Windows 10 Update

[Darkpriest667]

Basically everything is cloud based these days. Companies might as well just issue chromebooks to all their users. You can open a terminal and run whatever you want, too. I'm sure Google is stealing data, but they are already hooked into GCP and AWS, so...

Part of my job is troubleshooting chromebooks. Last year there were two major issues with chromebooks that I discovered. One was - schools didn't properly power down chromebooks at the end of the year so they would all be dead at the beginning of the next year. Google in their infinite wisdom created an auto battery saver mode. Basically if you don't turn it on for 10 days it goes into battery saver mode. Problem was it did it in 20 minutes sometimes while they were still in use. On 150k chromebooks LOL

 

[Brains]

Basically everything is cloud based these days. Companies might as well just issue chromebooks to all their users. You can open a terminal and run whatever you want, too. I'm sure Google is stealing data, but they are already hooked into GCP and AWS, so...

A lot of truth to this, which is why I believe the operating system itself will be very much out of sight out of mind in the coming years.

If I were to play a hunch based on recent activities, Windows will eventually transition into a set of value added services riding on top of the OS, based on .NET core. "Windows" may very well end up being an operating environment sitting on top of a Linux kernel. The clues are already there.

 

[Darkpriest667]

A lot of truth to this, which is why I believe the operating system itself will be very much out of sight out of mind in the coming years.

If I were to play a hunch based on recent activities, Windows will eventually transition into a set of value added services riding on top of the OS, based on .NET core. "Windows" may very well end up being an operating environment sitting on top of a Linux kernel. The clues are already there.

They're already requiring every app be certified on the MS store, that's not just about profits. It's so they can control the environment better and run everything from the cloud. It's definitely coming. Even our driver related apps have to be UWP now.

 

[Eli]

If you can't afford Apple products, go here: https://ubuntu.com/desktop
I'm writing this on a Debian desktop, but use Windoze regularly - primarily because OneDrive makes life easier, and the wife hates anything except M$ Office. My primary desktops have been Linux since 2006.

Eli

 

[Dougw1515]

MyIT guy said disable auto updates and don’t update it. Lots of problems. It crashed my new laptop.

You can not fully disable auto updates. You can delay the update but the update software "IS" going to be downloaded. I'll restate. With Windows 10 Home edition you can not stop the update. With Windows 10 Professional you have a few options that may or may not prevent FORCED update. It just pisses me off to no end that "someone" feels they have the right/obligation to protect me from myself when I'm willing, and able, to make those decisions - and accept responsibility for the result whatever that may be.

 

[oldag]

Third time's a charm. Set it to update overnight, and this morning it was done. Must have been quite an update. Changed the task bar color, but that's the only noticeable change.

That is worth three tries and 24 hours.

The update hung the first two times. This time it didn't.

 

[oldag]

You can not fully disable auto updates. You can delay the update but the update software "IS" going to be downloaded. I'll restate. With Windows 10 Home edition you can not stop the update. With Windows 10 Professional you have a few options that may or may not prevent FORCED update. It just pisses me off to no end that "someone" feels they have the right/obligation to protect me from myself when I'm willing, and able, to make those decisions - and accept responsibility for the result whatever that may be.

And I am using those features. I want to control when updates occur.

Too many times I have had updates cause serious, crippling problems.

 

[Darkpriest667]

You can not fully disable auto updates. You can delay the update but the update software "IS" going to be downloaded. I'll restate. With Windows 10 Home edition you can not stop the update. With Windows 10 Professional you have a few options that may or may not prevent FORCED update. It just pisses me off to no end that "someone" feels they have the right/obligation to protect me from myself when I'm willing, and able, to make those decisions - and accept responsibility for the result whatever that may be.

That's why customers pay for enterprise ;-) then they have control over the environment and which KBs get rolled out via SCCM.

 

[Brains]

And I am using those features. I want to control when updates occur.

