IE and Edge go into crash-dive

[Skybird]

Another thing where Microsoft has intentionally and completely messed itself up. This battle too is lost for them. Within 21 months from a market share of roughly one half down to roughly one fifth. Wowh, thats a steep dive plane angle.

https://www.computerworld.com/articl...sing-ways.html

However, that a privacy-violator like Chrome now rules over 60% of the market, is anything but encouraging. It shows that people do not care for their privacy at all. In such an environment, it is a hopeless cause wanting to get more privacy.

Chrome is a secure browser, little doubt on that, no other browser gets as qickly and as often updated on security-relevant issues like this one. But privacy and security are two different things, and relating privacy, Chrome is a worst-case-scenario. You have no privacy in Chrome, that simple it is. None. Rien. Keine. Nada.

[Rockin Robbins]

They also surrendered to Spotify on the music front. Is there a company-wide trend developing? Are they going to dump all their former core businesses in favor of being a cloud company only?

[Skybird]

Actually cloud compouting and server business is what not only keeps Microsoft aflat, but send their stocks flying. So you are right, their former business models, payware software packages that are bought-and-owened instead of leased-and-milked, means losses for them. And Windows was nothing they could gain huge profits with anymore in the old model. In principle, they would love to get rid of Windows once and forever, they still need to invest much more in "servicing" it, but do not get much profit out of it. Thats why it was turned into Windows-as-a-service and why they have cut back technical support staff for it. - They indeed want to focus on sever and cliud business for sure. This is wehre microsoft's future revenues lie. So they think, and so far they are right, both branches are flourishing.

[Catfish]

Only because people have their say in public surveys does not tell whether a product is really good, or if they even really mean what they say, or know what they are talking about. Microsoft bashing is as old as Microsoft, and a good part is sheer envy. Still, show me companies who do not use Microsoft products; domain and active directory technology along with the Exchange server paired with iPhone tech is much better than anything else on the market.
You can program Linux to behave like that, but then you have.. what? A clone. Like with those free office suites, which are just older Windows office versions changed a bit so they get no lawsuit. The ideas were and are coming from MS, like it or not.
No, i do not like Win 10, especially since you can only cut the complete transfer of data with the Enterprise edition, which makes no sense for private use. I would have preferred an improved Windows 7.

Germany has tried to switch over to Linux in a lot of ministries and institutions, the result was a big failure, and they went back to MS as fast as possible. Which is of course because people know how to handle MS, but not Linux, it would take some more years to change and adapt.
Apple as an alternative? Don't make me laugh.

Problem for high tech firms or companies like Volkswagen is of course that MS has all kinds of backdoors installed for sniffing on your data, which gives the US companies and secret services etc. an unfair advantage, when it comes to technology, patents and ideas.
But since Trump i guess technology and science are so being cut down that creationism will strive and the stars will become some strange lights in the sky for US citizens anyway

Chrome is secure? In a way that all your data are saved and published already so there is no need for concern anymore?
Edge will not be much better, but it is a fast and lean product, i use it daily since switching to Win 10. I still use Firefox, but maybe to an extent of 10% if at all.

That said, what i mean is they all suck

[Rockin Robbins]

Have you tried Vivaldi? It's a brilliant browser on Windows or Linux. The French police use Linux. Microsoft stays in Germany by buying the political process, not because Linux is a failure.

Libre Office is not a copy or even close to a copy of Microsoft Office. No, they did not copy Microsoft code and change it just enough not to get sued. Reverse engineering is a crime. Linux programmers are plenty good enough to outperform Microsoft, and they do so all the time.

Firefox, Thunderbird, WinDirStat, Steam, your home router, your cell phone, just about every site on the Internet, game servers, and many many more things we generally aren't aware of all came from Linux or run on Linux today. If you want dependability, Linux is the only game in town. If you want security Linux is the only game in town. Nine of the ten fastest computers on the planet all run Linux. There are good reasons for that.

