Minor things that bother you

[JayhawkCO]

My beef with Teams is that it started asking me to switch to the new Teams. So I did, and then it started constantly asking if I want to switch back. I finally decided that yes, I do want to switch back, just so that I don't have to keep being asked. But what was the point of new Teams if you want everyone to switch back anyways? Nothing like flunking the rollout of a new product by admitting that the original is better anyways.

I don't find them much different to be honest.

[J N Winkler]

Microsoft Teams.  I mean, I don't like it in general, but that's not what I'm talking about.  It's that the program decides on its own every so often that I must want it open on my computer.  Every few weeks, I'll open up the computer in the morning, and there it is:  no other programs open, because I shut them all down at the end of the day.  Just this morning, I needed to go into the Task Manager and restart Windows Explorer to fix a glitch.  When it restarted, yep! there was Microsoft Teams opened up.

No.  If I want a program open, then I'll open it.  That's the way it works.

It is an option to uninstall Teams?  If not, I would try the following:

*  Check Task Manager for a setting that causes it to launch at boot, and disable it.

*  Check Task Scheduler for a task that launches it, and disable it.

[Rothman]

Microsoft Teams.  I mean, I don't like it in general, but that's not what I'm talking about.  It's that the program decides on its own every so often that I must want it open on my computer.  Every few weeks, I'll open up the computer in the morning, and there it is:  no other programs open, because I shut them all down at the end of the day.  Just this morning, I needed to go into the Task Manager and restart Windows Explorer to fix a glitch.  When it restarted, yep! there was Microsoft Teams opened up.

No.  If I want a program open, then I'll open it.  That's the way it works.

I agree with you on this.

I find Teams cluttered compared to other conferencing software (e.g., WebEx).  But, yep, stupid Teams pops up every time I login.

[kphoger]

Microsoft Teams.  I mean, I don't like it in general, but that's not what I'm talking about.  It's that the program decides on its own every so often that I must want it open on my computer.  Every few weeks, I'll open up the computer in the morning, and there it is:  no other programs open, because I shut them all down at the end of the day.  Just this morning, I needed to go into the Task Manager and restart Windows Explorer to fix a glitch.  When it restarted, yep! there was Microsoft Teams opened up.

No.  If I want a program open, then I'll open it.  That's the way it works.

It is an option to uninstall Teams?  If not, I would try the following:

*  Check Task Manager for a setting that causes it to launch at boot, and disable it.

*  Check Task Scheduler for a task that launches it, and disable it.

Thanks.  I just went to Task Manager > Startup, and changed Microsoft Teams from 'Enabled' to 'Disabled'.  We'll see if that helps.

[7/8]

Teams is very mediocre. It lacks some basic features that Discord has had for ages:

1) The ability to mute a user only on your end. If I'm on a conference call with someone in the office directly beside me, I would like to mute them so I don't hear them twice. I tried muting them, but it muted them for everyone in the meeting (talk about embarrassing )
2) The ability to change volumes of individual users. Some people have louder mics than others

[JayhawkCO]

Teams is very mediocre. It lacks some basic features that Discord has had for ages:

1) The ability to mute a user only on your end. If I'm on a conference call with someone in the office directly beside me, I would like to mute them so I don't hear them twice. I tried muting them, but it muted them for everyone in the meeting (talk about embarrassing )
2) The ability to change volumes of individual users. Some people have louder mics than others

Teams is very mediocre, but still better than using Slack and Zoom, two solutions that don't speak to each other and don't save chat details easily.

[Bruce]

I don't get how y'all are having issues with Windows (maybe being on 11 is different?).

I have Windows 10 and never have forced updates (instead it's run on a schedule or manually when I am prepared), programs on startup are controlled by the Task Manager, and I don't have Edge or Teams or other crap running in the background constantly.

[JayhawkCO]

I don't get how y'all are having issues with Windows (maybe being on 11 is different?).

I have Windows 10 and never have forced updates (instead it's run on a schedule or manually when I am prepared), programs on startup are controlled by the Task Manager, and I don't have Edge or Teams or other crap running in the background constantly.

Working for a big company, you have to do constant upgrades/reboots. A lot of what goes on on my machine is not decided by me.

[J N Winkler]

I don't get how y'all are having issues with Windows (maybe being on 11 is different?).

I have Windows 10 and never have forced updates (instead it's run on a schedule or manually when I am prepared), programs on startup are controlled by the Task Manager, and I don't have Edge or Teams or other crap running in the background constantly.

Aside from the problem of not having full control over the PC in an enterprise setting, it's not always intuitive how to access the mechanisms that keep Windows from getting in your way, and sometimes it takes experimentation to determine what works and what doesn't.

