Ian was among the best Linux pioneers there were, there’s no one that can replace him, what a tragic loss for his family also. Time will heal things, yet the spirit of Ian will live on.

May Ian rest in peace.

Cat

First of all, it’s nice to finally argue points with somebody that actually read what I said and didn’t reply with a “your wrong” without giving a reason for saying it. lol. You bring up some good points.

For OS speed, I assume most people out there have a dual core processor by now. I never recommend anybody of my clients use less than a dual core Processor and 4GB of ram. A refurbished PC with these specs go for maybe $150-$250 bucks now-a-days so no reason to have anything less. Using these specs as a baseline, I’ve installed and used 7, 8, 8.1, and 10 many, many times. I never go with default settings and always turn off junk services, junk settings, and remove all bloatware apps. With Windows “streamlined” I have never noticed huge differences in speeds of the OS itself. After loading a few programs, I’ve seen huge differences however. I’m not sure if the low end PCs your referring to are older than this but this is the typical setup I see day to day with my job. I’ve not heard of the overheating problem with Windows 7 Aero but I’m certainly going to do some research on that. Overall my work PC (average specs) gets to the desktop in about 30 seconds. My home, nice quad core with SSD, gets to the desktop in 19 or 20 seconds. I haven’t gotten better than that with all my programs but that’s pretty darn fast.

For drivers, I’ve noticed most machines installing clean (or upgrading) Win10, it gets all new drivers including the graphics card drivers. Drivers do however seem to be Win10’s most common issue however, sometimes it just does not find one. I’m not sure why it doesn’t attempt to use the drivers from the previous OS if it can’t find new ones since most drivers from 7 and 8 still work for 10. I’ll admit that seems to be an issue and the last thing we want is users to go to google and search for “download drivers”! But as with any new OS, drivers are always a problem early on. remember the driver issues when Windows vista and XP first came out? It was baaaaad back then!

As far as privacy is concerned, I’ll clarify that I meant I’m willing to sacrifice a bit of privacy if it means stopping terrorists or the “bigger issues”. Yes I agree having the government ease drop on the small crimes like copyright would be aggravating! Don’t even get me started on the issues with copyright laws and the whole “pirate” issue. I hate greedy people using these laws to stay in the top 3% of wealth… Anyways, I just meant if a machine records a phonecall to my wife about me picking up groceries just to make sure it’s not a phonecall to a terrorist about a bombing, I’m ok with that! If the ‘machine’ happens across a phonecall that sounds bad, then go after them!

Win10 EULA scares many people but it’s mostly because M$ must protect themselves against EVERYTHING by putting it in there. Most of the things that scare people are never touched by a human being. Lets face it, M$ isn’t hiring thousands and thousands of people to look through our stuff. Again, if somehow M$ is able to flag a computer searching for bomb components, blueprints…etc then by all means, alert the authorities. Many people don’t realize all the privacy settings in Win10 were actually automatically “on” with no options to turn them off in older versions of Windows. By lining them up in one area and making them clear, it has actually scared everybody. Win10 actually just offers the ability to protect everything, but leaves it unprotected (as usual) by default.

I haven’t ever heard of Win10 removing programs from people’s PCs without alerting them too. Again, I’m going to look more into that. If you don’t use any antivirus, Defender automatically is used. Defender sucks but it’s better than nothing. Everybody should be using better options (also free) anyways. 360TS is free and fantastic as an example.

When you monetize global spy practices under the false pretense of a never ending “war on terror” you have committed the greatest felony offence possible.

People who do wrong get by for a short time.
But judgement day is coming, for the wicked.

Thanks for posting!

I see you believe Win 8 is similar to Vista.

Maybe, on mid to high end machines.

But, I can tell you through personal experience & testing that on slower machines such as netbooks/slow computers that Win 8 boots & shuts down faster than XP/Vista/7 or 10. 8 boots as much as 4x faster than 7, & 2x faster than 10, so on slow machines the difference is considerable. Netbooks or other slow computers that were barely usable under XP/Vista/7/10 are a good deal faster on a netbook.

In addition, you have to install multiple drivers on XP/Vista/7 & you have to manually install display driver on 10. Windows 8 automatically installs all drivers needed & when combined with ClassicShell is hardly different from Windows 7 other than the considerable boost in speed.

Windows 7 causes a netbook to heat up a lot when using Aero, & basic looks pathetic. Windows 8 still looks ok without needing to use Aero. Those wishing to speed up 8 still more, can download ex7forw8 & import Windows 7 explorer.exe + explorer.exe.mui & have a Windows 7 start menu while completely eliminating Metro from loading (saving many mb of RAM & enabling a slightly faster experience).

I have tested XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, & 10 on modern & older computers.

Here is the the thing.

On modern hardware, ANY os feels “fast” because the hardware pushing it is fast.

On slower hardware, you can really tell which OS is the most efficient in operation because slower hardware doesn’t have as many resources & will bog down with bloatware.

Maybe you do not care about older machines because you have a “decent” machine, but I do research because I care, I have a netbook & older machines & being able to know what is best to use for older hardware prevents having to trash or sell hardware that is practically un-usable under the wrong OS.

I can tell you, from self experience, Windows 8 is the fastest MS OS on older, slower machines. People like you with reasonable hardware may not notice an extra 10 to 15 seconds on faster hardware. On older hardware, Windows 7 takes 80 seconds to boot to usable desktop with wifi, vs Windows 10 taking 40 seconds, vs Windows 8 taking 20 seconds on the exact same hardware. Even though Windows 10 takes half the time of Windows 7 to boot, it is still slower feeling than Windows 7 or 8 on older hardware. Newer hardware may be different.

