Dr. Phil's Dreamwidth Journal

When I shut down ZEPPELIN at home Tuesday night, there were five updates to Windows 7. So I knew it would have to do some updating when it booted Wednesday evening. Applied 3912 updates, not all that many, considering how long it was updating the downloads last night.

And then you get to boot and Windows pauses to Configure your updates -- and then you get to go to work. Right? Isn't that why you paid money for a computer? To do work? And not just update some company's software?

Grrr...

ZEPPELIN was being really pokey, which happens because you have no good way of telling what the Sam Hell is going on in the background tasks. I had planned to post the Quiz 6 solutions for both classes this afternoon, but as I wrote, I deferred doing anything serious while OUEST was on battery (DW) (LJ) due to the power issues at work.

I had to create two JPEGs from screenshots for the PHYS-1070 Quiz 6 and a PDF for the PHYS-2070 Quiz 6 -- all of this complicated by having to work in both Windows 7 and editing my webpages in Windows NT4 in a virtual machine. This involves having a lot of windows open: Word, Acrobat Reader DC, Paint, Notepad, VirtualBox plus HoTMetaL Pro 4.0 and Ulead PhotoImpact 3.02 in NT4.

The virtual machine crashed when I booted it and I had to try again. Just as I was starting to do my file transfers between Windows 7 and Windows NT4 sessions, I realized there was another icon on the Taskbar below.

Turns out Windows 7 wanted to reboot to finish installing the updates and was running a counter down to forcing a reboot. This in a window WHICH WAS BEHIND EVERYTHING ELSE.

Now I've dealt with this crap before. Basically, it does the eager dog/pestering child routine -- Can we reboot now? Can we reboot now? Can we reboot now? And I swear it is doing this at 85% of the total billions of clock cycles, so drags the whole system down to where, not only does it not work very well, it won't even recognize for a while that you click the Postpone button Microsoft thoughtfully provided. Which, by the way, only restarts this hidden window and its insidious countdown to reboot doom, and polling for permission to reboot NOW, it slows the system down...

So Microsoft fails at coming up with a priority pop-up window for its very own operating system.

But really, it's worse.

Why the HELL did you wait twenty minutes, to where I was knee deep in open windows and doing a bunch of complex procedures, before deciding to let me know you trying to hold it in your pants you needed to reboot so hard?

Microsoft, here's a clue. Windows is YOUR fucking operating system. I think you know how to do a reboot. If this update REALLY needed to have a reboot, you could have built it into the update before I even logged into the computer. After all these years, you should know how to reboot Windows 7.

I'm sure they'd answer that this would delay the startup and... and... and... nothing, guys. Because when I did do the Restart, after interrupting my work and closing NT4 and all the other windows, there was an excruciatingly long Configuring Updates... 28%... 29%... pause... pause... pause... 30%... This was going to take a while.

FINALLY, I got my machine back and sat through more configuring and all. No doubt this was all updates related to something stupid, like future updating to Windows 10 or something else I don't need Right Now.

Man, somedays you gotta wonder if anyone in Redmond has every actually used a computer...

Dr. Phil

UPDATE: To add insult to injury, at 25:10 EDT, when I shut down ZEPPELIN, I saw the little yellow update shield next to Shutdown and sure enough, Update 1 of 1. How much you want to bet it's supposed some they fucked up yesterday? (evil-grin)

UPDATE2: 10-15-2015 Th 09:46 EDT -- Oh, lookee at that... ZEPPELIN at home is Windows 7 Home Premium. OUEST at work is Windows 7 Enterprise edition. I knew when I shut down yesterday that it had loaded 8 Updates. Today when I booted, it Applied 34,361 updates... and then it rebooted. So somebody at Microsoft is smart enough to manage Updates better, but only for big IT customers. Screw the Home users.

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Crossposted on LiveJournal

So, it's the summer of 2015 and Microsoft Windows 10 is upon us.

It will take time to determine if this Win Ten is a good witch or a bad witch. Redmond's track record is not particularly stellar on upgraded OSes. Windows 2000, for example, shipped with what, 50,000 known bugs? NT4 shipped without a working ability for a user to change a password. So if you think I would use the initial release of Win Ten -- you're crazy.

BTW, I'm jokingly calling it Win Ten, because Windows naming conventions have been so varied -- 95, 98SE, Me, NT, 2000, XP, 7, 8.1 -- and not only did they skip Windows 9, the competition went to Roman numbers with OS X.

There's no question that Microsoft needs a clean new operating system. Windows 8 was a stupid attempt to turn real computers into tablets and phones. We didn't ask for that. Windows 8.1 has improved operability, or so I am told. I wouldn't touch with gloves on. But which features? And what stuff will run on it?

