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Title: Windows 10 = Maze of Slow, Intrusive Garbage. Need Help in Un-Bloating and Speeding Up
Source:
Me
URL Source: [None]
Published: Jan 2, 2018
Author: Me
Post Date: 2018-01-02 11:15:46 by Liberator
Keywords: Windows 10, Intrusive, Garbage
Views: 21531
Comments: 92
To you Computer tech-heads, just got a Win 10 HP piece of crap that is running in quicksand. It's not a brand new machine... Firefox is running, but preventing the LF page from opening without permission. Took forever to load youtube as well as all other pages. Have loaded CCleaner and Avast. There seems to be a mountain of bloatware and intrusive programs running in the background. I'm a Win 7 guy, so this is all Greek to me. It's like a selfish Monster has hijacked the machine. The Settings are nothing like the simplicity of Win 7. Very convoluted. How do I take back this machine? And stop the intrusive stuff and updates? Any constructive suggestions are appreciated. Thanks...
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#19. To: All, buckwheat, Liberator (#18)
A bit of fresh news on the issue of ongoing OS support from Slashdot today:
One of your most perspicacious observations here at LF. : ) Going back to my #19 and the performance hits that older Intel CPU-based systems will incur to fix the CPU flaw in these older systems (under Linux/Windoze/MacOS), there are those within the industry who are saying this benefits AMD. AMD's new generation of CPUs do not have this deep security flaw found in the Intel CPUs. These AMD CPUs, the Ryzen line for desktops/workstations and AMD's big multicore server CPUs do not incur these speed penalties that are being enacted now on all the Intel-based machines that are a few years old. So suddenly those old Windows machines are going to get noticeably slower. People that just got screwed by Intel are going to be looking hard at buying AMD if they feel they have to upgrade their machines due to this security flaw. Why would anyone want to reward a company that just screwed them by buying another of their products? Nobody wants to do that. And it does give AMD a food in the door, just as their powerful new chip designs have matured and come to market in sizable quantities. Intel issued a patch to essentially slow down all machines running Linux/Windoze and close the security hole caused by the flawed CPU design. Now that has apparently been pulled back and the AMD machines sail on running at full speed and the Intel-based machines are stuck with worse performance if they patch this severe security hole. Apple will have to do the same, I think. Apple's Mach micro-kernel would seem to be just as vulnerable from what I'm reading. The most recent Intel CPUs are far less impacted by the performance hit incurred by patching this CPU flaw. This indicates that Intel knew for some time that they were producing extremely flawed CPU designs and chose not to fix that problem and then issued a patch to fix and, therefore, greatly slow down those CPUs. It brings to mind the Apple iPhone scandal of stealthily trying to downgrade their performance to save their battery life (warranted for 3 years for AppleCare customers to retain over 50% of battery life, no matter how many times the battery cycled). So I would expect some class action lawsuits against Intel for this. Among others, thing of all the cloud providers with hundreds of thousands of these CPUs who will, as a direct result of Intel's actions, lose 20%-50% of the performance they paid Intel's premium prices to obtain. This will not end well for Intel in court. Then think of all the damage from class action lawsuits by ordinary consumers. For the first time in a long time, this might be the time to consider buying some AMD stock. They really do have some good new hardware in their latest CPU designs. There are also some of the latest Intel CPUs that are containing fairly powerful AMD Radeon graphics instead of the various Intel embedded 3d graphics capabilities, an implicit admission that AMD has progressed faster and cheaper than Intel has. Intel wouldn't license AMD's Radeon silicon for its own chips if it could economically provide the same performance in-house. I welcome the competition, across the board. The rise of AMD against Intel has always been a net bonanza for the consumer, it seems.
What about processors in phones/tablets? ARM, Qualcomm etc. etc.? Android OS?
Apparently, some of the ARM CPUs suffer a comparable defect, the bigger 64-bit ones. So many of these are customized CPU cores, like Apple's A8/A9/A10 CPUs in its iPhones/iPads, that it is hard to make a comprehensive statement about all the ARM CPU variants. But I suspect the high-end ARM CPUs will suffer some performance penalty as well. Most prominent suspects: Windows 10 tablets with ARM and Google's own Chromebook and its clones (like the ASUS Chromebook). The units most likely to be adversely affected will be the most pricey models produced in recent years for Windows ARM tablets and Chromebook hardware. That'll leave a bad taste in the mouths of buyers and summon a parade of class-action lawyers hungry for a payoff. I think people haven't quite realized just how bad this is for Intel and, to a lesser extent, ARM.
Is the defect actually being criminally exploited by malicious hackers? Or is it just a theoretical flaw that MAYBE they might find out about someday?
