How do you permanently stop Microsoft Edge?

On Mon, 20 Aug 2018 22:23:10 -0700, Justin Tyme
wrote:

On Mon, 20 Aug 2018 16:41:42 -0500, Char Jackson
wrote:

On Mon, 20 Aug 2018 18:05:20 +0100, mechanic
wrote:

On Mon, 20 Aug 2018 09:46:57 -0700, Justin Tyme wrote:

I never use Edge so I removed it. Winaero has an Edge uninstaller
that works well. Get the Edge Uninistaller he

https://winaero.com/download.php?view.1835

Winaero also has a Cortana removal tool which works well. I have
uninstalled all apps, cortana and edge. Windows 10 is much better
without the useless crap I don't use. Yes, they all come back
after a major update but it only takes a few minutes to remove
the bloat.

So why bother with Win10 in the first place? Stick in the 20thC.
with Win7 or even Vista.

I agree. For me and pretty much all of my work colleagues, Win7 is the
place to be. Win8 if you must, but avoid 10.

The problem with that is Windows 7 only has 16 months before support
ends. There will be no security updates after Jan 14, 2020. For the
businesses that value security there will be no choice but to move to
Windows 10. Better to get used to it now rather than wait to end of
Win 7 support if you depend on MS for your business needs.

Sorry, but that dog don't hunt. When Win10 was first introduced, people
were falling all over each other trying to be the first on their block
to use the new OS. It's new so it must be better, in fact so much better
that people were signing up to claim a free copy. I didn't. Having tried
10 at the time, my opinion was that free was still way too expensive. I
hate to be that guy, but I was clearly right. Even back then, two years
ago or so, people made the exact same claim, word for word, that you
made above: support will end in xx months so why not downgrade now
instead of waiting. My position is that when it comes to downgrading,
every day I can put that off is a good day.

At one point, my employer showered all of us consultants with new
laptops, Lenovo P50's with a wicked fast CPU, triple SSDs (two NVMe and
one SATA), and 64GB RAM. Oh, and Win10. Long story short, after using
that laptop for upwards of 9 months or so, I was able to upgrade to a
Win7 laptop and I'm so much happier. Win10 is absolutely not fit for
business use. (On my team, one person is still using Win10; everyone
else requested an upgrade back to 7.) Once I retire, I could possibly be
a candidate for Win10 just so I have something to do every day. You
know, slay the dragons that continually crop up due to the dripped
updates, but I'm still working so Win10 is a non-starter.

Windows 10 isn't bad at all.

Huh? Apparently, we're two blind guys trying to describe an elephant.
You've got your arms wrapped around a sturdy leg, so for you it's pretty
solid. Meanwhile, I happened to grab the trunk, and to me this elephant
is an awful lot like a snake.

On Tue, 21 Aug 2018 01:31:44 -0400, Paul wrote:

Char Jackson wrote:
On Mon, 20 Aug 2018 20:26:58 -0400, Paul wrote:

Justin Tyme wrote:

Of course, I am free to think your choices are foolish as well.

Why do you say there is no advantage to removing the programs I don't
like? I think it is a huge advantage to remove bloatware. You remove
other programs you don't want/use so why not remove Microsoft
bloatware? Just because it comes from Microsoft does not make it some
holy software that thou shall not touch.
It's because the OS is upgraded twice a year (for
no apparent good reason), that making changes like
that are a waste of your time.

If you could be confident that removing an App,
removed it "forever", I'd be on your side.

However, I don't customize Windows 10 *at all*
because of its habit of undoing everything I do.
If I used Classic Shell for example, there would
be no guarantee that twice a year, something
would happen to it.

Even the ****ing screen blank after 10 minutes - every
time the video driver is updated, the OS changes the
screen blank from my 2 hour setting, back to 10 minutes.
I *hate this*. But, there's not a ****ing thing
I can do about it.

