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kgf93 post(s)
#24-May-15 23:17

Does any one have an inkling of how the Windows update to 10 happening this year might affect Manifold activation's. Having hit the wall on the number of activations I dont want to waste any.

tjhb
10,094 post(s)
#25-May-15 01:30

The update to Windows 10 is a fresh OS install, so it requires third-party applications to be reinstalled as well. This means reactivation. (That's my belief, based on limited experience with the Technical Preview.)

Remember though (see this page) that if your activations are exhausted then (a) Manifold automatically grants one new activation for free, a year after the last activation and (b) you can at any time buy two more activations for $US50.

kgf93 post(s)
#25-May-15 01:50

Thanks for the info, looks like I will be paying for some more, after using my last activation and then a free one after a problem and then a windows reset when setting up a new computer. Suspect the Windows update will affect a few people that are running out of activations, certainly would rather be paying for an update to Manifold than more activations.

ColinD

2,081 post(s)
#03-Jun-15 21:55

Now that Windows 10 upgrade (from 7 & 8) is coming is it definitely to be a fresh install? Surely MS would not do this if it screwed all activations?


Aussie Nature Shots

Geary3 post(s)
#06-Jun-15 21:34

No, the Windows 10 upgrade is not going to require a clean install. Microsoft wants as many people as possible to upgrade, and requiring a clean install would reduce their upgrade rate by 90% or more. After all, how many casual Windows users want to or are even able to reinstall all their apps?

I don't know how a Windows 10 upgrade will interact with an existing Manifold activation, but they will definitely allow an in-place upgrade that preserves existing app installations and settings.

tjhb
10,094 post(s)
#06-Jun-15 23:06

There's a lot of common sense in that--a sound opinion.

Facts though?

It would be great if anyone who tries the upgrade route could post their experience here, either with the "final" release or with a recent technical preview.

I haven't tried since January, and at that point applications, including Manifold, but even Windows Store apps, were not migrated. The release will be very different in many ways, possibly this.

My choice of words in "fresh OS install" was bad. I didn't mean a clean install is required--it's not, and most people won't do a clean install. Also, even in January, the upgrade over 8.1 was really smooth, very impressive (except for an endless succession of "we're almost done" and "one more thing" announcements, very funny, and the difficulty in opting out of the masses of built-in spyware). Microsoft will undoubtedly try to migrate a lot of settings from the old OS--we can probably count on Office working pretty well, perhaps with reactivation, perhaps not. But real applications like Manifold are another story.

tjhb
10,094 post(s)
#08-Jun-15 02:49

I took my own advice and did a trial upgrade on a spare machine from Windows 7 SP1 64-bit, to Windows 10 64-bit insider preview, build 10130. (FWIW it was an HP 8710w notebook.)

No problems--no real problems--very smooth (though the interactive messages have become deeply patronising, maybe the new thing).

Manifold 8 Ultimate 64-bit was migrated perfectly with no effort, and activation was maintained.

No guarantees of course but good news for now.

kgf93 post(s)
#08-Jun-15 04:14

Great to hear. Hopefully the final release will play as nice.

mdsumner


4,260 post(s)
#08-Jun-15 05:17

Is "Revolutions" R built in as an app yet?


https://github.com/mdsumner

tjhb
10,094 post(s)
#08-Jun-15 06:36

[Removed]

tjhb
10,094 post(s)
#08-Jun-15 07:18

Something more sensible:

I'm R-illiterate Mike but It's only laziness that's been stopping me.

Microsoft bringing R into the SQL Server front line has to be positive, doesn't it?

I'd love to see you write a Manifold tutorial for R beginners sometime. Any chance?

mdsumner


4,260 post(s)
#08-Jun-15 14:29

It's actually more possible these days than it has been, I've really upped my use of R and been using Manifold again for work more than ever.

You can't do much better than these recent books:

R packages

The Art of R Programming

Hands on Programming with R

I could parrot back your second sentence replacing R with "SQL" - although, the fantastic new dplyr package has kicked me over the edge into SQL-land recently in a way I was not expecting. The most important extensions to R right now are dplyr and Rcpp IMO, and there are dozens of great things in competition for that front role.

I'm in two minds about the Microsoft purchase since Revolutions is based on a sneaky loophole around the GPL, and I am sympathetic to the author of R who is aggrieved by this: Starting over

R is a complex beast though, with many contributors and many up and comers for the core team, and some downplay Ihaka's involvement (since the early 90s) putting it in a longer context as an evolution of S from Bell labs in the 70s. There's really no question that he's the father of modern R though, and he is working together with a student working on a new one:

A new statistical computing system

RStudio is giving Revolutions and run for their money and for me it's a better choice overall. The main difference comes down to the compiler, it's a big commitment in effort to build the entire tool chain with Intel when the entire project is natively geared towards GNU.

I was interested in Revolutions products (based on the Intel compiler) until the core team succeeded in compiling R for 64-bit Windows with GNU, but Revolutions has some very nice high level tools for parallel coding.

