Posts by Dave K 1045 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Apr 2008
A company I was contracted to until just a few years ago still had dozens of CNC machines running Windows 95 on their consoles. Despite the age, they still worked OK. They were also still networked to download new designs for milling, albeit they were on a separate VLAN and were heavily firewalled.
I agree, although I did find that 95 really needed 16MB of RAM to run smoothly. A 486 was also at the lower end I found. With a Pentium (or AMD/Cyrix equivalent) and 16MB of RAM, it ran absolutely fine. Still, this was also back in the era when PCs were rapidly improving in performance year-on-year and a system that was a few years old often fell below minimum requirements for modern games and software. Hence a new OS that had notably higher system requirements than its predecessor wasn't really that surprising.
Personally, I think 95 was the right OS for the time. True in some respects it was really quite a bodge and decidedly flawed, but it ran far better than NT on more modest hardware (it ran fine for me on a 133MHz Pentium with 16MB of RAM), it had better compatibility with DOS programs and games - including the "restart in DOS mode" for games that struggled with 95 running in the background, and it introduced a user interface that I found to be pretty intuitive and a big step forwards from Program Manager. Windows 3.11 was only really used in our house for more serious apps, word processing and the likes. For most games you usually quit back to DOS.
NT was technically better, but was just too heavy for average home PCs, and had much poorer compatibility with games and other legacy applications of the time (as it didn't have DOS in the background). To be honest I have never used OS/2, so am not in a position to comment on that side of things.
I'm mixed regarding Windows 11 as well. I like that it looks more polished. I always thought Windows 10 looked incredibly bland, flat and lifeless. Windows 11 looks a lot prettier, and that's good IMO. Unfortunately the regressions to the task bar and start menu seem pretty illogical to me. I just don't understand the benefit of removing features and customisation options for no understandable reason.
The new task bar also means that OpenShell isn't currently a seamless option for adding a properly functional start menu back in just yet. For that reason, my W11 test rig will remain a VM until both MS fix some of Windows 11's stupidities and 3rd party tools catch up to fix the other annoyances.
The minimum requirements issue is also daft, but so far it is fairly easy to circumvent.
Still on Windows 7 on my main PC here (typing this from the very machine). A quick ESU hack and the security updates continue to flow, all programs I want to use still work and receive updates, and it looks a shit-load better than Windows 10 and supports a lot more customisability and flexibility than Windows 11.
Yeah, 240v can be unpleasant. I once got a nasty belt in my parent's old house. We had a hanging ceiling lamp downstairs in the hallway with 3 bulbs in it and one of the bulbs had blown. I changed out the bulb and switched it on. All looked well! I noticed the lamp fitting was swaying back and forth due to my recent work on it, and reached up to steady it. Cue a nasty zap from the fitting which felt like someone had yanked my arm off. Thankfully, no worse damage to me than that.
Later that evening, we removed the fitting from the ceiling and found that the genius that had fitted it originally had just twisted the bare wires together from the fitting and the house wiring (no connector block, not even some insulating tape around them), then screwed the (metal) fitting of the lamp over the top. Unsurprisingly, one of the cables had come to rest against the light fitting. Result? Every time the light was on, the whole fitting became live.
I've had this a couple of times with my motorbike (a BMW). Sat on it, tried to start it and it just wouldn't fire. Kill-switch was off in my case, ignition was on, starter motor turned but it just wouldn't fire. 2 minutes later after lots of trying and head-scratching, I realised I still had the side-stand folded out - and on my bike there is a microswitch that kills the fuel pump if the side stand isn't folded back. It's a safety feature to prevent you starting the bike and riding away with the stand sticking out.
<clunk>, <click>, <vroom!>
One that did make it was Active Roles Server for managing AD. Shortening it you get ARS, but every technician at my previous place of work simply called it Arse. And of course the common queries between technicians of "I can't find this user in my arse", "Is your arse working?", "Arse seems to be f*cked" etc.
