Hello World: Windows 10 Available on July 29 • Hacker News Board

Re: Hello World: Windows 10 Available on July 29

#201

Post by soylentcola » Mon, Jun 01, 2015, 5:34 PM UTC

dagw wrote: post #62

venomsnake wrote: post #7

Why all of their screenshots are on laptops? Doesn't anyone use real computers anymore?

Fewer and fewer people. Given that laptops today can have 32 GB or RAM, Quadro cards and fast quad core CPUs, there's less and less work that requires a 'real' workstation. Even the CAD people where I work have mostly switched to laptops. (Full disclosure: I use a workstation as my main computer both at home and at work. My laptop is mainly for traveling and computing in the sofa)

I guess I'm in the minority then, but even as someone between "light user" and "professional developer/designer", I still prefer the powerful desktop/relatively affordable laptop combo.

To get laptop specs approaching my desktop I'd need to spend close to double the cost and I'd still be giving up quite a bit since there just aren't equivalent laptop-grade CPUs, GPUs, and storage options that compare.

Instead, I keep a desktop that's a bit lower spec than a serious workstation but higher than most basic office/home systems (i7, 16GB RAM, SSD, a couple of HDDs that were in previous machines, GTX 980, optical drive, etc) and a more basic laptop for use in less demanding tasks when away from home.

I guess my usage is a bit of a throwback in this sense but my desktop is the center of my home computing. Until recently it was the network storage for my media library (since offloaded to a NAS but still acts as the Plex server for transcoding and streaming media throughout the house). It's my main gaming platform. I use it for editing photos and video and well as my hobbyist-level dabbling in 3D graphics and animation. And it's obviously capable of all the less-demanding stuff like web browsing and Netflix on a decent-sized monitor.

A docked laptop would have lower CPU, GPU, and storage options and even if I bought some exorbitant "desktop replacement" model, it would cost a fortune and not be very portable. Much easier to buy a more reasonable notebook to take with me and even remote into my desktop if I really need to do some heavy lifting outside the house.

Re: Hello World: Windows 10 Available on July 29

#202

Post by bad_user » Mon, Jun 01, 2015, 5:35 PM UTC

atap wrote: post #136

ikurei wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can disable it in about 10 seconds. Fro memory: press the Meta/Windows key; write "privacy" on the dash; a window with privacy options appears; hit the Search tab, disable the checkbox. It annoys me that it's there by default and non-technical users will not know how to do anything. There should be an option or warning on the dash itself.

If everyone wants it disabled, then it should be disabled by default. If it's the type of thing no one would ever enable, unless it were defaulted as such, then it shouldn't even be there in the first place. If someone paid money to put it there, then the person who agreed to do so isn't acting in the best interests of those they serve.

I like having it enabled, so I don't know what you guys are talking about.

Re: Hello World: Windows 10 Available on July 29

#203

Post by bad_user » Mon, Jun 01, 2015, 5:37 PM UTC

castell wrote: post #95

doczoidberg wrote: post #61

I like it just to press the win key to do a (cortana) web search. If they stay with bing as the only web search integrated into cortana google will lose some users. Nevertheless they should implement google as an option.

Microsoft had to change Vista's startmenu search function to allow also third party desktop search vendors like the free "Google Desktop Search". "Two areas have seen changes in SP1 that have come as the result of concerns from software vendors. One of these is desktop search; users will be able to change the default desktop search program to one provided by a third party instead of the Microsoft desktop search progr…

Third party search providers are not supported in Windows 8.1 and you're talking about Vista. So no, Win10 will probably not support third parties.

Re: Hello World: Windows 10 Available on July 29

#204

Post by yuhong » Mon, Jun 01, 2015, 5:37 PM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #160

zanny wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless MS changes their free upgrade policy to be every version of Windows since XP instead of 7 nobody using Vista / XP will upgrade because its expensive. Though the market share of XP has been dropping. The only real users left are those who don't know what an OS is and only uses it to check AOL in ie6 and businesses who are too stupid to upgrade their horribly dated software.

As someone who is still on XP after having tried all the newer Windows versions (and forced to use some), I don't think it's worth relearning everything and finding out that a lot of the functionality that you used to rely on is now either completely missing or terribly dumbed-down. All the little irritations add up. We've probably long passed the point of "sufficient for the average user" in terms of OS features, as…

examples?

Re: Hello World: Windows 10 Available on July 29

#205

Post by bad_user » Mon, Jun 01, 2015, 5:45 PM UTC

icc97 wrote: post #50

stinos wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does have some small improvements ( http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/09/window... ) but nothing spectacular. I'd recommend you to look into MobaXterm or ConEmu running cygwin as well, I like any of those two way more then Putty actually.

Those are actually pretty important improvements. But it's quite shocking how long they've taken. > this is something that other operating systems have had in their text shells for ages Perhaps someone knows the date from which you could highlight single lines as single lines in the commad prompt for linux / mac?

The first time I tried Linux on my desktop was in ~ 1998, I believe it was Mandrake and the terminal had all of these "improvements".

Re: Hello World: Windows 10 Available on July 29

#206

Post by zanny » Mon, Jun 01, 2015, 6:03 PM UTC

sp332 wrote: post #153

Someone1234 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to say, in general, that Microsoft's "messaging" about how the free upgrade will work has been riddled with bad communications. It is like the XBone incident all over again. Instead of simply just spelling out with a very straight forward table what will be eligible they kept releasing vague and confusing press releases. I've read articles which have claimed (amongst other things): - Windows XP+ will be eligib…

Pirated copies of windows will get to upgrade, but they will still be illegitimate. I think it's a security and support issue. It's just cheaper and safer to have the pirates running the latest version of the software.

