Microsoft +++ revealed +++ it will stop support for Windows 10 on October 14th, 2025.

Microsoft has scheduled an event to introduce the next version of Windows on June 24th, 2021.

Microsoft anticipates the transition to the next version of Windows will take around four years.

The announced end-of-support timeline puts the Windows 10 lifecycle at a hair over 10 years. This is similar to previous operating system iterations.

Good find Jim, and it appears that the speculation Matt had noticed were correct.

I wonder what's in store for the next exciting episode? Not more bloatware, I hope.

Pretty much more of the same.

Here's the other thread on this.

https://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=658821#Post658821

I might be able to answer this. Microsoft will take the same old items and put then in different places. They may even rename a couple of them. Plus if it is something that you use a lot, say like Device Manager, then they will eliminate it or even worse make it less useful, much like the current search. Oh yes they will also set up your machine like they want it.

And undo your changes after each update.

I can't remember a company providing a no longer support date on a current product BEFORE they have released its replacement.

At least they could tell us how much better the as of yet unnamed replacement will be.

It really does not matter what Microsoft does. Most of us are going to use their crap anyway. What real choices do we have? Mac? Linux?

These poor guys need money. They have pay for coral reef damage in the Cayman Islands done by their $300,000,000 yacht.



Billy

Huh? The end of life for 10 is in 2025. The next version, according to the thread here, is going to come far sooner. They are having an announcement event 10 days from now. It will likely come out in 2022.

I'm a Windows user since Windows 95. A Linux user since 2003.

With the introduction of Windows 8 and Windows 10 my enthusiasm for Windows faded away. I really don't like the direction that Microsoft is going with Windows 10 with every feature update.

Recently I got myself a MacBook and I'm pretty surprised how well it deals with audio.

Didn't Paul Allen die 3 years ago?

I bought a Mac 10 years ago.
Ran it alongside a win7 & win 10 PC for about 8 years.
Turned my PC off a year ago.
Hope never to turn it back on.

A Mac is far from universal goodness, but its a better computing platform for me.
YMMV

Exactly.
That's what they did.
That's all I said.
Exactly.

I may be joining you in the Land of Mac soon here. Getting tired of Micro$oft.

Yeah, that's a new one on me too. They haven't even shown us the replacement before they announced when Win10 will die.



I agree. I switched to Mac full time (except for gaming) in around 2005 when it was still PowerPC, and haven't looked back. There are a LOAD of improvements I'd make to Mac OS and Mac computers if I had the power to do so, but what they have currently is still miles better than using any Windows machine.

Not to say that Windows computer hardware is no good - I have had very good luck with certain brands of laptops and custom built desktop components in the past and present.



Make sure to max out the computer as much as you can when you buy it - many of them can't be upgraded later!

That's not as big of a downside as most people think - Apple computers tend to hold their resale value quite well, so you can always sell it and buy a newer one for not a lot more than it would cost you to pay for upgrades (and often less than the cost of paying someone to upgrade it for you).

Agree with Simon's last post on maxing out the MAC hardware when you purchase.
I purchased a fully tricked out top of the line macbook pro 10 years ago.
It cost real $$$ but It still does the job with Logic Pro X and BIAB Mac.

I am considering buying a new mac mini with the M1X chip if they become available soon. it will have at least 16gb ram and 2TB ssd.

that new mini could be a real badass at about $2k.

I remember when Windows 95 came out back in, oh, about 95! I was one of those idiots you saw on your local 11 pm TV news broadcast lined up to get into the store at midnight to buy it. That was in the days of CompUSA and the store I went to was giving away a manual for free that was so thick it had enough paper to burn for home heat!

That was on a Thursday night/Friday morning at midnight. I went home, installed it and spent the next 40 hours listening to the computer beep at me as I made mistakes. With no sleep. My roommate and I took breaks only to get more pizza.

