This is probably blindingly obvious to some, but wasn't to me ...

We have an ordinary flat screen TV which receives little use, but looks
OK when it is used, until I started watching world cup games, and
realised a strip of image is being cut off, both sides. Ah! Aspect
ratio. No - even at 4:3 a black strip at both sides but the picture
itself incomplete. RTFM no good, that just talks about plugging stuff
in and basic tuning. OK, much digging through on screen menus and
adjusting, to no avail.

Google to the rescue. The setting I needed was within the Thompson set
top box, not the TV itself. Reset that, and all is well. Must have had
that box for 15 years, and had no idea it did anything other than
channels. Hey ho.
--
Graeme

On Sun, 8 Jul 2018 08:13:46 +0100, Graeme
wrote:

snip

Google to the rescue. The setting I needed was within the Thompson set
top box, not the TV itself. Reset that, and all is well. Must have had
that box for 15 years, and had no idea it did anything other than
channels. Hey ho.

Being an IT / hardware guy I often check to see if there are any
firmware updates for such things, assuming they don't update
themselves OTA.

A mate gave me quite a good laser printer that he was fed up with
because it kept going to sleep and wouldn't wake up and 'couldn't be
bothered with it' any more.

I checked online and found there was a V1.02 of the firmware and it
was running V1.01. A quick upgrade later and it was fine and I have
been using it (with it sleeping and waking up) ever since.

Also, because we had a Topfield STB from the early days of them I'm
also quite used to upgrading the Taps on that. I believe that defaults
to 4:3 after a factory restore.

Mobile phones and online tablets tend to prompt you that there are OS
/ firmware updates, even if you have to Ok them manually. PC / Laptop
Mobo BIOS's are often way out of date and again, I generally try to
bring them up to date, especially if it's a new-to-me box that I'm
playing with.

Even optical drives can often enjoy a firmware upgrade. ;-)

My thought on it is this ... in most cases upgrading doesn't do any
harm (you can brick stuff though) and sometimes does visible good.
That the manufacturers don't necessarily list all the issues it fixes
and I have seen things fixed when the release notes didn't suggest it
should. The manufacturers / developers wouldn't generally release new
code for 'no reason'.

Cheers, T i m

Yes the one thing that always amuses me is that everyone adopts standards,
then of course invents new ones and does not apply logic to selection of
which so called standard is right for a given situation.
Its made worse apparently by some channels using copies of films that
already contain blank bitts of screen then sending the flag to put the tv or
box into the wrong mode for them.
It sound not really be that hard to just have two aspect ratios, ie the
wide 16/9 and the old 4/3, but then we get folk making things in any old
format or deliberately making it the wrong format.
Nowadays I never notice of course but it is a worry how the average person
gets to grips with it when each bit gear can have different settings.
Worse still is the default audio soundtracks of course, It was bad enough
with dolby Surround and stereo, but now there are so many flavours of Dolby
and other surround sound systems as to make the whole thing almost a
lottery.
Brian

--
----- --
This newsgroup posting comes to you directly from...
The Sofa of Brian Gaff...

Blind user, so no pictures please
Note this Signature is meaningless.!
"Graeme" wrote in message
...

This is probably blindingly obvious to some, but wasn't to me ...

We have an ordinary flat screen TV which receives little use, but looks OK
when it is used, until I started watching world cup games, and realised a
strip of image is being cut off, both sides. Ah! Aspect ratio. No -
even at 4:3 a black strip at both sides but the picture itself incomplete.
RTFM no good, that just talks about plugging stuff in and basic tuning.
OK, much digging through on screen menus and adjusting, to no avail.

Google to the rescue. The setting I needed was within the Thompson set
top box, not the TV itself. Reset that, and all is well. Must have had
that box for 15 years, and had no idea it did anything other than
channels. Hey ho.
--
Graeme

The inverse is possible though. It seems recent windows 10 drivers for
realtek hardware have introduced a power saving function that switches the
hardware off when its not in use much, but not in use much is set to
seconds, not minutes and there is no way to stop it so a lot of blind folk
are finding that their audio speech is sluggish to start on new menu items
or for clips off the first little bit of words. I understand the Microsoft
are aware of this but most newer labptops have to use the latest drivers if
they use windows 10 since the older ones will only work on out of date
versions of windows 10.
I have read a lot of disgruntled blind folks messages in the last couple of
months, since a new laptop that otherwise flies along is now being crippled
even with all power saving settings turned off due to this stupid new
'feature'.

