Charity: Ta for the free Win 8.1, Microsoft – we'll use it to install Win 7 In November, Microsoft started offering free copies of Windows 8.1 to non-profits and charities. Redmond called it a "donation"; the more cynical saw it as a handy way to boost deployments of the new OS and migrate desktops away from dead-end Windows XP. Today The Register can reveal Microsoft has struck a deal with members …
TIFKAM isn't hard to learn. It's just not as productive for me as a piece of freeware.
Hell, with Classic Shell, I can even remove the side-crap on the Windows menu, change the Start button to the company logo, whatever I like.
And it works quick, smooth, easy, ADMX-configurable, MSI-deployable... literally in the time it took me to "learn" Metro, I had deployed an alternative that saved myself - and any of my users - from ever needing to.
New != progress. And I fail to see anything that Metro does "better" than the old-fashioned interface and a properly configured start menu (which we can do now that we can turn every damn option on it off whenever we like, site-wide, in a matter of seconds - even down to the order of things in the menu).
Even if we're all wrong and it's just a fad and we all end up on Metro - fact is, I've put off that "training" for another year, i.e. another budget, and provided a much smoother transition than MS ever did for my users... and it's under my control and on my schedule.
Firstly I like your solution... it certainly works on many levels.
But, (there's always a but)... if you're failing to see how TIFKAM is better than the old start menu, you really haven't spent much time with it. The Modern UI has a number of benefits, firstly Live Tiles - updating in real time with information from relevent souces. It will be a while before a significant number of LOB applications offer Live Tiles, but when they do (and they are coming) this will be quite powerful. Secondly, a lot of users don't know how to use the start menu - sad I know, it's only been around since Windows 95, but I still speak to too many people that if they do not have an icon on the desktop they are unable to find their application.
From a roll-out perspective, I can certainly understand that it would be easier to disable that interface than learn how to manage it, but if it can offer a business benefit maybe it should be investigated - looks like that will come next year hey?
The Windows 8.1 Update certainly helps make the Windows Apps and TIFKAM more mouse friendly - I recommend you give it a go.
The irony is that even without being asked the live tiles happily show unwanted distracting information in a tiny window surrounded by other unwanted tiny tiles, but when given an explicit request and the run of the full screen with 1024 x 600 pixels it isn't enough for TIFKAM and they refuse to display anything at all. Fortunately, real time updates that I consider irrelevant or distracting can be turned off. I could choose a scaled display resolution, but then the real applications I use all the time look wrong.
Sorry, but everywhere I've worked, the unanimous decision has been to turn off anything even approaching Live Tiles. In fact, we uninstall the apps (which is easier said than done for a lot of them).
We don't want every desktop running off to download weather updates and animate the desktop - we got rid of that junk back in the days of Active Desktop for the same reason (if you can't see the similarity between Metro and Active Desktop, I suggest you look again).
Users ask me to turn off tiles. So I turn them all off and the tech ones are free to reinstall / reshow whatever they want. I've yet to see someone with anything but a "quick-launch" desktop of what they deem to be their most used apps, not what Windows Tiles want to throw at you.
If I were getting complaints from users about WANTING to have this stuff, I'd be forced to change it quite quickly. The opposite is true and workplaces that were putting off 8-deployment because of tests went onto it when they say my "cut-down" version that was still 8, but without all the junk.
I spend months testing these things before I roll them out. And I'm still yet to see why a Finance app or a Weather widget is at all useful to the average user. Hell, even the Metro "versions" of things like Chrome and IE are pretty inferior to the real product. People, in general, just don't care about Metro. And, so, I'm forced to follow the majority.
Just be thankful that I do push them by making 8 work rather than letting them linger on 7 or even - in some cases I've seen - XP.
Background:
I am a "techie", so I do like to tinker with stuff.
My WiFi is set up with MAC address filtering (so the neighbours can't use it to download pirate grumble flics)
Problem with Windows 8.1
A friend came round with a new laptop. After 15 minutes of clicking in likely looking locations to find the MAC addresss, I resorted to ipconfig from a command prompt.
That can't be a good thing...
Where have those idiots hidden it please?
@Bert...My WiFi is set up with MAC address filtering (so the neighbours can't use it to download pirate grumble flics).......etc etc...
