Questions about the "end of Windows 7"

Mike wrote:
On 3/3/2019 10:26 PM, Bill in Co wrote:
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 guess I should have asked you first. But it's too late now.

For me, Win7 on 1GB of ram was intolerably slow.
2GB was dramatically better. 4GB better yet.

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.

nope...
According to task manager, I had plenty of available ram. But Opera
browser still crashed occasionally with out of memory error. Seemed to
be more to do with the number of tabs open.

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.

Caveat: I'm running either XP or Win 7 32 bit, so 1 or 2 GB seems to be
adequate, and rarely have more than one or two applications open at the same
time. I bought an old Win 7 laptop on ebay with Win 7, and more
specifically, the 32 bit version of Win 7.

On 3/3/19 12:27 PM, Bill in Co wrote:

[snip]

Typewriter??? What is a typewriter? LOL.

I heard that the first electronic word processor had knobs on the side
(instead of cursor keys), as well as sound effects

BANG BANG BANG BANG ding BANG click-slide-click-screeech-click BANG BANG
BANG ...

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"The objection to Puritans is not that they try to make us think as they
do, but that they try to make us do as they think." [H.L. Mencken]

On Mon, 04 Mar 2019 11:30:34 -0500, Tim Slattery
wrote:

"Bill in Co" surly_curmudgeon@earthlink wrote:


In my Fortran class in college, we typed up our program on those punch
cards, and had to wait a *week* to get back the results (due to
adminstrative job use of the mainframe computer for the entire campus).
Your job was just one in a batch to be run on the system mainframe. I'm
talking about the 1960's here.

I was at the U of Texas in the very late '60s. The computer science
department had their own machines (CDC 6400-6600 complex) that were
separate from the administration.


I was at City College in NYC in the late 1950s. It had no computer
science department, and as far as I know, no school did in those
days.


We punched cards and submitted the
decks, but we didn't have to wait a week for our output. Usually an
hour or so. We primarily used FORTRAN, as I remember.


My first computer job started in 1962, as a programmer on an IBM 1401,
in SPS and Autocoder, the "assemblers" of the 1401.

All programs were punched on Hollerith cards, but I didn't have to
keypunch them myself. I wrote the code on paper, then submitted it to
the keypunch department. The only time I did any keypunching was when
it was just a few cards--if I needed to patch the object code or make
a small source code change.

Like you, I usually had to wait only an hour or two for assembly and
testing, but sometimes the computer was very busy and it took longer.
And sometimes what I submitted was so critical that it got priority.





Nowadays, I see Hollerith cards as *extremely* low-density storage. I


Yes. Yes, low-density, very slow, and more prone to error than most
alternatives.

well remember carrying a box of 2,000 cards across campus to the
computation center. That's about a foot and a half by 6 inches by 3
inches. For 2,000 lines of text! Woe to you if you dropped the box!


Two points:

1. Normally source code decks had sequential numbers punched into
them, so, unless they had been physically damaged when they fell, they
could be easily put back into sequence with a card sorter.

2. I always used a black magic marker to put a diagonal stripe across
the top edge of the deck. So if it was out of order, it was readily
apparent.

On 3/3/19 12:30 PM, Bill in Co wrote:

[snip]

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

A lot of it is junk you don't get, including "product activation".

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"The objection to Puritans is not that they try to make us think as they
do, but that they try to make us do as they think." [H.L. Mencken]

On 3/4/2019 6:37 AM, Mayayana wrote:
"Mike" 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 don't know what that is. I find several links, but
none that works without javascript. And the program
descriptions vary from one listing to the next: An
American flag, a New Zealand link, one author name
"Gergar", another named "Mike Williams". I have no idea
what that is. But they've used the same name as mine.

https://jsware.net/jsware/msicode.php5

Looks like it works.
thanks,

On 3/3/19 12:47 PM, Stan Brown wrote:
On Sun, 03 Mar 2019 09:04:46 -0700, Ken Blake wrote:
It's very common for someone to complain about some particular program
being "bloated." What they mean by that, I assume, is that it consumes
a lot of disk space.

Maybe "they" do. :-)

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

And those features you DO use are now even harder to find. That's a big
part of why I gave up on Vista.

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"The objection to Puritans is not that they try to make us think as they
do, but that they try to make us do as they think." [H.L. Mencken]

On 3/3/19 12:49 PM, Char Jackson wrote:

[snip]

These days, you could target the folks who have touch screens by adding
a widget that you swipe right to left when you get to the end of line.
You could call it a "Carriage Return!" :-)
I once heard it called "down and to the left" action.

On 3/3/19 12:56 PM, Stan Brown wrote:

[snip]

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.

More and more fake directories. I wish directory programs like "Windows
Explorer" would limit themselves to what's actually on the disk.

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"The objection to Puritans is not that they try to make us think as they
do, but that they try to make us do as they think." [H.L. Mencken]

On Mon, 4 Mar 2019 10:37:23 -0700, "Bill in Co"
surly_curmudgeon@earthlink wrote:


Caveat: I'm running either XP or Win 7 32 bit, so 1 or 2 GB seems to be
adequate,


In my experience, not for most people. Sometimes 2GB is enough, but
1GB is very rarely enough. But it mostly depends on what applications
you run and how big are the data files you use them on. For example,
edit a large video file and it's unlikely you'd be happy with 2GB.


and rarely have more than one or two applications open at the same
time.


In general, how many applications you have open hardly matters. Much
more important is what applications they are, and especially whether
they are doing something at the moment. Even a big application, if
it's open and you're not doing anything with it, will quickly get
paged out and not affect the performance of the program you're
actively running.

