Microsoft extends OS upgrade nags to Windows 7 Pro users

[Apex]

*Yawn* Another Win10 animosity thread.

Ok i'll let you explain to the board why in the middle of a glass run the furnace was shut down by the shiny windows 10 pc that decided now was a good time to update (fyi there is never a good time to shut a glass furnace down other than in a planed phase)

Or what about the saw that was cutting the slab of granite, yeah lets just stop it dead while its cutting one of hardest stones know to man oh and wait the motor won't restart because its now stuck....

The mandated updates need to do one, the need to be always connected needs to do one.

For the home user this is ok for some but on the other side of the coin the direction they have taken is wrong.

Modern O/S design is junk for stuff like this and even Linux has its problems (but least it doesn't need activation servers and updates services to be running)

[Tabbykatze]

Ok i'll let you explain to the board why in the middle of a glass run the furnace was shut down by the shiny windows 10 pc that decided now was a good time to update (fyi there is never a good time to shut a glass furnace down other than in a planed phase)

Or what about the saw that was cutting the slab of granite, yeah lets just stop it dead while its cutting one of hardest stones know to man oh and wait the motor won't restart because its now stuck....

The mandated updates need to do one, the need to be always connected needs to do one.

For the home user this is ok for some but on the other side of the coin the direction they have taken is wrong.

Modern O/S design is junk for stuff like this and even Linux has its problems (but least it doesn't need activation servers and updates services to be running)

And if you were any form of capable IT SysAdmin you'd know that you can disable updates through domain joined group policy. We use ManageEngine and i validate very specific security updates then release them on a monthly patch tuesday. Further to that, if you are updating sensitive to uptime systems then you should be doing calendared or scheduled reboots as part of your updating process.

Proper planning prevents piss poor performance.

This is pedantic but actually the vast majority of fabrication systems have a redundancy that in the event of high level controller failure it will ckntinue doing the task it is set not just instantly shut down.

[Apex]

Sigh, if you were a capable IT SysAdmin you would have found that Windows does what the hell it wants not matter the group policy, it likes to ignore them at times and go off and do its own thing.

New controller kit might have redundancy, but this kit isn't new and shiny some of it is 20,30 years old and so on, that word wasn't thought of back then.

But anyway seem to have gone off the track somewhat;

Saracen, I guess you don't play any modern games ? they often have requirements for x or newer version of the drivers. With the dropping of support for 7 it wont be long till AMD / Nvidia stop producing new drivers to cover 7 and so that new shiny game won't run because you don't have x. Same for the game, the game devs won't test it on 7 and are likely to have it refuse to install / run or use features that 7 doesn't have (this happened with BattleField 1942, i had a 3dfx card that was fine but it didn't support T&L i think and so the game was full of graphical issues only resolved when i got a TI4200 i think)

So far i am happy enough with 10 on this rig, just the normal tweaking needed to get it to how i like it.

[MaddogPepper]

Not animosity. A dose of realism for those that think because it suits them, it should suit everybody else. Well, it dossn't.

Case in point ...

As has been pointed out from small professional home users (like me) to industrial and commercial users, there are circumstances where upgrading would just be stupid. One such is where a user needs to support hardware old enough for new drivers to not be available, or even where the manufacturer is no longer in business. Another is where necessary software won't run. I have a series of customised databases built using software no longer supported that won't run on 10 (or in some cases 7 or anything later) and where it would take werks, more likely months of my timecto build alternatives, port and then validate data.

And for what? To run an OS that does a load of things I don't need, or want, on those machines, but won't do what I do need? Sorry, but I've got better things to do with my time than waste it doing that.

Does W10 appeal to me? No. Not at all. So, for machines that do need to be more modern, I went Linux. MS moved on all right, butcnot in a direction that suits me. Thzt's not animosity but simple fact, just like having been driving BMWs for years, but buying something else if I don't like current models.

I long ago stopped caring what MS do/did with Win10, but when people "don't get the fuss", well, part of the function of a forum like this is to explain part of the fuss, so they do get it andcto correct the misunderstanding that because they like it, ecerybody that doesn't is wrong and needs to "get over it".

I still don't understand your fuss, sounds to me like you did not correctly design/select the systems you are using in the first place for the tasks you need to carry out. Did you consider when commissioning these systems that Microsoft OS's have and always will move on? If you needed something that would work indefinitely without "a load of things I don't need, or want" then use the appropriate operating system for what you are trying to do. You cannot expect something to last and be supported forever (for free as well) and this should be incorporated into your business planning.