(Gee appears I really have a lot to say here)


https://github.com/mdsumner

mdsumner


4,260 post(s)
#08-Jun-15 14:37

Oh and so I had some very limited exploration with this:

rClr - R package for .NET

I got it going enough with Manifold to list elements within the dll Manifold.Interop, but I couldn't get an Application object going. (I don't even know the .Net lingo enough to ask what I need). If someone could help me with that we could really do some damage.

I have some notes on another computer at work, so I'll dig them up.


https://github.com/mdsumner

volker

1,086 post(s)
#09-Jun-15 12:42

Maybe interesting for R with Manifold -> found this:

http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2015/05/r-in-sql-server.html

In-database R coming to SQL Server 2016

R is coming to SQL Server. SQL Server 2016 (which will be in public preview this summer) will include new real-time analytics, automatic data encryption, and the ability to run R within the database itself:

For deeper insights into data, SQL Server 2016 expands its scope beyond transaction processing, data warehousing and business intelligence to deliver advanced analytics as an additional workload in SQL Server with proven technology from Revolution Analytics. We want to make advanced analytics more accessible and increase performance for your advanced analytic workloads by bringing R processing closer to the data and building advanced analytic capabilities right into SQL Server. Additionally, we are building PolyBase into SQL Server, expanding the power to extract value from unstructured and structured data using your existing T-SQL skills. With this wave, you can then gain faster insights through rich visualizations on many devices including mobile applications on Windows, iOS and Android.

With this update, data scientists will no longer need to extract data from SQL server via ODBC to analyze it with R. Instead, you will be able to take your R code to the data, where is will be run inside a sandbox process within SQL Server itself. This eliminates the time and storage required to move the data, and gives you all the power of R and CRAN packages to apply to your database.

At last weeks' Microsoft Ignite conference in Chicago, SQL Server program managers Lindsey Allen and Borko Novakovic demonstrated a prototype of running R within SQL Server. (A description of the intergration begins at 57:00, and the demo at 1:05:00, in the video below.) In the demo, Lindsey applies a Naive Bayes classification model (from the e1071 R package) to the famous Iris data, using the same R code used in this Azure ML Studio experiment.


http://www.thegisservicesector.de

Jonathan_r

160 post(s)
#04-Aug-15 10:51

Have just installed Win10, but upgraded, keeping all apps in place rather than a clean install. Firs thing I tried was Manifold and it didn't request a new activation for me but YMMV! Now if I could just sort Outlook and Creative driver issues...*sigh*

Cheers

KlausDE

6,410 post(s)
#01-Aug-15 09:09

Back from the side-track:

Wanted: First hand experiences with Mfd run no longer as program but as an app on Win 10.

Activation, speed, reliability, handling, ....


Do you really want to ruin economy only to save the planet?

oeaulong

521 post(s)
#01-Aug-15 14:59

Thanks Klaus, This is an important thread. Listening as well.

ColinD

2,081 post(s)
#01-Aug-15 21:49

I upgraded yesterday from Win 7 64-bit and on a superficial look all seems to be as it was. Map files open and display as I expected. Tried a few queries and they also did what they were intended to do. My only problem on that particular machine was that the NVIDIA drivers for the Quadro card weren't used; a restart fixed that. On a non-Manifold machine running Adobe CC and upgrading from Win-8.1 64-bit it all went smoothly including the Quadro card drivers.


Aussie Nature Shots

antoniocarlos

609 post(s)
#02-Aug-15 14:57

Manifold seems to be working fine on my PC. Just upgraded. My Idrisi Selva licence stopped working. Waiting for their tech response.


How soon?

tjhb
10,094 post(s)
#03-Aug-15 02:33

Here's a caveat.

I upgraded my Lenovo Tablet 2 yesterday (the least valuable machine first), but have had to revert to 8.1. There were two issues.

(1) A clean install is difficult or impossible. The glitch here is that the Windows 10 USB installer has no touch support (if you can believe that). So you need an external keyboard to get started. If you only have one USB port, that means... well, to cut a very long story short, failure. You may get a result though. (If so I'd love to hear how.)

(2) An upgrade went fine. No problem with Manifold activation being maintained, no other problems, except...

Expect that every time the machine restarted (during the upgrade and afterwards), it would lock up at the BIOS splash screen. It was necessary to do an ACPI reset (hold down the power button for 4s) then switch it back on, each time. That's not much good.

Having wiped the disk and reverted to 8.1 (using an 8.1 USB recovery disk and a set of images) I may have isolated the cause.

I'm hazy on details, but from memory, Windows 8.x (or 10) does not necessarily shut down when it shuts down "normally". It saves active system files to disk, and sets a BIOS flag that this has been done. The next restart looks like a fresh boot but is effectively a warm reboot, with the active system files being re-read from disk, which is faster than initializing them all again. Great.

But it seems that it's possible (I can't be more specific—maybe it was my fault, maybe not) for the "hibernated" flag to survive an upgrade from Windows 8.1 to 10. Then on every subsequent restart (which should be a cold boot), the BIOS or Windows tries to find its old hibernated system—which are long gone.

