I will have to pay to keep using Windows and this old dog is too comfy in his spot using Windows, and doesn't like to pay for things that can be gotten for free.
Then stick to Win 7!!!
Quote:
Windows 7, Service Pack 1, end of extended support January 14, 2020
Windows 8/Windows 8.1, end of extended support January 10, 2023
Windows 10, end of extended support October 14, 2025
"support" only matters to Corporate customers, home users don't need it. Don't be taken in by the hype. I still run an XP rig, with free antivirus, might be slow but perfectly stable.
M$ need to be taught a lesson by customers "walking". And in fact now that we are getting nag-ware everyday to upgrade, we should all get together and take a class action against M$ for harassment and intimidation. Where do I sign up?
Waiting for Godot & salvation :-)
Why do doctors have to practice?
You'd think they'd have got it right by now
Interestingly our local computer shop now sells new systems with "Windows Installed !!" where it used to say "Latest Windows Installed !!" or "Windows version x/y", and you now have to go in and ask which one. So I guess there is much consumer push-back ( or walk-on-by ) occurring. I guess Blind Freddie must be working in the M$ marketing department. I must say it's not often that you see such a successful company go to considerable lengths to really annoy it's customer base. Remember what happened to Hewlett Packard .... ( Hewlett Who ? ).
Cheers, Mike.
( edit ) HP used to be extremely successful ( late 70's, early 80's ) with calculators, plotters, printers, computers etc. Then they did the silliest of things by forcing only intra-HP compatibility with it's products ( you see this in recent times with the unfolding Apple pod/pad/phone connector debacle ). Their printers are still good though.
Has anyone read Robert Pirsig's "Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" ? Within he discusses a scenario of a certain bolt that can't be removed from a crank case to access the interior mechanics to fix something crucial. So at that point the bolt is worth the entire selling price of the bike if it can't be undone. That's not a design feature to be leveraged. It's a fault. This type of 'gotcha' is death to a product and the company that makes it. I think that the ability of a company to continually re-define the usability of it's product after sale is a similar error, unless managed very carefully.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
There will always be the geeks that prefer Linux and AMD, but I think that we are basically living in a Wintel world whether we like it or not. And we probably don't. M$ know that of course and also know that it is not likely to change in the foreseeable future, therefore they can to a certain extent hold us all to ransom. As far as we understand it, there will never be a Windows 11, there will just be upgrades and refinements every so often to Windows 10. They've opted out of the numbers game. Well for now anyway.
Gone are the days of WIN NT for business and Win 3.11 FWG for home use, but they still have separate versions for different users. Win 7 had Home, Professional, and Ultimate editions, now Win 10 has Home, Professional, and Enterprise versions. Same basic software just some functionality disabled. Although I believe it is all 64 bit these days, 32 bit versions seem to have disappeared.
It builds on the old days of 3 1/2" floppy disks where they all went down the same production line, and those that formatted to at least 720Kb were sold as that, and those that reliably formatted to 1.44Mb were sold as HD. Same as the 80386 SX and DX chips where they were the same chip but the SX had a link cut to disable the co-processor. Yup, been around for quite some years mate :-))
Compaq took over (ooops sorry, "merged" with) HP in 2001, same computers and printers, just a lot of re-badging went on. I was in an HQ eqipment specifying role at that time and printers were quite important. We came to the conclusion after exhaustive testing of many manufacturers products that for inkjets and ultimate quality the best buy was Epson, and using their own inks and their own photo paper. But the hardware was of flimsy construction, and it was all rather expensive. i.e. quality costs if you need it. For everyday rugged use we went for the HP kit, solid construction, good basic quality with reasonable ink and paper costs.
Laserjets were somewhat different, and they were all pretty much of a muchness but of course they had the razor blade syndrome where the replacement toner cartridges were exorbitantly high compared to the cost of the printer. But all that was 15 years ago, maybe quite different now I expect.
The deliberate design "gotcha" is prevalent all over the place. Typical example is a simple electric iron, where usually special tri screws hold the end plate in position. The manufacturers say that it is a "safety feature" to stop unqualified people fiddling with a product and making it unsafe. Nope, it is deliberate so the owner can't change a damaged power cord, unless they go to an "authorised dealer" at high cost to get it repaired, and the manufacturer gets a rake off on spare parts.
But we live do we not, in a throwaway society. Technology is advancing at such an exponential rate, that a washing machine, tumble dryer, fridge. or other household white goods have deliberate built in obsolescence after about 3 years. At which point it's usually cheaper to buy a new one that repair it. And of course the new one will have all this years new bells and whistles on it!