I am often glad I use old software!
Brian

--
----- --
This newsgroup posting comes to you directly from...
The Sofa of Brian Gaff...

Blind user, so no pictures please
Note this Signature is meaningless.!
"T i m" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 8 Jul 2018 08:13:46 +0100, Graeme
wrote:

snip

Google to the rescue. The setting I needed was within the Thompson set
top box, not the TV itself. Reset that, and all is well. Must have had
that box for 15 years, and had no idea it did anything other than
channels. Hey ho.

Being an IT / hardware guy I often check to see if there are any
firmware updates for such things, assuming they don't update
themselves OTA.

A mate gave me quite a good laser printer that he was fed up with
because it kept going to sleep and wouldn't wake up and 'couldn't be
bothered with it' any more.

I checked online and found there was a V1.02 of the firmware and it
was running V1.01. A quick upgrade later and it was fine and I have
been using it (with it sleeping and waking up) ever since.

Also, because we had a Topfield STB from the early days of them I'm
also quite used to upgrading the Taps on that. I believe that defaults
to 4:3 after a factory restore.

Mobile phones and online tablets tend to prompt you that there are OS
/ firmware updates, even if you have to Ok them manually. PC / Laptop
Mobo BIOS's are often way out of date and again, I generally try to
bring them up to date, especially if it's a new-to-me box that I'm
playing with.

Even optical drives can often enjoy a firmware upgrade. ;-)

My thought on it is this ... in most cases upgrading doesn't do any
harm (you can brick stuff though) and sometimes does visible good.
That the manufacturers don't necessarily list all the issues it fixes
and I have seen things fixed when the release notes didn't suggest it
should. The manufacturers / developers wouldn't generally release new
code for 'no reason'.

Cheers, T i m

On Sun, 8 Jul 2018 09:23:53 +0100, "Brian Gaff"
wrote:

The inverse is possible though. It seems recent windows 10 drivers

Ah, yes, and why I didn't really include drivers in my post.

I can see how any 'non required' feature adjustment could be a PITA,
especially so for a blind user.

And driver issues are common across all OS's of course.

Do you know if this new power saving default can be turned off?

Cheers, T i m

On Sun, 8 Jul 2018 09:07:06 -0000 (UTC), Jethro_uk
wrote:

New version of Linux Mint is out. First line in the "how do I upgrade ?"
FAQ warns that "If it ain't broke ..."

But how do you know if it isn't broke?

Something may not be working properly (like video performance) that
has been fixed and you will never see it?

And aren't we supposed to ensure we are 'up to date' to be the most
secure?

Cheers, T i m

In article ,
Graeme wrote:

This is probably blindingly obvious to some, but wasn't to me ...

We have an ordinary flat screen TV which receives little use, but looks
OK when it is used, until I started watching world cup games, and
realised a strip of image is being cut off, both sides. Ah! Aspect
ratio. No - even at 4:3 a black strip at both sides but the picture
itself incomplete. RTFM no good, that just talks about plugging stuff
in and basic tuning. OK, much digging through on screen menus and
adjusting, to no avail.

Google to the rescue. The setting I needed was within the Thompson set
top box, not the TV itself. Reset that, and all is well. Must have had
that box for 15 years, and had no idea it did anything other than
channels. Hey ho.

Normally, using the wrong aspect ratio to the transmitted picture is
pretty obvious. Circles are no longer round. People are the wrong shape.
It really annoys me when broadcasters transmit old 4:3 inserts in 16:9
stretched to fit.

Some sets still include an overscan option. To make the picture look
bigger. A throwback to the days of small screens.

--
*HOW IS IT POSSIBLE TO HAVE A CIVIL WAR?

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

Brian Gaff explained :
The inverse is possible though. It seems recent windows 10 drivers for
realtek hardware have introduced a power saving function that switches the
hardware off when its not in use much, but not in use much is set to seconds,
not minutes and there is no way to stop it so a lot of blind folk are finding
that their audio speech is sluggish to start on new menu items or for clips
off the first little bit of words. I understand the Microsoft are aware of
this but most newer labptops have to use the latest drivers if they use
windows 10 since the older ones will only work on out of date versions of
windows 10.