That was my first real exposure to how the world manipulates us. They invented a convenient silicon shortage and told us that RAM was going to go up in price because of it. I was running a Pent1um 100 at the time with 8 MEGS, yes, MEGS, of RAM. That day, Saturday, I went to a computer store to buy another 8 MEGS, yes, MEGS, of RAM. It cost me $325!! * GB now costs about $40. So they caught us by the short hairs because everybody who ran Windows 3.1 was going to have to upgrade their RAM before 95 would run. I remember how convoluted 95 seemed. I got call after call because of memory paging errors and put a band-aid on them by making the swap file bigger. Then a utility came out to clear the memory of whatever leakage had happened as people opened and closed programs, and that helped some. Them come the nightmare that was 98, then ME, then 2000 which everybody confused with the Millennial Edition (which didn't play well with AOL). I can't even tell you how many people I had to back-rev who put the newest AOL on the newest Windows. It would go to the first web page and then every one after was "Page cannot be displayed". And this was so long ago people were on 1200 baud dialup modems. Can you imagine having to reload AOL every time you wanted to go to a different web page? Hang up, dial back in, log in...

I'll never forget seeing Gates do a demo of 98, telling us all about USB and the live swapping ability is offered. During the demo be plugged in a scanner and the computer totally went dead. Powered itself off and everything. Everybody in the auditorium laughed violently, and he calmly looked at the camera and said "Well, that's why we're not shipping it yet."

What is Mac up to now, and what is the animal name? I remember Snow Leopard but that's the last one I remember. That was what, like OSX?

And my support of Microsoft ended about 15 years ago.

The current Mini is more powerful than my heavily upgraded 8-core Mac Pro from 2009, even if I were to upgrade it to 12 cores!




I remember installing MS DOS from floppy discs - does that date me?!?

Mac is on to mountains and locations now - El Capitan mountain, High Sierra, Mojave, Catalina island, Big Sur... The current version is Mac OS 11.4, Big Sur.

I thought that Win 98 SE (Second Edition) was the best OS of the time and did fix most of the mistakes of 95 and 98. That was actually my stable OS for a long time. I completely skipped ME and later Vista. I had hung on to XP for quite a while too as that was a good OS. After that, no issues at all with Win 2000, 7, 8, & now 10.

<RANT>I think one reason I've had no issues with Win OSs is that since Windows NT/2000, I've put in my 40 hours a week in IT working in them. Most companies you work for in IT have their company standard OS which these days is usually the most recent Win version. So you don't have much choice other than to learn and work in the OS. With all those hours spent you definitely learn to get around the deficiencies to the point you no longer see them. That's why typically when M$FT releases a new Windows version, I jump on it right away for my home machines. I get excited to get those hours in and get sh%& figured out. Just another perspective.</RANT>

My first OS for a personal computer was on cassette tape. Does that date me?

My first computer was a TI-99/4a. The OS was on a chip, but anything else ran on a cartridge t hat went into a slot that lasted about 2 years before it wore out and the contacts were worn out. There was also a slot for a 4 inch wide plug end that was connected to a cable we all called "the firehose" though it was a flat cable. That went to an expansion box where you could add more memory and other IDE slot based cards. Everybody and their uncle told me that the TI would NEVER run floppy discs. I experimented with controller cards, burning 2 of them out in the process before finding the right combination of connections that allow it to work with the TI. Then there was figuring out the right parsing to access the floppies. I had 2 DS/DD drives and I was the KING of the TI world. Of course the whole community was like "Can you make me one like that?" I declined. Let them learn on their own!

Remember in the early days of hard drives when we would get a 40 meg drive and say "I'll NEVER fill this drive up!" Now we have 128 GB in our cell phones.

I went to an NT seminar and they gave out copies of Windows NT v.99, one before 1.0!! It came on like 37 3.5" floppies. And in true Micro$oft fashion, disc 29 had a bad byte and you couldn't install it because of that. It took many phone calls but they finally had enough complaints that they made a good copy of disc 29 and sent them out upon request.

The first copy of BIAB I ever purchased came on 5.25" floppies and ran on MS-Dos.

What's a good model Mac to look at used? I can't really afford a new one. Also one caveat is if it is going to be my main computer it has to support 3 monitors. Here in the Casa del Eastside control room I run 3 monitors.