[Skybird]

Libre Office is a split from Open Office, and Open Office roots back in Star Office by Sun Microsystems. And Star Office was was no split from Microsoft Office Suite, but a competing rival product to it. It based on a very early text editor named Star Printer or Star Writer, that was I think as early as in the 80s. It never had any link to Word, or Office Suite by MS. The open document format stems from this lineage, its no Microsoft format. The early founders came form Germany, btw.

There were so many simply factual wrong claims raised in Catfish's post that I got confused on where to start and then decided to just not care getting started at all.

Indeed the Paruis police has installed - in free time of the officers! - Linux, aga8inst the will of the French interior minsitry. Since years the altter demands the Paris polcie to move back to Micorosft, but the Paris flics just do not care, because Linux works safer and more stable for them. that has the French interior minister (before Macron) fuming since long. But the Paris police ignores him. Since I think three or four years. LOL

In many German towns and cities, indeed Linux is beign maintained, partially for overt ten years already. Amongst them my hometown where I live.

Munich however illustrates how Microsoft all too often tries to play the game. Munich also was on Linux, since years, but then the local government or mayor changed and the new boss in town is a close friend of Microsoft. Big MS told him they would move some representation center into Munich if he woudl force the public services to switch back to Windows - which they do not want at all. So he gave the order, simply that, and ran into stiff resistance. There were at least two oublic heairng by now where the guy tried to give practical arugmwents of why Windows is better for munich. He gailed. He claimed the poublic office workers want it, and they immediately rejected it. He claimed sdecurity soncerns,a nd was proiven wrong piont for point. He had no arguments that were valid. But Microsoft'S model is to cash in hilariously expensive yearly license fees, becaseu th software is no more bought, but just leased, these fees can reach easily into the millions. The mayor in Munich wna ts to waste oubkic tax money to give MS the wanted license fees to get a pointless Microsoft office into the city, all that at the cost and expense of the tax payer. I call that fraudulent conversion.

In some cities they have converted back to Windows indeed in the past years, however. sometimes indeed due to workers having problems with handling software. But that is due to incomepetent political administratoin that did not care fopr gettign staff trained comoetently. Where such training was invested into, usually Linux is preferred and works better - and muczh cheaper.

However, sometimes indeed certain specialsied software needed is not avialable under Linux. The old vulnerability of it: compatability. This is however not the general case in public administration.

And Catfish, get yourself some info on what the difference is between just polling consumers on a sample basis, and monitoring complete network traffic loads to come to empirical conclusions about market shares. Its not the same.

In the US, I recently have read, schools and universities by now have tipped the flood. No longer micorosft devices get ordered or donated predominantly, but Google and Apple devices.

Professional It admins hate Wujndows 10. I read two Engish and three German tech blogs frequently, more or less frequently at least, and the audfience as well as tghe authors are profesuisonals needing to know this stuff for thewir living. Catfish, realise it: they hate it. Many more working hours to maintain it, to repair all the things Microsoft breakes, to work around the many issues. MS cannot make money with Windows anymore, and if they could, they would just dump it and leave it behind. So they cut funding, fired any good people wokring on and knowing Windows since half their lives, and made others fleeing Microsoft voluntarily. A massive drain of experience and knoweldge, related to Windows. No wonder the patching is a mess. IT admins seem to try in significant numbers to convince their employers NOT to switch to Windows 10. And the boss of MS, Nadalla, just a short time ago inficated that they were wrong in their claimed rates of custoimerd adopting W10, in a recent interview the number he most naturally mentioned was by one third lower, than before. They have just lost one third of their global Windows 10 users? Wowh.

How the tide is shifting, Robbins has shown some weeks ago with a link to some statistics showuijgn that the number of Wiundows devices per one single Appole device sold, has drmataically dropped. It still is severla times as high as the sales by aplles, yes. But it has dropped by over one half, and this in relatively short time. And that has its own message. The new bully on the block for operation systems, is Android. The future ofor producers hwo create their own hardware for their own software, beliongs to Google, and Apple. Microsoft - is busy in cloud computing and server business (where again Linux already dominates, and with Novell a third contender comes in as well). Windows is no longer a core business, so is Office.

