Be Excellent To Each Other

Got a HP Laptop recently and it wasn't that bad - even had to install a program that was meant to be on it to get the Pen to work properly. I'd heard a lot of bad things about HP and was expecting to have to reinstall Windows on it, but there was only 2 or 3 things I actually removed.

https://www.beexcellenttoeachother.com/ ... 30#p947730

I have questions

I just went into Device Manager and told Windows to search for a new driver for the wireless NIC, it went off to Windows Update, found something it liked better, replaced the driver HP had provided, and the internet hasn't dropped since.

If you're not sure on any of that I can grab some screenshots when I get home.

Thanks. I will look later.and then ask for help after I brick it.

Processing grunt is at a premium on the All-In-One PC, so one has to go with the browser that delivers the best experience, particularly in YouTube which is what it's doing most of the time when it's being used.

I was watching a game review video on YouTube before at 720p/60FPS, and Chrome seemed to be struggling with it. A quick look at Task Manager revealed why, with a few tabs open the CPU was spiking up at 90%+ utilisation across all four cores.

So I installed Firefox, and immediately noticed that the multi-tab experience was a lot smoother.

I then distilled it down to having just the same 720p/60FPS video running in a single tab in Chrome, then I closed Chrome and ran the same video through the same section in Firefox in a single tab, and repeated this a few times (with only Chrome or Firefox running at any given time), with no other applications open on the PC.

The results are consistent, Chrome always wants about 200-250% more CPU usage than Firefox to play the same 720p/60FPS video through the same two minute section.

Easy decision to make then, it's back to Firefox on the All-In-One PC. (Incidentally, I even use Firefox on my main PC for when I'm running loads of online slots simultaneously, as Firefox seems to cope really well whereas Chrome starts to struggle at a certain point.)

Remember when Chrome was the lightweight, nimble browser?.....

That's eye opening! What about a side by side comparison using Edge as well... You never know, it might be even more efficient.

So, erm, that was unexpected......

This is repeatable and consistent, it's not a freak result.

Remember, this is the SAME two minute section of the SAME video at the SAME settings running in each browser independently with no other applications open on the PC.

There are peaks and troughs in each browser's CPU utilisation, but fundamentally Edge wants far less CPU than Firefox, and Firefox wants far less CPU than Chrome - and not by small margins either!

My initial observations are that Edge is better at offloading stuff to the GPU, (which is a real shit low-end thing in the All-In-One, but clearly better than leaving the CPU to do everything), but more testing will be required for that.

Edge is the most lightweight browser at the moment (as you've obviously noticed).

Amusingly YouTube is now nagging me on the All-In-One that I should consider using Chrome to watch videos as it's all fast and secure and lightweight and stuff.

I may actually make the switch wholesale to Edge, (not just on the All-In-One), those figures from the All-In-One are really quite startling.

When did Chrome go so shit then? I haven't really noticed it happening but I guess it's been a gradual process.

I use Chrome but I really want to start using (and liking Edge). The only problem is that it's just a little different to what I'm used too and I don't have the time, or inclination, to dick about with stuff these days.

All my stuff's in Chrome. Bookmarks, passwords, all linked to my google account. Can't be bothered changing to a slightly more well optimised browser only to then have to kludge my way around all that lot.

You can import them into Edge from Chrome.

That didn't work so well for me, even though I told it to import everything. I think a lot of that stuff is in the Google Cloud Thingy now so isn't actually stored locally on your PC or something.

Either way Edge didn't have my logon credentials for any sites after the import process, although it did get my favourites and history and stuff. Like, it knew to autocomplete beex.... to the URL for this site, but didn't know my username and password.

Chrome was burying my HPStream netbook jobber so I switched to opera, which has worked a treat for the last year or so. I like it.

I've said before on other BBS that you will never upgrade or update any control system. Because if you fail, you can cause serious damage to your computer.you can't even access your computer .the Windows 10 is extremely volatile
You have to find some way to break it just like this .

Yeah! That's right. Those BBS are all abuzz about windows 10

I dialled in especially!

That’s BS!

No! It's B-BS!

*serious sideeye at whichever of the other two was on account approvals this morning*

Well, it wasn't me...

Oooh! Only 2 more registrations and we hit our 2000th spambot user!

Just in time for our 10th anniversary party!

We've already had it. You weren't invited.

I heard it was great.

Well, that's the important thing...

So... the new Windows 10 update has totally trashed my boot loader, and it seems i'm not alone when I do a google. Can't even start Windows anymore, i'm sure this will be a fun fix...
I was looking for something to do this evening, thanks Microsoft!

