10 doesn’t fix the desktop it fixes 8's reputation

Layback Bear · 09 Oct 2014

First of all I think we should all thank Microsoft for Vista. It got us to Windows 7.

Will we find pieces of previous Windows systems in W-10; hell yes we will. Why would anybody think different.
Keeping the good parts and loosing the bad parts is a great idea.

Microsofts idea of bring out the consumer testing of W-10 so early in it's development stage means to me Bosses at Microsoft finally got their heads out of that dark smelly hole. I believe they have finely decided to listen to it's already billions or so customers.
I'm as sure as a outsider can be that Microsofts App Store is trying a little Apple trick.
Surly that can be understood in todays market place. Adding things through Apps of ones choice gets the E.U. off their backs.
If they include many of these Apps in W-10 then Microsoft will be back in the E.U. Courts for more years than we can count.

Remember the BS Microsoft went through in the E.U. Courts with I.E. and Windows Media Player being included with their operating system. A App Store should help with those E.U. Court problem.

I have that feeling that W-10 is going to be a great choice for a operating system when it's completed.
The direction Microsoft is going with it's new management gives me that felling.

I remember when I was on XP-Pro thinking about using W-7. I kept putting it off thinking their was no way they could improve on XP. All the stories I read about Vista I never tried it. One day I decided to build a new computer and just for S and G installed W=7 and have been happy every sense that I finally got off of XP and went to W-7.
Now I'm thinking I will just keep using W-7 along with W-10. What ever the price of W-10 is I keep thing it will be cheaper than the fans I have in my computers.
When one thinks of the money they have in hardware and other programs the price of a operating system is a small part money wise in their system that will not work without a operating system.
Windows 10 gives me and my hardware a good feeling.

Layback Bear

P.S. How do you all like my new signature by Stephanie?

Jody Thornton · 09 Oct 2014

See I think similarly to Cr00Zng. Right now, it's a fun ride trying out Windows 8.1 Eval Edition (50+ more days left) and Windows 10 TP, just to see what's out there after Vista extended support expires.

But once April 2015 is done, I'll resume using Vista, which works GREAT! on my PC. I can mange to customize it to my liking, and it's not tied to the cloud in any way (ala Bing Search and the like). If I were able to get extended support updates past April 2017, I'd stay with Vista quite honestly.

After that, I'll go with Windows 8.1 which will keep me supported until 2023. And with IOBit Start Menu 8, I'll be good.

I don't hate Windows 10 so far, I'm just not WOWED by it.

Cr00zng · 10 Oct 2014

I agree that Vista works great, still have a laptop and desktop with Vista. Adding an SSD drive to the laptop made Vista run just as fast as W7 on the same hardware. For that matter, adding an SSD to Netbook (remember of the little 10" screen buggers?) allowed W7 to be installed and runs great.

In my view, W10 is integrating with the cloud too much that the previous Windows did not do. The chances are that this had been a business decision with little or no regards to end user privacy. It remains to be seen, if MS can unset Google from its mega-marketing title, but the chances are that they'll succeed. Simply because of their market share and most people don't really care if companies establish and sell their profiles. Besides, by now how would one know which company actually sold his/her profile?

In this thread, post #16 :

https://www.tenforums.com/general-dis...sk-view-2.html

I've looked the active "call-home" connections. In short...

The "explorer.exe" maintains connection to the MS cloud, weather it is open or not.

The "searchui.exe", part of the Cortana engine also connects home whenever a search is used or browser opened. Cortana may not be active in W10 as of yet, but it does run in the background. By default installation of W10, administrators don't have access to the "C:/Program Files/Apps" folder where Cortana is located. As an administrator, one can take ownership of this folder and view/change the content. I have yet to find a way to uninstall Cortana and other apps, deleting the files would probably hose W10. If that's true, it would just show how much MS values the tracking capabilities of W10.

Maybe I'll backup my Vmware and try deleting Cortana. Also, try moving the "explorer.exe" from W8.1 to replace the same to W10 and see what happens...

Jody Thornton · 10 Oct 2014

Cr00zng said:

Maybe I'll backup my Vmware and try deleting Cortana. Also, try moving the "explorer.exe" from W8.1 to replace the same to W10 and see what happens...

I'll be interested in hearing the results. Though in the finished product, I'm sure that Windows 10 will have less resemblance to Windows 8.1, so I wonder if any successful hacks we make now, will work at RTM time. Remember Longhorn Beta Builds such as 3790 were more like Server 2003 than Vista. Most of 2003/XP's codebase was there. Someone debated that before on here, but this is correct.

mart1981 · 10 Oct 2014

Jody Thornton said:

I'll be interested in hearing the results. Though in the finished product, I'm sure that Windows 10 will have less resemblance to Windows 8.1, so I wonder if any successful hacks we make now, will work at RTM time. Remember Longhorn Beta Builds such as 3790 were more like Server 2003 than Vista. Most of 2003/XP's codebase was there. Someone debated that before on here, but this is correct.

If history is anything to go by - M$ conveniently disabled the registry hack for booting straight into desktop with Win8. Cortana I would have thought was vital to M$ for revenue stream purposes so my betting would go on this being mandatory. Personal privacy won't come into their thinking IMO.

MikeHawthorne · 10 Oct 2014

Hi

I use Agent Ransack for my local search app.

I've used it for a long time, I'm used to it, and when Windows search couldn't find anything AR always could.
It is easy to use, but has a lot of options as to how you want to search if you want to use them.

Mike

PS. I forgot I'm also using Agent Ransack as a local search application.
Another thing I've used for years.