Today i have read that MS works on a new Windows, named Andromeda. I heard of this for the first time today. It again holds a message, ebcasue originally W10 was meant to be the last orioginal Windows that Microsoft woudl ever develope, and then constantly uodates in the way of the scheme they have tried to establish by now, they said so already before W8 was released. And some weeks ago they gave up their resistence to Linux, which before they fought against right to the bone, they say they now want to support it and assist development for Linux as best as they can. LOL Now they try to embrace it to death, but meet extremely cool reaction by the Linux com munity of course. Both pieces of info tell me that they have admitted the failure of W10, and their defeat by Linux in general. Hell, even MS headquarters in Redmont are said to run Linux!

Its Windowsdämmerung, plain and simple. It will die on for more years to come, but it dies. And this new Andromeda - we will see. To me it is an emergency reaction born out of despair. I do not b eleiove thnat the past will come back, so if somethign good comes from it, then due to it beign somethign totally new, but not an old Windows in new clothings. After the terribly bad experiences of the past two years however I will be so on my guard however , that they will find it almost impossible to befriend with me again. These two years really have blown it for them. And I learned that I only need Windows anymore to play some games.

[BarracudaUAK]

Just a quick note:

Word Perfect predates Microsoft Word,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPerfect

And Lotus 1-2-3 predates Microsoft Excel,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_1-2-3

Compare the release dates of MS Word, and Excel:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Word
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Excel


I knew several people that switched from these to Microsoft Office when their jobs switched over to Windows and MS Office.

I used Word Perfect also, actually worked on my Tandy 1000 RL.

Also of note is GeoWorks, We had a 386 SX/25 that originally came with Geoworks Ensemble,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEOS_(...erating_system)

There were things I could do in Geoworks, that I couldn't do in Win95 years later.

Still have the disk in storage... I really need to go dig them out.



Just a bit of info.
Have a good one gents...

Barracuda

[Rockin Robbins]

Aldus Persuasion, in 1992 was many times more powerful than Microsoft Powerpoint is today. Microsoft doesn't innovate, it emasculates and then calls it simplification.

In Persuasion I could independently change font outlines, outline width, outline color separate from font fill color, all in 1992. You can't do that today with Powerpoint. And that's only the beginning of features absolutely missing from the Microsoft product. I've forgotten most of them, I'm sure. But I sure miss the total control of fonts in Persuasion.

As for Microsoft, they lost the handle. They disposed of the one factor that makes a company valuable: its people. it's amazing how a company on top of the world gets a new CEO who promises great profits to investors. He does this by imitating the Worm Ouroboros, which lived by eating it's own tail. Firing more and more employees to eliminate expenses and increase the bottom line, these companies eat their own tail and pretend to be healthy. But they eat more and more of the tail and eventually reach vital organs. Then the company dies.

[vienna]

Originally Posted by BarracudaUAK

Just a quick note:

Word Perfect predates Microsoft Word,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPerfect

And Lotus 1-2-3 predates Microsoft Excel,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_1-2-3

Compare the release dates of MS Word, and Excel:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Word
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Excel


I knew several people that switched from these to Microsoft Office when their jobs switched over to Windows and MS Office.

I used Word Perfect also, actually worked on my Tandy 1000 RL.

Also of note is GeoWorks, We had a 386 SX/25 that originally came with Geoworks Ensemble,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEOS_(...erating_system)

There were things I could do in Geoworks, that I couldn't do in Win95 years later.

Still have the disk in storage... I really need to go dig them out.



Just a bit of info.
Have a good one gents...

Barracuda

Predating both Lotus 1-2-3 and Excel was Multiplan, a very early spreadsheet; it was the first PC spreadsheet I used and it was bit of a struggle to make it really workable; the first project I created was tax depreciation schedules for a utility company:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplan

Also, predating MS-Office, was a Lotus product called IBM Lotus Symphony, an all-in-one suite of software, which later morphed in what is now OpenOffice:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Lotus_Symphony

The utility company I mentioned above got me the Symphony package after I solved a problem of not having a word processing application (it was either get Multiplan or get a word processor, not both) by using 1-2-3's macros to program a rudimentary word processor, so I could handle inserting large blocks of text into the spreadsheets...