Hey this new 'Your Phone' app is pretty good.

It basically links your phone and your PC so you can 'browse' your phone from your PC without plugging it into anything.

I think this is the first thing that MS have added to Windows 10 I've actually wanted.

Yeah seems like something they should have had a solution for a while ago.

I don't send sms texts because it's 2018, and google photos does a solid job of getting photos, but this seems like a good way of doing that kind of stuff too.

I still use SMS for anything timely because there's a better chance that someone will get it. Plenty of people still turn off data or end up connected to WiFi that's not actually working properly etc.

I pretty much only use text messages for conversations with Mum, although for some reason, she'll switch to Facebook Messenger for no reason. Thankfully for Android there's the Messages site for SMS syncing and sending.

I find the opposite. Often I'll send SMS to people and they won't get them for hours or days sometimes.

So here's a thing, once you enable OneDrive it fucks your local backups.

Enabling OneDrive seems to do two things:

1) It moves all your personal files into a new folder called 'OneDrive' in your profile area. (This clears the old areas completely, so any backups you have configured to back up the previous location will carry on happily, except they're not actually backing anything up.)
2) In the new 'OneDrive' folder it does everything with reparse points, which a lot of backup software doesn't seem to understand and ignores completely, including, amusingly Windows Backup and Windows 10 File History.

I only started fucking about with it last night so haven't reached any firm conclusions yet, and fortunately I was just doing my regular sanity check on these things so no data has been lost. Initial testing seems to show that Goodsync gets on happily with the OneDrive folder structure, but Windows Backup and File History doesn't.

I'll faff about with it more tonight, but if you've enabled OneDrive at some point after getting all your normal backup routines in place, it's something you might want to check.

EDIT - Note this is not down to 'Files On Demand' being checked, whereby the files only exist in OneDrive and just links are kept on the PC. The entire physical folder and file structure is present locally on the PC.

Never had any issue with it. Seems easy to use

I like how you can have multiple one drives.

It is easy to use, the problem is if you transition to OneDrive whilst you already have other backups scheduled that use the 'pre-OneDrive' paths, in that they will effectively break without telling you (as technically speaking the backups are still completing correctly, they're just not actually backing anything up), and then you have the problem with the NTFS reparse points in the new OneDrive folder structure that a lot of backup software fails to deal with in spectacular fashion.

Forcing the deletion of the reparse points looks like it does the trick - https://kb.acronis.com/content/61362

So not one drive. Just the way you do things?

I guess it comes down to how safe you want your data to be

In the cloud. Seems safe to me

That's great until you need to do a total recovery of all your data and find that downloading 500GB on a home internet connection isn't necessarily much fun.

That’d take me about eight hours at full speed. Four if I used it as an excuse to upgrade to the higher speed tier.

We're definitely getting to the point where cloud is viable, or nearly viable, for a lot of people, a lot of the time.

However, a full DR scenario would still test the limits of some internet connections and user patience, especially when we're talking about hundreds of gigs. (Our total 'backup estate' between me, Mrs Hearthly and Jnr, runs to nearly 1TB. That's a lot of data to pull down from the cloud in the aftermath of our house burning down.)

Also, call me old fashioned but I still like to have extra copies of my backups, on physical devices that I personally have access to. I wouldn't feel comfortable knowing that the only extra copy of my data was in the cloud.

Well that's why you implement a multi tier strategy. How much of that 500GB do you need back immediately? How much in a week, a month?

Personally I would be worried about other things if my house burnt down but that's just me.

My spreadsheet is in the cloud and that's only 271kb so I'm alright.

Is it not like Google Drive? Can't you access the backed up data through the browser anyway and just download what you need?

Out of interest, what kind of stuff goes in to that 1TB? All my stuff - documents, photos, website bits and bobs etc. comes to 2.5gb, so that's in my OneDrive folder. As Spotify has 99% of the music I listen to covered, I don't have to keep much in the way of local music files anymore, but the ones that I have are backed up into Google Music. Beyond that, everything else is easily replaced.

On day one, or week one, or month one - yes it'd be 'Oh fuck the house has burnt down'.

However, as time went by the question would be asked, 'OK, so where are all our family photos and videos?', and so on.

And you'd need to download that entire 1TB on that day, I assume?

Hnnnngn, want to put Apache Open Office on the kids laptops (as their Office trial has expired) but unless I upgrade the Windows 10 to Pro I can only download apps from the Microsoft store...

Help me Hivemind, you're my only hope.

That doesn't sound right.

You must have Windows 10 S.

Does this work?
https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/dont- ... soft-store