The Vent and Rant Thread

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by wodin

If you have two monitors, and a docking station, and you take your laptop off to use standalone the screen res has to change to single monitor, and all the icons you used to have on the secondary monitor get crammed into the primary one. Trouble is when you plug your dock back in, they don't go back the way they were. If you have a lot of icons on your desktop it can become a real PITA.

Yes, correct. Fortunately, I never have any icons except My Computer and Recycle Bin on the desktop. I use the Start Menu or Quick Launch option of the taskbar, so I don't need to go back to the desktop to launch a program.

The one thing I find *much* more annoying is that Windows 10 resets your font size when docking and undocking. When undocked the screen is at 125%, but when docked, it's at 100%. However, I was used to setting the font sizes to 11 (up from 9) as well, but when docking/undocking, Windows 10 resets that size to 9 each time. I consider that to be a bug.

I also consider it asinine that MS has removed the option to change window colors and font types (and many sizes) from the options. It's still possible, to some extent, through the registry or tweaking programs, but officially, the options are gone. That, combined with the current fad of huge titles and tiny body text in dialog screens make Windows 10 often very much harder to use than Windows 7.

As someone working IT however, I can't afford to just stick with an operating system that has been superseded by three versions already.

[wodin]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

... Windows 10 often very much harder to use than Windows 7...

+1 on that, Win7 was (is) da bomb, and after the disasters that were Win8 and Win9 (8.1) it's good to see that Win10 at least makes an attempt to look more like Win7.

Win10 is needed to better address the cloud paradigm and touch screens, but think how much further ahead we'd be if they'd just gone there straight from Win7 and forgot about those other two orphans.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by wodin

+1 on that, Win7 was (is) da bomb, and after the disasters that were Win8 and Win9 (8.1) it's good to see that Win10 at least makes an attempt to look more like Win7.

The problem with Windows 10 (and worse, 8.x) is that they are into design fads, such as "flat" and "material". You know how those graphics are normally called? Retro. I think, when looking at Windows 8.x and 10, that I'm seeing an early 1990's operating system with all the flat, solid colors.

Windows 8.x has the additional problem of not having drop shadows beneath the windows, which make it *REALLY* flat. With all the whitespace, it's often very hard to see which window is on top. Windows 10 is better in that regard, but the shadows are so light and thin that, if you don't have quite a good monitor, you might not even be able to see them. If you have a monitor with small viewing angles, the shadows actually turn white, while your background turns grey.

Another design fad they are into is that many dialogs use huge titles and child-like (IMHO) talk, which is now popular with many web shops in the Netherlands as well. The body text is often very small in comparison.

===============

Hello. I am your personal computer.
You can use me to run software.

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged....

===============

Let's just assume that I cannot read that body text, and that I'd like to have it at 125% or even bigger. How large do you think that title is going to be? It's going to become ginormous.

The latest design crap that came along is black user interfaces. I don't mean dark grey, with gradients or something; I mean dialog windows or programs that are *solid black*, as in color 00 00 00. Open a few of those, and you have a jumble of text you can't even imagine without actually seeing it. Windows 10 is jumping on that bandwagon to provide a black theme for apps.

Does it show that I don't like the way where desktop computing is headed since the release of Windows 8.x?

[Toxaris]

You could use an USB docking station, that way if you change your laptop, you don't have to change the docking stations. The only downside that I know of, is that you need a separate power cable for your laptop and for the docking station.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Toxaris

You could use an USB docking station, that way if you change your laptop, you don't have to change the docking stations. The only downside that I know of, is that you need a separate power cable for your laptop and for the docking station.

That is a possibility only if you don't need graphics power. Those docking stations use DisplayLink (graphics over USB), which slows down rendering so much that gaming, or other 3D tasks are only possible if not very demanding.

[Cinisajoy]

Tiny rant.
I called my mom last night. First thing she said was email your dad about phones. He has decided because one of his friends pays $100 a year for his web capable phone (friend said it was a smartphone) that he now wants a smart phone.

I know it is only a Web capable phone because I looked up his friend's plan at tracfone.
A one year plan is 400 minutes of talk, text and data. And I know from talking to net10, that data doesn't work on smartphones.

Only 1 problem, he wants a bigger screen with GPS function and he wants it super cheap like his friend's phone. And of course when he talked to the Samsung girl at Best Buy, he told my mom he didn't think the girl knew what she was talking about. He was looking at the Note 5.
Mom told him yes the girl knew and he didn't.