It is a known defect. The exact details have not yet been revealed from concern that the criminal element would exploit it widely. You probably realize that it is necessary to fix these things because if some indy researcher can find it, so can talented and sophisticated foreign intel services and industrial espionage outfits who want to steal information. So they must be patched to fix their defect. The exact details of the patch will become known in a month or so. This is pretty typical. After that, machines which remain unpatched will most certainly be vulnerable to attack via this CPU defect. The patch issued (or a new Linux kernel) can be diffed against the most recent version of the kernel being used. The patch itself is a roadmap on where and what to attack. This is why issuing the patch is in itself a danger to all machines which remain unpatched because the criminal element will take advantage of it. We are already seeing, for instance, North Korean hackers trying to hijack computers in the West to use them to mine for cryptocurrency. This is always the problem with closing security holes. When you issue the patches, they can be reverse-engineered with a decompiler so that virus writers know what to attack. And any machine which remains unpatched is fully vulnerable. The effort to patch the problem reveals the vulnerability to all the bad actors wanting to exploit such things for malware networks or botnets or cryptomining on other people's machines. From Engadget yesterday: Intel is grappling with another major security flaw in its processors... and this time, the cost of fixing it may be very steep. Researchers have discovered a design vulnerability in Intel CPUs over the past decade that covers the ability of ordinary programs to determine the content or layout of protected kernel memory (i.e. areas reserved just for the operating system). While the details appear to be under embargo for now, the fix is to completely separate the kernel memory from those ordinary processes. That could carry a significant speed hit, since it requires switching between two memory address spaces every time there's a system call or a hardware interrupt request. How much of a slowdown you see depends on the processor and the task in question. The biggest blows are expected to come to virtualization systems like Amazon's EC2 or Google Compute Engine. The Register claims the performance hits could range from 5 percent to 30 percent, but there's evidence to suggest steeper hits might be possible. Whether or not this affects everyday tasks like gaming or web browsing is another matter, though -- there has yet to be comprehensive testing. As it's a chip-level flaw, the bug affects virtually every operating system, including Linux, macOS and Windows. Software fixes are known to be in the works for at least Linux and Windows, but a true solution that maintains performance will require changes at the CPU level. Notably, though, AMD reports that its processors aren't affected due to key differences in memory handling. Intel has so far declined to comment. However, to call this ill-timed would be an understatement. After years of maintaining a fairly secure performance lead, it's facing stiff competition from AMD's Ryzen and Epyc processors. The last thing it needs is a security hole that not only requires design tweaks, but could slow down virtually all the chips it sells once patches are in place. AMD is "not affected". That's because they were building a better Intel CPU than Intel was. Intel cheated on security to rack up higher benchmarks to help their sales as the alleged performance leader. Now we find out the true price we paid for these Intel CPUs which showed very marginal increases in performance in numbers of cores or CPU clock speed over the last five years. Recall the bad CPU instruction in the old Pentium III series as they pushed for 1GHz and 1.3GHz CPUs. They were lucky that they could recall most of them before they went out the doors at Dell and other companies. But that gave AMD a big chance to take the market for years with its new Athlon CPUs. I would say that AMD has an even greater opportunity now as its Ryzen and server class CPUs are already being produced at market scale around the world and its GPUs have good performance with real strength in the notebook and embedded GPU segments. Once the patch is implemented, don't be surprised if AMD's Ryzen and Epyc CPUs are the performance leaders across the entire market. They're close enough already, easily so in the price range of most consumer devices. And forget just about every CPU benchmark that you've seen in at least the last five years. They're all wrong and they favor cheating-ass Intel as a result.
In the link above to The Register, they have a very complete explanation of the exact nature of the flaw in handling kernel requests and why they have to move the virtual kernel to its own separate address space (incurring a major speed penalty). They mention this at the end: So, that answers some of your question about ARM systems. And I am already safely slowed down on my Intel i7 Mac as I am now running MacOS 10.13.2.
Hey, I gotta Win 10 question that maybe you can answer for me... I have a cheapie HP Stream 11-y010wm notebook computer that I use on very rare occasion when I need to use HP scanner/printer software on my printer... Anyway, the damn Win10 upgrade wizard tells me that my CPU is OK & my RAM is OK, but I don't have enough space on the 32GB built-in hard disk. Well I've run the damn disk cleaning utility and I've removed all the damn programs except Windows itself (plus a few HP programs I need for the Wifi, mousepad & crap like that) and the frigging bloatware STILL tells me I need more room... I'm at wits end... what else can I safely remove so the damn upgrade will work? Even if I have to remove system files that it'll reinstall when it upgrades... Any advice/help would be appreciated.
