scientiae: Win10 has a very annoying log-in process.
frogthroat: Nope. It's wonderful. The
optional (on by default) loading of startup applications already during the login screen is great. Makes booting up even faster when you have a fast computer and an SSD.
scientiae: (WinXP, Win3.1)
frogthroat: You probably mean Win8.1? Win3.1 was not an operating system, per se. It was more of a graphical interface for the operating system at the time, MS-DOS. And loading Win3.1 was pretty fast even on old 386 computers. No network, no problems. (Network came with Win3.11/NT3.51.) It was when all this internet stuff and constant updates started to come with Win95/NT4 generation when things became slow.
No I don't mean Win8. You could network Win3.1. (Just as you can network a DOS machine.)
You are correct that I can't be bothered to study the intricacies of the OS, past the essentials required to make it work. Once you have learnt a few of them, their peculiarities become tedious. I prefer to simplify my digital interactions. (Perhaps one day I might need to be online more often; at that point I will take more interest in said peculiarities.)
scientiae: there are all sorts of background processes taking the focus from the keyboard when I try to enter my password, to the point that the wireless keyboard will nearly always have a buffer-dump multiple of a single keypress when the log-in process returns.
frogthroat: Oh, that sounds annoying. If it is a desktop, you can set it to log in automatically. It's not secure in case someone physically breaks and enters your house, though. If it's a laptop, turn the loading of startup items already in the login screen off.
It's a laptop. And most of the crap that is loading is part of the manufacturer's "value-added" software, which is very likely to mess with the underlying OS if I start messing with it, due to unintended dependencies that perhaps even the manufacturer has forgotten (coding assumptions, etc.).
scientiae: I also remove the CAT5 cable connecting it to the modem. Every time. (There are network protocols that wake up computers.
frogthroat: I hope you mean CAT5e, unless you have a 10/100 network. But why don't you turn off Wake on LAN from the BIOS if that worries you?
Yes.
And I don't turn it off because it can be turned on again, remotely.
frogthroat: I use WOL all the time. I even have buttons on my phone's desktop to turn on various computers around the house and/or see their status. Just a simple icon that sends a magic packet to the selected mac address -- magic packet is basically just a mac address and a bunch of times the letter F. Turn off WOL and the NIC is not listening for a magic packet.
Shutting my computers down remotely with an easy button on phone's desktop is a bit trickier. But it's still quite easy with JuiceSSH's snippets -- you can make a desktop icon that runs a command via ssh. Easy peasy.
Just use encrypted connections if the security worries you.
Anyway, you can either learn to use the scary functions of your computer, or you can just turn them off. There's really no need to unplug the cable every time.
I am well aware of my needs. What makes you think I don't know how to use the technology, simply because I don't trust it?
dtgreene: Anyone used to older computers will probably remember how DOS was significantly less stable than the OSes and software commonly found on other computers like the Apple 2 family.
Or, anyone who used Linux in the early days will remember how much more stable (in terms of not crashing) it was than the mainstream proprietary operating systems.
(Anyone here use (pre OS X) Macintoshes back in the day? Were they more stable than DOS/Windows, or were they just as prone to crashes?)
Yes, they were much more stable. (Fun fact: the first Macintosh DOS was too large to fit on a single floppy.)
Win3.1 (and Windows for Workplaces 3.11, coincidentally mimicking the (much more popular) Novel Netware version) were indeed a GUI upon MS-DOS.
The OS was so unstable (memory leaks especially) that it was impossible to operate without rebooting at least daily (depending on your duty cycle). Games, being advanced applications that seek to extract maximum performance, have always taxed the system more than practically anything else.
The biggest instability (after graphics card configuration) was always the TCP stack. It wasn't much later (Win2k, IIRC), that it wasn't necessary to reboot the OS when the stack crashed. And bouncing an earlier Microsoft OS took many minutes.