Be Excellent To Each Other

You fucked it up!

I have a mate who's trying to move house. It's taken him three weeks so far to get 7 different solicitors to all talk to each other on the same day to agree a date for exchange. They literally have to do it serially - lawyer one calls lawyer two, then lawyer two calls lawyer three, etc. Each and every day there was another reason why they failed to get all the calls done in a day. And the next day they start again. They weren't even debating the date, they just have to tell each other and agree.

Three weeks it took, to do something that could have been achieved with one email and six replies.

Law people are dumb and yet make so much money. There's a lesson there for all of us.

Back onto Windows 10 - I bought an HP Stream laptop at the weekend which pleasingly looks like it's made from Lego, in both colour and scale.

With it I got a £20 promo code to spend in the Windows App store. So, can anyone recommend any must-have Windows Apps that cost monies? I'd likely use the code to download to my main PC, rather than the lego laptop.

I realise my criteria is broad.

So why am I so poor!

You're the dumbest of the dumb, as Shirley Manson once sang.

http://www.alphr.com/microsoft/microsof ... games-news

Christ, it's as arid as the Windows mobile store. Might have to spend £8 on a pdf reader. Watch this space.

You'll be able to buy Halo: Spartan Assault and Halo: Spartan Strike on there no doubt. They're fun looking twin-stick shooters set in the Halo universe.

http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/halo-sp ... 0-6416114/

cheers, I'll have a go at hooking up my 360 pad to tha machine.

If it's a wired pad you just plug it in and you're done, Windows has full native support. If it's wireless then you need to buy one of these to connect it. You can probably find them cheaper than that, that's just the first link I came across.

Hitman go is well worth whatever they're charging for it these days. Get that.

Also the semi-sequel Lara Croft GO which is also awesome.

I've no idea if this is actually a Windows 10 issue or not, but fuck it.

As well as being connected to my monitor via DVI, my PC is also HDMI'd to my TV; and the TV's optical out is then connected to my surround sound system. I realised tonight that audio coming from the PC wasn't actual being rendered in surround. The PS4 is also HDMI'd to the TV and it does output surround properly (um, now that I've activated it in the settings *cough*) so that rules out a problem with the TV->surround amp connection, and means it's definitely on my PC itself. I've gone through the Windows audio settings and made sure it's set to 5.1. I even went through the AMD control panel thing to check things there as the HDMI connection does come from the gfx card but there's nothing obvious happening. Anyone got any idea what it could be?

I thought optical out was 2 channels only? Don't you need to connect to your amp via HDMI? I could be wrong, mind, but I just seem to vaguely remember reading this recently.

EDIT: No, that's not right. It was something to do with HD audio, whatever that is.

Anyway, try and google "optical vs hdmi", there seems to be a lot of discussion about this that might give a clue.

Most TVs won't output surround sound via optical and just dumb it down to stereo. Sony TVs are generally pretty good for this though and I know mine will do it because I've tested it with the PS4 and it works fine. What optical won't handle, as you say, is the higher definition surround sound that you get on Blurays but I'm not bothered about that.



I'm not sure that's relevant; my issue is that my PC doesn't seem to want to output surround via HDMI as opposed to anything to do with optical. Given that the PS4 manages surround perfectly well going HDMI->optical I'm assuming the problem here is the PCs HDMI connection to the TV as some level.

Yeah, that makes sense. And like you say, Sony TVs are supposed to handle this well.

Obviously I can't help cause I'm a spaz, but I did want to say that twice now since I updated to Windows 10 the sound has completely disappeared with no apparent way to get it back without restarting the pooty. I never had any problems with Win 8.1 so it must be Windows Fucking 10.

Also: I still miss the tiles as a sort of home screen. Over there on the start button looks shit.

EDIT: Well blow me, I wrote then went for a look at the Tablet mode for a minute and then somehow made a screen pop up to tell me how you can recreate the tiled start screen from personalisation.

EDIT 2: Actually it scrolls vertically now, so it's a bit different just for the fucking sake of it of course.

Over all Windows 10 is pretty good day to day.

Still got a lot of small annoying things though, mostly between Apps and Windows Applications

Take today, I wanted to update my account picture and the camera app that takes a new one kept chucking up errors.