We also had a programmer there that wrote a simple user-data backup tool called "Back-Up My Stuff". Albeit it was deliberate, and as a personal tool, BUMS never attracted sufficient attention higher-up for anyone boring to complain about the name.
Brings back plenty of bad memories of being forced to roll-out buggy and hopeless applications in years gone by. Bonus points if said application is ridiculously bloated, you're working at a university and a very large lab-full of students power up 60 PCs simultaneously in a remote lab that only has a 10Mb network link. That was fun!
I don't mind positive change where I can see the advantages it brings. I thought the Start Menu that Windows 95 introduced was superior to Program Manager. I also grew to like the updated Start Menu in XP (and liked that you could switch it to Classic Mode if you preferred). Similarly, I had no problem with the updated menu in Windows 7.
That changed with Windows 10 as lots of options from the W7 menu are either missing or more deeply hidden, I don't see the point of the "live tiles", and the menu is far, far less customisable than it was in Windows 7. Plus of course no "Classic" options or anything like that. Win 11s menu continues that tradition of being very rigid, missing in functionality and missing many customisation options.
Same goes for task-bars. There was little change up to Vista, but the Windows 7 task-bar had genuine advantages and I liked it! I also liked that it was fairly customisable. Windows 10's taskbar isn't bad either (despite the bland, flat look). Windows 11 once again adds no real benefits and instead removes a lot of customisation. Want to change grouping of icons? No can do. Want the buttons to expand to bars with program/file text included? Can't do it.
In summary, I don't mind positive change. But when the "new" version offers no real advantages but lots of disadvantages and missing features, then I consider it a design fail and a usability regression. What do you think incidentally? "Woo-hoo a new taskbar and start menu with far less functionality than the old one - how awesome"??
Clearly many parts of the iPhone already report their serial numbers - hence how the screen is "paired" with the rest of the device by Apple. And you are trying to suggest that a company the size of Apple isn't capable of maintaining a database of serial numbers with flags as to whether they're from handsets that are reported stolen?
Really not sure why you're so against the idea of cheaply repairable devices. I understand the theft-for-parts concern, but surely there has to be a better way than blocking anything but super-expensive official Apple repairs.
And for what it's worth, I'm not an iPhone user. However I do care about generating senseless electronic waste for no good reason.
Ah, the amount of times someone has e-mailed me, then immediately phoned me as well "Hi, I've just sent you an e-mail".
Very nice. Maybe you'd like to give me more than 5 seconds to try reading it first? That's assuming I have time tor read it now and am not in the middle of something far more important...
Reminds me of so many airport toilets I've visited in the past (back when flying was still a thing). Sitting there, as still as possible - which let's face it, isn't that easy when you're "doing the business". Eventually, you move half a millimetre and the sensor behind your back decides that you've finished. Immediately, you're subjected to an arse soaking as the flush triggers beneath you.
I agree, but for most people the rendering engine isn't really a concern. Interface, speed, compatibility, flexibility all tend to be attributes that matter more.
Don't get me wrong, for the more technical minded person you're absolutely right. However the typical geek that cares about rendering engines is also usually the same geek that likes the very customisability that Firefox keeps clamping down on...
Fully agree that Mozilla seem to enjoy doing their utmost to alienate long-standing users. I used Firefox as my primary browser for many years, but migrated to Pale Moon after the awful Australis makeover came along. It wasn't just the "Chrome-clone" theme that alienated people incidentally, it was that Mozilla also removed a lot of customisation options with Australis and locked many of the UI elements in place.
Since then, every single makeover seems to have focused on stripping out customisation and extensibility that used to be Firefox's USP. With fewer and fewer reasons to use Firefox over a Chromium-based browser, it's little wonder that their market share continues to slide. Meanwhile, forks such as Pale Moon and Waterfox have largely retained market share because they've done their best to retain the unique selling points that Firefox used to have.
Have you checked the BIOS for an fTPM option? I have an older self-build Ryzen system with a Gigabyte motherboard and no hardware TPM. However after enabling fTPM in the BIOS, it passes that part of the system requirements check.
