Windows fades as the world gets more connected

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I found this chart from Benedict Evans to be… sobering… The world’s changing. Fast.
[See the full post at: Windows fades as the world gets more connected]

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Fred

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I think that what it is changing is the mass-market, for the most part.

The PC itself is fading from that market, and Windows along with it, to the extent that it has not made that much of a headway as a cell-phone, tablet and is perhaps also fading as an embedded operating system (although that is just a guess, as am not conversant with embedded systems).

And as an OS for PCs, it is in a downward trend, among those that need it to do their work, as yours truly, because of malign neglect from the makers’ company.

What is not going away, even as the percentage of those in use decreases, is the PC itself (and a PC by any other name (e.g. “Mac”)… is still a PC).

The reason for this is unchanging and unchangeable until some genius comes up with a full-blown alternative that works for those who need computing power and versatility for their tasks, because the PC is now, and will remain to that day, an effective, self-contained — and much cheaper — alternative to the workstation, not to mention the mainframe. And if one needs to use the latter, which these days would be a supercomputer, then, while one is on the Cray CX50 (let’s say), the PC can serve as a dumb terminal to the super in one window, while one may be doing in another something smart and work-related (or entertaining, such as listening to music or a video of some favorite show), between interactions with the Cray.

Preferably from the comfort of one’s living room or den, thanks to the blessings of telecommuting.

 

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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lurks about, DeWayne12, fk5353, SueW, Seff, BobbyB, HiFlyer, Sessh, Elly, Noel Carboni, Bill C., woody, wdburt1

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I have telecommuted for quite some time, doing software engineering. For folks who work purely with information, it can be an ideal environment for working at the limits of your abilities.

Imagine the extra energy you have showing up for work after a 15 second commute (i.e., a walk across the house to your home office) instead of having to spend all the effort driving, getting fuel, dealing with idiot drivers, parking… Not to mention the significant amount of extra sleep you get, expenses you save (imagine not actually having to buy a new car every 3 or 4 years).

By contrast, when I worked in cube land (way too many years of it) I was distracted all day by people in nearby cubicles incessantly blabbing on the phone to relatives and friends, chattering with one another about things that were anything but work-related, asking questions they could have solved by doing a little of their own research… It’s a wonder I ever got anything done.

There is certainly a gap between what’s accepted and what’s ideal.

A growing problem in modern times is that with all the dumbing-down happening in the new millenium, managers seem to be becoming less and less capable of assigning work meaningfully and managing by results. It’s much easier to review someone on how often they were at work in a cubicle by 8am or stayed late past 6pm (“shows initiative and team spirit”).

What seems attractive to we technical types is often unacceptable to pointy haired bosses.

Now, even though I am developing pointy hair of my own, I run a software engineering business where everyone collaborates via the Internet. Productivity is huge; quality is high; bugs are almost non-existent; customers are happy (I am ending the year with literally ZERO outstanding customer reported problems on an installed base of a hundred-thousand users).

I have a high-end PC workstation and my chief engineer (4 decades of experience) telecommutes using his iMac on which he runs Windows 7 in a virtual machine. My phone is a flip phone that I can actually carry around without buttdialing and make voice calls for a week between charges. One day maybe I’ll get a smart phone, when they’re finally reliable enough to work when actually needed. I am imagining it will likely have a Google operating system, because that seems to be what the good ones run.

-Noel

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A portion of my research work depends on being connected to other experts in the field, when I need or can offer help.  Part of my writing depends on being connected to a small group who offer an informal peer review.

A much larger part of my research and writing depends on working alone, questioning what I have written, and taking the time to think things through.  And for that part, connectedness is way overrated.  It has become the vehicle for various people who want to sell me something, scam me out money, beg for money, make their cause my cause, and all the rest.  It interrupts my concentration and interferes with my work.  Each time, it takes a little bit of the time I have left on this earth and wastes it.

Doing creative work, alone, has been gradually marginalized over the last couple of decades.  Everybody has to be a team player now.  Software, including programs for writing and spreadsheet work, is designed for collaboration rather than solving the problem by thinking.

Noel has commented on the dumbing-down that came with all this.  There is another aspect to that–the tackiness of it all.  It would be nice of some of the stuff being pitched in the “connected” world showed some class.

But forget all that.  I wish everyone here a Happy New Year!

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lurks about, OscarCP, SueW, Charlie, Seff, Noel Carboni, HiFlyer, Ascaris, Sessh, Elly

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I agree with you Noel about the benefits of the 15 second walk to the home office, having spent the last few years of my career writing up all my reports etc at home and with everything being processed by a remote secretarial team 30 miles away courtesy of the internet, after many years of sitting in an office with a personal secretary bringing me coffee – although the wife kindly replaced that aspect of the secretarial job!

The only real problem with such an arrangement, of course, is that even at evenings and weekends you are never more than 15 seconds from the home office and other people know it! You have to be pretty disciplined at times, and  I confess I wasn’t always good at that. When I retired the first thing I said to the wife when driving home from an afternoon out was that it was so good to know I wasn’t going to switch on the computer when I got home and have a load of emails to read and reports to check etc!

The world certainly continues to change, and based on some of the conversations I have with my grown-up children I don’t think it’s just the old ones who regret some of the changes.

Happy and Healthy New Year all!

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OscarCP

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I telecommute most of the week and go into the office for a couple of days. I find this to be the best for my situation. I maintain some personal connection with colleagues and mangers (actually see them) but do not have be in the office all the time.

If find telecommuting helps productivity in another, overlooked area: trust. Management trusts us to work when we are telecommuting which has an positive effect on morale.

