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The Windows operating systems continue to amaze me. Microsoft makes obscene amounts of money and has huge numbers of employees. How can they do so poorly with operating systems? Windows 8 was a disaster. I am still using 7 which barely works, has constant updates, is prone to viruses and hacking. Every morning I make a pot of coffee while waiting for my Windows 7 software to load. Usually the coffee is finished brewing well before the software. And that is on my powerful desktop. I could walk around the block and brew coffee waiting for it to load on my laptop.
Don't have any of these frustrations - have been using Windows from day one and by no means am I'm any sort of computer geek. Something is wrong w/ your system and it needs work/updating.
Another frustration that I noticed just this season, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers has started pushing mobile ticketing. I still have a card that lets me in, but if I want to give my ticket away or sell it, it has to be done by mobile device. I'm resisting the data plan cell phone services for as long as possible, but this stuff is pushing me to have to buy into cell phone plans against my will. I guess the Buccaneers assumes everyone has a cell phone plan.
I do have a cell for emergencies with a pay as you go - no surfing the net use.
I think MoviePass subscriptions uses the same model. Forces you to have a cell phone w/ surfing data plan. https://www.moviepass.com/
If anything, I think technologically is more user friendly than ever.
When I built my current computer in 2013, I had it all physically mounted in the case and hooked up in around an hour. I started a Windows installation and went to the grocery store. I came back and was at my desktop. I think I had Windows 8 at the time.
I can't remember hassling with any drivers. I have two SSDs and a storage drive. A standalone graphics card. Nothing complex, but everything was detected. I have a utility that keeps my graphics drivers updated automatically. When I upgraded to Windows 10, I configured automatic updates to run automatically at 3 AM. The only way I know updates are applied would be to check the logs or the computer was rebooted. I can't remember the last time I had a truly broken application on my personal desktop and I haven't had to call for support on anything not work related in years.
Before I moved back to Tennessee, I had a small CD wallet dedicated to various computer drivers. Ten years ago, if you needed to reformat and didn't have the driver disk for your motherboard, good luck getting that network adapter working. It was common to have driver related crashes and errors.
I had a cell phone in 2007, but it was extremely clunky compared to even the first gen iPhone.
The slow loading has nothing to do with Microsoft. This is an age old issue resulting from the junk (trialware) that came loaded on your machine, as well as certain programs you downloaded after you bought it.
I totally agree. Over the years, I have fixed the slow loading problems of many computers and laptops for friends, relatives and computer forum users by doing or telling people to do two things:
2. Uninstall certain programs one at a time before rebooting to identify the problem program. First is the program or software that one installed before the slowing down occurred. Next is the resident antivirus program. The AV programs sometimes can be as bad the viruses themselves. If the AV program being the culprit, one has to replace it with a less problematic one.
I fixed my daughter's laptop with windows 7 few weeks ago by doing the above two steps. Her laptop had slowed down not only during bootup but also during normal operation to the point that she could no longer use it. I thought of doing a system recovery to restore the laptop to its original condition. This would be the last resort since it means wiping out all installed programs and one has to make sure to backup all users' documents, internet bookmarks etc.
I was so relieved to find that the laptop ran fine again after I finished the two steps mentioned above. It appeared that the AV program (McAfee) was the culprit. I tried Bitdefender and it worked fine as an AV program. This does not mean McAfee is not as good as Bitdefender since McAfee did work fine for years before. The problem could be due to an update of either the AV program or Windows. A window security fix update may be incompatible with the resident AV program. This is why I never use window automatic updates and would rather taking the time doing manual updates, one at a time. This way I can uninstall a problem update and figure out whether it is worth it or find ways to make it compatible with existing softwares.
There are other ways to speed up a system at startup, shutdown and during normal operation. Running out of memory is one common slow down problem. The easiest fix is to set virtual memory to 1.5x actual memory instead of letting windows manage VM.
BTW, my answer to the OP's question is a big NO. I enjoy technologies, learning new things, solving problems etc. I am not a gadget freak and have never tried to obtain the latest, greatest electronic toys. However, I do try to keep up with the latest technologies, be informed and adopt new things if I find them being useful.
I am always quite amazed by the latest technology applications. For example, bluetooth has been around for a long time (patent filed in 1997) but new applications still continue to popup. In our recent stay at my daughter's home, I was thrilled to install the Homebrite app on my tablet to turn different bluetooth smart LED lightbulbs in the house off and on as we move around from room to room in the evening!
No.
Use a password manager.
I use (have used for 6+years) 1Password.
As I manage 567 logins, it is very much worth the money.
I probably only have a tenth of these accounts personally, but they are all in my password manager. I use KeePass. I can't imagine running off an Excel file or something.
All I need to is double click the URL for the website, right click in the user name field, and the information is magically autopopulated and I'm logged in.
I can log into Mint and see what's going on with my primary checking, credit union savings account, credit cards, retirement accounts, HSA, etc. I just have to keep the passwords straight.
Don't have any of these frustrations - have been using Windows from day one and by no means am I'm any sort of computer geek. Something is wrong w/ your system and it needs work/updating.
........
I would guess we are talking about a matter of expectations. My "system" has consisted of professionally maintained PCs at work, my wife's laptop, my laptop, my desktop and a small laptop computer. Microsoft has provided miserable operating systems for all of them. I could start with Windows 8 on the small laptop but I am willing to skip that since it is well known that Windows 8 was a disaster that Microsoft replaced ASAP. My other systems all work poorly but at least better than Windows 8. How could the massive resources of Microsoft allow such a POS to be released?
Years ago my wife had a Mac that booted up almost instantly. My Windows computers take several minutes. In fact I have timed the older laptops at over 10 minutes.