According to its press, MSFT is phasing out MS Paint in favor of next-to-useless Paint 3D. I use Paint a lot for a number of things, including sheet music. I'll write a lead sheet in NCH Crescendo, export it to .jpg and from there on out,
it's Paint. Once you get used to it, you can even change the notes on the staffs with copy/paste. Nothing open-source really compares. Just my luck -- about the only use I have for MSFT is Paint and they quit it. Maybe the kids are making too many politically incorrect Memes for FB.
Spot the tweaks:
https://www.webdirectory21.com/hymn/its_good_to_be_home.htm

Ed, if I were in your shoes I would purchase an inexpensive refurbished computer from TigerDirect, put Win 10 on it, then keep it off line. That way you could continue to use Paint. This of course assumes that MS does discontinue Paint.

Me too Ed. I like it's simplicity for grabbing and getting screenshots but M$FT has done this with other light utilities in the past. I had used Microsoft Photo Editor a lot before they wiped that one too.

P.S. - Backup C:\Windows\System32\mspaint.exe to a personal storage folder so you can just run off the executable when they do destroy it. Just did so on my machine.

Sweet Eddie! My first one was in a similar vein in the same time period......

Ed Shaw, "discontinuing" means they won't support it. I doubt seriously they will forceably erase it from your computer. Windows 10 has both versions NOW. You may want to copy it and rename the to anything but "paint" so if they DO try to remove it there will be no program called paint for them to remove. Make it "Monet" or something you will remember. It MIGHTH take some registry editing as long as real mspaint is there.

Steve, my first DOS based computer was an IBM, model number I don't remember, but it was numbers, like 5150 or something. I paid almost 4 grand for a computer that compared to computers of 2021 was a real pile of manure. Slow, heavy... Ran Microsoft Basic that was on a ROM chip. Picture trying to run on wet Georgia red clay in your bare feet. That's how it ran. Launch a program and 45 seconds later it started populating the screen. Horrible. BUT, at the time, it was THE thing! That was like 1982 or so. 40 years of technology advancement later I am sitting in a room with a computer running an i5, with 3 27 inch monitors, and a 200 mbps internet connection, watching TV, playing music, WRITING music...

I truly love this stuff.

(And getting close to ready for an overnight road trip to somewhere near St Louis. I have to pick something up over that way.)

Mario.
i agree 100 percent. i love refurbished pc's.
if i can use an analogy. a new camry is 35k plus BUT a camry with only 70k on the clock ranges around 17k or so at some dealers with warranty. no brainer. still a new vehicle.

you can buy refurb i5/4570 or i7 systems now with one year warranties and win included (some with win 7) for coupla hundred buks.
eat paint like no tomorrow and many other apps.
OR if you want the basis for a great daw that will eat traks and plug ins (unless your running a zillion) with loads of ports that you can stuff ssd's in and loads of memory i love the off lease refurb hp z and lenovo desktop workstations that oroginally cost thousands and can be picked up for 600 buckies or so.
(god how i miss "get fuzzy bucky" lol. reminded me of my bossy cat lol.)
they come with dual xeons/ssd's/loads of ram/usb ports/internal expansion slots/win etc etc. and warranties. those workstations are beasts. i highly recommend testing one out.

refurbs forever ! lol.

oldmuso
miss my old atari for midi ? lol nah !

I hear you - I'm always eager to try out the new versions of Windows or macOS - although I never put them onto a production machine unless I need to! My studio computer is still running macOS High Sierra for that exact reason - if it ain't broke, don't fix it!



The 2009-2012 Mac Pro is probably your best bet. With the right video cards, you can have 16 monitors!



Dang! I use Paint for creating a lot of screenshots for tutorials or tech support here, it does exactly what I need it to do.



Adjusted for inflation, that's just under $300. We've beaten that price point today with the Raspberry Pi, Android tablets, and Chromebooks/Chromeboxes - what an age we live in!