On 3/3/19 1:00 PM, Stan Brown wrote:

[snip]

In 2018, I did my 2017 taxes at Credit Karma ( creditkarma.com ).
It's free, unlike desktop software. And though it uses the same
interview approach as Block and Turbotax, the prompts are much better
written. I'm sticking with Credit Karma this year.

It's NOT free (no corporation would spend hundreds of thousands of
dollars for TV advertising to give something away). It may be OK, but do
consider what you're paying (money isn't the only important thing).

If you don't pay for the product, YOU'RE the product.

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"The objection to Puritans is not that they try to make us think as they
do, but that they try to make us do as they think." [H.L. Mencken]

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote

| No, silly. It's international. Don't know what a
| picture of a squirrel with tire tracks across it means?
|
| I think it's supposed to be a cat (and ironic; he likes cats). (And the
| .exe includes several other icons if you want.)
|
It might be a cat. And yes, I found the other icons
ages ago. I use the sunset one. It's simple and recognizable.

| Serves you right. Now you know how someone in
| China feels trying to read "Irfan View", you
| insensitive clod.
|
| "View", OK; "Irfan" doesn't mean any more in English than it does in any
| other language - it's just the creator's forename.
|

?? The point is that on a normal Start Menu you
can see program names. But if the name is only
in English it might be difficult for Russians, Turks,
Arabs, Chinese, Japanese, etc. However, for us
westerners, international icons are usually just a
problem.

Personally I also organize shortcuts, putting them
into categories and dumping all the crap like shortcuts
to websites, readmes, etc. So I have a nice, compact
Start Menu, with menu items like Office, Internet, etc.

I still have tiny icons on my Start Menu in XP, but
I don't have to know what they mean, because I
have the program title. And I don't have to put up
with that peculiar idiocy of the Win7 Start Menu:
"Here's a short list of programs you don't use.
Want more? Click 'All Programs'".

On 3/3/19 1:05 PM, Stan Brown wrote:

[snip]

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

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

you and YOUR computer being treated as Microsoft property.

--
"Of course, we cannot guarantee our Bibles against normal wear or
abuse." [Oxford University Press]

On Mon, 4 Mar 2019 15:37:33 +0000, Java Jive
wrote:

On 04/03/2019 15:33, Ken Blake wrote:
On Mon, 4 Mar 2019 12:02:51 +0000, Java Jive
wrote:

On 04/03/2019 06:03, Mike wrote:

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.

Well, you'd've thought it shouldn't be by now, but it certainly still is
here. Win10 as supplied on this second hand/used PC took several
minutes to boot, the W7 that I replaced it with comfortably less than a
minute.

My personal view is that the attention many people pay to how long it
takes to boot is usually unwarranted.

No, not really, because it's a simple measure of how well and
responsively it can run that OS. If it takes two or minutes to even get
to the point that you can log in, then most probably it's going to be
just as slow when logged in.

Assuming that the computer's
speed is otherwise satisfactory, it is not generally worth worrying
about.

That's the flaw in your argument, it generally isn't. On this PC W7 is
usable, but perhaps a little sluggish, whereas W10 is unusable.



I said "assuming that." If it's not, it's not. If its speed is
generally unsatisfactory, then that's what you should complain about,
not about one little piece of what it does--how long it takes to boot.

Despite what I said above, I actually know it takes several minutes
for my computer to boot, and the reason it takes as long as it does is
that I have several large programs start automatically. To me, that's
good, not bad. If they didn't start automatically, I would have to
start them after I got my coffee, and that would take extra time.

But when it's finished booting, it's fine. I have no complaints about
its speed (and I'm running Windows 10 Professional).

My wife's computer, on the other hand (also running Windows 10), has
almost nothing starting automatically. Her computer boots very quickly
and runs very quickly after booting.

Mark Lloyd wrote:
On 3/3/19 12:56 PM, Stan Brown wrote:

[snip]

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.

More and more fake directories. I wish directory programs like "Windows
Explorer" would limit themselves to what's actually on the disk.

They do, if you use Windows XP. A big part of the reason I prefer XP.
Well, that, and not being told I'm not priviledged enough to do so and so,
or "are you sure you want to do that", or "you can't enter here", and "why
do you even care where anything is actually located? Let me take care of it
for you", and ....

Ken Blake wrote:
On Mon, 4 Mar 2019 10:37:23 -0700, "Bill in Co"
surly_curmudgeon@earthlink wrote:


Caveat: I'm running either XP or Win 7 32 bit, so 1 or 2 GB seems to be
adequate,


In my experience, not for most people. Sometimes 2GB is enough, but
1GB is very rarely enough. But it mostly depends on what applications
you run and how big are the data files you use them on. For example,
edit a large video file and it's unlikely you'd be happy with 2GB.


and rarely have more than one or two applications open at the same
time.


In general, how many applications you have open hardly matters. Much
more important is what applications they are, and especially whether
they are doing something at the moment. Even a big application, if
it's open and you're not doing anything with it, will quickly get
paged out and not affect the performance of the program you're
actively running.

I mentioned this in another post, but probably should add it he
Caveat: I'm running either XP or Win 7 32 bit, so 1 or 2 GB seems to be
adequate, and rarely have more than one or two applications open at the same
time. I bought an old Win 7 laptop on ebay with Win 7, and more
specifically, the 32 bit version of Win 7. And I'll add one more thing,
and that's that the programs I use are not memory intensive,or albatrosses
like Adobe.