Old-Rider,

Have you replaced the Bios "maintain battery" that is located through the drive bay hatch -- 2 wire pin connector to a flat battery pack .....

Jest askin' ......   when these go flat your machine loses its mind while in storage.

If you have never replaced the Bios battery, consider doing it to prevent problems.   That is if you intend to use the machine for anything out in the future.    Sounds like it is parked for the duration, no?

I have 2 perfectly good, BIOS battery changed, main battery charged and wrapped in cloth, all defragged and snuggled down for the long nap XP laptop machines, that I still think perform as good as they ever did.

Issue becomes that my cheapie cell phone responds way better than they do when out on the web.  I don't even take them on vacations any more .....

How old are the machines?   The internet still only responded to WWW. calls back when the machines were new and there WAS no streaming video anything anywhere, web pages were static read sort of things.   Flash was under development back then.  They have been updated all the way to the latest XP service packs and fixes, then it all stopped when XP updating stopped.

Speaking of not bright things for MS to be doing right now ......

http://www.technobuffalo.com/2015/10/15/microsoft-no-longer-lets-you-opt-out-...



"If you haven’t already updated your computer to Windows 10 and it is eligible for a free upgrade, then prepare yourself for more aggressive update notifications that no longer give you the ability to opt-out.

Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users are reporting popups that inform them their Windows 10 upgrade will be installed in one hour. Users have the option to start the process immediately or reschedule it, but there is no longer an option to opt-out of upgrading altogether, ZDNet reports.

Not even GWX Control Panel, a third-party tool that allowed Windows users to avoid the upgrade before, is able to sidestep these notifications at present, according to the app’s creator, Josh Mayfield."

Ruh Ro Shaggy ..... I use GWX Control Panel and the man who wrote it says it won't block MS any more?  


........ aw shite .......         ......... I'm screwed .......


OK, I was curious, so I went and looked.

I booted my gaming partition (Win 7) and sure enough all the bad KBs are there waiting for me to approve them --- right now I am set up to manually approve ALL patches and upgrades, and I simply don't do that.

Upping them to security patches won't get on my machine as I manually approve those too.

MS will have to break into full 'accidental completely automatic' mode to break into my gaming partition ..... and they could get sued for doing that.

http://www.neowin.net/news/world-bank-director-wants-class-action-lawsuit-aga...

World Bank director wants class-action lawsuit against Microsoft after son's $4500 Xbox bill

"The latest example is quite a high profile case, involving Jeremy Hillman, Director of Communications for the World Bank Group, whose son managed to spend over $4,500 on digital content purchased on his Xbox before his parents noticed.

In a post on Medium, Hillman explained how - while checking his credit card bill - he spotted four charges of $109 each from Microsoft in just two days. While he initially believed it to be a billing error related to his Office 365 subscription, it didn't take long for his son to shed light on the matter.

In Hillman's words:

What he had been doing was purchasing FIFA player packs. He tearfully told me that he’d tried to buy a player pack for $100 but it hadn’t worked and so he tried a couple more times. Knowingly trying to spend $100 would have been bad enough but if he was telling the truth then this was a one-off aberration — and Microsoft would surely compensate us for the failed purchases.

It was only when he contacted Microsoft to request compensation that he was informed of "all the other charges" that had been adding up: "With horror I started scrolling through pages of charges — $109, $109, $109 — sometimes two a day. More than $4,500 of charges for virtual FIFA players going back several months."

Hillman said that he and his wife "accept our responsibility in this. We should have paid much closer attention to his video gaming, and my son accepts his responsibility and punishment."

But he claims that Microsoft bears some of the responsibility too, and alleges that the company has mishandled the whole situation.

"Where was Microsoft in this? What was their responsibility?" he asked, adding: "...the treatment we have had at the hands of Microsoft has been appalling. On the first live-chat we were assured we'd be contacted within three days. That never happened."

He went on to explain that, after speaking with someone else a week later, he had to wait several days more for the case to be referred to a Microsoft 'escalation analyst', who told him:

Our policy states that all purchases are final and non-refundable. A purchase confirmation email was sent to email: XXXX.XXXX@hotmail.com (my son) each time a purchase was made because that is the email that was designated as a contact email on the billing profile …….. you are responsible for any material that a user of your Services account accesses or is denied access to (including as a result of your use or non-use of Parental Controls). You acknowledge that use of our settings is not a substitute for your personal supervision of minors that use your Services account.