I wonder if you could get away with adding a line to your startup
script, if you have such a thing and if OS updates don't neuter it, to
(re)set the screen blank to 10 minutes. I assume the screen blank
timeout is in the registry, but I don't know where to look. I checked
HKCU/Control Panel/Desktop, which has a toggle for "ScreenSaveActive"
but I didn't see a key for the timeout. I also checked Nircmd and Steve
Gibson's Wizmo tools.

That's an admission of defeat though.

Sorry, I thought you were looking for a solution.

Maybe I could install one of those programs that
keeps the OS busy, so it never enters the screen
blank state. Movie players are supposed to use
some sort of multimedia flag, that prevents screen
blanking while a movie plays.

If 'never' is desired, both of the command applets I mentioned above can
do that by flipping the reg key I listed above, but you don't need a
third party program. Just manually flip that key to 0, or write a reg
script that sets it.

HKCU/Control Panel/Desktop/ScreenSaveActive 0|1

On Tue, 21 Aug 2018 08:44:27 -0400, "Mayayana"
wrote:

"Justin Tyme" wrote

| All true. The thing is, it only takes about 15 minutes to remove the
| apps, cortana etc. and Bob's yer Uncle (or maybe yer Aunt, who knows
| these days?) so 15 minutes every 6 months is not too bad.
|
| I only have to do this with the one computer I have that runs Win10
| Pro. The LTSB version doesn't have that crap in the first place.

You keep talking about LTSB. Win10 "sucks" but LTSB
is good.

No, I said Home sucks not Windows 10.

There's no legal way to get that without an
"enterprise" license, which requires paying for a very
large number of licenses in one batch, as part of a
corporate contract.

You can legally acquire it no problem. Anyone can download a demo. The
guys in my other group say the demo will run indefinitely, it does not
time out, there is a watermark on the desktop and you can't
personalize things, otherwise it runs normal. I know how to activate
things so I have never tried their method.

Activating it is the tricky part but not entirely neccessary.

The digital activation system has been compromised recently. KMS
activation is now outdated. With the new digital activation hack
nothing is installed on the machine, a script is run, one click and MS
digitally activates Windows 10. If you sign in with your MS account MS
ties the activation to your account. You can then reinstall on any
machine and activation will happen when you sign in to a MS account.

Then you say Home "sucks" but Pro is good. There's
never been a lot of difference between the two, aside
from Pro being much more expensive. You can control
the Microsoft hacking a bit more with Pro, but that's
hardly a selling point.

Control. That is a selling point for me. I need everything Pro has to
offer.

I have both Home and Pro
Win7 here. I never think about which is which. And
none of them require me to stop MS hacking.


You also say most of the problems you see reported
are "user error" from people who just don't get how to
use it. What I see is mostly questions about "how do
I fix x now that update y broke it?". This question is
similar: "How do I stop Microsoft software I don't want
but which won't stop running?"

I always leave 1 week after an update comes out before I apply it. You
(hopefully) avoid bad updates that way.

So if you have a stuck update you know how to fix it, right? Stuck
updates are not a problem if you know how to fix it. I have had one
update that stuck and I fixed it in a few minutes. So some problems
are user error and others are lack of knowledge. Previous versions of
Windows also got stuck updates. Not a big issue once a person learns
to fix it. Many of the other problems you see here were common on
most of the previous version of Windows. There were ****loads of
complaints and problems with Windows 7 updates. To this day I still
see people having problems with Windows 7 updates.

Your answer is that a 3rd party program can probably
do it but you'll need to run it periodically, and hope that
MS don't change something that breaks that software.
That's not a selling point for Win10.

I am not trying to sell you on anything. The OP asked:

" How do you permanently stop Microsoft Edge?"

The best answer is to remove it.

I also mentioned that it would be back after the next major update. It
requires one click on a command file and Edge is removed. So not any
hassle at all for the person who does not want Edge on their machine.
Cortana is the same. The apps are one click and a command line, gone.
All this takes less time than a Macrium backup. So please, don't make
it sound like some onerous task that I am forced to do.

