Weather widget replacement for Windows 7

gregrocker said:

I look at it from the consumer and not the legal view. This is a feature that's popular with tens of millions of MS Customers so that they don't dare disable it completely. Yet leaving gadgets in a crippled state is as frustrating and irritating with consumers, who visit threads like this via searches and read widespread speculation that this has to do with the whole failed business plan revamp to an Ipad-type touch OS that was going to rent everything through the Store. That is as plausible as non-existent gadget infection.

@gregrocker:
"Like you read my mind!"

(Potentially off topic)
One of the things that totally burns my biscuits about Windows - and software in general - is that "legally" they have no desire to stand behind their product. AFAIK, every single piece of software I've seen has a clause in its license that goes something like this:

This software comes with no warranty whatsoever. If you bork your system because you installed this piece of unmitigated GAGH!, it just sucks being you.

Even if we advertise it as being the hottest thing since sliced-bread, and it stinks, or is blatantly deceptive, you have zero recourse, and you cannot sue us.

If someone wanted to sell a new car, 'fridge, microwave, or whatever else, with a warranty like that, the state/jurisdiction consumer protection laws would be all over therm like a cheap suit!

Re: Windows 10.

gregrocker said:

We were able to finally reach MS execs before the Win8 debacle became Saturday Night Live material and they have corrected course nicely with Windows 10 that gives a billion+ desktop customers something to call their own. [emphasis provided by me]

First of all, though I have downloaded the relevant TechNet images, I have not yet had time to play with it. However, I have heard from more than once source that M$ plans to license W10 as a "subscription based" operating system. i.e. You will have to pay an annual fee to continue using it. I don't know if that's actually going to happen, but if it does I predict that there will be a mass exodus to systems like Linux Mint.

gregrocker said:

I personally spoke with a member of the IE11 team about this issue whose attitude seemed arrogant and anti-consumer.

Ubuntu Linux started out with the paradigm of it being "all about choices", and it attracted a large following because of that user-centered philosophy. Unfortunately they lost track of that concept as Ubuntu became more and more popular, forcing users to accept unilateral decisions absent user input - in fact in direct opposition to user input. As a result, many Ubuntu users bailed and went to Mint - a much more consumer/user-centric distribution.

In the case of Linux, users have this kind of choice. If a particular distribution [censored!!] its user base, there is always another, potentially better, distribution to jump to. And chances are that all the apps and programs used in distribution "A" will work as well, or maybe even better, with distribution "B".

It is unfortunate, but Windows isn't like that. You either put up with M$'s BoooS**t, or you're out of luck.

Maybe I'm still wearing my "rosy tinted glasses", but IMHO, especially if the user base has no other effective choice, it behooves the software company to be particularly sensitive to user input and needs.

Gadgets are a prime example of this. M$ has decided to (in essence), "pull the plug" on Win7 and wants to coerce everyone into using Win8+, like it or not.

(/potentially off topic)
(/rant)

What say ye?

Jim (JR)

gregrocker said:

I believe it's IE11 security enhancements. It went away whenever I rolled back to 10 but it's getting too old to do that safely now.

Not true. At least not in my case.

My Win7-64bit laptop is running IE-9, My wife's system (Also Win7-64bit), is running IE-10, and we both experience the same problem. And we both have the same solution: "touching*" the C:\Users\....\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live\Services\Cache\Config.xml file.

Maybe there are (ahem!) "security enhancements" that caused this debacle, but they're not specific to IE-11. If I knew what they were, I'd back them out so fast the smoke would still be coming from my hard drive!

If I knew what "service" (or whatever), gets restarted when you touch that file, I'd write a script that would run periodically - say at system startup, or hourly, or whatever - that would give that service a kick up the bum and get it going again if it had stopped.

What say ye?

Jim (JR)

* "Touching" a file:
Doing something to it so that the file is "changed", and therefore the last access time is updated.

There is a Linux/Unix command, "touch", which does exactly that, it changes the last access time to the current system time without actually changing the file itself. If there is a program or service that watches the file to see if it has changed, "touching" the file will trigger it.

A convenient way to do this in Windows is to open the file in notepad, add a space somewhere and then remove it, (which marks the file as "dirty"/"changed"), and then re-save it. I do this because I have noticed that simply opening the file, and then re-saving it, does not always work.

gldndragn said:

MSNWeather.zip
To solve ALL of the "weather gadget" problems, It is from MS, it is CLEAN (no virus/malware) it works 100%, does NOT need to be repaired every couple of days, looks, and functions exactly like the stock one.
I only zipped it to upload here. PLEASE share this, or point others to this thread to solve the problem with the weather gadget. (only the weather gadget) Open zip, double click, install, and go....
This solves it once, and for all. :):)

Have a great day everybody

Can someone cite the original source for this file? Maybe I'm paranoid, but I'd like to see the original download site rather than someone's upload. Not that I don't appreciate it, but. . . .

What say ye?

Jim (JR)