Windows updates are fairly frequent. Many users may not even notice the downloads which are occurring in the background. I do processing for photography that comes to a virtual stop if background downloads or maintenance are occurring.
There are numerous issues with viruses and hacking. We seem to accept both and spend additional money on antivirus programs. Why? After decades of experience, I expect a system that could not be hacked or compromised from outside. Either the hackers are really good or the system is really poor.
I have been told my systems are slow to boot up because I use too many programs. I have 3 main photo editing programs and some plugins for them. I only use one at a time. I see no reason my system should load or run slowly because I have a program available I am not even using. This is just unacceptable and poor software design. I am told to expect a program to degrade performance even when not in use. But for an "app" this does not occur. BS! It is way past time to fix this issue.
I would guess we are talking about a matter of expectations. My "system" has consisted of professionally maintained PCs at work, my wife's laptop, my laptop, my desktop and a small laptop computer. Microsoft has provided miserable operating systems for all of them. I could start with Windows 8 on the small laptop but I am willing to skip that since it is well known that Windows 8 was a disaster that Microsoft replaced ASAP. My other systems all work poorly but at least better than Windows 8. How could the massive resources of Microsoft allow such a POS to be released?
Years ago my wife had a Mac that booted up almost instantly. My Windows computers take several minutes. In fact I have timed the older laptops at over 10 minutes.
Windows updates are fairly frequent. Many users may not even notice the downloads which are occurring in the background. I do processing for photography that comes to a virtual stop if background downloads or maintenance are occurring.
There are numerous issues with viruses and hacking. We seem to accept both and spend additional money on antivirus programs. Why? After decades of experience, I expect a system that could not be hacked or compromised from outside. Either the hackers are really good or the system is really poor.
I have been told my systems are slow to boot up because I use too many programs. I have 3 main photo editing programs and some plugins for them. I only use one at a time. I see no reason my system should load or run slowly because I have a program available I am not even using. This is just unacceptable and poor software design. I am told to expect a program to degrade performance even when not in use. But for an "app" this does not occur. BS! It is way past time to fix this issue.
This "problem" is more than anything due to the performance of old, slow, spinning hard disk drives, and not the operating system.
Many, if not most, consumer PCs sold at retail in stores have traditional HDDs. They are terribly slow. SSDs are far, far faster, and do not have physical, rotating platters.
I still have an older computer with a processor from 2007 that I pulled from an old Dell computer a family member had then. With a solid state disk, it is plenty fine for a video streamer for local media. I do not use it much, but it's faster in general use than most new computers would be without an SSD.
I would guess we are talking about a matter of expectations. My "system" has consisted of professionally maintained PCs at work, my wife's laptop, my laptop, my desktop and a small laptop computer. Microsoft has provided miserable operating systems for all of them. I could start with Windows 8 on the small laptop but I am willing to skip that since it is well known that Windows 8 was a disaster that Microsoft replaced ASAP. My other systems all work poorly but at least better than Windows 8. How could the massive resources of Microsoft allow such a POS to be released?
Years ago my wife had a Mac that booted up almost instantly. My Windows computers take several minutes. In fact I have timed the older laptops at over 10 minutes.
Windows updates are fairly frequent. Many users may not even notice the downloads which are occurring in the background. I do processing for photography that comes to a virtual stop if background downloads or maintenance are occurring.
There are numerous issues with viruses and hacking. We seem to accept both and spend additional money on antivirus programs. Why? After decades of experience, I expect a system that could not be hacked or compromised from outside. Either the hackers are really good or the system is really poor.
I have been told my systems are slow to boot up because I use too many programs. I have 3 main photo editing programs and some plugins for them. I only use one at a time. I see no reason my system should load or run slowly because I have a program available I am not even using. This is just unacceptable and poor software design. I am told to expect a program to degrade performance even when not in use. But for an "app" this does not occur. BS! It is way past time to fix this issue.
maybe needs more memory? I have an old desktop with windows 10. It started out with 7 I believe. Starts right up.
I'm with you, we are in the barbaric stone ages of technology, especially in software. Frustrated and disgusted. The very idea of thinking that it is acceptable that you need to google fixes to some crap app that should work to begin with is beyond absurd.
Oh yeah, right now is the first time in history that software has ever had bugs.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Larry Caldwell
Netflix and Hulu are out of the question.
With Netflix app you can download lost of movies/shows to watch offline later. Grab some movies and let them download overnight, then watch 'em later at your leisure.
We travel a lot and internet speeds are inconsistent (or nonexistent) so we often roll with a lot of Netflix content stored locally for offline viewing. We're talking six seasons of Breaking Bad, six seasons of Mad Men, 3-4 movies, etc. Great for watching stuff on airplanes too.
Quote:
Originally Posted by V8 Vega
Get a Chromebook, all your computer problems are over!
I agree, people don't realize how far Chromebooks have come. These says can do almost everything a day-to-day user has a computer for on a Chromebook, but they are cheap, never need to worry about updating anything, never get a virus, they boot up in seconds, etc. Bonus = if you need to buy a new one you just need to log in and you're good to go, no spending all that time installing/updating stuff.
Get a Chromebook, all your computer problems are over!
Yes, but my Chromebook screen is so small.... Do they come in bigger sizes?
And now its the voip phone. Ooma has worked great for years. Now it drops calls, buzzes, people cannot hear me, etc. The fix seems to be requesting to be "transferred to the East coast server" ??? What? So I requested it too. We will see if that fixes the problem.
today I am waiting for a new printer to be delivered. Another frustrating day to set it up and get it going.
I have learned NEVER to unplug any cords around the TV/modem/phone. Last time I moved the furniture, I had to get the tech out to re plug everything. He told me to take a photo of what was plugged in where !
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