SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
tl;dr: Directing the wind is not possible, being compelled to adjust my sails. How can I transition to Windows 10 and not suffer extreme loss in productivity.
Windows Classic Theme: How do I get something like this. I assume other Soylentils are like me and the first thing they do when logging onto a Windows XP/7 computer is change the theme to classic. Has anyone done this yet on Windows 10? In my very brief experience dealing with 10 I was unable to find a way to do this, I presume that they removed this because they are awful people.
Specifications: How powerful of a computer do I need to do the same thing I am currently able to do without any lag. I was compelled to do testing using an i7 laptop with 8gb of ram from a couple of years ago, I found I was unable to do any testing because it was bogged down at 95% CPU capacity just running the base OS. What should I be running to make this thing bearable. My job function is to review, build, maintain reports which can involve files large enough to bog me down on my current system (i7-5600U with 8gb), what hardware should I have, how much ram should I have.
Experience: What lessons did others here learn the hard way as they went though this process. I am aware of the updates causing data to be non exist and things of that nature. What are things that I need to know about in this new age of 10.
I am sure there are some other things I should ask, just can't remember ATM.
Just run Linux XD: I am not allowed to withdraw consent from Windows 10, but I am pushing off implementation as long as possible.
[For information about issues with Windows' updates, see Ask Woody. --Ed]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by julian on Thursday November 01 2018, @07:13AM (3 children)
I manage IT at a medical office with about 12 Windows 10 workstations, a few Windows 7 installs on some diagnostic scanning equipment, and even a Windows XP machine on an airgapped fluorescein angiography camera.
The classic theme is gone and never coming back. Sorry. Best you can do is right click on "This Computer" in Explorer and select "Properties". Then Advanced System Settings, "Advanced" tab, Performance settings, and then select the "Adjust for best performance". This basically just disabled all the animations. Disable the transparency effects by right clicking on the desktop and going to Personalize settings.
Windows 10 gives me the fewest headaches to administer. All the workstations get rebooted every day. Accept that, understand that computers can be power cycled and it's not an affront to your manhood to see that your uptime is less than 24 hours. As for hardware, all the computers are running with 4GB of RAM and i3 CPUs from about 4 years ago. They run windows 10 just fine. The biggest upgrade is an SSD over a spinning rust drive. My workstation is the only one in the practice not running Windows. I use Debian on the same computer with 8GB of RAM I upgraded myself.
We do everything through a web browser, Google Chrome, and the limiting factor isn't our hardware, it's the bandwidth we get from our ISP. Nothing is saved locally, so I can erase a machine and reimage with little downtime. Faster computers, running Linux, wouldn't speed up our workflow.
(Score: 4, Informative) by driverless on Thursday November 01 2018, @08:32AM
Well, not from Microsoft anyway. Start10 [stardock.com] and WindowBlinds [stardock.com] will undo a lot of the damage that Microsoft has inflicted.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bradley13 on Thursday November 01 2018, @12:07PM
In addition to julian's recommendations, you can get close to classic, simply by removing all of the tiles from the start menu.
Be sure to follow any of the various guides, on how to improve privacy and shop data-sharing with MS (insofar as possible). Of course, if you're in a corporate network, much of this is probably handled by group policies.
You won't have a problem with hardware - Win10 is reasonably fast. The biggest problem is this area is that your temp-directory gets full - Windows puts all sorts of crap there, and never deletes it. You have to be careful if you delete it yourself, for example, this is where files are stored for pending updates that are waiting for a reboot.
The biggest annoyance with Win10 is advertising (which, again, may not apply to corporate networks). For example, Win10 comes with some "freebies" such as games and a couple of unwanted applications that paid MS for placement. If you uninstall these, the next major update just puts them back. Plus ads in those tiles (part of the reason I removed them), plus apparently MS is going to start putting ads in the file explorer.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 1, Troll) by jmorris on Thursday November 01 2018, @09:59PM
If you are lucky enough to be in an environment where everything is running in a browser, what kind of idiot isn't replacing all that Windows filth with Chromeboxes or Linux? Windows is not secure, it can't be made secure. Accept that, running windows in any place that accesses private customer information (and a medical practice is about as private as it gets) is IT malpractice. When you get hacked, and it is WHEN and not if, you should be fired and banished from the IT game as a fuckup. It is long past time for people to be fired for buying Microsoft. You don't even get the crutch of users demanding Microsoft Office or a closed source vertical application you "absolutely can't live without" and whine that your security advice was ignored. No, you LIKE Windows and apparently aren't even on record as recommending against it and being overruled from above. You are the problem here.