Will us elders soon be computerless?

wrote:
On Mon, 06 Apr 2015 10:55:17 -0700, "Ken Blake, MVP"
wrote:


I've said it here several times, but for anyone new here who doesn't
know it, the Metro interface is optional, and doesn't need to be any
sort of problem. I almost never use it.

It might be optional, but every store which sells computers has that
miserable Metro screen visible. Every advertisment for Win8 has that
same Metro screen showing. One day I played with it in a store and I
could not find the (Non-Metro) screen, and that thing had me totally
puzzled. That alone was enough to make me NOT want it.

They are appealing to the younger market. That's the cash cow, not us
oldsters. Same thing with cellphones. How many large and easy to read
cellphones have you seen? :-) (no market)

On Mon, 06 Apr 2015 18:02:42 +0100, Good Guy
wrote:


Apart from books nothing in your list will ever come back. Even the
books are electronic these days!! Depending on your age, have you
thought of packing up everything and spend time talking rubbish about
how how wonderful life was in the 40s after the war and all that crap.
aren't there any old people's clubs in your area? You will find lots of
old people like you to talk to there.

On these forums we tend to see more and more octogenarians reminiscing
of their childhood.


Some day YOU will be old too, and it comes sooner than you think. It
seems like just yesterday I was hanging out at rock concerts smoking
some funny looking cigarettes and trying to pick up girls wearing
fringed swede vests and head bands.

I really would not want to go back to typewriters, rotary phones and
film cameras, and there is really no reason I need to, since aside from
the internet, my old computer works fine for typing and handling my
digital photos. My cellphone also works fine. As for music, vinyl
records still sound the best for my ears, but for quick music and in my
car, MP3's are fine.

But when it comes to computers, I much prefer the older operating
systems and most of the older software as well. For example, Photoshop
is absolutely ridiculous these days. Probably the most bloated piece of
crap software ever written. I have Photoshop 5 (very old), and Paint
Shop Pro 3.x (older yet). Simple and easy to use.

Microsoft seems to ethink thazt everytime Intel makes a faster
processor, they have to slow it down with bloat, so the speed of
computers never really increases. However running Win98 on a computer
designed for Win2000, makes a heck of a difference.

And you were probably not around when the internet first began.
You dont know what you're missing. It was so easy, fast, and friendly
back them. If I have any HUGE gripe about modern technology, the
internet is my biggest gripe of all. It's so ficking bloated with
useless crap these days, it makes no sense. There is absilutely no
reason whatsoever that a one week schedule for one TV channel should
require a 2+ meg download, special browser, scripts, and all of that.
A simple text file showing the progranm name, and time for each day of
the week is sufficient. Add a few photos to make it look nice, and 200K
is all that is needed.

By the way, the 40's were before I was born!!! Try the 50's!

And books are still sold everywhere. You need to get to the library!

On 04/06/2015 04:30 PM, wrote:
On Mon, 06 Apr 2015 10:55:17 -0700, "Ken Blake, MVP"
wrote:


I've said it here several times, but for anyone new here who doesn't
know it, the Metro interface is optional, and doesn't need to be any
sort of problem. I almost never use it.

It might be optional, but every store which sells computers has that
miserable Metro screen visible. Every advertisment for Win8 has that
same Metro screen showing. One day I played with it in a store and I
could not find the (Non-Metro) screen, and that thing had me totally
puzzled. That alone was enough to make me NOT want it.




Though I think Metro makes good sense for any touch screen computer, to
me it's rather useless otherwise.

An easy fix is the free utility Classic Shell

or for a small fee Start 8

wrote:
On Mon, 06 Apr 2015 18:02:42 +0100, Good Guy
wrote:


Apart from books nothing in your list will ever come back. Even the
books are electronic these days!! Depending on your age, have you
thought of packing up everything and spend time talking rubbish about
how how wonderful life was in the 40s after the war and all that crap.
aren't there any old people's clubs in your area? You will find lots of
old people like you to talk to there.