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OscarCP wrote:
the PC can serve as a dumb terminal to the super in one window, while one may be doing in another something smart and work-related (or entertaining, such as listening to music or a video of some favorite show), between interactions with the Cray.

I humbly suggest you consider doubling down, and interact with the Cray while you’re interacting with the Cray…

http://www.robertcray.com/videos/

🙂

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SueW

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Hello and happy new year!

There is a problem with latest version of windows 10 (1709) with 8100 officejet pro if your printer is in network mode (via rj-45). It takes 8 seconds to print, but before the last update of windows 10 (1709) this problem didn’t exist. HP and Microsoft know this problem, but they aren’t doing nothing to solve this problem!

Thanks!

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woody

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Do you have any links to ongoing discussions?

I’m simmering here with all the reports of problems in 1709 that still aren’t fixed…

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1709 is known for serious performance issues showing up after some uptime (i.e. task manager, event viewer, and other programs may easily take around 10 seconds to respond). Maybe it’s the EMET implementation or related to memory management (free memory gets sucked up within hours after computer start, leaving just a few MBs available even when running programs including the OS just use 10% of the memory available). While Windows Blue (8.x/2012-2012R2) is quite stable and speedy, any version of Windows 10 is having quite a bit of performance issues (slow start, slow Windows updates, name it); not to mention all the bugs (my favorite…. just drag a tile from the start menu to some program, and programs stop responding until the start menu is clicked again). So far, it seems that the Windows 10 spring version is somewhat usable while the fall version sucks big time, all the time…

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woody

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Do you have any links to ongoing discussions?

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Search engines are your friend… Just search for => Windows 10 Fall Creators Update slow performance

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Happy new year!

Yes. This M$ link:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-performance/slow-printing-on-windows-10-after-fall-creators/da51b440-e36f-41d5-9450-dc1dfd0fff02?auth=1

 

I need to find other links!

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And here is another thread, it says that the problem is fixed (hp  8100 OfficeJet Pro 8100), but it isn’t fixed:

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Inkjet-Printing/My-OfficeJet-Pro-8100-is-slow-to-initiate-a-print-job-after/td-p/6390422

This problems reminds me of when M$ did an update, and finally the problem was of intel and M$!

EDIT HTML to text

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Noel Carboni wrote:

There is certainly a gap between what’s accepted and what’s ideal.

To pull a bit out for further comment, possibly in a different but relevant direction.

Part of this is not the technology’s ability to allow us to thrive. It is also how it has allowed us to choose different ways to pursue growth. Some for good, some not so much.

As a teen, like many, I wanted to hear my music while doing homework on my bed. Obviously my parents were clueless on how a teen is most productive. I also matured, and as the joke goes, was astonished at how smart they were. Now, years after trying and only partially succeeding in passing that knowledge onto my own children, I am still most productive standing or sitting in front of a large horizontal surface where various reference items can be rest within easy reach, and a responsive keyboard gives me near perfect thought to input flow.

With this available space around me, why restrict my self to the limitations of a tablet or smartphone? I do use a ‘laptop’, but that has proven durable enough with sufficient cooling in a chassis that is not marketed as the slimmest, lightest, ever to be made.

My continuing struggle with Free and Open Source Software has suggested to me I might be best served by dusting off some very old and unused skills in assembling my own PC in a more ‘traditional’ or ancient cabinet. Hard to believe I am unique in this opinion.

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johnf, Noel Carboni

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Cascadian wrote:

I do use a ‘laptop’, but that has proven durable enough with sufficient cooling in a chassis that is not marketed as the slimmest, lightest, ever to be made.

Any laptop should have cooling capable of dissipating as much energy as the thing uses when under heavy load (real load, not synthetics like FurMark or Intel Burn Test).  I’ve heard of some laptops that would shut down under load even with fully-functioning cooling systems (as designed by the laptop maker), or worse, those that have actually had heat damage to the case or other bits.  That’s just a poorly designed bit of hardware if it does that.  I really hope that such things are more the exception than the rule!

My continuing struggle with Free and Open Source Software has suggested to me I might be best served by dusting off some very old and unused skills in assembling my own PC in a more ‘traditional’ or ancient cabinet. Hard to believe I am unique in this opinion.

I am not sure what the form factor has to do with free or open source software, but a lot of us still like the desktop form factor.  While I would never expect a lappy to cope with FurMark or IBT without severe throttling or emergency self-shutdowns, my desktop can, and it’s overclocked by 1300 MHz (as far as the CPU).

 

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Noel Carboni, Cascadian

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On the two items, you are right, and I failed to be more clear in my writing.

Most laptops are designed adequately, including many of the thinnest lightest. My comment was more of a derisive opinion on those aspects being of primary importance in a buying decision. I prefer a durable chassis that will outlast the technology it protects, the largest screen practical for the design, and a full, responsive keyboard with as much keystroke travel as is practical for the design. And many manufacturers offer products that meet my needs right alongside the more expensive, thinnest and lightest ever.

The amateur assembled form factor is a place where form follows limited ability, not function or necessity. If I pursue this goal I would rather relearn my skills in a desktop box. I also believe this gives more options in available parts at economical prices. I may learn differently.

It is more likely that time and other life considerations will have me purchasing newer hardware manufactured complete. Which very likely means “Hello, Apple. I haven’t seen you since the AppleII.” Where I will attempt the Win7 in a Virtual Machine or as I believe BSD operating systems call Jails.

In short, I was not commenting on what is possible in the wide world, or what is true in all instances. But what my likely path will be at home.

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I’ve never owned a PC desktop that I didn’t build.  I can’t imagine doing that… I obsess over each and every part I put into a PC I build, and that level of control just isn’t possible with premades.

