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Well, I've finally upgraded to W10. I was putting it off for ages but it went remarkably well. All my programs etc seem to still work and I've noticed few annoyances. I managed to remove the News and Interests thing in the taskbar. Is there any other bits like that that need changing. Or performance/privacy tweaks I need to know about?
Cheers.
there are some scripts to debloat that you might be interested in.
I used the second one he shows a few times, no drama on new installs, as allways bckup your important stuff before you do anything!
Just the ticket. Thanks!
Turn on Clipboard history - Windows key + V.
It's fab; saved me hours of copy and pasting awkward passwords in the many places they aren't just saved in your browser. You can pin the most commonly used ones as well.
Is the Mail app any good? I'm still using Mozilla Thunderbird which does the job, but was discontinued ages ago and doesn't sync with anything else, like my iPhone.
If you have an older/PC laptop, don't let it do any of the automatic updates*.
It will cause you more issues than any virus ever could, by removing drivers it doesn't like, changing settings etc. Its an utter ****.
*I don't really recommend this on here as Cougar waves his arms about and gets all indignant about "security". It's MY JOB etc 😆
People still use apps for email instead of a web browser? How very 20th Century of you.
The clipbook thing as Chaos said is very good.
Windows-[.] (full stop) pulls up an emoji keyboard. That's handy.
If you have an older/PC laptop, don’t let it do any of the automatic updates
That's questionable advice. Delaying the major feature updates for six months is a good idea. Not getting security updates is a terrible idea. Keeping backups of drivers is sensible, having updates break drivers is something that MS deserve a kick in the arse over (FFS, I have an Intel Iris graphics chip that got crippled by an automatic driver update a few years ago, not exactly a niche piece of hardware.)
That’s questionable advice.
"Questionable" isn't the word I'd use. But he knew I'd say that when he posted it. (-:
Suggesting blocking Windows Update is basically the anti-vaxxer argument for PCs. There is a risk with WU, sure, but the risks from not letting it run it is many orders of magnitude greater. And recommending it without further comment is reckless and dangerous.
On the upside, it keeps me in gainful employ.
Before this goes into a ten page bicker-fest, this is covered by that scripts-video someone posted up there. Delay the big updates, allow the security updates I think is the gist of it. My laptop was bought in 2015 so yes, old-ish.
Windows-Key & Shift & S - Opens Screen Snipper
Windows-Key & P - Opens Display Clone/Extend Options.
RM.
Yes! I'm the gammon anti-vaxer conspiracy theorist for PCs!! Cool!
Only last week my HP's fingerprint detector was killed by a Windows update. But it's all just a conspiracy theory innit! 😀
Before this goes into a ten page bicker-fest,
Sorry, I'll shut up with my unhelpful bollix. 😛
My laptop was bought in 2011 or early 2012; I can't remember, & I've never had any issues with Windows updates/drivers etc. causing problems. Maybe just lucky?
edit - ooooh, admittedly I don't have a fingerprint sensor.
Thunderbird still being updated here and in daily use. Miles better than the Windows mail app. Only other one i've tried is BlueMail which is getting better all the time but not quite there yet.
Our webmail interface is utter rubbish so we won't use it
Only last week my HP’s fingerprint detector was killed by a Windows update.
So you're not following your own advice? That's even worse.
😛
Windows + Tab = all your open things to then click on
For DezB and anyone who has that problem.
run gpedit.msc
Navigate to Administrative templates\windows components\windows update
and enable the "don't include drivers with windows updates" rule
Not sure how secure passwords stored in your clipboard are?
Could be wrong.
Bitwarden is great for managing passwords.
So you’re not following your own advice? That’s even worse
You scared me. I thought my identity would get robbed an all that 😀
Nice one MSP, didn't know there was a policy for that.. I shall hack.
Win-left/right puts your window to that half of the screen and then allows you to put another in the second half so you get two windows side by side, excellent for doc writing. Win-up/down then allows you to set the left/right window in the upper or lower quadrant which is handier for having two tertiary apps (Spotify and whatever else) on one side of the screen.
Oh and don't get too comfortable, Windows 11 is due in the next six months or so.
^^ that really comes into its own if you have multiple screens.
I wouldn't worry too much about W11 at this point. If you've only just "finally upgraded" to W10 then your computer likely won't be able to run W11 anyway. I'm expecting a huge climb-down from MS in the next six months.
I’m expecting a huge climb-down from MS in the next six months.
I'm expecting a repeat of the Vista debacle. Waiting a year for MS to sort out all the problems sounds like a sensible strategy.
I agree every other release seems to be a disaster but it seems more of a progression than outright change. I think it's more like Windows 8 Done Right (ie works on all platforms but still does desktop well).
And yeah, multi monitor gets the best out of it, still works really well on one though.
I’m expecting a repeat of the Vista debacle. Waiting a year for MS to sort out all the problems
W7 was essentially "Vista fixed." But Vista was much-maligned. It felt like a Beta product and it did a lot of things badly, but it was a huge shift in architecture. I despised XP from beginning to end, Vista for all its failings was a breath of fresh air.