Too many times I have had updates cause serious, crippling problems.

That's why customers pay for enterprise ;-) then they have control over the environment and which KBs get rolled out via SCCM.

That's why Enterprise customers pay for enterprise. Last I checked you can't do SA or OL contracts as an individual, and I don't think many home users are running Windows Server with SCCM enabled and configured properly. So, everyone else just has to hack their way through and spend hours doing it.

Apple tends to have a lower TCO when you factor in all the components for a typical setup. Hardware + OS + CALs and other licensing for starters. Let's not bring up the issue of support either. There's a real cost to things like Win10 update issue support (printing subsystem anyone?) and downtime cost. Oh, your update stuck huh? Okay, guess you can screw around and interrupt 2 other people for 15 minutes while your PC completes the update and reboots. Multiply that out by incident and asset count, and it is certainly very non trivial.

Honestly stuff like this is why I laugh and shake my head at the Windows fanboys who try to downplay Apple or any other platform. I have to think of the overall bigger picture, not isolated problem/solution cycles. The proof for me has been laid out by history - the Mac users I have require far less support interaction and far less licensing headaches than the Windows users. So, with Apple getting into Enterprise with a yet to be explained model, I'm certainly going to be listening to see what those plans are. Even if the setup is $300 more per seat up front, that could potentially be offset in first year support and management costs alone. The biggest barrier is the software development cost which I'll have to factor in.

It's a lot like how my wife wants to find the best deal on everything. She'll spend hours scouring the 'net for the best deal on a $200 item with a low-high price delta of $10, and then complain about how busy she is and doesn't have time for the things she wants to do.

 

[Dougw1515]

The proof for me has been laid out by history - the Mac users I have require far less support interaction and far less licensing headaches than the Windows users.

Could be but... what you fail to provide is how, as a total percentage, each group compares. Naturally you'll have less support request from Mac users based on a reduced number of said users in you customer base. Not that I have a shred of admiration for anything MS has or does.

 

[jordanmills]

A lot of truth to this, which is why I believe the operating system itself will be very much out of sight out of mind in the coming years.

If I were to play a hunch based on recent activities, Windows will eventually transition into a set of value added services riding on top of the OS, based on .NET core. "Windows" may very well end up being an operating environment sitting on top of a Linux kernel. The clues are already there.

MS already figured out that they screwed up with .net core, and are completely reversing all of it. There will only be a single framework after .net core 3. So they're covering by saying ".NET 5 = .NET Core vNext". But they're effectively abandoning core and putting mono back in the middle of everything. I'm sure they'll find some way to fragment the host process architecture even more, but that's MS for you.

 

[jordanmills]

You can not fully disable auto updates. You can delay the update but the update software "IS" going to be downloaded. I'll restate. With Windows 10 Home edition you can not stop the update. With Windows 10 Professional you have a few options that may or may not prevent FORCED update. It just pisses me off to no end that "someone" feels they have the right/obligation to protect me from myself when I'm willing, and able, to make those decisions - and accept responsibility for the result whatever that may be.

You can. It just takes some work.

 

[jordanmills]

The proof for me has been laid out by history - the Mac users I have require far less support interaction and far less licensing headaches than the Windows users.

That's because the platform is far less capable. I hate MS as much as anyone who has to suck down their garbage, but at least their crap can do just about anything that needs to be done (as long as they haven't discontinued the product for no apparent reason, and it isn't broken at the time).

 

[Brains]

Could be but... what you fail to provide is how, as a total percentage, each group compares. Naturally you'll have less support request from Mac users based on a reduced number of said users in you customer base. Not that I have a shred of admiration for anything MS has or does.

My current environment has ~5% OS X 94% Windows 10, and a few kiosks/dedicated service machines on Win 7. For a bigger example, peek at IBM and how Macs were received in their environment.