So I think we must ensure a full shutdown before attempting to upgrade to Windows 10. In 8.1 one way to ensure this is to right-click the Windows icon (the once and future Start button), choose Shut down or sign out -> Shut down. Or you can swipe in from the right, choose Power -> Shut down. Then reboot and upgrade.

I hope that avoids the problem. (When I have the patience I'll try again, and report if it doesn't.)

tjhb
10,094 post(s)
#03-Aug-15 05:21

Yes, that was fine. No problems rebooting during the upgrade. But...

After the new upgrade I shut down again fully, for good measure. Rebooted to a blue screen (blue screens now have emoticons, very cool, and they're a lot less dark than they used to be) with code 0x000000ef and signature CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED (which though honest would also be improved by an emoticon).

People who suggest waiting a month or two before installing a new OS are whacked in the head.

vankampen6 post(s)
#07-Aug-15 13:13

Upgraded a week ago from Win7 64 bit to Win 10 on my Surface Pro3. Manifold (64 bit) works just like before, no need for new activation.

scandalxk72 post(s)
#03-Aug-15 10:47

I just moved my cheap, supermarket, five-year-old Dell laptop from Windows 7 to Windows 10. Everything including Manifold seems to work fine in Windows 10. Most pr... sorry, "apps", seem to run a little faster in Windows 10, at least for now.

The change was straightforward, although it took about three hours, perhaps, because of many gigabytes of work files.

I am an unshakeable disciple of the KISS principle, and my IT tends to be bog standard; I follow the instructions carefully and tend to accept most or all defaults. It works for me.

kgf93 post(s)
#07-Aug-15 23:29

No problem for me using manifold on the windows 10 upgrade, apart from the many hours installing the 10 upgrade, failing, downloading, installing, failing etc. But no activation issues anyway.

tjhb
10,094 post(s)
#08-Aug-15 00:33

To minimize avoidable grief, download the Windows 10 Media Creation Tool, run it (as an administrator) and select the option to create installation media for another PC. Select language, edition, and architecture(s), then select USB flash drive as the media.

Once the download and media creation are complete (assuming that works), you can install Windows 10 on as many compatible devices as you like. (Licensing is a separate matter of course but there are no tricks.)

You can either boot from the USB drive for a clean install (as long as you don't need touch) or run setup.exe from your existing version of Windows for an upgrade.

(This is the best strategy even if you only want to upgrade your current PC.)

kgf93 post(s)
#08-Aug-15 04:56

Second that, that is what I ended up doing.

KlausDE

6,410 post(s)
#10-Aug-15 15:35

Next question:

Is there anything worth the upgrade from Win 7 or 8 ?

(apart from wordy blue screens and a browser and a cloud that I will not use anyway)

Anything worth the loss in privacy ?


Do you really want to ruin economy only to save the planet?

tjhb
10,094 post(s)
#10-Aug-15 19:44

In my opinion, 7 is better than 10, at least so far. But if you're stuck with 8.x on some machine, then 10 is already an upgrade.

mdsumner


4,260 post(s)
#10-Aug-15 23:18

Well, that's it for me - bring on 10.


https://github.com/mdsumner

KlausDE

6,410 post(s)
#10-Aug-15 20:56

Thx Tim

Coming from 7 and going for the first coffee of the day while machine runs up not too eager to clean up the spam of the night.


Do you really want to ruin economy only to save the planet?

adamw


10,447 post(s)
#17-Aug-15 16:25

Is there anything worth the upgrade from Win 7 or 8 ?

What follows is a personal opinion.

There are no short-term benefits, but plenty of long-term ones.

Mostly that's better and more mature subsystems for drivers and various system services. One thing that stands out is DirectX 12. That's a major step forward, and it will benefit not only games but also applications, although that is not going to happen overnight. In terms of the UI and immediate user benefits, it's subjective, but I, personally, don't see much either. There is built-in support for multiple desktops, universal apps start better, and there's Cortana for those who miss her, I guess...

mechalas

839 post(s)
#21-Aug-15 03:51

One big short-term benefit is that you get a much, much faster startup/boot time (this was the only thing Windows 8 had going for it).

tjhb
10,094 post(s)
#21-Aug-15 04:08

a much, much faster startup/boot time

Much faster than what?

A clean, fresh install of anything is relatively fast.

In a few minutes I'll post my cold boot time, power-off to desktop visible, with Windows 7. I challenge anyone to beat it by much.

tjhb
10,094 post(s)
#21-Aug-15 04:20

Windows 7 64-bit SP1.

Shut down -> power off -> true cold boot.

"Starting Windows" at 14s.

Desktop at 24s.

tjhb
10,094 post(s)
#21-Aug-15 05:15

That's the machine in my profile, a desktop.

Main laptop, same OS, fewer drives (3x SSD):

"Starting Windows" at 5.6s.

Desktop at 18s.

mechalas

839 post(s)
#22-Aug-15 03:49

Much faster than what?

