Well, I have been really happy with Win7, it is fast, easy and does not screw up much. XP seemed a very slow loading system, but was solid.

Well, I have been really happy with Win7, it is fast, easy and does not screw up much. XP seemed a very slow loading system, but was solid.

I can not comment on Windows 10 because i personally do not use it. From what i've read and heard it is virtually no better than Window 7 or later systems. The only really good system was and is Windows XP. I made the mistake getting rid of my computer that had XP on it. Everything else since then is extremely inferior to XP for my use.

Well, then it is someone else's problem, so you don't need to worry, unless you ever do get your own. Good luck.

Fact is, I don't even have an Internet computer. I
come to the library and use the computers here.
I should be using them to get another job; not that
there's any rule about that, but I am allowed only
a certain number of minutes per day, and then I
get sidetracked by reading and expressing o-
pinions.

I am not sure it will kill it off for good as they seem to come back in new incarnations. They started as optional, then made them recommended. Look down here and I posted a link to a page that has a GUI gizmo that will do all the hardening need to kill it off for good, if you want something simple. I even tried their referred to WSUS update tool, which is a fabulous way to get updates.

I tried WSUS and it just zips through he download process with no issues. MS should adopt that as their model, something that actually works....

Agreed, in most part. The issue in the early 2000'a (and I rescued a few elderly people then), was "I don't want to pay for, or understand this "antivirus" stuff". And then go on and get infected. It got to where I would put Zonealarm on and just call it quits. I do think a modular approach may be the best way to help this mess, sort of like "Safe mode" for people who do not want to be bothered.

Oh, yes. If you have a PC, it is almost implicit you need to become a little bit understanding of what they are doing. My point in sevreal places here is that 80% of the users are in your boat, and so have machines that will automatically download patches, and then you have a brick on your desk. The what do you do? Most people go to a shop like BB, and pay 100.00 for some geek to undo it. That is my man issue with MS right now. Their attitude is "We blew up your box? Sorry, not covered in end user agreement".

Oh, I was just referring to that technical computer
stuff, most of which I do not understand. This
world is becoming very strange to me.

I think MS has gotten a good line on their retail customer base - it's just that their customers (at least individual private sector market - not business sector) are just not tech savvy and want everything simple and for free. I have build more than a few hundred computers - mostly out of new parts, and many piece meal from used stuff as well. I have dealt with elderly people too. And they make my point - they don't understand the tech. They don't want a bunch of choices. They just want it to be easy and work. MS IMHO is pandering to this crowd and leaving the business world and tech savvy people with fewer and fewer options.

Look at Office - many options - very powerful - but compare Outlook to the Mail App. I hate the mail App. It's barely functional by my standards. I actually use the options that Outlook has - like rules, auto responders, signatures, etc... But that's too hard for an App (sarcasm intended here). Granted - an App could still do this - but they choose not to include those options. How many average users ever use that stuff in Outlook? Very few that I’ve ever met. They read their mail, reply, delete. Most don't even setup additional folders. I have liked the fact that MS has kept giving the options and customizations for all these years, but I think they are beginning to give in. At least on what they are producing for the individual end users. Maybe they will maintain the two separate lines.

I'm not really sure what their long term angle is with their cloud operations - like Azure and Office 365. Maybe it's just to stop copyright infringement - or maybe to take away control and simplify there as well. MS's direction as of late has been hard to read. I think a lot of it also has to do with major infiltration of MS by Linux and open source proponents. Their direction and revenue streams are in flux because of this as well. Chaos does not lend itself to top notch quality.

I think their Update model is a good one in general – however – it has taken a hit as of late. I do not like the forced updates – it should be an option. It should be like before where you can choose to apply critical updates automatically or manually and the same option for non-critical. It would be nice if they would have a little better explanation of what the updates do and what files they effect – as well as rollback options that actually stick. Like my driver issue – what’s the point in allowing me to roll the driver back if you’re going to keep pushing the same new one back onto the machine. Maybe roll it back and if they have a newer driver (even new than the one you rolled back from) have that be applied. Or give an option on each driver to allow you to stop any individual driver from being changed by updates. But then again – the crowd that screamed for auto updates for ease and security reasons will baulk at this idea as many people will simply not manually apply new updates that fix security issues – causing a whole new bunch of problems. In the end – I think what they are doing almost makes sense. Set the OS up to auto update by default – but give tech savvy people a way to control this process. This will keep the machines the safest while allowing people that are responsible to keep their options open. But – this will end in bricked systems on occasion. MS cannot anticipate every conceivable issue, hardware configuration, software configuration, infested systems, etc… There are probably trillions of trillions or more possibilities. It’s simply isn’t rational that they can catch them all.

