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Features That Windows 10 Will Deprecate 468

Posted by samzenpus from the so-long dept.
jones_supa writes: Microsoft announced that a Windows 10 upgrade will be free for users running Windows 7 and 8.1, but there will be a number of features that will no longer work after that upgrade. The features that will no longer work are listed on the official specifications page on Microsoft's website. Some of the deprecated features include: Media Center, out-of-the-box DVD playback and USB floppy support, desktop gadgets, deferring updates (Home edition), old versions of Windows games, and Windows Live Essentials version of OneDrive.
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Features That Windows 10 Will Deprecate More

Features That Windows 10 Will Deprecate

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  • You Mean...? (Score:5, Informative)

    by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Wednesday June 03, 2015 @07:13PM (#49835495) Journal

    You mean someone uses Windows built-in DVD playback? The first thing I've done on a new computer for the last five or six years is install VLC.

    • Re:You Mean...? (Score:5, Informative)

      by TechyImmigrant ( 175943 ) on Wednesday June 03, 2015 @07:16PM (#49835529) Homepage Journal

      I tried to do that two days ago after I de-regioned my PC's DVD player so I could actually play the DVDs I had paid for.

      I could not get the windows 8 to play the DVD. I found no program that could do it. Media player certainly couldn't.

      I downloaded VLC.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sconeu ( 64226 )

        How do you de-region a PC DVD player/burner?

        • Re:You Mean...? (Score:5, Informative)

          by ihtoit ( 3393327 ) on Wednesday June 03, 2015 @07:43PM (#49835675)

          in most cases you're looking at a firmware upgrade. Go here: http://www.doom9.org/index.htm... [doom9.org]

          HTH.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Mashiki ( 184564 )

          You reflash the rom. You can screw it up and nuke it though, but there's plenty of guides out there.

        • Re:You Mean...? (Score:5, Informative)

          by meglon ( 1001833 ) on Wednesday June 03, 2015 @07:45PM (#49835695)
          PC dvd players used to (and still do?) allow you to change the region 5 times before locking it permanently to the last one selected.... so your region 1 dvd player could be changed to play region 2 dvd's (but no longer region 1 ones). Good for a couple movies you want to watch once. VLC is a vastly better choice.

          • VLC doesn't let you play through a region locked DVD. At least it didn't for me and my DVD drive.

            I had to reflash the DVD drive firmware downloaded from the internets. The risk of nuking it wasn't a big deal. I have no US DVD media I would play. I can Netflix/Roku/Stream that. It's all foreign DVDs that I would actually play and/or rip to my NAS. I'm partial to some Japanese bands. So without the region-unlock it was useless to me.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by Creepy ( 93888 )

            Or you could rip them with "illegal" software, at least as far as the US government is concerned. Since you are entitled to one backup by copyright law into any format you choose, the DMCA vs copyright is kind of nebulous. You could probably legally ship it to some other country where it is legal to rip, have it ripped there, then have it and the copy shipped back and not break either law. Or you could rip your CDs/DVDs while on vacation to such a country, but you probably legally have to delete the ripping

      • Re:You Mean...? (Score:5, Funny)

        by wonkey_monkey ( 2592601 ) on Thursday June 04, 2015 @03:33AM (#49837363) Homepage

        I could not get the windows 8 to play the DVD. I found no program that could do it. Media player certainly couldn't.

        I downloaded VLC.

        And then what happened? I need closure on this anecdote!

    • I haven't used Windows as my desktop in a while, but - when did this become an out-of-the-box feature? Back in the old days you had to find a third-party solution to play DVDs on a Windows PC...

      • I know that Windows Media Player in Windows Vista could play DVDs, because I accidentally used it a couple of times, but honestly that was several years ago, and like I said, I just automatically install VLC with every new machine so I doubt I would have ever have noticed if Win10 no longer had the feature.