I'm just glad I looked at the web capable phones in June. Hubby was thinking about getting one.
He is with Net10 and pays $100 every 6 for 1500 minutes. That is for talk, text and data. Although each text only costs half a minute. Oh and the minutes never expire.
For many years, he only used his phone for maybe 15 minutes a month. So now he has something like 13,000 minutes.
Right now his cell usage is about 15 minutes a day.

[Katsunami]

LOL. Sing along now, on the melody of Abba's "I am just a girl" :

I am just a fool, one among the many, no more brain to use
A plain and simple fool, with a display to abuse...

I've just received my new mid-end Dell U2414H, to replace the high-end color managed Eizo CS240*. I've spend 20 minutes swapping DisplayPort cables. Tried 4, including the mini-DP to DP cable that came with the monitor, directly connecting it to the laptop.

"No DisplayPort cable detected."

I was ready to do a rage quit and package the monitor up as defective, but I decided to get a cup of tea and then see if I wasn't making some sort of mistake somewhere. How difficult can connecting a cable be? Then I looked at the underside: DisplayPort1, mini-DP, DisplayPort2, HDMI1, HDMI2. Huh? I can't remember reading in the specs that this monitor has two DisplayPorts.

*find specs*

- DisplayPort In
- DisplayPort Out

What? Video *out* on a monitor? If I've seen it, I forgot it. Well, it seems you can chain DisplayPort devices, one to the other, to create a multi-monitor setup.

I had been sticking some stuff where it didn't belong (in my case); into the DP Out connection. After I connected the cable (*any* cable) to the DP In connection, the monitor worked.

Spoiler:

(Why would I drop down so much? Because I haven't touched my camera for at least the time I have this monitor, and it's too expensive and good to just use as a normal monitor for browsing and gaming. I'll sell it along with the photography gear. The swap will recoup me a significant amount of money, while still having a 'good enough' display, with good viewing angles, for doing the things I now do most; and photography work is not among that.)

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

LOL. Sing along now, on the melody of Abba's "I am just a girl" :

I am just a fool, one among the many, no more brain to use
A plain and simple fool, with a display to abuse...

I've just received my new mid-end Dell U2414H, to replace the high-end color managed Eizo CS240*. I've spend 20 minutes swapping DisplayPort cables. Tried 4, including the mini-DP to DP cable that came with the monitor, directly connecting it to the laptop.

"No DisplayPort cable detected."

Until I looked on the underside: DP1, mini-DP, DP2, HDMI1, HDMI2 Huh? I can't remember reading in the specs that this monitor has two DisplayPorts.

*find specs*

- DisplayPort In
- DisplayPort Out

What? Video *out* on a monitor? If I've seen it, I forgot it. Well, it seems you can chain DisplayPort devices, one to the other, to create a multi-monitor setup.

I had been sticking some stuff where it didn't belong (in my case); into the DP Out connection. After I connected the cable (*any* cable) to the DP In connection, the monitor worked.

Spoiler:

(Why would I drop down so much? Because I haven't touched my camera for at least the time I have this monitor, and it's too expensive and good to just use as a normal monitor for browsing and gaming. I'll sell it along with the photography gear. The swap will recoup me a significant amount of money, while still having a 'good enough' display, with good viewing angles, for doing the things I now do most; and photography work is not among that.)

On audio an input doesn't work as an output either.
So don't feel lonely.

[Katsunami]

Having used LCD monitors with 50mm bezels and huge stands for 10 years, using a new monitor with 5mm bezels (of which, 4mm is actually a border around the panel, and not part of the bezel) and a stand half the depth looks weird. If they had managed to make the lower bezel 5mm as well, the image would all but float in space.

Pet peeve: with this monitor, as with ALL of it's predecessors, most games are just too dark on default settings. I often have to put the brightness/gamma bars in the games up to 75%+. Everything else displays fine; I can see all black and white levels at the http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/black.php Lagom Black Test and related pages, everything displays perfectly, but games are close to black on default settings. They have been like that with any monitor I've ever used. I wonder why.

And I hope Microsoft fixes that font reset bug. Having all the fonts reset from size 11 to 9 when the laptop docks or undocks is just idiotic. There's no reason for that.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Until two days ago, I basically worked the same way as you do. However, I *do* do the same things on both my main system and laptop, and I need the data to be available on both. That means I'll have to transfer and sync data all the time, which is a bigger hassle than a docking station.