I've already had to deal with dropping 16-bit and MS-DOS legacy support by Windows XP -- and Windows 7 doesn't run a lot of legacy software I could still make work in Windows XP. It's not a matter of me being cheap and not buying new versions of software. It's that some of my software HAS no new versions. And others, no longer work in the way I need them to.

As noted here (DW) (LJ), I have just resurrected NT4SP6a on two machines using Oracle's free VirtualBox virtual machine system in order to support legacy software. NT4 forever!

File format creep. Software version creep. OS version creep. Just stop it, dammit!

So...

Wednesday 6 June 2015 00:12 EDT, a new icon appears on the right side of my System Tray. It looks like a four-panel window in perspective. "Get Windows 10" it said. Free upgrade from Windows 7 Home Premium. Hmm...

Actually, it's rather nice of Microsoft to actually offer a free upgrade. They're always complaining about having to support older OSes after they release a new one. Trying to bounce all the Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 users up to 10 sounds like a plan. Maybe Windows 10 learned from Mac OS X. (evil-grin)

And I guess they did a slow roll out. If you ordered the upgrade, you'd be told when it was available. Again, clever. Of course, I've heard mixed reviews of whether the status of Windows 10 drivers and program support works.

I will never understand the thinking that when you get a new machine or new OS, you would just throw away 20 to 30 years of work and act as if that never happened. The real world doesn't work that way. My complaint for a LONG time is that I don't think the people designing and testing these things actually expect people to USE computers. Seems to me a lot of the computer business thinks that I own a PC simply to run Windows Update, Norton Live Update and install new versions of Adobe Flash. Urgh?

Then, with the release of Microsoft Windows 10, there's the issue of advertising. I swear, cell phones and Microsoft -- they don't seem to know how to sell these things. I mean, think of it. Most cell phone ads talk about very useless things and most of them never even talk about using the damned things as a phone. Their rationale for owning a smart phone is pretty darn vapid. It's made worse because ads for non cell phone products, but use cell phones, are equally clueless. Consider the current Eggo waffles commercial with the whole family sitting around the table texting "leggo my eggo".

So... the Win Ten ads? Yeah, the baby ads. They show a bunch of babies and claim that they'll grow up and not have to know about passwords and they'll be able to draw stuff on the screen. Great. You think Win Ten's login procedure is going to rid the world of passwords? Good luck with that. And making cheesy crayon mods of nice sharp pictures, ooh, how classy. Besides, think of it. How long does a typical Windows OS version last? Do you REALLY think these babies will be using Win Ten by the time they're teenagers? I don't think so.

This is NOT the Men In Black Last Operating System You'll Ever Need.

And then there's this:


Not content with the little System Tray icon in my Windows 7 Home Premium, we now get a Win Ten Upgrade pop up box. Get Now! Limited Time!

One -- I have heard that the free upgrade will run for a year after the Win Ten release. So, no panic. Plenty of time for Win Ten Service Pack 1 to get shipped and companies to improve the drivers situation.

Two -- I can even live with the pop up popping up at login. But... on the night August 14th, in one session, I had to kill the little blue fucker SEVEN times.

That is abusive.

And it doesn't endear me to you, Redmond.

Grow up. And figure out how to make a good OS, keep it up to date, keep it secure and How To Market It.

I'll give you time. I'm not going anywhere. And I'm still using XP and 7 -- plus NT4.

Dr. Phil

UPDATE 8/26/15 W: And then, of course, there's this from WMU's OIT:

The Office of Information Technology recommends that faculty and staff not upgrade to Windows 10 at this time. Any time a new operating system comes out, there is a fair amount of testing that has to occur to ensure that the upgrade will work with Banner and other enterprise systems. This testing is occurring, and an announcement will be made when it is concluded and upgrades may occur.

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In music -- or writing -- sometimes you just go on a riff. Despite our devotion to recorded music, to the point where the definitive version is not whatever the band is playing now, but that one recording that you've listened to all your life, there is a whole world of other versions. And variations. The Grateful Dead allowed recordings of all their concerts, so you can listen a different Grateful Dead concert probably from now until forever, and Jerry Garcia died nearly ten years ago!

Many jazz standards were not, at the time, written down. Improvisation is a thing. Classical musicians have long taken one theme and produced countless variations. Variation is a thing.

It shouldn't be with computers.

