking about the older versions here, however, and
not the newer ones. As usual, everything gets bloated, with the later
editions. The newer version is called WPS Office.

For the older Kingston Office Free, the word processor was a pretty close
clone of MS Word, and was given high marks for that, in some online reviews.
And there is also a spreadsheet and presentation program in there too, but I
didn't try those, since I didn't have any use for them.

On Sat, 2 Mar 2019 14:47:10 -0800, Mike wrote:

Win10 is inevitable. Resistance is futile. You don't have to
like it, you WILL submit eventually.

In recognition of that, I installed 10 on all my machines as soon
as I could to get the free digital entitlement. Then most got immediately
reverted to win7. Over the last 3 years, most have been put back to
win10. NOT because it's better. Because it's inevitable...and it's
finally good enough. I rarely have to fire up win7 to get something
done. I can't remember the last time XP was required.

The user interface is a non-issue. You CAN learn the differences
and make 10 work. Yes, it's a PITA, get over it. There is no viable
alternative.

Summary: INEVITABLE

OK, I'll risk excommunication: as an interim step, how does W8 compare with
W7 and W10?
I couldn't find a news group for W8, which should tell me something. I have
wondered if W8 could be tamed to be like W7. Thing is, I've managed to get
W7 very close to looking and feeling like XP, i.e. cut all the frippery and
crap.
Given the impending 'demise' of W7 I have wondered about W8. Sorry.
--
Peter.
The gods will stay away
whilst religions hold sway

On Sat, 2 Mar 2019 12:53:18 -0700, "Bill in Co"
surly_curmudgeon@earthlink wrote:

Char Jackson wrote:
On Sat, 2 Mar 2019 01:04:39 -0700, "Bill in Co"
surly_curmudgeon@earthlink wrote:

Mike wrote:
On 3/1/2019 7:30 PM, Bill in Co wrote:
Mike wrote:
On 3/1/2019 12:39 PM, Bill in Co wrote:
Roger Blake wrote:
On 2019-03-01, Bill in Co surly_curmudgeon@earthlink wrote:
What support? (If you're a home user, I mean). In which case,
it's a moot point. So I expect some of us will stick with Windows
7, or even Windows XP, at least for those few of us that like to
work on their PC without all those extra encumberances getting in
the way.

I would say that as long as you can run an up-to-date antivirus
program and web browser then you're golden with Windows 7.

I hate to say it, but I'm taking a few chances by NOT using the
latest antivirus programs, because I just can't handle all the bloat
and slower performance of the newer versions. That said, I try to
play it safe with my online browsing and emails. :-).

I'm guessing the day will come when I will have no choice but to go
to Windows 7, if for no other reason, due to the browsers not working
anymore on most sites. So I've got a Windows 7 laptop next to me for
that, which I occasionally boot up, just to check for and presence of
rust. :-) But the aggravation of using it, with Win 7 and all its
ownership and permissions baggage getting in my way, especially when
using Windows Explorer for any file operations, is just too much for
me. I'm too old for this nonsense. :-)


Turn off UAC.
Don't try to put stuff in protected directories.
Don't use Windows Explorer.
I prefer Totalcommander, but there are several that claim to be
as good.
You can easily take ownership of anything you want.
You can take ownership of the whole drive.
But I have had issues with circular references in the user's
directories after doing so. But there's a tool to fix that.

I've already done much of that. It's still an unnecessary nuisance.

People get very excited about tiny changes in the UI.
Put links to everything you use frequently in one directory
and load that page. Or link stuff to the toolbar of startmenu.

If your computer has enough horsepower and available drivers
for your hardware, win7 is a slam dunk.

It's not for me, until necessity prevails. :-)

You can say the same thing for win10 once you get the updates under
control and delete anything that's deletable, especially active
icons on the start page.

I've done some of those things, but it's still a bit of a PIA. And
don't get me started on the circular references and junction points
crapola!

As I've said, life is too short for this obfuscation (at least for me).
OTOH, if you're just using it for work programs and higher level stuff,
maybe it's not such a problem. The problem is when you get down to the
file administration level and it gets in your face. Well, that, and the
pathetic GUI that needs Classic Menu to be even halfway usable. And
that it takes twice as long to boot up in the first place (might as
well get a cup of coffee while its booting up).

Classic menu is an excuse for people who want something to bitch about.

No, Classic Menu is there to make it easy to find something, instead of
going on some fishing expedition.

If you sleep your computer, it takes almost no tome to boot. I reboot
my system every few weeks just in case. There are enough memory leaks
in the gazillion apps to make it crash eventually. That's not new with
win10.

This Win 7 laptop takes about 4 minutes to fully boot up (the other same
model Win XP laptop takes about 2 minutes). I prefer shutting ALL
systems down at bedtime, for what I consider to be self evident reasons.