I recall the transition to Office and Windows; I accepted a project and was told the company used MS-DOS, WordPerfect, and 1-2-3, all of which I was well familiar; when I got to the site, I found out they actually used Windows 3.1 and MS-Office, neither of which I had ever used; it was a real "in at the deep end" situation, but I was able to suss out how it all worked and complete the project. Ah, the "Good Old Days"...





<O>

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by vienna

Windows 3.1

Shivers, I still feel uncomfortable when hearing the sound of that. The OS before that I was familiar with, was Amiga DOS. LOL. The migration was not really smooth, not really without enormous difficulties, and in the end not really successful. I hated it, although later, still at university, I learned to hate SPSS 6 for Win95 even more.

[propbeanie]

How 'bout GeoWorks on Commodore C-64 machine with 64k total RAM - at 1.2MHz - MEGA-Hertz!!!??... - phwew! no hard drive either...

man, I'm having a difficult time getting me-self up off me land-lubber floor!...

That, and some spreadsheet and database that ate up floppy disk after floppy disk... and The Hunt For Red October on 2 floppies... ah yesh... good times, good times... sigh... - two-button mouse! almost forgot about that one...

My least favorite computer thingies was probably AS/400, after having gotten used to a gui on a C-64, Amiga, Mac, and Windows... but man, it was powerful... "Robust" was a term they used back then. Not anymore... "Today, Corporation XYZ has announced another 3.2 million customers were exposed in its latest data breach"... so let's trot Edge out there...

[Rockin Robbins]

I remember as an Apple II with Visicalc guy going to a sales session for the Tandy of the time with Microsoft pre-Excel, what was it? MULTIPLAN! That's was the ticket!

The instructor was up there telling us what to type into the machine and I found a few other Apple guys. "Type sum(a5...a8) and press Enter! And the machine went zoom zoom, as every time you entered a formula the floppy disk ran like a washing machine.

Us Apple guys just laughed and laughed. "You mean every time we enter a formula we have to wait for the stupid machine to run the floppy drive for ten seconds? Hashahahahahahahahahahahahaha!" We were amazed how much better VisiCalc was than Multiplan, and maybe our Apple IIs over the Tandy.

But we knew crap when we saw it and that was pure crap! The instructor/sales dude wasn't amused.

[Skybird]

Imperfection with fascination.to day, more visual perfeciton in games, butn the thunder, the magic, the fascination is somewhat gone. Is perfection really always worth it? Food for thought. Time was good to me, and those were good times for sure, at least for me. Sometimes, I remember them. And then I miss them. To much perfection today, and gettin abused for questionable casue, and paid for with new, other imperfections.

Very well. Now I talked myself sad. Well done, Sky.

[BarracudaUAK]

Originally Posted by vienna

Predating both Lotus 1-2-3 and Excel was Multiplan, a very early spreadsheet; it was the first PC spreadsheet I used and it was bit of a struggle to make it really workable; the first project I created was tax depreciation schedules for a utility company:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplan

Also, predating MS-Office, was a Lotus product called IBM Lotus Symphony, an all-in-one suite of software, which later morphed in what is now OpenOffice:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Lotus_Symphony

The utility company I mentioned above got me the Symphony package after I solved a problem of not having a word processing application (it was either get Multiplan or get a word processor, not both) by using 1-2-3's macros to program a rudimentary word processor, so I could handle inserting large blocks of text into the spreadsheets...

I recall the transition to Office and Windows; I accepted a project and was told the company used MS-DOS, WordPerfect, and 1-2-3, all of which I was well familiar; when I got to the site, I found out they actually used Windows 3.1 and MS-Office, neither of which I had ever used; it was a real "in at the deep end" situation, but I was able to suss out how it all worked and complete the project. Ah, the "Good Old Days"...





<O>

I was sure someone would fill in the area before Word Perfect, and Lotus 1-2-3.
Those were the earliest that I remembered...

My Mother had several jobs that included transferring older records/files to MS Office.
Some as far back as an early '60s OS (Unix maybe?) when everybody decided to update to PCs.

