Posts by Kris Sweeney

Finally been forced to 'upgrade' to Windows 10 and it gets worse not better the longer i use it!

Now I wish M$ could understand the simple reality that I don't want to use their store, don't want to use Cortana and I will not use edge or internet explorer. It's a shame they forgot the IE antitrust case and baked this crap into the OS.

Forced because a recent windows update + VS 2017 install for work decided to screw with my audio output, corrupt HAL or driver registration only affecting output, plugging in a USB camera/mic registers the input device with no problems.

Rolled back to previous backup, no problems, performed updates again, lost audio again... No combination of uninstall drivers, reinstall last known good from fresh download and multiple reboots worked to resolve the issue so i either sit in silence, run Windows 10 or try and figure out how to get all my usual apps working under emulation on Linux.

Apple and MS

Can we see similar anti-trust cases against Apple and Microsoft for their stores, Siri and Cortana?

Damn...

In comparison to other 'mainstream' commercial AV products I've found Kaspersky to be relatively unobtrusive, easy to use, configure and monitor and despite going down the fancy UI route made popular by certain US resource hogs, I've found KNS has has a minimal impact on system resources and performance.

Yet another blow to their business in EU and i suppose GB.

Suggestions for a good alternative?

Another Useless Change

Forgive me but i just want my word processor to enable me to create documents and my spreadsheet app to manage figures with the odd graph sprinkled in, i suppose the other apps in the 'suite' have their uses too.

My employer mandates the 'use' of Office 365, quotes because the number of times the Excel UI has decided to stop displaying text, lock up completely or create random versions of documents i'm writing collaboratively with colleagues is at least once per day I have Excel open. Word is not much better, collaboratively working on a long document involves spending a at least 1 of every 5 minutes watching the modern spinning hourglass thing.

I have a Core i7 with 32 GB ram, twin SSD's and a Geforce 1080 card, not a slow machine, this is coupled with a >200mb cable broadband connection and I still spend a considerable amount of time waiting for Office to think about simple tasks like scroll to the next page.

And yes, my drivers are all up-to-date, gone are the days where a product did one thing well, now it seems to be a race to do as much as possible, quality and accuracy be damned.

scam the scammers

Had calls from the latest bunch.

They were 'Calling from Microsoft' and started by asking me to run 'assoc' and find the zsendto CLSID as confirmation i had been 'hacked'

They provided more evidence in the form of warnings and errors in eventlog (all normal stuff) and asked me to install TV12 and initiate a remote control session then choose to give control over... Faked some networking issues and ended the session when they asked for control and tried to draw things out when they called back in order to report it.

TeamViewer support didn't answer their phones and they didn't respond on twitter. I had the session ID's and had a session open at the time but they didn't seem to care, this might provoke a decent response now.

Telemetry is not the issue...

I'm sorry to all who's sole concern is hiding dodgy stuff on their computer, but i'm all for some telemetry, especially if it stops the vendor deleting a feature i use regularly or actually improves the function of the software.

That said, in it's current incarnation i would never willingly choose Windows 10 over Windows 7 and would sign up for a lobotomy before being forced to use what (for the way i use my computer and what I want out of my computer - purely subjective) is a downgrade.

Windows 10 in my personal opinion does not provide the functionality i am used to and i require from a personal computing device, it looks bloody awful too.

I'm sure that at least on one of my points i'm not in the minority.

W10 install will be over my cold dead body...

I've used most versions of Windows from 3.11 onwards and my experience from a usability perspective and omitting VISTA, a positive one. I looked forward to new versions of the OS and despite a couple of hiccups along the way, 7 ticked all the boxes and performed above my expectations.

Unfortunately my positive feelings died with the release of 8. Given the number of years I have used Windows, I'm used to things moving around a bit, names changing for no good reason (at least that I can determine) and API's gaining and losing random functions and events. But 8 and each version (minor or major) since have been a total clusterf***.

Windows 10 may be quicker (at some things) but I the list of 'features' that are jarring, badly designed, difficult to identify (given the awful flat design), and simply incomprehensible mean that I will never willingly allow 10 onto a system that I have any control over.

My father passed away very recently and I received his shiny widescreen 3 month old laptop, it runs Windows 10 and to my disappointment there are no drivers available for Windows 7 - it's now sat in a cupboard waiting for MS to see sense and release Windows 11 which will be a shinier even more stable version of 7, that or me to see sense and install Ubuntu.

I truly prefer my outdated 2GB Dell D620 which is on it's second battery and third case, the first after being dropped down the stairs and the second after it was stood on by my kid, it also happily runs W7.

BT disconnect delay

BT will keep a line open for two minutes to allow the called party to move to another room and pick up a different handset - caused major problems with an important client when i was working with predictive diallers as their previous vendor had fudged all the figures and convinced them they could disconnect a call immediately - untill we compared results with a side by side comparison using identical data.

Small outsourcing company 1, large dialler vendor 0 :)