Look at what was going on in the early 2000’s – there were so many machines infected with spyware, malware, adware, etc… that it was choking the internet with all the traffic. This is really when MS started pushing the whole update system because people were demanding that their OS be more secure. They have made a lot of headway – but their recent approach is wrong.

nickursis - I agree that there are 80% of the population that do not know how software works and that certainly makes things more difficult for software vendors. We want our computers to be like our cars. You just start using it. No need to know how the bloody thing works. While this can be achieved for closed ecosystems, it is probably not possible for open ones. As far as Microsoft having modular versions of Windows I am in agreement and they should have started to head that way 10-15 years ago and created an operating system that is cloud based. I don’t see any evidence, however, that they are moving that way.

One other observation. One of the properties that meet the criteria of mathematical Chaos Theory is when a system has three or more independent variables. When this is true, then there is no general solution that predicts how it will operate. Three very good examples of this are the weather, the financial markets and software products. This is why I say that all computer systems have bugs.

I'm with ProfChuck. I've used Ubuntu for over a year now with very little in the way of problems.

I do not know, their system will probably be proprietary, since they built it all from scratch, it allows many instances of the same universe with fantastic quality, and o lost relational data. Your ship will move from a planet and others will see it, even though they are using a different server. The primary hold up they experienced is getting it all to sync correctly. It works pretty damn good.

Yikes, that's getting into the depths. I wonder if they're doing anything weird with the low-level IP packet formats, which stuffs up the NAT used by VirtualBox. Would be good, albeit very time-consuming, to run Etherape or Ethereal over the connection and pull the packets apart and see if there's anything funky going on.

That is possible, although to make SC work, they are running a completely new type of server backend, with an entire universe running specific instances, and then it updates the master. This is different from EVE Online, where they have their universe on one huge server instance, which has made it pretty primitive for the ships and physics. Becomes more of a WOW experience, where as SC is going for authentic realism, and is hugely intensive for video and processing needed. The VM issue stems from a protocol conflict they have yet to unravel, which is why it will only run on WIN right now.

I am sure they have detailed specs on your system. I am willing to believe a lot of the issues referred here will be related either to a common program they are running (and I have seen a lot of patches where they refer to oracle databases as causing crashes), or a specific device driver like a brand of video chip.

That makes me wonder if there might be a networking issue. Is the VM's networking set up to allow the VM to connect out to the net? Is there a licensing issue that prevents StarCitizen from running within the VM?

I am not sure what you are referring to..

Links seem to sometimes choke as you go through all the various sub sites, and ad servers.

A good argument for MS's current process, but I disagree that it serves well. Having built many machines, some for older people where I reuse pieces from several to make one, I know that a lot of people just cannot grasp the need for basic maintenance. tech Republic has some great pictures of some nasty things some PC fixers have had brought in, from dust packed machines to PBJ sandwiches in disc drives. I always found that AV software was a foreign idea to a large group of people and they would call me up to "fix" it. I had to give up after a while, it got to hard. I do think they could have come up with a better option, if they really had opened their heads and thought about it. LEAN Six Sigma always says you have to go to the point of activity to get good data, and I don't think a bunch of remote testers qualifies, so they really do not have a good picture of their customer base, IMHO.

Right now, I'm running build 14295.rs1_release.160318-1628 and it is VERY stable, no crashes and MS Edge works well (that was the reason I had to go back to a prior build, Edge would crash with no warning, and the power button would not work off of the task bar). The changes seem to make a more stable platform.

If IBM treated PC's like CBS and Paramount are treating Axanar, the market today would be nothing but slow X86 based machines with IBM on the side. In fact, they could follow their model and call up all the PC makers and tell them to stop making them..

Indeed, it does seem that way. As a business model, I guess they are looking at speed, and ease of integration of other programs on a basic operational level, and now they seem to want to mix in data gathering ala Google. If you aggregate a huge population you can sell that data and use it for predictive marketing, as Google does. Google needs you to use their browser or web site, whereas MS, for all their "it's just for reliability purposes" BS, will soon start trying to sell their data, and claim it is all anonymous. Their revenue stream from retail sales is minuscule, and the PC market is shrinking, so their corporate license is dropping, so they found another tit to milk.

I have looked at Virtual Box, my system was built specifically for StarCitizen, and the way they connect to their servers appears to be non concurrent with it, it fails to connect, there are notes on their forums about the issue, and they say they will look into it once they go Beta.