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Who needs Cortana in a desktop? Uh, me. Apparently you haven't used it. It has a LOT to offer.
But keep using your antiquated OS. Ignore all the progress around you.
Meanwhile, I'll be doing things sort of like StarTrek envisioned. I just said, "Hey Cortana launch Insteon" and she told me she was launching Insteon Hub. And up it came. Quicker than moving my hands off the keyboard to touch the touchpad and do a some clicking.
And there is a LOT of other things it does. Just to mention one from yesterday. I ordered something from Amazon. Received a confirmation email from Amazon that contained the tracking number. Later, when I popped up the Cortana UI, there was an item that asked me if I wanted to check the status of my UPS package using the tracking number.
Pretty cool stuff that isn't in XP or Win7.
And in time, there will be a lot more interesting new things.
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While I have Win 10 sitting in my inbox ready to be installed (currently running Win 7), I hesitate to make the switch given the intrusiveness of MS's latest OS. While the author seems to like the fact Cortana asks if they want to check on the status of their order, I personally don't like the fact that MS is gathering all this information about my on line activity as well as who knows what other information they gather. They certainly aren't talking.
For me the decision is to move away from MS and on to something else. Possibly a linux distro.
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No one said that Microsoft was "gathering all this information". There seem to be a lot of people that are paranoid lately. Cortana on the local machine looks at my local email and offers to help. Cortana is configurable. If you don't want it to help you out, you can turn that feature off in Cortana's settings. (I don't remember, but off may have been the default).
But even if they did gather the information, it doesn't bother me.
You say "They certainly aren't talking". There is quite a bit of information about how things work regarding privacy here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement/Default.aspx[^]
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Check out the following two articles concerning the way Microsoft is gathering informaton.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2489212,00.asp
http://lifehacker.com/what-windows-10s-privacy-nightmare-settings-actually-1722267229
from other discussions, it is clear that you can protect yourself from most of the data collection, that not all data collection is controlled from the privacy settings and no one is sure what data is being collected or for what reason. Thus my paranoia
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Yep, both articles basically say it is no big deal and if you are paranoid, turn off what you can.
I feel sorry for paranoid people. Really.
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I guess I have been toying with the move to linux for several years and this maybe the straw that breaks the camel's back so to speak. I will most likely stick with Win7 for awhile and see what happens, and maybe load a second laptop with a linux distro and see how that goes.
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I can't even imagine going back to Windows 8, let alone Windows 7.
Good luck with that Linux thingee.
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Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you or aren't spying on you...
Decrease the belief in God, and you increase the numbers of those who wish to play at being God by being “society’s supervisors,” who deny the existence of divine standards, but are very serious about imposing their own standards on society.-Neal A. Maxwell
You must accept 1 of 2 basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not alone. Either way, the implications are staggering!-Wernher von Braun
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I agree with you. But, having just upgraded from 7 to 10 I find it is not too different. They removed all the 8/8.1 tiled desktop garbage, and left it like 7. The start menu is more in the manner of 8, but you can remove all the tiles and make it look a bit more like the old style. I haven't used it for long enough to check out all the other "exciting new features", but so far am reasonably happy.
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'Version' are coming too often? (Instead of simple quiet updates)
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
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I still remember those days when I "upgraded" from bare-bones DOS to Win 3.0 and was glad but less productive for I was so used to command line commands and pipes that it was hard for me but... heck! anything for progress and loved it in a couple of months. Then upgraded to W3.1 (for workgroups) and loved it again with the new VC++ 1.0 that was a delight to work with (butt still slower than DOS and TC++) then came Win95 and all the hype that it caused and a (first I believe) worldwide launch and event, even the Rolling Stones contributed with that catchy song "Start me up". Ohhh those were the days, the new UI was so radicall but you could be still productive.
Any of you has a time travel machine for rent?, no? mmh I thought so! 
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Marc Clifton wrote: XP was a great improvement over 3.1. I
WTF! You missed 2K? THAT was a good OD. Quick? By Christ it was, NT4 with the best bits of Win95 grafted on. Simple, clean, functional. Everything since is bloat ware!
