Questions about the "end of Windows 7"

On 05/03/2019 06:55, Mike wrote:
On 3/4/2019 11:19 AM, Java Jive wrote:
On 04/03/2019 18:32, Bill in Co wrote:

I wonder if anyone has a computer using Windows 7 or 10 that boots up
in a
couple of minutes without a SSD.Â*Â* IOW, not 4 or 5 or 10 minutes, to the
finish screen.

Yes, this oneÂ* -Â* I haven't actually timed it, but, unless it's doing
updates, it boots within about a minute, in fact my guess would be
that if measured from the grub menu comfortably within a minute.

Well, I had reason to reboot it this morning, and things are a slower
than I recall.
00:00 Power On
00:15-20s Grub menu which times out after some seconds
1:15 Logon
2:30 Desktop

So basically I was judging a minute to be longer than it actually is.
It still doesn't alter the fact that W10 is *much* slower on this PC, so
we'd be talking maybe double that to get to the Desktop.

So, Dell Optiplex 360 2.8GHZ dual core, 4GB RAM.
Start with cold boot push the power button.
Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â* Time in seconds
WhatÂ*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â* XPÂ*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â* Win7Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â* Win 10
Welcome screenÂ*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â* 27Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â* 30Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â* 46
DesktopÂ*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â* 45Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â* 48Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â* 59
Comodo display showsÂ*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â* n/aÂ*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â* 113Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â* 59
CPU usage dropsÂ*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â* n/aÂ*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â* 128Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â* 78
disk activity dropsÂ*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â* n/aÂ*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â* 128Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â* 150
You can actually do somethingÂ*Â*Â* 45Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â* 128Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â* 150

It appears that M$ has tuned win10 to look like it boots fast, but
it does take longer before you can actually do anything productive.

That actually began with XP. W2k & XP have the same major version
number, yet are completely different in many important respects. W2k
took a long time to boot, but, as long as you didn't have anything too
time consuming in your StartUp folder or registry Run key, was usable
almost as soon as you logged on, whereas XP actually got to the logon
screen more quickly, but faffed about much more after you logged on,
which meant that although XP superficially 'appeared' to be quicker
because the logon screen came up sooner, it was about the same time
before you could actually do anything, and it certainly wasn't a faster
OS on the same hardware, and probably a little slower because it has
some extra processes running.

There's the whole other thing about fastboot.
I have hibernation disabled, so have no experience with that.
IIRC, fastboot is a combination of return from hibernation and cold boot
that reduces boot time.Â* I'd rather have the disk space that hibernation
would steal.Â* Most of my reboots are system demanded and wouldn't be
helped by hibernation anyway.Â* Would be interesting to see numbers
for fastboot vs nofastboot.

I'd certainly be using hibernation on W10 machine. Yes it uses some
diskspace, but there are ways of making the OS use less in other ways to
compensate.
Remove all the pre-installed junk that you can;
Compress what you can't delete;
Compress foreign language folders in %WinDir%;
Compress folders in %WinDir% unrelated to daily running;
Periodically delete the contents of your %TEMP% folder;
Periodically delete the contents of %WinDir%\Temp;
Etc.

I still think that people should use what works for them.
For me, win10 is inevitable and its time has come...for me.

For those too stubborn to get the free digital entitlement, YMMV.

Contradiction - if people should use what works for them, why are they
being stubborn in continuing to use it? The use of that word reveals an
arrogant value judgement of others which directly contradicts the first
paragraph.

On 3/5/2019 3:39 AM, Java Jive wrote:


I still think that people should use what works for them.
For me, win10 is inevitable and its time has come...for me.

For those too stubborn to get the free digital entitlement, YMMV.

ContradictionÂ* -Â* if people should use what works for them, why are they
being stubborn in continuing to use it?Â* The use of that word reveals an
arrogant value judgement of others which directly contradicts the first
paragraph.

Read the words before rushing to contradict.

I didn't demand anybody USE 10.
If the FREE digital entitlement was available, anybody who didn't grab
it up was negligent.

There was never any doubt that adoption of win 10 was INEVITABLE.
It took me over three years to USE that entitlement on this system.
I planned for that inevitability. For me, that day has come.

Better to have and not need than to need and not have.

Stubborn indignation is the road to missed opportunities.

On Mon, 4 Mar 2019 22:55:39 -0800, Mike wrote:

On 3/4/2019 11:19 AM, Java Jive wrote:
On 04/03/2019 18:32, Bill in Co wrote:

I wonder if anyone has a computer using Windows 7 or 10 that boots up
in a
couple of minutes without a SSD.** IOW, not 4 or 5 or 10 minutes, to the
finish screen.

Yes, this one* -* I haven't actually timed it, but, unless it's doing
updates, it boots within about a minute, in fact my guess would be that
if measured from the grub menu comfortably within a minute.