The issue isn't Windows, it YOU. If you rely on a MAC filtering, which is SHIT, instead of WPA2, then, trust me, no OS is going to help.
.
The issue isn't Windows, it YOU. If you rely on a MAC filtering, which is SHIT, instead of WPA2, then, trust me, no OS is going to help.
Hang on, you think MAC filtering is 'SHIT' but that WPA2 which has been shown to be quite crackable with the use of rainbow tables and a lil data capture isnt ??
You should be using as many levels of security as are effective/possible
So using MAC filtering is a start and much more than most average users are even aware of, add on a WPA2 radius server (FreeRADIUS anyone?) and you have a good begninning
Re: Things are hidden :-(
@Bert...My WiFi is set up with MAC address filtering (so the neighbours can't use it to download pirate grumble flics).......etc etc...
The issue isn't Windows, it YOU. If you rely on a MAC filtering, which is SHIT, instead of WPA2, then, trust me, no OS is going to help.
Errrr.... No. WPA2 is trivially crackable - if you know what you're doing - and using MAC filtering is very effective on top of WPA2 - it makes spoofing a legitimate-looking network device more difficult (but not impossible). If you want to sort-of secure your wireless network, you also have to turn off the SSID broadcast and use yet another level of encryption on top of WPA2 - even then it's not totally secure!
>WPA2 is trivially crackable
Interesting use of the word 'trivial'.
But in any case, a trivial configuration change and WPA2 can be made secure - if you know what yo're doing. FYI, MAC filtering and turning off SSID broadcast don't form part of the solution. For further details I suggest you talk to a CLAS Consultant with experience of WiFi...
OK, I googled it.
===============
On the Start screen, type Network and Sharing
Under the search box, select Settings
Click Network and Sharing Center:
Select Change Adapter Settings from the list on the left hand side
Right click on the connection you are trying to find the MAC address for and select Properties.
Hover your mouse over the text box underneath connect using. Your MAC
address will appear in the tooltip.
==================
It's in a tooltip behind a change settings button!
Fuck Me! All it needs is a sign saying "beware of the leopard"
Run --> cmd
ipconfig /all
Read "Physical Address" for the appropriate NIC.
That's exactly what he said he did. But you shouldn't need to do that if the info is also accessible from the Control Panel, and it isn't easy to relay these instructions to a regular user over the phone.
Two weeks training for 1000 people, oh, lets see, that is about £600,000 woth of lost time. In practice it won't be as people will learn on their own time and management will put a couple of sessions on...
Information needed: UK specific, charity registered organisation, small, about half a dozen boxes and a domestic style Internet connection. Can they get MS freebies? Free Win upgrade and freebie Office would be good.
The tramp: I'll be a charity case soon the way the pensions are going...
Two weeks training? I don't believe that.
I switched the company secretary (60+ years old, basically technically illiterate) from XP and Office 2003 to Windows 8.1 and Office 2013. She needed about 45 minutes of support for Windows and another couple of hours for Office, the Office move was more of a problem for her than the OS. Most of the niggles with the OS were the default programs being Metro apps (Photos instead of Picture Viewer, Reader instead of another PDF reader), which I could've fixed with a deployment script before hand if I had realised.
There will of course be people who struggle more and some who struggle less, but if a practically technically illiterate secretary can handle the move that easily, I find it hard to believe that anyone else will struggle to the extent of requiring 2 weeks of training.
Yes, but you said it yourself... Company secretary.
It's to be expected that she will have a higher aptitude with the general desktop environment and should be expected to be able to cope with change in GUI, yadda, yadda.
Some random in an organisation though that only knows a few basic key shortcuts and only uses the same two programs day in, day out? It will take longer.
All they need is someone to right click the taskbar then go to properties -> navigation and tick the suitable boxes to disable most things and prefer the desktop and then they should be fine.
With the latest update it is basically back to normal then. (Metro apps appear like normal ones on the taskbar). Desktop Apps listed first - Default to the Desktop. Disable the corners for the charms or recent apps.
Can just add shortcuts to the apps on the Desktop if you want as well.
You can avoid metro basically entirely now.
