Illuminati-R-Us

SO I was sitting at my desk working on something, moving stuff around in my heap, when I noticed my screen was "updating windows" in some hard core fashion. Apparently I had hit the mouse with something and the cursor was in the right place, and it launched the goddam Windows 10. That took a good hour, an hour I was of course unable to use my computer.

Now everything has to wake up and look at the new home. At least I had the foresight to turn off as many of the tracking things as I could in the opening sequence.

I notice it still launches Windows Live Messenger. Does anyone even use that?

I am anticipating various ugly moments where some little detail needs attention, or doesn;t work like it used to, etc.

I have a button on the bottom for Chrome, but I don;t see IE. I assume "Internet Edge" is their new Internet Explorer offering?

Oh and we now have Cortana, which I guess is sorta like Siri? Says ask me anything. I think I will ask it how to restore my computer to the way it was that I was comfortable with.

Enzo wrote:it launched the goddam Windows 10.

Uh oh. Let me know what you think of it. I haven't even seen it yet and avoid all the upgrade notices.

Enzo wrote:I notice it still launches Windows Live Messenger. Does anyone even use that?

No. It doesn't even work anymore. It was retired and replaced by Skype when they were acquired by Microsoft.

Enzo wrote:I am anticipating various ugly moments where some little detail needs attention, or doesn;t work like it used to, etc.

I would concur. I am anxious to hear about your experiences.

Enzo wrote:I have a button on the bottom for Chrome, but I don;t see IE. I assume "Internet Edge" is their new Internet Explorer offering?

Correct.

Enzo wrote:Oh and we now have Cortana, which I guess is sorta like Siri? Says ask me anything. I think I will ask it how to restore my computer to the way it was that I was comfortable with.

I do believe there is a way to roll back...

Maybe bark "Restore Windows 7" at her. Maybe she'll say she has migraine and just isn't up to it.

I clicked on her for a quick peek, but it started with "setting up" and so I bailed. I get the impression it is more like an electronic concierge than a helpful assistant. Do I want it to find me tickets to a game, or book a room, or reserve a flight. Probably would buy things on Amazon for me. Bleh.

SO far, I note that my Chrome, which had performed quite well over the previous months and years, now is slower and "not responding" a lot. Also the Chrome tends to hang up opening pages, I think it is looking for like avatar images or something. The little circle sits there spinning for ages. I can hit ESC and stop it, without seeming to affect the operation of the page, though avatars will not be displayed.

I like to play solitaire now and then. The games page opens up as a large array, with big boxes for each game. It also is plugging hard for me to set up an "account" with Microsoft so I can store my game results on the cloud. AS if... Forgive me lord, but I liked to play Mah Jong, a mindless image matching game. The Windows 7 version had crisp images of the tiles, and a format I liked called "The Cat." The cat is gone from the selection, but more than that, the tile images are sort of soft rounded and pastel. I realize now what has happened is they created this mess for smart phones, as it Mah Jong looks just like things people thumb on their phones. The Solitaire moves much more slowly, and so far I have not been able to find any options menu. In setup it did let me turn off animations and sounds and hints. I don;t need suggestion while playing solitaire. Hearts appears to be gone. And they want me to buy games from their "store".

The only positive so far is when it wakes up. WIndows 7 just brought up a password page. This brings up a screen saver of a western landscape with a large time display. I like that I don;t have to log in to see what time it is. The time display looks like that on a smart phone.

It seems like within the Chrome (I have yet to try their new browser) the old stuff seems to work the same. At least while it isn't locking up.

I don;t do a lot on this, I use it for email, forum posting, and googling various information for work and idle interest. Oh, and paying bills. No gaming, streaming movies, no music, no photo collecting/manipulating/storing. I keep a lot of technical information for electronic systems on my flash drives.

In googling a moment ago I find "how to get Windows 7 games working on Windows 10.

This site has several different versions of Mahjong. Here are some of them: http://www.izzygames.com/mahjong-games-k42.html

I play a couple of games here and they're not a pain in the ass.

Well I've never seen this one before...

I decided to play with your pussy, Enzo. The Cat map on the Window's 7 Mahjong game. I got down to just 2 tiles left, and they were stacked on top of each other.

Yes, that happens a certain percentage of the time. Hardly seems fair, y'know?

For no apparent reason,. I add some rules to the cat. There is the main body, then the tail curving up the right side. I don't use any tail tiles until they are the only moves left. I have no idea why I started that. I make extra rules up for things like crossword puzzles too: Write in a word, then solve the word connected to the end letter. I wind up snaking around the puzzle. No real reason.

My Chrome keeps locking up. Let it stew in its juices for a 45-60 seconds and it wakes back up fro "not responding". When foruming, I click the little go to first new post button, and it heads to the thread start and then spins a while before finding the end. I find it faster to just click the go to fresh post button and do it myself.

it keeps trying to get me to sign up for things. it wants me joining their system.

I have no idea at all what the reason for that is, but have it on good authority that the solution to each, any and every problem involving a browser is "clear your cache". so clear your cachei, it can'T be wrong.

yeah, probably so. But none of that happened until this conversion, dammit.

Pisses me off that it "allows" me to play solitaire as a "guest".

Dickheads, all of them.

If you keep getting asked to sign up for stuff you may be virused.

I tend to think not, this is part of the WIndows stuff. The games page allows me some basic solitaire card games, but half the time puts up a window informing me that more options can be had by establishing an account. It constantly reminds that it cannot keep score records and stuff - in the cloud of course - if I don't sign up. I do click the don't show me this again when I see one. This seems to be common these days. MY virus software likes to wake me up and tell me my computer started up in 46 seconds or whatever, and that is slower than 80% of all computers, and they can save me time. I fell for that once long ago. Sure enough, it did whatever clean up and condensing it does, and saved me a whopping 4/10 of a second at start up.

Ah, okay.

I note that the game screen has some links to new feeds or some such, and has the gall to suggest it I want to stop seeing ads, I should get the full membership.

smh

Found out that Microsoft changed Windows 10 from an optional upgrade to a recommended upgrade. recommended upgrades install automatically unless you specifically opt out. So it seems I did nothing wrong, I thought I had triggered it with my mouse. But it just installed itself.

I do find there is a function "go back to windows 7" in the settings area, but it only works for one month after the switch to 10.

Apparently the Windows 10 is free for a year after they announced it, whenever that year is up, coming soon, it will then be $119 or something like that.

I think I have most of the data harvesting things turned off, but i am not sure. There are a couple things I don;t yet know what they refer to.

Well, you still have a few days to back out, right?

yes.