Sometimes it has to do with technology. My copy of IBM PC-DOS 1.10, for example, doesn't know about hard drives or networks. Which made it perfect for booting up in a computer lab during the infancy of networked computers and early viruses. PC-DOS 1.00 felt "different" than 1.10, not only because it had different commands and subcommands, but 1.00 didn't even have COMMAND.COM so that certain functions like DATE and TIME were DATE.COM and TIME.COM programs, which had to be loaded every time.

Similarly with IBM PC-DOS 2.10 and MS-DOS 2.11, which were similar. PC-DOS 3.20 and 3.30 were variations. And PC-DOS 5.00. And early Windows 1.04, 2.03, 286 and 386.

The Windows 95 and NT 4.0 Professional era brought things closer -- but there were differences. If you wanted to open an MS-DOS box it was MS-DOS.EXE versus CMD.EXE. And the DOS subcommands are different between those. My numerous DOS batch files had to test for 95/98/SE/Me versus NT4/2000/XP. And now some of those NT-class batch files don't work right in Windows 7.

Same with all the variations of Microsoft Word and Office. I've railed about this before.

This essay, however, is about Windows 7. Sure, it's past its due date according to Microsoft. We're deep in sales of Windows 8/8.1 and Windows 10 is in beta testing -- as if they are seriously going to address even 30% of the things wrong with Windows 10 before it ships.

So this is old hat to most of you Windows users. Uncaring for those who just do a few things. Smirking contempt for those of you are/were Windows 7 whizzes.

OUEST, the Dell laptop I've been given at work, is technically my fourth Windows 7 machine. KATNISS is an Asus netbook running Windows 7 Stupid, er, I mean Windows 7 Basic. You can't even change the wallpaper. Really? ZEPPELIN is Wendy's Toshiba laptop running Windows 7 Home Premium. CAROUSEL is Wendy's desktop, which I haven't booted since Georgia -- I think it has Windows 7 Home Premium as well.

OUEST is running Windows 7 Enterprise Service Pack 1.

Yes, I know there are lots of technical reasons for all these versions, but Microsoft could have made those changes internal so that the user didn't have to know anything about it. Home and Professional, with a Server version for powering the back end properties. Instead there are an appalling number of versions.

That plus this is the only machine I have running Microsoft Office 2013 and there are a bunch of things which "don't quite work right" from my point of view. Yes, I have a tendency to do things in an unorthodox manner, but the bottom line is:

It shouldn't be so hard to get the machine into a familiar configuration so I can browse and type. Really?

The College of Arts Sciences owns this machine and so, like Windows 7 Basic, I am locked in with a BRIGHT WHITE SCREAMING wallpaper. Yuck. Without the Y. With another letter. As in, "what the ..." It took a while to get Word 2013 to have the background stick and stay with a light gray, instead of INTENSE SCREAMING WHITE. Whoever was the keyboard jockey setting the defaults is either blind, wears dark glasses at work, or is getting kickbacks from the university's health care providers of vision and epilepsy coverage.

Little niggling details. On KATNISS and ZEPPELIN I get readable icons in the Task Bar, and a two-line Time over DATE display. Handy to have both those bits of information. Have had that through many versions of Windows -- the old CLOCK program put the date into the tab in the Taskbar, too. On OUEST, the icons in the task bar were tiny -- and because they were small the pre-start icons for Firefox and Chrome were both tiny and widely spaced apart. And I only go the Time in the right hand corner. Oh sure, you can hover the mouse over the Time and get more info.

Surely there was an option to toggle to get Time AND Date? In an Enterprise Edition of Windows 7? Hmm? Alas, could not find anything. (What do you mean go and ASK someone? Are you crazy? That's no fun! Plus I should be able to figure this out -- ANY user should be able to figure this out -- that we can't tells us the problem is not about asking someone else a question. Plus-plus the Physics Dept. is filled with a bunch of people who either take Windows as they come or are Mac users.) I'm only coming to this issue late, because I stuck with Windows XP Professional SP2 on KATSUMI, WINTER, SUMMER and LARA for a very long time.

So yesterday, it occurred to me that maybe I was looking at this wrong. It wasn't a setting for the clock display in the Taskbar, it was the Taskbar itself.

Today on my once-a-week office visit I did a right-click on OUEST's Taskbar | Properties | (uncheck) Use Small Icons -- and voila! The Taskbar is now twice as high, the icons are readable -- and I get a two-line Time over Date display. Silly rabbit, you weren't looking to change the time display, you wanted to change icon size. Obvious. (rolls-eyes)

And look, in the old days you could grab the top of the Taskbar and yank it up to make for a second row of tabs if you had a lot of programs open. That didn't work either, and yes I unlocked the Taskbar first.