      • I'm pretty sure, at a bare minimum, Vista and 7 could do this out-of-the-box. They removed it in Windows 8, requiring the "Windows Media Center" upgrade to re-add the codecs as Microsoft didn't like paying the licensing fees for a feature few people used.

    • Let's be realistic... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by JMJimmy ( 2036122 ) on Wednesday June 03, 2015 @07:29PM (#49835603)

      You mean someone uses Windows built-in DVD playback? The first thing I've done on a new computer for the last five or six years is install VLC.

      First thing is install a new browser, second thing is install adblock plus, the third is to install VLC.

    • You mean someone uses Windows built-in DVD playback?

      No, that's why they're deprecating it.

    • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

      by Gadget_Guy ( 627405 )

      You mean someone uses Windows built-in DVD playback? The first thing I've done on a new computer for the last five or six years is install VLC.

      Ah yes, the old "I don't use it, some therefore nobody does" trope. The majority of people in the world wouldn't bother to install VLC to replace a function that was built-in to the OS.

      I tend to use the standard media player with K-Lite codecs to play DVDs because the picture quality is slightly better on my system. Perhaps playing with VLC's options would fix that, but I can't think of a reason to bother. For video files, I tend not to care which player I'm currently using unless there are audio sync probl

    • Re:You Mean...? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Tailhook ( 98486 ) on Wednesday June 03, 2015 @08:19PM (#49835919)

      You mean someone uses Windows built-in DVD playback?

      Yes. The codec in Windows 7 (ultimate) and its integration with Media Player produces smoother playback with less system load than VLC. The difference grows (up to a point) when other activity competes for resources while playing DVD or Blu-ray video.

      You may not realize that, and it may not even occur for your particular collection of hardware. I didn't pick up on it for a long time, but at some point I noticed the difference and since then I've used Media Player. And I'm not some crazy 'phile that obsesses over imaginary minutia; I spend less than average on media gear and I'm not particularly sensitive to minor phenomena. But I can tell the difference between VLC and Media Player, and I can measure the difference in system load.

      So yeah, it kinda sucks that the DVD codec Microsoft provides is going away. Will I care enough to not just use VLC? We'll see. I also use VLC frequently; it's better when coping with with random media and does a lot of tricks WMP won't. I have no problem with VLC at all. But if I can get better results with something else then I just might do that instead.

      • Re:You Mean...? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Wednesday June 03, 2015 @08:52PM (#49836085) Journal
        This is also a fairly niche issue(given that most people shoving DVDs into computers either want them to Just Play, or want to rip the to some format that means never dealing with DVDs); but I'd assume that the MS codec that is being killed is a DirectShow filter; while everything in VLC's bag of tricks is specific to VLC(though some programs do specifically use VLC for various things).

        In practice, the words 'DirectShow Filter Graph' typically mean that somebody just opened an industrial sized box of incomprehensible pain; but the theory is noble: it's Microsoft's stab at a modular media handling system that allows a given application to painlessly 'inherit' codecs, effects, demuxing steps, and assorted other operations provided by other software without having to be built with them in mind. If the application uses DirectShow, and there is a set of filters that will get you from the item you are attempting to play to the format the sink requires, things are supposed to work.

        There are some atrocious complications(shitty 'codec packs' registering themselves as the most preferred codec for every possible situation, even ones they are horribly broken at, seemed to be a favorite), and much of the time the theoretical elegance of the system was excessive to the actual need, while the complexity was always lurking; but there probably are a few users who will find the announcement painful for this reason. VLC, ffmpeg, etc. are very good at what they do; but just as OSX-native applications expect Quicktime to handle media, and anything that isn't a quicktime plugin will remain isolated solely in the one playback program that it came with, Windows native applications expect Directshow, and if some piece of software is demanding a set of directshow filters that can take a DVD and do something useful, all the VLC in the world will not save them. Not VLC's problem; but one of the reasons why some users are going to be unhappy.