It sounds like you have an older HP medium-class laptop that you upgraded to Win10. I suggest you check some of these solutions from Microsoft: MSDN: Deleting temp files in Windows 10. Also computer slower with Windows 10. Click to skim through the 45 user comments too. Windows has never been good at dumping its own temp files. It's never wrong to suspect they're leaving a lot of temp files around. They just aren't good at cleaning up temp file messes that they make. Linux and MacOS don't have this problem. You might also check your web browsers to make sure that their disk caches are reasonable. Something less than 128MB for each browser isn't unreasonable. Some people would say smaller or bigger size is better but just checking through all those (hashed) cache files takes considerable time for your browser to do, making your browser experience slower on average. Win10 really shouldn't be taking up more than about 10GB. You should have plenty of room unless you're storing big stuff in your Documents folder (like big video or audio collections or hundreds of large scanned PDF files). Update: looking further I see Win10 is a bigger hog than I knew: Yeow!
Maybe you should check what your disk free space is. Go to My Computer, right-click the hard drive icon, select Properties from the pop-up menu. You should see how much space is used and free with a pie chart. You might check to see whether you're running the 32-bit or the 64-bit version of Win10.
After I offered up advice that you solicited, you don't even bother to reply.
Have you deleted the OS save points? Those can eat up a lot of space.
Thank you for responding and for extending your respective advice and suggestions. It is appreciated... I don't always checks my pings, especially when I've been off-line or elsewhere. My bad.
No, not you. Willie was the one who asked a specific question. I was a little grouchy and needy to Willie that he didn't followup but you know how I crave closure. To return somewhere near your topic - the ol' BTTT we all recall - here's a fresh link about the ongoing effort to patch recent Intel CPUs with microcode updates. ArsTechnica: Intel ships (hopefully stable) microcode for Skylake, Kaby Lake, Coffee Lake The microcode updates help address Spectre variant 2 attacks. Spectre variant 2 attacks work by persuading a processor's branch predictor to make a specific bad prediction about which code will be executed. This bad prediction can then be used to infer the value of data stored in memory, which, in turn, gives an attacker information that they shouldn't otherwise have. The microcode update is designed to give operating systems greater control over the branch predictor, enabling them to prevent one process from influencing the predictions made in another process.. . . Supposedly, this update will fix the problem of the last CPU microcode update which caused a lot of system crashes and made people unhappy.
I know your post wasn't addressed to me, but I wanted you and others to know I appreciated your helpful suggestions.
Sorry... I've been struggling with that damn bloatware, trying to get the upgrade to work... I have the 64-bit... and the suggestions you gave helped quite a bit... I can clean out a LOT of crap that the clean-up wizard misses, giving me 17.0 GB used on C:/ and 10.8 GB available... and did a "reset this PC" taking it all back to square one with no reset point to revert back to... And delete ALL other programs it will let me delete... I don't have NOTHING on there except the fucking Windows... And I made sure the recylce bin is empty too... And when I start the Win 10 upgrade assistant, IT TELLS ME EVERYTHING IS OK... And then I sit there and wait while it downloads... And then I sit there and wait while it installs... And I sit and wait some more because it's slower than molasses in January... And then I get pissed-off & start cussing a blue streak because it mother-fucking bombs out after being 80% installed... And it has the mother-fucking AUDACITY to tell me that it's because there's not enough disk space after telling me there WAS enough space when I started. GODDAM BLOATWARE Fuck Bill Gates... Fuck Microsoft Fuck Redmond Washington The world would've been a much nicer place to live if they had just called it quits after DOS 6.0... Gates has NEVER made a version of Windows that didn't SUCK.
Yes, it's never good when your OS takes up more than half of your storage media. Is there any way that you can download the update you need on to a USB drive? Those are very cheap now for 16GB or 32GB. I'm not sure you could even update that laptop's internal drive. An EMMC drive is unusual, not really an SSD, just a MMC data card soldiered to the motherboard. I suppose you could try to ask HP support or search around their forum to see if anyone else has the same problem or found a solution. I went to look at the HP forum and found this thread: HP: I am runnin W 10 ver.1511 and wish to upgrade to 1607, but it is no go , 12/15/16 HP is saying that the drive cannot be upgraded, it seems. They suggest wiping the drive entirely, installing Win10 fully from a USB drive. That's a lot of downloading and fussing. That is just an insanely small boot drive. I suppose it must have made some sense to HP when they built it.
