Computer General Discussion Thread

[Minoa]

This thread because it relates to technology.

Source: https://www.howtogeek.com/409517/how-th ... s-to-stop/

April Fools’ Day all used to be in good fun, but I think it was the mic drop prank on Gmail that really started the trend of companies pulling the plug on what has recently devolved into bad jokes and fake press releases that might leave the prankster worse off.

It probably explains why NationStates has repurposed 1 April to the day of a new mini-game, hoping that it will catch on (like the trading cards).

Apple never had any interest in April Fools’, and this year Microsoft called time on it.

[Cekoviu]

This thread because it relates to technology.

Source: https://www.howtogeek.com/409517/how-th ... s-to-stop/

April Fools’ Day all used to be in good fun, but I think it was the mic drop prank on Gmail that really started the trend of companies pulling the plug on what has recently devolved into bad jokes and fake press releases that might leave the prankster worse off.

It probably explains why NationStates has repurposed 1 April to the day of a new mini-game, hoping that it will catch on (like the trading cards).

Apple never had any interest in April Fools’, and this year Microsoft called time on it.

Stack Exchange's thing was actually really awesome this year imo.

[Vassenor]

This thread because it relates to technology.

Source: https://www.howtogeek.com/409517/how-th ... s-to-stop/

April Fools’ Day all used to be in good fun, but I think it was the mic drop prank on Gmail that really started the trend of companies pulling the plug on what has recently devolved into bad jokes and fake press releases that might leave the prankster worse off.

It probably explains why NationStates has repurposed 1 April to the day of a new mini-game, hoping that it will catch on (like the trading cards).

Apple never had any interest in April Fools’, and this year Microsoft called time on it.

#bringbackcornhub

[Saiwania]

The full disk backup and restore utility that comes with Windows 7 and that is still in Windows 10 (but deprecated) sucks. I've used it regularly for Windows 7 and it did an okay job but was slow. With Windows 10, the back up process might get stuck at 97%. Not worth trying to get it to work in my view now.

I tried out the free edition of Macrium Reflect disk imaging and cloning software, and it backed everything up in less time and using less space. 30 minutes as opposed to over 1 hour to back up around 80 GB. Its compression was superior and overall, I'm very impressed. Having tested out AOMEI Backupper as well, I'd rate Macrium as being better, but less user friendly. The free edition of Macrium Reflect lets you do more than the other software.

If anyone has a need for full disk cloning/imaging for backups or restoring from those backups, chances are that 3rd party software will perform this task better than Microsoft can. If Windows had a truly decent option for backing everything up locally on a physical drive as opposed to in a cloud, I'd use it. It looks like Macrium is what I can rely upon more for some insurance.

I can't be using no internet centric cloud solution. Would cause the bandwidth usage and cost to go up higher than I'd want. My ISP gets enough money each month, and they're in a worse way towards you generally speaking, if they got little to no competition where you live.

[Minoa]

Saiwania, Macrium Reflect Home never failed me, especially when I had to replace the hard disks for failing the SMART tests.

However, Macrium could add the ability to replicate the Time Machine scheduling, without running into legal issues with Apple, because schedules are obviously not copyrightable.

[Valentine Z]

After my exams are over this week, I'm totally going to buy an external SSD, backup my stuff, and nuke my laptop's drives.

I want to start afresh, and also want to dual-boot Ubuntu.

Carrying 2 laptops is just difficult when you have Ubuntu-based schoolwork.

[Minoa]

After my exams are over this week, I'm totally going to buy an external SSD, backup my stuff, and nuke my laptop's drives.

I want to start afresh, and also want to dual-boot Ubuntu.

Carrying 2 laptops is just difficult when you have Ubuntu-based schoolwork.

External SSDs? I do not think they are suitable for cold storage due to the fact that they use electrical charges or something.

[Minoa]

For Firefox users who wondered where all their extensions went: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2019/05 ... n-firefox/

It is pathetic for Mozilla to forget to renew their add-on signing certificate and accidentally bring down the add-ons ecosystem as a result.

However, I remain sceptical of Chrome because of their privacy practices, sceptical of Edge because of how Microsoft tries to promote it, and Safari because it is hard to install classic web extensions that we now take for granted. I might as well not rule out quitting the net entirely, when it is possible.

Source: https://www.howtogeek.com/365983/window ... -the-edge/

[Saiwania]

This add-ons mess is a bit of a major setback for me. Am now looking to have a good Firefox clone on hand for occasions like this. The most popular ones are said to be Waterfox and Pale Moon but those have very different goals in mind. Pale Moon isn't a modern browser, it has lots of downsides in that its based on very old Mozilla code, but it's good if you want support for more legacy extensions and etc.

