Zeta Posted November 28, 2015 Report Share Posted November 28, 2015 Windows tells me my computer is now ready to upgrade to Windows 10. Bad sleep last night, so might as well go for it since I'm too tired to work. Might be gone for a bit... hopefully not, like, a month or something.... I found the upgrade to Windows 10, at least from Windows 8, to go amazingly smoothly, even when Windows 10 first came out. So hopefully it will go well for you too! --Dean The upgrade process (all the way from Windows 7 no less) went amazingly quickly and smoothly. I was surprised. Smoothly, that is, until my computer crashed unrecoverably two days later.... But it wasn't primarilly Windows's fault (though a bit). Windows 7 had been working around some bad sectors that Windows 10 apparently wasn't too worried about. My harddisk maybe is/was about to die anyway, so not a bad time to get a new computer. But irritating. Meanwhile, I've learned (to a certain degree relearned) a few things I want to share with those few reading this who might be in need of this info. (I assume most of you are wiser than I about these things.) 1) Back up your files! A) Choose a method that you'll actually use frequently. B) Select the right files to back up. (From now on, for ease, and peace of mind, I think I'm just going to back up everything - maybe not certain system directories, but I do find selecting what to backup and what to restore is a pain.) C) Make sure you know the procedure for a restore (maybe even do a partial test run). Passwords? Separate program needs to be installed? I use CrashPlan, the paid version. It meets one important criterion for me most of the other cloud backup servies do not: I can set a password that only I know (most of these online backup services have their own encryption keys). You can try the free version for as long as you want. (And if you and at least one friend are willing to leave your computers on most of the time, you might have enough capacity without the paid version. See CrashPlan's website for more on that option.) A little time to set it up, a few days for the initial backup, then incremental backups as often as you want. Saves older versions of files if you want, deleted files if you want, etc. 2) Create a "recovery media" for your operating system. In the future, I'm always going to have a bootable flash drive on hand -- maybe two: Linux (which can actually be run from a small flash drive - I think under 4 GB), and Windows. In the case at hand, I doubt Windows could have been repaired, but in the past, operating system failures I've suffered could have been dealt with so much more easily with a recovery disc or flash drive. I can't work so this would be a great time to finish all the half-written drafts of posts I have, except they're not restored yet.... I will note: great work, everyone, in making this site increasingly vibrant and useful. Zeta Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dean Pomerleau Posted November 28, 2015 Report Share Posted November 28, 2015 Zeta, Sorry to hear your disk crashed. Glad you're on the road to recovery from it. An alternative that I use (that many people here will hate for privacy reasons) is keeping everything in the cloud. I use Gmail, Evernote, Chrome, and Dropbox. With those four, I don't store any important files on my PC, and there is the added bonus of being able to access my files from either my Android tablet or phone. --Dean Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nicholson Posted November 28, 2015 Report Share Posted November 28, 2015 Of course it has been suggested that the reason for the seeming extreme urgency with which 'they' want us to update to Windows 10, even to the extent of making it free (!!!!! Now does that not strike you as odd?), is that the NSA has finally perfected the spyware in it and can just hardly wait to get at real time information about everything everyone on the planet is doing every minute of the day, at the very moment they do it. Some may take the above as a joke, or a conspiracy theory. But, from using Sygate firewall years ago, I know WITH 100% CERTAINTY the spyware on my computer was trying to send stuff to various intelligence services. Sygate provided remarkably comprehensive details of where - which intelligence services it was attempting to communicate with, three of them, none, incidentally, in my country of residence - and the IP addresses to which the data were being sent. Sygate was so effective at exposing this that as soon at they realized it, Windows was made 'incompatible' with Sygate firewall. Not joking, folks. Not making it up either. Rodney. ============ "The unverified conventional wisdom is almost invariably mistaken." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zeta Posted November 28, 2015 Author Report Share Posted November 28, 2015 I'm not worried about privacy much. For me the problem would be the lack of good cloud-based software, above all, a good word-processor. But maybe it's now possible, and actually works smoothly, to use client-based software with cloud-based files? That would be fantastic! I'm in, say MS Word, click on File->Open, and see a list of files in the cloud somewhere? I can open one quickly? Work on it, save it, close it, as fast and as easily (or, well, close) as if it were on my harddrive? That would change how I do things. Zeta Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dean Pomerleau Posted November 28, 2015 Report Share Posted November 28, 2015 Yes Zeta. When I want to edit a MS Word or Excel document, I create the file in Dropbox. It is stored in the cloud, but there is also a shadow copy on all your devices that gets synced automatically when you update the file on any device. So you get the best of both worlds - local access to the document even