I was about to ask you the same thing... or at least a similar question.. I have a 32GB microSDHC inserted as drive D:/, and found a way to use it as default for any apps I download plus docs, pictures, music, etc... but don't know how to divert any system crap to it.. I can't remember... is there some kind of windows swap file that I can change the path for? I found a way to disable the recycle bin, so anything that I delete actually gets deleted... What about "temp" files... I vaguely recall something about using environmental variables to divert them somewhere too.... But my memory is getting faulty in my old age... I also have a 16GB USB stick plugged in as drive E:/, but it's just sitting there not doing anything... Is there any way to "merge" or "append" drives D:/ or E:/ with C:/ so the system thinks it's all just one big drive? Or is that just wishful thinking on my part? That's another vague memory I have from somewhere that I don't know if it's real or not... Maybe I'm getting confused with linux...
That should be plenty to be able to download a current Win10 install file, wipe your drive in the BIOS utility, and then install. Just be certain that you have created a bootable USB drive with the Win10 OS on it. You can limit its size or you can divert it to another drive. I doubt that will solve your problem. You should be able to download a full Win10 installer to it and use it to install to a blank C: drive. There are utilities that have come and gone over the years but I wouldn't recommend them. That works okay on Linux and MacOS, not as well for Windows machines. Microsoft: Windows 10 ISO download Make sure you have your OEM licensing info handy before you try any of this stuff. Also make sure you can boot with that USB flash drive before you erase anything on the C: drive.
is that stored on my computer somewhere?
Is there a sticker on the bottom of your computer or inside the battery compartment? Did you get any install disk with the laptop (seems unlikely)? You might try to do an online chat with HP. It'll take a while to get a good answer but they should know something. Apparently, they sold a lot of these laptops to schools, including a schools-only model with a 64GB eMMC drive. On some machines, they have a Windows activation key tied to their serial number and system configuration. For such machines, it will just install and you can skip entering any license key. For others, you need to find your Windows OEM key before you wipe that hard drive. Yours is probably already embedded in the BIOS info. But make sure you know before you try anything. Also, it would be a good idea to get all your system drivers from HP downloaded before you wipe the machine.
You might read this HP thread: HP: How I was able to install Windows 10 on HP Stream 13 (32GB SSD) HP's forums do have some info from others that had problems, mostly getting from Win8.1 to Win10. HP has an upgrades page that could help. HP: HP PCs - How to Reset Your Computer to Factory Settings (Windows 10, 8, 7)
OK... thanks... I DID at least manage to download & do an HP bios update a couple days ago, so I'm pretty sure that change is permanent no matter what I wipe from the drive... But it's gonna take a few days for me to check out that other stuff because I have other commitments to take care of... So be patient & I'll get back to you then... Thanks again!
When you download the fresh Win10, try to use the Win10 Media Creation edition. That will help you prepare the USB drive and make it bootable. That plain ISO file download I pointed you to earlier requires you to create your own bootable USB setup with other utilities. So the other Media Creation version should be more straightforward and reliable.
I assume I can download the iso to my linux PC & use UNetbooten to make it into a bootable USB... That's what I usually use when I need to do a fresh install of linux on something... (although I've been pretty happy with Mint for a while & will have to refamiliarize myself with UNetbootin details in case somethings changed) Annyway, I assume it will work with a Win10 iso... as long as it's the same as the OEM installed and not some exta fancy professional edition they want you to pay extra for...
Just verify it is bootable before you wipe stuff. Any embedded license/serial info should be stored in protected NVRAM and not able to be wiped by an ordinary BIOS update. Some of these machines do have a hidden recovery partition. It sounds like yours doesn't, given what you're telling us about your disk free space.
They will pry Windows 7 from my cold dead hands. But I guess I already said that weeks ago when this thread first started.
Finally! After purging temp files & old window versions over and over and over and over and over again.... it slowly but FINALLY began accepting the upgrades, little by little until AT LONG LAST, I'm up-to-date! OK... so now what? I forget why I started doing this (other than it needed upgrading) But why did I want to mess with it anyway? Well hopefully it'll come to me... But in the mean time, are there any "must have" applications and/or utilities that you'd recommend? Is the MS Edge browser good enough? Or should I download Firefox or Chrome for familiarity? Is MS Bitdefender good enough for virus protection? Or should I download Norton? (or is there some other virus protection that's better but I never heard of because I haven done Windows in a dozen years? BTW, where's a good place to download software? Is CNET OK? Or is there a better place for shareware? What about adblocking and crap like that? I worked my butt off to get this damn little notebook up to date... might as well give it a shot & see if I like it any better than my obsolete Android tablet. (at least it has a real keyboard LOL!)