I’ve spent countless hours agonizing over which power supply to use in my current desktop, for example.  You’re lucky if you can even find out any details about the PSU in a prebuilt, let alone specify that it has to have all Japanese caps, decent hold-up time, well below average ripple, tight voltage regulation and cross-load regulation, and on top of all that, a quiet fan and great efficiency.  FWIW, I ended up getting an XFX modular PSU (Seasonic OEM), gold rated, and with all of the performance requirement boxes ticked (which is a safe bet in general with Seasonics).

I put that much attention into each part I use.  I can’t imagine it otherwise!

With laptops, of course, you’re buying out of the box, of course.  I still like discrete touchpad buttons, swappable batteries, and components I can switch out easily.  I like thin and light too, but it’s not a primary concern.  It’s an “all else being equal” thing.

We keep hearing that laptops and other devices HAVE to be glued together and have limited serviceability to make them as thin as they can be, but that seems like an excuse to me more than anything.  I just bought a thin and light ultraportable laptop less than a week ago (my regular laptop is great, but the battery life is really short), and while I haven’t yet opened the case on the new lappy yet (warranty and what not), I can see already that it will be a piece of cake to service it.  The service manual from Dell is available online, and it describes how to replace the battery, the hard drive (for models that have one; mine does not), the wifi card, and other things.  Nine phillips-head screws and the case is apart; two more and the battery is in your hands.  Do they really have to be all glued together (or welded, in the case of the Surface laptop) to make them thin and light?  I’ve read about Apple laptops where the battery is fused to the aluminum case with a super strong adhesive, where attempting to separate the battery is liable to crease and fold the ductile metal.

My easily serviceable laptop is 3/4 of an inch thick when closed, including the screen/lid and the base.  That’s plenty thin for me… if gluing things together could shave off a few more millimeters, I’ll pass.  I checked to make sure the unit could be serviced without risk of destroying it before I bought it.

It’s true that my new lappy does have a clickpad, which is unfortunate.  It’s a real pain in the rump to use compared to a real touchpad, but… well, it was $180, so it is as it is.

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Cascadian

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Laptops do not need to be “glued”. I’m using old Lenovo Thinkpads (X200/X201) that are thin, built like tanks, and VERY repairable (you can replace everything on it if you like, fairly inexpensively…there are youtube videos for anything you need to do on those).

They will take up to 8gig of ram,  and have decent battery life. Running Linux Mint XFCE plus a tuned SSD (or Win 10), they will boot up and run quickly and flawlessly as most modern laptops from 2017 that I’ve seen.

The only reason to glue items like this together is to make them throwaways….it helps the bottom line of the major PC companies. Sadly, Lenovo’s  current Yoga line is much inferior, especially the stupid touchpad they use on those things now.

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And thanks Woody, for the reminder on End of Year backups. Cannot be said or heard enough.

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Noel Carboni, SueW, BobbyB

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Well, since Microsoft has finally given up on their phones, their remaining platforms are now desktops and tablets, which the future doesn’t look good for. Microsoft’s future doesn’t look good either which honestly doesn’t bother me at all. In my opinion, Microsoft deserves this for putting money before their customers’ privacy. No matter how long it takes, I believe that Microsoft is slowly dying, amen to that, Satya Nadella.

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fk5353, SueW, Canadian Tech, Cybertooth, Elly

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In the end we’re all dead, of course, but I think Microsoft is morphing, not dying. The company is thriving, but it isn’t the old Windows-on-every-desktop company that many of us remember.

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Cascadian, BobbyB

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The question is: morphing into what?

i.e., what part of their business is a demonstrated success vs. competitors’ products or services?

I’m not denying that they are “thriving”–I don’t know–but I would suggest that further exploration of what actually works for Microsoft would give us a better idea of where they are headed.  There has been plenty of speculation about that.  More factual analysis would be potentially interesting.  Particularly if it includes a focus on short-term profit (e.g., extracting the last dollars out of dying franchises) vs. development of products that will generate growth over the long term.

 

 

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Yeah well, they have tried morphing/adapting to the evolving world and we all saw how that worked out. Now with Windows phone gone and desktops fading away, Microsoft is gonna have to come up with something new to stay on the market.

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Things may not always be as they seem.

AOL seemed to be thriving too when they merged with Time-Warner (and got top billing!), but that turned out to be the peak of the company’s fortune.  That began the long, sad road toward nothingness, with AOL relegated to being a free email provider that hardly anyone uses, and with that fated merger being made into a textbook cautionary tale for MBA students.

The definition of whether a company is thriving or not today seems to be its stock market valuation, and that’s determined by the market itself.  The talking heads on the financial channel may all be atwitter about how Microsoft is cool again, but do they really know anything about tech?  Do they know what “the cloud” is?  They, like the other irrationally exuberant investors who are dazzled by words and phrases like “cloud,” “paradigm,” “innovation,” or other such things, can easily get into a buying spree that can push a stock value higher than it should be.

I haven’t researched it and I am not an investor, so I can’t really say whether this is happening or not, but this whole “Microsoft is thriving” thing to me definitely has an “emperor’s new clothes” feel at a gut level.  I think the cloud is a fad based around a buzzword, and while some of it has value, it’s no different than the stuff we’ve been doing for 20 years without the “cloud” moniker attached.

It’s like a story on The Register that I read the other day, where a company called Long Island Iced Tea company renamed itself Long Blockchain and suddenly had three times the market valuation.  They had no history of providing anything other than beverages, but call your company something trendy and have a neat prospectus printed up at Kinko’s and suddenly people are throwing money at you.

