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ben-ja-menGOLD Member
just lost .... evil init
2,474 posts
Location: Adelaide, Australia

Posted:
so after much head scratching about why all of a sudden my wireless network appears to randomly stop working i noticed that the default for devices is power saving enabled ..... this means that to save power microsoft thought it would be a good idea to just turn bits off ...... and this is the default ...... yeeeeeeeeeep cos everyone would know to go and switch power saving off their network adaptors and the like.

another one that i fixed for a friend was that their computer would randomly switch itself on to which i was quite skeptical being very computer illitorate they had got to the point where they switched it off at the wall and unplugged it to solve the problem. after MUCH stuff around i found in the bios settings the computer was set up to turn on whenever the modem was used, being on dialup this ment that everytime the phone rang the computer switched itself on so later when they went into the computer room there it was humming away ........ i mean really who comes up with these features and sets them as defaults !!!

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourself, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous and talented? Who are you NOT to be?

SymBRONZE Member
Geek-enviro-hippy priest
1,858 posts
Location: Diss, Norfolk, United Kingdom

Posted:
I think the main problem is that Microsoft has no idea what hardware you’ll be using on your windows system.

Think about it this way as well; Microsoft doesn’t really care about home users. It’s all set up for being on managed networks of 500+ computers. Trust me, when you are running a network that big a lot of the ‘stupid’ defaults fit in to place and are quite handy. The wake up on LAN/Modem is a good idea for remote working on machines. I guess if you have LAN wake up and set the network card to turn off when the computer isn’t being used you can cut down on unwanted network traffic as well as having the network up when a user needs it.

I can’t believe it; I’m, almost saying nice things about Microsoft! If you want a really nice computer experience where things just work without a weekly patch or 10 bits of software scanning your every move just in case you get a virus...get a Mac! Really, they are actually nice to use, can you believe it?!

There's too many home fires burning and not enough trees

ben-ja-menGOLD Member
just lost .... evil init
2,474 posts
Location: Adelaide, Australia

Posted:
i can see the advantage of having the features just not making them the defaults, the ppl who will benifit from them will know that they exist and how to turn them on. the average user however wont

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourself, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous and talented? Who are you NOT to be?

SymBRONZE Member
Geek-enviro-hippy priest
1,858 posts
Location: Diss, Norfolk, United Kingdom

Posted:
Yeah, but the average user from Microsofts point of view IS the big network users...IMHO

There's too many home fires burning and not enough trees

JauntyJamesSILVER Member
Carpal \'Tunnel
3,533 posts
Location: Hampshire College, MA, USA

Posted:
just linux.

-James

"How do you know if you're happy or sad without a mask? Or angry? Or ready for dessert?"

ado-pGOLD Member
Pirate Ninja
3,882 posts
Location: Galway/Ireland

Posted:
really smart little people

Love is the law.

polytheneveteran
1,359 posts
Location: London/ Surrey

Posted:
For the corporate and professional versions, maybe, but you'd think for an edition called 'home'... just IMHO wink

The optimist claims that we are living in the best of all possible worlds.
The pessimist fears this is true.

Always make time to play in the snow.

SymBRONZE Member
Geek-enviro-hippy priest
1,858 posts
Location: Diss, Norfolk, United Kingdom

Posted:
sparkey, If you're after good software, 99.9 uptime and a secure system you're right, linux is great. If you're after hadware compatibility Linux isn't for you! (yet). You don't even have to be all that smaty to use Lunix any more.

polythene, XP home edition is just XP pro with less stuff. The code base is the same. In fact if it weren't for the legal side of it most large networks could use XP home just as well as pro.

There's too many home fires burning and not enough trees

polytheneveteran
1,359 posts
Location: London/ Surrey

Posted:
I am aware of this, if I may draw your attention to the wink in my previous post...?

The optimist claims that we are living in the best of all possible worlds.
The pessimist fears this is true.