I thought they went back on letting pirates get legit Win10. You need a valid CD key or something for the update process.

Re: Hello World: Windows 10 Available on July 29

#207

Post by zanny » Mon, Jun 01, 2015, 6:10 PM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #160

zanny wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless MS changes their free upgrade policy to be every version of Windows since XP instead of 7 nobody using Vista / XP will upgrade because its expensive. Though the market share of XP has been dropping. The only real users left are those who don't know what an OS is and only uses it to check AOL in ie6 and businesses who are too stupid to upgrade their horribly dated software.

As someone who is still on XP after having tried all the newer Windows versions (and forced to use some), I don't think it's worth relearning everything and finding out that a lot of the functionality that you used to rely on is now either completely missing or terribly dumbed-down. All the little irritations add up. We've probably long passed the point of "sufficient for the average user" in terms of OS features, as…

> I'd sooner switch completely to Linux

I do local IT. Word of mouth side job stuff. Its nice to remind myself why Windows is shit down in the trenches sometimes, and its a lot easier to manually uninstall a half dozen viruses and edit out registry rootkits for an hour after a week of coding.

I normally bill pretty standard in home support freelancer rates, $60 an hour with a minimum $80 to come. If I ever find a computer running Windows XP, I always offer and implore the owner (assuming they are not dependent on some software that has no Linux surrogate) to let me throw Lubuntu 14.04 on the thing. I do it for free, and offer up to three hours of tutoring also for free, because Windows XP is literally cancer. Its a tumor you don't know is there until it goes malignant and kills you by having some unpublished never to be patched exploit used to wreck your PC and steal all your personal information or lock you out. Its more unsafe than unprotected sex in a sleazy strip club.

Feature wise, Lubuntu matches pretty much perfectly, and even people still using XP often have Android phones, so the Lubuntu software center makes a lot more sense to people than have Play Store experience. Its not like anyone using these computers needs performance out of them - if they were trying to run a business or do anything intensive enough to require proprietary Windows only software they would have certainly updated the machine once in the last decade. They almost always are exclusively doing word processing and email, often not even web browsing because these are systems stuck with IE8 at best. And Lubutu does both of those things much better than XP ever did with auto-updating Firefox / Libreoffice and one click system upgrades every two years for LTS releases.

So yeah, switch to Linux, please. Your OS is hugely insecure and nobody is ever going to fix it.

Re: Hello World: Windows 10 Available on July 29

#208

Post by unique_parrot » Mon, Jun 01, 2015, 7:30 PM UTC

agildehaus wrote: post #10

kozukumi wrote: post #5

I have been running the technical previews since the very start and I have to say I am quite surprised at the July 29th release date. Even today's builds are riddled with problems. They have a lot of work to do if they really think it will be consumer ready by the end of July.

Update often is the new mantra. Unfortunately that sometimes means "we can ship crap!".

That reminds me of the win8 release. I got it after preorder on release day, installed it immediately, hit update and got something about 350MB of updates. WTF, on release day??? After 2 weeks I switched back to Win7 (which was a lot of work, because I didn't think of making a backup before, because I didn't believe what a pice of sh*t it could be).

Re: Hello World: Windows 10 Available on July 29

#209

Post by pjob » Mon, Jun 01, 2015, 7:34 PM UTC

vosper wrote: post #155

getsat wrote: post #70

Will there be a way to buy a digital download of it? I recently wanted to bootcamp my Macbook Pro to play some games Windows-only games. I went to Microsoft's website and looked at the options for buying Windows 8. The only options were a retail DVD which would be shipped (and I don't have a DVD drive) or to upgrade from Windows Vista/Windows 7 which I had neither of. I ended up pirating it because I couldn't figure…

I'm running the Windows 10 Technical Preview on a 2013 MacBook Air, solely for gaming. So far I've only played Halflife 2, and it's much better than under OSX. I had to force it to run windowed, rather than true full screen, because full screen had some issues. I don't notice the tiny window bar once I've started playing. The Technical Preview is free and easy to setup with Bootcamp, so you may as well give it a shot…

Try adding "-noborder" to your launch options. (Right click on the game in your steam library > Properties > Set launch options...)

see https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Command_Line_Option... for more options (I recommend "-novid -window -noborder -high -threads ")

Re: Hello World: Windows 10 Available on July 29

#210

Post by ladzoppelin » Mon, Jun 01, 2015, 7:46 PM UTC

MichaelGG wrote: post #189

wernercd wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iPhone shipped feature-incomplete yet people were screaming from the rafters about how awesome it was. Earth Shattering. MAGICAL! Gotta love the double standards...

The current Win10 builds are not even close to having the polish iPhone 1 had. There's all sorts of inconsistencies and screwed up stuff. Hell, just clicking on search settings doesn't even work (in true JS style even; it just does nothing, no error, no response). OTOH, coming from Win8, where it's so much worse, Win10 is an improvement. After running I for months, a friend asked what was new. "Well they undid the Me…

Anybody who thinks Windows 7 is better than Windows 8.1 needs to get a new monitor or their eyes checked. Also if you update to the latest Windows 10 build, released this weekend, it fixes the search/start menu launch stuff. I am running 8.1 and Windows 10 in a virtual plus several users are already running 10. Blurry fonts are the app makers problem, just like Apple.