The fact is you haven't considered this, have had no succession plan and now you have left it too late and are being "forced" into changing. As an engineer who has worked in both hardware and software disciplines this is something that is always in the forefront of my mind with anything I design and build.

[Jonj1611]

Gets popcorn

[Disturbedguy]

I still don't understand your fuss, sounds to me like you did not correctly design/select the systems you are using in the first place for the tasks you need to carry out. Did you consider when commissioning these systems that Microsoft OS's have and always will move on? If you needed something that would work indefinitely without "a load of things I don't need, or want" then use the appropriate operating system for what you are trying to do. You cannot expect something to last and be supported forever (for free as well) and this should be incorporated into your business planning.

The fact is you haven't considered this, have had no succession plan and now you have left it too late and are being "forced" into changing. As an engineer who has worked in both hardware and software disciplines this is something that is always in the forefront of my mind with anything I design and build.

You clearly haven't read many posts from Saracen. If there's anything I know about Saracen he would have 100% sat and thought about the system / OS choice he was making, probably for quite some time and likely weighed up every possible pro and con, and if something was even slightly wrong, he wouldn't have gone for the system. When whatever version of Windows came out, at the time it was likely the best if not perfect OS for his needs.

I understand both sides of the argument, if I had a set that I used for work purposes that was 100% the way I wanted it and I knew Windows 10 would not work the way I would like, I wouldn't upgrade. In fact I didn't upgrade to Windows 10 until last year, Windows 7 was perfect for me, did everything I wanted. The only reason I did upgrade to Windows 10, was because my old rig was begin to develop faults so I upgraded.

As an engineer who has worked in both hardware and software disciplines, as you claim, you of all people should know that it isn't possible to plan for all eventualities and sometimes upgrades simply aren't necessary.

[Saracen999]

I still don't understand your fuss, sounds to me like you did not correctly design/select the systems you are using in the first place for the tasks you need to carry out. Did you consider when commissioning these systems that Microsoft OS's have and always will move on? If you needed something that would work indefinitely without "a load of things I don't need, or want" then use the appropriate operating system for what you are trying to do. You cannot expect something to last and be supported forever (for free as well) and this should be incorporated into your business planning.

The fact is you haven't considered this, have had no succession plan and now you have left it too late and are being "forced" into changing. As an engineer who has worked in both hardware and software disciplines this is something that is always in the forefront of my mind with anything I design and build.

I love it when people say "the fact is" when it self-evidently ISN'T the fact.

First, where did I say I expect it to be supported forever?

If you bothered to read what I said before criticising, I said tbe exact opposite. I neither want nor need MS support for my systems. That's why they are isolated behind an air-gap, have no internet connectivity, and have been running, 100% stably, for a decade or more, and so on.

My comments were to illustrate why the "you should upgrade" cobblers is just that in some circumstances. It might well apply to most users, especially home users, but people that say that ought to realiise there are circumstances where it is simply wrong.

Also, while future-proofing is indeed always a major consideration, so is the cost both in time, money and inconvenience of doing so.

I have hardware that is currently doing a perfectly adequate job, so please explain your engineering rationale for why I should spend thousands of pounds, or more, and loads of time, upgrading it to gain .... well, what exactly? The ability to run the "latest OS" that doesn't do anything I want, or need.

Then there's software solutions, There's a whole load of stuff written in Delphi, Paradox, dBase III/IV, CA Clipper, FoxPro, DataEase, etc. Again, they are doing what's needed. They sit there, day after day, doing what they need to, costing .... zip, zilch, nothing.

So again, why exactly should I upgrade, and to gain .... again .... what, exactly?

You then go on to claim "The fact is I haven't conxidered this".

Utter tripe.

It's a simple cost-benefit analysis.

Cost of upgrading = prohibitive. Benefit = naff all.

To do so, I either have to replace perfectly functioning hardware ( and you don't what or even if it exists) or go find suitable modern development environments, buy them, learn them, then build systems to replicate what is currently being done perfectly happily for no cost.

If these were systems which needed to grow constantly, evolve now and into go long-term, then I might agree with you and would have been porting years ago. But they aren't.

The fact is you haven't considered this, have had no succession plan and now you have left it too late and are being "forced" into changing. As an engineer who has worked in both hardware and software disciplines this is something that is always in the forefront of my mind with anything I design and build.

Where on earth are you getting this rubbish.

No, I'm not being "forced" into changing, mainly because I'm not changing.

Yes, I considered it. If you read what I said, I have a whole cupboard of "spares" that will allow me to replace everything, most of it several times over and if absolutely necessary, can double up one machine to two or three uses.

No succession plan? Left it too late? What the hell?