And don't start me off on the cost of extended warranties where the store get a handsome commission from the insurance companies. I actually had a salesman follow me out to the car park at Currys trying to sell me one for a new microwave we'd just bought. I told him he had three choices if he didn't go away. I would punch him on the nose, call the police, or both.
All together now with feeling ...
1, 2, 3 ....
"Bah Humbug!!!"
Waiting for Godot & salvation :-)
Why do doctors have to practice?
You'd think they'd have got it right by now
Well I'm not intending to do a fanboy bashing of any particular company or product. My objections are more generic. I'm outlining what I think are key aspects of sale & design which can make or break a product/company in the longer term. Start by not urinating off your customers by apparent features, which are none of the sort, that are simply gags to attempt to force repeat business. I think consumers have come a long way in the last three decades of our info 'revolution' and aren't even halfway the mugs some marketing/design departments think they are. Given that the companies are asking for real money and often none-too-small amounts, then price/value tug of war is getting quite an inspection.
Bear in mind that 'longer term' here may only be a few years, such is rate of change in the IT industry ie. today's headline is tomorrow's fish wrapping.
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
Just a quick recap on printers. For home use buy "compatible" inject cartridges, less than 1/3 the price of the OEM ones, and just as good. Buy the cheapest paper for everyday use, and set the printer to "draft". For special stuff buy cheap inkjet paper and photo paper, and use the "best" setting. You will save much money.
Quote:
Start by not urinating off your customers by apparent features, which are none of the sort, that are simply gags to attempt to force repeat business.
Exactly.
Quote:
I think consumers have come a long way in the last three decades of our info 'revolution' and aren't even halfway the mugs some marketing/design departments think they are.
Not quite so sure about that. The average oik in the street may be a bit more intelligent oik, but still an oik.
Quote:
such is rate of change in the IT industry ie. today's headline is tomorrow's fish wrapping.
Yup, as I said, exponential.
Quote:
(a) I've married a clever poppet
Yes you have and well done! I do note though that you call your wife a "significant other". Enquiring minds would like to know are there any insignificant others? It rather calls to mind a chap I knew some 40 years ago that used to introduce his partner socially as "You haven't met my first wife yet have you?". He thought it kept her on her toes, but she was less than impressed!!
I'm sure that I've posted before somewhere about a computerised till failure in a local shop. I bought 3 things for something like £1.75, 89p, and £1.99. The young girl spent 1 minute scribbling on a piece of paper before I gave her a fiver and said you owe me 37p change. She eventually said "You're right, how did you do that?". I just said, I went to a proper school and got taught properly, and I can do mental arithmetic. Blank stare ....
But these days the educationalists all say why waste time teaching kids things they don't need to know in this modern world? Great, until the modern world gets a glitch. "failure pathways" ? don't think so mate, they cost money, shareholders won't get their dividends. Joe public is as thick as they always were but are becoming less tolerant of modern society when it goes wrong.
Waiting for Godot & salvation :-)
Why do doctors have to practice?
You'd think they'd have got it right by now
Sorry I deleted a section describing my wife's initiative at her work place, as I realised it may be commercially sensitive, and thus create some poo for her to wade through if I revealed that. LOL ! :-)
There's a book called The Mythical Man Month by a chap called Fred Brooks. He wrote it in 1975, describing his experiences as a computer operating system designer/developer in the 1960's with IBM. It summarises the pitfalls experienced during the OS/360 series of computers. Fred is still with us, now 85 years old. He is a legend to many eg. he has won a Turing Award.
Now the edition I have was a later one which included an extra chapter at the end entitled No Silver Bullet. That chapter was a review of whether anything meaningful had changed in the industry concerning matters he raised some two decades prior ( the first edition ). No it hadn't. It is now two decades again : same answer. So the faulty behaviours in software development that was quite apparent in, say, 1965 are not radically corrected after several generations of industry participants. I can also anecdotally confirm this as my son is a recent graduate and now a ( paid ! ) developer. Perhaps the metrics of performance have changed, perhaps the modes of failure disclosure, perhaps the feedback to producer have matured, but largely the situation is same-same but different ....
Why might this be the case ? Well first and foremost I would bring forward ( Exhibit A for the prosecution ! ) the 'fitness for use' clause in the thingy-you-click-to-agree-on-but-never-read when you install. The disclaimer that proudly thrusts it chin out and says : we guarantee exactly nothing, you can't sue us in disappointment, and more fool you for buying or having faith in this product. So there !