I used to complain about that, but looking back, I made a BOATLOAD of money setting up "OS Next" on their computers. That early look at the "next" helped me get a head start. I did NOT appreciate that in the Windows 8 era they set the screen up so the pc, laptop, tablet and Windows phone all had the same user interface. THAT is what the "Take over the world" pic was about. I used to make house calls JUST to make Windows look like Windows and not a phone. I get the business model that if someone has that interface on their computer they might be motivated to buy a Windows phone. I just didn't appreciate it.

I was THRILLED about the Y2K hysteria!! I worked contracts for as high as $28 an hour doing data backups, imaging new computers with NT, and pulling the data back down. My pal Jason and I did a rollout at the battery place with the bunny and we built a little impromptu server farm to dump user data to. 4 PCs, named Dump1 2,3, and 4. I used 1 and 2, he used 3 and 4. We wrote batch files to scan the user's PC and find doc, jpg, gif, etc.. and dumped them to a dump server. Then when that finished we imaged the computer from the department specific CDs we made with images on them. We had the system down so well we each did 4 at a time in the morning and 4 at a time in the afternoon, so we did 80 PCs a week. The prep took all the time. Tweaking those images for the red hallway, the green hallway, etc... And the engineers... oy! Some of the software was not compatible with NT (one was called Manugistics) so we had to battle with the OEMs to get a patch ready, because everybody using Manugistics was going to have the problem.

28 bucks an hour and that lasted 9 months. (We stayed around 6 weeks after 2000 began to make sure everything was okay, catch the stragglers who may have been traveling and such.)

Good times. Retirement is better though. By a large margin.

Cool story, thanks for the share....


Cool, I worked at their HQ in St. Louis briefly in 2004.

I talked to the IT god there every Friday with the weekly tally. She LOVED us. Other than Manugistics that was one of the smoothest rollouts I ever did. Jason and I worked well together. Sat down over wings on day 1 and came up with the plan, presented it the morning of day 2, and the person we reported to said "Just do it." We always planned to start the afternoon backups at 11:30, JUST before lunch, so we could take 90 minutes for lunch. I still talk to that dude about once a month, 22 years later.

I asked him once "Did you ever marry that girl who would call you with every little bit of minutia in her life? Like calling YOU in tears because she didn't like her haircut? And you were like 'What do you want ME to do about it'?" He said "Yeah. Briefly." That was WAY too many levels of crazy for me!

FWIW there are plenty of free replacements for Paint that are better (IMHO).

Photofiltre (spelling intended) is free for home use
Paint.NET (weird name and can take a bit of avoiding the ads to get to the actual free product, but is wonderful for the price). Supports Layers, Transparencies, etc.

One of our programmers showed me that one a while back.
I kissed Paint goodbye years ago.

Remember, if this doesn't work, it's YOUR fault...

Is there a place to find the download in, you know, English? Mine is en Francais...

I MAY be able to live with paint.net but at first blush those toolbars are like how the cavemen did it. I wanted to put in a white text box and I had to literally eye-dropper a piece of white to do it. And there is no cursor control that makes sense. If I type "hey rharv" and then want to change the color I can't select it with the mouse. How old is that program anyway

Photofiltre in English is here -
http://www.photofiltre-studio.com/pf7-en.htm

I'm not saying they are the latest/greatest, but I doubt generic Paint could do any better.
That was my simple point. There are alternatives for no cost; losing 'Paint' really doesn't mean much to me.
I use Photofiltre most commonly (quick simple efficient). I don't remember the last time I opened Windows Paint.
To each his own.

You can get Photofiltre in a version that runs off USB .. put a thumb drive in any computer and run it without needing to install. I think its a pretty cool freebie.

As far as a white box for text, yeah, most decent imaging software will try to overlay text with a clear background as default. Logos, sliders on websites, etc.
Many times a white box is not preferable. At least in my experience.

+++ Irfanview +++ includes a F12 "Paint" toolbar.

IrfanView is a fast, compact and innovative FREEWARE (for non-commercial use) graphic viewer for Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8 and 10. It is designed to be simple for beginners and powerful for professionals. From the feature description:

Quote:

Paint option - to draw lines, circles, arrows, straighten image etc.

