• Is Microsoft going to disable Windows 10 at EOL?

    From John@21:1/5 to All on Thu Jun 6 17:25:09 2024
    Microsoft is warning (reminiding) its Windows 10 users that the Windows
    10 EOL is approaching. Given Microsoft's past behavior and that it is
    a commercial business, has it made any comments that it will terminate
    the Windows 10 O/S software after the last EOL security update? These
    days I just don't trust MS to not want to force people using Windows 10
    to migrate to a new version whether said user wants to do so or not.

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  • From Newyana2@21:1/5 to John on Thu Jun 6 14:41:06 2024
    On 6/6/2024 1:25 PM, John wrote:
    Microsoft is warning (reminiding) its Windows 10 users that the Windows
    10 EOL is approaching. Given Microsoft's past behavior and that it is
    a commercial business, has it made any comments that it will terminate
    the Windows 10 O/S software after the last EOL security update? These
    days I just don't trust MS to not want to force people using Windows 10
    to migrate to a new version whether said user wants to do so or not.


    MS have never remotely disabled Windows computers before.
    But just for the sake of your own sanity you might consider
    getting a firewall (Simplewall seems good) and disabling all
    possible notifications. MS could make your life miserable with
    warnings and salespitches if you don't block them out of your
    system. It's beyond me why anyone puts up with the ads and
    popups.

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  • From Paul@21:1/5 to John on Thu Jun 6 16:09:27 2024
    On 6/6/2024 1:25 PM, John wrote:
    Microsoft is warning (reminiding) its Windows 10 users that the Windows
    10 EOL is approaching. Given Microsoft's past behavior and that it is
    a commercial business, has it made any comments that it will terminate
    the Windows 10 O/S software after the last EOL security update? These
    days I just don't trust MS to not want to force people using Windows 10
    to migrate to a new version whether said user wants to do so or not.


    No.

    My Win7 and Win8.1 drives still work.
    My W10 drive (not going to receive any more Version Upgrades now) is also going to work.

    The purpose of any Marketing Effort, is to use FUD (Fear Uncertainty Doubt)
    to encourage you to spend more money. Whether you do, would depend on
    whether the new offering has something the old (unsupported) offering
    no longer has.

    At this point in time (June 2024), we don't have truly competitive hardware offerings from the players. Only one product is being touted. Recent
    slideware implies competition will eventually show up, and I would wait
    until the dust has settled before buying hardware to support anything new.

    On a comedy note, yesterday on Toms, one of the reviewers gets
    an NPU top hat for an RPi 5. What was the problem for the reviewer ?
    No software. And that's how it goes in a gold rush. You get
    to the gold mining site, and realize you left all the shovels behind.

    Paul

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  • From VanguardLH@21:1/5 to John on Thu Jun 6 15:15:39 2024
    John <invalid@invalid.net> wrote:

    Microsoft is warning (reminiding) its Windows 10 users that the Windows
    10 EOL is approaching. Given Microsoft's past behavior and that it is
    a commercial business, has it made any comments that it will terminate
    the Windows 10 O/S software after the last EOL security update? These
    days I just don't trust MS to not want to force people using Windows 10
    to migrate to a new version whether said user wants to do so or not.

    When have you EVER seen Windows get disabled or self-destruct when its
    support ended? Or MS-DOS? Or MS Office? Or when has any MS product self-destructed when support gets discontinued? Not supported has
    nothing to do be continued usability. Discontinued support means the
    owner no longer updates, not that they send out a self-destruct signal.

    Products and services are separate beasts. Microsoft could yank away
    their e-mail, OneDrive, and other online services. If they yanked away
    MS accounts, you'd have to create a new local/offline account in Windows
    since you no longer have an MS account to log into.

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  • From VanguardLH@21:1/5 to Paul on Thu Jun 6 15:36:16 2024
    Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:

    The purpose of any Marketing Effort, is to use FUD (Fear Uncertainty
    Doubt) to encourage you to spend more money. Whether you do, would
    depend on whether the new offering has something the old
    (unsupported) offering no longer has.