OK... so now what? I forget why I started doing this (other than it needed upgrading) But why did I want to mess with it anyway? Well, well. Congrats on sheer persistence. Up in your #27, you indicated it was for an HP printer and/or scanner thing that is highly important to your happiness. Anyway, that's what I thought the upgrade was about. Your mileage may vary but you should make sure that you have working print/copy/scan capability. Then check your free space on that really tiny 32GB hard drive and see if you have enough space for any more stuff. Maybe you can put documents and stuff on a flash drive or external USB drive but you need space on your main hard drive for basic apps and for virtual memory and system hibernate disk space too. If you don't use it much for internet, you can probably get by with MS Bitdefender. I wouldn't install Chrome or Firefox unless you're sure you have enough free space for it. Although I use Firefox myself, Chrome just completed their transition to support all their different versions of Chrome with clang replacing cc and Microsoft's compilers across the board. So all versions are now synchronized, regardless of OS. And now they'll switch the linkers and use LLVM across all those platforms as well. So I would recommend Chrome just for that reason: works the same on all platforms, all features will be available on all platforms. And no proprietary compilers now. Firefox will be updating as well but Chrome is definitely in the lead.
Oh, I got plenty space now... and I reinstalled all my HP printer/scanner software too Drive C:/ shows 21.3 GB used, 7.8 GB free... But I also installed a 32 GB SDHC as drive D: which shows 2.41 GB used, 27.2 GB free... And I found a place where I can set the default for new apps, music, downloads & crap like that all goes to D: So I assume that as long as I don't have to do any more MAJOR Win10 updates, I should be OK with the OS on C: and everything else on D: Does that make sense?
Drive C:/ shows 21.3 GB used, 7.8 GB free... It all sounds good to me. You need several gigs of that free space just for your hibernate file and your swap file. Good idea. And you can move your scans/documents/etc to your main machine easily from that SDHC. Woh. I didn't know you could install apps on a secondary drive. Good for you. Win10 is configured to auto-install updates. However, it seems unlikely that you'll have any problems with those unless they come out with a SP2 or SP3 (a really major update). Just keep in mind how we freed up that drive space, clearing temp files and snapshots (above). You'll want to do that every few months, just to keep your free space as high as possible. And if you created a Win10 Media Creator flash drive, keep it around just in case you ever need a re-install.
As for Win10 updates, there is one larger-ish one upcoming: ArsTechnica: Switching from Windows 10 S to regular Windows will be free for everyone However, this is more likely to be a smallish update in terms of file sizes. Just a guess of maybe a few hundred megs.
Thanks for the advice. We tend not to want to be out of our comfort zone. It's been Firefox for as long as I remember. But it has become far too intrusive and pretentious -- I mean what platform thinks it has the right to control your very computer?
Same here... (But I said the same of XP ;-)
All of them, if you allow it. By default, they all auto-update. Microsoft is especially aggressive. Chrome gets high marks here for switching to the clang compiler (instead of Microsoft's Visual Studio + Linux's cc compiler + Apple's Xcode/clang/llvm. Now it's all compiling with just open-source clang. And soon they'll be linked with llvm. Clang/llvm are Apple's own tech, put into the public domain just for this kind of scenario. And Google was smart to embrace it. Of course, I'm a Mac nut so you'd expect me to think highly of them. (I'm sitting here waiting for the delivery of a new high-end iMac as I type this and, no, I won't say how much it cost because these Apple machines are insanely overpriced but will also be worth at least 75% of their retail price 2-3 years from now.) But Apple has some great development tech. The support for all the different iPhone/iPad screens in emulation mode is just astonishingly good. Firefox, OTOH, has blindingly fast execution now, even faster than Chrome. So they aren't sitting on their hands. Supposedly they're moving to clang/llvm too. Google is approaching the other web browser makers and proposing that they all move to Google's AMP SDK (Accelerated Mobile Pages). It allows serving the same page on all devices but particularly with regard to mobile browsers where it greatly reduces data consumption and delays. So Firefox and Opera and Safari and others can embrace it as an open standard. Facebook already has. Trying to stay compatible with all these different phone/tablet/PC standards is a freakin' nightmare, always has been. AMP isn't the first ones to try this; Amazon has something very similar. But AMP is more ambitious, more of an open-source solution.
Greek to me TC. Can you simplify it a bit? All of them [control your computer], if you allow it. By default, they all auto-update. Microsoft is especially aggressive. Is there no autonomous option whereby the browser of choice still runs with the owner of the computer the primary Admin? There appears to be no way for the novice to change the order of who's "Boss" of his/her computer. And why must it "auto-update"? Is that necessary? Of course, I'm a Mac nut so you'd expect me to think highly of them. (I'm sitting here waiting for the delivery of a new high-end iMac as I type this and, no, I won't say how much it cost because these Apple machines are insanely overpriced but will also be worth at least 75% of their retail price 2-3 years from now.) Yes, I would expect you to be a Mac nut. (Congrats on the new unit.) I've heard many reasons, but for you, what are the main benefits that justify their high initial cost? FWIW, I'm not one of those people who make the type of computer a personal/political grudge-match or debate. Firefox, OTOH, has blindingly fast execution now, even faster than Chrome. So they aren't sitting on their hands. Supposedly they're moving to clang/llvm too. If Chrome is slower than FF, then...why Chrome?? (other than its "clang compiler" -- which required a definition for me.)
