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Our home just gained a shiny new HP laptop, which was immediately upgraded to Windows 10.
Much of the last tweny-four hours has been consumed by two tasks: making it print to an HP printer networked to our router, and moving email from Windows Live Mail on an XP box to the same program on the W10 machine.
If I run into a Linux problem (or even Android) I can usually visit a forum or other resource and get an answer in a few minutes. With Windows I'm Googling madly and chasing many more dead ends than useful answers.
And yes, that not surprisingly includes Microsoft's own sites.
So Soylentils, what are your go-to places for good-quality Windows 10 information?
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The last time I saw him he was walking down Lover's Lane holding his own hand.
-- Fred Allen
(Score: 3, Informative) by Appalbarry on Saturday September 05 2015, @10:58PM
OK, ignoring the obvious useless posts, here's more info:
SO actually knew pretty specifically what she wanted in terms of processor, RAM, drive space, and wanted to be able to flip the lid and use it as a tablet. She's also one of those people who actually care about design, so the machine had to look and feel good. Keyboard mattered. The choice based on budget wound up being an HP Envy. I'll say that it's a nice looking machine, and seems to function just fine.
It's her machine, not mine, and she chose to do the Windows 10 auto-upgrade. More to the point, she knew there might still be issues because it's new.
She has some pretty specific software needs, and has no interest in moving to Linux. Her first serious system ran NeXT, so change is not an issue. She just knows what she wants.
Parenthetically, she also looked at Apple products, but they lacked the touchscreen, the flip to laptop option, and generally cost a lot more money. If they had offered what she wanted she probably would have gone to a Mac. Well, except that she finds the Apple attitude irritating.
(God I love this woman!)
The printer is a not too old HP 2600 All-in-One, with a network cable running to the wireless router. I was gobsmacked when Windows could not find the printer, even when handed the IP address. Don't know why, don't entirely care. Once we installed the MASSIVE HP driver pack the HP software found and installed it fine.
I swear that after installing printer drivers Windows forced a reboot.
I mean, seriously, is this 1998?
Moving the email from Windows Live Mail on her XP box to Windows Live Mail 2012 on the HP proved to be an endless hassle. She made the big jump from Outlook Express to Windows Live Mail a couple of years ago, and has no wish to move to another program. It works fine for her, so that's where she's staying.
Way too much Googling told me only that with some versions of this software, on some versions of Windows, email can be moved by copying over the whole mail directory. Or maybe mail can be moved by exporting and importing mail. Ultimately I wound up trying both.
The Export/import scheme for some reason only moved over mail from 2011.
Exporting Account information for import was a non-starter. Don't recall why.
Copying all mail directories over worked better, except that all mail was now marked "Unread." CTRL A + Mark read. This also copies over the various email account settings, except for passwords.
Contact lists had to be exported and imported separately, but lost any contact groups that has been set up.
Honestly, I have long since learned to dread moving between MS e-mail programs.
As for the product itself, I was surprised how little it actually changes from Vista or even XP. Aside from tiles and touchscreen capability it really feels and looks about the same. And I like that if you dig a bit there are lots of geek type options available for tweaking the system.
We both found that we were using the touchscreen a lot in a very short time - again, something I wouldn't have expected.
Most of my searches for answers were Googled, and yes, I didn't think to look for hardware specific forums, although it seemed fairly obvious that the issue was with Windows, not HP.
What I found was that even if I wrapped Windows 10 in quotes, all sorts of things relevant to Windows 8 and 7 showed up, some of which were possibly useful, many of which weren't. It really does seem that there's very little Win 10 info out there yet. It also seems that a lot of Windows users are posting a lot of "fixes" that don't work for any one else.
I don't think that any result from the Microsoft.com web universe was of any use, including their user forums.
Despite this being a new product, I would have expected a fairly solid base of support information from Microsoft. Then again, Even as far back as Windows 3.1 I recall that MS was the last place you expected to find answers.
Ultimately I'd say that she really likes the HP hardware, and that Windows 10 looks like it'll be just fine once we're beyond the teething pains. There are still a lot of niggling "features" that she wants to kill off, and certainly tons of crapware that will need to be removed, but the system itself is quite OK.
The other noteable thing is that Microsoft really, really, really wants you to move things on-line, and is pushing people to store documents in The Cloud. Needless to say they also really want us to rent Office 365 instead of borrowing a CD player to install our old copy of Office 2007. Good luck with that!
Me? I'm typing this on my ancient dual-core, 4 gig RAM HP desktop, running Mint 17.
(Score: 2) by Appalbarry on Saturday September 05 2015, @11:05PM
Oh yeah, in response to the guy who posted along list of stuff that he Googled, good for you. I guess I have limited patience.