Haven't tried Waterfox just yet, but it may be like Australis era Firefox. Official Firefox is 64 bit as well now, so that isn't a reason for Waterfox anymore. They have to differentiate themselves. Pale Moon's purpose it said to keep XUL-based stuff alive. With Basilisk being a fork of Pale Moon that is based on far newer Firefox code but is an unstable development project.

I just want a fork of Firefox that'll work with my favored extensions to use temporarily, for when or if official Firefox has problems.

[Cekoviu]

For Firefox users who wondered where all their extensions went: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2019/05 ... n-firefox/

It is pathetic for Mozilla to forget to renew their add-on signing certificate and accidentally bring down the add-ons ecosystem as a result.

However, I remain sceptical of Chrome because of their privacy practices, sceptical of Edge because of how Microsoft tries to promote it, and Safari because it is hard to install classic web extensions that we now take for granted. I might as well not rule out quitting the net entirely, when it is possible.

Source: https://www.howtogeek.com/365983/window ... -the-edge/

Vivaldi is your friend.

[Cekoviu]

This add-ons mess is a bit of a major setback for me. Am now looking to have a good Firefox clone on hand for occasions like this. The most popular ones are said to be Waterfox and Pale Moon but those have very different goals in mind. Pale Moon isn't a modern browser, it has lots of downsides in that its based on very old Mozilla code, but it's good if you want support for more legacy extensions and etc.

Haven't tried Waterfox just yet, but it may be like Australis era Firefox. Official Firefox is 64 bit as well now, so that isn't a reason for Waterfox anymore. They have to differentiate themselves. Pale Moon's purpose it said to keep XUL-based stuff alive. With Basilisk being a fork of Pale Moon that is based on far newer Firefox code but is an unstable development project.

I just want a fork of Firefox that'll work with my favored extensions to use temporarily, for when or if official Firefox has problems.

Pale Moon is really only useful for the specific purpose of Puppy Linux or another lightweight system for old computers. I would never use it on a modern system, but it's excellent for my 2001 XP system.

[Valentine Z]

After my exams are over this week, I'm totally going to buy an external SSD, backup my stuff, and nuke my laptop's drives.

I want to start afresh, and also want to dual-boot Ubuntu.

Carrying 2 laptops is just difficult when you have Ubuntu-based schoolwork.

External SSDs? I do not think they are suitable for cold storage due to the fact that they use electrical charges or something.

I think I will go with the HDD, actually. They are cheaper too.

Thanks for the advice! ^^

[Valentine Z]

So my laptop (Dell Inspiron 7559) has been giving me a lot of shit recently. This has been happening ever since I got this laptop, and okay, fine, it happens now and then, but this is getting annoying.

So get this: While I'm typing something on a web browser (and it is usually on a browser), the keyboard would just froze and I can't do anything. I can't reset because the power button didn't work, and shutting down/restarting from the UI would just leave it in an endless animation of "shutting down" or freezing altogether.

Either way, keyboard freezes > mouse freezes > computer freezes. Then I have to take out the back panel and disconnect the battery cable, which is extremely dangerous, but that's the alternative compared to waiting hours.

Why on Earth is my keyboard and my laptop acting up? Am I typing too hard? I used to think so, but I'm typing as gently as possible.

Is it some browser's fault? Possibly, but it's not just Chrome, or Firefox, or the new MS Edge Dev Edition. Same horseshit happened in the past, but it was like once every 3 months. Now I got three such incidents in these past few weeks.

What the hell is happening? Software or hardware issue, I will gladly build my own laptop one day when I am able to. This is fucking atrocious.

EDIT: Glad to know that I'm not the only one. https://www.dell.com/community/Laptops- ... 798/page/2

[Saiwania]

So far as the Dell Inspiron 7559's problems are concerned, it might be because your BIOS is too new or is flawed in some way. The rumor is that version 1.2.7 is more stable than 1.2.9 for that product.

https://www.dell.com/community/Inspiron ... -p/7186689
https://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en ... op/drivers
(Drivers and Downloads support page for that specific make and model)

I don't recommend ever changing your BIOS unless you absolutely have to. It's a tremendous risk in that if anything at all goes wrong during the flashing process, any interruption or any incompatibility whatsoever, there is every possibility that your motherboard will get bricked which would make the entire machine useless. There is more risk but much less upside to this in my view.