  • No media center? Windows 10 is DEAD to me... (Score:5, Funny)

    by bobbied ( 2522392 ) on Wednesday June 03, 2015 @07:13PM (#49835505)
    Nope, not going to migrate up to 10 from 7 anytime soon if it means media center goes away...

    • I am in this quandary myself as well. I am *hoping* that Microsoft (or Ceton, Hauppauge, or someone in this field) releases an "App" that can do everything Media Center does now - and maybe even more. WMC hasn't had any updates of substance in years, and the Netflix plugin for it has become unreliable (for me at least). They wouldn't need to worry about Netflix, Hulu, etc as those all have their own Apps at this point - so an app that was focused on TV watching / recording and playback of locally stored med

      • Visit kodi.tv you will never ever ever look back. Simply put it is the pinnacle of home media centre systems. Simple to setup, runs on windows, linux, mac and has a million plugins and companion apps on android & iOS

        • Does it record from my Ceton HD quad tuner with cable card? [and yes all of our channels are drm/encrypted]
          Does its TV Guide no longer suck?

          When it can do those 2 simple things 1/2 as well as MediaCenter then maybe I'd consider using XMBC again, but until then MediaCenter is my go to software running on my media center machine.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by afidel ( 530433 )

          Kodi doesn't work with cablecard (yet, the guys at SiliconDust just had a kickstarter campaign for support, though unfortunately the first gen Prime isn't supported so it won't be a solution for early adopters)

      • I am in this quandary myself as well. I am *hoping* that Microsoft (or Ceton, Hauppauge, or someone in this field) releases an "App" that can do everything Media Center does now - and maybe even more.>

        Silicondust is working on a cablecard solution that is not windows DRM/Media Center dependent. Lets cross our fingers and hope CableLabs approves their approach.

        • Further, let's hope Silicondust makes the software available for their existing customer base... I'm guessing that's as likely as them having the resources to actually get though the certification process....

          Snowball's chance is what I give it... This market is *really* a dying thing. Cord cutters are axing cable provider subscriptions right and left and every one of those that leave is one less potential customer for Silicondust's primary market. This is why Microsoft is bailing on the Media Center thin

      • Re:No media center? Windows 10 is DEAD to me... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by dslbrian ( 318993 ) on Wednesday June 03, 2015 @08:00PM (#49835793)

        I really don't get their stance on WMC. I have two media PCs running Win7 essentially only for WMC (more specifically the Live TV + free scheduling it has, vs Kodi/XBMC). Lacking WMC there is really no reason I wouldn't run Linux and kick them out. If they are trying to increase their presence on HTPCs in the living room it makes no sense. I would consider Roku and such but I need web browser capability.

        There was some bizarre comment [twitter.com] about people only using it for DVD playback. I don't know where they got that feedback from. I know several people who have WMC setups only for it's added Live TV PVR capability.

        • Microsoft needs to pay royalties on the codecs included in WMC for every copy they ship. Very few users actually use it, so Microsoft was spending a ton of cash on codecs they don't need. That's why WMC was removed from Windows 8 by default, requiring an upgrade code (for tracking the codec royalties). Perhaps the demand for the Windows 8 upgrade code was too low to make it worth their effort, so they dropped it completely.

    • Serious question. Have you looked at KODI? I stopped using MCE, must be 5+ years ago, because I hit serious limitations in its capabilities. Such as support for both analogue and digital tuners (less an issue now, and it could be forced with a reg hack), the inability to specify how long it should record before and after a show (the options are too short especially for sports), the fact the system croaked under load if you had lots of videos.

      I went from MCE to a Mythtv setup but have now moved to xbmc /

      • I have not looked that close as I only got my cable card tuner last month so I'm new to this. I found out that my Windows 7 home premium box already had software for this so that's what I'm using, along with a couple of XBoxes for extenders.

        Does KODI handle the DRM and let you record/playback protected content off of cable?

    • I'm not so much concerned with Media Center as I am with the underpinnings. What games are they playing with Media Foundation and DirectShow?