On these forums we tend to see more and more octogenarians reminiscing
of their childhood.


Some day YOU will be old too, and it comes sooner than you think. It
seems like just yesterday I was hanging out at rock concerts smoking
some funny looking cigarettes and trying to pick up girls wearing
fringed swede vests and head bands.

I really would not want to go back to typewriters, rotary phones and
film cameras, and there is really no reason I need to, since aside from
the internet, my old computer works fine for typing and handling my
digital photos. My cellphone also works fine. As for music, vinyl
records still sound the best for my ears, but for quick music and in my
car, MP3's are fine.

But when it comes to computers, I much prefer the older operating
systems and most of the older software as well. For example, Photoshop
is absolutely ridiculous these days. Probably the most bloated piece of
crap software ever written. I have Photoshop 5 (very old), and Paint
Shop Pro 3.x (older yet). Simple and easy to use.

Paint Shop Pro is great. But I think some people probably need Photoshop
for more involved work.

Microsoft seems to ethink thazt everytime Intel makes a faster
processor, they have to slow it down with bloat, so the speed of
computers never really increases. However running Win98 on a computer
designed for Win2000, makes a heck of a difference.

And you were probably not around when the internet first began.
You don't know what you're missing.

+1
BTW, that applies to a LOT of things in society - and people in general -
these days. And that's probably the least of such.

It was so easy, fast, and friendly back then.
If I have any HUGE gripe about modern technology, the
internet is my biggest gripe of all. It's so ficking bloated with
useless crap these days, it makes no sense. There is absilutely no
reason whatsoever that a one week schedule for one TV channel should
require a 2+ meg download, special browser, scripts, and all of that.
A simple text file showing the progranm name, and time for each day of
the week is sufficient. Add a few photos to make it look nice, and 200K
is all that is needed.

By the way, the 40's were before I was born!!! Try the 50's!

And books are still sold everywhere. You need to get to the library!

Books? Library??? What's a library??? Gosh darnit, I know I've heard
that term somewhere before...! Oh yeah, I remember now....grandpa told me
about those archaic places!

philo wrote:
On 04/06/2015 04:30 PM, wrote:
On Mon, 06 Apr 2015 10:55:17 -0700, "Ken Blake, MVP"
wrote:


I've said it here several times, but for anyone new here who doesn't
know it, the Metro interface is optional, and doesn't need to be any
sort of problem. I almost never use it.

It might be optional, but every store which sells computers has that
miserable Metro screen visible. Every advertisment for Win8 has that
same Metro screen showing. One day I played with it in a store and I
could not find the (Non-Metro) screen, and that thing had me totally
puzzled. That alone was enough to make me NOT want it.


Though I think Metro makes good sense for any touch screen computer, to
me it's rather useless otherwise.

An easy fix is the free utility Classic Shell

or for a small fee Start 8

An easier fix yet is Windows 7 or XP, n'est pas?

| Since you seem to know more about the Apple machines than me, maybe you
| can tell me what browsers they use..... It seems to me there is a
| Firefox for the Mac. And something which begins with the letter "S"
| (cant recall what that is).
|

Firefox, yes. And Chrome, I think. Their equivalent
of IE is Safari. But I don't really know that much about
the details of using Macs. I avoid them when I can.

wrote:
On Mon, 06 Apr 2015 10:55:17 -0700, "Ken Blake, MVP"
wrote:

I've said it here several times, but for anyone new here who doesn't
know it, the Metro interface is optional, and doesn't need to be any
sort of problem. I almost never use it.

It might be optional, but every store which sells computers has that
miserable Metro screen visible. Every advertisment for Win8 has that
same Metro screen showing. One day I played with it in a store and I
could not find the (Non-Metro) screen, and that thing had me totally
puzzled. That alone was enough to make me NOT want it.


Alt-F4

Tattoo on your wrist.

Works on old OSes too.