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I agree Win2K was great. Three words describe it best: stable, stable and stable.
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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True, it's been so long, I forgot about Win95 and Win2000. I had those installed as well.
Marc
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I still have my installation disks for Win95, Win97, Win98, Win2K, WinXP, Win8.1. If I have to rebuild this machine, I'm stuck -- no Win10 installation disk.
The difficult may take time, the impossible a little longer.
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Twasn't Microsoft's fault. You just got old and boring and difficult to impress like the rest of us! 
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I'm with you on this.
My brother upgraded to W10 a week or so ago and just today reverted back to 8.1.
I was excited when I heard W10 was coming out I though maybe they had learned enough from 8 that mistakes would not be made but the more I hear and see of 10 the more disappointed I become and the closer I am to moving to Ubuntu. I would hate to do that as everything I've done over the last nn years has been either DEC or Windows and we all know where DEC went, proving that no one is exempt from failure.
New version: WinHeist Version 2.1.1 new web site.
I know the voices in my head are not real but damn they come up with some good ideas!
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In my case, Marc, I've settled on 8.1 for my desktop development system and W7 everywhere else on my network. Like you, I didn't care much for "Metro" but it doesn't bother me with 8.1 - I just let it boot straight to desktop and us Start8 as the menu system. 8.1 performs fine.
I'm not planning to go to 10 unless I buy a new piece of equipment and it already comes loaded on it or something. Upgrading the OS used to be something I did for fun but, to be honest, I'm tired of doing all that. It's very distracting. I would spend days fiddling with the OS instead of writing software. The stuff I write runs in the desktop or in a web browser; any version of Windows desktop will run my stuff (XP and up, yes I've even checked out 10 in a VM to make sure it still does).
In evaluating whether or not to upgrade I basically asked the question: "How will it enhance any of the work I'm doing?". I have not seen even one feature of the new system that would make me justify the time and risk of breaking anything. I had people say to me "but it's new!" and "but it's free!" ... neither of which amounts to a hill of beans as far as I'm concerned.
Am I against Windows 10? No ... I'm just done fiddling with the platform that's all. I just want the thing to work. I understand that 8.1 is going to be officially supported until 2023 (and won't just "break" after that) so I'm not particularly worried about this right now. I need to be about my business and doing this upgrade crap all the time ain't going to get that done. I'm not "anti progress" at all, I'm just sick of "pulling the rug" out just because they make one of a different color. As far as my work is concerned I can't tell you of one feature that has appeared since XP that particularly enhances my ability to get the job I'm doing done. I could literally take the tools I have, return to XP and operate as well as I do under my present system.
Quite honestly, IMHO, a lot of this is smoke and mirrors at this point. Yeah, yeah ... we're developing these things like voice technology and we can handle photo and video now but we're BASICALLY doing the same stuff with this technology that we have always done; communicate and process information. (Besides, I don't want my computer talking to me! I barely use the voice stuff on my iPhone as it is).
Well, enough of that - I have a project I need to go work on (that can only run on about 4 billion machines right now) so worry about upgrading my platform is something I'll just set aside for awhile!
-CM
modified 20-Aug-15 10:56am.
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Why would anyone want to move from the greatest version of Windows named ME?
The OS that could make the 800 MHz processor of the time run like it was only 400 MHz.
Remember how you could combine Windows CE, Windows ME, and Windows NT to make the hybrid Windows CEMENT?
Seriously, Win10 has been working out great for me. A system of mine that has been a little unstable in Win7, (you could work on it all day with a hitch, but leave it alone for more than a half hour and you'd come back to find it locked up) has been running for the last two weeks without crashing under Win10.
Psychosis at 10
Film at 11
Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it.
Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.
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A lot of people pan Windows 8 because of Metro/Modern, but Metro does work great for pure tablets, just not for our old desktops and laptops that don’t have touchscreens. However, for a person who has been using a Microsoft account, Windows Phone, and Sky/OneDrive for years, the integration of the Microsoft Account in Windows 8 was a truly killer feature that allowed me to overlook the inconvenience of Metro on the desktop. In fact, I find it one of the best things Microsoft has done for Windows. And yes, Windows 8.1 helped too.