You use a compiler to create intermediate code and then use a linker to produce a finished application program. Like Chrome or Firefox. Most stuff you've ever run on Windows would be produced by Microsoft's comprehensive Visual Studio application development package. It's groundbreaking to see Chrome walk away from Visual Studio with its legions of fanboys. But now Chrome only has to compile with clang, for Windows/Mac/Linux/Android phones/Android tablets/iPhones/iPads/iTouch. It's clang! One compiler to rule them all! And now they'll complete the job by switching the standard linker (for all those different platforms) to just one: LLVM. While both clang and llvm started as Apple's compiler projects, they went open-source early on. So now you can use these compiler linker tools across all platforms. For those of us who like free open-source software, it's all good stuff. Google using clang for all its Chrome platforms tells the industry that it has their seal of approval for general use. Microsoft is even "helping out", modifying its classic debugger to accommodate clang. But they have a kind of grim humorless smile about finally complying with movement toward fully-open compilers. It strikes at their power and leverage with developers. And it means that programmers who go on the clang/llvm platform will have skills and tools for every platform, not just Microsoft. It will also aid porting utilities, apps, games. Oh, well, you have to care about software for any of that to be news. Apple has quietly become a behemoth of compiler/linker tech and has a very popular new programming language called Swift, also open-source, already ported and running on Linux and Windows as well. The new iMac showed up. I booted it once, installed 32GB of RAM to get to 40GB system memory. The 5K Retina screen (5120x2880, over 1 billion colors, 10-bit HEVC ready) is a thing of beauty. It should be, for the price Apple wants. I've cloned half of my current Mac's drive onto it, just waiting to finish and my new machine will be a clone of my current Mac. The old Mac is a Mini with 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD drive but it is six years old. (And you'd be shocked how much it is still worth, I was.) All the apps, data, settings, everything will be the same on the new iMac from the old Mac Mini. Except this iMac has twice the CPU, twice the RAM, and 12-16 times as much video card. It is a do-anything machine, at least anything I can dream up. It isn't an iMac Pro though, I couldn't possibly justify spending that much for a workstation-class machine. The Mac can do it all. I can use it to run multiple virtual machines. So I might have my old WinXP setup. And a Windows 7 VM. And a Windows 10 VM. And several Linux VMs for various tasks. And they all live together on the same machine. This works especially well with an SSD drive to handle all the disk IO. The iMacs, especially the 27" ones, are certified within a percent of perfect color accuracy with a billion colors available to display. If you want to do desktop publishing and have your printed brochures turn out exactly as they look on your screen or your photos to look exactly as you set them up on the screen, you have to have a properly calibrated professional display. The same is even more true of editing video. Without a calibrated monitor, you can never achieve professional results. It's not just editing the video, it's doing things like industry-standard color correction and knowing that the video you produce will look exactly the same on all the TVs or Bluray players that you put it on. The Mac is great at audio/visual stuff. Not just Adobe but Apple's own apps. Apple sells its high-end apps pretty cheap, once you've bought their computer. The Mac is also a smaller target for viruses and malware. Those people go after the dirt-common PCs running Windows because that is where the numbers are. Macs also tend to hold their value shockingly well. Even rather mediocre older Macs bring surprisingly high prices 4-5 years later. So you can use a Mac for 3-4 years and still sell it for at least half of what you paid for it, typically. iPhones and iPads are about the same. The usual rules of what used electronics are worth simply do not apply to Apple. It's their hardcore fanbois, I think. Worse even than those old Amiga fanatics (which I used to be in the Eighties and early Nineties).
The auto-update is on by default. You're supposed to agree to allow autoupdates according to the Win10 licensing. It's considered kinda mandatory in the license. However, there is a way around it. If you select your network connection to the internet and designate it as "metered", then they won't autoupdate your machine. This article walks through the various angles of this and how it's done. HowToGeek: How to Prevent Windows 10 From Automatically Downloading Updates This might be something that Willie wants to disable and then he can just manually download updates as he thinks he needs them. But if his machine is happy now, maybe he doesn't really need updates. Or he just wants to keep an eye out for major updates that might give him problems again. He'll probably want those Windows Defender updates to keep his machine fairly secure so shutting them off completely isn't entirely desirable. You do want some of those updates.
