There is only one configuration. Well, a few, they are all designed and built by MS. They have total control and full responsibility. No palming it off on third party driver vendors and such. Like Apple.
It turns out this Windows 10 on a Surface Pro is as insane and unpredictable as every MS product I have ever had to use in the past three decades.
So I close the thing up for ten minutes as I walk back to the hotel. When I open it again there is no mouse pointer and no response to the keyboard.
After messing around a bit I shut it down totally and restart it. That's what you do with Windows, right?
Great, it starts up with no mouse pointer, no keyboard input, no way to log in, and... the screen upside down!
Hmm...OK, restart it again a couple of times. Eventually it came right again.
WTF?
I've seen that a few times on my little ASUS convertible. It appears that for some reason, it wakes up thinking it's in tablet mode (e.g. no keyboard connected). Since the keyboard connector is part of the hinge assembly, I'm assuming it's a momentary contact anomaly when closing the lid. Not to let MS off the hook, but I think at least with the ASUS it's a hardware issue.
Thing shuts down. Press the power button to wake it up. Keyboard and slidy mouse don't work. No mouse cursor. Suspecting it's forgotten it has keyboard attached I remove that and replace it. No good. Power down and up again and it works again.
I notice my HP tablet, and Samsung laptop, have the most issues around shut-down and resume.
Seems there are just so many processors in these things today, and no one takes responsibility for manage of all of them. BIOS testing focuses on boot time, and OS testing focuses on 'user experience' while running, so nobody checks just how much resume code, and resume co-operation, is required.
Wifi often fails to resume properly, and Windows seems to need a very long time to actually, properly, wake up.
Lots of things can get scope, but are woefully slow, until something magically unsticks.
That suspend mode never seemed to work properly on this laptop under Win10 plus you always took a gamble when putting it in a bag that it might wake up again by itself and start cooking. Then you took a gamble opening it up again that it might decide to do its updates which are of course far far more important than the user and must take priority.
As mentioned previously I install openSUSE and have been very happy but decided to try the latest Linux Mint 18 beta and now I'm back in the Mint/Ubuntu fold. I timed suspend in this beta version and it seems to take a long time, around 9 seconds but waking up only takes a couple of seconds to be fully working.
The problem is I'm now expected to use Skype and Webex and whatever collaboration Smile the new guys in the company persuade the boss is a good idea.
Which leads to interminable, inescapable, online conferences, with no significant benifit.
Also leads to my having to have a Windows machine.
I have managed to get Skype working on Linux boxes, it got much harder with the move to 64 bit Linux as there is no 64 bit Skype. It's a horribly complex setup which is very hit and miss. And when you miss it's impossible to diagnose.
At least now that I have this Surface it's not my fault when I can't into a meeting
32 bit Skype works just fine on my 64 bit Gentoo Linux. It even worked (except once, when there was a bad upgrade involving pulseaudio, and I just needed to downgrade Skype until they fixed it) before Gentoo got their act together and added proper 32 bit multilib support.
And, if you're paranoid about having Microsoft products on your Linux machine, you can run Skype inside a sandbox such as Firejail. I do that, and it's no slower, since it just uses kernel namespaces.
Yep, I have had Skype working on 64 bit Debian machines. It's just that on a few of them it seems to be impossible to get audio working. Audio works, just not from Skype. After a couple of hour long sessions trying to find a solution I had to give up. It's kind of tough when you don't get any meaningful error messages out of anything.
Pulseaudio is such a pain. But I'm pretty sure that when I installed the version of Skype that didn't have working audio, it was very obvious that it was pulseaudio's fault.
But that is the end of the line for me, when that thing is not cooperating you are lost.
On the net there are billion posts about Skype and pulseaudio not playing together. Having tried a few dozen suggested fixes it just seemed to get worse rather than better !
When it broke for me, I just downgraded Skype to the previous working version and told Portage it wasn't ever allowed to install the broken version. When the Gentoo devs got it to work, Portage installed the new fixed version for me, which worked fine.