Now with Windows 10, they've got the desktop feel right with the combination start button/screen and a desktop that feels like a desktop and not just another store app, but it's awful on a tablet. I really miss the store version of IE on the tablet. It was much more suited to the tablet with controls that are less likely to be fat fingered and features like swiping back and forward and charms. Yes, charms were great on the tablet. I've updated my tablet to Win10 and it's barely useable. Many controls are too small. I can’t imagine how anyone could use it on a 7" tablet.
What really makes me sad about Windows 10 is the Mail/Calendar/People app. It is just one of the worst things I've seen in recent years (except maybe for Android in general). They’ve dropped sweep functions. I can't set up rules. Using folders is awkward. It doesn't sync quickly with my Outlook account. And most of all, many great features of the people app aren't there. I can't pin a contact to the start screen. I can't link Skype contacts. The People app doesn't even acknowledge Skype contacts! (How much did Microsoft pay for Skype?). The People app will tell you to go to the store to get ‘Social Apps’ and then the store gives you a blank list, (psych!) If you try to add a photo to a contact, it brings up this strange, quasi-dialog version of OneDrive that's not quite desktop and not quite Metro and you can't browse to a folder where you know the file that you want is. It just lists every photo it can find on OneDrive and lists them by date. And they dropped the Skype store app and while Skype for desktop is well, okay, it's awful to use with fat fingers on the desktop.
Many people are in love w/ their iPhones and Android phones. But I know few who know how to sync contacts and mail, or share OneNote folders and pages, or share folders in OneDrive. In other words, they don't think Windows Phone is good because it doesn't have their bank's app, and all of the other amazing things that Windows Phone does so easily (which are difficult if not impossible on other phone operating systems) are just something they don't even know can be done, and therefore is not something they want or care about. My point here is that Microsoft has thrown away so many features that I thought made them so much better than the other phones and tablets in order to be more like the popular operating systems. The truth is those operating systems aren't better.
And yes, I have owned an iPhone. Yes, I have to setup my family's Android phones for them. Yes, I’ve used Google Nexus tablets and iPads for my work as a developer at a financial institution.
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It has a lot of bugs, and the recent upgrades broke things that were working. The start menu is nice, but it often freezes; the notification center is cool, but it regularly stops working (sometimes killing explorer.exe does the trick, sometimes it doesn't). I don't have Cortana because it's not available in my country, even though I installed the OS in English, so I really can't tell how good it is. The touch screen sometimes it won't show up when a textbox gets the focus, in tablet mode (which has rendered my Surface 3 Pro useless without the keyboard, since it won't let me enter my password). The apps are buggy too, especially the mail and calendar app.
It's better than Weight, however, and has many improvements. Metro apps now are Windowed (in desktop mode) so I can have my Netflix app running alongside Visual Studio, without flickering. Continuum feature is great in my Surface. Snap views work cool with any app regardless of their origin (Win32, WPF, Metro).
So I think it's a better OS than Weight, and slightly better than Weven. When the OS becomes stable (because IMHO this is still a beta product) it will become the best Windows OS so far. Until then...
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Sounds to me like you're just getting old and crotchety. Maybe you just need to get some.
Decrease the belief in God, and you increase the numbers of those who wish to play at being God by being “society’s supervisors,” who deny the existence of divine standards, but are very serious about imposing their own standards on society.-Neal A. Maxwell
You must accept 1 of 2 basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not alone. Either way, the implications are staggering!-Wernher von Braun
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TheGreatAndPowerfulOz wrote: Maybe you just need to get some.
Some what, Wen? They clearly skipped Wine!
Marc
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Decrease the belief in God, and you increase the numbers of those who wish to play at being God by being “society’s supervisors,” who deny the existence of divine standards, but are very serious about imposing their own standards on society.-Neal A. Maxwell
You must accept 1 of 2 basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not alone. Either way, the implications are staggering!-Wernher von Braun
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