Of course it then fails on the CPU as Microsoft don't consider a Ryzen 7 1700X (3.4GHz, 8-core) CPU to be good enough...
Yep, I maintain a couple of XP machines for my wife's university lab. They run XP due to interfacing with an old but expensive motion tracking system. Obviously they're off the network, however it is amusing that she's now dealing with students that weren't even born when XP was released!
There's also the aspect of not wanting to throw away perfectly usable kit. I have a wake-up lamp with radio in my bedroom. The light steadily brightens in a morning, then the radio slowly fades up at alarm time to wake me. It works, it does the trick, and the FM receiver in it can receive the station I want to wake up to and plays it with perfectly acceptable quality.
Why should I want to throw it away if it works OK?
Plenty of other people I know use radios that are far older. They still work, they play what the listener wants to hear, and the audio quality is fine for that person's needs. I just don't see the point or the obsession with binning working kit just to jump on the rather questionable DAB bandwaggon.
Norway and Switzerland are not in the EU, but are in the single market and the customs union, so I'm afraid that's untrue. The EU were perfectly open to the UK remaining in the single market so long as we satisfied the requirements of this - something the Tories were unwilling to do.
Also, prior to the referendum, nobody was saying we'd leave the single market (not even Farage), so it simply isn't true to say that it would not have delivered what was voted for.
I suspect a lot of the downvotes are due to the claims that the "EU isn't taking it seriously" - or words to that effect.
The NI protocol exists because both the EU and UK were very keen to avoid a return of the troubles by slapping a hard-border down the middle of Ireland (as I'm sure you know). I fully accept that the Ireland situation is very complex and I'm not going to pretend I understand absolutely everything about it.
My main gripe is that the UK government readily opted out of the single market and the customs union to satisfy the ERG and the hardcore Brexiteers, yet didn't seem to even consider the implications that this would have on Northern Ireland. Now the EU is getting stick because of the border in the Irish Sea, despite no reasonable alternatives being offered by the UK and despite it being a solution that the UK proposed.
So far the only "solutions" I've heard from the Tories are vague waffles about using "technology" to magically fix things, yet no firm information as to what this would actually involve.
To some level, it's understandable. Boris is a master of lies and bullshit and doesn't want the issues in Ireland to be thought of as the fault of his government, so he keeps sticking the boot into the EU for not "negotiating" - even though it's a mess of his (and his predecessors') making and the "problem" is something that he proposed, championed and signed not that long ago.
The EU does understand that, but what exactly do you expect them to do here? Allow goods to freely cross the border into the EU without tariffs or checks?
It was the UK that opted out of the single market and customs union. There is a simple solution here: We accept that it's been a mistake and apply to re-join the single market at the very least. Call it a "Norway deal" if you like. However it's a mess completely of the making of the UK, and it's out responsibility to fix it. Not the EU's.
I actually was looking forward to Windows 11 originally, simply because I consider Windows 10 to be an ugly, inconsistent mess of an OS. Hence the opportunity to move to a new OS that didn't look like a bag of spanners sounded quite appealing. Of course, optimism has faded quite considerably since then...
I'm waiting to see just how enforceable this all becomes. After all, MS officially blocked Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 on newer silicon after Windows 10 came out, yet it took hardly any time at all for enterprising folk online to create a simple script (wufuc) which overrode the block and allowed updates to work once more. I ran Windows 7 for several years on a Ryzen system with no problems.
Time will tell how this plays out for Windows 11. Or of course whether the stringent requirements simply result in Windows 11 flopping. Either way, I'm not binning a perfectly functioning and capable PC just because of Microsoft.
Ahh the scourge of the personal fan heaters. Working previously in a university, they were quite popular when some staff work early/late and the building heating system wasn't running. Of course telling people they weren't permitted just resulted in most of them being locked in the bottom drawers of filing cabinets so they could get them out again once the H&S group had left.