For me, my tablets and the Chromebook spend most of their time shut
down, while all PCs remain running 24/7 for obvious reasons.

As for Windows boot time, it stops being an issue if you stop shutting
down so often. I've found that restarting every 3-4 months is fine for
anything up to 8.1. With Win 10, I've never gotten nearly that far.
After a few days, it manages to tell me that it's sick and needs to
rest.

Windows XP (and Windows 98SE and Windows 2000) were simply lean and
mean, with nothing ever getting in your way. If you wanted to do
something at the file level, nothing was stopping you. That said, I
wouldn't want to go back to Windows 3.1. :-)

A horse drawn buggy was lean and mean. I wouldn't go back there either.
Time marches on. Try to keep up ;-)

No thank you. (contary to public opinion, newer is not always better).
Want another sterling example? Office 365, and all the subscription
nonsense. No thanks.

Windows 2000 was my favorite OS. I put off XP until I just couldn't do
what I wanted anymore in 2000.
Same for 7 and 10. Average delay was 3 years after introduction.

My 10 start page looks almost the same as my directory/window of program
launchers in 7 and xp and 2000 and 98... I find myself using the window
of program launchers in 10 most of the time anyway.
I haven't used windows
explorer much since MS started messing with it at every turn.
If you haven't tried totalcommander, give the demo a try.
There are several freewares that are similar.
If I didn't already have a license, I'd probably start with one of
the free ones.

I've got several Windows Explorer clones over here, but I generally
prefer jjust using Windows Explorer. I'm, not looking for lots of of
bells and whistles. (Less can be More, sometimes. :-)

Windows 10 as an OS isn't any more difficult than previous versions.
What's different is the MS philosophy of monetizing your computer use
by any means possible. Blocking updates at inopportune times seems to
have been fixed. I've had months where I had 50GB of internet download
that was mostly updates for several computers. Pity the people on
metered internet. but I digress...

But I seem to recall that there are some programs out there that can
prevent those incessant, automatic windows updates. And kudos for that.

So, I have to keep removing junk they download
and block access wherever possible. But I'm old...what else am I gonna
do? Take another nap...yep, that's it another nap...

It would be interesting to see what kind of file administration is
causing you consternation.
Copy, delete, move, open, save. What am I missing?

ALL of that, with access sometimes being denied (and the incessant
permissions and ownership BS), OR even just having to see if what is
there, is really there, or is just an illusion, with all the stupid
circular references and junction points, and some smoke and mirrors.
No thanks. It's not worth the aggravation to me, and is completely
avoided by simply using XP. I'm sure Mayayana can fill ya in. :-)

You guys recently tried to fill me in, but were unsuccessful. ;-)
You have to really go out of your way to have those kinds of issues.

--

Char Jackson

No, we probably just spend a bit more time down there at the C: partition
level, working with Windows Explorer (or at least trying to, in spite of all
the obfuscations and smoke and mirrors), for various sundry tests. :-)

No, I don't presume that to be the case at all. But, please, carry on.
:-)

--

Char Jackson

On 3/2/2019 8:52 PM, Mayayana wrote:
"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.


Why do people get so turned off by registration or email?
Create an alias.
Name,address,phone,typical security question answers, registration
password. Stick a postit on your computer.
Get a free google voice phone number. They have a lot
of flexibility in forwarding specific calls to your real number, or not.
Same for free email account. Selective forwarding or just check it
when you expect some email.
If you don't like the webpage, open it in a Comodo virtual desktop or
similar container program.
Use single use credit card numbers for risky purchases.

Safe surfing is a good idea, but email and phone are a non issue
if you plan for it.

On Sun, 3 Mar 2019 07:32:00 +0000, PeterC
wrote:

OK, I'll risk excommunication: as an interim step, how does W8 compare with
W7 and W10?
I couldn't find a news group for W8, which should tell me something. I have
wondered if W8 could be tamed to be like W7. Thing is, I've managed to get
W7 very close to looking and feeling like XP, i.e. cut all the frippery and
crap.
Given the impending 'demise' of W7 I have wondered about W8. Sorry.

The short answer is yes.

The longer answer is that it took me two years to get 8/8.1 to look and
act like 7, but now there are very few clues that it's not actually 7.
If you have the time to invest, I'm sure you can get there much sooner
than I did.

The Windows 8 group is alt.comp.os.windows-8 but it doesn't get much
activity these days.

--

Char Jackson

On 3/2/2019 9:10 PM, Mayayana wrote:
"Mike" wrote

| A couple of relevant things are missing from this discussion.
| There are multiple versions of win10.
|

And a couple of relevant points the The version
keeps changing every 6 months and if you don't
let it update you lose support.

| It's widely reported that HOME is far more difficult to tame
| than PRO. I don't have any HOME systems, so can't comment further.
|
As I understand it, Home doesn't allow control. Pro
does, allow some control, but limited, and I'm not
sure if even that's possible without corporate licensing.
Either way, I wouldn't be paying an extra $100 to get
the option to hold off on updates. To my mind Pro
is pure scam.