Roughly translated "Go Away!".

If you click on the desktop (background)
and do Alt-F4, it shuts down the computer.

If you Alt-F4 a program window, it dismisses the window.

If in the Start screen, it closes the Start screen.

If thrown into a Metro screen for picture viewing
or whatever, it'll get you out of there.

In Windows 8.1, the upper right corner of Metro
windows has an "X", so Alt-F4 is no longer
necessary there.

*******

An OEM computer with Windows 8 Pro on it,
has downgrade rights to Windows 7 Pro. Most
PCs will come with Windows 8 Core, to prevent
this option from being available. If you look
in the "Small Business" or "Business" section
of the OEM computer sites, you may find the
ones with Pro, and then you can downgrade to
some Windows 7 Pro equivalent.

http://www.microsoft.com/OEM/en/lice...de_rights.aspx

The main problem with this option, is expect
zero support from the manufacturer. You need
drivers to get your Windows 7 to run. They
won't "curate" a DVD for this purpose. You
do it all yourself (as far as I know). Hardest
part is laptop video card driver. Many other drivers
can be easily obtained. Desktop video drivers
should be available. The laptop video is the hardest
one to locate.

Paul

choro wrote:
How do you get that pale yellow background in your T/Bird messages? It's
rather nice.

--
choro
*****

HTML.

I can't see it. HTML is turned off here.

Paul

On Mon, 06 Apr 2015 18:36:50 -0500, philo wrote:



Though I think Metro makes good sense for any touch screen computer, to
me it's rather useless otherwise.

An easy fix is the free utility Classic Shell

or for a small fee Start 8

I may as well ask. In order to use the "touch screen" feature, I know a
special monitor is needed. But I never heard whether the computer itself
also needed to be a special one intended for touch screen? I'm guessing
it is, but maybe there is some card that can be installed or
something....

On Mon, 06 Apr 2015 19:54:01 -0400, Paul wrote:

Alt-F4

Tattoo on your wrist.

Works on old OSes too.

Roughly translated "Go Away!".

If you click on the desktop (background)
and do Alt-F4, it shuts down the computer.

If you Alt-F4 a program window, it dismisses the window.

If in the Start screen, it closes the Start screen.

If thrown into a Metro screen for picture viewing
or whatever, it'll get you out of there.

In Windows 8.1, the upper right corner of Metro
windows has an "X", so Alt-F4 is no longer
necessary there.

*******

I just did it on Win98, while reading your message, and it closed my
newsreader. I was NOT expecting that


An OEM computer with Windows 8 Pro on it,
has downgrade rights to Windows 7 Pro. Most
PCs will come with Windows 8 Core, to prevent
this option from being available. If you look
in the "Small Business" or "Business" section
of the OEM computer sites, you may find the
ones with Pro, and then you can downgrade to
some Windows 7 Pro equivalent.

I know one quick way to downgrade to Win7. FORMAT the hard drive.
Or just change to another harddrive, which would not void the warranty!

On Mon, 6 Apr 2015 19:52:43 -0400, "Mayayana"
wrote:

| Since you seem to know more about the Apple machines than me, maybe you
| can tell me what browsers they use..... It seems to me there is a
| Firefox for the Mac. And something which begins with the letter "S"
| (cant recall what that is).
|

Firefox, yes. And Chrome, I think. Their equivalent
of IE is Safari. But I don't really know that much about
the details of using Macs. I avoid them when I can.

Safari os the one I was thinking about!
No Chrome for me. More google spyware!!!!

wrote:
On Mon, 06 Apr 2015 18:36:50 -0500, philo wrote:


Though I think Metro makes good sense for any touch screen computer, to
me it's rather useless otherwise.

An easy fix is the free utility Classic Shell

or for a small fee Start 8

I may as well ask. In order to use the "touch screen" feature, I know a
special monitor is needed. But I never heard whether the computer itself
also needed to be a special one intended for touch screen? I'm guessing
it is, but maybe there is some card that can be installed or
something....