One thing I really miss in W10, is the ability to adjust the keyboard
repeat rate. Whilst editing text, I often have to make my way back
along a line of text, using the cursor keys. The fixed repeat rate
makes his use of the cursor keys very slow indeed, such that it is
sometimes quicker to just point and click with the mouse. Very
annoying, unless anyone has found a way to adjust it?

In message , "Dave Plowman (News)"
writes
In article ,
Graeme wrote:

Google to the rescue. The setting I needed was within the Thompson set
top box, not the TV itself.

Normally, using the wrong aspect ratio to the transmitted picture is
pretty obvious. Circles are no longer round. People are the wrong shape.
It really annoys me when broadcasters transmit old 4:3 inserts in 16:9
stretched to fit.

Neither of us noticed anything wrong with the picture itself, although
this is the first time we have used the TV since the wedding. I only
knew something was not right because, during matches, top left of the
screen is a bar showing the score. There is also a clock which, on ITV,
is to the right of the bar, and visible. However, the BBC clock is to
the left, and was not visible. All now fixed.
--
Graeme

On 08/07/18 10:35, Harry Bloomfield wrote:
Brian Gaff explained :
The inverse is possible though. It seems recent windows 10 drivers for
realtek hardware have introduced a power saving function that switches
the hardware off when its not in use much, but not in use much is set
to seconds, not minutes and there is no way to stop it so a lot of
blind folk are finding that their audio speech is sluggish to start on
new menu items or for clips off the first little bit of words. I
understand the Microsoft are aware of this but most newer labptops
have to use the latest drivers if they use windows 10 since the older
ones will only work on out of date versions of windows 10.

One thing I really miss in W10, is the ability to adjust the keyboard
repeat rate. Whilst editing text, I often have to make my way back along
a line of text, using the cursor keys. The fixed repeat rate makes his
use of the cursor keys very slow indeed, such that it is sometimes
quicker to just point and click with the mouse. Very annoying, unless
anyone has found a way to adjust it?

Not running windows 10here, but:

If you're happy editing the registry -
https://superuser.com/questions/1077...keeps-changing

Or -
https://bltt.org/adjust-windows-keyboard-repeat-rate/

"Harry Bloomfield" wrote in message
news
Brian Gaff explained :
The inverse is possible though. It seems recent windows 10 drivers for
realtek hardware have introduced a power saving function that switches
the hardware off when its not in use much, but not in use much is set to
seconds, not minutes and there is no way to stop it so a lot of blind
folk are finding that their audio speech is sluggish to start on new menu
items or for clips off the first little bit of words. I understand the
Microsoft are aware of this but most newer labptops have to use the
latest drivers if they use windows 10 since the older ones will only work
on out of date versions of windows 10.

One thing I really miss in W10, is the ability to adjust the keyboard
repeat rate. Whilst editing text, I often have to make my way back along a
line of text, using the cursor keys. The fixed repeat rate makes his use
of the cursor keys very slow indeed,

The fix for that is to move using crtl arrow, steps by words instead of
character.

such that it is sometimes quicker to just point and click with the mouse.
Very annoying, unless anyone has found a way to adjust it?

On 08/07/2018 08:13, Graeme wrote:


... a strip of image is being cut off, both sides.

Who remembers fiddling with the horizontal and vertical hold knobs?

--
Reentrant

In message ,
Reentrant writes
On 08/07/2018 08:13, Graeme wrote:


... a strip of image is being cut off, both sides.

Who remembers fiddling with the horizontal and vertical hold knobs?

I miss knobs to twiddle :-( Much better than all this on screen faffing
around.
--
Graeme

On Sunday, 8 July 2018 12:09:46 UTC+1, Graeme wrote:
I miss knobs to twiddle :-( Much better than all this on screen faffing
around.

especially when you have to reboot for settings to take effect

Owain

Richard laid this down on his screen :
Not running windows 10here, but:

If you're happy editing the registry -
https://superuser.com/questions/1077...keeps-changing

I tried that before, it made no difference

Or -
https://bltt.org/adjust-windows-keyboard-repeat-rate/

That does not exist on my Laptop's settings.. No adjustment for delay,
no adjustment for repeat rate.

Rod Speed wrote on 08/07/2018 :
The fix for that is to move using crtl arrow, steps by words instead of
character.