Most of my 7 systems have been Ultimate, because that's what
they gave away for free at the launch event.

I tried 8 for a millisecond or two. 10 took 3 years to become
warm and fuzzy enough.

The big unknown here is what is going on behind the curtain.
We have no control and no knowledge of any of it. M$ can
install anything or leach anything without your knowledge or consent.
Do you trust M$ to have your best interests at heart? Neither do
I. But the key word here is "INEVITABLE". "It won't hurt as
much if you don't resist."

For 10 Pro, at least, windows update minitool does a seemingly
good job of managing updates. It has a bug that it just
aborts if there are too many updates. If you wait too long
it will tell you that you don't have enough 'storage' to continue.
Storage is not defined, but it seems that increasing the size of
C: helps. I've had systems where I had to backup D:,
expand C:, do the updates, shrink C:, restore D:.
There's a fork of minitool called wumgr that doesn't have
this problem, but seems to have other issues cooperating with
windows update. Both may be fixable if you know what you're doing.
I don't.


| IT is possible to largely decouple yourself from the OS.
| My win10 machine operates very much the same way that my win98 did.
| It ****es me off that they keep downloading Candy Crush et al.
| to my system, but if that's the worst issue in my life, I'm
| truly blessed...

Candy Crush? They're installing games without asking?


YES they are.
Every major upgrade gets you a new start page full of live tiles that
you have to stop and remove. Some let you uninstall, some don't.
It takes a few minutes every year or so. Annoying, but doesn't even make
the top 100 life annoyances list.

My major win10 concerns are
Control of updates...check
Hardware drivers for ancient hardware...mostly check
Software compatibility for ancient software...mostly check.
Would have been great if all the hardware/software compatibility
issues/solutions could be archived in the same place.
FREE...check
If you have a SSD and use sleep instead of shutdown, boot time is a
non-issue.

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.
If your hardware is sufficient and you still have a way to get the free
upgrade to 10, you should do it, then revert to 7. If you don't,
you'll be paying for 10 eventually or the resale value of your computer
will be diminished.

Free update is a crap shoot. Recently, I have some computers that
activated automagically.
Others took a few clicks in the activation troubleshooter.
Others refused to activate, period.

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.

Anybody with a spare computer should put windows 10 on it.
You can stick it in the corner and run it headless via desktop sharing.
If you have lots of
ram and disk, run a virtual machine.
In either case, disable updates if you have limited internet.
If you have unlimited internet, talk someone else into hosting a machine
for you.

Fire it up when you're bored and learn. You WILL be switching to it
eventually. I cannot imagine a scenario where that is not the case...
well...maybe if you die soon.

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

In message , Mike
writes:
[]
Why do people get so turned off by registration or email?
Create an alias.
Name,address,phone,typical security question answers, registration
password. Stick a postit on your computer.
Get a free google voice phone number. They have a lot
of flexibility in forwarding specific calls to your real number, or not.
Same for free email account. Selective forwarding or just check it
when you expect some email.
If you don't like the webpage, open it in a Comodo virtual desktop or
similar container program.
Use single use credit card numbers for risky purchases.

Safe surfing is a good idea, but email and phone are a non issue
if you plan for it.

I'm certainly not going to ...
o create an email alias
o get a google 'phone number (not sure if I can in UK anyway)
o set up a virtual desktop
o set up a single use credit card!
.... if there are alternatives that _don't_ put me through such hoops.

If you do it a lot, it probably doesn't take you long. My MV.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Science isn't about being right every time, or even most of the time. It is
about being more right over time and fixing what it got wrong.
- Scott Adams, 2015-2-2

In message , Mayayana
writes:
"Mike" wrote

| A couple of relevant things are missing from this discussion.
| There are multiple versions of win10.
|

And a couple of relevant points the The version
keeps changing every 6 months and if you don't
let it update you lose support.

I notice that we've rather accepted the morphing of "support" to mean
just "(some, only) bugfixes and security patches". To me, that's not
"support": to me, support, in the context of computer software, means
somewhere I can ask - _and get a meaningful answer_ - how to do
something. (By "meaningful" I don't mean the sort of answer you parodied
beautifully not long ago.)
[]
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Science isn't about being right every time, or even most of the time. It is
about being more right over time and fixing what it got wrong.
- Scott Adams, 2015-2-2

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?

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

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

eventually. 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 ... (-:

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

(-: (-:



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

"Get off my turf!" screamed Pooh, as he shot at Paddington.