You know little or nothing about me or my circumstances yet you jump to unsupported conculsions and preach at me. My experience in this business goes back to IBM mainframes in the 1960s, and DEC machines in the 70s, where a punch card machine with a whole 80-character buffer was the height of luxury and my early backups of development stuff was on ASCII punch tape input through a teletype. Take a wild guess, from that, about how much longer I might need these system before both they and I are decommissioned permanently. When I did my computer science programming at Uni, it was in Algol and Cobol.

Do you have any idea how ridiculous "no succession plan" or "left it too late" actually are?

That post is a perfect example of why someone with an eye on the big picture always holds the purse strings over "engineers" in the real world - to stop engineers over-engineering a solution to a problem, especially a non-existent problem.

Finally, you say I expect something to be supported for ever (not what I said, by the way) and "for free as well" when I said on the record here that while I applaud MS for extending limited support, and I'd cheerfully pay for it, if I needed it (which I don't). I certainly do not expect it to be free.

My Windows machines are staying with W7 indefinitely.

That said, I applaud MS for extending Security updates, and there's no reason not to expect a fee for it. So, well done MS.

Still sticking with 7 for legacy machines (and Linux for current ones) so I won't be taking them up on ESU, as I don't need to fix what in my case ain't broke. But well done.

Your problem, MaddogPepper, is that while I was trying to illustrate, using my situation, why the generic advice about keeping up to date is not always appropriate and why it is perfectly valid for those users to have the hump with MS foisting stuff on them that being largely (but not entirely) why I DID pick an alternate OS for suitable systems) you are trying to apply generic procedures to my specific circumstances when you don't understand those circumstances.

So, with your engineering expertise, go on, give me an idea of just how expensive its going to be or would have been even 10 or 15 years ago, to take customised systems, including some running under OS2, and port them to something in a different environment and maybe even a different OS?

Then, consider that I developed those systems, some over several years, updated as my needs evolved, and NONE of them requiring external comms connections. So, a system, one of a number, that may have taken me several months of work, much of it evenings and weekends, and that has been running solidly since, well, since Paradox (for DOS) was state of the art ....

So, I'm semi-retired now, have systems doing what I need, am I supposed to spend probably a year or two redeveloping so I can upgrade? Or is it just possible that you don't know what you're talking about and that carefully considered options, selected in some cases 20 years ago, are working perfectly to plan?

How often have you "engineed" and developed a succession route and had it still working perfectly 10, 15 or 20 years later, with almost zero ongoing costs over those many years.

Then, go on, tell me about all the benefits I'm missing out on by not "upgrading", and ..... what was it again ....

....

The fact is you haven't considered this, have had no succession plan and now you have left it too late and are being "forced" into changing.

God give me strength.

[Saracen999]

Gets popcorn

Fancy some coke with that? I'm buying.

[MaddogPepper]

I love it when people say "the fact is" when it self-evidently ISN'T the fact.

First, where did I say I expect it to be supported forever?

If you bothered to read what I said before criticising, I said tbe exact opposite. I neither want nor need MS support for my systems. That's why they are isolated behind an air-gap, have no internet connectivity, and have been running, 100% stably, for a decade or more, and so on.

My comments were to illustrate why the "you should upgrade" cobblers is just that in some circumstances. It might well apply to most users, especially home users, but people that say that ought to realiise there are circumstances where it is simply wrong.

Also, while future-proofing is indeed always a major consideration, so is the cost both in time, money and inconvenience of doing so.

I have hardware that is currently doing a perfectly adequate job, so please explain your engineering rationale for why I should spend thousands of pounds, or more, and loads of time, upgrading it to gain .... well, what exactly? The ability to run the "latest OS" that doesn't do anything I want, or need.

Then there's software solutions, There's a whole load of stuff written in Delphi, Paradox, dBase III/IV, CA Clipper, FoxPro, DataEase, etc. Again, they are doing what's needed. They sit there, day after day, doing what they need to, costing .... zip, zilch, nothing.

So again, why exactly should I upgrade, and to gain .... again .... what, exactly?

You then go on to claim "The fact is I haven't conxidered this".

Utter tripe.

It's a simple cost-benefit analysis.

Cost of upgrading = prohibitive. Benefit = naff all.

To do so, I either have to replace perfectly functioning hardware ( and you don't what or even if it exists) or go find suitable modern development environments, buy them, learn them, then build systems to replicate what is currently being done perfectly happily for no cost.

If these were systems which needed to grow constantly, evolve now and into go long-term, then I might agree with you and would have been porting years ago. But they aren't.

Where on earth are you getting this rubbish.

