M D Computer Works

Finally (possibly) I tried to upgrade my HP Stream 8 the tablet from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 but it failed twice. After some research, the problem might be my antivirus program. It just finished downloading the upgrade and now I need to put it in airplane mode and uninstall my antivirus program. The upgrade should start the next time I turn it on.

Before turning my tablet on I did some additional research. I discovered that it might not be a good idea to upgrade the tablet to Windows 10. (It did not upgrade automatically anyway) HP’s website recommends not using the MocroSD card memory for the upgrade backup as Windows 10 probably will not be able to use it. To me, this sounds like a good idea to leave it on Windows 8.1 as the installed “memory” (taking the place of the hard drive) isn’t big enough.

As it is after the end of July and the free upgrade to Windows 10 is over, it really doesn’t matter. So I currently have two laptops, and two desktops (as well as my dad’s) on Windows 10. I still have one active desktop on Windows XP as well as one on Linux Mint – in addition to the tablet mentioned above. I may convert my XP system to Linux Mint, possibly installing XP as a virtual machine. But that is to be decided later.

My conclusion – I still like Windows XP better than any of the versions that followed it. My limited experience with Vista and Windows 8 leads me to believe that both are better off gone. My tablet has Windows 8.1, which despite Microsoft’s claim, still does not have a start menu. Windows 10 is a good start but it still has some distance to go before it is as good and user friendly as Windows XP. Especially Cortana – which still doesn’t seem to search the local drives very well since I killed off “location” information. Near as I can tell, location based information is just an advertising ploy anyway.

In my last post, I mentioned to a problem I was having in Windows 10 – “it seems very easy to overwhelm the operating system and thus have to wait while it catches up. ” When I switched fron Edge to Chrome for my default browser, this problem seems to have gone away. While I must admit that I frequently have many browser tabs open, I don’t see why Chrome can handle it and Edge can’t.
I have noticed that a couple of times when I was away from my computer for several minutes, that it seemed to go into sleep and when the screen came back up, the computer had rearranged all of the screen icons to the left side of the screen – auto-arrange? This is very frustrating. It has only happened since I added a second monitor and only on the primary monitor. The second monitor just freezes where it was. It has not happened while I was using the computer.
The next step is to upgrade my Windows 8.1 tablet. Having a start button back will be very nice.
Then I have two older computers that if they will run Windows 7, I will try to upgrade to Windows 10.

Concerning Microsoft Office, on one of my laptops I have been using software by Kingsoft called WPS Office 2014. It is a free alternative to Microsoft Office. Unlike OpenOffice, WPS Office has the right click menus in the spreadsheet similar to Microsoft Excel. I have used OpenOffice software for years and I really miss those right click menus. Since I use the spreadsheet more that any other part of Office, this is great. However, the OpenOffice has one feature that WPS does not – export to a pdf file. I don’t know if Microsoft Office has this feature yet, but I don’t see in the 2000 or 2003 versions I have used lately. My current biggest complaint about Microsoft Office 2003 Excel is the annoying “SmartTags” which seem to have no purpose except to annoy me. I have not found any way to get rid of them entirely. At least both OpenOffice and WPS Office don’t seem to have them. Both OpenOffice and WPS Office deal well with all versions of Office compatible files that I have tried. (My Microsoft Office 2003 can’t use the new “X” file types.)