when off-line, but also Cloud storage and cross-platform access. --Dean Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zeta Posted November 29, 2015 Author Report Share Posted November 29, 2015 First, Rodney, apologies if my note about privacy seemed dismissive of your points. We actually were posting around the same time, and I posted without seeing your post. That said, I am indeed not worried about privacy, for various reasons. We could start a new Chitchat thread on that, if someone wanted. Meanwhile, Dean, you're kind of blowing my mind here. I'm rethinking my whole computer strategy. The syncing thing is what makes me nervous, probably because I don't understand it. My main question is: how much do I have to "supervise" the syncing process? Example: Let's say I have two devices, A and B, and all my documents are in the cloud. I jump on a plane without Internet, start working on "job.doc" on device A. I land somewhere (maybe a foreign airport) where my devices don't automatically connect to the Internet. I want to start working on job.doc on device B. First of all, would I be warned that it might not be the most current version because a certain amount of time has gone by? (There's no way the cloud or any device could positively know it wasn't the most current version, of course.) And if I did start working on job.doc on device B, what happens under the various scenarios of the devices reconnecting? The whole situation seems like a potential mess, unless I remember that I cannot work on job.doc on device B until both devices have connected to the cloud. Oh, and once they connect, would there be a "Ready to start working on job.doc from any device" type notification? And if I accidentally worked on job.doc on device B before it's connected to the could (thus beginning from an older version, compared with the version created on the plane with device A) how would that affect the syncing process once it finally happens? Maybe it wouldn't matter, as long as I was working in two different regions of the document. Both sets of changes, that from A, and that from B, could be incorporated. (But even that seems tricky.) Sorry if these questions are stupid, or FAQs. Feel fee to answer with "Let me google that for you". :) Zeta Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dean Pomerleau Posted November 29, 2015 Report Share Posted November 29, 2015 Zeta,Dropbox, the cloud storage service I use isn't clairvoyant, it can't know how to handle changes made to the same document on different devices since the last sync. What it does is explained here:https://www.dropbox.com/en/help/36Suppose you've edited a document managed by Dropbox on two devices, both of them detached from the internet. The first one to connect to the Internet will sync it's version of the file to the cloud, and that copy will be propagated to all the (connected) devices you have.The next time the second device connects to the internet, Dropbox will notice, as it is about to update the version of the file on the second device, that the file has changed locally since the last sync. As a result a conflict has arisen.What it does when it sees a conflict is to make a copy of the file with your local edits (with the original filename appended with "Conflicted Copy" and the date), so that none of your work is lost, and then update the file to the version stored in the cloud.You'll then need to go in and merge the two conflicting copies yourself, although I think there are tools that can help automate the process.I personally just make sure to sync from one device to the cloud before starting to edit a file on another device. But I realize for some this won't always be possible in some circumstances.Overall, Dropbox (and other cloud storage services) are a great resource, as long as you aren't overly concerned (paranoid?) about privacy. I find the free version (5GB) is enough for my needs, but you can pay to get more storage space.Now that I think about it Google Drive (which I think you may already use) has the same cross platform syncing feature. You might look into that one too.--Dean Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nicholson Posted November 29, 2015 Report Share Posted November 29, 2015 Greetings Zeta: No problem. Your concern had not even occurred to me. Maybe there is a rhinoceros hidden somewhere among my ancestors?! Rodney. =========== "The unverified conventional wisdom is almost invariably mistaken." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nicholson Posted December 12, 2015 Report Share Posted December 12, 2015 Talking about the spyware incorporated into Windows (1:11 pm, 28 November 2015), here is some information about Cortana: "Microsoft collects and uses information including your location and location history, contacts, voice input, searching history, calendar details, content and communication history, from messages and apps and other information on your device ...... collects and uses your browsing history. " Note in particular: "CONTENT and communication history." And the: "and other information" which would certainly be able to cover keystroke logging. And the use of the term "uses" twice can certainly cover the matter of "sells this information to anyone who wants it". Someone is likely to respond by saying something like: "Well, yes, they CAN do it but they really don't." To which my reply would of course be: "If they never planned for this information to be collected for what purpose would they have wasted all the time and money organizing things so it can be collected?" George Owell was an optimist. Have a nice day. Rodney. =========== "The unverified conventional wisdom is almost invariably mistaken." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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