    • Re:No media center? Windows 10 is DEAD to me... (Score:4, Informative)

      by YrWrstNtmr ( 564987 ) on Wednesday June 03, 2015 @07:35PM (#49835643)
      Direct from MS:
      "Windows Media Center is not part of Windows 10 and won’t be available after upgrading to Windows 10. If you use Windows Media Center, we will alert you during upgrade that Windows Media Center is not available on Windows 10. We know that some users use Windows Media Center to play DVDs, and we are providing a free DVD playback app in Windows 10 for Windows Media Center users."

      https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-10-faq
    • It's an operating system. Why does an operating system need to come with an app for playing media? They should sell the base OS for a reasonable price and then sell (or freely distribute) these other add-ons separately. I really haven't seen a whole lot of growth in the functionality that I use in the last 20 years of Microsoft OSes, but they have increased in size from fitting on a couple of floppies to multiple gigabytes now.
      The Microsoft would just focus on making their OS an OS, then it wouldn't have a

  • Really, USB floppy? (Score:5, Funny)

    by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Wednesday June 03, 2015 @07:22PM (#49835565) Homepage Journal

    It's rare that I need to read an old floppy, but if I do it's surely going to be on a USB device - I haven't had a 'real' floppy drive in a decade.

    I guess that driver was a such a bear to maintain. Oh, right, nevermind - I've got a linux box where the driver support is better. Oh, hai, 2015.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Zero__Kelvin ( 151819 )

      "I guess that driver was a such a bear to maintain."

      There is already a perfectly fine Floppy driver. It isn't a car. It doesn't rust with age. Any floppy drive that acheives standards conformance will work, and there is no need to "maintain" the driver. Yes they have to port it to Win 10, however porting and maintenance are two separate and distinct processes. Furthermore, if they can't port it easily then they are doing something seriously fucking incompetent, even by M$ "standards". Also, in case yo

    • Re:Really, USB floppy? (Score:5, Informative)

      by AMDinator ( 996330 ) on Wednesday June 03, 2015 @07:34PM (#49835631)
      FTFA: You can still get the driver from Windows Update. It's just not shipping with the driver on the system image.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward

        FTFA: You can still get the driver from Windows Update. It's just not shipping with the driver on the system image.

        I'm really grateful for Microsoft saving 75KiB of disk space by removing such basic functionality.

    • It sounds like out of the box usb floppy support is going away. What is stopping anyone from installing a 3rd party driver?

    • Apparently the driver still exists, it just doesn't ship with the default OS image anymore, and the OS will have to grab it from Windows update. Pretty much the same thing that they do to older printer models and other hardware from time to time.

      MS is fairly conservative about actually murdering driver support that they've previously provided(firewire got the axe pretty hard; but most of the casualties are in drivers that only the vendor ever supplied, especially in XP->7 or 32->64 bit); but they'v

  • How to get rid of the free upgrade icon? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Wednesday June 03, 2015 @07:30PM (#49835615) Journal
    I have a win7 home machine. Suddenly this icon "free upgrade to Win 10" has popped up next to the clock in the notification area. It pops open a window that says, " it is not a trial version. It is the real deal. Click now and we will download and upgrade you to win 10 when it is released". There is no way to dismiss the icon and stop it. I am not going to upgrade, not with the subscription model they seem to be moving to. How do you get rid of this icon? Worried my better half might click ok by mistake thinking it is a good deal.

    • Re:How to get rid of the free upgrade icon? (Score:5, Informative)

      by TypoNAM ( 695420 ) on Wednesday June 03, 2015 @07:36PM (#49835647)
      Here's an article that lists what Windows updates [comtek4u.com] to remove to do just that. It's primarily KB3035583 that's responsible for the nag screen. However there's several other updates that are suspect to be causing performance and spying/'telemetry' that wasn't occurring until fairly recently.