MS already figured out that they screwed up with .net core, and are completely reversing all of it. There will only be a single framework after .net core 3. So they're covering by saying ".NET 5 = .NET Core vNext". But they're effectively abandoning core and putting mono back in the middle of everything. I'm sure they'll find some way to fragment the host process architecture even more, but that's MS for you.

I feel you there. I've stopped keeping track of bleeding edge and my .NET developers are still on VS2015. They collectively recommended not moving forward.

That's because the platform is far less capable. I hate MS as much as anyone who has to suck down their garbage, but at least their crap can do just about anything that needs to be done (as long as they haven't discontinued the product for no apparent reason, and it isn't broken at the time).

That's a fallacy if I've ever seen it, but then again I see things from a much more personally capable perspective than your typical user. I'm on a Mac, and have been for a decade. I'm actually feeling like Windows is finally catching up to Apple in many regards, but a lot of that is likely due to my area of comfort (e.g. I see WSL as the greatest addition in a long time). Each platform has it's strong and weak points, but there's a LOT of seemingly simple things a user can end up going down a Google rabbit hole that is just easier on OS X. Like moving a print job from one queue to another, or shell scripting (sorry, bash/zsh is still easier than PowerShell, but PS is getting close), and lets not get into the abomination that is the Windows Registry and how well it is "documented."

If I need Windows it's readily available. Either via RDP or in a VM - or on this little Lenovo m715q Tiny sitting to my right that lives in sleep mode. The truth of the matter is I go weeks before I need anything on a Windows box. When I do, it is going to be something like our (ancient) PBX management tools. Then there's the simple usability and performance nods to OS X, like simple connectivity. OS X is much faster to complete these simple tasks. Managers get together in a meeting and pull out laptops, who is the first ready to roll? Me, every time. I'm usually screwing around replying to shit here waiting for them.

The basic productivity stuff is more or less a wash, especially with the move to cloud provided alternatives being readily sucked up by users and many of them moving to mobile. The custom stuff can be built for either platform. I just don't see any super important must-haves as I used to, which is opening up options for other platforms more than ever before.

 

[deemus]

I have windows 10. But there is a new iteration that is causing major issues.

 

[Brains]

Latest bit of support fun, dev team is finalizing code changes to a few apps that display PDF's. Since Windows doesn't have built-in support for PDF, you need third-party support. Well, they were linking to Adobe Acrobat reader for those with it installed, falling back to using the system web browser if not. Worked like a champ, until last week when patch Tuesday broke it.

PDF support is built-in on a Mac. Works beautifully. PDFKit is pretty amazing.

 

[jordanmills]

(sorry, bash/zsh is still easier than PowerShell, but PS is getting close)

Lol not even close. Unless you mean easier as in "hasn't changed in 20 years and doesn't do near as much"

 

[robertc1024]

Us non-IT guys are kinda stuck though. My company is so invested in Microsoft tools that they bought. PowerPoint, Visio etc. When working in a global scale, they picked the horse at the time, and are stuck with it. For personal use, I dumped Microsoft. Wife has an old Mac that runs perfectly. Most of my stuff is done on a hacked Amazon fire. The laptop I rarely use is on Unbuntu.

 

[jordanmills]

Us non-IT guys are kinda stuck though. My company is so invested in Microsoft tools that they bought. PowerPoint, Visio etc. When working in a global scale, they picked the horse at the time, and are stuck with it. For personal use, I dumped Microsoft. Wife has an old Mac that runs perfectly. Most of my stuff is done on a hacked Amazon fire. The laptop I rarely use is on Unbuntu.

And now you're stuck with the new hot MS trash.

"I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it further."

 

[robertc1024]

And now you're stuck with the new hot MS trash.

"I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it further."

Yep. From a user's perspective, MS10 wasn't that bad. From a manufacturing perspective, it sucks donky balls. I work for a company that builds things. You, and probably everyone else would be shocked how prevalent legacy programs are. Over half of our production programs are in VB6. The rest are in C#.