When I moved to Windows 10 in 2021, it took several forced updates before I figured out how to postpone updates for 35 days.  (I install updates at the end of the month, so I am guaranteed the entirety of the next month before I need to think about updates again.)  I still haven't sorted out how to prevent Windows apps from updating themselves.  (A recent update to the Photos app made it much harder to use for viewing TIFF plansheets.)

[kphoger]

programs on startup are controlled by the Task Manager

Which I didn't know until Jonathan mentioned it.  I still remember when these things were handled by C:\>edit startup.bat, so part of it might be that what seems like common sense to you just isn't to me.

[formulanone]

My beef with Teams is that it started asking me to switch to the new Teams. So I did, and then it started constantly asking if I want to switch back. I finally decided that yes, I do want to switch back, just so that I don't have to keep being asked. But what was the point of new Teams if you want everyone to switch back anyways? Nothing like flunking the rollout of a new product by admitting that the original is better anyways.

I don't find them much different to be honest.

I was getting the same stupid quest as well. I didn't mind the "new" Teams (though I liked Slack better), but it didn't seemed like that big of a change. Problem was that it all happened on rather short notice, so we lost 5 years of know-how that couldn't easily be scraped/exported from Slack which many never bothered to put in a secondary repository...but that's a reliance problem, not an MS issue.

Where's the old Microsoft that just forced changes on us?

Teams is very mediocre. It lacks some basic features that Discord has had for ages:

1) The ability to mute a user only on your end. If I'm on a conference call with someone in the office directly beside me, I would like to mute them so I don't hear them twice. I tried muting them, but it muted them for everyone in the meeting (talk about embarrassing )
2) The ability to change volumes of individual users. Some people have louder mics than others

Teams is very mediocre, but still better than using Slack and Zoom, two solutions that don't speak to each other and don't save chat details easily.

It works...well enough; sound is less dodgy than Zoom but less controls overall. My company ditched both for Teams in one singular app so it makes sense.

[kkt]

My "can't kill it" software thing is that I hate when I have a forced reboot of my work laptop and then Edge and the Microsoft Store get pinned to my taskbar again, despite me not using either of them ever.

We are Microsoft.  We know what you need on your computer.

[vdeane]

Posts that are titled differently from their thread, making it difficult to tell which posts are tied with which thread in the recent posts view.

[SSOWorld]

Phone number for you?

[Scott5114]

Phone number for you?

For me? Oh, thank you, that's so kind of you!

[ZLoth]

Phone number for you?

(776) 867-5309

[jeffandnicole]

Phone number for you?

(776) 867-5309

It's showing up as Suspected Spam.  Jenny won't answer.

[Big John]

Phone number for you?

(776) 867-5309

Jenny doesn't live in a non-existent area code.

[mgk920]

I wonder how many prank calls went to someone in Weyauwega, WI back in the 1980s because of that song . . .

Mike

[SSOWorld]

Phone number for you?

I was using the Minnesota Accent
(attaching "for you" toe every line.)

[ZLoth]

From PC Gamer:

'Our long-term objective is to make printing a subscription' says HP CEO gunning for 2024's Worst Person of the Year award
Not satisfied with merely bricking printers, HP now wants to own them all forever!

It was only the other day we reported how HP has been slapped with a lawsuit in response to measures that disable its printers when fitted with a third-party ink cartridge. Now the company's CEO, Enrique Lores, says HP wants to "make printing a subscription." Nice. Not.

It's well known that printers are routinely sold at a loss, with the real revenues made from selling replacement ink cartridges. The move to a subscription model, as reported by Ars Technica, is just another attempt at maximising that profit stream.

"This is something we announced a few years ago that our goal was to reduce the number of what we call unprofitable customers. Because every time a customer buys a printer, it's an investment for us. We're investing in that customer, and if this customer doesn't print enough or doesn't use our supplies, it's a bad investment," Lores says, turning "selling at a loss" into a neat "investment" euphemism.

FULL ARTICLE HERE

If the CEO of HP wants to act like a James Bond villain, then it's Brother products for me. I already dislike inkjet printers and prefer duplexing color laser printers with a Ethernet connection... for whatever little I print nowadays. My Brother HL-L8350CDW has a manufacture date of May, 2015, and I really should investigate replacing the rollers on the manual feed.