FTR, it's a second-hand/used Dell Precision M6300, Intel Core 2 Duo
(T7500) @ 2.2GHz, 4GB RAM, running W7 64-bit Ultimate on a Toshiba
MQ01ABD050V, a conventional HD.* It's not as fast as my other W7 laptop
-* a Dell Inspiron 15RSE 7520 Core i5-3210M @ 2.5GHz with 8GB RAM
running Windows 7 Home Premium on a Western Digital WDC
WD10JPVT-75A1YT0, again a conventional HD (which has just taken 21
seconds from switch on to logon screen for a resume after hibernation,
no grub menu on that one)* -* but then no-one in their right mind would
expect it to be.

It groans sometimes loading a memory hungry program, for example Firefox
(I use Pale Moon which has a much smaller memory footprint for more or
less the same functionality), but generally it's fine running my
everyday stuff* -* Explorer, Pale Moon, two copies of Thunderbird (one
for mail, another for news), Digiguide UK TV guide, a console or two, a
backup program which I run in the evening but otherwise just sits there,
and usually Explorer within Control Panel in a separate Window from the
above.* These are nearly always running, other programs are run as
needed.* I've used some fairly resource-intensive programs such as
FFMPEG and Handbrake on it, and it copes fairly well.

By contrast W10 took ages to get to the login screen, at a guess at
least about 3 minutes, and was unusable thereafter.

I should perhaps point out that I've customised this build, so Task
Manager shows about 40-50 processes running when the machine is idle
with no programs loaded (and, as already pointed out, that's still
double what I've been able to whittle W2k & XP down to), whereas W10 was
running as supplied by the reseller, but I didn't and still don't think
it would be worth even considering customising W10 to try and run it on
this PC* -* I'm pretty sure that it would still be unacceptably slow.


We have to be careful not to compare apples to oranges and proclaim a
conclusion.
My definition of "boot time" is the time from power button cold start
until you can actually do something useful with the computer.



Out of curiosity, and since my wife wasn't home and using it, I just
powered off her Windows 10 computer, started it, and timed how long it
took to get to the point where "you can actually do something useful
with the computer."

Including the time it took for me to enter her password, it was about
1 minute 30 seconds (and I'm a slow typist). If she had it set to
enter the password automatically, it would have been 1 minute 20 or 25
seconds.

Yes, that's a little longer than I thought it was (yesterday I said
"well under a minute") but not by a lot. It still isn't very slow. And
her computer is a very cheap Dell model.

On 05/03/2019 12:53, Mike wrote:
On 3/5/2019 3:39 AM, Java Jive wrote:


I still think that people should use what works for them.
For me, win10 is inevitable and its time has come...for me.

For those too stubborn to get the free digital entitlement, YMMV.

ContradictionÂ* -Â* if people should use what works for them, why are
they being stubborn in continuing to use it?Â* The use of that word
reveals an arrogant value judgement of others which directly
contradicts the first paragraph.

Read the words before rushing to contradict.

I did, and you contradicted yourself.

Wolf K on Mon, 4 Mar 2019 10:12:24 -0500 typed
in alt.windows7.general the following:
On 2019-03-03 23:03, Char Jackson wrote:
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.

I like the _idea_ of a library, but IMO the Windows implementation
is/was defective. It had a couple of hidden gotchas: deleting a "folder"
didn't delete its (which could overlap with another folder), but
deleting a file did delete the actual file. Dunno if that's been fixed.

What I do not like is the "magic folders" which show you one name,
while hiding the true name. And then link to that other folder, even
if on another drive.
--
pyotr filipivich
Next month's Panel: Graft - Boon or blessing?

"Mayayana" on Mon, 4 Mar 2019 13:15:28 -0500
typed in alt.windows7.general the following:
"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'"

"Want the program you need to run? Click 'All Programs'"

But it had better be in the only place it knows to look, or it
still can't find it.
--
pyotr filipivich
Next month's Panel: Graft - Boon or blessing?

"Mayayana" on Sun, 3 Mar 2019 22:49:20 -0500
typed in alt.windows7.general the following:
"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.

Well, our Lord and Savior, but no, He doesn't have a local
'vicar'. B-)

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 argument is made, that in the East, the Faithful are the
repository of The Faith - teachings, customs etc. There is no single
individual who can say "This is the way it is, I have spoken.". Well,
a Bishop may lay down the law, but his writ only extends to the
border. Even the Ecumenical Patriarch is but the Bishop of
Constantinople, and he cannot move Bishops or priests around outside
of his jurisdiction. (E.G. may not transfer a priest in the Diocese of
Eagle River and the North West to the Diocese of Wichita and
Mid-America. Not without asking said priest's current Bishop, and the
Bishop of Wichita, for a blessing to do so.)
Anyway, as an example, there is a story that in the last days of
WW2, a man was ordained in Greece to be Bishop. Now part of the
service is the presentation of the candidate for the approval of the
faithful. The usual response is "Axios", he is worthy. But on this
occasion, he was not approved, the little old ladies banging their
canes on the floor and saying "Anaxios!" - unworthy! He fled town
with the Nazis.

The monarchical leadership seems to help to
maintain a continuity that supports an "ecosystem"
of monastics, such as benedictines, cistercians,
franciscans, trappists, etc.

