THE COMPUTER THREAD

[MartyS (Gromit)]

Went to run MS flight sim 2020 and it kept going to the MS store and attempting to install something that wouldn't install.  Uninstalled flight sim, then nothing would install so couldn't re-install flight sim....  Spent an hour going through various fixes, rebooting a dozen times, now it is at least trying to install.

How can the Microsoft store suck so badly?  Not like it's something new, it has always sucked and they don't seem to want to fix it...

[RVR II]

And now Windows 11 is coming out and it's offered as a FREE upgrade ...
BUT.. your CPU might not support it
https://www.cnet.com/how-to/windows-11-will-be-a-free-update-heres-how-youll-download-it-and-if-your-device-is-compatible/

[MartyS (Gromit)]

And now Windows 11 is coming out and it's offered as a FREE upgrade ...
BUT.. your CPU might not support it
https://www.cnet.com/how-to/windows-11-will-be-a-free-update-heres-how-youll-download-it-and-if-your-device-is-compatible/

Other thing I read was that it will require secure boot, so your PC will have to have TPM (trusted platform module) in it.  My mid-range motherboard from less than 2 years ago doesn't have one, so I'm guessing if they stick to that requirement most people will not be able to upgrade to Win11 even if they have a pretty good gaming PC now.

Windows 10 will be supported for 4 more years, so at least there's no need to rush to upgrade.

All the changes made for touchscreen users is a bit troubling, I hope they remember what a disaster windows 8 was initially for mouse users and don't go down that path again.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

So it seems even if your motherboard doesn't have a TPM most CPUs made in the last 3 years or so do have something equivalent built into them, Intel and AMD call it different things and it's disabled by default in the bios but after some research I found the setting (Intel calls it Platform Trust Technology) in my bios and switched it on, now the utility you can download says my PC can run windows 11.

Watching some reviews of what has been announced so far the one that will bug me the most is that taskbar icons will be combined by default with no way to turn it off.  Really hope that gets changed because I hate icon combining and always turn it off.

[ihavemyreasons]

Well my 3 year old gaming laptop seems to meet the requirements for Windows 11. Much more surprising, so does my $100 year old HTPC with a celeron processor- key being "seems" as I wouldn't be surprised if the cheap HTPC's TPM isn't up to snuff.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

Found an old windows program from 1995 that calculates pi, back then on a Pentium 90 it would take 3 days to calculate pi to 32 million decimal places, the program still runs and my PC just did it in just over 7 minutes.  So, roughly 600 times faster on a single core, times 8 cores in my PC, so 4,800 times faster in 25 years.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

Downloaded a multi-threaded calculator for pi, and calculating out to 5 trillion decimal places only took 6 minutes.
To compare with the old windows 95 program I did 25 million and it took less than 1 second to do it all in ram, so adding in ram speed along with 8 faster cores it is something like 200,000 times faster today vs 1995.  The old program was constantly writing to disk since it only used about 20MB of ram, but the disk speed wasn't a factor, I ran it on an NVMe drive vs. spinning rust and both took about 7 1/2 minutes.

[LucasM]

Well, my video-downloading software just crapped out.  Not just stopped working, but the original files to try reinstalling it - hell, even any MENTION of the program - are no longer on the company's website.

What program do people use for downloading things like YouTube videos?  (Bonus if it can also do things like download from streaming services.)

[RVR II]

What program do people use for downloading things like YouTube videos? 

I use https://y2mate.is/en322/ for YouTube videos, not sure it will work on anything else..

[ihavemyreasons]

I use 4k Video Downloader for youtube. Free version allows you to download 1 video at a time. Got the paid version a few years ago and it allows you to dowload entire lists.
Use pai extension for firefox called "Video Download Helper" for a lot of other things - works on youtube too but also with many different streaming services as well- if you can watch it, there is a 80+% chance that video download helper can download it.

[LucasM]

Thanks RVR II and ihavemyreasons!  I'll definitely be checking each of those out to find the one I'm most comfortable with.

My strong impulse is that the company creating the one I've been using (Ashampoo brand's 'Audials') was sued.  They had in the program direct links to places like Disney+ and Netflix... and that may have gotten them noticed by attorneys.

The thing that ticks me off with the company I had is that, because the program apparently requires internet confirmation of the license at the start of each use, them cutting off support causes the program to simply freeze during loading and never recover.  In other words: they completely canceled the use of a program I paid for, when the understanding when I bought it was that I'd be able to use it until I uninstalled it.

[goflyblind]

the understanding when I bought it was that I'd be able to use it until I uninstalled it.

sadly, i don't think any software license agreement actually says that.

i use the Easy Youtube Video Downloader firefox extension. it's not great, but it works most of the time.