Some Win10 update news I saw today at Slashdot. Willie had so much fun with his last update, he'll be rarin' to go with this new one. : )
Hell no... I'm getting too old & brain weary to try to keep up with all that crap... I figure I'm better off letting Windoze maintain itself as automagically as possible... But since this isn't my main computer, I just gotta remember to turn it on at least once a week to let it do its thing so it doesn't get swamped by a tidal wave of backlog updates all at once... And my HP Support Assistant is also set up to update any special software drivers for my notebook & scanner/printer... And I was unfamiliar with MS Edge browser that came as default with Win10... but discovered Edge takes addons/extensions & plugins same as any other browser, so I was relieved I could install uBlock Origin for adblocking, same as I use in Firefox... Between that and the built-in Windows Defender anti-virus, I figure I should be adequately protected considering how little I actually use that computer... It's not as if I'm constantly downloading a shitload of pirate software or bootleg media files that might be infested with malicious garbage... At most, I may be using it to visit some financial websites (like my bank) which may work better with Windows than with Linux... So I wouldn't want to risk exposing it to all that other crap anyway.
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So the chances are that an HP machine a few years old will be vulnerable to these problems and the only fix is to slow down its performance with a new kernel (OS core functions). And no one is likely to go back and fix those issues properly for Win7. The corporates will stick with their Win7 through 2020 but apply stricter security inhouse to those machines.
According to The Register, "A fundamental design flaw in Intel's processor chips has forced a significant redesign of the Linux and Windows kernels to defang the chip-level security bug." From the report:
The report goes on to share some details of the flaw that have surfaced. "It is understood the bug is present in modern Intel processors produced in the past decade," reports The Register. "It allows normal user programs -- from database applications to JavaScript in web browsers -- to discern to some extent the contents of protected kernel memory. The fix is to separate the kernel's memory completely from user processes using what's called Kernel Page Table Isolation, or KPTI." Programmers are scrambling to overhaul the open-source Linux kernel's virtual memory system. Meanwhile, Microsoft is expected to publicly introduce the necessary changes to its Windows operating system in this month's Patch Tuesday: these changes were seeded to beta testers running fast-ring Windows Insider builds in November and December. Crucially, these updates to both Linux and Windows will incur a performance hit on Intel products. The effects are still being benchmarked, however we're looking at a ballpark figure of five to 30 per cent slow down, depending on the task and the processor model. More recent Intel chips have features -- specifically, PCID -- to reduce the performance hit. Similar operating systems, such as Apple's 64-bit macOS, will also need to be updated -- the flaw is in the Intel x86 hardware, and it appears a microcode update can't address it. It has to be fixed in software at the OS level, or buy a new processor without the design blunder. Details of the vulnerability within Intel's silicon are under wraps: an embargo on the specifics is due to lift early this month, perhaps in time for Microsoft's Patch Tuesday next week. Indeed, patches for the Linux kernel are available for all to see but comments in the source code have been redacted to obfuscate the issue.
#20. To: Tooconservative, buckeroo (#18)
You get stupider by the day.
Yep, and every time I break wind from the
beans the sound it makes is: "Buckeroo."
#21. To: Willie Green, buckeroo, Liberator (#20)
Yep, and every time I break wind from the beans the sound it makes is: "Buckeroo."
#22. To: Tooconservative (#21)
#23. To: Willie Green (#22)
What about processors in phones/tablets? ARM, Qualcomm etc. etc.? Android OS?
#24. To: Tooconservative (#23)
#25. To: Willie Green, Liberator, buckeroo (#24)
(Edited)
#26. To: Willie Green (#24)
Finally, macOS has been patched to counter the chip design blunder since version 10.13.2, according to operating system kernel expert Alex Ionescu. And it appears 64-bit ARM Linux kernels will also get a set of KAISER patches, completely splitting the kernel and user spaces, to block attempts to defeat KASLR. We'll be following up this week.
#27. To: Tooconservative (#26)
#28. To: Willie Green (#27)
(Edited)
Hard disk space: 16 GB for 32-bit OS 20 GB for 64-bit OS
#29. To: Willie Green (#27)
#30. To: All (#29)
#31. To: Willie Green (#27)
#32. To: Tooconservative, Buckeroo, Pinguinite, goldilucky, all (#30)
#33. To: Liberator (#32)
(Edited)
Thank you for responding and for extending your respective advice and suggestions. It is appreciated...
So users should expect to see these updates coming down the line from Microsoft very shortly. I just updated my MacOS last night. Intel reports that it has developed a stable microcode update to address the Spectre flaw for its Skylake, Kaby Lake, and Coffee Lake processors in all their various variants.