This reminds me of the situation we saw in the mid to late 1990s, where anyone could have a half-baked idea about doing something on the web, rent an office suite and hang out a shingle, and investors would line up outside to hand you money or to buy you out, and all without ever having produced any kind of product or service.

Without “the cloud,” Microsoft has its Surface line and its software biz, which has long been the core of Microsoft, though now MS seems to treat it like a bit of its history it would be happy to forget.  From what I have read, MS has yet to turn a profit on the Surface lineup, so that’s not going to keep them afloat unless something changes.  If MS keeps up the silliness with Windows, and it seems likely they will, they’re going to lose the PC market (and I have my suspicions that this is exactly what they want to happen, though I really do hope I am wrong).  They may still do well selling software for other platforms (Office on everything!).

I really can’t say whether MS is thriving or whether it’s just enjoying a bit of irrational exuberance within a bubble.  The thing about bubbles is that they pop.  It’s not a matter of if… it’s a matter of when.  In the roaring 20s, people who had never thought of investing before could buy a lot of stock on margin, often with little or no actual cash, and there was an unrealistic belief that it could only go up.  The popping of that bubble resulted in the Great Depression.  The Dotcom crash of the 1990s wasn’t as bad as that, but it did lead to a recession.  Then, of course, there was the real estate bubble of the “oughts,” which was again a situation with easy money and an irrational belief that things could only go up.  Reality asserted itself once again in ’08, of course.

I’m doing well in my plans to move to Linux, and I’m not going to go back to being strictly Windows in any case, but I would still like for MS to reverse course and stop with the silliness in Windows. If MS thinks that what they’re doing is going to stem the tide of the Windows fading as in the post title, I think they’re out of their minds.  They’re hastening the demise of Windows, if anything.  Does anyone think that any of this silliness with Windows 10 is going to win back the scores of people who have fled the PC platform in favor of iOS or Android?  I doubt it, strongly.  Is that same silliness driving away any of the stalwarts who stuck with the PC platform even in this allegedly mobile era?

People loved XP.  People love 7.  Personally, I liked XP the best; with the Classic (non-Luna) theme and the Classic (Win 95 style cascading) start menu, it remains the high water mark for GUIs in my mind.  Windows 7 is close, but it still has a number of annoyances that XP didn’t.

Those two Windows versions were designed for the desktop exclusively.  So was Vista, which actually went into EOL as a decent but underrated product, still tainted by the bad name it earned at the time of its release.  After 7, the subsequent versions of Windows have been weird attempts to combine dissimilar platforms that don’t really belong together, and it seems that MS is determined not to learn anything by the failure of 8 and the would-be failure of 10 if they hadn’t tried to ram it down everyone’s throat.

Sometimes I really miss Steve Ballmer.

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AlexEiffel, Noel Carboni, fk5353, OscarCP, Tom in Az, wdburt1, Cascadian, Elly, FakeNinja, SueW, Sessh, Charlie

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Agreed about Win XP vs Win7.   I made that jump directly, with the help of Classic Shell.  As I recall, there wasn’t much that I found superior about Win 7, on the surface.  The improvements were in the area of stability and security.

As to your larger question, as an active investor I also agree that Microsoft, and the tech sector as a whole, feel like a bubble.  When I questioned above what “thriving” was supposed to mean, I left open the possibility that there are sectors, such as its services to larger corporations, that might be doing well.  But this would not be the first time that our gracious host has cited the company’s stock price as evidence that Nadella must be doing something right.

Transitioning into providing services for big companies–isn’t that what IBM did?  IBM is still a decent investment, but its price/earnings ratio is not in bubble territory, even though the artificial intelligence chatter is creating a little buzz lately.  Perhaps Microsoft will simply do an IBM, and what Windows users are going through now will be remembered simply as a fitful abandonment of the consumer.

 

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Ascaris, Cascadian

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Ascaris, I enjoy your long posts and they are often highlighting similar experiences I’ve had myself.

I too maybe just took a bit too much time to choose my power supply and ended up going with a Seasonic Gold, not too powerful as it is wasteful and not optimal if it is too much. I wonder sometimes if the time spent is worth it, as maybe I could just buy faster and cheaper PCs more often rather than keep the old reliable ones I took a long time to choose. One thing for sure, I don’t loose a minute repairing or maintaining my 7-8 years old carefully chosen computers and I just work on them.

I was actually thinking today how Win XP was the finest OS in terms of settings layout and how Vista degraded that with the Network Center and other scattering and hiding for the sake of simplicity that ends up being more complexity. XP installed so easily, not much tweaking, much less intrusiveness than even 7. On 10, I find what I want because I know what to look for. I don’t see it in the Start menu, because it is either too hidden or not there no more, but I type a few words in the search box and what I want will come back unless I don’t remember the exact word. If I wasn’t a Windows “expert”, there’s a lot of things I wouldn’t find easily. A few nice things have come since XP, a few nice refinements in the UI, but overall, it got bloated, messy, scattered everywhere. That’s too bad since 10 cleaned up and with a more XP-like interface and a stable release cycle could be the best OS ever. I would take the integration of EMET, the ReFS disks, some File Explorer improvements, the WIN-X menu, command prompts improvements. This is nice.

I still run 7 on Classic interface even if it is ugly because it is more functional for me. Running the taskbar with open Windows shown on it, the colors on 7 makes it hard to see which one is the active Window and if you use Office, a bug shows the wrong window as the active window when alt-tabbing on the more modern interface, at least, last time I checked when I decided to switch to the classic interface. Vista was so much better on this particular aspect, having the pressed down button for active Window and no less-productive launcher copied from Apple. I ran Vista clean and fast without ever reinstalling until its EOL and the PC it was on is still good and is going to have Linux on a brand new SSD soon to give it a second life.