The only hard or annoying part was that they removed the previous good version from the package repository. Fortunately, Gentoo makes it pretty easy to add your own custom repositories, so I downloaded the removed .ebuild file and put it in my own private repository.
Gnome, pulseaudio, and friends are such pains. There's this great thing called Unix philosophy, and Linux is constantly getting farther and farther from it.
Microsoft invalidates earlier, working versions of Skype (after you log out, or are being logged out, you may be unable to log in again until you 'upgrade'). So you're forced to use the newer versions, which are all bad in several ways. The pulseaudio issue, the UI which gets worse and worse for every iteration, the ads, etc. etc. So in practice I'm not using Skype anymore on Linux, I still hold on to it on an Android tablet, but even there I have been able to replace it (with Line for private calls, and Webex for business). Only one use case left, after that, bye-bye Skype. MS destroyed you.
Microsoft invalidates earlier, working versions of Skype (after you log out, or are being logged out, you'll unable to log in again until you 'upgrade'). So you're forced to use the newer versions, which are all bad in several ways. The pulseaudio issue, the UI which gets worse and worse for every iteration, the ads, etc. etc. So in practice I'm not using Skype anymore on Linux, I still hold on to it on an Android tablet, but even there I have been able to replace it (with Line for private calls, and Webex for business). Only one use case left, after that, bye-bye Skype. MS destroyed you.
I have Skype 4.3.0.37-r5 (the -r5 is a Gentoo thing). Portage tells me it first installed that -r5 version of Skype on December 8th, 2014 but then reinstalled it for some reason on September 28th, 2015. My version, which has no ads and doesn't have the stupid new interface, is 1.5 years old and still works just fine.
Yes, the 4.x version still works on Linux, but that's the pulseaudio-only version. The one before, which worked perfectly without pulseaudio, was force-disabled. It worked fine until you logged out. There haven't been any protocol changes, but you were still forced to 'upgrade'. The equivalent 4.x Windows versions were force-upgraded to the ad version, one which seems to be hard-connected to a 'microsoft' identity, and, on some machines at least (this is pretty bewildering, as it isn't the same everywhere) won't let you log out and log in with another account. Suddenly the computer is useless for companies where people use private and company accounts. The Android versions have also been force-upgraded, although I have for some reason been able to stay one version behind my father - only a later version works for him. The new versions completely destroyed the overview. It's a toy, it assumes you have no active contacts.
Heater, webex had terrible sound in earlier versions. I used webex for video and skype for the sound back then. Both can run at the same time on my tablet. But the newer versions have good sound. In any case, most companies use the phone audio option - there's a local BT number to call. There's even one for Japan. You can mix the BT option with internet audio too. Webex screen sharing is also a million times better than Skype's useless variant.
I see MS bought Linkedin for $26 billion.. they would destroy Linkedin too, if there was anything to destroy. What assets could possibly be worth $26 billon? Linkedin is just a glorified contact list.
You know, often a company gets bought and gutted. Whatever it did gets shutdown and thrown away. All that the purchaser wanted was the customer information/contacts. And perhaps the brand name. Happened to a company I worked for a few years back.
In this case, linkedin is nothing but a contact list and brand name.
In this case, linkedin is nothing but a contact list and brand name.
...and a potentially HUGE data mining and monetization opportunity. $65 a user might be cheap if you can maintain them and groom them and harvest data from them.
Soylent green in people....or at least their data!
In this case, linkedin is nothing but a contact list and brand name.
Maybe, but for "nothing but a contact list and brand name" to generate revenues of ~$3B and growing "Full Year 2016 Guidance: Revenue is expected to range between $3.65 billion and $3.70 billion", it seems they have found ways to extract real money from what they have.
That's around half of revenue at Microsoft’s productivity and business processes unit.
However, there is a large amount of smoke and mirrors here too...
["But despite all the headlines about growth and profits, LinkedIn has been a money-losing operation for the last two years.