So people are really faced with uncontrolled updates

Then those people need to learn to schedule the hours for reboots. We
can't control MS. They are going to pump out the updates as they see
fit.

an uncontrollable system, and spyware. And if they want
to work at it they can do as you do: Run 3rd party
tweakers regularly to clean up some of the worst problems.

Apparently you don't mind the spyware or the unstable
dripfeed of updates.

I try to control spyware the best I can but I don't really worry about
it too much. Google, Amazon, Apple are all the same or much worse.
****, Google tracks you even when you tell it not to. I carry my phone
around all day so Google is far more of an security issue than Windows
10 spying. This issue is so overblown.

And you even prefer that because
security updates for 7 will be gone in 2 years if they
don't extend them.

You completely lost me at this point. I don't 'prefer' anything. The
security updates end date is a MS preference, not mine.


All of this is still not taking into consideration the fact
that anything can happen going forward. It's not your
system.

Yeah, well that is always the case, anything can happen going forward.
So what? Deal with issues as they come along.

I like to think it is my system to bend to my will not Microsofts.
It may be a dellusion but I will keep doing my best to operate the
system my way.

Snip
--
JT

On Tue, 21 Aug 2018 11:50:31 -0500, Char Jackson
wrote:

On Mon, 20 Aug 2018 22:23:10 -0700, Justin Tyme
wrote:

On Mon, 20 Aug 2018 16:41:42 -0500, Char Jackson
wrote:

On Mon, 20 Aug 2018 18:05:20 +0100, mechanic
wrote:

On Mon, 20 Aug 2018 09:46:57 -0700, Justin Tyme wrote:

I never use Edge so I removed it. Winaero has an Edge uninstaller
that works well. Get the Edge Uninistaller he

https://winaero.com/download.php?view.1835

Winaero also has a Cortana removal tool which works well. I have
uninstalled all apps, cortana and edge. Windows 10 is much better
without the useless crap I don't use. Yes, they all come back
after a major update but it only takes a few minutes to remove
the bloat.

So why bother with Win10 in the first place? Stick in the 20thC.
with Win7 or even Vista.

I agree. For me and pretty much all of my work colleagues, Win7 is the
place to be. Win8 if you must, but avoid 10.

The problem with that is Windows 7 only has 16 months before support
ends. There will be no security updates after Jan 14, 2020. For the
businesses that value security there will be no choice but to move to
Windows 10. Better to get used to it now rather than wait to end of
Win 7 support if you depend on MS for your business needs.

Sorry, but that dog don't hunt. When Win10 was first introduced, people
were falling all over each other trying to be the first on their block
to use the new OS. It's new so it must be better, in fact so much better
that people were signing up to claim a free copy. I didn't. Having tried
10 at the time, my opinion was that free was still way too expensive. I
hate to be that guy, but I was clearly right. Even back then, two years
ago or so, people made the exact same claim, word for word, that you
made above: support will end in xx months so why not downgrade now
instead of waiting. My position is that when it comes to downgrading,
every day I can put that off is a good day.

At one point, my employer showered all of us consultants with new
laptops, Lenovo P50's with a wicked fast CPU, triple SSDs (two NVMe and
one SATA), and 64GB RAM. Oh, and Win10. Long story short, after using
that laptop for upwards of 9 months or so, I was able to upgrade to a
Win7 laptop and I'm so much happier. Win10 is absolutely not fit for
business use. (On my team, one person is still using Win10; everyone
else requested an upgrade back to 7.) Once I retire, I could possibly be
a candidate for Win10 just so I have something to do every day. You
know, slay the dragons that continually crop up due to the dripped
updates, but I'm still working so Win10 is a non-starter.

Windows 10 isn't bad at all.

Huh? Apparently, we're two blind guys trying to describe an elephant.
You've got your arms wrapped around a sturdy leg, so for you it's pretty
solid. Meanwhile, I happened to grab the trunk, and to me this elephant
is an awful lot like a snake.

