Opting Out Of The Windows 10 Lemming Rush

My computer is 4 years old. It runs just fine with Windows 7, thankyouverymuch. I am not at all convinced that (a) Windows 10 will run on this computer, (b) that any or all of my various outdated programs that still work perfectly well (tyvm) can be made to run under Windows 10, assuming the "upgrade" didn't brick the computer, and (c) that the security concerns* being expressed all over the internet are just scaremongering. Nope.

I am told that all editions of Windows 7 will continue to receive security updates until January of 2020.

However... one has to be vewwy, vewwy careful if one does not want to have the Windows 10 "upgrade" inflicted upon their unsuspecting computer.... See, they're being very sneaky, and they have marked it as a "recommended" update. Thus, if your computer is set to download and install recommended updates automatically, you will be "upgraded" to Windows 10 whether you like it or not.

Here is a very good article that explains exactly how not to have this "upgrade" foisted upon you. (You're welcome.) As best I can determine, this procedure will work, for the foreseeable future. If (and when) they invent a further sneak-around to make changes to MY computer without MY permission, all bets are off.... As others have pointed out, Microsoft owns the operating system, and I have purchased a license to use it. But they do NOT own my hardware.

* In case you didn't click over to the Forbes Magazine article, here's a quote:

By default Windows 10 Home is allowed to control your bandwidth usage, install any software it wants whenever it wants (without providing detailed information on what these updates do), display ads in the Start Menu (currently it has been limited to app advertisements), send your hardware details and any changes you make to Microsoft and even log your browser history and keystrokes which the Windows End User Licence Agreement (EULA) states you allow Microsoft to use for analysis.

Hmm. Microsoft as Big Brother? We report, you decide.

And for those whose current Windows 7 (or 8) computer is breathing its last... you can still pick up a brand-new Windows 7 computer at Amazon. There are lots of choices. Brand new, not somebody else's refurbished castoff.

Another thing to be aware of. Many of today's laptops don't come with a CD/DVD drive, apparently because so many people are now "streaming" their content. So if you're shopping, be sure to look out for that.

To Whom It May Concern

Dear Carbonite:

Don't lie to me. My backup cannot possibly be up to date when at the same time it's telling me I have 805 files pending for backup!

Who knew? Musings from the dial-up ghetto

Or, trying to upgrade internet in the 21st century.

I will name some names in this post only because the last time I blogged about a banjaxed product, someone from that company actually saw my post and sent me a free widget. So, with that in mind… AT&T, listen up and pay attention!

I sent the following letter this morning to Randall L. Stephenson, the CEO of AT&T:

Dear Sir:

I am writing to draw your attention to a serious deficiency in your system.

Let me state at the outset that your sales representative named T*** in New Mexico is a credit to your company. He has worked very hard on my behalf, but all of his best efforts (and those of his supervisor) were not enough to overcome the flaw in the ordering system.

I have had DSL internet for many years through R*******, a local provider. While they are a very good company and I do prefer to use local businesses as much as I can, their DSL is just too slow for today's needs, so I made the decision to upgrade to Uverse internet plus voice. I placed an order online on Friday, September 19, 2014.

On Saturday, September 20, 2014, I received an email informing me that due to existing service at my address, the order could not be completed, and that I needed to have the existing service disconnected.

I used the online chat feature of the website to converse with someone in tech support, who suggested I call the sales department. I did so, and was connected to T*** in New Mexico. By the end of our conversation, we had concluded that I was essentially stuck in an endless loop; the ordering system at your end would not allow scheduling of installation until the existing service was confirmed to be disconnected; but needless to say, because I work online from home and I take online classes as well, I could not schedule disconnection of the DSL until I knew when the Uverse installers were coming. But the installers could not be scheduled until the sales and ordering system was satisfied, by its own internal criteria, with no overrides able to be done, that the existing service was gone.

Do you see the problem here?

T*** called me back yesterday (Monday, September 22) after speaking to his supervisor. He brought in a support technician named E* from R*******via conference calling and explained the problem. E* said that in his experience, all the Uverse installers needed to do was hot-swap the wires when they got here, and that would turn off the DSL and turn on the Uverse. However, despite every trick that T*** tried to get through the system at his end, he was not able to move the process forward to the point of scheduling installation, and no one in his vicinity had the ability to override.

Thus, while we waited, E* put us on hold and disconnected the DSL at his end, gave T*** a cancellation number, and set me up for a temporary dial-up account. (T*** was horrified at the very thought, as he should be.)

I had to go to B*** B** to purchase a modem because nowadays, laptop computers do not come so equipped.

When I got home from that excursion, I found a message from T*** indicating that the DSL cancellation had not yet filtered through the system, he was still unable to complete my order and schedule Uverse installation, and he would check on it as soon as he got in on Tuesday (today), and call me.

Meanwhile, I sit here in the dial-up ghetto, unable to get any significant work done. The public library does not open until noon; but even so, any public wi-fi is going to be a problem because the nature of my work involves transmitting HIPAA-protected medical information.

In summary, from a technical standpoint, my internet service should have been able to be switched in a manner that would minimize my downtime. This can be easily accomplished by the Uverse installation technicians, and apparently this was how it was done in the past.

However, due to a serious design flaw in the sales and ordering system, I am stuck with dial-up internet for at least the next week. In this day and age, that is unacceptable.

At this moment, when I attempt to check my order status online (at the glacially-slow dial-up speed) I find that the order was last updated 3 days ago.

Again I would like to emphasize that T*** is a credit to your company, and has gone above and beyond in his efforts to resolve my dilemma. However, his hands are tied by the system.