I have long complained that Microsoft's programmers have too little depth of knowledge -- no Institutional Memory, which is something I very strongly believe in for any large organization. They don't care, or don't know, how things were done one, two, five versions ago. They just wing it any old way now.

Corporations have learned they have to pay people to do IT training and whole companies are built on teaching people how to use Windows and Office and other programs. Never mind that some of these clients include slow-to-learn older folks who have been using computers for several computer generations and would really rather things got back to Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect 5.1.

So, it's a success. And yes, I added in the Additional Clocks so I can hover over the Time and Date to get the current time in Central Europe and Tokyo (DW) (LJ). Rather than have industrial images burned into all of the machines and complicated Windows Registry machinations, what users really would like would be a portable User Profile. But that's not needed, because We Know How You Should Set Up Your Machine.

And... There Is Nothing We Can Bother To Learn From The Past.

Uh-huh. And:

Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

George Santayana

We simply do not need so many useless variations. Not until we have A.I. computers smart enough to handle sixty-zillion different ways of asking for the same thing. And then, like Ex Machina (DW) (LJ), they may no longer be interested in our agendas, but their own.

Dr. Phil

Posted on Dreamwidth
Crossposted on LiveJournal

No, not that Big Brother. I'm talking about Brother Printers.

And yes, this is a big pleased Thank You, for a job well done -- which if you've read this blog doesn't always happen, especially when one is talking about computers. (grin) In fact, though I have a "rants" LJ/DW tag, I didn't have a "kudos" or "attaboy" tag, so I created the former. (double-entry-grin)

A Very Long Time Ago, I bought a Brother P-Touch label printer for the office. I cannot remember now if the model I got had the keyboard, or the keyboard and a PC printer input. Whatever, a handy gadget to have. I's in a box somewhere, I think I saw it in the fall, and I should really dig it out. Then Brother had a label printer without a keyboard, designed to hook up with that newfangled USB cable stuff and it was reasonably priced -- I think we bought it as a Christmas present. This was sometime in 1998 or 1999, because I was running it under a Windows 98SE partition on HARTREE at home.

That machine hasn't been run in ten years or more. I never bothered to get drivers for KATSUMI, the Sony VAIO S270 Windows XP Pro SP2 laptop that was my main home work machine for a number of years. Alas, KATSUMI is sitting on the side with a poorly feeling HDD and I haven't tried the old stick-it-in-the-freezer trick to see if the HDD will last long enough to pull some old files off it.

Which brings us to Today and Wendy's big Toshiba laptop. Windows 7. What are the odds that if I wanted to make some labels that the old Brother P-Touch PT-1500PC label printer would be compatible? So I went to the Brother website. Or rather I bypassed it and just Googled "brother pt-1500pc". Yup. There it is. Listed as Discontinued, no surprise there. But the first note I saw was directed to Windows 8/8.1 users. Okay, this is promising.

Not only did it have Windows 7 drivers and software, the Brother site checked the info from Firefox and already had Windows 7 and 64-bit already preselected in the radio buttons. The Driver webpage even provided the helpful information that (a) the Driver needed to be installed before the Software and (b) that the unit should NOT be connected or turned on until those steps were specifically called for. After that, pffft! Piece of cake.

Of course I had to find a USB A/B cable -- full-size connectors, not those mini-USB or micro-USB things. And the power brick for the unit, which not only was sitting on the rolltop desk just where I'd last left it, but amuses me because it's got so much metal inside that it's heavier than the plastic bodied printer.

Oh, and the PT-1500PC printer itself? Yup. It's been sitting on a slender bookcase top shelf for over a decade. Dusted it off, set up the cables -- hardest thing was I had to move a spare extension cord on the coffee table around two mammoth piles of books. Don't ask. It'll make sense if you have 2N to 3N books, where N is the number of books that you have bookshelves for. Which, come to think of it, is most of the people likely to come visit this blog.

After the reboot for the Driver and the Software installation, I fired up the printer and software, and composed a label which read, "Brother PT-1500PC _________ Brother PT-1500PC". The underlines are actually spaces so I could fold the label tape around the cord near the 5 VDC jack end. Worked perfectly. Pressed the big lever on the top to slice off the tape. Opened the door to the tape cartridge where they'd designed a secure hidden slot for the little tool which separates the label from the backing -- if you have ever had to peel these things apart, you know they're a pain. I remember having one of those small handheld Dymo embossed label tape machines back in high school and I used the scissors on my Swiss Army knife to curve the ends so the sharp corners couldn't catch on anything and you couldn't stab yourself trying to get the backing off. (fond-memories-OUCH-grin)

It's usually a waste of time to articulate my complaints on the Feedback parts of most websites, but this time I felt that I really should check the Found This Page Helpful button and actually left them feedback:

I'm pretty sure I bought this Brother PT-1500PC a very long time ago and installed it in a Micron Millennia 166MHz running Windows 98SE. The printer has sat on a shelf for a long time, since maybe 1999? Faced with a pile of chargers, I realized that I could make labels for them all -- and I had a label printer!