Correct me if I am wrong, from your posts it appears you have never
used Windows 10 for any length of time, so how can you make these or
any conclusions. I felt exactly the same and resisted Windows 10 for
the first year. Now, it is no problem. Took a little time though.

I am not trying to push Windows 10 on anyone. Actually I could not
care less which version of Windows people prefer. The OP asked a
simple question: "How do you permanently stop Microsoft Edge?" I
replied with an answer that I believe is correct.
--
JT

On Tue, 21 Aug 2018 11:24:44 -0700, Justin Tyme
wrote:

On Tue, 21 Aug 2018 08:44:27 -0400, "Mayayana"
wrote:

So people are really faced with uncontrolled updates

Then those people need to learn to schedule the hours for reboots. We
can't control MS. They are going to pump out the updates as they see
fit.

The unplanned reboots were a showstopper for me, or one of the
showstoppers. I tend to reboot every other month or so, sometimes every
3 months, and in the meantime I leave everything running: half a dozen
Excel spreadsheets, Notepad++ with dozens of tabbed documents, MS
Outlook and Calendar and 15-30 opened emails that I haven't responded to
yet, half a dozen Word docs, and several hundred Firefox browser tabs
open. It's pretty disheartening to come back and see none of those
things open and running because MS decided it wanted to reboot.

I tried a couple of utilities that claimed they would keep shifting the
'active hours' to avoid a reboot, but they apparently can only do so
much. After a period of time, the reboots still happened.

On an unrelated note, the delays while updates were being installed were
painful. Many times, I have exactly one hour to make a presentation to a
prospective customer, so it's rough to spend the first 20 minutes
waiting for updates to be installed, the system to be rebooted, and then
all of my programs to be relaunched, all hopefully without any data
loss. I'm good at giving an ad hoc presentation with nothing but a
whiteboard and some colored markers, but the good stuff is on the PC so
it's painful if I can't get to it on my schedule.

On Tue, 21 Aug 2018 11:40:31 -0700, Justin Tyme
wrote:

On Tue, 21 Aug 2018 11:50:31 -0500, Char Jackson
wrote:

On Mon, 20 Aug 2018 22:23:10 -0700, Justin Tyme
wrote:

On Mon, 20 Aug 2018 16:41:42 -0500, Char Jackson
wrote:

On Mon, 20 Aug 2018 18:05:20 +0100, mechanic
wrote:

On Mon, 20 Aug 2018 09:46:57 -0700, Justin Tyme wrote:

I never use Edge so I removed it. Winaero has an Edge uninstaller
that works well. Get the Edge Uninistaller he

https://winaero.com/download.php?view.1835

Winaero also has a Cortana removal tool which works well. I have
uninstalled all apps, cortana and edge. Windows 10 is much better
without the useless crap I don't use. Yes, they all come back
after a major update but it only takes a few minutes to remove
the bloat.

So why bother with Win10 in the first place? Stick in the 20thC.
with Win7 or even Vista.

I agree. For me and pretty much all of my work colleagues, Win7 is the
place to be. Win8 if you must, but avoid 10.

The problem with that is Windows 7 only has 16 months before support
ends. There will be no security updates after Jan 14, 2020. For the
businesses that value security there will be no choice but to move to
Windows 10. Better to get used to it now rather than wait to end of
Win 7 support if you depend on MS for your business needs.

Sorry, but that dog don't hunt. When Win10 was first introduced, people
were falling all over each other trying to be the first on their block
to use the new OS. It's new so it must be better, in fact so much better
that people were signing up to claim a free copy. I didn't. Having tried
10 at the time, my opinion was that free was still way too expensive. I
hate to be that guy, but I was clearly right. Even back then, two years
ago or so, people made the exact same claim, word for word, that you
made above: support will end in xx months so why not downgrade now
instead of waiting. My position is that when it comes to downgrading,
every day I can put that off is a good day.