You are supposed to hooooowwwwwl. Don't you understand that? Making reasonable comments, albeit not especially complimentary to Redmond is definitely not on the agenda. Remember, hoooowwwlllliiiing about the Demons of Redmond is where its at. If you do not do that you are going to lose all your street-cred.
A non-profit organisation; IMO a wrongly used term from the get-go, because a lot of these organisations do keep employee's on the payroll. Ergo; they'll need money in order to survive themselves, and something tells me that will go before their ideals.
Even so; it would be my impression that one of the main aspects of such organisations would be to reduce your own costs in order to get even more revenue for the help you want to provide.
So why isn't open source software much more widespread within these organisations I wonder?
I'm running a business myself and yes, I also rely on Windows and MS Office (2010) to keep up with my administration. But part of the decision to do so is also based on my profession: ICT. I actually use Office as a development platform to build other (VBA powered) applications which then help my own environment but which can then also be implemented on customer sites. And having to deal with customers which run Windows themselves also helps here. Even so; it goes beyond your average "write a report, send a bill, do your bookkeeping".
Recently I've started experimenting with Xorg, Xfce4 and LibreOffice on my laptop and I have to say that there's tons of options there as well. More than enough to run your entire administration on it, especially if it's mainly aimed at writing reports, keeping track of finance and all the extra stuff (Thunderbird on Linux/BSD really isn't that much different than Thunderbird on Windows).
SO yeah; why Windows and why haven't these organisations experimented (and embraced) open source software I wonder? I can't help think that it should fit in just fine.
My cynical opinion on that? Because there's plenty of money to be made in this field and so these kind of cost reductions are the least of their worries.
In my (very biased) opinion a real non-profit organisation would be mostly run by volunteers which may indeed have some costs to deal with (I could imagine that you prefer an accountant to handle your financial administration) but not in the likes of what we see happening right now. Where the whole "charity organisation" is actually a company of its own.
The reality however is that such organisations are usually run by people who get their full incoming out of it and supported by volunteers which try to do the right thing and help other people out.
And in case you're wondering; yes, I don't like most of these "charity organisations" at all.
You might not like charity organisations but there are many who provide a valuable contribution to local communities. Indulge me whilst I Illustrate with an example:
I volunteer at a local community centre, itself a registered charity and a company limited by guarantee. It is located in the North East of England in an area the government acknowledge as suffering from a high level of social deprivation and unemployment. There are two full-time employees whose salaries are paid for through funding raised from other organisations who finance a variety of community projects. Two other people, the building's caretakers, are employed by the local council from whom we lease the building. We also have an Ofsted-registered nursery catering for 0-5 year old children.
As well as a wide variety of social and leisure activities for all age groups, we also have two IT suites which are heavily used for a variety of purposes, not the least of which is catering for unemployed people fulfilling their obligations under Job Search and a myriad of other things like applying for benefits of all kinds which the government now require to be done online—over 40% of the local population do not have access to the internet of a computer at home, so we provide a vital service in that regard.
We also provide IT services for vision and hearing-impaired people, those with low literacy skills and those for whom English is not their first language. As a charity, we have received our Windows licences free and we make use of many other open-source packages. We are also looking to move to a more heterogeneous computing environment incorporating Macs and Linux in the future.
In short, the cost of maintaining our IT systems pales into insignificance compared to the cost of maintaining the infrastructure: gas and electricity bills,insurance, interior fabric maintenance, yada, yada, yada. Every single penny of profit is ploughed back into serving the community's needs: last year, nearly 5000 people benefited from the centre. Put another way, over 60% of the local population directly benefited from the centre's activities. Therefore, the idea that such services can be created and run by an organisation staffed entirely by volunteers is both ludicrous and jejune: you need highly-skilled people in order to drive this forward and for that, you need to pay them.
We also are having to contend with the government's Community Asset Transfer program—an accounting con-job of monstrous proportions—which will mean us becoming responsible for everything while the council keeps the building as an asset on their books without having any responsibility for it. Many centres in the surrounding area will not be able to cope with the financial responsibility and will undoubtedly fold thus further disenfranchising people who can ill afford further social isolation.
So, before you decide to repeat your importunate and ill-advised commentary, I urge you to spare a thought for those less well-off than yourself and for those organisations who struggle daily against a sea of government iniquity to make a genuine difference in people's lives. To quote Whoopi Goldberg: "…he who is without shit on their shoe, take the first step on the white rug!"