One of the reasons Igor Sikorsky and his engineers made such rapid progress to create a usable and ( reasonably ) safe helicopter was a special executive decision early on in the life of the company : the chief test pilot and the chief design engineer were to be one and the same person ( ie. Igor ). The ultimate 'dogfooding' strategy ( so named as to correct the early TV dogfood ads where the mut was shown busily eating something else entirely, not the contents of the can as sold though ). It intentionally & dramatically raised the quality of the product, and the processes used to create said helicopter. Conversely ( obversely ? ) a disclaimer like Exhibit A has exactly zero contribution to a good outcome, and so the remaining sales tension must simply be can you convince anyone to buy it, whatever the grounds.
There are other issues but they will come to nought unless Exhibit A is addressed, they are downstream to any solution of that. If I designed, manufactured, distributed, sold, and maintained a car under same rubric I would be hung, drawn and quartered long before the first wheel fell off*. The IT industry has to come in line, even vaguely, with the expectations of other goods & services. Serious quality will not be emitted while the penalty loop-back doesn't exist. That's just human nature ....
Cheers, Mike.
( edit ) Please read the book. It is full of pearls that apply well outside the IT industry eg. a pregnancy takes nine months, regardless of how many women you assign to the task. :-))))
* .... I forgot about the automatic braking/control etc systems now offered with some newer vehicles. There must be algorithms that determine the behaviour. These are currently guaranteed via the overall warranty for the car, though still ( not unreasonably ) retaining 'appropriate usage' clauses.
( edit ) If stupid dystopias are your thing then the 2006 movie Idiocracy was made just for you. Only trouble is : ten years later we aren't laughing so hard .... :-)
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
Start by not urinating off your customers by apparent features, which are none of the sort, that are simply gags to attempt to force repeat business. I think consumers have come a long way in the last three decades of our info 'revolution' and aren't even halfway the mugs some marketing/design departments think they are.Cheers, Mike.
I immediately was reminded of the iPhone. $xxx.xx for each new model/revision every few months. People buy the latest and greatest for bragging rights not because the newer introduction offers much more. So no. I don't believe that consumers are that much smarter. And along the lines of an OS why would you buy something when you can have a free OS that is equally as good as the "expensive" one and which offers "more"?
People buy the latest and greatest for bragging rights not because the newer introduction offers much more. So no. I don't believe that consumers are that much smarter
It's called Street Cred. Means everything to a section of society that is a member of the one-upmanship brigade. Thick as two short planks, But my iPhone does more than your one does, and your trainers are so last year. Aged 18 and we give them the vote on the future of our country???
Waiting for Godot & salvation :-)
Why do doctors have to practice?
You'd think they'd have got it right by now
RE: I will have to pay to
Then stick to Win 7!!!
"support" only matters to Corporate customers, home users don't need it. Don't be taken in by the hype. I still run an XP rig, with free antivirus, might be slow but perfectly stable.
M$ need to be taught a lesson by customers "walking". And in fact now that we are getting nag-ware everyday to upgrade, we should all get together and take a class action against M$ for harassment and intimidation. Where do I sign up?
Waiting for Godot & salvation :-)
Why do doctors have to practice?
You'd think they'd have got it right by now
RE: Where do I sign
Be the lead plaintiff.
As a Mason and pillar of
As a Mason and pillar of society, isn't that your role?
Waiting for Godot & salvation :-)
Why do doctors have to practice?
You'd think they'd have got it right by now
Interestingly our local
Interestingly our local computer shop now sells new systems with "Windows Installed !!" where it used to say "Latest Windows Installed !!" or "Windows version x/y", and you now have to go in and ask which one. So I guess there is much consumer push-back ( or walk-on-by ) occurring. I guess Blind Freddie must be working in the M$ marketing department. I must say it's not often that you see such a successful company go to considerable lengths to really annoy it's customer base. Remember what happened to Hewlett Packard .... ( Hewlett Who ? ).
Cheers, Mike.
( edit ) HP used to be extremely successful ( late 70's, early 80's ) with calculators, plotters, printers, computers etc. Then they did the silliest of things by forcing only intra-HP compatibility with it's products ( you see this in recent times with the unfolding Apple pod/pad/phone connector debacle ). Their printers are still good though.
Has anyone read Robert Pirsig's "Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" ? Within he discusses a scenario of a certain bolt that can't be removed from a crank case to access the interior mechanics to fix something crucial. So at that point the bolt is worth the entire selling price of the bike if it can't be undone. That's not a design feature to be leveraged. It's a fault. This type of 'gotcha' is death to a product and the company that makes it. I think that the ability of a company to continually re-define the usability of it's product after sale is a similar error, unless managed very carefully.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
Good post Mike. There will
Good post Mike.