At one point, my employer showered all of us consultants with new
laptops, Lenovo P50's with a wicked fast CPU, triple SSDs (two NVMe and
one SATA), and 64GB RAM. Oh, and Win10. Long story short, after using
that laptop for upwards of 9 months or so, I was able to upgrade to a
Win7 laptop and I'm so much happier. Win10 is absolutely not fit for
business use. (On my team, one person is still using Win10; everyone
else requested an upgrade back to 7.) Once I retire, I could possibly be
a candidate for Win10 just so I have something to do every day. You
know, slay the dragons that continually crop up due to the dripped
updates, but I'm still working so Win10 is a non-starter.

Windows 10 isn't bad at all.

Huh? Apparently, we're two blind guys trying to describe an elephant.
You've got your arms wrapped around a sturdy leg, so for you it's pretty
solid. Meanwhile, I happened to grab the trunk, and to me this elephant
is an awful lot like a snake.

Correct me if I am wrong,

OK, I'm correcting you. :-) I had the Win10 laptop for 9 months or
more, and I've had multiple unregistered Win10 VM's for about 2 years
now. I have plenty of Win10 exposure. More than I'd like.

from your posts it appears you have never
used Windows 10 for any length of time, so how can you make these or
any conclusions.

Justin Tyme wrote:
On Mon, 20 Aug 2018 16:41:42 -0500, Char Jackson
wrote:
[...]
I agree. For me and pretty much all of my work colleagues, Win7 is the
place to be. Win8 if you must, but avoid 10.

The problem with that is Windows 7 only has 16 months before support
ends. There will be no security updates after Jan 14, 2020. For the
businesses that value security there will be no choice but to move to
Windows 10. Better to get used to it now rather than wait to end of
Win 7 support if you depend on MS for your business needs.

The 'no security updates' problem mainly affects 'consumers', not
businesses.

Until very recently, Microsoft still provided security updates for
*XP* for its business customers. (Remember the drama, about a year ago,
of XP systems going down in several areas/businesses all over the world,
due to the [Not]Petya ransomware, because these businesses had not
bothered to *install* the XP security updates which MS provided.)

So it will take quite some time before MS stops providing security
updates to its business customer, first for Vista and then for 7.

[...]

On Tue, 21 Aug 2018 23:36:13 +0200, FredW
wrote:

I have no understanding for all the moaning and groaning in this subject
about Windows 10.

In the first place this newsgroup is about Windows 10, so why talk about
Windows 7, Vista, Win 2000, etc.

In the second place if you do not want to upgrade to Windows 10,
be my guest, but stop nagging in this newsgroup, that you want to use an
old Windows OS.



Strong dittos to everything you say above!


In the third place, until a few weeks ago, I used Windows 7 and I was
happy.
But then my computer collapsed and I had to buy a new one.

I prefer a modern CPU and the modern motherboard that was required
worked only in Windows 10.
So I started using Windows 10.
Now I have my new computer with Windows 10 working almost completely as
my old computer with Windows 7.

I used Winaero Tweaker to get rid of things I do not need.
(like I got rid of things I did not need in Windows 7)
I have my Quick Launch bar and all the applications I had before.
So in the end the only thing different on my Windows 10 computer
compared to the Windows 7 computer is the Start menu.


A recommendation: download and install either the free Classic Shell
(www.classicshell.net) or the almost free ($4.99) Start10
(https://www.stardock.com/products/start10/) which I like even better.
With one of those installed, you'll find that almost nothing is
different from Windows 7.

On Tue, 21 Aug 2018 23:38:39 +0200, FredW
wrote:

On Mon, 20 Aug 2018 18:05:20 +0100, mechanic
wrote:
On Mon, 20 Aug 2018 09:46:57 -0700, Justin Tyme wrote:

I never use Edge so I removed it. Winaero has an Edge uninstaller
that works well. Get the Edge Uninistaller he

https://winaero.com/download.php?view.1835

Winaero also has a Cortana removal tool which works well. I have
uninstalled all apps, cortana and edge. Windows 10 is much better
without the useless crap I don't use. Yes, they all come back
after a major update but it only takes a few minutes to remove
the bloat.