Always make time to play in the snow.

flidBRONZE Member
Carpal \'Tunnel
3,136 posts
Location: Warwickshire, United Kingdom

Posted:
I think more people would whinge/complain if wireless cards didn't have power saving enabled by default. That goes for linux, unix (although you don't get many laptops), macs, windows etc. Wireless cards use lots of power, if they were on 100% power all the time you would notice a performance drop in battery life. I'm pretty sure this is Microsoft's reasoning on the matter



Written by: Sym_

You don't even have to be all that smaty to use Lunix any more





I recorded a program the other night on my PVR on channel 5 about Linus (I normally don't watch anything on channel 5, but the name caught my eye). Of course it was actually about Linux, they'd researched it so badly they couldn't even spell it. Apparently open source means it's free umm
ben-ja-menGOLD Member
just lost .... evil init
2,474 posts
Location: Adelaide, Australia

Posted:
sorry i didnt make it clear it was actually on my desktop that the lan port was getting disabled (ive got a usb adsl model attached to my computer and the lan port of the computer going into the wireless dsl router [my mum brought the wrong one and threw the docket out with the bag frown] huzzar for work arounds)

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourself, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous and talented? Who are you NOT to be?

flidBRONZE Member
Carpal \'Tunnel
3,136 posts
Location: Warwickshire, United Kingdom

Posted:
i'm pretty sure it's not the default setting for PCI Lan cards. Is your machine store bought (ie not installed by you)/did you install software with your wireless thing which could have changed it?
SymBRONZE Member
Geek-enviro-hippy priest
1,858 posts
Location: Diss, Norfolk, United Kingdom

Posted:
My PowerBooks will keep the Airport (the nice apple name for IEEE 802.11) on whenever it’s in use. I can turn it of with 2 clicks at anytime but they assume that if you are connected to a network you don’t just want to be kicked off.

Flid, it is the default for any ‘non-essential’ hardware on an XP box, I think anyway.


A documentary about Linus? Wow, he doesn’t like to talk in public much. Was he on it? Shame I missed it (even if it was crap).

Open source being free? Mmm...not quite...but close. Did they talk about the GPL at all?

There's too many home fires burning and not enough trees

flidBRONZE Member
Carpal \'Tunnel
3,136 posts
Location: Warwickshire, United Kingdom

Posted:
There was no mention of Linus, it was an article about Linux within a show, but they couldn't spell it. They were just saying how they think you should try and save money by not buying MS products and install Linux instead. It was incredibly vague/badely researched/channel5 trash. No mention of anything as advanced as lisencing, other than it's made by people who just like giving people free stuff. That's nice. I'm affriad I've deleted it now.
SymBRONZE Member
Geek-enviro-hippy priest
1,858 posts
Location: Diss, Norfolk, United Kingdom

Posted:
yeah...so are evangelical christian flyers

There's too many home fires burning and not enough trees

Fine_Rabid_DogInternet Hate Machine
10,530 posts
Location: They seek him here, they seek him there...

Posted:
ive said it once already on HoP, but i'll happily say it again.

Lets go hurt bill gates.. untill he makes windows less stupid

The existance of flamethrowers says that someone, somewhere, at sometime said "I need to set that thing on fire, but it's too far away."

flidBRONZE Member
Carpal \'Tunnel
3,136 posts
Location: Warwickshire, United Kingdom

Posted:
Good luck, and watch out for his army of evil monkeys
SymBRONZE Member
Geek-enviro-hippy priest
1,858 posts
Location: Diss, Norfolk, United Kingdom

Posted:
Have a look at this: https://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.02/microsoft.html

It made me laugh a lot, but I'm a geek.

There's too many home fires burning and not enough trees

Fine_Rabid_DogInternet Hate Machine
10,530 posts
Location: They seek him here, they seek him there...

Posted:
ubblol I loved the monkeys!

But i dont really know bout Linus, Microsoft or Linux, so that memo didn't really mean much to me. And i am kind of a geek.

The existance of flamethrowers says that someone, somewhere, at sometime said "I need to set that thing on fire, but it's too far away."