There will always be the geeks that prefer Linux and AMD, but I think that we are basically living in a Wintel world whether we like it or not. And we probably don't. M$ know that of course and also know that it is not likely to change in the foreseeable future, therefore they can to a certain extent hold us all to ransom. As far as we understand it, there will never be a Windows 11, there will just be upgrades and refinements every so often to Windows 10. They've opted out of the numbers game. Well for now anyway.
Gone are the days of WIN NT for business and Win 3.11 FWG for home use, but they still have separate versions for different users. Win 7 had Home, Professional, and Ultimate editions, now Win 10 has Home, Professional, and Enterprise versions. Same basic software just some functionality disabled. Although I believe it is all 64 bit these days, 32 bit versions seem to have disappeared.
It builds on the old days of 3 1/2" floppy disks where they all went down the same production line, and those that formatted to at least 720Kb were sold as that, and those that reliably formatted to 1.44Mb were sold as HD. Same as the 80386 SX and DX chips where they were the same chip but the SX had a link cut to disable the co-processor. Yup, been around for quite some years mate :-))
Compaq took over (ooops sorry, "merged" with) HP in 2001, same computers and printers, just a lot of re-badging went on. I was in an HQ eqipment specifying role at that time and printers were quite important. We came to the conclusion after exhaustive testing of many manufacturers products that for inkjets and ultimate quality the best buy was Epson, and using their own inks and their own photo paper. But the hardware was of flimsy construction, and it was all rather expensive. i.e. quality costs if you need it. For everyday rugged use we went for the HP kit, solid construction, good basic quality with reasonable ink and paper costs.
Laserjets were somewhat different, and they were all pretty much of a muchness but of course they had the razor blade syndrome where the replacement toner cartridges were exorbitantly high compared to the cost of the printer. But all that was 15 years ago, maybe quite different now I expect.
The deliberate design "gotcha" is prevalent all over the place. Typical example is a simple electric iron, where usually special tri screws hold the end plate in position. The manufacturers say that it is a "safety feature" to stop unqualified people fiddling with a product and making it unsafe. Nope, it is deliberate so the owner can't change a damaged power cord, unless they go to an "authorised dealer" at high cost to get it repaired, and the manufacturer gets a rake off on spare parts.
But we live do we not, in a throwaway society. Technology is advancing at such an exponential rate, that a washing machine, tumble dryer, fridge. or other household white goods have deliberate built in obsolescence after about 3 years. At which point it's usually cheaper to buy a new one that repair it. And of course the new one will have all this years new bells and whistles on it!
And don't start me off on the cost of extended warranties where the store get a handsome commission from the insurance companies. I actually had a salesman follow me out to the car park at Currys trying to sell me one for a new microwave we'd just bought. I told him he had three choices if he didn't go away. I would punch him on the nose, call the police, or both.
All together now with feeling ...
1, 2, 3 ....
"Bah Humbug!!!"
Waiting for Godot & salvation :-)
Why do doctors have to practice?
You'd think they'd have got it right by now
Well I'm not intending to do
Well I'm not intending to do a fanboy bashing of any particular company or product. My objections are more generic. I'm outlining what I think are key aspects of sale & design which can make or break a product/company in the longer term. Start by not urinating off your customers by apparent features, which are none of the sort, that are simply gags to attempt to force repeat business. I think consumers have come a long way in the last three decades of our info 'revolution' and aren't even halfway the mugs some marketing/design departments think they are. Given that the companies are asking for real money and often none-too-small amounts, then price/value tug of war is getting quite an inspection.
Bear in mind that 'longer term' here may only be a few years, such is rate of change in the IT industry ie. today's headline is tomorrow's fish wrapping.
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
Again another excellent
Again another excellent post.
Just a quick recap on printers. For home use buy "compatible" inject cartridges, less than 1/3 the price of the OEM ones, and just as good. Buy the cheapest paper for everyday use, and set the printer to "draft". For special stuff buy cheap inkjet paper and photo paper, and use the "best" setting. You will save much money.
Exactly.
Not quite so sure about that. The average oik in the street may be a bit more intelligent oik, but still an oik.
Yup, as I said, exponential.
Yes you have and well done! I do note though that you call your wife a "significant other". Enquiring minds would like to know are there any insignificant others? It rather calls to mind a chap I knew some 40 years ago that used to introduce his partner socially as "You haven't met my first wife yet have you?". He thought it kept her on her toes, but she was less than impressed!!