So why bother with Win10 in the first place?

Because this newsgroup is about Windows 10 ???


Stick in the 20thC.with Win7 or even Vista.



I prefer to live in the 21st century.

Totally agree!
--
JT

slate_leeper wrote:
I never use Microsoft Edge. Yet I can't stop it from running. I have
searched via Google and found various suggestions or "solutions," none
of which have worked.

When I run ccleaner, it asks if I want to stop Edge. Yes. It then asks
if I want to force it to exit. Yes. Ccleaner than runs, shows that it
cleans Edge and deletes cookies.

Run ccleaner again in just a couple of minutes, and the same thing
happens. Edge has been restarted.

Edge is not listed in the startup folders or in Task Scheduler, at
least not under that name.

Agent Ransack finds four instances of MicrosoftEdge.exe. However they
can only be renamed by Trusted Installer.

By the way, in researching this I learned that "disable background
apps" in the current Win-10 version is also not permanent. They are
re-enabled during reboot. The cure for that is he
https://winaero.com/blog/disable-bac...-version-1803/

That no longer stops Edge, however. Task Manager shows five different
entries under Microsoft Edge. End Task does stop them. However that,
of course, only lasts until the next reboot (or maybe even less.)

Anyone know how to do it? Note, this is not a critical thing. It just
annoys me that I have to waste resources running a program that is
never used.

-dan z-

I removed Edge. But there's a trick. By editing the StateRepository-Machine.srd
file with SqliteBrowser, the "IsInbox" status of MSEdge can be reset
to zero, to make it removable. If the OS ever installs MSEdge again,
it will switch that bit back on.

https://s8.postimg.cc/fd3htvlg5/sqli..._fix_first.gif

This picture shows the satisfying part, where you've removed
the "safety belt" and then this command works :-) This command
would not normally work because the "isinbox" bit is set
in StateRepository-Machine.srd (SQLite) database file.

https://s8.postimg.cc/sh926ql9h/half_done.gif

Now, if you by accident, click on the space where MSEdge
was located, it'll reinstall itself!!! This is probably
tile cache repair code installed after tile cache problems
in the past.

You then need a way to remove the "blank" icon in the
Taskbar, so you don't click on it by accident. This
article hints at where the control is located...

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/...dows-10-a.html

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Exp lorer\Taskband

There are a number of registry settings there, and some
appear to be Unicode (16 bit) labels for applications.
It's possible the icon for the (missing) MSEdge
is still in there. I deleted all the registry settings
(didn't want to spend the time figuring out the
format and how to edit large binary blobs).
And now there are no Apps pinned to the bar at all :-)
Oops.

But MSEdge isn't starting. If you do a Cortana search,
now a dialog appears asking for permission to install
MSEdge from the Microsoft Store. So any search that
Cortana cannot resolve locally, could well end up
prompting to put Edge back. (Even though the default
browser is set to Firefox.)

But as a customer, my satisfaction level is at an
all time high :-/ Or something.

Paul

On Tue, 21 Aug 2018 23:38:39 +0200, FredW wrote:

So why bother with Win10 in the first place?

Because this newsgroup is about Windows 10 ???

I think you may have misunderstood the thread topic. People seem to
like the idea of moving to win10 as long as they aren't threatened
by Cortana or Edge etc. Some on here apparently like the idea of
sticking with Win7 as long as they can put a Win10 sticker on it!

Mr Jackson is an exception in that he's entirely happy to stick with
win7 warts and all.

On Tue, 21 Aug 2018 15:32:19 -0700, Justin Tyme wrote:

So why bother with Win10 in the first place?

Because this newsgroup is about Windows 10 ???

Strange reason to move to Win10 but I suppose it takes all sorts.



Stick in the 20thC.with Win7 or even Vista.


I prefer to live in the 21st century.

Totally agree!

Get with the programme then and accept the inevitable!

