0/10 for new Microsoft laptop

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Counting by the above, one could say you have had not one but several desktops.

But I have not bought new optical drives, keyboards, mice, monitors, video cards, cases, power supplies......all the stuff you buy over when you buy a new machine. You don't really need it. Those still all work in your old machine. And it takes a lot of money to buy stuff you don't require.

I spent all my money on the core components that provide performance: motherboard, CPU, RAM. That's the difference between buying a new machine and refreshing an existing one.

You have 100% control over every single component. You only have to buy those few components you wish to upgrade. You don't have to junk the case and all those components which are still functioning perfectly well.

[Skybird]

Well, I keep quite some of my old periphals as well: monitor, printer, keyboard, mouse, external drive, modem.

CPU, motherboard, gfx, to me form the most obvious performance characteristic of a system. Replace them all, and what you deal with is a new system in my book. You may put it inside an old shell - nevertheless it is a new performer.

You change your coats - you look different, but you stay the same person. Give your coat to somebody else, put another person into your coat - and you deal with somebody who happens to look like wearing your old coat, but nevertheless is somebody totally different from yourself.

[Onkel Neal]

My only complaint on Win10 is, as you have mentioned, the telemetry and its attempts to bankrupt me through massive, unexpected updates. For the most part that's manageable through options, though I still suspect every now and then it downloads a large update secretly (my bandwidth useage can be very consistent for months and then out of the blue I get the dreaded "You have used 50% of your bandwidth" message with 25 days to go.)

Oh, and the horrible Metrosexual UI, which can be easily replaced with Classic Shell

[Skybird]

I see that Classic Shell also is avialabole for Windows 7. I wonder why? Isn't it emulating the looks of Windows 7 anyway?

What I would want, once the thing arrives next week, is the option to have shortcuts to the exes of my games on desktop, and a background slideshow of my liking/screenshots, like one used to have in W7. That, and system and option access a la Windows 7 style.

Since I will only launch games, telemetry is not that much my concern, I will reduce and supress it as much as possible and switch Cortana off, of course, and then will not mind for the remaining almost 2000 variables that Windows nevertheless phones home, even with all privacy options activated. Since nothing else will be stored on this rig and no other activity will take place on it, they cnanot violate my privacy more than to find out what games I have played and the password to my Steam account, thats all.

Actually I am a bit more worried about learnign to find what I need and want to tune in Windows 10, some things will be handled differently than in W7, I expect. I have become a lazy dog, learning new things no longer is to my liking.

Looking forward to VR, however. I have waited and did not embark on the early development kits, but with Oculus now being affordable (450 Euro in Germany with both handles), I think I have waited long enough. Now I want to see with my own eyes!

P.S. Am I the only one with a strong antipathy against these talking, voice-sensible "personal assistants"? I hate the mere idea of it, and what they show of it in TV commercials, Google and who else offers them, I find simply - ridiculous. They celebrate it as if it were the finally discovered meaning of life. To me, it simply is - ridiculous. Unneeded. Unnerving. Gimme a mouse anytime. Mouse rules. Babbletoys are like one of these gifts you may get on your birthday, and you unpack it, see what it is and you ask yourself silently "Why me?"

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by Onkel Neal

Oh, and the horrible Metrosexual UI, which can be easily replaced with Classic Shell

Yes, it is ugly. I put Classic Shell on my wife's Win 10 computer and she's been mostly happy with it so far. I have her set up as a metered connection so we can choose when she downloads updates and can actually postpone them for 30 days. And she's on Spybot Anti-beacon with Microsoft data-scraping servers shut down.

All this can be undone in a minute with a rogue MS Update though, so it's only a temporary position of relative ownership of her machine.

[Rockin Robbins]

P.S. Am I the only one with a strong antipathy against these talking, voice-sensible "personal assistants"?

No Skybird. I was playing with my brother's Alexa the other day and most of the time her response is "I didn't understand what you want." She's the best of the personal assistants so that tells you what they are worth.

The only time I think they are useful is if you are driving and want to call someone without touching a cell phone. Even then the impersonal thing doesn't need to talk to you.

[Cyborg322]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

No Skybird. I was playing with my brother's Alexa the other day and most of the time her response is "I didn't understand what you want." She's the best of the personal assistants so that tells you what they are worth.

The only time I think they are useful is if you are driving and want to call someone without touching a cell phone. Even then the impersonal thing doesn't need to talk to you.

Utter nonsense !

The other day I was depressed, I told Cortana that I was suicidal. She told me I needed to speak to someone

She saved my life

[d@rk51d3]

Talking to yourself doesn't count.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

No Skybird. I was playing with my brother's Alexa the other day and most of the time her response is "I didn't understand what you want." She's the best of the personal assistants so that tells you what they are worth.

The only time I think they are useful is if you are driving and want to call someone without touching a cell phone. Even then the impersonal thing doesn't need to talk to you.

I can understand talking navigation devices when yiour ride a car. Or the benefit for people with handicapped eyesight, i observed that myself during a trainride one year ago, an old women, almost blind, who called in a taxi for her arrival, and called someboy else to tell her the train was delayed. Okay. Disadvantage: the whole train compartment participated in her private life.

But usually: normal people? What does Cortana do for me that I van not do with greater speed and precision with a mouse? Worse: when buying something like this Amazon cylinder that was prgrammede to react to the speaking out of the magical speel "Alexa", - only to tell it to play a song, or ordering it to tell me the weather?

Hype.