Which is what I have to do.. Its just that I am used to/always found a
fast repeat easier..

Reentrant was thinking very hard :
Who remembers fiddling with the horizontal and vertical hold knobs?

...and giving the TV a technical thump a fist, when it would not behave?

explained :
especially when you have to reboot for settings to take effect

...and the reboot, takes longer than it used to take for the old valve
sets to warm up and show a picture.

On 08/07/18 12:41, Harry Bloomfield wrote:
Richard laid this down on his screen :
Not running windows 10here, but:

If you're happy editing the registry -
https://superuser.com/questions/1077...keeps-changing


I tried that before, it made no difference

Or -
https://bltt.org/adjust-windows-keyboard-repeat-rate/

That does not exist on my Laptop's settings.. No adjustment for delay,
no adjustment for repeat rate.

Oh well...

In article ,
Reentrant wrote:
On 08/07/2018 08:13, Graeme wrote:


... a strip of image is being cut off, both sides.

Who remembers fiddling with the horizontal and vertical hold knobs?

I can certainly remember when it was almost a weekly job trying to keep a
colour picture to spec with CRT sets. If nothing else modern sets are
usually stable.

--
*If at first you don't succeed, redefine success.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

In article ,
Huge wrote:
On 2018-07-08, Harry Bloomfield wrote:
Reentrant was thinking very hard :
Who remembers fiddling with the horizontal and vertical hold knobs?

..and giving the TV a technical thump a fist,

aka "percussive maintenance".

£10, please, sir.

£10 for thumping the set?

50p for the thump. £9.50 for knowing where to thump it.

--
*Gravity is a myth, the earth sucks *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On 08/07/18 12:45, Harry Bloomfield wrote:
Rod Speed wrote on 08/07/2018 :
The fix for that is to move using crtl arrow, steps by words instead
of character.

Which is what I have to do.. Its just that I am used to/always found a
fast repeat easier..

Try this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/c...in_windows_10/

q
EDIT: The only way I could find to access the keyboard repeat rate is
through Control Panel itself (Start Run "control") Keyboard
(you'll need to change View By to Icons).
/q


It works on the wife's Macbook with Parallels running windows 10.

In article ,
Huge wrote:
On 2018-07-08, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Reentrant wrote:
On 08/07/2018 08:13, Graeme wrote:


... a strip of image is being cut off, both sides.

Who remembers fiddling with the horizontal and vertical hold knobs?

I can certainly remember when it was almost a weekly job trying to keep a
colour picture to spec with CRT sets. If nothing else modern sets are
usually stable.

Well, the hardware is. The software is a different matter ...

True. But then the first software many of us had to deal with TV wise was
teletext. And that used to frustrate too.

--
*The statement above is false

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

In article ,
Huge wrote:
When I worked for ITT, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, we had some crappy
ITT B&W monitors (probably VT100 clones, but TBH, I don't remember) which
had a fault where the display went away and could be rectified by thumping
them. Conveniently, they had stuck the ITT logo in exactly the right place
where you had to hit them.

What used to happen a lot was 'dry' solder joints to the line output
transformer. Which used to vibrate quite a bit and at a high frequency.
Causing metal fatigue in the solder rather more quickly than with a mains
transformer.

Used to reflow all of those as a matter of course if the back ever had to
come off.

--
*OK, so what's the speed of dark? *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

Richard pretended :
Try this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/c...in_windows_10/

q
EDIT: The only way I could find to access the keyboard repeat rate is through
Control Panel itself (Start Run "control") Keyboard (you'll need to
change View By to Icons).
/q

Thanks, but zilch to be found..

"Harry Bloomfield" wrote in message
news
Richard pretended :
Try this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/c...in_windows_10/

q
EDIT: The only way I could find to access the keyboard repeat rate is
through Control Panel itself (Start Run "control") Keyboard (you'll
need to change View By to Icons).
/q

Thanks, but zilch to be found..

Dunno what you have managed to do to your system,
its there fine in a clean install of Win10 here.

On Sun, 08 Jul 2018 15:14:47 +0100, "Dave Plowman (News)"
wrote:

snip

But then the first software many of us had to deal with TV wise was
teletext. And that used to frustrate too.

I had a Teletext adaptor for my Spectrum and you could download
programs OTA with it.