As for Microsoft success, it is very possible they are making money with their cloud services, Azure and Office 365. But the thing is, it is not a success due to Nadella’s great strategy. It is something that was easy to do with a captive customer and there are some things that might do well too on the enterprise side, but that didn’t mean they had to sacrifice Windows for this. So, yes, maybe Microsoft is doing well, maybe there is also some expectations that aren’t really well founded by investors, but I think Microsoft can be well positioned to make more money forcing companies on a subscription model for some of their products and for a lot of companies, they will just pay more and that’s it.

But the thing is, if they didn’t sacrifice Windows, maybe their future would be even better. Agree that Windows could have been modernized in many ways to make it more secure and maybe more simple if they choose better default settings. But the way things are going, they opened the door for small businesses to choose something else if another entity understands the nice opportunity and seizes it. Lots of factors of inertia and barriers to entry are at play here, but when someone you knows tells you how much better it is to use this other brand, then people start to switch and they might not come back. Microsoft relies too much on the fact that their customers are captive. Many of them still are. Gamers. Windows-only fancy software users. But I think they play a dangerous game. When power users switch, it is not a good sign.

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Ascaris, Cascadian, Elly

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Morphing into what?  X-Box, Office 365, virtual reality?  Maybe even robotics?  Now there’s a scary thought – a robot, possibly even in your home, with MS software.

Being 20 something in the 70's was far more fun than being 70 something in the insane 20's

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OscarCP, Cascadian

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Happy New Year!

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SueW, BobbyB

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Its been happening for a while now. Windows becoming less relevant then when we had PC and Mac’s competing for end users. Windows isn’t going away, but its now simply one player in a assortment of devices and operating systems. I’m glad Windows mobile is dead, because this obsession creating a bunch of users all accessing one OS on every platform isn’t ever going to work well. But what is troubling is Microsoft seemly admitting that its mobile platform not working, at the same time trying to introduce Windows 10S another restrictive locked ecosystem that won’t work. Will Microsoft ever learn its lessons of the past?

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Elly, FakeNinja

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I don’t think Windows is going away any time soon. It is too much a part of the way we do our business, run our governments (even those still on XP), spy on each other. There is no viable contender that covers all the bases (at least at this time), only substitutes for some users and wanna-be OSs.

I do think Windows is morphing in the direction of a cloud platform. That doesn’t seem to be as difficult for the Enterprise sector, which has the protection of IT Departments, servers, and special concessions from Microsoft (paid for, of course). But it is harder for the Home and Small Business sectors that don’t have that buffer. And even harder still for us old timers who grew up thinking we were in control of our computers.

It doesn’t seem to bother the younger generation, who spend their whole existence tied to the Internet through smart phones, tablets, and even occasionally PCs. They already spill their privacy through the plethora of social networks and when their expendable hardware is broken/old it is replaced with a new one (planned obsolescence).
But those of us who remember the control (we thought) we had, find it hard to give up. I want to be able to replace my hard drive, RAM, battery and other bits and pieces – I’m too “cheap” to think my hardware is expendable just because one part doesn’t work. And I’m not ready yet to put all my private information in the “Cloud,” although I admit I do spend a great deal of time and do a lot of business on the Internet.

It will eventually settle out. Those who want to, and can, may move away from Windows. The others who are inextricably tied to it will adjust, though there may be weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth (and a lot of frustration).

And the the rest of us “oldies” will eventually loose our eye sight, mental facilities, and just won’t care. (LOL) 🙂 🙂

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EXACTLY! Wow, couldn’t have said it better myself. This saddens me so much because no one seems to see what Windows has become. I am a stubborn Windows 7 user just because of the lack of control and freedom in Windows 10 and I am determined to never let Windows 10 anywhere near any of my computers ever. I hope that Windows 7 and Linux will keep a strong user base in the future so that Windows 10 never has to become the “must have OS for supported software”. R.I.P Windows as we know it.

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I think you make a very good point about the younger generation’s ready acceptance of the sort of privacy issues that annoy we older users. We were brought up to be reserved so far as our private life is concerned and discreet so far as our business life is concerned, but when younger people today eagerly post on social media what they had for breakfast or just bought on Amazon there’s little wonder they don’t mind who knows everything else about their lives.

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>younger people today eagerly post on social media what they had for breakfast or just bought on Amazon there’s little wonder they don’t mind who knows everything else about their lives.

It has always bothered me how many people in my generation do this. Here is a fun game for anyone else in their 20s: Tell them you do not have an account with Facebook/twitter/other trendy social network, and watch their heads as they cannot fathom how that is possible.

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PKCano #155209  “But those of us who remember the control (we thought) we had, find it hard to give up. I want to be able to replace my hard drive, RAM, battery and other bits and pieces – I’m too “cheap” to think my hardware is expendable just because one part doesn’t work.”

Why We Must Fight for the Right to Repair Our Electronics

Pending U.S.  legislation could force manufacturers to make repair parts and information available at fair prices.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/conservation/why-we-must-fight-for-the-right-to-repair-our-electronics

https://repair.org/

Chances slim to none?

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Perhaps I am an incurable optimist, but I am always mildly bothered by “this youth today…” comments, as if the folly of mankind was the monopoly of the young. Also by the “…we the old that were brought up to… “, because, if so, why so many old fools that has been my loss to know in my, by now, rather long stay in this world?

Briefly on this: I understand very well that the folly of humanity is immense. Also: I’m not the first ever to notice that.