    • Re:How to get rid of the free upgrade icon? (Score:5, Informative)

      by YrWrstNtmr ( 564987 ) on Wednesday June 03, 2015 @07:38PM (#49835661)
      To remove:
      http://microsoft-news.com/how-to-remove-windows-10-upgrade-notification-on-windows-7-and-windows-8/


      And Win 10 will not be a subscription model.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by SeaFox ( 739806 )

      There is no way to dismiss the icon and stop it. I am not going to upgrade, not with the subscription model they seem to be moving to. How do you get rid of this icon?

      I was fine with just going into the advanced settings for the System Tray and setting the icon to be one of the always hidden ones, so I wouldn't have to see it all the time, but even that doesn't work. Windows changes the setting back on it's own.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rwa2 ( 4391 ) *

        So I had an OEM version of Win7 on my gaming PC until the C: OS drive died. Couldn't reinstall, so I just broke down and reinstalled a pirated version onto the replacement disk and plugged my game disk back in.

        It's great, absolutely no nags for anything ever, all it does is run Steam, which auto-updates stuff as painlessly as apt or yum.

        Well, almost no nags... Steam still wants Adobe Flash.

        And since the kids occasionally want to play Minecraft, I get the silly Oracle Java nags too.

    • Re:How to get rid of the free upgrade icon? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03, 2015 @07:44PM (#49835685)

      http://www.ghacks.net/2015/06/01/how-to-block-the-windows-10-update-notification-in-earlier-versions-of-windows/

      1.Tap on the Windows-key on the keyboard, type programs and features, and hit enter. This opens the list of software installed on the system.
      2.Switch to "view installed updates" on the left side of the window.
      3.If you are using Windows 7, locate the following updates: 3035583, 2952664, 3021917
      4.If you are using Windows 8, locate the following updates: 3035583, 2976978
      5.Right-click one update after the other and select uninstall from the context menu.
      6.Select Restart Later when the prompt appears and remove all updates first from the system.
      7.Once done, restart the computer to complete the process.

      To block these updates, do the following:
      1.Tap on the Windows-key, type Windows Update, and hit enter.
      2.This should open the Windows Update dialog.
      3.Select "check for updates" to find new updates to install on the system. Windows should find the updates listed above again.
      4.Click on the "important update is available" link.
      5.Right-click each of the listed updates above that are listed on the page and select hide update from the context menu.
      6.This blocks the update from being installed on the system.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      not with the subscription model they seem to be moving to

      Its amazing that people are still confused about the free upgrade. They are not going to charge you next year when the free upgrade offer ends. They aren't going be moving windows 10 to a sub model. You'll still be buying oem or retail copies of windows 10 when you are building a new machine - you can do so RIGHT NOW on newegg if you really wanted to. They've explicitly stated this.

      • Yes and companies never would lie, change their minds, or decide that maybe they shouldn't be giving away their main cash cow for free. Take a look at god damn apple to see where microsoft wants to be in 5 years.

        Its pretty fucking simple. They don't sell hardware, they dont sell services. How the fuck are they going to make money giving away their shit for free? Its a bait and switch, its a crack dealer and comments like this AC are naive crack whores. Shits gonna change, and everyone else is doing it.

        "They

    • Seriously, how does Microsoft get away with this shit? Virus scanners should block this "update" as malware. And Microsoft should be sued. Your average Windows 7 user isn't going to know how to uninstall this crap.

      • I don't want to live in the same world that you do... The one where people don't know how to use their computers, so instead they SUE other companies!

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 )

      you know why it's there, right?

      it's there so that someone who sits on the computer would press it without knowing what it is.

      and then they will be enjoying METRO MINESWEEPERRRRR.

      they know it's annoying. they know you don't want it popping up there. it's just there that someone clicks on it and then later, sometime later, it will install windows 10 on your machine without asking you again(potentially).

      for the record, I haven't noticed seeing the same on 8.1 pro. probably because 8.1 already has metro.