For that, I like USB thumbdrives. I got a 128GB USB3 thumbdrive for under $20 US at a local retailer. Depending on the data, I might keep it on a thumbdrive, and simply plug the drive into whatever machine was current. (There would be another thumbdrive as a backup copy, with something like a once-a-week sync pass with the master.)

How much data are you dealing with, and what type is it?

I've actually splurged on this laptop; it has a Quadro M2000M (which is the professional version of the GTX 960M/965M, and it falls right between them in terms of speed), and the one thing I use it for is the occasional, mostly older game. The only new game that's going to run on this notebook will be the Witcher 3 (which isn't new anymore, already), and probably, Tides of Numenera after it is released (and patched for at least 6 months to a year...)

It may simply be a matter of familiarity, but while I've had an assortment of laptops, I've never been comfortable trying to use them as my main machine.

This laptop has the most powerful CPU and graphics card available in a 15.6 inch model at the time of purchase, and has 32GB RAM and 2TB of storage. It's slated to go along for at least 5 years, which is the term of warranty for this thing. After that, it'll run until I either replace it, or it breaks.

Given your stated use cases, I agree on the strategy. Get the biggest most powerful machine you can afford, to give yourself headroom to handle inevitable growth.
______
Dennis

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

How much data are you dealing with, and what type is it?

Most of my currently used data are music files. I'm still ripping my CD collection. It's a few hundred gigabytes of FLAC-files. 879 CD's, excluding some Classic boxes (Bach, Beethoven, ....) that contain 40-160 CD's a piece; all collected in the last 20 years. Some of the Classic boxes I bought because they either contained recordings of a performer/orchestra that was out of print on its own, or because they contained 2+ recordings that would have actually been more expensive on their own than in the box set.

It may simply be a matter of familiarity, but while I've had an assortment of laptops, I've never been comfortable trying to use them as my main machine.

Most of the time, I don't notice anymore. My current laptop is almost three times as powerful as my previous desktop (Passmark score 9025 vs. 3335), and has four times the memory (8GB vs. 32GB). I don't actually need 32GB, but hey... when buying the laptop, getting 16GB was only €5 more than 8GB (weird enough), and then I could get another 16GB of Kingston memory of the same specs for €30 or so in a sale. So why not?

Now, while organizing my e-book library, I can convert 7 Delphi Classic ebooks at once and still use the computer for desktop tasks. My desktop computer would have capped at three. Same goes for ripping and converting music.

The only thing I regret which I did have on the desktop were three DVD-drives so I could rip three CD's at once. Now I'm stuck with one external drive.

Given your stated use cases, I agree on the strategy. Get the biggest most powerful machine you can afford, to give yourself headroom to handle inevitable growth.

I dislike having my data spread around. Nowadays, I want to be able to just pick up the laptop and go sit in the living room if I so desire; or take it with me to where ever I need to go, and have all my data available there.

With regard to computing power, I've always got the best I could afford, and I've always used my computers for a *very* long time (5-8 years). Actually, my old desktop is still fast enough to be on par with a *new* lower end desktop costing around €500 or so, and my old notebook from 2008 is twice as fast as one of the notebooks my boss bought *new* in 2014. (I think that's just ridiculous. Such a notebook shouldn't even be sold, IMHO. That thing is unusable in practice, especially because it only has 2GB of RAM and a 5400 RPM hard disk.)

I write off a system in 5 years; they also have warranty for 5 years. After that, I use the system until I consider it to be too slow to handle the data of the time, or until it breaks. I must say, I only have had a system break once (mainboard failure).

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by cromag

In addition to anything else you do, write out a complaint to your state's banking regulators. And send a copy to Wells Fargo.

I tend to advise people to send snail mail the the company's president.

At the bank I once worked for, there was a VP in charge of handling Presidential complaints. His staff looked at letters that hit the President's office, figured out who had to fix the complaint, and sent it there, and they tracked resolution. Prompt handling of Presidential complaints was one of the things the bank's internal auditors rated you on, and if you got a failing grade, kiss your place on the fast track to senior management goodbye.

A friend at the bank worked in the Service and Support Center - the back office that handled a lot of bank processing. She described a case that hit her desk. A bank officer retired as a VP. At that level, when you retired, you got to keep bank employee rates on services the bank sold. He was going over his bills, and discovered he was being overcharged. (It was a branch error, because they failed to properly code the product as issued to an employee when they opened the account.)

