[Auzzie-Phoenix]

With all the BS ms has pulled over the last few years, I'd honestly be happy if someone came out with a 64-bit version of Win95. Nothing was hidden, you needed to find X tool... x tool was in control panel... you wanted to release renew IP without command prompt? they had a tool for that. No pain in the butt UI changes, nothing fancy. MS didn't try forcing their versions of drivers on you back then... nothing.

Better yet... just create the OS itself, but then make GUI packs that overlay on top that can be swapped out at the drop of a hat. And of course... no mandatory updates. If someone is too stupid/lazy to run updates, let them get weeded out. I kinda miss the days when everybody and their brother weren't using the net for things like stupid cat photos. /rant

[magkelly]

I kinda miss the days when everybody and their brother weren't using the net for things like stupid cat photos. /rant

Well, I'm a total tech head, to the point where I can build and maintain my own machines, but still that would be me. I am to be counted among the masses in that I happen to LIKE stupid cat photos...

[Tom S.]

Well, I'm a total tech head, to the point where I can build and maintain my own machines, but still that would be me. I am to be counted among the masses in that I happen to LIKE stupid cat photos...

Mag, I agree with him on the stupid cat photos, however the cute and funny cat photos are great.

[magkelly]

As I was sitting here reading this my boy cat Loki raced down the hall towards me, skidded to about 2 feet from my desk chair, abruptly jumped straight up and right over me, about 4 feet up, VERY narrowly missing my nose with his back claws, and then landed on the low bookcase about two feet to the side of me where he then proceeded to sit down, lick a leg and innocently look up at me as if to say "What?"

Siamese cats should come with warning labels I swear....:P

[PDL]

Sorry, I can't let this go any longer:
I have been a Microsoft user since DOS 1.0, I was a Windows 95 Beta tester as well as Windows NT (the original NT v3.0). For most of my 20 year odd professional career I was a Microsoft System Administrator in a corporate environment providing hardware/OS/application support for thousands of desktops and hundreds of servers spread across the continental US and a limited amount of foreign sites. I currently have seven (7) computers at my personal disposal, nine if you count my Kindle and phone.

In the corporate environment updates are/were handled by the global infrastructure as it is in most Forbes 100 corporations. As for my home environment, when updates/patches come out I install them.

Here is the important part:
I have never had a Microsoft update break one of my systems. I have had third party drivers trash systems along the way, but never a Microsoft patch brick a system. The biggest issues I have had over the years (both corporate and home) are hard drive and power supply failures with graphic cards/monitors bringing up the tail. Some of the corporate failures have been pretty dramatic, at my last position I was on contract supporting a disaster recovery backup process (5 Pentabytes storage spread across 56 servers located in three data centers supporting 100K end users) that partially migrated to a brand spanking data center in AZ. (please note I live in WA) For some reason the power supply failed in a iSCSI storage array. The array was supposed to be fault tolerant, but it wasn't and it took out taking 200 TB of data off line. The data were recovered but the hard drives in the array started to throw errors. The entire batch of hard drives were delivered with bad sectors. Ah the life of an Admin, although since I was a contractor supporting the application and not an System Administrator, I got to go home at the end of my shift.

My point is, I have never had a Microsoft patch brick a system. If you do not like MS/Windows, use something else and just stop complaining about MS.

The Elitist - formerly known as PDL

[vonBaloney]

My point is, I have never had a Microsoft patch brick a system. If you do not like MS/Windows, use something else and just stop complaining about MS.

Who ever said "brick"? (Meaning totally broken, dead, unusable.) But "break"? (Meaning some program or whatever that I had been using before now doesn't work right, i.e. *something* is screwed up that wasn't before.) That's happened a lot of times, and naturally is to be expected once in a while as the number of possible configurations,etc is infinite. And when it happens to the wrong thing at the wrong time, well now the thing that you usually do doesn't work anymore and you're wasting a lot of time trying to undo whatever the latest update did to your system (and you really have to go digging just to find out what the updates are for). Which is a major reason I want to pick when updates are applied, so for when those few times that it does screw something up, I'll have time to do something about it instead of having it destroy my business, along with just wanting not to be randomly interrupted when I'm trying to get something done or a machine is supposed to be doing what it is doing and not being bogged down with unstoppable automatic updates.

And if there was nothing ever wrong with anything, they wouldn't have so nearly many updates and "hotfixes" to begin with, which are patching security holes and other things that don't do what they are supposed to. (Of course some updates are new features or "natural" updates, but no where near all of them.)

[condor27596]

That sounds so mind boggling ! We have a number of alpha server 2600 ( I think) that run Linux I think. The systems run hardware. I am the hardware person. My interface is propriety program written in fortran. It's a secret project and can never be connected to the Internet. Remote log in stations run windows xp and can not be upgraded due to legacy issues.