    • GWX is fucking shady as shit M$!!!! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by n3r0.m4dski11z ( 447312 ) on Thursday June 04, 2015 @01:36AM (#49837117) Homepage Journal

      That GWX is so shady, I will now never upgrade to windows 10, whereas i had no opinion on it before. Can you imagine that they thought they could get away with abusing the trust of windows update like this? Well it just got windows update turned off on all my machines.microsoft. theres no way in hell im trusting that anymore. Fucking advertising bullshit. we aren't god damn mac users who are used to having things thrust down our throats like this. I wait at least a year before upgrading to ANY os... when SP2 is released is a good rule of thumb with MS.

      If they are such dicks to use windows update this way, can you imagine what kind of shit they would pull with 10? not to mention how much of a bait and switch offering a free update like this is. The wording is so fucking scammy i felt like i had been violated. They snuck in the back door!!!
      Fuck you and your unremovable tray icons!!! deny security on GWX folder, suck it SYSTEM, suck it trustedinstaller!!!! they even hid a bunch of scheduled tasks just like a god damn spyware would do!!!

  • What an upgrade! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by RazorJ_2000 ( 164431 ) on Wednesday June 03, 2015 @07:34PM (#49835637)

    Upgrade? Sounds like a downgrade to me.
    Seriously, what's the benefit to upgrade to a downgraded OS? Sounds like XP to Vista all over again.

  • deferring updates (Home edition) (Score:5, Insightful)

    by phorm ( 591458 ) on Wednesday June 03, 2015 @07:41PM (#49835671) Journal

    That one kinda sucks. As it is it's a bit of a pisser when I'm in the middle of something, have deferred an update, and the next deferral times out causing it to reboot my PC on me....

  • No USB Floppy Drive? (Score:3)

    by denobug ( 753200 ) on Wednesday June 03, 2015 @07:52PM (#49835757)
    What! No USB Floppy Drive? What is Microsoft thinking!!!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rwa2 ( 4391 ) *

      What! No USB Floppy Drive? What is Microsoft thinking!!!

      That the people still holding onto their floppy drives probably aren't their target market for upgrading past Win98SE ?

      Wonder if ZipDrives still work... I'm not sure if my current PC even has a parallel port anymore...

  • Not quite dead. (Score:4, Informative)

    by westlake ( 615356 ) on Wednesday June 03, 2015 @08:00PM (#49835799)

    Some of the deprecated features include: Media Center, out-of-the-box DVD playback and USB floppy support, desktop gadgets, deferring updates (Home edition), old versions of Windows games, and Windows Live Essentials version of OneDrive.

    If you have a USB floppy drive, you will need to download the latest driver from Windows Update or from the manufacturer's website.

    If you have Windows Live Essentials installed on your system, the OneDrive application is removed and replaced with the inbox version of OneDrive.

    Windows 10 Specifications: Feature deprecation section [microsoft.com]

    In a separate FAQ, Microsoft says it is ''providing a free DVD playback app in Windows 10 for Windows Media Center users.''

    Here Are the Features Windows 10 Will Remove When You Upgrade [thurrott.com], Windows 10 Q&A: Will Windows Media Center be available in Windows 10? [microsoft.com]

  • Solitaire (Score:5, Funny)

    by tverbeek ( 457094 ) on Wednesday June 03, 2015 @08:14PM (#49835901) Homepage

    I know a whole bunch of people who are going to be upset about Solitaire going away. I work for a retirement community, and the second-most-used application on the computers in the activity center (after "The Internet") is Solitaire. We're going to have to install a substitute on these machines (or their replacements) when we switch to WinX, or we'll never hear the end of the complaints.

  • For me it deprecated itself. (Score:3)

    by future assassin ( 639396 ) on Wednesday June 03, 2015 @08:23PM (#49835949)

    Came to work on Tuesday to find out some bs nag screen asking me to reserve windows 10 for myself. Ok click on the menu and see no don't bother me again option. Right click on the icon, hmm nothing, Its fucking not removable WTF?