=:~)
So, before you decide to repeat your importunate and ill-advised commentary, I urge you to spare a thought for those less well-off than yourself and for those organisations who struggle daily against a sea of government iniquity to make a genuine difference in people's lives.
Why? I have yet to see any charity that does not have some ulterior motive lurking behind the do-gooding. It's usually religious and therefore to be avoided at all costs.
Oxfam proudly announce that they've reduced infant mortality in Sierra Leone to <5%, but entirely fail to broadcast the fact that mortality between 2 and 10 years old approaches 60% - they "save the babies" just to have them starve later.....
They cannot see the fundamental flaw in their meddling.
>"it would be my impression that one of the main aspects of such organisations would be to reduce your own costs in order to get even more revenue for the help you want to provide."
One of the weird things I've encountered with for profit/charities is their cash flow. Because of the way grants and gifts (such as MS licenses) are offered, it is relatively easy to get monies to finance capital expenditure, but more problematic to generate income to cover normal day-tpo-day operating costs. So one of things I've had to learn is how to structure, what would be T&M work package in a commercial environment, into a capital expenditure work package that they can use in a grant application. For example, installing additional disks will solve a server problem, however, it is easier to get funding for a totally new server...
Up til recently I used to do the IT thing for an all-volnteer organisation (even better, one that doesn't do fund-raising - will accept donations but doesn't go round asking for them).
I would have loved to make full use of open source software, but the volunteer character of the organisation meant that there was a lowest-common-denominator effect with technology. i.e. most people know Word, there is no training programme, so it is just easier for everyone if Academic MOLP MS Office is deployed (at least then everyone is using the same version - we hope!).
Also, volunteers have a nasty tendency to opt out of any standardisation effort.
But that said, even after 10 years helping this organisation I absolutely agree with you - better the all-volunteer craziness than charities that are indistinguishable from corporations even down to the tricks they use to get people to part with their money.
Why use Windows at a charity?
First, the computer probably came with Windows. Don't fix it if it's not broken.
Second, just let people use what's familiar and efficient. Many people can use a Mac. Almost everyone can use Windows.
Third, most other organizations (including donors and foundations) use MS Office. Therefore, we use MS Office to exchange documents.
I'm involved with 2 charities. If you "don't like" them, then you aren't our audience anyway. We have a mission to achieve, and it's not "evangelize open source."
I think non-profit does not mean what you think it means.
Non-profit means that the company does not make a profit. Profit is revenue minus expenses. It's actually possible to have a non-profit company which isn't a charity at all (in fact I do some work for one).
Then there are charities, which are a particular large subset of non-profit organisations. Most charities depend on volunteers, but to depend solely on volunteers is risky, because you're giving your volunteers an incentive to rort the charity. Most charities have an administrative core or permanent payrolled staff, which they supplement with volunteers when they can get them.
Having an ALL-volunteer staff isn't particularly practical for any charity of significant size. You need to be able to rely on somebody to handle the books, to organise donations, to answer the phones. Often the people who do this work will do so at a discount to regular wages, but they too need to keep a roof over their heads.
As for Windows vs. Open Source, the market is flooded with entry-level MCSEs. Finding somebody competent to run a Windows network is much easier than finding somebody to run a Linux network, and your staff are probably more familiar with Windows, and your vendors probably want their files in Office formats. Given the PC probably comes with Windows already, the time saved in training and file conversions will generally cover the licence costs.
It would be *nice* if charities stuck to Open Source, but that's not the world we live in.
Using/Upgrading to Windows 8 file manager is reason enough not to stick with Windows 7's Windows Explorer (file manager). Windows Explorer (file manager) is by far the biggest weak point in sticking with Windows 7.
Not that it affects me much, most of my work is done in iOS and Mac OS X. Mac OS X/Linux are the only file managers I use now, though Mac OS X isn't exactly full proof when it comes to networks.
But not having "previous version option" when you really needed (Windows 8) sucks even more. Not that explorer improved much anyway (ribbon - ?, copy/pause - sure). Overall upgrading to 8 because of improvements in explorer is more justified than upgrading to 8 because of improvements in the task manager (I know, but some would seriously use that argument), but only barely.
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