Specialised purposes in clearly defined environments, okay, I can image and have read enough science ficiton to understand that there cna be imagined scneairos, when it is nic to have a tlakign compouter. But they act todfay as if private households could not live anymorte wiothout these things. As a matter of fact I find the scneairo of commanding a computer to do thre stuff I want it to do via voice, much more annoying, than to use a graphical mouse interface handled via mouse (or gestures).

The next big thing, they say. I do not see it.

[propbeanie]

"Talk-to-text" has been around since the days of the Creative Labs Soundblaster 16, like 1992, if not before, but it stills gets confused. My auto mechanic guy uses it on his cell phone all the time. I send him a text, typing it in. Takes me about five minutes (I'm slow) for a four line text. He uses talk-to-text to respond, then send three more texts for all the "typos" it does from mis-interpreting what he'd said... One of my least-favorite phrases from our "talking" GPS device (which we nicknamed "Amelia") "recalculating...". Next would be "... in one quarter mile, make a U-Turn"... Traffic laws, what traffic laws?... Of course, another good one is "Turn left in one half mile and reach destination" slight pause "Turn left"... haven't even traveled 500 feet!... Add in AI to that?... I do not like talking devices. They act like a distracted mother-in-law...

[Reece]

I love my GPS, and yes it speaks pretty much how you describe but you start to understand it after a while and you don't have to take your eyes off the road. Sometimes it stuffs up but not often, once it had me driving around in circles!!

[Cyborg322]

Mercedes Benz Voice Activation

Julie Joiner, Sales and Leasing Consultant at Mercedes Benz of Naples demonstrates voice Activation



Sorry She did not sell it to me, in fact I'm surprised she did not crash the car, made it sound so complicated its untrue and the delayed responses ,.... Well judge for yourself

[Cyborg322]

Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear Take on Voice Activation





Somewhere in between the 2 takes is probably true, it is getting better

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Cyborg322

Mercedes Benz Voice Activation

Julie Joiner, Sales and Leasing Consultant at Mercedes Benz of Naples demonstrates voice Activation



Sorry She did not sell it to me, in fact I'm surprised she did not crash the car, made it sound so complicated its untrue and the delayed responses ,.... Well judge for yourself

Nerve-killing. - The day I need to handle a computer in this way, will be the day it flies right out of my window. Reminds of voice-bot on a telephone-line.
Also, these cars constantly, always phone home. A complete profile of your movement habits is being established. And you might be surprised what a lot they learn about you from that alone. I saw it once described in a docu on TV. It was frightening how far-reaching conclusions they could reach by such data. Combine that with info on your credit cards, your cellphone, and you turn into a crystal-clear human.

Did you know that it takes I think less than 30 such data setpoints/coordinates to identify you amongst all humans on Earth, with higher confidence than your finger prints...? If somebody means it bad with you and gets access to these datapools, he can turn your life into hell by abusing or manipulating them, like you forge a digital photo via photoshop.

People jjst do not know what they wish for when celebrating this "progress".

I recommend Osmand. Allows offline navigation without needing to be online, you can save data and maps on the device, must not access the web. in urban areas, the map material is the best you can get. It gets fa rmore often updated than many others. Google's maps are garbage, compared to Osmand. Free version is avialable, try it. The navigation, as far as I have tried it, is perfectly understandable in talking, and flawless (I use it to record tracks and study maps in advance, not so much for live navigation).

[BarracudaUAK]

Originally Posted by Skybird

...

But usually: normal people? What does Cortana do for me that I van not do with greater speed and precision with a mouse? Worse: when buying something like this Amazon cylinder that was prgrammede to react to the speaking out of the magical speel "Alexa", - only to tell it to play a song, or ordering it to tell me the weather?

Hype.

Specialised purposes in clearly defined environments, okay, I can image and have read enough science ficiton to understand that there cna be imagined scneairos, when it is nic to have a tlakign compouter. But they act todfay as if private households could not live anymorte wiothout these things. As a matter of fact I find the scneairo of commanding a computer to do thre stuff I want it to do via voice, much more annoying, than to use a graphical mouse interface handled via mouse (or gestures).

The next big thing, they say. I do not see it.

Originally Posted by propbeanie

"Talk-to-text" has been around since the days of the Creative Labs Soundblaster 16, like 1992, if not before, but it stills gets confused. ...

When I got X-plane 5 way back when (I don't remember the date), to get the in-game air traffic controller on the radio to talk, you had to install the voice stuff.

Which turned out to be voice recognition.
I could do anything, move the mouse, press keys, even start programs.

Set the "Listening" activation to "computer", then spoke with Mr. Scott's (from Star-Trek) accent, Similar to the way he does in Star Trek 4.
"Computer" 'now listening' in the bottom right. "start half-life/homeworld/etc".

It was useful in certain situations. I could boot the computer, walk to get a drink from the kitchen, and say "computer, start <program>" and it would be loading by the time I got back, and then I could say "stop listening" and it would basically stop the program and remove the load on the CPU (my 500mhz or my 1.4ghz system).

I liked it, but you had to do a bit of training, and it didn't need to call home.
All the voice stuff on my phone is off, and access is all set to "denied" as well as no background bandwidth usage. Automatic updates are off as well.
Noticed a massive drop in data usage after the first 3 days that I turned all of it off.
Even if I'm watching a ton of youtube on my phone, I don't get anywhere near my bandwidth limit.

Also, Command: Aces of the Deep has voice recognition with the game.
That was cool, "all stop". "Yes, sir."
It hasn't worked since Win95 though (it might have worked in 98, but it's been a while).

Still, as Skybird said, I'm faster with a mouse.
It was more of a "range" thing, I could use the PC while not sitting in front of it.

Barracuda