KatincaSee my vest.... see my vest...
693 posts
Location: Adelaide - South Australia

Posted:
Hey Ben, my first reaction to when I first read your choice of topic to this thread was:

NO SH!T

Love and Light

~*~ Katinca ~*~

PyrolificBRONZE Member
Returning to a unique state of Equilibrium
3,289 posts
Location: Adelaide, South Australia

Posted:
Can I add that we are getting Mac Powerbooks with wireless networking as our next computers? I'm done with this micro$hit (almost) smile

Josh

--
Help! My personality got stuck in this signature machine and I cant get it out!

flidBRONZE Member
Carpal \'Tunnel
3,136 posts
Location: Warwickshire, United Kingdom

Posted:
for a company who is stupid, they've made a hell of a lot of money wink
newgabeSILVER Member
what goes around comes around. unless you're into stalls.
4,030 posts
Location: Bali, Australia

Posted:
Yeah, go the iBooks.There are a few tiny things that I haven't figured out how to do yet on mine, (for instance save some downloads, including Under the Bridge 2 ,Josh!) and occasionally I can't look at something one the net like a video or something. But overall the stability and usability is just great. The most annoying thing about using a Mac is the attitude of people in shops etc whose idea of them must have stopped around System 8. Or eg a client who thought that my 'apple word processor' must be wrong because he didn't know how to use styles in Word and couldn't figure out why he couldn't ruin my formatting....sigh.

.....Can't juggle balls but I sure as hell can juggle details....

SymBRONZE Member
Geek-enviro-hippy priest
1,858 posts
Location: Diss, Norfolk, United Kingdom

Posted:
Written by: flid


for a company who is stupid, they've made a hell of a lot of money wink



So did forrest gump. (and he invested in apple - take that as you will)

MS seem to come to every problem in the wrong way. Take HTML. The W3C have very good guidelines that everyone in the world follows except MS. They had to make up something to do it 'better'. We now have the mess of bad code and rubbish that we like to call the Internet.

Everything they do is about market share and money. Ok, I know that's what business is about, but it's also about making the product better all the time. The code base at MS has about a 2 year turn around from being written (or fixed) and being shipped. That can't be good for anyone.

give me OOS with an open CVS so I can get the code when I need to, not when someone else wants to make more money or take over another business.

As for the iBook and Powrebooks...yeah, some videos about the place are in WMA format. You can download WMP for mac, but I use VLC or mPlayer. Some of the sites have anti-hot linking code that doesn't work on Safari, but Firefox can open everything that Safari can't (or everything I've come across). You can always open up IE, but I don't think I've ever needed to.

For everyone on OS X 10.3 or better, have you downloaded Quicksilver? It's the most amazing app ever.

Have a look at https://quicksilver.blacktree.com/
and enjoy!

There's too many home fires burning and not enough trees

flidBRONZE Member
Carpal \'Tunnel
3,136 posts
Location: Warwickshire, United Kingdom

Posted:
Don't get me wrong, I think AOL offer a shockingly poor service, but as a user of VOIP I'm really happy that AOL have announced they're gonna start mass marketting it. The more people using VOIP the better, and if AOL help people start using it who have know idea what it is then that's only a good thing.



I think MS have done a lot for the internet we have today, if only from the point of view of getting computers into so many homes/offices. I got really frustrated a few years ago when i wrote a webmail client, which was totally complient with the mail/mime RFCs, only to find it wasn't compatible with outlook. So, I had to rework my code to make it unnofficial enough to ensure people could send and recieve with MS outlook. Yea it's annoying, but it's life. As most people use outlook, i'd be stupid not to really.



I really don't think there is as good an alternative to MS for average computer users. I'd love to like macs, but they run on propriatory hardware and the best thing about PCs is the amount of vendors/manufacturers all competing and pushing prices down (although it'd be nice if as much collaboration on Internet protocols went on with hardware compatibility, I'm a calm person, but i really want to severly hurt the inventor of molex connectors). I'm in no doubt that macs can be easy to use, but I don't think they're as good value for money, performance/upgradability/long term investment wise.
SymBRONZE Member
Geek-enviro-hippy priest
1,858 posts
Location: Diss, Norfolk, United Kingdom

Posted:
You do have a good point flid. BUT, because Macs run on Apple hardware, they run really really well. Like stupidly well.

As for preformance, thay are way faster than Pc's.

Price, ok, not so good, but look at the TCO for most users. Having to pay for anti-virus/spyware, Office at some stupid >£100 price. Most people will have to spend about £150 a year extra on a windows PC, so if you add that to the cost of a Mac it works out about the same.

Also the new (I admit) Mac mini is only £340. OK, it's not got a screen or anything, but it's one amazing computer for the price (Think home users here, I know it won't do XYZ but XYZ aren't things most people want a computer for)

There's too many home fires burning and not enough trees


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