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Why did Windows 7 log on slower for months if you had a solid color background?

devblogs.microsoft.com

121–130 of 311 posts

Re: Why did Windows 7 log on slower for months if you had a solid color background?

#121
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you suggest? Is it better to wait until the whole app is loaded to show anything? Or is the only solution to fix loading times in the first place?

> Or is the only solution to fix loading times in the first place? Ding! Ding! Ding! We got a winner! Yeah, maybe we could expect machines which got 40 years of Moore's law to give you an experience at least as snappy as what you got on DOS apps.

When I want to make old devs cry I send them this link[1]:

https://forum.dlang.org/

I know it's very simple, I know there isn't a lot of media (and definitely no tracking or ads), but it shows what could be possible on the internet. It's just that nobody cares.

[1] Yes, Hacker News is also quite good in terms of loading speed.

Re: Why did Windows 7 log on slower for months if you had a solid color background?

#122
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar with google docs, if you share a link to a doc, even if the doc is restricted access, anyone can see the thumbnail icon with the contents of page 1.

Really? That’s very surprising. You can see what this says? https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uYM0vyZiDJbo-5mXmU_6Xtrz...

Possibly they refer to this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39172527 “I received a link to a Google doc on slack recently, but the owner had forgotten to share permissions with me. Though I couldn't view the doc when I clicked it, I did notice that I could view the first page of the doc in the link preview. It was very high res and I could view the text clearly.”.

If so, pasting that link into Slack may reveal its first page.

Re: Why did Windows 7 log on slower for months if you had a solid color background?

#123
post #103
post #32

It's funny to see this: after avoiding the Windows world for the last 25 years, back in the corporate world in the last few, I see this pattern with Microsoft tools all the time. Teams not loading due to security issues, but notifications coming through with full content of messages. Ability to type a handful of words in cloud version of Word (or paste full documents) before security check catches up and requires me…

I like to joke that Microsoft stuff is always 80%. Works very well for the obvious use cases, but then you are bound to run into weird issues as soon as you run into some edge case they haven't covered. Makes me think it must have something to do with their corporate culture and how they work, since their developers, to my knowledge, never had a reputation for being weak. Maybe it's just because they have such a giga…

> Maybe it's just because they have such a gigantic user base for everything they do, that 80% is the best business value.

I was thinking about something similar recently. 80% of features take 20% of the time. For the hobby stuff I program, I want to make the best use of my time, so I skip the last 20% of features to make more room for stuff that matters.

I call it PDD: Pareto-Driven Development. Looks like you think Microsoft is similar.

Re: Why did Windows 7 log on slower for months if you had a solid color background?

#124
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, in the corporate information systems world, we have to wait for the half-dozen security and monitoring systems to get done scanning memory and blocking while painstakingly logging to the clould. Only then do you get to watch a catatonic UI thread idly wait for every last piece of the underlying software to load.

Not only do they forbid devs to use Linux on their dev machines, they then proceed with cb.exe etc. Nothing shows how they value your time quiet as much as these artificial slowdowns they love to introduce. (Along with gigantic privacy issues, as it allows the employer to essentially look at a live feed of your desktop whenever they want) I could understand it if your device needed special access (VPN to prod etc), b…

Well, we use Linux dev machines but IT has loaded them up with enough panopticon software that several times a week for an hour or so I can not get enough CPU or resident RAM to do productive work. But at least there are no forced system reboots at inconvenient times during the work day.

Re: Why did Windows 7 log on slower for months if you had a solid color background?

#125
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just MS. I think they might have fixed it now, but my personal favorite was when Google photos would send me a notification with a preview of an AI generated album of my photos they made for me even though the app did not now, nor ever have permissions (on Android) to look at said photos. And it too would then "catch up" and ask permission to see my files and I'd say "no" and then the preview would go away.

Google Keep is a note taking app. However when you're inside a note (which BTW, can also be converted into checkboxes, aka very simple TODOs), Google Keep, the note taking app from search giant Google, doesn't have search functionality for that specific note. Besides the many small bugs, sometimes the missing functionality in Google apps is mind boggling.

On a asimialr vein, Microsoft's OneNote, which is of course part of the famed and expensive Office suite, still doesn't support Find and Replace. But, they do have a meticulously written official support article that suggests you can copy the text you want to replace with, and then do Find, double click the text it finds, ctrl+V, and repeat...

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/find-and-replace-...

Re: Why did Windows 7 log on slower for months if you had a solid color background?

#126
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? That’s very surprising. You can see what this says? https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uYM0vyZiDJbo-5mXmU_6Xtrz...

Possibly they refer to this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39172527 “I received a link to a Google doc on slack recently, but the owner had forgotten to share permissions with me. Though I couldn't view the doc when I clicked it, I did notice that I could view the first page of the doc in the link preview. It was very high res and I could view the text clearly.” . If so, pasting that link into Slack may reveal…

permissions might have changed after link preview was generated

Re: Why did Windows 7 log on slower for months if you had a solid color background?

#128
post #16

A bit meta, but I've come to look forward to the "Why did happen with " headlines that herald a Raymond Chen post. These are always fascinating.

Agreed. The Old New Thing is such a wonderful collection of Windows oddities. Its the only blog that has explained away computing myths surrounding Windows that I've held since childhood.

Re: Why did Windows 7 log on slower for months if you had a solid color background?

#129
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just make a black png and use it as the background?

Sure but why should a workaround be required for a feature that should work?

If they can't get colors to work, the software should just create the image itself and fake it.

Re: Why did Windows 7 log on slower for months if you had a solid color background?

#130

Great read. Raymond Chen's blog is absolutely legendary.

I feel that Bruce Dawson's blog falls into the same/similar category, though he hasn't had a great technical post in a while. I wonder what multithreading bug he'll find next.

https://randomascii.wordpress.com/

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