No issue with the same webcam for Skype, Lync etc and its obviously Ok in device manager

So I look the error up, and to fix it I had to install another driver that now calls my Logitech 9000 a USB Camera in Device manager.

So now it works with everything, my issue is I was doing account changes which I don't see as an Metro\App task, yet the now you are forced to use crappy apps that won't work with a camera that everything else on you PC has no issue with.

Also find IE 11 on Windows 10 can be really shit with a number of websites, so much so I have Chrome installed now as a backup

Overall I regret upgrading so soon. I have now had several older games giving me trouble that worked fine in Windows 8.1. Also, I wanted to try some programming with the Unreal Engine, but it requires Visual Studio to work, and that, if you will believe it, does not work in Windows 10. I mean, come on, Microsoft. Really?

In fact, where Windows 8.1 more or less just worked, Windows 10 has rekindled my hatred for all things Windows.

What? That it does.

Err... visual studio works ok, I believe. Does at work at any case.

Not the Community 2015 version. The installer bugs out.

I think it may be a network issue, as it seems unable to download files from within the setup program. I had the same problem trying to install Skype. I haven't had problems with anything else, though, only Microsoft's installers.

Ahh, we use isos

No download required.

I've just installed it today without any issue.

I don't get anything from a Google search on the issue, so it could be something quite specific for my setup. Back when I installed Window 8.1 I had to manually install some super duper special network drivers because Windows doesn't recognize the Killer network chip on the MSI Gaming board. It is still using those drivers after upgrading, because Windows 10 still won't recognize it.

On the other hand, like I said, nothing else has given me any problems.

Everything was going fine until yesterday when my start button broke. Pathetic.
Currently following some online advice to see if I can get it back (I like the pop-up weather forecast)

I'm happy with Windows 10 - glad Microsoft realised the error of their ways and made a solid OS again.

The "every other" rule holds

Hmmm...well, the second solution on this page appears to have fixed it.

Drive letters tho
Program Files (x64) tho
SysWOW64 tho

what's up with that

Drive letters are ideal as something that makes sense to a basic end user, to be honest.

So far, Windows 10 seems a lot less solid than 8.1.

As long as you don't need more than 26 24

It's not like alternatives aren't provided.

You can still use A and B for non-floppy drives

I haven't seen a B drive in many a year.

The magic phantom B: drive

Can you actually use B: if you have something else defined as A: ?
(I mean in Win10 or whatever)

So many people stood up for Win 8 though as if they were married to it. It was trash.

I can't tell much of the difference between 8.1 & 10 as a casual user, except when I upgraded to Windows 10 things that worked suddenly no longer worked.

So, should I upgrade from 7? Is there any real point? I don't really use my laptop for much and it works fine, so...?

You're probably in the same category as me then, which is to say there's no compelling reason to upgrade at this moment in time, but reasonable potential for stuff to break with no matching upside.

There's still a few months left for the free upgrade offer, I'd say sit it out until towards the end of the free upgrade year, the more kinks they've ironed out the better.

Even then, the only major reason I'll finally switch is for DirectX 12, if that's not a draw for you then Windows 7 is supported until 2020 - if you like it, and it works, just stick with 7.

Microsoft haven't said that the free update will expire, they have just said that it will be available for a year. I can't see any reason they would actually end it, given how much they are pushing for people to update. It's obviously a free update because it makes business sense for them for it to be, not out of generosity.

Suggesting it might be a time limited offer (which they did) is a good way to motivate people to update, but I don't think it will actually be time limited.

Is there not a point during the upgrade process that your license key is assured but the install isn't actually done? So people can essentially get their license sorted but do the actual upgrade at their leisure?

That would be convenient if so!

The desktop side of the OS is pretty good, I just wish that they would let you separate all the apps from it on a PC where there is little use for them.

Mostly the apps are buggy and not thought through. There is a photo one which as first glance was great for me as if you sign in with an MS account and have all your pictures in OneDrive (which I do) lets you see your pictures without having to use the web interface .

All good until you try and share something and it will only let you do that if you use the mail app. There is no option to share if you use Outlook for mail.

For anyone still moaning about this (*cough*Hearthly*cough*) MS have revealed a way to stop the Windows 10 upgrades notices from annoying you.

Broken again. This is a bit rubbish.