I've used this free program even longer than I've been a Band-in-a-Box user. It's that good.

This looks more "paint like" with the fill tool right on a toolbar and such. With the exception of Pro Tools, I don't want any software I have to go back to school to learn. (Which I did for Pro Tools.)

I am also a long time user of Irfanview. I only used it for audio and never messed with the picture side. You need to DL all of the Plug-ins to get to the photo side of Irfanview. HoweverIrfanview will not work with print screen. You must save the print screen to a picture prior to using it in Irfanview.

The free Monosnap is what I have been using.
https://monosnap.software.informer.com/

I can capture all or just part of a screen as well as adding arrows, text, etc.

LOL, it's not that bad and you're not that dumb.......

Actually, I'm not overly worried.

They will maintain Windows 10 for some years yet, and progress is inevitable, otherwise we'd still have DOS 3 or Windows 3.1 (and be driving T-Model cars).

Nothing will stop such progress, but there is a choice: get on the bus, or stay at the bus stop. Ultimately, it's a user choice.

Exactly why I like being a boat rocker, Trev. I believe the only boat that doesn't rock is the one that's dead in the water.

Hey! Don't underestimate my level of stupidity! LOL

Eddie, c'mon ! I've never known you to be rock the boat! What gives?

Thanks, everyone, for chipping in on that MS Paint situation. I have been working with Paintdotnet; so I do appreciate those suggestions and will dig in. When Illustrator went to the cloud, I figured it was time to bow out. I have irfanview loaded and working. So far, so good.

Can you edit with Irfanview like you could with Paint? I always found it to be only a viewer.

Press F12 and a Paint toolbar appears.

Nice. Thanks.

I just took a look at windows 11. On the surface of things it is not a huge change. Who knows what will happen if you install it.

Here is a video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJR3-UtmoUU

Billy

Ugggh, the guy said they are taking ability to start with a local user account away. That's something I like to do as I try to avoid all the Microsoft Store. We'll have to see if they can be created after initial Windows setup. They are integrating store stuff more and more with each release, making it more difficult to avoid it.

If I have to log in with a Micro$oft account, it's absolutely time to turn to Mac. That is too controlling for me. It's bad enough they phone home so often to check my license key. Time to move on.

EDIT: Correction since publishing: You can sign into Windows 11 using a local account (although it's not quite as intuitive as you might think!). When it asks for your Microsoft account details, click "sign-in options" and then select "Offline account".

Good, I didn't see that. That's how it is in 10.

Is this true for Windows 11 Pro and Home? Last time I checked for Windows 10 this was only allowed in the Pro version.

Eddie: Venturing into the ol' You Tube tutorial jungle, Jim Lindsay on select>crop>resize.
Jim Lindsay Tutorial

That's pretty cool to know for Irfanview.