Much faster than Windows 7. This was true for Windows 8 as well.

Comparing boot-to-desktop times on completely different systems with completely different environments is nonsensical, especially since a user's login speed is affected by network drives, startup applications, and so on. But doing a Windows 7 to Windows 8 or 10 comparison on the same system pre- and post- upgrade is a valid test. My PC, with no hardware changes, routinely goes from POST to a (usable) login window in under 10 seconds. I stress "usable" because I can actually type a password in the password box without it hanging or lagging, unlike Windows 7.

I consistently get a usable Windows 10 desktop in under 30 seconds from POST. Same was true for Windows 8 (and I was also loading Classic Shell to skip the Metro screen). Windows 7 could get me a desktop by maybe 40 to 45 seconds, and a responsive (meaning, "usable") environment in about a minute. Those problems of "here's your desktop but you can't do anything with it" are long gone.

No matter how fast your Win 7 system is booting now, I guarantee that Win 10 will boot faster.

tjhb
10,094 post(s)
#22-Aug-15 07:34

Broadly John, yes. But I won't be upgrading a production machine to 10 for now, because I'm not happy about the decline in privacy standards. Even under intelligent user control, the possibilities are significantly limited. There is a small amount of bullying, and a large amount of non-disclosure.

When Peter Bright and colleagues at Ars Technica are eventually happy with Windows 10, I will be too.

I agree that comparing boot times on different systems is fundamentally unhinged. The point, though, is that 18s or 24s for me is completely acceptable. It's not something that needs fixing, at all. So, even if Windows 10 would (not yet "will") boot even faster--due to clever caching of live system files to hibernation--that's not an advantage that would make a difference. Other things matter far more than saving 2 or 3 (or even 10) seconds out of a day.

And to split hairs (only slightly), this is not true:

doing a Windows 7 to Windows 8 or 10 comparison on the same system pre- and post- upgrade is a valid test.

What would be required, if it were worth it, is a comparison of a fresh install of Windows 7 against an equally fresh install of Windows 10. (It's probably not worth it.)

adamw


10,447 post(s)
#24-Aug-15 09:03

Well, my problem with Windows 10 is simpler - just a personal opinion again - it just doesn't work sometimes. You can have a completely working Windows 7 system, press the "upgrade to Windows 10" button, and have this system, um, altered in such a way, that it boots 5x slower, works 2x slower, throws twenty error messages after you log in, and doesn't recognize some of the devices - all due to misbehaving drivers. It's also possible to have a newly upgraded system not load at all, and be, essentially, bricked, and all of this can happen with systems that are right out of the OEM install, no user apps except for things like antiviruses that the vendor decided to bundle into the master install image (I have some opinions about that, too).

I agree with mechalas that if everything goes well, the system should load faster, not slower, I've seen it happen, etc - my point is that things might not go well right now, things are too raw.

Sorry for a bit of a rant. :-)

ColinD

2,081 post(s)
#24-Aug-15 21:44

One Win-7 workstation, one Win 8.1, and one Laptop Win 8.1 all 64-bit upgraded OK with about the same performance as before. One Win-7 workstation simply refuses with error 80070005. I have tried every remedy on offer with no luck, it even refuses to work with the Media Creation Tool. Meanwhile it is operating quite normally.


Aussie Nature Shots

tjhb
10,094 post(s)
#24-Aug-15 23:20

Possibly (probably?) the largest public beta programme ever, worldwide over 10 months, logging everything that moved and phoning it all home.

How could they screw up basic compatibility, given so much data?

A guess: skewed assumptions, plus goal displacement.

The skewed assumptions: that automatic logging and error reporting will capture the most serious and blocking errors; and if there are gaps, users' manual reports will generally fill them.

Both of those things might be false. The worst errors, especially blocking errors, may cause the entire system to fail, to the point where automatic logging and error reporting do not function. Likewise, in the worst cases, most users will not take the trouble to write a thorough error report, because (a) they have little idea what went wrong, or where to start in describing it; (b) their computer just got hosed and their immediate priority is making it work again; or (c) they conclude that Windows 10 is simply too broken to be worthy of their time just yet, life is short.

(I wasn't a diligent participant in the insider programme, but I admit that when things really didn't work, all of those things were usually true for me.)

Building on the skewed assumptions, the goal displacement is to focus on making sure that the sheer deluge of issues that do come through the error reporting and feedback channels get analysed and fixed, as quickly and expertly as possible. So that dealing with all that (fashionably big) data becomes the main organizational challenge, and fixing those problems becomes the engineering goal. The worst cases, which on the whole do not come through those channels, but which of course are the problems that most need fixing, tend to go unaddressed.

Dimitri


7,413 post(s)
#07-Sep-15 10:33

How could they screw up basic compatibility, given so much data?

They really don't get that much data given the permutations possible. Microsoft has to deal with a user population that, just considering hardware and device drivers, employs machines and hardware going back over twenty years from hundreds of thousands, if not over a million, vendors. In many key ways, each individual installtion is unique.