There is nothing special from the computer end.

The touch portion would interface via USB (as a HID device).

While the video would be conventional HDMI/DVI/VGA/DisplayPort.

Example (at one time, you could only find one model
for sale - now there are many...)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16824236403

To be "certified fun stuff" for Windows, the monitor
would need to support "ten point touch". If you touch the
screen with all ten fingers, all of the touch spots
would register. This allows gestures such as "grabbing
or squeezing". Microsoft doesn't use such gestures
for itself, but specified such features for Windows
certification, so that application developers could go crazy.

There was at least one monitor on the Newegg section,
that was only two-point touch. And there was a lousy
touch screen that used optical-based sensing, which
the reviewer found would not reliably accept input.
You need to go through the reviews, to find out
the issues with each one.

Having used gesture based software before, typical
users only use a couple gestures, but they get used
roughly every five seconds. Things like a gesture to
close a window would be popular. If you make
the gestures "too crazy", people cannot memorize them.
Just like 200 keyboard shortcuts is too many, and
a person might only remember Alt-F4.

Paul

In article ,
lid, Ken Blake, MVP says...

On Mon, 06 Apr 2015 02:42:27 -0500, wrote:

On Sun, 05 Apr 2015 19:32:19 -0700, "Ken Blake, MVP"
wrote:

Not at all true. Like all Microsoft MVPs, I am free to have my own
likes and dislikes, and I not forced to like any Microsoft products
even in the slightest, nor am I ever taken to task for expressing my
preferences for competing products.

As an example, I think WordPerfect is a much better word processor
than Microsoft Word, and I've said so many times, here in the
newsgroups, on the Microsoft web-based forums, and even to Microsoft
employees on the campus in Redmond.

I also think that Internet Explorer is poorer than either Maxthon
(which I used until a couple of weeks ago) or Firefox (which I now
use), and that Quicken was always better than Microsoft Money, and
I've similarly expressed my views on those too.

In football, MVP means "Most Valuable Player". In your case, I'm not
sure what it means?????


It stands for "Most Valuable Professional." It's an honorary title. No
MVP is a Microsoft employee.

Well... a little more than honorary Certainly is for a friend that's
been an MVP for several years now. I think one year he got *two* MSDN
subscriptions - one to just give away.

--
Duncan.

In article ,
, says...

On Mon, 06 Apr 2015 14:34:20 -0400, "(PeteCresswell)"
wrote:

Per Ant:
I am not even 40 yet and am already
hate upgrading often.

I am still searching for a rational explanation of why MS moves the
furniture around in each "Upgrade".... Same functions, different names,
often buried in different places.

Company with 10,000 employees... new version of Windows... it's got to
be costing them some serious bucks for everybody to find out where the
furniture has been moved to.

I would think there would be a standing committee in Microsoft and, if
the developers want to make a change in what a function is called and/or
how the user gets to it they would have to justify that change to the
committee in terms of increased functionality.

But that does not seem to be the case and I am jonesing to know why.

Like in Win98 you'd click on "FIND" (to search for files). In XP it's
called SEARCH. Does the same damn thing, just confuses the user....
And for what purpose?????

Perhaps the lawyers changed it

--
Duncan.

| Safari is the one I was thinking about!
| No Chrome for me. More google spyware!!!!
|

I've never tried Safari, but neither have I heard
any good reviews of it. There used to be a version
for windows, but I don't see it now on Apple's site.
Safari is a WebKit-based browser, like Chrome.

Awhile back Google was caught hacking Safari
browsers to set 3rd-party cookies, which Safari
blocks by default. That tells me two things:

1) Safari seems to be oddly insecure.

2) Default blocking of 3rd-party cookies is what
all browsers *should* do. On the other hand, Apple
has no respect for customer privacy, so I expect
the setting is another example of how Apple is
like AOL: "No one gets their hands on our suckers
but us!"