I'm sure that I've posted before somewhere about a computerised till failure in a local shop. I bought 3 things for something like £1.75, 89p, and £1.99. The young girl spent 1 minute scribbling on a piece of paper before I gave her a fiver and said you owe me 37p change. She eventually said "You're right, how did you do that?". I just said, I went to a proper school and got taught properly, and I can do mental arithmetic. Blank stare ....
But these days the educationalists all say why waste time teaching kids things they don't need to know in this modern world? Great, until the modern world gets a glitch. "failure pathways" ? don't think so mate, they cost money, shareholders won't get their dividends. Joe public is as thick as they always were but are becoming less tolerant of modern society when it goes wrong.
Waiting for Godot & salvation :-)
Why do doctors have to practice?
You'd think they'd have got it right by now
Sorry I deleted a section
Sorry I deleted a section describing my wife's initiative at her work place, as I realised it may be commercially sensitive, and thus create some poo for her to wade through if I revealed that. LOL ! :-)
There's a book called The Mythical Man Month by a chap called Fred Brooks. He wrote it in 1975, describing his experiences as a computer operating system designer/developer in the 1960's with IBM. It summarises the pitfalls experienced during the OS/360 series of computers. Fred is still with us, now 85 years old. He is a legend to many eg. he has won a Turing Award.
Now the edition I have was a later one which included an extra chapter at the end entitled No Silver Bullet. That chapter was a review of whether anything meaningful had changed in the industry concerning matters he raised some two decades prior ( the first edition ). No it hadn't. It is now two decades again : same answer. So the faulty behaviours in software development that was quite apparent in, say, 1965 are not radically corrected after several generations of industry participants. I can also anecdotally confirm this as my son is a recent graduate and now a ( paid ! ) developer. Perhaps the metrics of performance have changed, perhaps the modes of failure disclosure, perhaps the feedback to producer have matured, but largely the situation is same-same but different ....
Why might this be the case ? Well first and foremost I would bring forward ( Exhibit A for the prosecution ! ) the 'fitness for use' clause in the thingy-you-click-to-agree-on-but-never-read when you install. The disclaimer that proudly thrusts it chin out and says : we guarantee exactly nothing, you can't sue us in disappointment, and more fool you for buying or having faith in this product. So there !
One of the reasons Igor Sikorsky and his engineers made such rapid progress to create a usable and ( reasonably ) safe helicopter was a special executive decision early on in the life of the company : the chief test pilot and the chief design engineer were to be one and the same person ( ie. Igor ). The ultimate 'dogfooding' strategy ( so named as to correct the early TV dogfood ads where the mut was shown busily eating something else entirely, not the contents of the can as sold though ). It intentionally & dramatically raised the quality of the product, and the processes used to create said helicopter. Conversely ( obversely ? ) a disclaimer like Exhibit A has exactly zero contribution to a good outcome, and so the remaining sales tension must simply be can you convince anyone to buy it, whatever the grounds.
There are other issues but they will come to nought unless Exhibit A is addressed, they are downstream to any solution of that. If I designed, manufactured, distributed, sold, and maintained a car under same rubric I would be hung, drawn and quartered long before the first wheel fell off*. The IT industry has to come in line, even vaguely, with the expectations of other goods & services. Serious quality will not be emitted while the penalty loop-back doesn't exist. That's just human nature ....
Cheers, Mike.
( edit ) Please read the book. It is full of pearls that apply well outside the IT industry eg. a pregnancy takes nine months, regardless of how many women you assign to the task. :-))))
* .... I forgot about the automatic braking/control etc systems now offered with some newer vehicles. There must be algorithms that determine the behaviour. These are currently guaranteed via the overall warranty for the car, though still ( not unreasonably ) retaining 'appropriate usage' clauses.
( edit ) If stupid dystopias are your thing then the 2006 movie Idiocracy was made just for you. Only trouble is : ten years later we aren't laughing so hard .... :-)
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
RE: Start by not urinating
I immediately was reminded of the iPhone. $xxx.xx for each new model/revision every few months. People buy the latest and greatest for bragging rights not because the newer introduction offers much more. So no. I don't believe that consumers are that much smarter. And along the lines of an OS why would you buy something when you can have a free OS that is equally as good as the "expensive" one and which offers "more"?
RE: People buy the latest
It's called Street Cred. Means everything to a section of society that is a member of the one-upmanship brigade. Thick as two short planks, But my iPhone does more than your one does, and your trainers are so last year. Aged 18 and we give them the vote on the future of our country???
Waiting for Godot & salvation :-)
Why do doctors have to practice?
You'd think they'd have got it right by now