    I remember when Microsoft starting pushing its users to change from
    Hotmail to Outlook.com. They made it sound like you had to switch
    domains. The even provided a toggle button to auto migrate from Hotmail
    to the Outlook.com domain. It was NOT a requirement. When I saw the
    prompts, I kept my Hotmail.com account, AND also created a new but a
    separate account on the Outlook.com domain.

    My Hotmail account got grandfathered with the 25 GB storage quota it had originally. Microsoft dropped the quota to 5 GB unless you logged into
    your account, and by using their webmail client, not by using a local
    e-mail client. However, new accounts, like the new one I created at Outlook.com, or Hotmail accounts you didn't get grandfathered by signing
    in using their webmail client with 15 days of the notice, got stuck with
    the new lowered 5 GB quota. Gmail starts with 15 GB for new accounts,
    and kept it even after Microsoft dropped from 15 GB to 5 GB.

    I know a lot of friends and family that got conned by Microsoft when
    they were misled into believing they must migrate from Hotmail.com to Outlook.com. They didn't get another account. Their Hotmail account
    converted into an Outlook.com account. Both Hotmail and Outlook.com
    logins go through login.live.com. Yep, Hotmail, Live.com, and
    Outlook.com are all the same service. I never had a Live.com account to
    know if Microsoft misled those users into moving to Outlook.com.

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  • From Steve Hayes@21:1/5 to Paul on Fri Jun 7 05:16:34 2024
    On Thu, 6 Jun 2024 16:09:27 -0400, Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:

    The purpose of any Marketing Effort, is to use FUD (Fear Uncertainty Doubt) >to encourage you to spend more money. Whether you do, would depend on
    whether the new offering has something the old (unsupported) offering
    no longer has.

    And whether the old unsupported offering has something that the new
    supported version no longer has -- in my case, the ability to run
    older programs that run under MS-DOS.


    --
    Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
    Web: http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm
    Blog: http://khanya.wordpress.com
    E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk

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  • From VanguardLH@21:1/5 to winston on Thu Jun 6 22:43:26 2024
    winston <winstonmvp@gmail.com> wrote:

    The toggle button was to migrate the device from one backend server to
    the newer Exchange server which supported the prior Exchange Active
    Sync(old server) and additionally Exchange.

    Although it was announced maybe a year ago, Microsoft caught up to my
    account to remove EWS (Exchange Web Services) access. I had to delete
    my current Exchange-capable account in my local e-mail client to using
    IMAP to regain access.

    I forgot about the msn.com domain. I never had one.

    ***Note:*** - the size reduction(15 to 5 GB) did not impact M365
    Office subscriptions(365 Family has 1TB for the primary subscription
    owner and 1TB for each shared MSA with up to 5 shares allowed; Personal(single user subscription) 365 has 1TB for that single owner
    user.

    With MS 365 (aka MS Office 365), yep, you get 1 TB for storage quota,
    and the means to up to 6 TB (but, as I recall, it wasn't contiguous
    storage, but kept separate, unless you used a local storage consolidator
    app to effectively merge them, but there was still the 1 TB boundaries).
    When I subscribed to MS Office 365, I got the 1 TB, but never used much
    of it. When I dumped the subscriptionware after 5 years, I dropped back
    to the 15 GB quota of which I'm only using 1.4 GB. Consumption doesn't
    change much over the years. I only put a few zipped folders up there.
    Most of my backups are on internal HDDs, and copied to external USB
    HDDs, with some data on USB flash drives (that rarely get written, and
    mostly for reading during restores).

    The backend server changed, no Hotmail.com accounts were converted to Outlook.com accounts...the domain didn't change. The only things that changed was the backend server, all MSA(Outlook.com, Live.com,
    Hotmail.com and MSn.com and 3rd party registered retained the domain
    name, and all logon to the web mail UI - which now goes to:
    https://outlook.live.com)

    But when you converted your Hotmail account to an Outlook.com account,
    you no longer had the Hotmail account (er, domain). Once you moved, and
    didn't move back within somewhere around 15 days, you were stuck with Outlook.com.

