The Top 40

They seem to be becoming more and more dysfunctional.
I have 2 brand new Win 10 machines sitting over here doing nothing and I'm over here doing my day to day stuff on a brand new 12 year old machine with Win XP on it, and getting stuff done.

What is a brand new 12 yo machine you ask?
It is a Dell that has been professionally rebuilt.
It cost less than $100 delivered to my door with Win XP SP3 and almost everything I need to be up and running in 24 hours.

I can't run my AutoCAD on the Win 10's, nor my Indexing software at the same time as the built in pdf software. Even just playing mp3's is problematic and don't get me started on the diabolical email process.

srsly, I don't know what these Win 10 things are used for.....certainly not for productivity.
When I get tired of stacking shit up on them I'll box em up and haul em to the curb I guess.

my main surfer is an XP lappy.
The work machine is W7 and it seems to be OK.
W10. Forget about it.

Agreed. W10 is horrid. This from a fond W7 user.

My wife bought a 7 machine in the past and uses it daily and likes it, then a couple weeks ago she got a new Dell with 7 on it too. The old one was getting bogged down.

I suspect 7 will be kicked to the curb in the next year or 2, like they did with XP, as the push to 10 is overwhelming for some reason.

FWIW, I am discovering that not only is XP no longer *supported* but it is also being pushed under the truck. It is becoming problematic to use for online purposes. Add-ons and extensions in chrome and firefox are starting to fail and they are no longer upgradeable. I have a fleet of add-ons for blocking ads, videos, pop-ups, etc., and they are becoming less stable/workable.

I suspect in 2 years I will be out of the online business, for multitudes of reasons, with hardware/software being primary, and content being secondary. The web is saturated with bullshit and sifting through it to find quality is a huge time drain.

"We can always make more money but we can't make more time."
--gs, 2099

Around 15 years or so, after using PCs for years and hating every minute of them, I switched to Macs.

Never have viruses
Never have software problems
Seldom need a tech
Macs version of MicroSoft Office communicates well with PCs

I could say more but there really is no need.

Use a hopped up i7 Windows 7 PC with 2560x1440 monitor and some good speakers for serious web stuff, e.g. studying howto videos on Youtube.... (I'm a tinkerer.) I don't see how you can really use the web on anything less than Win 7 and latest browsers because of web programming (¿)advancements(?).

Use a P4 Windows 2k PC for chip reading/writing, hexing etc. Can't beat 2k and those old programs for that kind of stuff.

Also have a Celeron NUC scewed on the back of my TV to I can switch over and check weather radar and stuff.

Won't go into the wife's stuff. She has one of everything.

Mac....LOL!

I bought a Mac in 1994 to see what it was all about and started laughing at it's cartoonish nature from the first minute. It was incompatible with all my business software and got relegated to a vacant corner of the office. About a year later I gave it to my wife's boss at the time to use for publishing purposes. He's still using it as a printer server in an international trade magazine business though he's said they rarely actually print anything any more - everythings gone digital.

I have a Mac, but so far I have avoided its offer to updegrade to the latest version of MacOS.

For the wife we have a Windoze box with Windows 10. Seems to generally run OK for what she needs, though the interface took some getting used to.

Yeah, no one really knows what goes on under the hood of these computers, just like no one these days understands how modern car engines work. But all is not lost. I get these ever-so-helpful phone calls, unsolicited, from "Microsoft Support Center", or sometimes "Windows Technical Centre", staffed by people with thick Indian accents who, if you allow them, will walk you through a diagnostic process to isolate "technical problems" and will offer, for a modest fee, to fix said problems if only you give them remote access to your computer and, most importantly, to your credit card information. I can now sleep at night knowing that, if I run into a problem, I can just wait for the next call from these kindly folks.

Sleep tight Griz. As Vanderleun says, What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

All right pbird....don't be doin' no laughing' at my Mac, lol.

My Macs have been stellar performers and I have 3 of them at the moment.

I call in a tech about once a year for tiny problems but I never pay for virus protections that need updating 2x a month, malware protection that never works, or East Indian "experts" with horrible English skills that couldn't pour piss out of a boot with 10 rupees taped to the sole, much less assist with any thing technically related. Matter of fact, in all of my 20+ years with a Mac, I've never spoken to a single East Injun.

And as far as soft ware compatibility, mine sings like a bird with the Microsoft Office packages.

Got a refurbished 3 year old solid state EliteBook Pro for $400. Win7, and works like a charm. Win10 destroyed my other computer, and I won't upgrade ever.

My honey upgraded to 10 against my advice. It didn't take long for the problems to start. I bought a 3 terra byte WMD external auto backup digital drive. With that in place and unplugged,
the machine's disc was reformatted and #7 was reinstalled.

Some of the stuff gave problems 'going' backwards but it was a clean job. She learned her lesson.

I hate to be the bearer of ill will (not really) but everyone reading this will be using a Windows operating system in 2 years or less. Bet on it.

How do I know this?

Because the internet browsers and email programs as well as most software programs will no longer work with your old stuff. I am already experiencing this.

When you see that bold yellow banner across the top of your browser saying "Your operating system is no longer compatible with (browser of choice) please upgrade as soon as possible", they mean it.

They aren't asking, they're telling.

Little things will start to happen and you won't like them.

Certain websites you have frequented will start to be problematic, and your adblockers and video blockers will no longer work and when you try to upgrade them you won't be allowed to.

Amazon and others will require you to log in EVERY DAM TIME! Your bank websites will no longer be accessible.

Hackers will start accessing your email address, which is all over the web already, and your old email program will no longer be afforded the opportunity to upgrade with the latest coding to prevent such things.

One morning you'll wake up and find 300+ emails waiting for you, all of them from russian sexually starved wimminz drooling to be your gurlfriend if you buy their stay-hard pills and that old lady in africa wanting to give you $33.73mil that her recently deceased husband the prince left to you.

Every morning will be the same way, but gradually worse.

The bus is leaving the station and you have to have the current Windows ticket if you don't want to be left behind.

I'm not buying any more tickets and have started looking around and have come to the conclusion staying right here in Ludditeville might not be so bad afterall, I mean, as far as I can tell at least 95% of everything web is bullshit anyway.

Like TV 15 years ago, the web has become mostly useless due to the same things that have occurred with the gov't structure (you knew it was coming) - it has become all things to all people and worth nothing to anybody at all except a choice few at the very top.

For more than a year I have been predicting I will be involved with the web for 2 more years at the most and now I'm down to less than 1 year, if these rotten machines with their poisonous childs game programs will even last that long.

Glenn Frey said it best so long ago:

Well, I know it wasn't you who held me down

Heaven knows it wasn't you who set me free

So often times it happens that we live our lives in chains

That we never even know we have the key

Me, I'm already gone, and I'm feeling strong

I will sing this victry song, coz I'm already gone

Damn...now I'm really depressed.Been running W10 since January,it still does weird things that make me want to take a toilet plunger to Bill Gates' face.Edge browser works better than IE,so far...Ghostsniper's probably right,especially since the Overlords are throwing the Net away.

There is but one answer: UNIX.

"Welcome to cyberspace, I'm lost in the fog
Everything's digital I'm still analog
When something goes wrong
I don't have a clue
Some ten year old smart a** has to show me what to do
Sign on with high speed you don't have to wait
Sit there for days and vegetate
I access my email, read all my spam, I'm an analog man.

The whole world's living in a digital dream
It's not really there
It's all on the screen
Makes me forget who I am
I'm an analog man"

Joe Walsh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWZJFy8VQQg

tim