[vdeane]

People who can't be bothered to use the correct line and then cut in line and make you wait even more.  I attempted to get my car washed today, and ended up getting pissed off.  The place I go to has two lines, the one on the left for lanes 1-2, and the one on the right for lanes 3-4.  This is clearly delimited with a solid white line.  When I got there, there was a long line in the right lane (not too surprising, this is the first Saturday we've had in a while where there wasn't winter weather in the forecast immediately after, so everyone's desperate to get the salt off their cars), so I went into the much shorter line in the left lane (and lanes 1-2 tend to have the more functional equipment, so I favor them anyways).  Unfortunately, when I got to the point where the lane splits, people from the lane for lanes 3-4 would keep cutting in in front of me (the tight curve means that I couldn't move to "close the gap" and they took advantage).  When I confronted someone about it, someone else even defended her claiming "she was there first".  Never mind that she was in the other line, whipped around me, and then cut in front.  That got my blood boiling.  And then, even though I had already been waiting 15 minutes without moving, another person went and did the same thing.  At that point, I just left in disgust, finding a gap to cut over to lane 4, and then out once the person in that line moved forward enough to open the passage around the building.  I didn't sign up to wait 30+ minutes with the wait constantly extended by f****** rule-breaking c****.  That place needs pavement markings to make it even more explicitly clear what's going on (not that it wasn't obvious before, but somehow people were oblivious), and bollards or some other barrier to prevent people from cutting in line like the f***tards they are.  At this point I'm not even sure if I'm just going to go later when I pick up dinner or give Hoffman's a try (even though it's more expensive and isn't touchless).

And just because it's that kind of day, I had to wait a long time to get a question answered from my pharmacy (short answer: my doctor's office is useless and can't get the same page with the pharmacy on sending a prescription that is something they actually carry), although that thankfully wasn't anyone's fault, just how the line worked.  But then I had issues with the self-checkout throwing an error that happens a lot (the sensors are wonky and the first item put in a bag tends to throw them off) but which wasn't cleared quickly this time because the attendant was who knows where instead of doing his job.

From PC Gamer:

'Our long-term objective is to make printing a subscription' says HP CEO gunning for 2024's Worst Person of the Year award
Not satisfied with merely bricking printers, HP now wants to own them all forever!

It was only the other day we reported how HP has been slapped with a lawsuit in response to measures that disable its printers when fitted with a third-party ink cartridge. Now the company's CEO, Enrique Lores, says HP wants to "make printing a subscription." Nice. Not.

It's well known that printers are routinely sold at a loss, with the real revenues made from selling replacement ink cartridges. The move to a subscription model, as reported by Ars Technica, is just another attempt at maximising that profit stream.

"This is something we announced a few years ago that our goal was to reduce the number of what we call unprofitable customers. Because every time a customer buys a printer, it's an investment for us. We're investing in that customer, and if this customer doesn't print enough or doesn't use our supplies, it's a bad investment," Lores says, turning "selling at a loss" into a neat "investment" euphemism.

FULL ARTICLE HERE

If the CEO of HP wants to act like a James Bond villain, then it's Brother products for me. I already dislike inkjet printers and prefer duplexing color laser printers with a Ethernet connection... for whatever little I print nowadays. My Brother HL-L8350CDW has a manufacture date of May, 2015, and I really should investigate replacing the rollers on the manual feed.

Pure evil.

[kkt]

By the time you're using F... and C... they are no longer minor things.

[dlsterner]

From PC Gamer:

'Our long-term objective is to make printing a subscription' says HP CEO gunning for 2024's Worst Person of the Year award
Not satisfied with merely bricking printers, HP now wants to own them all forever!

It was only the other day we reported how HP has been slapped with a lawsuit in response to measures that disable its printers when fitted with a third-party ink cartridge. Now the company's CEO, Enrique Lores, says HP wants to "make printing a subscription." Nice. Not.

It's well known that printers are routinely sold at a loss, with the real revenues made from selling replacement ink cartridges. The move to a subscription model, as reported by Ars Technica, is just another attempt at maximising that profit stream.

"This is something we announced a few years ago that our goal was to reduce the number of what we call unprofitable customers. Because every time a customer buys a printer, it's an investment for us. We're investing in that customer, and if this customer doesn't print enough or doesn't use our supplies, it's a bad investment," Lores says, turning "selling at a loss" into a neat "investment" euphemism.

FULL ARTICLE HERE

If the CEO of HP wants to act like a James Bond villain, then it's Brother products for me. I already dislike inkjet printers and prefer duplexing color laser printers with a Ethernet connection... for whatever little I print nowadays. My Brother HL-L8350CDW has a manufacture date of May, 2015, and I really should investigate replacing the rollers on the manual feed.

I've been using HP printers for a while, and my latest one does have an optional feature where the printer can automatically connect online and order replacement cartridges.  No thanks!  Not enabled, not about to let my printer buy things on my behalf.  If a mandatory subscription model comes to be ... well, let's just say that there are other printer vendors out there.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

I remember Scott posting some time back about how technology sucks now because people are trying to create ways to sell you solutions to problems that they invented themselves.