PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows Win 10 forced updates - any plan on going to Linux?

This response is to Pepe's post. I won't reply quote by quote since it gets a bit messy with too many back and forths. I type up each response as I read each item.

Regarding the the file find in XP it had a nice menu setup with a lot of options. In Win7 they set it back to the old dos days of command line entry. I had to take notes on how to operate it and I have had to go back to the notes a few times. Lately I use notepad++ which has the unix regular expressions I know fairly well from memory. I rarely use the Win7 file find now. I still use the XP file find a fair bit.

The XP backup had a number of features. You could save different jobs and in each job you could store the job file for return later. The job contained all the parameters. It had all the features of a backup I had used earlier in 1997 in the Win 95 days. I figure MS must have bought the rights to use it. I could dig further if it is important. The win7 backup is okay. Not as good. I give it a 6 and the XP backup a 10.

I downloaded the 3rd service pack for XP and stored it on a CD. I could do this overnight when I was not using the computer and apply it when needed. It did not take very long to download it. The first time I tried to apply an update with Win7 it was still running in the morning when I wanted the machine. That was annoying so I shut if off and worked around it and my methods have prevented me from getting in trouble.

I did not say "win updates are internet junk or poor software uninstalls". The internet junk I am referring to are the things that get auto installed into the browser and who knows what else (viruses show up every so often including the one that disabled Avast, the control panel, the ctrl+alt+delete to get to the task manager, etc). Regarding the uninstalls I install a lot of software for try out and remove it keeping the one I want. I have noticed a lot of times the uninstall is not complete. I have no fear of doing these tryouts because I am well protected and I can return an image at any time. AVG is one example that pops in my mind. I decided to switch to Avast because AVG was giving me a false positive on a root kit and I could not get rid of AVG. I cleared it eventually through an image restore or format and install (can't I remember which one).

The repair person who commented on Windows worked on my machines for 20+ years. He owned a store then closed it down because he could not compete with the big computer stores any more and started travelling to his business clients. He worked only on windows machines and I never had issues with his work. He was able to get win XP to run on a machine built for win7 (at that time I did not need more than 3 gig and on my office machine I still don't). He was the person who said XP was the most popular windows operating system. I am not sure where he got his information. I assumed some magazine pole but it may have been his clients. It made sense to me because I liked XP over Win7 (except for the 64 bit enhancement allowing for more memory availability). The 2nd service person at Canada computers I have worked with twice. He was the one that said "Windows is like that". I don't remember the issue. Other than this I have read many complaints about Windows needing to be rebooted every so often as opposed to unix systems that have been known to run 3 years without a need for reboot. In my case I shut my machine off often to save power and have never had an issue as a result of running it for days. However a few of the professional traders on the forum I frequent have mentioned they try to run windows none stop to catch as many trades as possible and they are forced to reboot it every so often to get it running properly again. This tends to back up some of the other things I have read over the years.

Are you saying Microsoft will sell us windows 7 now. My understanding is you have to buy it through a retailer who still has it in inventory. At Canada Computers they do not stock Win7 any more. I would prefer a fresh DVD rather than a download. I would have to go to a shop that knows how to get the drivers to allow Win7 to run on my notebook. I would not miss Win 10. I use mostly the win7 machine.

Re "If it happens, it's because you haven't disabled it". I have disabled it several times in the services menu and the home version ignores this (not immediately - it changes the disabled status later and starts running again). I have not tried the registry adjustment. The problem may be over now. My understanding is that was the last update and they are no longer supporting win10. It finally forced the install and changed some of the personal display settings I had chosen such as the background colour. Although a minor issue I was not happy about that.

I am a programmer. The windows update will have to download the software then run it. It may do it in pairs (download then run, download then run). I have no idea how it works in this regard. I shut off the machine a few times and stopped the update a few times in the services window. It figured out where to continue. I was not always online so it was able to do this during the application of the updates it had downloaded. I was offsite when it would start up on its own and was not about to stick around for hours waiting for it to continue. At the jams they don't have internet. Obviously there is no reason to connect.

So I would assume that they have to charge a monthly or yearly fee because they have operating costs they need to cover and this is largely because many users do not have the need to buy more features. The only improvement I have used in Win7 over XP is the increase in memory for trading. The only improvement I have used in Win10 over Win7 is Microsoft Zira. I stopped using Windows Internet Explorer long ago preferring Chrome. My former guitar student who is a computer science major and the one who refuses to use Windows says he knows no one who uses Explorer.

Regarding the Monopoly topic the U.S. gov tried to break MS up for fear they were becoming a monopoly so I don't think this is a conspiracy theory. I did not follow it that closely and I am not sure why MS was not broken up. On a related topic my understanding regarding the Apple court battle is the court ruled that MS had to support Apple for a while so they would not go out of business. My assumption has always been that part of the court decision had to do with preventing MS from becoming a monopoly. Assuming my understanding of what happened is correct It seems that many Apple users are happy the court made this decision and MS has not become a monopoly. The people who run companies and own shares want the company to make as much money as they can. Bell Canada is a monopoly. It happens and they love it as long as they can keep it. I would too...lol. Buy their shares and you can benefit from their monopoly status too...lol. I don't think you could possibly be saying the people at MS as so nice they want to avoid having a monopoly. I don't think anyone would be naive enough to believe that. They will work to gain as much market share as they possibly can and as they should. They did a good job of winning over the U.S. gov.

From what I am reading it seems everyone is happy handling their computer issues the way they choose to handle them. I have never had any problems with shutting off updates and others have never had any problem with leaving the updates on. Everyone agrees images are important. As I have said several times my complaint is not the update content itself so much. It is the way MS handles it now. The only time I have needed an update was when one of my software programs needed XP service pack 3. I went and downloaded it (I would say in less than an hour but that was a long time ago) and applied it in maybe 5 or 10 minutes (it was all good). This 2 step method of getting the update worked just fine and I am sure it still would with Win10 now. No doubt the download and the update would take longer because of all the added features but that is fine. So explain to my why this can't work as wonderfully as it did in the past such that the updates to not take such as huge amount of time as they do now by trying to make it all one step. It would seem logical that if the amount of update is larger they should break it up into separate steps rather than make it one. If this is to complex for people write a nice interface to make it easy.