    Confusing, always!!!! :)

    Microsoft continually confuses with their rebranding. Mail app became
    new Outlook (and "new" was part of the product name). Lots of users
    confused Outlook Express (which came from MS Internet Mail and News
    hence the msimn.exe for its executable filename) with Outlook. Many
    users pushed to the Outlook.com domain just called it Outlook, so hard
    to know just what they're asking about. Microsoft keeps moving stuff
    under a larger umbrella. I'm suprised they haven't yet rebranded Azure
    to Outlook.

    Sometimes I think Marketing folks just make work to qualify their pay.

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  • From Paul@21:1/5 to Steve Hayes on Fri Jun 7 00:53:50 2024
    On 6/6/2024 11:16 PM, Steve Hayes wrote:
    On Thu, 6 Jun 2024 16:09:27 -0400, Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:

    The purpose of any Marketing Effort, is to use FUD (Fear Uncertainty Doubt) >> to encourage you to spend more money. Whether you do, would depend on
    whether the new offering has something the old (unsupported) offering
    no longer has.

    And whether the old unsupported offering has something that the new
    supported version no longer has -- in my case, the ability to run
    older programs that run under MS-DOS.

    Yes, Win10 would be the last 32-bit support.

    You could not do an Upgrade Install of Win11 x64 over top of a Win10 x86 (32bit).
    I don't think that would work, and it might not even start to upgrade
    when it detects the details.

    There may be some amount of surplus equipment at the end of the
    Win10 era (Oct 2025) and maybe you can get a machine suited to your
    archival activity at that time.

    I was looking on Ebay, and my laptop model was for sale for $50.
    That's what I mean by "end-of-era" computers.

    While VirtualBox allows running older stuff, one thing to be
    aware of, is the "tested support" is not as extensive as it once was.
    At one time, VirtualBox would be advertised as supporting MSDOS.
    You would not have that "promise" today. They might test today,
    that the most recent version runs Windows 10. They don't spend time
    testing that Win2K still works. And because Win2K tends to break anyway
    on VBox, then you definitely would want them to
    test that OS for you. Saving you the trouble of it railing on
    one core.

    While virtualization is interesting, the support of it is less
    interesting :-) They tweak some of the OSes to make them work.
    When they say they no longer support an OS, then any existing
    tweaks might not get tested.

    I would say, the best option for you, would be to acquire
    additional equipment, to preserve the capability you want.
    Dodgy workarounds just aren't worth it, to someone who has
    work to do.

    Paul

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  • From Steve Hayes@21:1/5 to Paul on Sat Jun 8 05:44:03 2024
    On Fri, 7 Jun 2024 00:53:50 -0400, Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:

    On 6/6/2024 11:16 PM, Steve Hayes wrote:
    On Thu, 6 Jun 2024 16:09:27 -0400, Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:

    The purpose of any Marketing Effort, is to use FUD (Fear Uncertainty Doubt) >>> to encourage you to spend more money. Whether you do, would depend on
    whether the new offering has something the old (unsupported) offering
    no longer has.

    And whether the old unsupported offering has something that the new
    supported version no longer has -- in my case, the ability to run
    older programs that run under MS-DOS.

    Yes, Win10 would be the last 32-bit support.

    You could not do an Upgrade Install of Win11 x64 over top of a Win10 x86 (32bit).
    I don't think that would work, and it might not even start to upgrade
    when it detects the details.

    There may be some amount of surplus equipment at the end of the
    Win10 era (Oct 2025) and maybe you can get a machine suited to your
    archival activity at that time.

    Yes, I did that.

    When my Win 7 laptop was stolen last year I asked around for a 32-bit
    Windows laptop to replace it, and one 2nd-hand dealer had a Dell
    laptop with no OS. They installed 32-bit Win 10 on it.