Consider there are probably a thousand different motherboard manufacturers worldwide with each having from dozens to hundreds of different motherboard versions over the last 20 years. Many have issued multiple versions of drivers for everything from the motherboard chipset to various peripherals such as audio, video, network and so on. If each motherboard on average has, say, six drivers and those exist in only three or so versions each (in reality there could be dozens of versions), that's around 20 drivers per motherboard. Start multiplying those numbers and you easily get from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of uniquely different motherboard configurations.

In the last twenty years there have been tens of thousands of different video cards issued using hundreds of different chip sets, each again with many different drivers issued. All those different USB drives have different drivers they install as well, and on and on.

Different people have different prior versions of Windows in many different languages, almost all of which have probably been updated in different ways and the majority of which on a worldwide basis mostly likely have been pirated. They have different anti-virus and other supervisory software, also often pirated. Viruses and other malware are the norm, not the exception. When you consider all the permutations it's a wonder Microsoft can get a complex "in place" upgrade to work at all on just a majority of systems, let alone on almost all of them.

It's a good thing that for the most part we are able to enjoy the mix and match lifestyle in terms of upgrading different parts of computer systems over time, including Windows upgrades. But sometimes one hits a "can't get there from here" moment such as trying to plug a newer video card into an older system that, except for having an older BIOS incompatible with the newer video card's firmware and drivers is a perfectly good Core i7 machine maxed out with as much RAM as one can put into a current motherboard. That's just life. You either upgrade the motherboard or choose a different video card.

I personally hope to minimize use of Windows 10 as long as I can. I don't like how Windows from 8 onwards has tried to force me to use a smartphone GUI or tablet GUI on my desktop computer system. I think that's absolutely idiotic, as I would much prefer a GUI that leveraged the potential of desktops, using keyboard plus super-fast and precise mouse action within the vast display area of three or more big, high resolution monitors. If a designer can't figure out how to utilize such interfaces to deliver efficiency and enhanced user experience in ways the limited visual real estate and tactile inefficiency of a smartphone or tablet cannot, that designer is too inept to be designing the operating system my valuable time demands.

But there's no denying that DirectX 12 and the faster rendering performance it provides to applications that can take advantage of it is a genuine improvement, even if the price of that improvement is learning to live with screwy GUI notions otherwise. Sigh!

tjhb
10,094 post(s)
#08-Sep-15 00:06

Those are all good points Dimitri, thanks.

On the other hand I'll stick to my hypothesis that the error reports that do get through to Microsoft represent relatively benign problems disproportionately, while bugs and incompatibilities that bring the house down are ipso facto under-represented, so that minor problems may have a higher probability of attention and resolution than breaking problems. But of course that depends on what testing Microsoft does in-house. (I read somewhere that employees were invited to bring old hardware into the office to see if it could break Windows 10--such a good idea.)

mechalas

839 post(s)
#08-Sep-15 14:28

[moved my reply to the right place]

mechalas

839 post(s)
#08-Sep-15 14:28

I don't like how Windows from 8 onwards has tried to force me to use a smartphone GUI or tablet GUI on my desktop computer system.

The mobile interface is all but gone in Windows 10. Just a tiny sliver of it remains inside the start menu, and I find I don't use that anymore, anyway, now that they have program search right on the dock.

But if you don't even like that, there's always Classic Shell which works beautifully.

Dimitri


7,413 post(s)
#08-Sep-15 15:21

The mobile interface is all but gone in Windows 10.

I have to agree with that although I'd call it more than a tiny sliver. I suppose I have developed such a negative attitude toward the interface in the Windows 8 machines I must use that I have become unfairly critical of any trace of it in 10.

I also must admit that once you get used to Windows 10 it is unexpectedly difficult to go back to Windows 7. So... Windows 10 it is.

tjhb
10,094 post(s)
#22-Sep-15 23:43

Last comment from me: I've tried to like Windows 10 but find the whole experience insulting. It's not an OS for intelligent people.

OK, neither were Windows XP, Vista or even perhaps Windows 7 out-of-the-box, but in those cases the issue was an understandable presentation for a lowest common denominator and the default dumbing-down could be completely switched off. Windows 8.x was plain idiotic in ways that could not be fixed.

10 is much worse, and more deeply worse. Most people can probably live with the dark(ish) telemetry issues, trusting in Microsoft's eternal benevolence and the complete security of its servers. But the obligation to take such patches as Microsoft sees fit, when it sees fit (with an optional finite delay), without any description of their purpose or intent, is a showstopper.

In a word, UaaS: User as a Service.

Mike Pelletier

2,122 post(s)
#23-Sep-15 00:38

Before I got to Tim's level of frustration, I removed windows 10 from a small touchscreen Asus laptop used by the family for photos, skype, email, and web. I had upgraded from windows 8 hoping for better everything. Instead found slowness and confusion. Replaced with the Ubuntu's current long-term version and everything works swell, without unwanted stuff popping up all the time.