[Tom S.]

I have never had a Microsoft update break one of my systems. I have had third party drivers trash systems along the way, but never a Microsoft patch brick a system.

Funny you should say that, as I just spent a couple of hours with just such a machine. Turned out Windows crashed during an auto update. Initially the machine gave me a red herring by indicating there was a problem with the memory, but after checking each stick and finding nothing wrong, Unfortunately, the owner never did a system backup, so I had nothing to roll back to. I ran a Windows 7 recovery program which found an issue in the start up files and fixed them. Up until that point, the machine did one of two things: gave the "Windows has failed to load" black screen of little info, or the infamous Blue Screen of Death stating Windows had crashed, possibly because of newly added hardware, which was definitely not the case.

[reeftool]

I've had pretty good luck with Microsoft updates so I leave updates on. I had an issue a few years ago but it was an easy fix. My biggest issue with some auto updates is that they seem to want to force themselves on you at very inconvenient times, like when I'm heading out the door in 2 minutes and I want to take a quick check at my bank balance or pay a bill. For that reason, I want the ability to install the updates at my convenience. I'll be paying close attention to what users are saying about Win 10. Of course, I always have the option of using my iPad which more and more is becoming my web browsing tool.

[boriscleto]

Imagine that...

Mozilla Displeased That Windows 10 Changes Users’ Default Browser ? Consumerist

[reeftool]

Imagine that...

Mozilla Displeased That Windows 10 Changes Users’ Default Browser ? Consumerist

This is almost funny. Everybody who uses Firefox has had to download and install the browser and also set their preferences on Windows 7 or 8. I think I am also safe in saying that those who use Firefox as their default browser do so because they they like it and one of the first things they will add to a new computer is the Firefox browser. Is the new Edge browser so good that Mozilla is afraid that once an updater tries it, they will never want to use Firefox again? I doubt it. I'm also pretty certain that Firefox users are more than capable of setting their preferences.

[drypenn]

I have used all versions of windows since the 3.1. I bought into the Mac OS in 2011, but continued using Windows alternately.

The Vista was MS' lowest point, it was slow, crashed a lot and overall a sorry experience every time I used it because it was a "nagger". The 8 was pathetic, hard to navigate, but relatively stable. The boring 7 was the best followed closely by the XP. Two days into the 10, I daresay that this must be the fastest windows ever. Save for two freezes while shutting down, this build, in its early stage seems surprisingly good. I actually like it and have not touched my Mac for the last two days

Addendum: And yes I'm using Firefox, and took me less than 15 seconds to configure it. Edge is actually just as fast, but I need a few extensions!

[gaweidert]

Sorry, I can't let this go any longer:...............

I have never had a Microsoft update break one of my systems. I have had third party drivers trash systems along the way, but never a Microsoft patch brick a system.

The Elitist - formerly known as PDL

Well a Windows 8.1 update killed a $2,500 software package my wife has on her computer. She has a $8,000 embroidery sewing machine and this was a Photoshop equivalent for it. It took me several hours to get it back working properly. And as stated earlier it disabled MS Streets and Trips 2013 on my laptop running Windows 8.1. I purchased this program at full retail price with the GPS module. Now the despots at MS don't want me to use it anymore but the cloud based Bing Maps. So they unilaterally revoked the license. I need to run this program offline but now it is worthless.

I have always purchased software products. But based upon this behavior, I would have no problem running bootlegged MS products in the future. If they can take away the my ability to use a purchased product, then why lay out any money for it in the first place?

[paulh]

And as stated earlier it disabled MS Streets and Trips 2013 on my laptop running Windows 8.1.

It seems there are a couple workarounds for this, involving MS Excel and/or installing Streets & Trips in Win 7 compatibility mode. I don't run Windows or own this software, so I can't help other than to provide a link: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows8_1-winapps/is-stre...827e974?page=1

[boriscleto]

This is almost funny. Everybody who uses Firefox has had to download and install the browser and also set their preferences on Windows 7 or 8. I think I am also safe in saying that those who use Firefox as their default browser do so because they they like it and one of the first things they will add to a new computer is the Firefox browser. Is the new Edge browser so good that Mozilla is afraid that once an updater tries it, they will never want to use Firefox again? I doubt it. I'm also pretty certain that Firefox users are more than capable of setting their preferences.

I see it as an extension of M$ insisting in court that uninstalling Spyglass MosaicInternet Explorer from Windows 98 would break the operating system.

The funny thing is I was using the Mac OS version of Explorer at the time because it was better than the bloat ware Netscape had become. Even if it was missing the <blink> tag...