He sent two registered, return receipt requested letters to the SSC about the issue, and got no response. So he sent an ordinary first class mail letter the the bank's president:

"Dear Bill,

How are you and how's the wife and kids? I hope we get a chance to play golf the next time I''m in the area.

By the way, I have a little problem..."

The problem got resolved with blinding speed, his payment rates were adjusted, and he got a refund for the overcharges.

The fact he knew the president was just icing on the cake. The bank took presidential complaints seriously.

I advised snail mail because words on a printed page still carry more emotional weight than electronic communication, and are more likely to get attention.
______
Dennis

[Cinisajoy]

Thanks for the advice Dennis. Sounds like a good idea.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

It showed on the new statement.
That is why I am upset.
We shall see on Friday what they say.
If they still insist, we will pay the late fee.
Already planning on cancelling the card. Just cancelling 10 months earlier than we had planned.

I've been watching the credit cards with grim amusement.

At the bank I once worked for in a consumer credit operation, we all got a good case of schadenfreude. The bank's credit card operations, in a different area of the bank in a different geographic location, had a bright idea for raising revenues and profits. They would lower the credit scores they required to get a card, and increase their market share.

It worked for a bit, but then the bad debt chickens came home to roost, the credit card division took hundreds of millions in charge offs for noncollectable debts, and everybody got a sharp reminder of why we hadn't previously issued cards to those folks.

Our Region Credit Officer was scathing in his comments. Al had been in credit for decades, and had forgotten more about it than most mere mortals would ever learn. But they hadn't asked Al's opinion, and wouldn't have wanted to hear it if they had, because he would have said "No. This is a bad idea. You're stupid!"

My SO and I have accumulated a number of cards. We've been deliberately culling the herd, dropping cards with higher APRs, and occasionally doing balance transfers to cards with lower APRs when paying down debt. We also historically sent double the minimum payment each due date (cash flow permitting.)

The end result has been a credit score that's quite high, thank you. We get periodic notes from issuers that make my SO say "X just raised our credit limit again!" "So? We charge things. We run up balances. We pay the balances off in half the maximum time we could take. That's the sort of customer they like, so they raise our limit. Since we have no plans to actually use that card, who cares?" "I guess..."

The basic problem for credit card issuers is that the market is saturated. Pretty much everyone who could get a credit card has one. So they are all trying to raid each other's market share and get customers to switch, or take on another card, or incur additional debt to run up balances they can charge fees on. We get multiple offers like that in our mailbox each week. We call it "land fill", and it goes into the trash unopened.
______
Dennis

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I've been watching the credit cards with grim amusement.

At the bank I once worked for in a consumer credit operation, we all got a good case of schadenfreude. The bank's credit card operations, in a different area of the bank in a different geographic location, had a bright idea for raising revenues and profits. They would lower the credit scores they required to get a card, and increase their market share.

It worked for a bit, but then the bad debt chickens came home to roost, the credit card division took hundreds of millions in charge offs for noncollectable debts, and everybody got a sharp reminder of why we hadn't previously issued cards to those folks.

Our Region Credit Officer was scathing in his comments. Al had been in credit for decades, and had forgotten more about it than most mere mortals would ever learn. But they hadn't asked Al's opinion, and wouldn't have wanted to hear it if they had, because he would have said "No. This is a bad idea. You're stupid!"

My SO and I have accumulated a number of cards. We've been deliberately culling the herd, dropping cards with higher APRs, and occasionally doing balance transfers to cards with lower APRs when paying down debt. We also historically sent double the minimum payment each due date (cash flow permitting.)

The end result has been a credit score that's quite high, thank you. We get periodic notes from issuers that make my SO say "X just raised our credit limit again!" "So? We charge things. We run up balances. We pay the balances off in half the maximum time we could take. That's the sort of customer they like, so they raise our limit. Since we have no plans to actually use that card, who cares?" "I guess..."

The basic problem for credit card issuers is that the market is saturated. Pretty much everyone who could get a credit card has one. So they are all trying to raid each other's market share and get customers to switch, or take on another card, or incur additional debt to run up balances they can charge fees on. We get multiple offers like that in our mailbox each week. We call it "land fill", and it goes into the trash unopened.
______
Dennis

You know what is really funny. Many years ago, we had lousy credit due to a repossession. We got shredder fodder by the ton.
As our credit score improved less shredder fodder, until it improved to the point of "no interest" on some loans.
Now we are back to shredder fodder.