Ok, it was a bit like night fishing but interesting none the less. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

On 08/07/18 18:16, Harry Bloomfield wrote:
Richard pretended :
Try this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/c...in_windows_10/


q
EDIT: The only way I could find to access the keyboard repeat rate is
through Control Panel itself (Start Run "control") Keyboard
(you'll need to change View By to Icons).
/q

Thanks, but zilch to be found..

Damn.
One last shot. Have you tried to remove the keyboard from Device Manager?

The old RTFM often can work wonders of course.
Brian

--
----- --
This newsgroup posting comes to you directly from...
The Sofa of Brian Gaff...

Blind user, so no pictures please
Note this Signature is meaningless.!
"T i m" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 8 Jul 2018 08:13:46 +0100, Graeme
wrote:

snip

Google to the rescue. The setting I needed was within the Thompson set
top box, not the TV itself. Reset that, and all is well. Must have had
that box for 15 years, and had no idea it did anything other than
channels. Hey ho.

Being an IT / hardware guy I often check to see if there are any
firmware updates for such things, assuming they don't update
themselves OTA.

A mate gave me quite a good laser printer that he was fed up with
because it kept going to sleep and wouldn't wake up and 'couldn't be
bothered with it' any more.

I checked online and found there was a V1.02 of the firmware and it
was running V1.01. A quick upgrade later and it was fine and I have
been using it (with it sleeping and waking up) ever since.

Also, because we had a Topfield STB from the early days of them I'm
also quite used to upgrading the Taps on that. I believe that defaults
to 4:3 after a factory restore.

Mobile phones and online tablets tend to prompt you that there are OS
/ firmware updates, even if you have to Ok them manually. PC / Laptop
Mobo BIOS's are often way out of date and again, I generally try to
bring them up to date, especially if it's a new-to-me box that I'm
playing with.

Even optical drives can often enjoy a firmware upgrade. ;-)

My thought on it is this ... in most cases upgrading doesn't do any
harm (you can brick stuff though) and sometimes does visible good.
That the manufacturers don't necessarily list all the issues it fixes
and I have seen things fixed when the release notes didn't suggest it
should. The manufacturers / developers wouldn't generally release new
code for 'no reason'.

Cheers, T i m

I'm sure that setting still exists in windows 10. I use windows 7, not
because of this or any other prejudice but I rebel against effectively
having a completely new untested version of Windows installed every half a
year with all the attendant resets of parameters needed and incompatibility
of software already running OK and indeed complete removal of some software
on the excuse you need to buy microsofts new version of office when the old
stuff worked perfectly well till then.
Brian

--
----- --
This newsgroup posting comes to you directly from...
The Sofa of Brian Gaff...

Blind user, so no pictures please
Note this Signature is meaningless.!
"Richard" wrote in message
news
On 08/07/18 10:35, Harry Bloomfield wrote:
Brian Gaff explained :
The inverse is possible though. It seems recent windows 10 drivers for
realtek hardware have introduced a power saving function that switches
the hardware off when its not in use much, but not in use much is set to
seconds, not minutes and there is no way to stop it so a lot of blind
folk are finding that their audio speech is sluggish to start on new
menu items or for clips off the first little bit of words. I understand
the Microsoft are aware of this but most newer labptops have to use the
latest drivers if they use windows 10 since the older ones will only
work on out of date versions of windows 10.

One thing I really miss in W10, is the ability to adjust the keyboard
repeat rate. Whilst editing text, I often have to make my way back along
a line of text, using the cursor keys. The fixed repeat rate makes his
use of the cursor keys very slow indeed, such that it is sometimes
quicker to just point and click with the mouse. Very annoying, unless
anyone has found a way to adjust it?

Not running windows 10here, but:

If you're happy editing the registry -
https://superuser.com/questions/1077...keeps-changing

Or -
https://bltt.org/adjust-windows-keyboard-repeat-rate/

Brian Gaff wrote

I'm sure that setting still exists in windows 10. I use windows 7,

So do I.

not because of this or any other prejudice but I rebel against effectively
having a completely new untested version of Windows installed every half a
year

It’s a lot less often than every half year now.

with all the attendant resets of parameters needed and incompatibility of
software already running OK and indeed complete removal of some software
on the excuse you need to buy microsofts new version of office

I have stuck with 2003, largely because it would be a
massive amount of work to move to the latest access
given that the UI has changed so dramatically.

when the old stuff worked perfectly well till then.