While Hillman acknowledged that he added his credit card details to his son's account - "I needed to do that to purchase the original game ($60)" - he said that he "had no knowledge that $100 in-game purchases could even be made and no wish for my credit card to be openly available for use for evermore" [sic].

In his post, he openly challenged Microsoft to answer his questions "on behalf of the thousands and thousands of parents who have fallen into this same situation":

With all the brilliance of your engineers and sophisticated systems to protect data how hard could it be to put a realistic ceiling on what can be spent on in-app purchases before the credit card details and security code need to be re-entered? Most apple –iTunes purchases need a password to be re-entered for each new purchase.

How many users legitimately spend thousands of dollars on in-app purchases and just how much usage would it actually take for you to flag this as unusual behavior and require confirmation that the purchase is legitimate? Banks and credit card companies regularly do this?—?  .... there can’t be many reasons you don’t.

But it's in his conclusion that Hillman pulls no punches, alleging that "Microsoft calculates that actually taking a responsible position that protects and safeguards its customers would be too much of a dent to its profits." He added that Microsoft "will tell you there are all sorts of parental controls available but back in the real world we all know that parents often don’t have the time or expertise to use these properly."

He claims that "if Microsoft wanted to spare thousands of parents from frustration, anger and sometimes, serious financial consequences then it could find a hundred ways to do it. It has just chosen not to. Microsoft made a decision based on profit maximization and adhering to the minimum legal requirements."

He concluded his post by stating that "if there's a lawyer out there that wants to start a class-action against Microsoft and force them into compensation and adopting a better policy I'll happily sign up."

We have invited Microsoft to respond to Mr Hillman's allegations, and we will update this article if and when they do so."



Ah Microsoft, go ACTIVELY piss off the directors of World Bank and see what that will get you for long term goodwill in Europe and other places.

I'm still using Vista and don't want any new Windows !  

Hay ??? What are you Windows 10 folks doing for a word processor ?

Our "New" computer is an 8 or 10   and it won't load my copy of Word 2003.  Surprise     even though my wife has tried it repeatedly .

Folks with DEEP pockets are looking to Apple Mac products for a solution, but Apple charges more money than MS does and actually uses the expensive MS Office products to fill out a productivity suite.

Folks with very skinny pockets are going with a friendly version of Linux like Mint Mate 17.2 or 17.3 right now because the OS and the productivity suite are already there and it is all free.

There are many who are looking towards Google for next year, as Google's stuff is free and they are used to using it on their phones and tablets.   They know it works and they know they could use it, if the Android stuff were to just catch some of the windowing ability that already exists in ChromeOS.   Google has promised this is coming for 2017.

Why not just use ChromeOS?    Folks really aren't that familiar with "living on the web" just yet, although many in truth spend more time on the web (in a browser) than anywhere else.    They have been told by MS's Pawn Star guys that "You can't do that" which isn't true, but it is what they believe right now.

Those that have seriously tried Chromebooks, have by and large liked it.    Those that wanted "more locally loaded content" found the Crouton trick and have become Linux users on top of ChromeOS and are quite content with that pair up.

Microsoft is creating a deep wish to get away from them in the hearts of many users.   When it all shakes out, MS will still be here, just a good bit smaller than it is right now.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2050508/former-microsoft-privacy-adviser-i-don...

Former Microsoft privacy adviser: 'I don't trust Microsoft now'

    yep, Cortana's eyeball

"Caspar Bowden, who authored Microsoft’s privacy policy between 2002 and 2011 for 40 countries, said this week that he distrusts his former employer and has gone so far as to ditch his Windows phone.

Bowden, who now calls himself a “privacy advocate,” told a conference this week that he was unaware that Microsoft participated in Prism, a charge that Microsoft has denied. But Bowden, as quoted in The Guardian, now says that he will only use open-source software and had ditched his phone for privacy’s sake.

“I don’t trust Microsoft now,” Bowden said. It becomes obvious that key MS employees were denied knowledge of what MS was doing when they did it.  

Microsoft representatives declined to comment."


At least the Google people know where Google is on these sorts of things ..... Google resists NSA, consistently, but cannot stop them from getting to the streaming data as it goes through public backbone nodes.  

And yes, Virginia, Google putting in their own optical backbone as part of their Google Gigabyte System does indeed remove their dependency on government controlled nodes to a major degree, and this is something that Google really thinks they need to do.