You wouldn’t know that if you only glanced at LinkedIn’s news releases. That’s because LinkedIn steers investors to focus on what’s known as its adjusted Ebitda, or non-GAAP earnings. The company purposely strips out the cost of stock-based compensation, which has the effect of turning losses into gains. LinkedIn paid out $510 million in stock-based compensation last year; over the last two years, that stock-based compensation represented a whopping 96 percent of operating income, or 16 percent of revenue, according to Mr. Mahaney. Companies like Google, Amazon and Facebook paid out about 15 percent of operating income, or well under 10 percent of revenue."]
I'll probably delete my linkedin account in any case. I only ever passively added contacts who asked for it, just to see how much that ridiculous 'wide contact' number jumped up. There's nothing useful in Linkedin, time to remove that experiment now that MS will simply use it for extended data mining.
I'll probably delete my linkedin account in any case. I only ever passively added contacts who asked for it, just to see how much that ridiculous 'wide contact' number jumped up. There's nothing useful in Linkedin, time to remove that experiment now that MS will simply use it for extended data mining.
I used to be disparaging of Dell in general, perhaps for no good reason. But one day a few years back I was after looking and looking at various laptops I couldn't one that suited my requirements. Most of these were either cheap and basic, more expensive but office like, or exy gamers. So looking at Dell I tried a build online that included everything I wanted plus the full HD 17" screen, twin 1TB HDDs, i7, RAM RAM RAM, and practical USB ports to the rear of the case rather than all up the front in the way rot that seemed to be a trend. This was a great laptop until the MB died and although I was going to repair it I picked up another Dell very unlike my first one.
Still though it was an i7 with RAM RAM RAM, but with 512G SSD and a slim 15" 4k screen with ports to the rear sides so it has been really useful. Really useful that is once I finally installed Linux, first openSUSE but now the new Linux Mint 18 beta, it has been fun, fast, and easy to use again, along with all the terminal bash shells and workspaces I could wish for. Besides the Dells have a nice backlit keyboard and a good keyboard can make or break a user's experience on a laptop (still like my Logitech mouse though). XPS 9550 (2015)
Comments
I notice my HP tablet, and Samsung laptop, have the most issues around shut-down and resume.
Seems there are just so many processors in these things today, and no one takes responsibility for manage of all of them. BIOS testing focuses on boot time, and OS testing focuses on 'user experience' while running, so nobody checks just how much resume code, and resume co-operation, is required.
Wifi often fails to resume properly, and Windows seems to need a very long time to actually, properly, wake up.
Lots of things can get scope, but are woefully slow, until something magically unsticks.
As mentioned previously I install openSUSE and have been very happy but decided to try the latest Linux Mint 18 beta and now I'm back in the Mint/Ubuntu fold. I timed suspend in this beta version and it seems to take a long time, around 9 seconds but waking up only takes a couple of seconds to be fully working.
Which leads to interminable, inescapable, online conferences, with no significant benifit.
Also leads to my having to have a Windows machine.
I have managed to get Skype working on Linux boxes, it got much harder with the move to 64 bit Linux as there is no 64 bit Skype. It's a horribly complex setup which is very hit and miss. And when you miss it's impossible to diagnose.
At least now that I have this Surface it's not my fault when I can't into a meeting
And, if you're paranoid about having Microsoft products on your Linux machine, you can run Skype inside a sandbox such as Firejail. I do that, and it's no slower, since it just uses kernel namespaces.
But that is the end of the line for me, when that thing is not cooperating you are lost.
On the net there are billion posts about Skype and pulseaudio not playing together. Having tried a few dozen suggested fixes it just seemed to get worse rather than better !
The only hard or annoying part was that they removed the previous good version from the package repository. Fortunately, Gentoo makes it pretty easy to add your own custom repositories, so I downloaded the removed .ebuild file and put it in my own private repository.
Gnome, pulseaudio, and friends are such pains. There's this great thing called Unix philosophy, and Linux is constantly getting farther and farther from it.
Ah good old Gentoo. I used that for some years a long while ago. Great stuff.
Yes, the Unix Philosophy seems to be being forgotten. What with things like pulseaudio and systemd.
@Tor
We have been trying to conference with webex recently. Normally the the sound is unintelligible. It's not so cheap for the amount we use it.
