"It's the updates"

I had an oil burner serviceman come in yesterday, and since the burner is right next to my shop, I kiddingly tried to sell him a laptop. But he wasn't interested. A year ago he got a Mini Mac, and he hasn't had a lick of trouble with it yet, he said. I asked him why he switched. He said, "It's the updates. I kept having trouble with the updates."

I'm sitting here this morning with two W7 machines spinning their update progress bars. One is trying to download, the other is trying to check for availability. It has been over an hour for each, with no visible progress. One of them I'm trying to get ready for shipment. Last night the updates were very fast, but that is unusual. It seems it's simply a question of MS's server load balancing, and my region appears to be turned off this morning.

Apparently MS hasn't made enough money to make the update process smooth and trouble-free. Somehow, I don't think the current state of affairs is going to help their cash flow.

AddRAM said:

It`s the will of the Force

Indeed.

I worked on Unix systems years ago but think I'm going Kubuntu next year (next week).
I'm MNCE and MNCE (Master Novell Certified Engineer and Microsoft Network Certified Engineer)
so my learning curve will be pretty steep to start with. Why? As stated above, "It's THE Updates!!"
M$ is slipping fast and even came out with open-source office couple years ago. All about the bucks.
Macs are great but pricy. I have no software on my W7 system that isn't free. (some came with laptop)
I get in a lot of arguments with other computer geeks with paid vs free versions of anything.
AVG Free Edition 2016/ZEN vs Norton or McAfee Suites. I rue the day I used to stick up for McAfee.
I'd match all my free stuff to anyone's paid for stuff any day.

I'd match all my free stuff to anyone's paid for stuff any day.

With some exceptions, notably MS Office for advanced users, I agree. A lot of the free stuff is actually better in some ways, and I think that's where the industry is headed. MS sees this, and that is why it wants control of the desktop at any cost, including giving the OS away. And indeed, the hidden cost of Win10 will be loss of control.

My basic position is that the workman is worthy of his wage. I don't begrudge MS making money on software. I do a whole lot begrudge them charging twice, like when you want to do a fresh install on a machine that was already sold with Windows preloaded. Yes, that violates the license agreement. This is utter greed and bullying of the marketplace, akin to what Monsanto is doing in agriculture. They both deserve to go down.

ThrashZone said:

Hee-hee yep I guess we were all suckers once with Mcafee
The great thing is Intel has hidden it as Intel management and security so don't fall for that one
Bad thing is they also bundled it in driver downloads

Yeah, McAfee was once lean and mean but then went uptown like resource hog Norton.
Downloading anything anymore one really has to screen all the install screens as they'll try and slip in
a whole lot of crap you wouldn't want. Use custom install when available but, even then one needs
to look at all those little boxes or, my favorite, accept or decline and then continue. You may get
3 or 4 of those before actual install goes to work.
Safe surf'n!!