On 22.12.2024 18:16, Mike Cowlishaw wrote:
[Actually, I am totally backlogged with different
time-consuming tasks, among them my new Windows 11 laptop
that arrived late and which needs to be installed with a
wealth of software to become able again to build ooRexx. At
the moment this important project is on hold ...
I thought Windows 11 from Windows 10 migration was supposed to be as easy as
Android .. i.e., just 'update', not 're-install everything'?
Wish that were the case. Got a Lenovo Thinkpad with Windows 11 preinstalled. From starting up the
machine for the first time until I arrived at the state where I could start to install software it
took almost four hours: fetching constantly updates, applying them, rebooting, a few times.
Microsoft forced me to create an account with Microsoft, otherwise I could not get to use Windows 11
that I had already bought with the laptop, talk about abusing power!
The user interface has "blind" links to all of Microsoft's Office modules pre-installed, including
OneDrive, Co-Pilot and the like. If you click e.g. on the Word link it appears to get you to the
open page, where you can choose a document type then a dialog pops-up where you have to register in
order to really use it, and the registration would move you to a monthly license fee plan it
appears. No competitor of Microsoft has the same ability (to put links to their software on to the
Windows interface and toolbar) thereby pre-empting any competition by abusing their market power!
(No, I would not want any advertisements or software bundles on an operating system, just the
operating system to operate the software.)
As I do not want any license fee based PC software I looked for the latest MS Office that is not
license fee based. It is rather hard to find, but since October there is a new one-time-fee
("permanent") Office 2024 Pro PC. Researching a little bit I finally got a version for € 29,99 which
entitles me to install it on three PCs (go figure if comparing to the officially announced prices).
The site I found would have Windows 10 or Windows 11 for that price, but also bundles with various
MS Office suites for that very same price. When installing MS Office 2024 one needs to remove any
traces of a prior installation of MS Office or one of its modules. And interestingly, the blind
links are installed and need to be uninstalled. (At that occasion I noticed that MS Edge seems to be
uninstallable as well which I contemplate as Windows 11 does not fully honor my choice to use
Firefox as the default browser.) Also it seems that Microsoft used my newly created Microsoft
account without asking, thereby personalizing the Office product without any need as the proof of
ownership had been given with presenting the acquired product key. Talk about breaking privacy!
Doing a Shutdown (German "Herunterfahren") will not shut down Windows 11 but put it into
sleeping/hibernation mode without telling you, so no reboot process when restarting. Researching on
the Internet yielded a solution: press the shift-key while choosing "Shutdown", then it will
shutdown (the meaning of words does not mean anything anymore it seems).
And on, and on, and on, a true time killer, not a productivity tool anymore, I am afraid (not the
least because of the many changes in the user-interface that force you to research on the Internet
what to do in Windows 11 in order to achieve what you have been doing for years if not decades on
all Windows versions in the past).
An important productivity howto for Windows 11: just memorize to use the <WindowsKey>+<R> to get a
little input window to enter a command like "cmd" and press <enter> to get a command line window, if
you need it with administrative rights you need to do a <shift>+<enter> instead. There is no
icon/link anymore to allow you to open it directly in normal or administrative mode.
If you choose "Terminal" in the search window you will get by default the quite human-unfriendly
"PowerShell" command line window (which very Windows-unlike does not search in the current directory
first and then on PATH, but sticks to the original Unix rule to only use PATH for locating
programs). To escape from PowerShell into the classic command line window one needs to enter the
command "cmd".
(If it was not for ooRexx- and BSF4ooRexx-projects I would not use a Windows machine anymore, but
rather a Linux or Apple machine with open-source software.)
[Some annoyance here because none of family machines are 'Windows 11
compatible' (they use the EU versions of Intel CPUs but the USA versions of
the same model are supported) so in theory have to replace all PCs and
laptops at huge expense when current hardware is plenty fast enough...]
... as I will be visiting my mother over Christmas and possibly New Year.
Have a good Xmas, and all the best for 2025!
Thank you and also have a Merry Christmas and all the best for 2025!
---rony
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