Mike Pelletier

2,122 post(s)
#05-Jan-16 23:14

FWIW and to be fair it's time to change my tune a bit. Did a fresh install of windows 10 on an old non-touchscreen laptop with a new 512GB SSD and said no to the various Windows focused services and I'm having a lovely experience. The difference is fresh install, non-touchscreen, custom install choices (easy), and better machine.

Dimitri


7,413 post(s)
#23-Sep-15 13:38

Tim, Mike...

I hear you. Last week was the first time I installed Win 10 on a personal machine and started using it, as opposed to encountering it on a work machine where someone else had installed it. I so disliked Win 8.1 on a 10" Lenovo Yoga 2 I use for travel that I wanted to replace it with Win 10 .

The back story to this is that I'm always seeking to travel lighter so I was looking for the very smallest, lightest device I could find that had a usable keyboard, ran real Windows and would last at least 8 hours on a charge, the overall objective being to have enough charge for 11+ hour flights after allotting some time for takeoff and landing, meals, etc., and ideally without needing to drag along a heavy charger. In theory the Lenovo gadget equipped with a big memory card fits that spec, especially considering that it charges through the single mini-USB port it has so you don't need to bring along an extra charger besides the one you will have for your phone. It can be used as a tablet or as an ultraportable with the detachable, slim keyboard.

In practice the Yoga 2 was a mistake. If you like Windows-based tablets (I don't for many reasons, for example because they tend to support use of a SIM card only for a data connection and not as a voice phone as well, as do Android tablets) it is OK as a touch-interface tablet with a good screen and fine audio. But for use as an ultraportable it is a terrible choice, mainly because of two problems with the keyboard: the magnetic hinge does not suffice to keep tablet and keyboard attached when using it on your knees in an airport and the Bluetooth drivers are so incompetently implemented (the device communicates with its own keyboard through BT) that every ten minutes or so it loses contact and the BT has to be cycled on/off. The problem appears to be that to save power the keyboard sleeps if no key is pressed for a while and that kills the connection.

But for all that I'm reluctant to toss it, as it really is the smallest and lightest, full keyboard, usable Windows computer I've found. I had hoped that an upgrade to Win 10, which Lenovo supports with a supported upgrade and Win 10 specific drivers for the device, would provide an opportunity for a smooth introduction to Win 10 in my personal life as well as possibly improved BT drivers. Experienced people are already thinking... "Ah... the triumph of hope over experience..."

Over the weekend I spent nearly two days struggling to load Win 10. After first carefully upgrading everything and making a restore USB I tried the upgrade to Windows 10 path invited by the taskbar button installed by one of the recent 8.1 updates. That seemed to work until it was time for the system to reboot and run Win 10, at which point the combined Lenovo / Windows 10 system put all of its energy into achieving a perfect emulation of a very light, thin, long-battery-life, expensive brick, neither booting into Windows 10 nor rolling back to 8.1. I should note, by the way, that the system was absolutely completely stock Microsoft and Lenovo before the upgrade, with nothing tricky in it of any kind. For some unknown reason, some machines like this upgrade fine on the first try and others don't. Mine didn't.

What followed was endless trial and error with consumer-proofed hardware and software where no documentation of any kind exists. It is not trivial to decode entry points into something as simple as launching what limited BIOS exists on such consumer-proofed devices, but where there is a will there is a way. I spent the next 12 hours or so trying a wide variety of strategies using downloaded Win 10 images on bootable USB devices, trying various combinations of the repair and troubleshooting tools when said images didn't work and so on. At the end I found a Windows 10 image on the Microsoft tech builder website that installed and allowed the device to reliably boot up Win 10 and be loaded with various Win 10 specific drivers from Lenovo. Clear sailing from then on...

Some notes: None of the Win 10 images I tried in a fresh install from a bootable USB recognized the Windows key pre-installed in the BIOS of the device so I ended up having to provide a fresh Windows 10 license key. That's costly if you don't get keys for free as a special friend of Microsoft. As with the case of Tim's report earlier in this thread, my device, like his, had only a single mini USB port for connectivity and power. Like his device my Lenovo also needed an external keyboard and mouse to get far enough past BIOS and installation to where either touch screen drivers could be loaded or Bluetooth drivers to use the device's own keyboard could be loaded.

I got around that by first charging the device to full and then using a USB port expander connected to a mini-USB to USB adapter to get four standard USB ports from the one mini USB. That allowed connecting a USB keyboard, USB mouse, bootable flash and a spare flash with drivers on it.

After all that effort I have to admit I like the looks and superficial appeal of Windows 10 on the tiny Lenovo much better than Windows 8.1. But I agree with Tim that the glib Win 10 style is unpleasant, much in the way that Apple's "Think Different" campaign was deeply insulting to educated people for its glib acceptance of such a vulgarly ungrammatical construction as a slogan, especially for a campaign they intended to use in schools.