There are a few things Win10 does better,
most obviously with paired windows.

I would use that, but only so I could have Freecell Pro
and notebook paired and may just have another
machine just for that running Win10 so I can keep
running what I use for usenet and access 2003 on Win7

Richard wrote
Harry Bloomfield wrote
Brian Gaff wrote

The inverse is possible though. It seems recent windows 10 drivers for
realtek hardware have introduced a power saving function that switches
the hardware off when its not in use much, but not in use much is set
to seconds, not minutes and there is no way to stop it so a lot of
blind folk are finding that their audio speech is sluggish to start on
new menu items or for clips off the first little bit of words. I
understand the Microsoft are aware of this but most newer labptops have
to use the latest drivers if they use windows 10 since the older ones
will only work on out of date versions of windows 10.

One thing I really miss in W10, is the ability to adjust the keyboard
repeat rate. Whilst editing text, I often have to make my way back along
a line of text, using the cursor keys. The fixed repeat rate makes his
use of the cursor keys very slow indeed, such that it is sometimes
quicker to just point and click with the mouse. Very annoying, unless
anyone has found a way to adjust it?

Not running windows 10here, but:

If you're happy editing the registry -
https://superuser.com/questions/1077...keeps-changing

Or -
https://bltt.org/adjust-windows-keyboard-repeat-rate/

On Monday, 9 July 2018 10:26:10 UTC+1, Rod Speed wrote:
Brian Gaff wrote

I'm sure that setting still exists in windows 10. I use windows 7,

So do I.

Why use an old system I;d have thought with all yuo auto on lights and everything else yuo spend money ona the latest OS would be your default.

Thought you might have a top end PC or Mac.






with all the attendant resets of parameters needed and incompatibility of
software already running OK and indeed complete removal of some software
on the excuse you need to buy microsofts new version of office

I have stuck with 2003,

And you call me a dinosaur. I considering my 2010 mac-mini to be old.


largely because it would be a
massive amount of work to move to the latest access
given that the UI has changed so dramatically.

I guess for you it could cause problems.


when the old stuff worked perfectly well till then.

There are a few things Win10 does better,
most obviously with paired windows.

Security being one of them, but not yet upto mac standard.



I would use that, but only so I could have Freecell Pro
and notebook paired and may just have another
machine just for that running Win10 so I can keep
running what I use for usenet and access 2003 on Win7

Why ?
what's so specail about newsnet that you need software from 2003 ?

whisky-dave wrote
Rod Speed wrote
Brian Gaff wrote

I'm sure that setting still exists in windows 10. I use windows 7,

So do I.

Why use an old system

Because some of the stuff I run every day wont run on Win10.

Same reason as Brian.

I;d have thought with all yuo auto on lights and everything else
yuo spend money ona the latest OS would be your default.

It never is because stupid MS keeps stopping you using
stuff that is included or free with the older OSs of theirs.

In theory you can run a virtual OS for the apps that
wont run on the new OS, but in practice thats not
as good as running the older OS natively.

Thought you might have a top end PC or Mac.

I do machine wise, but not OS wise.

I have been tempted to add a decent Mac to so iOS
apps but havent gotten around to adding one yet.

with all the attendant resets of parameters needed and incompatibility
of software already running OK and indeed complete removal of some
software on the excuse you need to buy microsofts new version of office

I have stuck with 2003,

And you call me a dinosaur. I considering my 2010 mac-mini to be old.

But you stupidly use cash to pay for most stuff in person.

largely because it would be a massive amount
of work to move to the latest access given that
the UI has changed so dramatically.

when the old stuff worked perfectly well till then.

There are a few things Win10 does better,
most obviously with paired windows.

Security being one of them,

The security is fine. You wont be able to get into any of my systems.

but not yet upto mac standard.

My total system wouldnt be any more secure with a Mac and
it would be much worse for usenet and the database stuff.

I would use that, but only so I could have Freecell
Pro and notebook paired and may just have another
machine just for that running Win10 so I can keep
running what I use for usenet and access 2003 on Win7

Why ?
what's so specail about newsnet that you need software from 2003 ?

I dont for that. Its only office that is 2003, stupid.