Windows 11

[LunarMist]

Starlink is great, not comparable to other satellite internet at all. The much lower orbit and hardware from this century helps a lot. I've run it on RVs, boats, and houses in remote locations. I haven't installed it on an aircraft yet.

One place I haven't installed it is any place fiber or even high-end coaxial (cable) based internet is available. There are very few exceptions to the phrase "wired is better than wireless".

Isn't the Starlink more expensive than fiber or cable? I also wonder how it could handle an EMP compared to wired/optical systems.

 

[ddrueding]

Starlink is probably more expensive, depending on your other options, but it is in the same ballpark. Old-school satellite and cell phone-based systems are bankruptcy inducing if used normally.

I doubt any of the major internet infrastructure would survive EMP situations very well, but I'd bet Starlink could get a replacement constellation up before Comcast drove around to every box and swapped a board.

 

[LunarMist]

Greg seems to have disappeared again...

 

[LunarMist]

Arghh! This is just to delete a reply.

 

[Handruin]

Do you need forum assistance? I'm HandGPT, your Artificial Ignorance

 

[LunarMist]

I posted here before realizing the reply belonged in the SSD thread. The forum software doesn't allow deleting threads.
Some allow that if there are no subsequent posts, but it's probably not worth looking into.

 

[ArAfGo]

Get laws passed which end this type of invasive spyware. It might be semi-OK only if the software was free. Then gathering user information could be thought of a payment of sorts. However, anything MS or Apple make is far from free. If you're paying for software, you should have a minimal expectation that you're not going to be spied on against your will.

I thought Recall was dead after the fiasco a few months ago? Now it's back??? These people never give up.

I have recently started getting the feeling that there is a need for elected representatives of people, in nations that allow that in a fair way, to start paying closer attention to what is going on in this new world of digital money-making through the sale of such things like operating systems and related tech stuff, and the companies that seem to be providing "free" software/tools and such.

Interestingly, it has only been that last few years where one doesn't get lambasted for writing such like I placed into my first paragraph.

But I'll halt here and see if anyone wishes to discuss this further.

 

[Mercutio]

For anyone using a Microsoft 365 subscription, you've probably gotten an Email recently about a change to your subscription price. It's a pretty substantial change, US$30 for the 6 user family plan. Here's the thing: You don't have to buy the family plan. If you have no use for Copilot AI (and I would argue most people don't), it's still possible to get the old pricing, though you have to cancel your current plan to change back to the old one. Here's Microsoft's instructions for doing so. Thanks, guys.

 

[Mercutio]

Windows 11 Enterprise LTSC does not not require a Microsoft Account to use and it is free to download and "evaluate." This is the version of Windows you want to use for your VMs, although it comes with almost nothing installed. No Windows Store. Almost none of the accessories. But you probably aren't using the calculator or sound recorder in a VM anyway, and if you want to put Windows Terminal or something back, it's just a winget install 9MZ95KL8MR0L away.

On the other hand, it DOES require an Enterprise License agreement.

On the other other hand, turns out it activates just fine off the MassGrave.dev script.

 

[sedrosken]

You can also just do

wsreset -i

to install the store. Takes a couple seconds and it's easier than the winget command to remember -- then again, I'm not sure if that winget installs the store or the Terminal you were talking about.

 

[Mercutio]

Winget is just winget but once it's installed, it mostly does the same things as chocolatey. Chocolatey is easier to use but it doesn't install Windows components, you you need to know about both.

 

[sedrosken]

I meant that particular winget command you put in, with the ID or whatever it is -- sorry, I actually haven't ever used winget.

 

[Mercutio]

I'm pretty impressed with Microsoft Power Automate's ability to do stupid, free-form web things.
I used it this morning to scrape and gather URLs, filenames and descriptive information from someone's (adult web service) account and dump them into Excel. (Adult web service) does not provide creators very robust tools to track what they've already put online, so many users resort to using Cloud Services like Dropbox or ask end users to give them an ID number to indicate purchase intent, but it was shockingly easy to record the action to grab all the relevant data and put it in a format my friend could easily interact with.

It saved her from having to look through ~900 individual posts to collect that information and/or saved me from having to write a bunch of Python.

 

[Handruin]

That is neat. Before even getting to the bottom of your post I was thinking, I'd use python and the beautiful soup http parsing library to do something similar.

 

[mubs]

Is everybody here on W11? I'm still on W10. I guess I need to get off my ass one of these days and switch.

My W10 was upgraded free from a Technet W7. MS stopped allowing such W10 installations from upgrading to W11. I'll have to buy a copy of W11 which I don't mind, but am resisting the new install of many progs and a million tweaks and customizations that I'll have to do. I'm dreading have to tweak so much in W11.

I need VMWare Player to run my Epson scanner software. W7 & W10 couldn't directly work with the scanner which I bought in 2004. Y'all know what Broadcom has done. The last full version of Player I was able to download was 17.5.0-22583795. The installed version upgraded itself to 17.5.2 build-23775571, but subsequent versions kept failing to update.

I guess by the time I move to W11, MS will deprecate it and will have moved to W12.

 

[Mercutio]

mubs, you do not have to buy Windows 11.

 

[sedrosken]

And if you're already not-buying Windows 11, you can use certain enterprise grade versions that come without a lot of the annoying cruft. IoT Enterprise LTSC 2024 is supposedly going to be supported until October of 2034. That said, you could stick with a 10 base and use LTSC 2021, which I believe is supposed to see support until 2031.

 

[mubs]

mubs, you do not have to buy Windows 11.