"Justin Tyme" wrote

| Stick in the 20thC.with Win7 or even Vista.

| I prefer to live in the 21st century.
|
| Totally agree!

XP came out in 2001. Vista came out in 2007.
7 came out in 2010. I guess Win8 and the birth of
the Metro shopping UI must have been about 2012,
since Win10 came out in 2015. Win10 must have
a very wacky calendar program if you think those
years were in the 20th century.

Even ME came out in the 21st century. That
was the excuse for the pretentious name
"Millennium Edition".

I know you won't believe this, but even
Windows 98 didn't exist in the era of Fred
Flintstone. It walked the Earth in a time
very similar to your famous "21st century",
when the dinosaurs were already gone.
And it ran on essentially the same hardware.
It postdated Moses, Jesus, and even the
Beverly Hillbillies.

Win98 was certainly odd, though. It was used
for bizarre things like running a browser, sending
email, and using strange programs with weird
names like Microsoft Word or Paint Shop Pro or
Photoshop or Notepad or WinZip. Ask your
grandfather. He can probably tell you about
how he ran his woolly mammoth tracking software
on Win98, back before HBO made their own
shows. (I kid you not! There was such a time!)

But enough about ancient history. I should let
you get back to your 21st century. What are you
doing with that super-modern Win10 today?
Getting a Bing-21st-century-edition map for your
upcoming vacation to Alpha Centuri? Have a good
trip. I hear it's wonderful this time of century.

"Justin Tyme" wrote

| You can legally acquire it no problem. Anyone can download a demo.
.....
| Activating it is the tricky part but not entirely neccessary.
|

I see. So the trick to loving Win10 is low expectations.

| Then you say Home "sucks" but Pro is good. There's
| never been a lot of difference between the two, aside
| from Pro being much more expensive. You can control
| the Microsoft hacking a bit more with Pro, but that's
| hardly a selling point.
|
| Control. That is a selling point for me. I need everything Pro has to
| offer.
|

Which is what? Pro version has gpedit, but that's
little more than a Registry front-end for IT dummies.
I guess it has disk encryption. I've never been curious
about that, so I'm not sure.

| I always leave 1 week after an update comes out before I apply it. You
| (hopefully) avoid bad updates that way.
|

Sounds sensible, but also a lot of work.

| So if you have a stuck update you know how to fix it, right? Stuck
| updates are not a problem if you know how to fix it.

Stuck updates? I don't know what that means.
I have XP SP3 and Win7 SP1. Neither of them got
stuck. Oh, and I also installed the XP update
for daylight savings. (Ask me if I'm worried
about your famous security crisis in systems
without the latest updates and I'll explain
0-days... Apropos of that, I heard yesterday
that MS took over some trick Russian websites
and they expect Russia will be trying again with
"spear phishing". In other words, tricking people
with things like misleading email rather than
directly hacking unpatched vulnerabilities.)

|There were ****loads of
| complaints and problems with Windows 7 updates. To this day I still
| see people having problems with Windows 7 updates.
|

Yes. Updates are destabilizing. The point is to
get them when you really need them and be careful.

| Apparently you don't mind the spyware or the unstable
| dripfeed of updates.
|
| I try to control spyware the best I can but I don't really worry about
| it too much. Google, Amazon, Apple are all the same or much worse.
| ****, Google tracks you even when you tell it not to. I carry my phone
| around all day so Google is far more of an security issue than Windows
| 10 spying. This issue is so overblown.
|

I guess if you don't mind the spyware and the
forced updates, and if you think constant updates
is the only way to have decent security, then I
can't think of any serious criticism of Win10. The
software I use would probably all run on it.

| All of this is still not taking into consideration the fact
| that anything can happen going forward. It's not your
| system.
|
| Yeah, well that is always the case, anything can happen going forward.
| So what? Deal with issues as they come along.
|