If hypothetically I had a choice today of any Windows OSes with guaranteed ongoing support I'd pick W7. Windows 8 was the Windows ME of the modern world and 8.1 is to 8 as 7 is to Vista, they fixed something broken.
I agree every other release seems to be a disaster
Are we entering "Star Trek movie numbers" here? every other release is shit?
W3.11 - great.
W95 - shit.
W98 - great.
ME - shit.
2000 Workstation - great.
XP - shit.
Vista - could have been great?
W7 - great.
W8 - shit.
W8.1 - could have been great?
W10 - great.
W11 - ... well, there's almost a trend here.
having updates break drivers is something that MS deserve a kick in the arse over (FFS, I have an Intel Iris graphics chip that got crippled by an automatic driver update a few years ago, not exactly a niche piece of hardware.
You can't really expect MS to regression test the huge number of different devices, especially if the vendor's driver isn't written exactly to spec. I'm not saying MS are faultless with their patching, far from it, but they have an almost impossible job when it comes to ensuring 3rd party hardware and drivers still works after every update.
As for Win11, I think MS have finally learnt their lesson about pushing out dodgy new major versions. From what I've seen of it it's more incremental/cosmetic over Win10 than anything more fundamental.
Where I work we're only just starting to develop a Win10 build for a customer (they mostly only agreed to it as they can't buy laptops certified for Win7 anymore) 😒
Hi, Mac user here! My top tip is... buy a Mac. 😉
You can thank me later.
No seriously; having suffered the effects of 'Windows Update' on a spare PC laptop (now given away), plus my wife's work laptop, there's no way I'd want to be dealing with that. Life's too short.
Hey, it looks like you're writing an angry response...
Hi, Mac user here! My top tip is… buy a Mac. 😉
You can thank me later.
You forgot to put "WinDoze" or "Micro$oft" in your post. Poor effort.
😀
I was trying to be helpful.
{Counts the days until wonderful, shiny new Apple iMac arrives...}
@cougar FTFY. Win 2000 isn't a fair inclusion as it was essentially a corporate edition and still flakey with games. You also forgot Windows 98 was so broken they had to release it twice.
W95 – great
W98 – shit.
W98SE - great
ME – shit.
XP – great
Vista – shit
W7 – great.
W8 – shit.
W8.1 – polished turd
W10 – great.
W11 – … well, there’s almost a trend here.
Don't underestimate how useful sticky notes are.
Other than that, errr, would you like to convert the 1st page of a PDF to a 150dpi image with two clicks? It needs Ghostscript and this code merged into the Windows Registry:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.pdf]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.pdf\Shell]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.pdf\Shell\tojpg]
@="To JPEG"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.pdf\Shell\tojpg\command]
@="C:\\Program Files\\gs\\gs9.54\\bin\\gswin64.exe -dQUIET -dSAFER -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -dNOPROMPT -dAlignToPixels=0 -dGridFitTT=2 -dTextAlphaBits=4 -dGraphicsAlphaBits=4 -sDEVICE=jpeg -dJPEGQ=95 -r150 -sOutputFile=\"%1.jpg\" \"%1\""
The first version of XP was pretty crap, too. They pretty much rewrote it with SP2.
W95 – great
W98 – shit.
W98SE – great
ME – shit.
XP – shit.
XP SP2 - great
Vista – shit
W7 – great.
W8 – shit.
W8.1 – polished turd
W10 – great.
W11 – … well, there’s almost a trend here.
They were all much a muchness but it can't really be called shit after ME. Did you have it? I did. The most commonly run application was the BSOD.
Oh yeah, had ME. And Vista. Although TBH Vista was fine - I got a computer with it pre-installed, so all the driver problems it had at launch didn't affect me.
Most unstable was a dodgy copy of Win NT4, which I installed on a ludicrously underpowered machine, just so I could play with a pirate copy of Maya. That would BSOD on a very regular basis, but I can hardly blame it 😀
If hypothetically I had a choice today of any Windows OSes with guaranteed ongoing support I’d pick W7.
^^^^ Agreed. The best version of Windows so far. There's quite a few things I didn't like about 10 when I tried it. Vista was similar to 7 once tweaked but still a bit less responsive IME. ME was a ****ing pig and so was the driver support. 2000 Pro alright, although I've heard it didn't do gaming well.
Not switching until another piece of software I use compels it, Septemberish. Still on a pretty old overclocked (oc'd CPU & GPU for the best part of 7-8 years) i5 2500k that runs like clockwork. I've not used a windows browser since XP and not bothered with AV for 5 years. It boots in about 20-30 seconds and everything is snappy fast, my GPU (it was all I could get) being the limiting factor in games! I've tried much newer builds and mine has been faster in use. I have tweaked a lot of things including the windows bootup and BIOS options, always notified about updates rather than auto. I keep the registry pretty tidy and don't allow many programs to run on startup or check for updates at ridiculous intervals. I even run custom fan speed curves, how tragic!