    To get it to do what the Win 7 one did I still have to do a lot of
    setting up -- for example, how does one set environment variables,
    especially PATH?

    But my concern is much wider -- for 20-30 years academic institutions, libraries and others have been collecting reseachdata data that they
    have stored on computers which will soon become inaccessible. People
    still lament tghemicrosft is doing the same thing right not.

    People need to remember:

    DIGITIZING DATA DESTROYS DATA

    I was looking on Ebay, and my laptop model was for sale for $50.
    That's what I mean by "end-of-era" computers.

    While VirtualBox allows running older stuff, one thing to be
    aware of, is the "tested support" is not as extensive as it once was.
    At one time, VirtualBox would be advertised as supporting MSDOS.
    You would not have that "promise" today. They might test today,
    that the most recent version runs Windows 10. They don't spend time
    testing that Win2K still works. And because Win2K tends to break anyway
    on VBox, then you definitely would want them to
    test that OS for you. Saving you the trouble of it railing on
    one core.

    While virtualization is interesting, the support of it is less
    interesting :-) They tweak some of the OSes to make them work.
    When they say they no longer support an OS, then any existing
    tweaks might not get tested.

    Yes.

    I lament the death of OS/2, which could emulate MS-DOS and Windows
    seamlessly. Its emulators were as good as the originals. But the
    add-ons one gets today don't seem so good.


    --
    Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
    Web: http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm
    Blog: http://khanya.wordpress.com
    E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk

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  • From Char Jackson@21:1/5 to Paul on Sat Jun 8 00:42:27 2024
    On Sat, 8 Jun 2024 01:23:51 -0400, Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:

    On 6/7/2024 11:44 PM, Steve Hayes wrote:


    To get it to do what the Win 7 one did I still have to do a lot of
    setting up -- for example, how does one set environment variables,
    especially PATH?

    Start : Run : sysdm.cpl [ Direct path to "System" Control Panel ]

    Advanced tab (in the middle)

    Environment Variables (bottom right)

    System variables, PATH (it seems some of my custom entries are there, like Ghostscript path)

    It's been about the same since at least XP.

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  • From Paul@21:1/5 to Steve Hayes on Sat Jun 8 01:23:51 2024
    On 6/7/2024 11:44 PM, Steve Hayes wrote:


    To get it to do what the Win 7 one did I still have to do a lot of
    setting up -- for example, how does one set environment variables,
    especially PATH?

    Start : Run : sysdm.cpl [ Direct path to "System" Control Panel ]

    Advanced tab (in the middle)

    Environment Variables (bottom right)

    System variables, PATH (it seems some of my custom entries are there, like Ghostscript path)

    Paul

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  • From Steve Hayes@21:1/5 to Paul on Sun Jun 9 11:32:58 2024
    On Sat, 8 Jun 2024 01:23:51 -0400, Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:

    On 6/7/2024 11:44 PM, Steve Hayes wrote:
    To get it to do what the Win 7 one did I still have to do a lot of
    setting up -- for example, how does one set environment variables,
    especially PATH?

    Start : Run : sysdm.cpl [ Direct path to "System" Control Panel ]

    Advanced tab (in the middle)

    Environment Variables (bottom right)

    System variables, PATH (it seems some of my custom entries are there, like Ghostscript path)


    Thanks very much!


    --
    Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
    Web: http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm
    Blog: http://khanya.wordpress.com
    E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk

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  • From John C.@21:1/5 to John on Sun Jun 9 16:12:18 2024
    John wrote:
    Microsoft is warning (reminiding) its Windows 10 users that the Windows
    10 EOL is approaching. Given Microsoft's past behavior and that it is
    a commercial business, has it made any comments that it will terminate
    the Windows 10 O/S software after the last EOL security update? These
    days I just don't trust MS to not want to force people using Windows 10
    to migrate to a new version whether said user wants to do so or not.

    I don't think that will happen. If they did that, it would trigger a
    massive exodus away from Windows.

    --
    John C.

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