If you doubt it, get on your car and go for a drive on a road with heavy, but still moving traffic that is , somehow, not fast enough for some, and observe. As to what happens now, when we can see so many willing to plaster their intimate details and thoughts, and those of their near and dear, all over “The Cloud” without a care, is that the wide and easy access to the Web, so wide and easy any fool can use it, and many actually do, has made folly more visible than in the past.

However, as foolishness is widely distributed, so is wisdom — to a smaller, but still real and non-negligible, extent — as is good sense and the ability to think, exercise discretion, and learn from others–  and from one’s own mistakes. And when that is matched with the capacity — and opportunity — for serious work, be it creating a new and really useful software application, or playing Bach on a violin without missing notes and hitting them always just so, enough to fine-tune the souls of attentive listeners with their sound, or developing a new vaccine for some ancient and crippling illness, or a new theorem that will firm up the basis of computing science, I will be ready to bet good money that this work will not be twitted, or posted on Facebook, for the admiration of countless other careless exhibitionists, but, when the time is right, the music will be performed in an appropriate setting to a seasoned audience, the research findings will come out as a peer-reviewed publication in a reputable journal, to be read by a very small percentage of those able to read anything — and also the ones capable to make good use of new knowledge. And the violinist, and at least one of the authors of the research publication, even the lead one, will probably be in his or her early twenties. Which does happen even in these times. And often.

As to adapting to whatever MS decides to inflict on serious Windows users: that will be the sad fate — for a time — of those working in organizations, public or private, that are set up with Windows as their main, even only, operating system. It might take time, but big ships, and companies and government departments and laboratories, eventually do turn. The question is: which way? Giving the very large number of competent people well-versed in Linux/Unix now running server farms and many other key components of modern life’s infrastructure, not to mention anyone with a decent degree in computer science, I think that a flavor of Linux or Unix might very well be the way they’ll turn to and follow. And when that happens, there will be plenty to do for those able to develop the application software needed for people in those organizations to get their work done. If someone doubts this: take a moment, and consider Android.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

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My only problem has been that I’ve always felt that Unix and its derivatives suffer from their own lack of discipline. Maybe they have been getting better over time, I don’t know. I admit not to running it in recent history. People say that Unix- and Linux-based servers seem stable, so I guess it can’t be all bad. I just never saw it as an architecture that espoused the kind of technical rigor that could be built upon.

Back when Microsoft came out with their implementation of Digital’s / Dave Cutler’s design of a virtual memory operating system – NT, which is at the core of Windows now – it represented a disciplined redesign with serious computing and the future in mind. It’s why it has come so far. Even Microsoft didn’t manage to corrupt it technically too badly, at least before now.

My bad dream is conceptual… That Microsoft sees to it through policy that NT is finally run into the ground, and (my worry) that Unix/Linux haven’t really gotten any better architecturally but become forced to support the world anyway.

-Noel

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Noel Carboni, I wrote “some flavor of Linux or Unix” meaning some OS based on those, but maintained by an organization, most likely commercial, stepping in where MS has finally left scorched earth and little more behind (or, if possible, even before that), and using the opening that will offer to replace Windows with something stable and, therefore, as useful and necessary as Windows used to be, before the present mad update cycle, at least those versions geared towards serious computing from NT through Win 7. I think that such a replacement is quite feasible, with plenty of talent out there capable of taking on the job.

The market might never be as fantastically large as the ones for cell phone, tablet or Cloud-related software seems to be now, but it should be sufficiently large, and solid enough, to make catering to it worthwhile financially.

Something like this replacement could well be around today, or at least something that could be used as an example of it. Thinking Mac OS, Android, Chrome OS…

Preferably, also with some tech support responsive to users’ concerns. And not tied to any hardware manufacturer in particular, unlike Mac OS.

How the changeover will occur? Well, I think I understand PKCano’s basic concern underpinning her skepticism, because I have no idea. But needs must, when the devil drives.

 

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
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It looks like there is a lack of discipline in the desktop world of Linux, but I am not sure it is the same on the server side.

However, regarding Unix, I have been running my servers on Unix for more than 20 years and one of them ran for 13-14 years without a single crash or meaningful issue, despite some redundant hardware failing over the years and being replaced within the four hours window provided by the hardware manufacturer.

Using an OS that has nothing set in a way that would be purposefully contrary to your interest in order to make money makes a very clean OS that is quite simple and easy to run without changing too much defaults. Unix has been good to me. I slept at night using it. The people who made it understood that stability was the number one goal for many like me. I wouldn’t say the people who did it lacked discipline. They had a good sense of priorities, to me. They didn’t develop exciting UIs for server OSes, they worked on things to improve performance, security and stability, not add features outside the scope of the OS. They didn’t need to market sexy new things to sell me an OS. I just got the latest version because I knew it would be better, but still compatible and as stable. That was enough for me. I didn’t want to recompile and change my software to adapt to a new framework every few years.

The only time I had a significant issue with the OS was a big new version just released and running on a bleeding edge hardware. Not the less risky combination. It caused a panic crash when testing before deployment. That’s pretty bad. I called the OS maker, we went over crash dumps and fancy things I didn’t understood very well. They found the bug and fixed it then I went on production and never had an issue after. They said to call the software maker to recompile their software and that it would prevent the problem, but that this still should not have caused an issue and that they would fix it. Those people knew what business need is.

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I agree with what @PKCano said in that

PKCano wrote:

… I do think Windows is morphing in the direction of a cloud platform…

I believe Microsoft’s vision for Windows, or whatever other name their core OS offering will be in the future, is that of a nearly completely cloud-based OS with just enough of a stub on a computer (laptop, tablet or desktop) to enable it to boot and go looking for the rest of the OS in the cloud. In other words, all we’re going to have will be “dumb terminals”, to coin a phrase from the past.

