Reply to post: Re: This is why Windows is no longer viable.

Re: This is why Windows is no longer viable.

"you have to wait for MS to acknowledge their cock up, accept that it's their fault, agree to write a fix for it, put the resources needed towards writing it, test it, release it, & eventually push it out to you... in this case nearly half a year later." - when has this ever not been the case? Do you think Patch Tuesday was Microsoft's generosity? It is fixes for problems, mistakes, errors, and the opportunity to ran W10 down everybody's throats.

"If your small business gets their (for example) payroll system crippled because W10's SAAS bricks it, can that business *really* afford to be without the ability to pay any bills for that time while MS pulls it's head out of it's arse? I doubt it." - I don't know about you, but if I was running a small business with a complicated payroll system, I would dedicate one specific machine to that task. The machine would have no unnecessary Internet access, would run no unnecessary software, and would not be updated. Plus, the data files would be backed up regularly and tested restoring the data on another machine. Anything else is just failing to take core parts of the business seriously. If I was in charge of IT in an SME, I'd be very inclined to set up a sacrificial lamb, a machine to receive updates. Updates that would not be applied to the other machines until the lamb has been tested. Why? Because what sort of IT person would permit unfettered access to unchecked "updates" from companies in another country? Things that go into a machine that a business relies upon should be justified.

!This applies to private citizens as well. What if the W10 SAAS cripples some part of the OS that you *have* to have running in order to use the computer?" - doesn't need to be SaaS. I'm still running XP (don't waste your breath arguing...) on an old box. It sits behind a NAT and I go online using Firefox and half a dozen plugins preventing pretty much everything from running. Etc etc. Anyway, the other day I had chkdsk perform a periodic check of the machine. It did its magic and somehow trashed the system to the point where it would boot, but no applications would run. Something to do with RPC? I don't know. I did a restore reinstall which luckily fixed the problem, but really Windows is pretty sensitive to having its insides tickled. There needs to be an "oh crap, revert!" option.

"you're without the use of your computer until they do." - one of the reasons I have not moved beyond XP is my old TV capture dongle (that I use to watch TV) only has an XP driver. Should the machine pack up, I think I'd be very inclined to set up Ubuntu or Mint in a dual-boot when putting XP back. Why? Because later versions of Windows have no compelling reason for me to stay. I'm looking now at what my computer does for me. I use the Pi for programming and fun, but the PC is for internet, watching DVDs, and so on. Linux can do that.

"Photographers, what if Win10 suddenly decides that all the image files you want to edit are now classified as "Kill With Extreme Prejudice" & deleted as soon as they're detected?" - I'd wonder if that would more likely be a balls-up with the anti-virus software. But, then, ever hear of this thing called backups? If something is important to you, dump it on to a USB harddisc. Dump it onto a DVD-ROM. Whatever. Don't keep just one source for your important information. A nearby lighting strike could toast the computer and evaporate your data faster than you can comprehend what just happened.

"Or if the highest resolution it'll allow is something you can do better than with an Etch-A-Sketch & one palsied hand?" - chances are your data is still there. Whether or not it will show it to you correctly is a different matter. Example? I have a little e-reader. It actually does make photos look like a distorted Etch-A-Sketch. But that's the display and the way the data was processed. The full colour 14mpix photo is still a full colour 14mpix photo even if I don't see it as that.

"Audio mixers, do you think you could handle having a perma-muted system for ~6 months" [...] etc etc

Yes, errant updates can kill your computer. XP's updater once upon a time trashed the system. I recall one of the AV products (Symantic?) released an update that considered a core part of Windows to be a virus. Pretty much anything that touches core parts of the OS could go wrong, with disastrous consequences.

However, that said, there are a dozen scenarios that are even worse which have no relation to bad updates - storm, fire, flood, disgruntled ex-employees, children... If there is data that is important to you (or your business), then you will take care to make backups that you can get to. I put "will" in bold letters, because the bladder-loosening sinking feeling that comes from realising that all of the photos of your daughter's christening have vanished and will never come back[*], that's the sort of thing that rams home the point of backups and you'll suddenly find yourself taking a lot more care over important data. If you don't, you have nobody to blame but yourself. Same, then, if you are happy to put the behaviour and activity of your OS in the hands of somebody else. At least my XP install has a disc here. It sits on my harddisc. Nobody messes with it. I can wipe it all off and put it back on, or maybe run it in a virtual machine (not tried, I don't think my computer is up to that). Ditto Linux. I have an Ubuntu DVD-ROM. It installs itself (actually pretty rapidly) from the disc. It can update. You can choose not to. Though, for some reason, I'd be inclined to trust that more than Microsoft. Maybe because I think a thousand angry Internet users are more likely to convince the Ubuntu guys to, you know, test stuff before it gets released...

* - Thankfully that hasn't happened to me. I lost a month of work on a project due to a disc crash back in the mid '90s. In a way it was good as I sort of knew what was required to recreate the work, but it was still a bloody hassle and involved pulling a couple of all-nighters to get caught up, back when I was young enough that such a thing wouldn't whack me out. And, yes, it was the one-shock method to learning the value of backups.