For most other personal devices like coffee machines and kettles, we just found it easier to stick them into the asset register, perform a PAT test on them and then move on...
When I was at college, Win95 was the OS at the time. I remember you could cause Win95 to bluescreen simply by opening the "Run" dialog and typing in "null\null". As a Computing student, I wasn't the only one who knew this however and it was surprisingly common to sit down at a PC, switch on the monitor and see a nice BSOD left for you as a present by the previous user...
It was at a University and they had a virtual reality centre, so they were mainly used for 3D modelling - although the sysadmin had one as well. They also had a few labs of Indys and O2s for teaching the students.
Incidentally, I also collect them and have an O2 I acquired from the university (when they were being replaced with newer Linux PCs), plus an Indigo2 and a Fuel. I used to have a few Indys from the uni as well, but those were sold a few years back.
Had something similar when I was younger. I would have been around 14 years old and during one school holiday, my dad took me into work with him for the day. Most the kit there was SGI Indigo2 workstations (lovely machines back in the mid 90s), but they also had a Win95 PC in the corner of the room for running some applications not available under IRIX.
The Win95 PC (a Pentium 200 if I recall) was universally hated amongst the staff as it was very unreliable compared to the SGI workstations. I used it a bit and agreed. In fact, it was unreliable to the point that something had to be wrong with it. On a whim I popped off the case and pointed out the dead CPU fan that was causing the thing to repeatedly overheat and crash.
We shut it down and popped off the old heatsink and you could actually see the CPU's model number on the scorched heat-sink it had been getting that hot. With a replacement cooler fitted, it ran fine after that. I was actually quite amazed that the CPU hadn't been damaged by the prolonged heat if I'm honest.
52% higher crashes sounds bad.
But then you realise that this takes it from 99.8% to no worse than 99.6%. Hardly an issue really, and most of it boils down to "older computers have more reliability issues", rather than any specific defect in the silicon.
Typical MS putting a stupid spin on it to try and justify a daft restriction...
There were some workarounds, but generally you are correct. It was possible to bump the Synapse app into "offline" mode, but you had to create an account and sign in first. I think I used a disposable e-mail address for this back when I had a Razer mouse. Still, the app was simply dreadful and being forced to create a Razer account just to control a local peripheral on your computer was sheer madness.
Either way though, I did the same as yourself and bailed when my previous Razer mouse reached end of life - I blacklisted them and ended up with a Logitech mouse as a replacement instead.
Agreed. I have no problem with an annual or semi-annual release channel being available, the issue is that MS forces so many to use it. This is notably different from Linux distros such as Ubuntu where everyone is free to choose whether they want bleeding edge or longer-term stability.
Of course, I know the reason why MS pushed the SAC for everyone. It's because they binned most of their QA department, and their "insiders" programme and telemetry requires as many testers as possible to bridge that gap. It's also why they blocked Office 365 from LTSC. They need companies to have their IT folk testing the insider builds and reporting bugs and issues to them, and they knew full well that without applying force, many businesses would just deploy LTSC to benefit from a stable environment.
Anyway, it's good that MS have seen sense with the Server SAC. But I'm not holding my breath for the end-user versions of Windows unfortunately...
Yep, I worked in a council back from 2004-2006 and we regularly had to review the filters in Lotus Notes. To be honest, there wasn't any filth (or at least not that I saw - although it being fully open plan may have helped there), but we regularly had to release e-mails mentioning Scunthorpe and the likes. The rest were mainly silly videos and picture memes. I built up a bit of a collection of the best ones if I recall...
Same on both sides. I'm in Aberdeenshire and we had a Tory MP previously (thankfully not any more). He voted in favour of every single Brexit related item that came up. When I pointed out to him that his constituents voted against Brexit and certainly didn't want a Tory ultra-hard Brexit, he was completely dismissive and just toed the party line regardless.