#34. To: Tooconservative (#33)
#35. To: Tooconservative, VxH (#30)
After I offered up advice that you solicited, you don't even bother to reply.
The CPU is OK and the RAM is OK and the hard drive space (10.8 GB available) is OK...
#36. To: Willie Green (#35)
And it has the mother-fucking AUDACITY to tell me that it's because there's not enough disk space after telling me there WAS enough space when I started.
#37. To: Tooconservative (#36)
Is there any way that you can download the update you need on to a USB drive? Those are very cheap now for 16GB or 32GB.
#38. To: Willie Green (#37)
I have a 32GB microSDHC inserted as drive D:/, and found a way to use it as default for any apps I download plus docs, pictures, music, etc... but don't know how to divert any system crap to it..
I can't remember... is there some kind of windows swap file that I can change the path for?
I also have a 16GB USB stick plugged in as drive E:/, but it's just sitting there not doing anything...
Is there any way to "merge" or "append" drives D:/ or E:/ with C:/ so the system thinks it's all just one big drive? Or is that just wishful thinking on my part? That's another vague memory I have from somewhere that I don't know if it's real or not... Maybe I'm getting confused with linux...
#39. To: Tooconservative (#38)
Make sure you have your OEM licensing info handy before you try any of this stuff.
#40. To: Willie Green (#39)
(Edited)
#41. To: Willie Green (#39)
(Edited)
#42. To: Tooconservative (#41)
#43. To: Willie Green (#42)
#44. To: Tooconservative (#43)
#45. To: Willie Green (#44)
#46. To: Liberator (#0)
#47. To: Tooconservative (#45)
#48. To: Willie Green, Liberator, VxH (#47)
(Edited)
Finally! After purging temp files & old window versions over and over and over and over and over again.... it slowly but FINALLY began accepting the upgrades, little by little until AT LONG LAST, I'm up-to-date!
But in the mean time, are there any "must have" applications and/or utilities that you'd recommend? Is the MS Edge browser good enough? Or should I download Firefox or Chrome for familiarity? Is MS Bitdefender good enough for virus protection? Or should I download Norton? (or is there some other virus protection that's better but I never heard of because I haven done Windows in a dozen years?
#49. To: Tooconservative (#48)
#50. To: Willie Green (#49)
Oh, I got plenty space now... and I reinstalled all my HP printer/scanner software too
But I also installed a 32 GB SDHC as drive D: which shows 2.41 GB used, 27.2 GB free...
And I found a place where I can set the default for new apps, music, downloads & crap like that all goes to D:
So I assume that as long as I don't have to do any more MAJOR Win10 updates, I should be OK with the OS on C: and everything else on D:
#51. To: Willie Green (#49)
#52. To: Tooconservative (#48)
I would recommend Chrome just for that reason: works the same on all platforms, all features will be available on all platforms. And no proprietary compilers now. Firefox will be updating as well but Chrome is definitely in the lead.
#53. To: no gnu taxes (#46)
They will pry Windows 7 from my cold dead hands.
#54. To: Liberator (#52)
We tend not to want to be out of our comfort zone. It's been Firefox for as long as I remember. But it has become far too intrusive and pretentious -- I mean what platform thinks it has the right to control your very computer?
#55. To: Tooconservative (#54)
(Edited)
Chrome gets high marks here for switching to the clang compiler (instead of Microsoft's Visual Studio + Linux's cc compiler + Apple's Xcode/clang/llvm.
#56. To: Liberator, Willie Green (#55)
Greek to me TC. Can you simplify it a bit?
Yes, I would expect you to be a Mac nut. (Congrats on the new unit.) I've heard many reasons, but for you, what are the main benefits that justify their high initial cost?
#57. To: Liberator, Willie Green (#55)
Is there no autonomous option whereby the browser of choice still runs with the owner of the computer the primary Admin?
#58. To: All, Liberator, Willie Green (#57)
Microsoft is planning to reuse its "Creators Update" naming for a third Windows 10 update. The software giant has strangely not yet officially named its next Windows 10 update, due next month, but it has been testing a future update that appears to reveal the spring update name. "Windows 10 Spring Creators Update" has been spotted in the latest test builds of the Redstone 5 update expected to be released later this fall. Microsoft first launched Windows 10 Creators Update last spring, followed by the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update in the fall. The new Windows 10 Spring Creators Update naming was originally spotted in Microsoft blog posts last year, but this is the first time it has appeared in the operating system itself.
#59. To: Tooconservative, Liberator (#57)
This might be something that Willie wants to disable and then he can just manually download updates as he thinks he needs them.
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