Another difference is that in the East, there are not monastic
"orders". There are monks of various sorts (hermits,and varieties of
communities), but no "orders". A lot of this has to do with the fact
that after the fall of the Western Empire in the 5th century, there
really wasn't any source of "civil servants" - clerks & scribes -
other than the Church. Many of the various orders in "the ecosystem"
were attempts to "get back to basics", usually a variation of "What
would Benedict Do?" (I'm Oversimplifying a lot. A huge amount.). But
in the East, the Civil Service continued right up until the Ottomans
took over in 1453.



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

On Sun, 3 Mar 2019 11:30:15 -0700, Bill in Co wrote:
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.

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

On Sun, 3 Mar 2019 12:14:35 -0700, Bill in Co wrote:
Well, ok, but I think you can have that freedom with Windows XP or Windows
7. Unless you're stuck on having to use Windows 10, for some reason.

Your point is well taken. I read carelessly. You said "in Windows", but I
read that as "in Windows 10".


--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://BrownMath.com/
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
Shikata ga nai...

On Sun, 3 Mar 2019 19:36:06 +0000, Java Jive wrote:
In Paint or PSP, one selects an area of the
image by dragging with the mouse, and then clicking crop in the former
or the crop tool tick button in the latter. Can IV *really* not do it
like that, or is it so obscure that simply I haven't been able to find
out how to do it?

Drag the mouse to frame what you want to keep, and press Ctrl+Y. I
don't deny that finding that it's Ctrl+Y can be troublesome, but it's
an operation I do often so i remember it.

As an alternative to dragging the mouse, or for finer control after
you've roughed out your area, press Shift+C and you can specify right
down to the pixel.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://BrownMath.com/
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
Shikata ga nai...

On Mon, 4 Mar 2019 16:29:34 +0000, Java Jive wrote:

... My recollection is that previously I found a dialog that asked
me to key in the dimensions I wanted to crop to, but I can't find *that*
now!

Shift+C.

Help*» Keyboard Shortcuts is your friend.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://BrownMath.com/
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
Shikata ga nai...

On Mon, 4 Mar 2019 12:28:50 -0600, Mark Lloyd wrote:

On 3/3/19 1:36 PM, Java Jive wrote:

[snip]

In W2k & XP, Control Panel was available in a single column 'Details'
view, but now there is only an icon view* -* people never seem to
understand that searching a 2D array of icons de ipso facto is less
efficient than searching a 1D list,

???

I have Windows 7, and my Start Menu's "Control Panel" item gives me a
1-D list.

No, I don't have Classic Shell. I like the native Win 7 menu just
fine.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://BrownMath.com/
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
Shikata ga nai...

On Sun, 03 Mar 2019 13:50:03 -0700, Ken Blake wrote:
You say it as a joke, but there are probably a lot of kids these days
who don't know what it is.


I explain it as a weird godless cyborg: half keyboard, half printer,
no CPU between.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://BrownMath.com/
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
Shikata ga nai...

In message , Stan Brown
writes:
On Sun, 3 Mar 2019 19:36:06 +0000, Java Jive wrote:
In Paint or PSP, one selects an area of the
image by dragging with the mouse, and then clicking crop in the former
or the crop tool tick button in the latter. Can IV *really* not do it
like that, or is it so obscure that simply I haven't been able to find
out how to do it?

Drag the mouse to frame what you want to keep, and press Ctrl+Y. I
don't deny that finding that it's Ctrl+Y can be troublesome, but it's
an operation I do often so i remember it.

Me too, but it's also there under the Edit menu.

As an alternative to dragging the mouse, or for finer control after
you've roughed out your area, press Shift+C and you can specify right
down to the pixel.

You can also drag the edges of your roughed-out area after you've
created it.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

once described by Eccentrica Golumbits as the best bang since the big one ...
(first series, fit the second)

On 06/03/2019 03:31, Stan Brown wrote:
On Mon, 4 Mar 2019 12:28:50 -0600, Mark Lloyd wrote:

On 3/3/19 1:36 PM, Java Jive wrote:

[snip]

In W2k & XP, Control Panel was available in a single column 'Details'
view, but now there is only an icon viewÂ* -Â* people never seem to
understand that searching a 2D array of icons de ipso facto is less
efficient than searching a 1D list,

I have Windows 7, and my Start Menu's "Control Panel" item gives me a
1-D list.

Start Menu can do that, but that's not what I'm talking about. There is
no longer a 'Details' or 'List' view when viewing Control Panel in
Explorer, the best, or rather least worst, that you can get is 'Small
Icons'.

"Java Jive" wrote

| Thanks for that. The question now is, why didn't I spot that for
| myself? My recollection is that previously I found a dialog that asked
| me to key in the dimensions I wanted to crop to, but I can't find *that*
| now!
|

Maybe you're remembering the resize tool window?
That's got a lot of options. But if you had auto-crop
you'd need to know which area to crop. I think of that
because I wrote such a program, for people who want
to crop to a particular ratio, like 5x7. It gives them 6
choices: start at any corner, or center it, or mount the
image on a backing of a chosen color. But there would
normally be no "default" crop region after you enter
something like 500x700 pixels.