I have Skype 4.3.0.37-r5 (the -r5 is a Gentoo thing). Portage tells me it first installed that -r5 version of Skype on December 8th, 2014 but then reinstalled it for some reason on September 28th, 2015. My version, which has no ads and doesn't have the stupid new interface, is 1.5 years old and still works just fine.
Heater, webex had terrible sound in earlier versions. I used webex for video and skype for the sound back then. Both can run at the same time on my tablet. But the newer versions have good sound. In any case, most companies use the phone audio option - there's a local BT number to call. There's even one for Japan. You can mix the BT option with internet audio too. Webex screen sharing is also a million times better than Skype's useless variant.
I see MS bought Linkedin for $26 billion.. they would destroy Linkedin too, if there was anything to destroy. What assets could possibly be worth $26 billon? Linkedin is just a glorified contact list.
I never did get Skype to work properly in Linux.
----
Strange? Why is that robot making a face at someone?
I make that about 65 dollars per user.
You know, often a company gets bought and gutted. Whatever it did gets shutdown and thrown away. All that the purchaser wanted was the customer information/contacts. And perhaps the brand name. Happened to a company I worked for a few years back.
In this case, linkedin is nothing but a contact list and brand name.
...and a potentially HUGE data mining and monetization opportunity. $65 a user might be cheap if you can maintain them and groom them and harvest data from them.
Soylent green in people....or at least their data!
Maybe, but for "nothing but a contact list and brand name" to generate revenues of ~$3B and growing "Full Year 2016 Guidance: Revenue is expected to range between $3.65 billion and $3.70 billion", it seems they have found ways to extract real money from what they have.
That's around half of revenue at Microsoft’s productivity and business processes unit.
However, there is a large amount of smoke and mirrors here too...
["But despite all the headlines about growth and profits, LinkedIn has been a money-losing operation for the last two years.
You wouldn’t know that if you only glanced at LinkedIn’s news releases. That’s because LinkedIn steers investors to focus on what’s known as its adjusted Ebitda, or non-GAAP earnings. The company purposely strips out the cost of stock-based compensation, which has the effect of turning losses into gains. LinkedIn paid out $510 million in stock-based compensation last year; over the last two years, that stock-based compensation represented a whopping 96 percent of operating income, or 16 percent of revenue, according to Mr. Mahaney. Companies like Google, Amazon and Facebook paid out about 15 percent of operating income, or well under 10 percent of revenue."]
+1
My thoughts and plans exactly.
But seriously, yeah, I would be very loath to spend so much on this. Even if it is pretty nice hardware.
It's such a pain to do any useful work on the command line. Which is where I like to live.
you could try to install powershell, it is the most confusing interesting MS shell. Sort of a object orientated command line for administrative tasks.
Quite interesting concept, but not really intuitive.
or install Cygwin and have a posix compatible system to run bash or whaever...
Enjoy!
Mike
Still though it was an i7 with RAM RAM RAM, but with 512G SSD and a slim 15" 4k screen with ports to the rear sides so it has been really useful. Really useful that is once I finally installed Linux, first openSUSE but now the new Linux Mint 18 beta, it has been fun, fast, and easy to use again, along with all the terminal bash shells and workspaces I could wish for. Besides the Dells have a nice backlit keyboard and a good keyboard can make or break a user's experience on a laptop (still like my Logitech mouse though). XPS 9550 (2015)
Amazingly file explorer has a search thing that did find the file I want.
But then it tells me the file is in:
search-ms:displayname=Search%20Results%20in%20This%20PC&crumb=location:%3A%3A{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}\rich_hanson
Or:
search results > bla bla
OK, so where actually is it?
Grrrr....
How do you guys work with this s**t ?
Or...what do have to install here to get some sanity ?
and you will see where it is.
I can log a whole branch of sub-directories or the whole drive and find that needle in a haystack.
Ah, It's under "All apps -> Windows System -> Command prompt
Now I get a DOS prompt.
Sure enough:
C:\>dir rich /s
Volume in drive C is Windows
Volume Serial Number is 44EC-5869
File Not Found
C:\>
Ok what about
C:\> dir rich* /s
Nope, hopeless.