I'm not quite sure how the search anywhere thing works, I typed in .jpg and it showed about 3 of the hundreds of .jpg files on my computer?

When I did .mp3 I got the same thing, when I asked to "Show all Results" it opened my browser?

Mike

Cr00zng · 10 Oct 2014

Well, deleting the "Microsoft.Cortana_1.2.0.0_x64__8xxxxxxxxxxxe" and the "Microsoft.Cortana_2014.913.601.3539_neutral_~_8xxxxxxxxxxxe" folders did not break W10. It simply shut off the "searchui.exe" and it no longer connects home. A working admin account needs to take ownership of the apps folder, otherwise the Cortana folders deletion is blocked by the "TrustedInstaller" account.

The The folder name in both cases are upended by the "_8xxxxxxxxxxxe" not for just Cortana, but all the apps within the "C:/Program Files/WindowsApps" folder (my previous post incorrectly stated this folder name). Presumably this 15 character add on is either the machine's app store ID, the advertisement id for the end user, or both.

Deleting the "explorer.exe" in the "C:/Windows" folder is not possible, the system does not allow overwriting while W10 is running. Duh, of course... I'll need to browse the vmware image and see, if I can replace it there.

Since the deletion of cortana, it seems that the system process had taken up the "slack". The TCPView showed these connections:

[System Process] 0 TCP localhost.localdomain 49167 ec2-184-72-115-86.compute-1.amazonaws.com
[System Process] 0 TCP localhost.localdomain 49174 bn1ab.wns.windows.com https

That's a kernel level connections and could be related to Windows update and/or feedback for the tech review version. But Amazon? Come on MS, can't you just keep it in house instead putting it on to another cloud?

Mystere · 10 Oct 2014

Cr00zng said:

Well, deleting the "Microsoft.Cortana_1.2.0.0_x64__8xxxxxxxxxxxe" and the "Microsoft.Cortana_2014.913.601.3539_neutral_~_8xxxxxxxxxxxe" folders did not break W10. It simply shut off the "searchui.exe" and it no longer connects home. A working admin account needs to take ownership of the apps folder, otherwise the Cortana folders deletion is blocked by the "TrustedInstaller" account.

I would be very careful about that... Windows 8.x had a lot of problems with permissions when people took ownership of things, which eventually led to various problems down the road. Not always noticeable right away.

Cr00zng said:

Deleting the "explorer.exe" in the "C:/Windows" folder is not possible, the system does not allow overwriting while W10 is running. Duh, of course... I'll need to browse the vmware image and see, if I can replace it there.

Explorer.exe is the basic shell, not just Windows File Explorer. It is also the start menu, and it has the integrated web search. So that's why it's connecting to other stuff. You can disable this.

Cr00zng said:

That's a kernel level connections and could be related to Windows update and/or feedback for the tech review version. But Amazon? Come on MS, can't you just keep it in house instead putting it on to another cloud?

You really like to jump to crazy conclusions. Did you try to go to that address? If you do, it comes back as DuckDuckGo, the search engine that doesn't track you. Sounds like you installed some third party search tool. It's certainly not Microsoft.

johnwillyums · 10 Oct 2014

I tend to agree with Layback Bear, and other, previous posts, after an initial "let down" feeling, I'm now liking the way W10 runs on my equipment, and the general feel of it in action.
Unlike many here, I missed out on W8.
I tried it, very briefly, and was just so put off by the interface, the fact that I couldn't even shut the damn thing down, that it lasted about two hours on my pc, before I sacked it, and re-installed W7 HP.
Obviously, this doesn't qualify me to judge W8 at all, I never gave it a chance. I did not feel like climbing any learning curves at the time.
I'm still not exploring the OS that deeply. For instance, I still don't really know what "charms" are. I'm just bumbling along, doing my photography, general browsing, social networking etc, and figuring things out as they happen.
The thing is, I haven't really met any obstacles yet. It's just doing things very slickly.

I understand concerns about a "call home" feature, and like the app store, I would think there will have to be some kind of choice, on or off, for the OS to get through EU privacy law.
Obviously, it is a very serious privacy issue, and not to be taken lightly, but Google knows me better than I know myself, and we did sign up for a "developer preview", with all that entails. It's made pretty clear that MS are going to be watching us, to see how we get on with their new baby.

Regarding the whole profiling issue, as I say Google knows my very soul, it stands to reason that MS will want some of that action. As I say, I think they will have to put in an "off" switch to get it through customs

Google have always done it. I suppose it's in the nature of a search engine, and has just crept up on us gradually.
I quite like not getting any spam from waterski, or mobile home vendors, but I suppose it is a bit sinister.

On the other hand, it seems the NSA can monitor anything they choose, and they can access my profile, I'm sure, as well as monitor my communications.

At the moment, we know what's going on in Hong Kong, because of Google, and Apple, messaging and internet services in general.

It would be in the interest of any government to be able to simply block Android, and Apple OS, to stop these images, and messages, getting out to the world.

It will come, I imagine.

mart44 · 10 Oct 2014

Layback Bear said:

I believe they have finely decided to listen to it's already billions or so customers.

Is it billions now? Whatever the figure, how does Microsoft know how many Windows 8 and 8.1 users think the OS is bad? They might have got an idea it wasn't being well-received from the relatively few (compared to millions) who have publicised the fact they don't like it ..but those who think the operating system and its tiled interface is OK wouldn't be so likely to come forward and say so. It's mainly only those who have an issue with it that would want to say or write anything. Do forums and technical articles represent all users? I sometimes wonder if they do because it's not possible to ask the silent millions of users for their opinions.