So far as the government making you safer by knowing more about your life, I believe it was in the news a while back that TSA failed to find about 95% of dangerous items when they were tested on capabilities.

Simply put, giving up privacy for protection isn’t really doing any good. Your giving up privacy but not getting much protection. If you want to live your live with a camera shoved in every corner & crevice of your private life, thats up to you. But many, including me, would rather die free than live a life in 100% scrutiny as a slave.

Also, there are no situtations the government & corporations that are conducting the spy operations would also agree to be counter spied on, which should open your eyes to the motives they have. Unless you are blind. I don’t blame you for being blind, as many are, but something is wrong when spying is only 1 way & the other way is considered criminal activity. Anyone watching the news, seeing Obama cry a single fake crocodile tear (from 1 eye) while telling you that guns don’t make you safe (And yet, he is surrounded by a small army of people armed to the teeth)…

Anyone with eyes to see can clearly see what’s going on, but that is another story for another day.

So far as the data that is leaked to the government isn’t sifted through by people, it’s machines, duh! Do you think a machine could sift through 200 million records? They use machines because they are much faster. Machines make it easier, not harder. Duh!

I see you do not believe the government cares about your digital life, but how do you explain the Windows 10 EULA detailing how your data will be turned over to federal law enforcement (if they think for any reason) that your data warrants it? They aren’t looking? Right!

Unless your doing something you shouldn’t, you shouldn’t be afraid to be spied on, riggggghhhht? Let me get this straight. Millions of patents on music, movies, documents, books, you can even be sued for millions of dollars if a phrase is “plagiarized” from a book. You don’t even have to know what the book says, but if you happen to think the same thing that happens to be under copyright law & write it down to share online, & this phrase happens to match what someone else thought of earlier… It won’t matter whether you read the book, it won’t matter if you didn’t know about it. Jail time!

Many people report the “anti-piracy” heuristics of Windows 10 to be automatically deleting Speccy & other programs. Making them have to re-download the app they were using. This is why you do not let a corporation try to spy on your programs to determine what is legal or illegal. If they delete legal programs & can’t even accurately tell whether you are using something legit, they don’t need to be trying to police what your doing with your things that you bought in the first place. I do not see why people have not already sued them for illegally deleting files that have nothing to do with “piracy”. Guess some people just don’t have the balls to sue a multi-billion dollar company. Hard to go against the big money, because history serves to teach that those with deep pockets have the most well lobbied lawyers.

Does this answer your other question about “If they were doing something wrong, they would be arms deep in lawsuits”? Not necessarily. Broke people are afraid to go against billion dollar corporations because they know the deal. They might win, they might lose, but big money wins much of the time. The risk isn’t worth it.

Again, yes, we realize its machines reading the text. Using heuristics. Which have many false positives. Which means, that many people can/will/do get falsely accused of “criminal” activities they were never guilty of in the first place.

As far as the claim that PayPal steals credit cards, I know from self experience this is true. A few years ago, I joined them to a bank account I had so I could use them. And then I bought a pre-paid card at a local gas station nearby, thinking to add it since it was like a credit card only it was prepaid with x dollars on it.

Girl who waited on me was new, spoke Spanish, but assured me that everything was ok.

I went home, tried to add it, & evidently the card wasn’t activated. Whatever. At this point, PayPal froze my account. Meaning, I could log-in, I could log-out, but that is all I could do. I could not unjoin them from my bank account, I could not delete the PayPal account, I couldn’t do a single thing. Good luck talking to someone to try to fix things.

You can laugh all you want, but cases of PayPal corruption exist. You will know, if or when it ever happens to you!

Just because you never had a problem, doesn’t mean noone else ever did.

So far as you only getting decent performance from Windows 10 with more than 2 GB Ram, my netbook was upgraded to 2GB RAM + 120 GB SSD. Windows 8 runs fine on that, and even ran ok with 1GB. I only updated to 2GB because when you use a web browser to watch vids, they take lots of memory for multiple tabs.

Windows 10 ran like a snail on the same hardware that Windows 8 ran ok on.

Most tests show there isn’t a significant change in OS performance, because these people are probably using machines with an i3, i5, i7, or equivalent quad/octo-core chipset. I am using an i3 laptop at the moment, so I know how this rolls.

You can only tell the difference on older hardware, which you obviously do not have too much experience with.

Bottom line is, you might not care about privacy & you might not care about other people.

Your choice!

(Just don’t complain if they come for you one day)

Totally?

It seems like the repercussions are ever more Orwellian in scope & nature, with fewer benefits.

Slowest, most insecure piece of junk ever released.

Almost every modern browser is 2x faster than IE.

And 1,000x more secure!!!

Very good points. Safety can definitely never be guaranteed but there’s plenty you can do to increase safety. I’m a tech guy and I support the use of machines to help sort people’s probabilities of being dangerous to others. If a machine listening to my phone call can help catch a terrorist that could put my life or the life of another in danger, I’m all for it. Yes, I would be sacrificing some of my rights to “possibly” save a life. Again, it’s a sliding scale. I personally support helping the refugees (or anybody) until they give reasons not to be trusted. Yes, it affects my safety again but I feel that is worth the good it does. We may save thousands of lives at the cost of a few of our own. Sad, but it’s for the greater good.