Came to the Brother website, found the Driver and Software, supporting from Windows 98SE through Windows 8.1, so Windows Home Premium 7 (64-bit) was not only there, the website automatically had the correct solution picked out. Installation was perfect, and the printer, which hadn't been used in a long time, printed the first label out perfectly -- and the label stock was also perfectly usable.

I am very impressed. Not only have I used Brother labelers for a long time, but that you support this USB printer for so long deserves a hearty congratulations -- and i will be blogging about it.

Dr. Phil

If you don't tell people that they've done good, even if it's from a long time ago, then no one will ever think to put the effort into getting it right again.

I have used Hewlett-Packard laser and inkjet printers, scanners, all-in-ones for forever. Despite corporate changes, one does get used to dealing with the nonsense and idiosyncrasies that all companies have. It explains why I have a love/hate relationship with Microsoft, HP, Symantec, Intuit, Sony and even, once in a great long while, Nikon. (evil-grin) That doesn't mean that I completely knock other vendors, just that I am brand loyal to a fault.

So yes, I do know that Brother makes some fine printers. And now I know they are much like the old WordPerfect people, who managed to keep printer drivers going long after some obscure printer had passed its Sell By date. In fact, they revel in it.

And I'm sure that Canon makes fine cameras and printers and scanners, too. If you like that sort of thing. (double-evil-grin)

Now I have some real work to do. But in a day or two, I shall open a 15+-year-old plastic bubble card with a new gold letters on black background P-Touch tape and start labeling the plug ends of the pile of chargers in the kitchen for the Kodak Pro SLR/n, Nikon D1 series, Nikon D100 and a bunch of other phone, computer, etc. charging cords.

After I brush off some of the monstrous dust bunnies I've uncovered... and see if I have another can of air in the closet...

Dr. Phil

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Crossposted on LiveJournal

The Lamest Windows Campaign Ever?

Two weeks ago I ragged on Microsoft's ads for Windows 7 which featured this little girl cutting and pasting blurbs about Windows 7 into pictures with animals. Well, there are now at least three versions of this ad. All have different animal graphics. And all HAVE THE SAME SET OF PRO-WINDOWS 7 BLURBS.

Come on, Microsoft. For crying out loud, your new OS is coming out in just a few weeks. And all you've done for the last few weeks is try to convince me that Windows 7 is a great OS for toddlers. This is your great marketing plan? For this you want me to abandon Windows XP Pro? Dream on.

Fire your advertising company and fire the middle-management layer that approved this crap.

Or are you telling me that Windows 7 is so lame and so flawed, that you can't even figure out how to sell it? After all, you had the silly Windows Mojave (equals Vista) ads where people went gah-gah over computers that didn't even do anything for them.

Do you remember why we bought computers in the first place? I don't know about anyone else, but I do work on them. My work. NOT your work. So you're damned OS better work. But you're not convincing me about this new Windows. Really, you're not.

Those Mac Ads

The Mac & PC ads? Those ads are so kicking Microsoft's butt from one end of the country to another. Even people I know who would never buy a Mac find them funny. And there are a LOT of them. Typically I see about 2 or 3 in rotation at any given time. Like right now, I've seen (1) PC in a Mac guy suit and telling the person to buy a PC instead, (2) the one with the suave Top Of The Line PC who tells the lady to call, "when you're ready to compromise", and (3) the one with the bubble wrap and the cupholders. Cupholders! Not only was that a joke in the hey-day of the minivan and the SUV, but a staple joke of the IT tech support world is about the cupholder (CD tray) in the PC not working right.

Those Other Windows Ads

The campaign about You Find It, We'll Buy It? You know, a lot of people will compromise on what they'll buy if someone is in the parking lot willing to give them cash to buy what they want them to buy. Smooth move. I'd get a Vista laptop if someone else was paying for it. Of course I might put a Virtual PC or VMware on it so I can run Windows XP Professional. Because if it was MY machine after YOU bought it, why I'd be able to run anything I want in order get some work done.

But giving people money to buy your own machines doesn't seem like a sustainable business model.

Me? I'm not very excited about the Windows 7 future.

Sorry.

Dr. Phil