Do you need Windows anymore?

wstrohm said:

But I have seen a few "SROD" from time to time.

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Never heard of it. Is this correct ?

trs96 said:

Never heard of it. Is this correct ?

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Sorry, guess I made that up: = "Spinning Rainbow of Death."

wstrohm said:

"Spinning Rainbow of Death."

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I've always referred to that as a beachball.

trs96 said:

I've always referred to that as a beachball.

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That's probably the right term. But I like real beachballs, just not that one.

wstrohm said:

I've never used Windows. I'm surrounded by it (wife, kids, friends, etc.), but know nothing about how it works. I started with an IMSAI 8080 in 1976, but it was a joke. (I still have dusty components from it in a "has-bin.") I first used a "real" computer at TRW, a Mac SE. My first Mac was a Macintosh II (color, yay!), and have stayed with the Mac OS ever since. If not for tonymacx86.com, I never would have tried a Hackintosh.

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The first time I had to use a computer to accomplish something "real" was in university. I was using a typewriter to write my essays, and my friend suggested I use his Macintosh Plus. I printed my essay from the school computer lab Apple Postscript printer. Life changing to say the least.

I couldn't afford a Mac back then and went with a PC clone. So I cut my teeth with DOS, then Windows. When I saved enough money, my first Mac was a Mac LC. I went into debt upgrading the memory, a 13" Apple Trinitron, external HD with a whopping 80 MB storage, and the Apple PC Compatibility Card which allowed me to play X-Wing and Doom (without sound, back then). I've been going back and forth since then. I've bought Macs, I've built PCs.

These days, everything is similar. Windows has pretty much cloned 80% of the MacOS. I think where Apple is going is to have the seamless connectivity with all your devices. I think the MacOS has these nuances that make for an overall more delightful experience. But overall, for the major programs that I use for work and for my hobbies, the two OS's are nearly identical to me. When Apple fully abandons the Intel architecture, I am likely to stick with Windows, unfortunately. I enjoy having control over what goes into my rig, and swapping out components here and there.

I've had my share of BSoDs but what bugged me most was how Windows would randomly become completely unresponsive. On my Z370 build with i9-9900K, 64GB RAM, and OS on SSD, the entire system would just become completely unresponsive. Clicking on things did nothing. It would take dozens of minutes for Task Manager to open. This is on a relatively "clean" system with no crazy stuff installed or anything considered "hacky".

My guess is that it had something to do with Windows updates and drive activity at 100%. I don't know how anyone can "use" a system in this state. When I boot in to Windows, it's probably because I need to do something in Windows at that moment. I don't have all day to sit there and wait for it to become responsive again.

If I give up waiting and force shut down, there's always a chance that I will get the BSoD on the next reboot. Then comes the process of trying to fix the POS because reinstalling everything is such a PITA because for some unknown reason just about any app requires an "installer". Standalone apps are rare. This is when I go down the rabbit hole where days of my life disappear in to oblivion.

When in Windows, I'm not the user, I'm the victim.

pastrychef said:

My guess is that it had something to do with Windows updates and drive activity at 100%. I don't know how anyone can "use" a system in this state.

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I have friends and family members that use Win10 on older laptops and desktops. They call up and say...
"My keyboard's not working, I can't do anything. What's wrong ?" My reply is, "you're trying to run a resource hog (Win10) on hardware that was never designed to run it." Even if you upgrade these to a 2.5" Sata SSD it still happens quite often.

trs96 said:

I have friends and family members that use Win10 on older laptops and desktops. They call up and say...
"My keyboard's not working, I can't do anything. What's wrong ?" My reply is, "you're trying to run a resource hog (Win10) on hardware that was never designed to run it." Even if you upgrade these to a 2.5" Sata SSD it still happens quite often.

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I can understand if the hardware were dated, but I was on relatively recent hardware and I wasn't running anything resource hungry other than Windows itself.

pastrychef said:

I can understand if the hardware were dated, but I was on relatively recent hardware and I wasn't running anything resource hungry other than Windows itself.

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It must have been downloading/installing updates in the background. Windows does that on it's own. Not like macOS where it asks you first to update. If you were running it on an NVMe, plenty of ram and a Core i9 Windows itself should not be the cause. Did you do any Windows de-bloating before trying to run it ? That helps some.

trs96 said:

It must have been downloading/installing updates in the background. If you were running it on an NVMe, plenty of ram and a Core i9 Windows should not be the cause. Windows does that on it's own. Not like macOS where it asks you first to update.

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I really couldn't tell what it was doing because I couldn't get Task Manager to respond...

There's always a fear in me that this sort of thing is lurking and waiting to rear its ugly head when I need to use the system the most.

The only time I ever experienced anything similar in macOS was when I was messing around with early version of OpenEMU and it had a bad memory leak that caused a ton of memory swapping. In that instance, I knew exactly what the problem was and knew how to avoid it from happening again. In Windows, I'm left guessing.