So, computer boots up with the stub and then goes looking into the cloud for the rest of what it needs to bring up the default interface screen. Then, it goes to get what you need from the cloud depending on what part of the OS you tap or click on for a service. No more multi-gig sized installations any more.

I also believe that the majority of the current problems with Win 10’s various iterations stem from Microsoft’s trying to figure things out as they go in trying to make Windows eventually a completely cloud-based OS. So, basically, I believe these hiccups (or disasters for some) are part of MS’s learning curve.

This is just the beginning, and we’re in for a wild ride in some cases.

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Bob99 wrote:

I believe Microsoft’s vision for Windows, or whatever other name their core OS offering will be in the future, is that of a nearly completely cloud-based OS with just enough of a stub on a computer (laptop, tablet or desktop) to enable it to boot and go looking for the rest of the OS in the cloud. In other words, all we’re going to have will be “dumb terminals”, to coin a phrase from the past.

Things move in cycles.  Marketers have to have something “new” and exciting to promote, so it’s a certainty that whatever we have right now isn’t going to be good enough.  What they’re now calling “cloud” computing is not new… in fact, it’s the oldest form of commercial computing.  In the early days of commercialized computing (as opposed to being the realm exclusively of those in the education/research sector), a computer was a centralized unit that serviced multiple users at once via terminals.  It was the revolution of the PC that freed us from the tyranny of the dumb terminal, something that was useless without that connection to the central hub.

During the ’90s, they tried to reinvent the mainframe/terminal again, and that time it was called the “thin client.”  It didn’t take, and decentralized computing remained the dominant type.

Now they’ve renamed “thin client” to “cloud,” and they’re pitching it as brand new and exciting again.  It’s just the same old stuff, repackaged and rebranded.  Centralized computing hasn’t improved since the last time we rejected it in favor of personal computing… it’s just something other than what’s currently the dominant regime, so it must be good and exciting.  If we ever move to the cloud, the next exciting development will (in time) be a rediscovery of personal, client-side computing.

When you let marketers and salesmen lead the way, this kind of thing is always going to happen.  Marketers don’t care about what works or what is useful.  They just want to sell stuff, and it’s easier to sell stuff if you keep changing what the “stuff” is every few years.  If they can keep the buyers chasing their tail and buying whole new setups every few years, that’s heaven, as far as they are concerned.

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I have stayed with Win 7 and plan to do so  until it or my PC become so unusable I switch to a Mac.  I don’t know much if anything about Win 10, but Ask Woody seems to report on one Win 10 horror story after another.  What after all is a Creators Update?  How do people deal with this?  Is Win 10 really such a disaster?

iPhone 13, 2019 iMac(SSD)

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pmcjr6142 wrote:

I don’t know much if anything about Win 10, but Ask Woody seems to report on one Win 10 horror story after another. What after all is a Creators Update? How do people deal with this? Is Win 10 really such a disaster?

It kind of depends on your own needs and standards whether you could consider it acceptable or a disaster.

Like you, I personally have chosen not to update my hardware systems to Win 10. I use Win 8.1 primarily, and also 7.

In all seriousness it’s possible to create a reasonably decent Win 10 setup. I run VMware Workstation Pro to provide a virtual Win 10 environment and without committing to use it on my hardware systems I have done all the work to determine whether Win 10 can meet my needs. Virtualization is a good way to be able to look forward without a commitment.

With an unprecedented amount of effort (repeated a few times a year) I’ve configured and augmented a Windows 10 setup that COULD actually support my needs. It’s a lot like my Win 8.1 setup, actually. But it’s intermittently buggy in minor ways, and most importantly it does not bring any new features to make what I do (software development and business management) better or easier, while at the same time it’s losing the integration and polish Windows once had. From my perspective, it’s a bit like the initial releases of Vista or Win 8 (neither of which I adopted at first) – Win 10 seems perpetually in need of a year or two of stabilization and a service pack update before it’s good enough. That very stabilization is what Microsoft is avoiding by releasing new versions several times a year.

Things a prospective Windows 10 user can consider:

• Do you consider cloud integration (and some loss of privacy) good or bad?
• What do you find more fun, fooling with Windows itself or running your applications?
• Do you like finding new ways to do the same things?
• Do you prefer free software supported by advertisements? Do Live Tiles popping up potentially interesting things seem cool?
• Did you think of older Windows versions of the past as “too stuffy and serious”?
• Do intermittent minor bugs bother you or do you find discovery of workarounds fun?
• Are less technical error messages easier for you to deal with?
• Did skeuomorphic controls with visual styles seem old and make it hard for you to use Windows, and are flat rectangular controls “cleaner” and “easier on your eyes”?
• Do you find yourself craving larger fonts and going full screen more?
• Were you frustrated by having to take control over what your older Windows system did (e.g. when to install updates)?
• With your older Windows systems did you sometimes find yourself thinking, “Gee, the OS should really find some use for all these RAM, CPU, and networking resources, since they’re just laying around idle otherwise”?

-Noel

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Microsoft said in 2015 that Windows (W10) is been built from the ground up for a world in which mobile and cloud computing are key. Execs from the company said it was committed to making Windows 10 friendly for the enterprise, ideal for keyboard and mouse users, but also optimized for touch.

In 2017, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said he failed, multiple times, to remain committed to consumers who have shown a commitment to Microsoft. Many loyalists, not fanboys, agree.
His inability to maintain a business and technological focus on Windows phones lead to its demise, an astounding lack of support for developers in regards to UWP offerings and a Surface support fiasco have all lead to a failed commitment to consumers.