It's always the F12 key that opens magic stuff, like in a browser

All.
heres a rare "mini rant"/thoughts from me on how us consumers of tech can protect ourselves in the coming years.
(like many pg users i worked in tech for a few years)
1. win 11. if its user friendly and doesnt get in my way i'll probably upgrade after waiting awhile to see if it causes any user issues..particularly for recording rigs like mine that are kept off the net because i want my rig kept clean of stuff or any possibility of viruses etc.
if it boots fast i'll be interested in win 11 and IF
particularly it helps recording rigs run better.
my recording rig boots fast in 5 secs or so cos its not loading all the security stuff // anti virus etc that my pc on the the net does...however if win 11 is very intrusive and wants to control my life...forget about it. in this case i'll again buy refurb pc's with win 7 or 10 on. for many years now day in/out ive done songs useing refurbs with nary a problem. with no bloatware either and never a crash. if i'm really pushed i'll find a way to do songs useing linux on refurb pc's/. and as i do now use my cheap 80 buk amazon tablet for the net/surfing/researching stuff. love it.
2. Apple. i would love an m1 mac like an imac. but i quell my lust for one by asking myself how long before its obsolete and replaced by an m2 imac ?
for me as a consumer the price of an imac is not trivial,
and i have other family commitments. just simple stuff like paying the never ending monthly utility bills.
i feel my whole darn life is bills and taxes.
my main concern with going to mac is how long will my financial investment last ? before a new model comes out ?
maybe in a couple of years buying a refurb m1 imac with warranty is a shrewder approach ? save money and any tech kinks ironed out ?
my overriding concern is...is apple (like the iphones) adopting a strategy to tempt mac users to buy a new mac model every year or so ?
if thats the strategy..sorry ..no can do ; i have other financial priorities. if however there was an upgrade path for existing users of m1 mac hardware...depending on pricing...i would probably be more interested.
another strategy is just buy older powerfull mac
refurbs that are cheap with warranty. there are lots.
3. in closeing i'm watching carefully developments on the raspberry pi computer thats sold now apparently over 30 million units worldwide. and is attracting many devs to it.
if i'm pushed now that pi runs reaper and traction daws, thats another possible future option. particularly as its 80 buks. if the pi gets a 3ghz processor i reckon things will get very interesting. cos more developers will get attracted to the platform.

why is it i get the feeling a lot of big organisations try and control my life these days ? its tiring and i'm fed up with it.
i'm sure lots of others feel the same.

best
oldmuso

oldmuso,
I was long a hardware geek with PC's
I swapped out cpu's, changed ram & HD's, video cards, overclocked, even watercooled.
I don't do any of that anymore.

my take on mac hardware is much simpler:
I buy a current model new with near maximum hardware configuration and it lasts me a decade without modifications.

My current macbook pro is almost 10 years old and works fine for biab and Logic Pro. Both of those apps are reasonably resource intensive.
I have not thought about upgrades or tweaking during the period.
It just chugs along.
No drama

The new Mac Mini with the M1x chip interest me. Hopefully we'll see those by years end. I expect a maxed out config to come in around $2k.
About half what I paid for my Mac 10 years ago.
Good value to me.

My MacBook pro may still be worth $500 or so on the used market also.
Bonus.

mrgeeze.
1. re keeping a computer for 10 years.
yeh i get it. but unfortunately i dont have your patience. lol.
what the heck happened to moores law that said "power would double every 18 months" ?. it seems ages its taken to get to 3/4ghz processors. laws of physics of course.
2. paying 2k for computer. this is where i get in a quandary.
i can get dual xeon refurb "beasts" of pc's for 600 bucks with all the trimmings (eg hp z ). OR if i'm tempted to pay 2k to 3k for a pc ;
i would have to consider one of the custom pc's from custom builders of turnkey recording pc's that the big recording studios buy.
just pure dsp beasts that run huge trak and plug in counts.
eg...check these out....
purrfect audio, rok box, adk pro audio, scan.co.uk etc
eg this very extreme pc up to 384 ddr4 of ram and xeons all the way. wowser.
https://silentpc.com/daw/studio-digital-audio-workstation
the above really cranks me up.
gotta win the lotto lol.

best
oldmuso

$4400?

Well guys, my birthday is June 27th, so if you all chipped in a couple of bucks...

(Well, more than a couple)

yep 4k is way way outside my budget eddie.

be curious tho' of peoples opinions of the following custom systems built for recording studios.
i'm considering a custom built pc maybe at some point.

question....would these beat out a m1 imac for max trak/plug in counts/dsp processing power ?
what i mean is if someone WAS going to spend 2k on a rig...what would beat a m1 imac ?

https://studiocat.com/opencart2/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=86

and heres a nice rig at only 1200 buks. would this beat a m1 mac mini ?

https://studiocat.com/opencart2/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=78

they also have laptops and rack systems.

i guess my overriding question is , what beats out m1 mac minis and imacs at less price and more dsp power ?

i cant wait for 200ghz processors lol. but i feel its gonna be years yet.
best
oldmuso

I wouldn't make 4400 bucks making music on that computer so it isn't even close to being worth my while to buy something like that.