I mention Apple's example from years ago to remind everyone that this dumbing down and profound infantilism is not something Microsoft invented. Instead, it is all part of the same cultural phenomenon that has resulted in twits being mistaken for wisdom and Facebook narcissim becoming the default interface for society. Also part of that trend is the slacker sleight-of-hand which seeks to lie to people about something being so simple there is no need to RTFM by not providing an M at all. Much better to use infantile language to give the appearance of simplicity, pandering to a lazy person's idea of what is hip and easy. If that person ends up spending thousands of hours in forums getting past all the "what's a BIOS? Is that like a cat video?" responses to get answers to what should be in a good manual, well, that's all part of the social lifestyle these days, right?

In all fairness to that I have to agree that one reason such pandering goes on is that it's clear to Microsoft the great mass of people in the world who formerly might have been convinced to buy Microsoft products now know they don't want them, which is very definitely a marketing problem for Microsoft. In years past there was a mistaken view of the market based on the erroneous belief that people wanted to have personal computers. Most people in the world don't want them and never have and Steve Jobs made his fortune by being one of the first to understand that.

What Steve realized was that people wanted to bask in the aura of being thought smart and tech-literate without actually having to be tech-literate and without having to actually learn anything about technology. Steve understood perfectly well that what almost all of his customers wanted was to use computers, whether packaged as a telephone or as a tablet, as appliances to look at videos, play games, and in later years most of all, to provide flattering portrayals of themselves on social media: gossip is great, especially when it is all about you and you can ensure the image your gossip about yourself projects is totally cool. Steve knew people wanted to use computers somewhat like the previous generation used television: enjoying the pretty colors and moving pictures without wanting to have to understand the technology inside the flat screen. You can't blame them for that. When I want to watch a movie on TV I just want to pick up the remote and click a button to do so. I don't want to have to know how it works in order to get it running.

The market for people who actually want to interact with an operating system, even just to launch applications like Manifold, is tiny in comparison with the seemingly infinitely larger market that just wants to post videos of their cat on YouTube or to tap out flattering gossip about themselves on the current generation's equivalent of a TV. To get the huge numbers they want, Microsoft is confronted with that reality, and the economic voting of dollars ensures that the overwhelmingly larger market is going to have its say in the form of consumer-proofed infantilism as the default personality of Windows.

So don't take the infantilism or the dumbing down personally. Be happy that the lure of big numbers convinces Microsoft to invest into a new Windows that, inside, is a genuinely improved technology compared to prior Windows and that the cost of such improvements can be amortized over the billions of people who don't give a hoot about "using a computer" but just want to gossip about themselves and post endless videos about their cat on YouTube.

I agree that even that lure is not enough to produce a system that can be bought as opposed to one that can only be leased at the cost of selling yourself as grist for the User as a Service mill. But unless you are willing to never use a big search engine online, never buy anything online, never participate in social networks, never use a mobile phone, only pay with cash everywhere and so on, well, more likely than not you are already deeply compromised on the anti-privacy, grist for the advertising Leviathan front and Win 10 is likely going to be the least of it. Microsoft has a very, very long way to go before they are remotely as good as Google, or even Apple, at data mining you.

Yes, the patronizing advice to use a troubleshooting page that refers back to the same patronizing advice in an endless loop can be annoying, as can be the various schizophrenic relics of a mobile GUI when you want to work in a more "classic" mode. But then you have DirectX 12 and other advances, what appear to be genuinely better drivers for many machines as various manufacturers make an effort to refresh their support, elimination of some bugs from better generations of software used throughout and so on.

And, I have admit the spending of hundreds of millions with an eye to achieving hipster, slacker coolness for a hoped-for bigger market as a side effect does indeed pay for graphic designers and stylists who have achieved a very visually appealing, more modern look. So I guess for now I'm not going to hold their feet too much to the fire for trying to appeal to a mass market, I'll cut them some slack on the patronizing tone, and I'll go for the good stuff inside Windows 10. But for all that I doubt that I'll upgrade my other personal systems from Windows 7, at least not for now. :-)

Almost forgot: about that slowness: in the case of some laptops and portables there are various software settings / options that can cause it. For example, in Lenovo's case there is a switcher program service that if enabled causes Windows 10 to run slow. Stop the service from starting (it is totally unnecessary bloatware) and Windows 10 runs fine. I don't see any such slowness on my Lenovo.

BCowper


1,275 post(s)
#23-Sep-15 15:38

No iOS Manifold app, with Facebook/Twitter connectivity, incoming, then!

I hear you on the Windows tablet woes, I purchased a first gen Surface for my daughter, upgrading it to the latest OS, at the time, was excruciating and lengthy to say the least. As for my old Windows 8.1 desktop, don't think I'll be moving up to 10 after all!

adamw


10,447 post(s)
#23-Sep-15 15:46

No way we are skipping on Twitter integration. Value proposition is just too high to ignore.

Every time you create a drawing or something, you have to be able to immediately tell about that to the world, complete with a selfie picture.

BCowper


1,275 post(s)
#23-Sep-15 16:16

adamw


10,447 post(s)
#23-Sep-15 14:35

But the obligation to take such patches as Microsoft sees fit, when it sees fit (with an optional finite delay), without any description of their purpose or intent, is a showstopper.