People who are actively debating with Google over Chromebooks in schools both get a real answer and access to verify whatever it is that they need to verify.   Google isn't secretive about the kiddies .... come check for yourself.

MS is coming across as much more secretive much more so now than they did 3 years ago.   They have more current dirty laundry to hide than they did under Ballmer and they are NOT going to let you in to check on it.    

I find the same thing --- tried to do a spreadsheet recently and found I had forgotten much of what I had known about formulas, etc.

Skills not used, get fuzzy.


============================


http://liliputing.com/2015/12/remix-mini-review-70-android-desktop-pc.html

First full review of the very first full windowing multi-user Android PC box intended for full use.    

This is a pre-cursor of the official Google system that will be out as Beta next year.





It is a long, full review, and I read it to see the developing details -- if this might be a real alternative to Windows.  

Answer runs like this, if you are an Android user this is a clear improvement for desktop uses.   If you are Windows user you won't be happy because the Android apps available now are "too slow and too limited" to fill your expectations.

If you are an Oriental Android user, it certainly fits the bill at $70 for a home desktop unit -- mainly because you have NEVER used MS Windows at all and can't miss all the power that you have never had.   The Orientals do have some very powerful, feature complete native language apps that actually really are what they think of as "computing".

Point is that the light duty kiddy level English language Android Apps are what make the thing come off as light duty to us -- when using full items like Chrome browser, etc it is same same as same as.    Use the serious Oriental native language apps and it is very much a real OS.

Will Android compete with Windows? -- yes, because it is the same thing that is run on phones and it is shown now that it can run on a desktop using all the tricks Windows uses.   When the English apps are better, it will compete better.

My interest is seeing if a year from now (when the main crop of mobile processors are all literally more powerful than the old Intel Core i3 stuff used to be) ....  will an Android phone be able to simply shine up on a big screen and do the home desktop duty for you using the then stock Android that came on the phone when you bought it.  

Not a different look, just the same stuff you use on the phone every day.



My answer from this review is, yes, they will.   Same OS on the same phone device will be able to dock and do it all for you.

Jide as an idea was developed as a Google person's paid for 25% side project while he was working at Google.   He was allowed to try commercializing it and he has successfully done so, so he has proven it is viable.   Really truly viable.

Likely Google will now offer to buy him out, or else do an IP sharing with him for $$$ payment since when Google does it next year some of the same "Google paid for to develop while he was working there" ideas are going to get used.   And then later when it is just a normal part of Android Google will give it all over to the public domain by putting it all in the LENARO store.  

And yes, this is why Google will pay the man before they turn it over, he has IP invested in it and he deserves to be paid for his IP.

And Google does this all the time with their top end employees, BTW -- you can't hire the very brightest and the best and not allow them to express that genius level thinking.  And you pay them for it, generously both while they work for you and after they go out independent if you want to use their ideas.

And yes, if you keep the relationship going by paying them fairly along the way, why you wind up being an industry leader waving the guiding baton for a whole lot of people who don't even work for you any more.

This is the same thinking that took place with two of the three guys who formed Republic Wireless, the guys actually made a working company out of it and it is still a working company that is doing pretty well (especially since Google was careful to come out with their Google Fi products at a pricier, much nicer level that was clearly above and SEPARATE from where the Republic Wireless guys had staked out their company's low end turf).  

And it is still clear that what Republic Wireless develops Google is using, and vice versa, so the cooperation agreement still exists.   Every new trick Google cooks up I find on my Republic Wireless $10 a month phone within a couple of months.   And vice versa ....   Google works that way, always has.

I really like my old first gen Moto G phone a lot, really.  

$12.46 a month for Republic Wireless Wifi Only unlimited data, unlimited cell calls and unlimited cell texts -- and it works everywhere Sprint and AT&T goes (my roaming back up is with AT&T).    If I have a wifi signal available I can do it all, for as much as I want, anywhere I go.  If I need cell data, I can get it over the phone for $10 per gigabyte (which is a very good rate now-a-days) but I find wifi for free at everywhere I stop now-a-days.   I can download a Google map for the area I am in and store it in the phone now, so I only need occasional wifi to get along just fine.

Can you imagine trying to do something like that with Microsoft?



Nope, neither can I.      Microsoft shares nothing with nobody and charges out the arse for everything they do.