You just have to be careful as the printer companies often pull similar stunts with laser toners as well. Our Brother laser printer stopped printing several years ago with an "out of toner" error. After applying a strip of gaffer tape across the sensor, it printed roughly a further 1,500 pages before the toner actually started to become patchy.
I've had similar experiences at work with HP colour laser printers insisting the toner is empty when it is anything but. Simple and uncomfortable truth is that consumer printers don't generate much profit for the manufacturers, so they make it all back with consumables - and this includes many laser printers too.
This!
Even for modern systems that don't have a physical TPM module, it's usually fairly simple to enable fTPM in the BIOS for those. My first-gen Ryzen desktop system (home-built) has this and now passes the TPM check with no problems. It's MS's crazy decision to restrict support only to CPUs released in the past couple of years that is the biggest issue.
Of course, time will tell how rigorously MS decides to enforce this I guess.
At the previous house I owned, it was a semi-detached, but was built side-on to the road. Hence although my house was adjacent to the road, the neighbouring house was actually reached via a path running past my front garden.
The water main to my neighbours ran underneath my house and the isolation valve (which killed water to both properties incidentally) was inside my garage. Thankfully for them, they never managed to piss me off enough to kill their water supply, and I resisted the urge to turn off the valve and see what would happen :-)
It's a toughie. Earlier this year I bought a Galaxy S20 about a month after the S21 came out. Two reasons I did this. Firstly because the S20 had dropped by a good £300 since the release of the S21. Secondly, because the S20 had an SD slot and the S21 didn't (and I had a 128GB card filled with music and videos I wanted to shift over from my previous phone).
Performance of it is fantastic so far given that it's a recently ex-flagship model, but as others have said the one main caveat is that it is likely to lose support sooner, although Samsung's support cycle is a lot better these days.
Still, I managed to extract over 5 years of usage from my previous LG G4. I don't personally mind using a phone that is out of support, but it does force you to be more careful what you download and makes some activities such as online banking much more risky (I always do that on my PC instead anyway).
You're right, they didn't apply them fairly. Most ordinary users would have been banned years ago for the stuff that the Tangerine man kept tweeting. The Tanned Baby was actually awarded preferential treatment for many years compared with normal users. It was only once it was clear that he was a deranged and dangerous Loser that they finally ran out of patience and decided to apply the same rules they'd been enforcing on everyone else...
Edit: Also, do please learn the difference between "what can be said" and "what a private firm is entitled to host and platform for you". Nobody was stopping the Buffoon from saying things, they just decided not to provide him with the megaphone any more.
The problem with restricted mode in Excel is that it is essentially useless. You can't even apply an existing filter or expand a field in a pivot table. So even performing the bare minimum of manipulation with a sheet you've been sent is impossible. Unfortunately, what this means is that most people I've seen just hit the "open in normal mode" routinely for all sheets they open without even thinking.
It's a bit like the Vista "UAC" issue again. I understand why MS implemented it, but it was so intrusive and popped up so frequently that people either turned UAC off altogether, or just got into the habit of hitting "allow" without even thinking. Either way, the security and safety gains were nullified.
That's the problem here. Make security too intrusive and people will get used to bypassing it by default. Either way, all you've achieved is to make your product seem more annoying. What MS need to do is to find the right balance so that people actually stop and think when they get such a notification.
You're being a bit harsh with Windows 7/10 there, although I agree with your comments for 95/XP.
At a previous company I worked at, we had Windows 7 running on some systems with 2GB of RAM. It worked, but was not great if you needed more than a couple of programs open. 4GB however was fine for e-mail, Word, light Excel and a web browser. It only became an issue if you tried to open multiple spreadsheets or run something more heavyweight.
Nowerdays, 8GB of RAM is quite common in many companies. The work laptop I'm typing this on is running Windows 10 with 8GB of RAM. I have Outlook, Teams, OneNote, Adobe Reader, Word and 3 spreadsheets open. Task Manager tells me I have 1.2GB of RAM free. Hence for general office work, 8GB of RAM is just fine. Sorry, but "16GB bare minimum" is not true.
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