If you are referring to forced updates, I hate that with a passion as well (everyone on the team shares the feeling). There are ways to control them somewhat though - they are pretty well hidden on purpose. See, for example, this article, items 3 and 4.

tjhb
10,094 post(s)
#19-Oct-15 23:33

(Don't know quite where to put this comment, so it goes here.)

Here's one great big improvement (from note by Gabe Aul):

Device activation improvements: We have received a lot of feedback from Insiders on making it easier to activate Windows 10 on devices that take advantage of the free upgrade offer to genuine Windows by using existing Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 product keys. If you install this build of the Windows 10 Insider Preview on a PC and it doesn’t automatically activate, you can enter the product key from Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 used to activate the prior Windows version on the same device to activate Windows 10 by going to Settings > Update & security > Activation and selecting Change Product Key. If you do a clean install of Windows 10 by booting off the media, you can also enter the product key from prior Windows versions on qualifying devices during setup. Refer to the Insider Hub for more information on these activation improvements including requirements.

So taking UaaS as a given, Microsoft are at least listening to reason, and communicating. Long may it continue.

(For those who don't know or don't care, to do a clean install of Windows 10 at no cost, a Windows 7 or 8 user previously had to upgrade, activate, then reinstall.)

But I love this known issue:

The search box does not work if you are in a locale where Cortana is not available. We are currently investigating workarounds.

That really does serve them right. The ideal "workaround" would be to go back to a search engine that was made for the user, not primarily a means for Microsoft to gather metadata about users and usage.

adamw


10,447 post(s)
#20-Oct-15 13:52

They do silently and gradually fix all the annoyances.

Ie, that Cortana-based search couldn't find installed apps on my machine (it feels pretty weird to open a search, start typing "Visual Studio" and have Cortana suggest searching for that phrase on Bing, even though I was typing the name of the shortcut that is right there, in the Start menu). Not anymore, this is fixed.

Or they used to have 'sticky corners' turned on permanently without a way to disable it - this was making some lives hell on multimonitor setups - whenever you'd move the cursor from the left monitor to the right in order to switch to a different app by clicking its window, you risked your cursor stopping in the right-top corner of the left monitor (sticky corners! they are supposed to help) so that your click went right to the red X button for some application - closing it (!). Much fun. This was silently fixed as well.

Etc.

Sloots

678 post(s)
#19-Aug-15 19:34

Just installed w10. Flawlessly in about 20 minutes. No activation issues.

Chris


http://www.mppng.nl/manifold/pointlabeler

planes1 post(s)
#26-Sep-15 11:22

I have up graded to windows 10 and I had an older version 8.0.16 and decided to up grade to 8.0.29

I first uninstalled the earlier version and down loaded the new version 32 bit and tried to install it It appears that I cant get the machine into full Administrator mode can any one suggest what I might need to do

When I right click on the .msi file there is no option to run as administrator can any one assist and point me in the right direction

tjhb
10,094 post(s)
#26-Sep-15 11:30

Not so fast!

...down loaded the new version 32 bit and tried to install it...

What happened? What messages did you get?

Dimitri


7,413 post(s)
#09-Dec-16 12:35

can any one assist and point me in the right direction

Yes. There are pages for that on the website.

1. http://www.manifold.net/tech/support.shtml

2. http://www.manifold.net/tech/admin_login.shtml

3. http://www.manifold.net/tech/activation.shtml

4. http://www.manifold.net/tech/activation_troubleshooting.shtml

and

5. http://www.manifold.net/tech/activation_faq.shtml

Read the first four carefully. If you have trouble it is always something in 4. or 5.

Manifold works fine with Windows 10. I resisted switching (my mistake) and now every machine I own runs Windows 10. I should have switched long ago.

On all of the machines where I upgraded to 10 as opposed to deleting the prior version and doing a fresh install, Manifold did not require any re-activation. The prior activation status and everything else was preserved just fine.

KlausDE

6,410 post(s)
#16-Aug-15 21:38

Can anyone share his knowlegde about the Windows 10 mobile preview for example on a cheap Lumia and the degree that ordinary MS-Office versions differ from their siblings on Windows 10 mobile?


Do you really want to ruin economy only to save the planet?

Chull20 post(s)
#08-Jan-16 22:11

It was seamless for me - no Activation needed.

Manifold Just Opened after the (LONG) Windows 10 Upgrade!

I had to burn an Activation because Windows 8 Died Spectacularly several Times!

steveFitz

340 post(s)
#11-Mar-16 11:02

I burnt an activation by rolling back Windows 10 to Win 7.

Just as a heads up to anyone else that may inadvertently make the same mistake: don't install a new license of Manifold after upgrading to Windows 10 if you have the opportunity to do it before you upgrade.

I had been sitting on my new 64 bit license waiting until I got around to upgrading to Win 10.

I finally did it but Win 10 would not recognise my wifi router extender and no (reasonable) amount of searching found a solution. I then rolled back to Win 7 and my old 32 bit Manifold version rolled back with it.

Reinstalling the 64 but obviously used an activation.

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