I remember using the old mainframe/dumb terminal at the local library to find books that I wanted (on submarines and planes mostly ).

Then the library switched to a PC/web site based search system, I couldn't find ANYTHING I wanted, no matter how I searched.
I went to using the 'cards-in-the-small-drawer' file to find the books I wanted (I forget what the actual term is).

Originally Posted by Skybird

Shivers, I still feel uncomfortable when hearing the sound of that. The OS before that I was familiar with, was Amiga DOS. LOL. The migration was not really smooth, not really without enormous difficulties, and in the end not really successful. I hated it, although later, still at university, I learned to hate SPSS 6 for Win95 even more.

A family friend had an Amiga 500, played "A-10 Tank Killer" on it once, also "F-117A".
"Babylon 5" space scenes were rendered on the Amiga model directly preceding the 500, and the 500 as well, for season 4 or 5.
I have all 5 seasons of this, plus the Spin-off/continuation "Crusade". Awesome Shows.

Amiga's had excellent graphics capability when IBM compatibles were on CGA/EGA.
If Amiga could have held on a little longer, I have a feeling that they would be the "gaming" machine of choice, or we would all be running "Amiga" video cards!
(This is just a thought, nothing to say they could do it, but if we look at the pace of development shortly after Amiga went under.... seems plausible.)

hmm, just think, Amigas running Unix/CP-m(?,the MSDos predacessor)/Linux...
Now I have to find an Amiga 500, and find a version of Linux to run on it....

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

I remember as an Apple II with Visicalc guy going to a sales session for the Tandy of the time with Microsoft pre-Excel, what was it? MULTIPLAN! That's was the ticket!

The instructor was up there telling us what to type into the machine and I found a few other Apple guys. "Type sum(a5...a8) and press Enter! And the machine went zoom zoom, as every time you entered a formula the floppy disk ran like a washing machine.

Us Apple guys just laughed and laughed. "You mean every time we enter a formula we have to wait for the stupid machine to run the floppy drive for ten seconds? Hashahahahahahahahahahahahaha!" We were amazed how much better VisiCalc was than Multiplan, and maybe our Apple IIs over the Tandy.

But we knew crap when we saw it and that was pure crap! The instructor/sales dude wasn't amused.

Originally Posted by Skybird

Imperfection with fascination.to day, more visual perfeciton in games, butn the thunder, the magic, the fascination is somewhat gone. Is perfection really always worth it? Food for thought. Time was good to me, and those were good times for sure, at least for me. Sometimes, I remember them. And then I miss them. To much perfection today, and gettin abused for questionable casue, and paid for with new, other imperfections.

Very well. Now I talked myself sad. Well done, Sky.

I typed this in reply to RR's comment, but it also seems to apply to Skybirds, so I moved it down, as I can't split it to make any sense!!!!!


Must have been a model before the 1000RL (RLX had a hard-drive), but it did access the drive anytime you ran anything because there was only one 3.5" floppy...
But if you were running a command from the "C:\" ROM, it skipped the floppy.
This one had Dos 3.1, upgraded it later to Dos 3.3...
Put a 40MB (yes that's MEGA-Byte) hard drive in it, and it didn't check the floppy for anything unless you were accessing A:\.
Only 768K of ram, but it was a very cool little PC, boot time on the ROM was under 4 seconds. One the HDD, about 5-6.
The Double Density 720K floppies, and the 768K of RAM were the biggest limiters.
But I did "game" on this PC for several years, then jumped to a 386 SX/25, then a 486 SX/25. Switching between the 2 because the 486's Game Port didn't work.
Sometime between 2010 and 2014, I found an old 486 DX/33mhz CPU and dropped it in the Socket next to the SX/25 processor... Played on that thing for the next few days.
Still works, has Win95 installed.
BUT, Command; Aces of the Deep works on it. WITH voice commands!

Skybird, you've done it to me too!!!

OK, I'm moving on now...

Barracuda

[vienna]

Originally Posted by BarracudaUAK

I was sure someone would fill in the area before Word Perfect, and Lotus 1-2-3.
Those were the earliest that I remembered...

