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Some people use their smartphone all the time. Small computer in their pocket, Social media, grocery coupons and incentives, smart home apps, weather and traffic alerts when out and about, perhaps ditched their landline, and many other reasons too. I on the other hand am from the old school, always lived in the same small town (pop about 3000), and retired. I use a big bulky desktop at home I can add/remove hardware to, enjoy my surroundings when I’m out and about, and use a copper land-line at home that always has power and has a separate receiver. Last time my landline went down was at least 15 or 20 years ago.

In 2005 I bought a wireless flip-phone (3G) for those “just in case” times. I commuted daily to work 100 miles round trip. It never broke down in those 17 years until 3G went bye-bye in December 2022. That phone only got turned on when I pull into the store and decide to call home and ask “I decided to go to the store. Is there anything you want?”. Everything else in life can wait.

I now have a new smartphone. I doubt it will last me 17 years. For now I’ll probably turn it on only when I go to the store. Eventually I might use it for other things. We’ll see. Maybe I’m cheap, but I’ve learned to do with the bare minimum because there are more important things in life to enjoy. Gosh, I never planned on typing all this 🙂 .

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DriftyDonN, SueW, Sueska

Since I’m generally very busy I usually do not post, but when I noticed my Restore points were vanishing, I had to jump in. Occasionally I rely on a restore point especially when new software misbehaves. Sometimes the misbehaving is not noticed for a few days and occasionally it is a different program that gets broken! My “System Protection” is enabled. I created a new restore point this evening. It vanished within 30 minutes. So much for “System Protection“. I wish there was an easy way to tell (yell?) at Microsoft and tell them to fix their System Protection.

 

I use a 3rd party to backup my files. That program (for a fee) can supposedly back up the OS. I might have to give it a try. BTW… I use Windows 10 Pro. Maybe next week I’ll start using a different OS. Don’t want to, but if MS keeps taking away the good things, I just might.

Thanks PKCano – I was 99.99% sure copied programs would not run. Therefore, I was almost sure that using a file mover program or copying the program files from my backups would not work. I also recall years ago from my old IBM-XT and IBM-AT days that some files are stored in specific locations. I wonder if that is still the case these days, but I’ll save that topic for another day.

Since I generally save all my email, I can probably search for those license numbers. If I did it properly in the beginning, I would have saved those emails with license numbers in a separate folder.

Well, Woody, I bought the book and it has given me a lot of useful information. THANKS!!

My new Windows 10 Pro was delivered today. Not ready to set it up yet, but I hope to in the next 5-7 days. Kind of hard for me though. Work 60 hours a week (telecommute – Oracle DB admin), volunteer as a Curator at our local Museum, maintenance on my 170-year-old house, and getting the yard ready for Spring. Some of my co-workers in Information Technology offered me some tips. Unfortunately, they all had differing opinions so the book is really a big help to me.

Thanks Woody! (wink-wink) AND it is available in a store near me! I will soon have a new book in my “reading room”, to go along with my recently received nursery catalogs.

I do a lot of googling (and double-check anything I find). I will occasionally search the askwoody forum and other forums. Unfortunately, there might be something I’m not even aware of, and consequently, I would not be able to search for an answer. A search is only good for what you know you want to search for.

krism – I understand there is a way to switch between using a local account and a Microsoft account. I’ll be getting the Pro version which has a few options I like, but they’re available only in the Pro version and only when using a Microsoft account. I’m not too terribly fond of Microsoft “controlling” me, but I was brought up using the Windows OS.

 

Hopefully I’ll be able to setup my PC the way I want it to work. The Windows Field guide and Suan Bradley’s article (mentioned in earlier posts) will help. Even though Windows has updates and options change during the year, I would still like to find a print book. Kind of hard to use an e-version before the PC is set up (unless I keep two machines running). Even if a print book gets out of date in a matter of several months, most of the information in a book will help. If something changes, at least I would have read something I was not aware of previously.

Thanks for all the replies. I’ve been using OpenOffice for ages (probably will start using LibreOffice soon) so I’ll remove MS Office and MS PowerPoint Viewer. Since MS integrates a lot of stuff with Windows, I didn’t want my OS to start crashing if it could not find an important file it needs especially when I do a Windows update.

Speaking of updates (patching), I update sparingly and only when Woody says it looks safe to update. I’m very glad someone by the name of Woody is holding the flashlight as we wander through the MS cave of unknowns. And thanks to his helpers for carrying spare batteries for his flashlight 🙂  .

David