Windows 10 forced upgrade

Microsoft are famed for making life difficult for competitors. They deliberately make changes that will cause others problems. This also seems to apply to people who write windows software using windows software that is specifically intended to do it. This included C++ Visual Studio and others.

PDF's - well when I have done my ODT or for that matter a spread sheet I can save in pdf, MS formats and load them but pdf loads could do with some improvements. Last time I tried images were lost. No complaints from people who have used them so far but when I save in word format I may not be a able to save in the latest greatest. Same for spreadsheets.

I just tried opening a pdf from libreoffice. It fired up libredraw but it looks like images are still not loaded. Maybe one day. One file I opened seems to be password protected for editing - it asked for the password. I can load this one into a reader without a password so assume it's just there to prevent anyone from editing it.

LibreCAD is looking better and better as well. I'm trying to get the dev's to make it more mouse friendly by using some techniques that are used in photo processing applications to allow easy very fine editing via a mouse.. CAD packages are usually crap in this respect and rely on snapping which is useless for very fine detailed scaled drawing. Sometime I do succeed with this sort of thing as I never ask for anything that would need very major changes to the package. Try doing that with MS.

John

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For those that have not yet had MS force the Win 10 update you may be able to prevent it. You can go to your control panel, in programs and settings, and set all Windows updates to "download only" NOT "download and install" which is the default setting on many computers.

Not saying this is a guarantee that a forced update will not occur, but it is less likely.

Regular full backups to memory sticks are a good idea.

Several types of midrange/ high end CAD programs still do not certify Win 10 to run them, and may not work properly with Win 10. Check regularly with your VAR for status on this if you have such a CAD program. JD

.... but remember also to check whether those updates contain the "important" one that forces automatic updates (a la Win-10) on Win-7 and Win-8 users.

That's the way this one runs Jeff since last year no GWX on the 64bit drive took it off last year.

For some reason switched GWX off on other drive running 32 bit, big mistake cant even play a cd. They had me on that win 10 last October 'admin privileges' ended up doing a clean install and have to do it again.

Neil its because every Win 10 user is a peer to peer sharer unless disabled of course but not that many would know about such under hand dealings.

Just a step closer to Cloud software and pay as you go.
I am not condoning illegal activities but MS are watching and logging everything you do, emails to what piccies you have looked at. Google and Apple major players as well. Do a search plenty of topics out there make your own mind up, didn't think we were in the eastern block.

Semi tracking - looking where people go and identifying them has had major improvements in recent years. One way was a unique string of cookies, now browsers offer persistent storage for the types that did that. It'll probably evolve even further over time. All down to browsers and nothing to do with the OS but that could do a much better job of it.

Email's have a problem if people open them in full html. They just access a directory on some server that is unique to that particular email. If the directory has been accessed they know it's been read or at least opened. Spammers make a lot of use of this as well. The usual trick is to load an image from the remote server or if a paypal etc spoof load images from paypal or who ever.

John

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Edited By Ajohnw on 18/05/2016 00:15:29

My 2cents

One of my pooters tried to force me to "upgrade" Win 8.1 to 10 but the other has never bothered me

The difference seems to be my browser(Firefox 27.01) I don't ever get nagged with it, when I used Internet Explorer it was a nightmare trying to stop it upgrading

Does anyone use SpyBotS&D (Search & Destroy), and its sister AntiBeacon?

Bernard

I've actually found that, of the free ones, CutePDF does a pretty good job. It used to be the default pdf printer for most folk at work before I retired.

its worth pointing out that Microsoft have never been keen on the PDF format so have never really supported it. Apple in contrast have had it built into their OS for many years. Although 80% of desktops where I used to work were Windows machines PDF generation was always done on one of the Macs. Adobe InDesign files were exported to PDF with Acrobat and MS office documents were exported with the Mac OS. PDF has been an accepted and widely used standard in the print industry for many years but even as a home user I've had no problems exporting OpenOffice documents to PDF with the Mac OS. I'm glad you've found a solution that works for you peak4.

Must admit I can't see any problems with using something that generates a pdf via print, It's a logical place to put it as many apps do print. Also as surprising as it might seem pdf's are vaguely related to a printer language anyway. Ripped off from Unix a long time ago.

Personally I would much rather print a djvu but as my printed pdf's are generally fairly small it doesn't matter that much anyway as there is no need to search them.

John

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Just over a week ago W10 forced its way onto my computer two days before I went on a three week holiday. Needless to say there were all sorts of problems associated with the normally simple tasks that I carry out on my computer. I wasted several hours trying to do stuff that normally takes minutes and even then I did not manage to do all the stuff that was needed before I went on holiday. I use Office 365 and surprisingly that seemed to be the root of my problems that and copying files to different locations. My nephew, bless him, who usually helps me out in extemis, said " Bring the box round to me, go on holiday and when you get back it will be fixed. "

Phew! Arn't I jammy.

OK so Microsoft need an updated system for various reasons and I was going to up grade at a time of my choosing but what makes me really angry is that they arrogantly steal my precious time at a most inconvenient moment.

GRRRR,😡😩

Some one once did some sums on how much time MS have wasted world wide in total - no idea where it is now or how accurate but the number was enormous. It does keep support people in a job though.

John

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Edited By Ajohnw on 18/05/2016 10:51:36

I've heard that starting some time in July the Win10 upgrades will incur a charge of something like £90, so if you are considering upgrading then a free forced upgrade could be a mixed blessing.

Gary your quite right about a charge being introduced link

H

Just repeating myself in an attempt to stop this discussion meandering on. Download this free utility, install it, and you won't be bothered.

Windows 7 mainstream support stopped last year but extended support will go on to 2020.

Given that GWX _control_panel.exe currently provides the solution to the WIn_10 problem

... May I be permitted a slight digression ?

I have two Samsung laptops, both running [?] 'Win_7 Ultimate'

Both are currently struggling to communicate with the Windows Update service:

Typically; it takes hours or days to check for updates, and even longer to download them.

Both machines currently have about 40 updates listed, but not downloadable.

I have been running 'Resource Monitor' to see what [little] is happening ... The 'Network' graph is auto-scaling to 10 Kbps, and typical values are 2-5 ... To all practical purposes, this is near-zero.

The performance is similar whether I am using WiFi or the Cat5 cable ... and the problem ONLY occurs when using Windows Update or Microsoft Update [I have tried both, and have run all the 'fixes' I can find] ... normal internet usage is fine.

Any advice, please ?

MichaelG.

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P.S. ... For preference, I use my Macs & iPad,

but I do need to retain a Win_7 environment.

I have set my computers to ..... Do not download updates...Do not check for downloads and updates.

I have not been bothered by Microsoft so far ......

Have you thought about running Windows 7 on your Mac? I've read that in some cases Windows runs faster on a Mac than natively on a PC. Just a thought.

The printer language you're thinking of Ajohn is Postcript which is built into the Mac OS. Apart from Windows all the other popular operating systems seem to be UNIX based. Mac OSX, IOS, Andriod, Linux etc.

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Vic,

Thanks for the thought, but ... after my last experience of installing a Microsoft product onto the Mac, I swore I would never contemplate doing it again.

This is not the place to dicuss the gory details, but it was a lesson to me.

MichaelG.

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P.S. ... Strangely enough; the Win_7 machine had a burst of activity this afternnoon, and suddenly downloaded and installed 31 updates. Although no-one has advised me as to what might be wrong; it seems that the mere act of asking the question on this forum has improved things .... which is rather Spooky