My Mother had several jobs that included transferring older records/files to MS Office.
Some as far back as an early '60s OS (Unix maybe?) when everybody decided to update to PCs.

I remember using the old mainframe/dumb terminal at the local library to find books that I wanted (on submarines and planes mostly ).

Then the library switched to a PC/web site based search system, I couldn't find ANYTHING I wanted, no matter how I searched.
I went to using the 'cards-in-the-small-drawer' file to find the books I wanted (I forget what the actual term is).

...

Sometime between 2010 and 2014, I found an old 486 DX/33mhz CPU and dropped it in the Socket next to the SX/25 processor... Played on that thing for the next few days.
Still works, has Win95 installed.
BUT, Command; Aces of the Deep works on it. WITH voice commands!

...

I did several conversion projects when PC first came out; sometimes the job was fairly easy and other times, they were near intolerable. The utility company I mentioned before was a case of the near intolerable; there was a very strong resistance from the mainframe group to the new PCs; the CFO and I asked for a direct connection to mainframe data so as to download raw financial information to be refined using the PCs, with the priority project being to speed up the monthly financial reports; prior to the PCs, the procedure was to have the DP unit printout a hard copy of the raw financial data (mainly ledgers and journals) and then forward it to Accounting where the data was written up, in pencil, on accounting pads in a rough final format; the pads would then be reviewed by the CFO, revised if needed, and the 'final' version would be sent to the Typing Pool where ditto machine masters where typed; then the ditto masters would be reviewed, and, once approved, the Print Shop would run off copies of the Financials to be distributed to the executives, outside auditors, and legal advisors; the whole process took about 1-1/2 to 2 weeks, not good if you wanted good data fast. The DP Head (who was a rather unpleasant person) refused to allow a mainframe to PC hookup, citing "security concerns", even though we argued having paper copies of printouts all over the place was hardly secure, and there was to be no connection to any other net, internal or external (the WWW was very new and we were far from capable of making any connection). They wouldn't budge, but they did grudgingly offer to supply us with the data on a tape spool (which were huge on mainframes), so we had to take what we could get; we found a tape drive that would interface with the IBM PCs. Lotus 1-2-3 (and later Symphony) couldn't directly download to the spreadsheet in those days, so I rigged up a macro in Lotus that would make a call to dBase III, which would run its own macro I programmed to run the tape drive and download the data to dBase II and then from there to Lotus. I had setup a spreadsheet to exactly mimic the final format of the monthly Financials and put a sort of gathering area for the data at the bottom of the spreadsheet, using formulas to assemble and compute the data into the appropriate areas of the report. Downloading form the tape took only a few minutes instead of hours over accounting pads; from there Accounting could make any necessary tweaks, print out a draft, get it approved, print a final, and xerox it, and distribute it to the execs, etc. The whole new method took two days, tops, rather than 1/2 to 2 weeks. After the battle over the data and tapes with DP, the CFO said he took no little amusement, when at the Executive Meeting following the first run of the new process, the CEO was praising the speed and efficiency of the new method; the DP Unit Head was rather put out by the CEO's praise of what he viewed as a threat to his little 'kingdom' and angrily said "Well, DP could have done the same thing long ago", to which the CEO demanded, "Well, then, why didn't you?" The CFO said watching the DP Head cringe when he realized he had royally put his foot in it was worth the trouble we had gone through...

I, too, miss the old index card files that used to be in libraries and have found the 'improved' digital lookups to be ma bit frustrating at times; if a patron is not really familiar with database search techniques, they can miss out on relevant information; an added problem is the quality of the conversion; here in LA, volunteers, of varying computer and typing skills, were used to manually enter the paper card data into the database; typos of all sorts resulted and, unless, you know try variant searches, some items will not show up. On a plus side, an artistic use for the old cards have been found:

http://www.poetichome.com/2010/03/15...eek-wallpaper/

Here in LA, the old wooden card catalog drawers have been re-purposed into a "Donor Wall" displaying the names of Library benefactors and donors:





I own what has been called one of the first models of a PC 'portable computer', a Compaq 'luggable', so called because the thing weighs about 40 pounds (a bit over 18 kilos):









<O>