Microsoft downgrade , we are on our way to Windows 95

spapakons said:

I don't remember Homegroup in Windows XP and earlier....

For good reason, it was a new feature first seen in Windows 7.

Microsoft said:

You probably have seen or heard about HomeGroup by now. We demonstrated it at PDC this year during Steven’s keynote, it was mentioned a few times at WinHec, and some of you may have even tried it on your PCs with the PDC pre-beta build of Windows 7.

When it worked it worked well (so I hear, I continued to use the reliable Workgroup sharing). It did however seem to be prone to unanticipated problems, particularly if you ever replaced, upgraded or changed the name of the machine that set up the Homegroup in the first place. Sorting out such problems was apparently a non-trivial task, not in keeping with the design goals for Homegroup, hence its demise as a failed experiment.

Microsoft said:

...I hope this post has given you some insight into some of our design decisions, as well as the capabilities of the feature. HomeGroup will highlight some of the cool capabilities Windows has had for a long time in a friendly and easy fashion...

At Home with HomeGroup in Windows 7 Engineering Windows 7

jimbo45 said:

Hi folks

perhaps we should all go back to Windows 3.11 (actually for its time it worked quite well).

Attachment 214860

CUTEEE!!!! The good old days!!! All we need in a 640x480 res and less than 12 MBs ! LOL

clam1952 said:

IMO most of what we have "lost" was not required or essential to me anyway.

But did we gain anything really say over the past 3~4 updates ? only shuffling the interface then deprecating stuff and giving us down time of no less than 4 hours to update on an average pc with average connection and another day or two to clean up the after party mess the update made and searching the net for why arent the options we are used to not in place any more weather they are deprecated or moved to another location for god knows what reason ?

Cheers

Bree said:

hence its demise as a failed experiment.

And ? Where is the replacement ? this is 2018 , where is the 2 steps clicky wizard that gets us up and running in file and print share in a home ? by the way us being there from the beginning give us some edge with MS mentality , the millennia kids when watch me do what i do to solve trivial things that can't be achieved but through command line prompt get to think i'm a hacker ! LOL

nIGHTmAYOR said:

And ? Where is the replacement ? this is 2018...

Workgroup sharing, first seen in Windows for Workgroups 3.1, has been a feature of all versions of Windows since then. It works reliably to this day.

Bree said:

Workgroup sharing, first seen in Windows for Workgroups 3.1, has been a feature of all versions of Windows since then. It works reliably to this day.

You mean the one that's hard to setup for non pro users and that would require you hand the group member your email password to join as now adays your account is often your email too or create a non administrator account on your machine if you do know stuff about network administration so they would not be able to have root access to you and then a wifi hacker gets to join it and access the shares by spoofing any machine id on the network as the group itself is without a password and no one tells people they have to change the group name to make it difficult to guess but yet very easy to scan the network for and find it out ? I still wonder how that thing wasn't deprecated too , ah wait , cause awful !
Cheers

nIGHTmAYOR said:

You mean the one that's hard to setup for non pro users and that would require you hand the group member your email password to join as now adays your account is often your email too or create a non administrator account on your machine if you do know stuff about network administration so they would not be able to have root access to you and then a wifi hacker gets to join it and access the shares by spoofing any machine id on the network as the group itself is without a password and no one tells people they have to change the group name to make it difficult to guess but yet very easy to scan the network for and find it out ? I still wonder how that thing wasn't deprecated too , ah wait , cause awful !

No, I mean the Workgroup that any machine on the network can join without a password, and the Sharing Wizard that easy to set up and lets you give Everyone full access without the need for a password if you turn off password protected sharing.

Well I've never thought of the standard sharing as being particularly difficult to set up. In fact I condier it pretty easy. And if you allow only users to access the shares (not everyone) it's also secure. Where's the problem with that?

Besides all these, you have to only do any sharing configuration once, not every day. If you do not know what you are doing, then it is best not to do it alone but ask a more advanced friend (not necessarily professional) to do it for you. I always prefer Advanced Sharing anyway to have full control over what I share and with who. Automatic stuff like Homegroup do not allow you share any folder other than the standard Documents, Music, Videos etc. I have most of my data on a second hard disk and it is a lot easier to share the folders with Advanced Sharing than spending a lot of time to figure out how to do it with Homegroup, provided it can be done. If you do a clean installation of Windows 10, it asks you the first time if you want to share data with the detected network connection or not. If you reply yes, it is set to private and you can access all the other computers on the network. Even if you reply no (set to public) you will be asked to switch to private the first time you try to access the network resources. To share any folder, right-click and select Share or Properties and then go to Share tab. It is that easy! Who needs Homegroup? Never used, I don't miss it. You think Linux is easier? Think again!