OEMs were mishandled by Microsoft. W10 has not been overly friendly to the enterprise either. The aggressive update cycles have lead to a great deal of anxiety.

Cloud, AI and Windows as a Service is the CEO’s latest vision. Microsoft is currently on a buying spree to get it into cross-platform progressive web apps, AI and bots. They have lots of competition most of which are as big, bigger or better than they are. To stay relevant they have to compete on merit and rebuild all the bridges they have burned. Grovelling may work.

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I’ve been waiting to see if anyone else would ask this question, and since no one has, I will.  What does the olive green line way above everything else, labeled “adults” mean?  I understand the other parts of the chart, but not that.

Being 20 something in the 70's was far more fun than being 70 something in the insane 20's

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Cascadian

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I’m thinking its the number of people in the world… that are adults…

So it is showing how fewer and fewer people in the overall population are not connected somehow, and that mobile is the way the majority do connect.

Non-techy Win 10 Pro and Linux Mint experimenter

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Cascadian

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Thank you very much Elly, that makes sense.

Being 20 something in the 70's was far more fun than being 70 something in the insane 20's

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Elly

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As I look around me, all the youngsters, seemingly as soon as they can grab on to one, are on smart phones… so I think the numbers will continue to rise…

Non-techy Win 10 Pro and Linux Mint experimenter

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Cascadian

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I agree with Elly’s interpretation of the label. But I also agree with your question of relevance. This chart is a good example of throwing data together from different assumed definitions, and then extracting a conclusion.

I do not believe adult population numbers follow a straight line as displayed.
– nor that non-adult users are excluded from other data populations.
– nor that those populations are necessarily screened to eliminate duplicates.

I think that if the same definitions were to be reused at a future date, you would find the other curves tracing above the artificially straight line of counted adults. It would not indicate that there were extraterrestrials or zombie users. It would showcase the unethical use of statistics.

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I use both a laptop (does that count as a PC?) and an Android smartphone. They do various different tasks in my life. The laptop either stays at home, accompanies me to school, or during special trips. I only take it out when I need to use it. The smartphone is on me at all times outside of the house, and I take it out when I need it or when I’m bored and feel like checking something.

I don’t think that PCs are necessarily dying, at least not in my life. For one, a lot of my time is spent using a PC, which multitasks far better than my smartphone ever could. Also, gaming is a lot easier and better on a PC than my phone, which I mostly reserve for offline games like Solitaire when I’m on the subway.

I’m a student as well, and here’s the biggest problem with mobile devices: It’s not fun writing an essay on one. Even more nightmarish to try and cite sources. You’re really better off using a PC. Using your phone to copyedit your essay is fine, but not writing it.

Granted, recently I’ve craved a lot of cloud-integrated services (If I’m using that term correctly). I still use a classic standalone IRC client, but I use IRCCloud happily on my phone, since it’s nice to be able to access your messages anywhere. Same goes with Facebook Messenger, Google Hangouts, and even Discord; it’s nice to be able to pick up where you left off. Chatting with a group and need to head out to a family dinner? You can catch up once you’re seated at the restaurant (Not while driving I hope). I like it when things that normally were once only accessible on my PC are also available on all my devices as well, and I like the idea of having cloud backups so that I don’t lose everything if my laptop or my phone goes.

Microsoft’s idea of having one Windows for everything (and I assume having everything in sync with each other) is indeed appealing, and if they had started earlier, then maybe I’d have jumped on board. As of now, though, I’m content with Google doing just that. Most of my files are stored on Google Drive, my photos on Google Photos. I don’t keep a lot of stuff permanently stored on my computer, save for Windows programs and games. I’m seemingly more reassured if the stuff I own is available wherever I go than just stored on my computer’s hard drive.

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Dear Anonymous,

If your PC is not government nor company issued, if you do not have classified, proprietary, confidential, personal identifiable information, unclassified but sensitive information, etc., etc. in it, and are not worried about whatever you have in the cloud being stolen and used against you, in some way, and ditto anything you post in social networks (and I am not thinking here just of flame wars, but of much worse), then, by all means, keep going as you have described.

You make a good point on the limitations of cell phones and how PCs complement them for those who, as yourself, do more than phone calls, texting, playing solitaire during long trips, or emailing.

However, if one is using the PC for work, it is a good idea to keep one’s work files at home, or in the office, duly backed up in external media. PCs can be hacked, any time, of course, but observing a few rules of Good Web Hygiene and keeping things you can hardly afford to loose close at hand, adds a a measure of security, of safety, that is truly a relief to have, and a lifesaver now and then.

And I am not entirely sure that waiting until you are seated at the restaurant to check your messages, etc. is really super cool, particularly in the eyes of your table companions. Unless you are all used to doing that at table, in which case you could all just as well stay home, order pizza or Chinese, and text each other instead of going to the trouble of booking a table and traveling physically to a restaurant to begin to exchange tweets, etc. around the table.

 

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
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If I read that graph properly, there is about the same number of PCs than in 2010 or shortly after. It is still a huge amount of people. Some, like our young friend anonymous here, will have both a PC and a smartphone because they are both useful, although the PC might be used much less often since the phone can do some of the things it did faster just by the fact that it sits in your pocket ready to be checked.

Some might not renew their PC if they mostly used it to look at social networks and email.

But overall, although the PC market might suffer competition from other devices, it is far from being dead. After adjusting to this new reality for a few years, it might get back on track of slow growth for situations where it will still shine for a long time. Of course, if Microsoft tries really hard to turn our PCs into poor smartphones, some people might not renew them next refresh cycle and just use the better smartphone.

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