If just about everything on the first results page is useless I tend to assume that pages 2 through 47 won't be much better.
And trust me, just because a page at MS or HP says they have the answer doesn't mean it will solve the problem.
Besides, every system in this house, including Linux and Android devices going back a few years, has been able to find the damned printer. It's insane that Windows wouldn't.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 06 2015, @12:27AM
I get that you would want to "ignore the obvious useless posts" but why do you have to be a jerk to the one person that actually provided information? "good for you".
You're the kind of asshole nobody really likes hanging around. You're a smug piece of shit.
Next time you ask for help, how about trying to not belittle the one person that actually helps you. Or maybe not asking for help at all.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Sunday September 06 2015, @09:19AM
I don't read that as being a jerk - he acknowledged what the other poster had done and said 'good for you'. You seem to have taken it as a sarcastic statement, whereas I read it as an acknowledgement and a hat tip.
However, you certainly don't make the mistake of leaving your views unclear - this is an unnecessary comment and, imho, quite undeserved.
(Score: 2) by Appalbarry on Sunday September 06 2015, @06:39PM
Yes, just to re-clarify, I wasn't looking for specific Googled answers to the question "How do I make my printer work with Windows 10."
I was asking what specific sites are best for quality advice from users and others.
For instance, for Mint Linux I go to http://forums.linuxmint.com/ [linuxmint.com].
(Score: 3, Informative) by deimtee on Sunday September 06 2015, @01:29AM
A large part of the problem is that google search has gone to shit.
Putting quotes around a phrase no longer means exact match, it means search for these words with quote marks. I don't know how to specify exact match any more.
Also, the advertising and SEO has taken over, even in the section after "sponsored results" . Your best bet is to go straight to page two or three.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 3, Touché) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Sunday September 06 2015, @04:50AM
A large part of the problem is that google search has gone to shit.
Putting quotes around a phrase no longer means exact match, it means search for one or more of these words, or words with similar spellings, with quote marks. And the "region" setting is just a guideline. I don't know how to specify exact match any more.
Not corrected, just more details.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by acharax on Sunday September 06 2015, @01:06PM
You need to use the burried verbatim search mode (if you disable scripting it will show up on the right side of the screen, instead of being burried under a layer of useless menus). Beware, if you use this too frequently for "complex" queries, there's a chance you'll get flagged as a bot.
(Score: 2) by acharax on Sunday September 06 2015, @01:09PM
* Left side of the screen.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Monday September 07 2015, @11:46PM
Maybe us peons in the rest of the world get a different page, but the only way I could get that option up was to turn on scripting and go through the advanced search menu.
The problem is that it doesn't work. You still get multiple pages of crap that is "related" not a list of exact matches.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 06 2015, @01:52AM
You really should be using IMAP for email, it is a lot less hassle when switching mail clients and you can use it on multiple machines.
For Office you can just copy the files onto a USB stick and install from that, it doesn't need to be installed from a CD. Also CD/DVD drives can be shared over the network, it's a convenient option if you don't have a USB drive handy, though it probably won't work for any programs that check for the disk as copy protection.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by vux984 on Sunday September 06 2015, @06:51PM
I swear that after installing printer drivers Windows forced a reboot.
No. Windows didn't. HP did. And it wasn't because you installed printer drivers. Its because:
Once we installed the MASSIVE HP driver pack the HP software found and installed it fine.
Those weren't just printer drivers. There were printer drivers in there, but that's not the half of what was in there. And that's barely a printer, an HP Photosmart all-in-one?
I was gobsmacked when Windows could not find the printer, even when handed the IP address.
Why? If the device doesn't respond like a normal network printer and wants only to be spoken too in arcane HP proprietary gibberish why on earth should you expect Windows to speak its language without first installing HP's garbage. And if I'm not mistaken that's a 10+ year old consumer grade inkjet that was discontinued before Vista came out. The HP support pages have Windows 98 and OS9 downloads for it.
Moving the email from Windows Live Mail on her XP box to Windows Live Mail 2012 on the HP proved to be an endless hassle.
Use IMAP. Don't transfer between mail programs directly.
Me? I'm typing this on my ancient dual-core, 4 gig RAM HP desktop, running Mint 17.
Yeah, but how well would it run on the new envy? From what I've seen... not so well. Everything from sound issues to graphics issues to battery life issues (power management) to keyboard and trackpad issues. And hows Mint as a touchscreen OS?
Am I trolling at the end here? Maybe a little. I like linux, and I like mint in particular. But I'd rather run Windows on most new ultrabooks / transformers etc.