    So instead of upgrading my only windows box (My pos is windows only) I'm on a hunt for a POS system that runs on Linux. In my shop it 2015 will be the YEAR OF LINUX.

  • What do we get? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by WaffleMonster ( 969671 ) on Wednesday June 03, 2015 @08:52PM (#49836087)

    What does someone upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 10 get out of the deal? A different UX and minor performance improvements only noticeable on low memory systems? Is there a list of substantive reasons for users to care other than 7 10?

    I go through Microsoft's website and google.. all I see is BS about a new browser, Cortana and Xbox. Is there a list of useful changes somewhere?

  • Icon Madness (Score:4, Insightful)

    by westlake ( 615356 ) on Wednesday June 03, 2015 @08:59PM (#49836119)

    Windows 1.0 was released in October of 1985. Twelve years before the launch of Slashdot. In 2015, the geek may fret and fume, but Windows remains a force to be reckoned with.

    If the geek wants to "talk tech" on Slashdot, that is a fine with me. But the stained glass icon isn't an invitation to talk sensibly about Windows --- it is an invitation to rant and rave, and that wastes time.

  • Innacurate summary (Score:3)

    by GoddersUK ( 1262110 ) on Wednesday June 03, 2015 @09:56PM (#49836371)

    TFS:

    Some of the deprecated features include: ... out-of-the-box ... USB floppy support, ... old versions of Windows games, and Windows Live Essentials version of OneDrive

    USB floppy support is still available, you just have to pull the drivers off Windows update, the old versions of Windows games have been replaced by the new versions (shock, horror) and WL Essentials OneDrive has been superseded by integrated OneDrive. So really we're only left with Media Center, DVD playback and gadgets being removed, and a stupid change being made to the way "Home" editions of the OS handle updates.

  • Backups (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Brianwa ( 692565 ) <brian-wa.comcast@net> on Wednesday June 03, 2015 @10:05PM (#49836427) Homepage

    If 10 is anything like 8.1, the upgrade will silently stop your backups and remove your ability to access any backups made in the Windows 7 backup utility. I discovered that one the fun way.

  • Floppy support (Score:3)

    by CauseBy ( 3029989 ) on Wednesday June 03, 2015 @10:27PM (#49836523)

    What's the argument against having support for floppy discs? What can that possibly be, like a 55K library or something? It's the kind of thing I'd expect to be included for 50 years.

  • No WMC means no upgrade for me (Score:3)

    by AaronW ( 33736 ) on Thursday June 04, 2015 @12:06AM (#49836903) Homepage

    My only PC that always boots Windows 7 is my home theater PC since I use the Windows Media Center to record broadcasts and use it as a DVR. As far as I know, Linux is not a solution because some of the channels I record are set not to copy and MythTV will not support that. I also have a Ceton Echo which lets me view the content in my bedroom. This also only works with Windows 7. None of the other packages I see out there can handle the protected content.

  • Deprecate? (Score:3)

    by Orgasmatron ( 8103 ) on Thursday June 04, 2015 @12:37AM (#49836987)

    Sounds a lot more like "remove" to me. Deprecate is when you warn that something is going away in some future release, including possibly the next release. Remove is when you take it out of the current release.

  • Win 10 update (Score:3)

    by Niko. ( 89205 ) on Thursday June 04, 2015 @09:49AM (#49838637)

    One of the first things i do with a fresh Windows install is head to Services and disable a lot of things i don't need that tend to soak up cycles or dilute security on a game box, like print spooler, remote login, remote registry, superfetch, homegroup, shadow copy etc.

    among the services i disable is Windows Update. i manually enable it a couple times a year and choose which updates to allow. i've had no trouble from this policy except that i get a resentful and incorrect desktop reminder that this is not a genooooine copy of Windows whenever the box wakes from sleep and can't call home. a quick trip to Windows Activation and that's sorted.

    do i understand correctly that Win 10 has removed the ability to disable Win Update? if so, is this by tweaking the related dependencies, or have they f*d up the Services capability itself?

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