No, I'm not being "forced" into changing, mainly because I'm not changing.

Yes, I considered it. If you read what I said, I have a whole cupboard of "spares" that will allow me to replace everything, most of it several times over and if absolutely necessary, can double up one machine to two or three uses.

No succession plan? Left it too late? What the hell?

You know little or nothing about me or my circumstances yet you jump to unsupported conculsions and preach at me. My experience in this business goes back to IBM mainframes in the 1960s, and DEC machines in the 70s, where a punch card machine with a whole 80-character buffer was the height of luxury and my early backups of development stuff was on ASCII punch tape input through a teletype. Take a wild guess, from that, about how much longer I might need these system before both they and I are decommissioned permanently. When I did my computer science programming at Uni, it was in Algol and Cobol.

Do you have any idea how ridiculous "no succession plan" or "left it too late" actually are?

That post is a perfect example of why someone with an eye on the big picture always holds the purse strings over "engineers" in the real world - to stop engineers over-engineering a solution to a problem, especially a non-existent problem.

Finally, you say I expect something to be supported for ever (not what I said, by the way) and "for free as well" when I said on the record here that while I applaud MS for extending limited support, and I'd cheerfully pay for it, if I needed it (which I don't). I certainly do not expect it to be free.



Your problem, MaddogPepper, is that while I was trying to illustrate, using my situation, why the generic advice about keeping up to date is not always appropriate and why it is perfectly valid for those users to have the hump with MS foisting stuff on them that being largely (but not entirely) why I DID pick an alternate OS for suitable systems) you are trying to apply generic procedures to my specific circumstances when you don't understand those circumstances.

So, with your engineering expertise, go on, give me an idea of just how expensive its going to be or would have been even 10 or 15 years ago, to take customised systems, including some running under OS2, and port them to something in a different environment and maybe even a different OS?

Then, consider that I developed those systems, some over several years, updated as my needs evolved, and NONE of them requiring external comms connections. So, a system, one of a number, that may have taken me several months of work, much of it evenings and weekends, and that has been running solidly since, well, since Paradox (for DOS) was state of the art ....

So, I'm semi-retired now, have systems doing what I need, am I supposed to spend probably a year or two redeveloping so I can upgrade? Or is it just possible that you don't know what you're talking about and that carefully considered options, selected in some cases 20 years ago, are working perfectly to plan?

How often have you "engineed" and developed a succession route and had it still working perfectly 10, 15 or 20 years later, with almost zero ongoing costs over those many years.

Then, go on, tell me about all the benefits I'm missing out on by not "upgrading", and ..... what was it again .... God give me strength.

Firstly, let me apologise for any offence caused, this was not my intention.

If you are open to it I would like to send you a PM to continue the discussion as there are a few points in your reply I would like to explore further. I am not going to be drawn into a "who's got the most engineering experience" competition here in public. You have also made several assumptions about my character and intentions that I would like to correct given the opportunity.

Have a nice day.

[Apex]

Upgrading for upgrade sake is BS I can do with out, Think Saracen's nice wrapped it up in better words then i could. I have reason to upgrade my main rig which I have done for the others I'll leave them as is; i fear for the new shiny future, the direction they are going in doesn't fill me with confidence.

[Saracen999]

Firstly, let me apologise for any offence caused, this was not my intention.

If you are open to it I would like to send you a PM to continue the discussion as there are a few points in your reply I would like to explore further. I am not going to be drawn into a "who's got the most engineering experience" competition here in public. You have also made several assumptions about my character and intentions that I would like to correct given the opportunity.

Have a nice day.

Thankyou for a very considered reply, and the apology for unintended offence gladly accepted, and in the way it was intended. I'm not aware of doubting your intentions or character, merely assumptions. But I'll happily sort that out over PM.

i agree about the pointless of the experience battle. I went that route merely because you had raised it, and to confirm I'm not a naive end user that got into this position accidentally. It was and is a considered strategy and, for my circumstances and needs, has worked. Even with the benefit of hindsight, I wouldn't change the approach.

I'm happy to explore points by PM if you wish. There certainly are some constraints in what I will say publicly, on an open public forum that can be read by anybody. Hence an element of vagueness in some places. There are some limits by PM too, but not as many.

Again, nice reply.

[MaddogPepper]

Thanks for the acknowledgement.

I attempted to send you a PM but I got this error message:

"Saracen999 has exceeded their stored private messages quota and cannot accept further messages until they clear some space."

[Saracen999]

Arghh. I'm still used to admin privileges on PMs. I keep trimming it, but putting off a good PM sort-out. I'll try to thin it again tomorrow.