No, it wasn't always the case. Microsoft have made
two fundamental changes over the years. Those changes
have been radical, yet barely visible to the public.
With XP they started product activation and began
system file lockdown. That tied the OS to a single
computer. It began the process of training the public
to think of Windows as part of devices rather than
as software... like the stations on your TV.
Billy G looked at all the redundant copies of Windows
that people were then forced to waste money on and
he saw that it was good. (That was also the time that
MS began a campaign to threaten "white box" builders,
claiming that to sell a computer without a copy of
Windows was to promote software theft. They wanted
to get out of the selling software business and only
deal with OEMs. Bill Gates famously told his buddy
Warren Buffet that Buffett should invest in MS because
no matter what else happened, MS was collecting a
"Windows tax" on every computer sold.)

Lockdown has progressed incrementally through the
last few Windows versions, which then made fundamental
change #2 possible, which is converting Windows to
a consumer service. It's still an OS on a computer, but the
legalese, the lockdown and the forced updates redefine
it as something like interactive cable TV. The basic problem
is that, increasingly, one can't "deal with the problems as
they come up". Your tricks to block Edge and Cortana
sound like good ideas and I'll keep them in mind. But
that's still basically a finger in the dike. They took your
car and put you in a taxi. You can bring your own seat
cushion and say screw them. You can get a ride where
you want to go. But you can't get your car back. You
even agreed to those mickey mouse terms by using
the product at all. The beauty of it for MS is that they
don't have to call out the big guns and alienate the public
in order to enforce those terms. And they don't have to
worry about the whole thing standing up in court. They've
perfected a kind of passive aggressive approach. They let
you play at freedom of choice while the system itself
is built to prevent you from having control. Like a
child's playpen.

And in the long run it's going to cost you. They
wouldn't be doing it if that were not their plan. Whether
they start putting ads in the cab or start charging you
by the mile, or both, it's a cab and you'll pay.

Look at Adobe for a good example of that. They
started out offering rental of Photoshop. Then they
made that the only option. Now they're quite pleased
with their income from a rental-only product. All the
while they explained it would be a better deal for
their customers.

The funny thing is that Gates and
Ballmer were trying to pull this off in 1998 with
Active Desktop. No one noticed, despite ads for
crap like Disney on the desktop. But it took them
this long to bring all the factors together. Most
notable was the factor of connection speed.
Maintaining a fast remote connection just wasn't
feasible until recently. Now it's reached the point
that both software and webpages can be run on
your system while being controlled remotely, providing
the illusion of a transmission and thereby justifying
the false logic of rental software being the inevitable
future.

"FredW" wrote


| But enough about ancient history. I should let
| you get back to your 21st century. What are you
| doing with that super-modern Win10 today?
| Getting a Bing-21st-century-edition map for your
| upcoming vacation to Alpha Centuri? Have a good
| trip. I hear it's wonderful this time of century.
|
| If you want to make yourself ridiculous by this kind of ranting,
| it is up to you.

It was meant to be playful but the point is serious.

Talking about "catching up to the 21st century" is
like accusing people of wearing tinfoil hats. It's
a cheap dig that's theatrical but makes an accusation
without substance. In other words, it's meaningless,
gruff namecalling.

The essential function of Windows hasn't changed
much in 20 years. Most software from XP will run
on later systems. Most of what people do on computers
doesn't require Win10. The differences from XP to
10 are mainly cosmetic and hardware support issues.

You could claim that security is better on Win10.
That's debatable, but at least it's a claim. Or you
might claim that the latest games only run on Win10.
That might be true for some of them, I don't know.
But again, that would at least be a point that could
be analyzed and discussed.

The claim that pre-10 is not "21st century" is both
spurious and factually untrue. It's an attempt to
denigrate the other versions without actually
making any case. Though if you have a case to
make it might be interesting to hear why, specifically,
you find Win10 to be so good in your experience and
why, by comparison, all other versions seem like they
went out with the washboard. I use XP and 7. I expect
if I also used Win10 I'd probably be using it to do the
same things, with the same software, that I do on XP
and 7.