If I didn't hate C****** already for reasons I won't go into here, by this point I would have told AT&T goodbye and gone with another internet provider.

I would urge you to investigate this flaw in your system and take steps to ensure that future customers do not wind up in the same boat as me. I would also boldly request that since I initially placed the order last Saturday, I should be bumped to a position in the installation queue commensurate with that date.

Sincerely,

Update from later in the day:  When I got back from my afternoon coffee shop sojourn, I found a message from T*** on my answering machine. He said that the DSL disconnection STILL has not made its way through the system, and therefore he still cannot schedule me for installation, but he will follow up again tomorrow and keep me informed.

Incidentally, I had to e-mail the above letter to the CEO because his fax machine just rang and rang and rang. Nice.  /sarcasm

Goodbye for now from dial-up purgatory. How did we EVER function in this environment?? (I should have timed how long it took for Blogger to simply load the page for me to paste in—after writing it offline--and post this entry. My best guesstimate is about 10 minutes, including all the times I had to refresh the timed-out page. Ouch.)

The Year Of The Dead Computer

It's been a busy one.

Shall I list everything that has gone wrong?

• Network card on work desktop machine died.
• Personal desktop machine died.
• Laptop power supply temporarily died.
• Router died.
• CD-ROM drive on work desktop machine died.

And that all happened before last Saturday morning.

It all started when, silly me, I went to follow my boss's instructions and install PowerPoint on my work computer. It was then I discovered the CD drive was hosed.

No fear, said I, I'll just make the desktop machine's CD drive a shared drive, and install from there.

Easier said than done, when the target machine has suddenly decided to take 10 minutes to boot up, and then 5 minutes to open anything at all.

So I took a stab at a Windows repair installation. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

The machine did boot up just fine in safe mode--but half my software wouldn't work.

Off to Best Buy to pick up a USB CD-ROM drive, cross all the fingers and toes, and re-format the hard drive, and reinstall the operating system.

Finished all that at about 7 o'clock last night, and then called company tech support to see when they could install all the company software so I could, um, do my job. You know, the thing that generates the paycheck.

Their first offer was Wednesday afternoon. Fine, I said, if you want to 'splain to my boss. They punted, and gave me Tuesday morning at 6 a.m. my time. And then the tech was late calling, and then he postponed the appointment until noon.

After that, it took 3 hours to get everything up and running.

All things considered, this wasn't how I wanted to spend the last 4 days. But at least the final result was a whole lot cheaper than buying a whole new computer, which was tech support's first suggestion.

Ahh, machinery. Can't live without it, but can't live with it either, a lot of the time.

As If The Earlier Fun Weren't Enough...

... my router decided it was a good day to die.

I tried everything. I figured out it wasn't my internet service or the DSL modem, because each of the computers is able to connect to the internet individually, if I take the router out of the chain (and remember to manually re-configure the IP address on each machine, since it was obtaining it from the router before).

It also isn't my laptop's wireless capability, because I was able to get online via a neighbor's unsecured connection that the laptop sniffed out.

I did a factory reset of the router, then painstakingly re-configured it from scratch, after I figured out that to get to the router's setup screens, the computer I'm using to do so has to have its firewall turned off.

Zip. Zilch. Nada. It's hosed. Bricked. Busted. Ka-blooey. It's a doorstop with pretty blinking lights that go nowhere and do nothing.

So I'm off to Best Buy to see what they've got.

This was not how I wanted to spend my weekend.

Good News and Not-As-Good News

The good news: The 'pooter is out of the shop. Finally.

The not-as-good news... I have to reinstall the operating system.

They put the new parts into it days ago... but it was having trouble booting up, and after several days of attempted diagnosis, they finally figured out that when the power supply blew, and took out the motherboard with it, there was a cascading effect on the operating system.

I told the guy I can do that myself. The truth is, I'd far rather do that myself, because I know exactly how I want it set up.

Guess how I'm spending my weekend....

Some Days You're The Windshield...

I'll give you 3 guesses what I've been this week. (Hint: It's not the windshield.)

It all started Tuesday morning. I was minding my own business, when all of a sudden my personal desktop computer shut itself off, and I smelled something burning. So I took it to the hospital, and the prognosis was grim. Seemed the power supply blew--and took the motherboard with it. Since I'm on a budget, I took the option of new power supply and new/used motherboard instead of a new computer. All the other pieces are still good. But they had to order the parts, so the 'pooter is still in the hospital.

But I still have the company computer to do my work on. Or do I? Mid-shift this morning, it quit talking to the internet. Since I work over the internet, this was not good.

I rebooted it twice, also rebooted the router and the DSL modem. I even tried switching the network cable to a different port in the router, in case the port had gone bad. I knew the router was fine, as was my internet connection, because I had the laptop running on wi-fi in another part of the house, and it was talking to the internet just fine.

I called tech support and they said it was very likely the network card inside the computer, as those have a habit of dying at the most inconvenient times. He suggested I try a "dongle," which is a USB ethernet adapter. I finally found the thing, right where I last left it. I even found the driver CD.

Next problem. The CD drive in the company computer could not read the driver CD. Back to the laptop, to download the drivers (which are fortunately still available) onto a thumb drive.

Now we're cooking. Or so I thought, until I experienced the first Blue Screen of Death I've seen in a very long time.

After yet another reboot, now Internet Exploder keeps freezing up on me. This too is bad, because the company software platform is IE-based. Makes it kind of hard to work....

So now I'm running every diagnostic trick I know to see if I can settle this thing down. And meanwhile, I had the tech support guys install the company software on my laptop, so I have that for a backup now.

I should have just rolled over and gone back to sleep when the alarm went off this morning, I am thinking.