The rule for BIOSes is still- "if it isn't broke, don't fix it." Most motherboard manufacturers still only do one BIOS per motherboard as a norm. There is usually no secondary BIOS chip included in the hardware that can be used as a spare to still start your system up if your main BIOS gets corrupted. It is hardware specific firmware that is meant to almost never change.

[Minoa]

I don't recommend ever changing your BIOS unless you absolutely have to. It's a tremendous risk in that if anything at all goes wrong during the flashing process, any interruption or any incompatibility whatsoever, there is every possibility that your motherboard will get bricked which would make the entire machine useless. There is more risk but much less upside to this in my view.

I have good reason to believe that Valentine Z’s laptop came with BIOS version 1.2.9: I do not know if downgrading the BIOS is possible, because I never did that.

[Valentine Z]

Hehe, yeah, I actually looked it up, and... I'll go check out my BIOS version later when I'm back to my laptop.

I've just recently gotten myself a BIOS update, which I got since 20/3, but I only installed the update a few days ago.

Thanks for the help, guys! ^^

----

To me, err... Even if will help with my issue, I don't think I'll downgrade the BIOS version. Seems a little too risky from what it sounds like, and I might be dual booting Linux for schoolwork.

[Minoa]

https://www.howtogeek.com/414036/2019-i ... e-desktop/

Now one can say that 2019 or 2020 is the year of Linux on the desktop, but it is also part of the growing realisation of the importance of cross-platform compatibility.

I still think that desktop software is here to stay, since the internet is not perfectly reliable worldwide.

[Cekoviu]

https://www.howtogeek.com/414036/2019-is-the-year-of-linux-on-the-desktop/

Now one can say that 2019 or 2020 is the year of Linux on the desktop, but it is also part of the growing realisation of the importance of cross-platform compatibility.

I still think that desktop software is here to stay, since the internet is not perfectly reliable worldwide.

But now I can't meme at the end of the year about how sad it is that 2019 wasn't the year of Linux on the desktop... ;~;

[Minoa]

Source: https://www.howtogeek.com/415040/micros ... -features/

It appears Microsoft did a U-turn on Paint, probably due to the outpouring of nostalgia and appreciation for what began as a basic graphics editor. I think Paint 3D should be abandoned: I would delegate 3D modelling to Autodesk and Blender.

[Ashanara]

-snip-
Stack Exchange's thing was actually really awesome this year imo.

I think new users would have been confused about a horse in the background and random Y2K things appearing on Stack Overflow, though.

[Cekoviu]

Source: https://www.howtogeek.com/415040/micros ... -features/

It appears Microsoft did a U-turn on Paint, probably due to the outpouring of nostalgia and appreciation for what began as a basic graphics editor. I think Paint 3D should be abandoned: I would delegate 3D modelling to Autodesk and Blender.

Paint 3D is barely even a modeling application, tbh.
While I don't use Paint for anything but the simplest of tasks, I think MS did make the right call with dedeprecating it.

[Kaberoan Oneland]

What do you think about IOS comparing Windows?

[Vassenor]

What do you think about IOS comparing Windows?

Why are we comparing a mobile operating system to a desktop one? iOS and Windows have entirely different use cases.

[Valentine Z]

I don't recommend ever changing your BIOS unless you absolutely have to. It's a tremendous risk in that if anything at all goes wrong during the flashing process, any interruption or any incompatibility whatsoever, there is every possibility that your motherboard will get bricked which would make the entire machine useless. There is more risk but much less upside to this in my view.

I have good reason to believe that Valentine Z’s laptop came with BIOS version 1.2.9: I do not know if downgrading the BIOS is possible, because I never did that.

My current BIOS is 1.2.7, but I got a push to update to BIOS version 1.3.0 right now.

But I'm in the library at the moment, so... can't update now without a power source!

Thanks for the help to both of you! ^^

[Valentine Z]

So... I got another problem again, and this time, I have tried Google-fu, but that has failed me.

My Task Manager has been showing 50%-100% Disk usage at times... sounds pretty normal, or solvable, right? Well, problem is that it is Task Manager (TM) itself that is running some disk-check thing, even though I remembered not doing any scanning.

I like to think that it might just be coincidence instead of BIOS 1.3.0 screwing things up. Sorry I have been using this forum to rant out my technical issues. I will try to search for more again, but Google doesn't help much in the sense that the questions and answers I found are for those that has high disk usage from some other program, not from TM itself.