New Laptop

Got a new £650 laptop yesterday and Mrs Scrungee had a go at me for spending 5p on a big carrier bag to take it away in.

 

I've been a programmer, mainly using Microsoft platform, professionally for more than 20 years now. Windows 8 made me think my career was over. 20+ years as a professional programmer plus another 10 as a hobbyist/student/trainee and yet I couldn't find my way round W8. I was relieved to learn that I was not alone. Everyone hated it. And from a programming point of view, a fair few of the core libraries are not fully supported on W8 and above, which means many programs and libraries and drivers that are core, simply can't work on newer versions. The irony is that Microsoft themselves pushed a particular 'stack' from Windows xp and bound it into the core since Windows 7. Everyone developed for it in accordance with Microsoft's advice, and promise that that way would be THE way for all future versions of their OS. Then they changed their API from w8 thus rendering lots of software utterly useless.

As for W10, I've not seen it yet. We're on W7 at work with no plans to change any time soon. But W10 is still very new. Never, ever, go for early versions of anything by Microsoft. They don't work, and most developers don't even think about developing software for it. With any Windows release, always wait for at the very least, service pack 1.

Sent from my HTC Desire 610 using Tapatalk

 

I've had no choice Clueless, my old computer died three weeks ago and I'm currently waiting on my new one to be set up for me.....Windows 10 and glitches of course!

 

There's always choice. It's just that the mainstream suppliers don't want you to know, as part of their profit comes from the mark up they put on the Windows license.

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Have you tried using your camera disk instead Armandii? I know it's not the same but at least you may be able to retrieve your pictures.

 

I don't know about now, but historically Photoshop used to use a third party generic driver for connecting to external devices like scanners and cameras. It was the twain32 library which is not Microsoft's work. Microsoft on the other hand do not advocate the use of such non-standard components, and promote the use of their own API, which they'd standardised from Windows xp, and provided backward compatibility as far back as Windows 98, and which is integral to their OS from I think Vista onwards, but which changed without warning in Windows 8.

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It will come good, but it will probably be a couple of years before all the problems are ironed out. It goes like this. Microsoft release their latest offering to a small subset of their target user base. Mostly techies who have volunteered to beta test. Ms tune it up until the beta testers are happy. Then it gets to official release. Suddenly, it is running on every conceivable hardware variation so inevitably, some combinations of hardware won't work properly with it. Meanwhile, the third party developers are giving priority to the majority of their userbase, who they know (via automated feedback and system info submitted at product install etc). The stats say that their majority users are on Windows 7 or below, with the next biggest group being on Windows 8, then finally a growing minority on W10. So they work to make their product work for the majority (W7 and below), then when they're happy it's solid, they give priority to W8 users, and finally, they'll look at working with W10 users.

So Microsoft are not getting the usage intelligence from the third party developers, so they have to work with the limited intel they get from their own product feedback. They can't make it solid for everyone until the third party developers catch up, which isn't going to happen until enough people are on W10 to justify giving them full support. This is the cycle with every release. Microsoft did a good job of mitigating against this problem when they introduced the .net framework, which is a comprehensive programmers interface to Windows, and standardises everything so that programmers shouldn't have to worry about which version of Windows their software would be run on. It worked very well. I can write code and test it on Windows 98 if I want to, and I know it will run on every version of Windows from 98 to 7. Then Microsoft changed the api slightly. The majority of code will still run, but there's enough change to ensure that just a few things won't. They will fix it, and the third party developers will work to the new stuff, but it will take time.

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Still waiting on my own new laptop I'm beginning to wonder what joys I'm going to have with W10. Like Armandii, possible camera issues, I've also been warned that W10 may refuse my wireless printer, a common problem apparently. @clueless1 would you know if there are any issues setting up Skype please?

 

No idea sorry. Although didn't Microsoft buy out Skype a few years ago, or did I imagine that? If they did, one would expect they've made sure it's all good.

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Ok, I just googled it @Sheal. Microsoft did by Skype back in 2011. However there are issues with Skype on Windows 10.

http://community.skype.com/t5/Windo...0-quot-Skype-has-stopped-working/td-p/4064364

It looks like Skype itself is probably fine, but it depends on the driver software for your camera and microphone.

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Oh surprise, surprise! I suspected there might be problems. Thanks for the info Clueless.

I use my computer for very little, right now it's looking like Gardeners Corner is the only thing I will be able to access, unless of course Microsoft know different!

If a new computer was faulty, we'd be able to get a refund on it, it's a shame we can't do the same with Microsoft!