On Sun, 22 Jul 2018 16:06:53 -0700, OFWW
wrote:

On Sat, 21 Jul 2018 09:12:07 -0500, dpb wrote:

On 7/21/2018 7:56 AM, J. Clarke wrote:
On Thu, 19 Jul 2018 20:48:49 -0700, OFWW
wrote:
...

John, if you are using Win 10 then you can schedule your updates to
update in off hours. Problem is your computer must be on in order for
it to work.

Not on my work machine I can't. That's controlled by the IT
department.

And there are times when we don't _have_ "off hours". There are
programs that take a couple of days to run--if an update decides to
install and dog down the machine, that could turn into a couple of
weeks, and if it decides to force a reboot ten minutes before that
process is done then we've lost two days, against a tight deadline.
...

That's a management problem in IT not being in synch with production --
a common complaint and one I saw all the time in consulting. Sometimes
one could educate upper management and get something done; other times
"not so much", unfortunately. IT departments are extremely good at
using the fear factor to be able to browbeat technically unsophisticated
managers.

What would help me is Microsoft letting me make my own decisions about
what I want to install on my computer.

There's the rub, too -- MS doesn't like the idea that anything is
"yours", whether it's the OS, Office applications, or even the computer
itself. From their viewpoint it's all "theirs".

Unfortunately, the mindset is growing amongst all the other vendors as
well as they see the only way to maintain revenue stream is by forcible
means--once applications are "good enough" there's no incentive to
upgrade so the only recourse is obsolescence or subscription.

Subscription, there's the rub. Nickel and dime you to death, mixed
with promises.

The subscription price is actually quite reasonable for what you get.
5 seats of Office for 10 bucks a month is not bad. There was a time
when you would have paid 2500 bucks for that.

In any case, Windows is not sold by subscription.

On Sun, 22 Jul 2018 16:01:52 -0700, OFWW
wrote:

On Sat, 21 Jul 2018 08:56:50 -0400, J. Clarke
wrote:

On Thu, 19 Jul 2018 20:48:49 -0700, OFWW
wrote:

On Wed, 18 Jul 2018 22:18:54 -0400, J. Clarke
wrote:

On Wed, 18 Jul 2018 12:23:39 -0700, OFWW
wrote:

On Tue, 17 Jul 2018 08:21:00 -0700 (PDT), Bob Davis
wrote:

On Monday, July 16, 2018 at 1:59:13 PM UTC-5, Leon wrote:
On 7/16/2018 10:03 AM, Jack wrote:
On 7/15/2018 11:24 PM, Bill wrote:

Remembering Leon's suggestion to "Make Components" is worth remembering
(or you'll be forever frustrated when trying to change a model--at that
point it's too late).

Yes, that's one of many "Keys" to learning sketchup.* More basic than
that however is nothing is very intuitive and trying to skip around
doesn't work, you must start small and take small steps. Draw a
rectangle with the rectangle tool, size it in the dimension panel.* Push
it into a box, size it, make it a component, etc, etc.

Start small, be patient, and you'll be able to learn how to do
everything.* I used to practice trying to build a 3-d house from scratch
everyday, Then I'd add a door, a window, furniture (from the "component
store), bushes, sidewalk, etc. One you figure it out, you can build
fast.* Take a few months off from it, and you won't be as fast.. ha.
Good luck!

I'll say.* I was really proficient at it but haven't used it in a year
or so.* I recently tried using it and while rusty, the damn app no
longer works correctly.* The select tool takes 30 seconds to make a
selection.* Turns out this problem was common with a WIN 10 update in
2017 (specifically KB4013429)* I'm current at ver. 1803 build 17134.165
and apparently the problem still exists, at least for me.

If one would try to learn SU with this problem occurring, they would
fail miserably before getting off the ground.

NO kidding!

The solution in 2017
appeared to be removing the win update, but it would return when WIN did
it's automatic update.* I haven't figured out the fix, if there is one,
yet.


I know that you can and or could have Windows wait for permission from
you to perform updates, you could look at the updates that were going to
be applied and uncheck the ones that would be a problem, that is how I
prevented Windows from updating my Win 7 to Win 10.

Have you checked with Sketchup?

I do not want to start an operating system war, just throw out some information. I see a post by Jack that there is a fix for the select issue under windows 10. That's great.

I own five personal computers - 2 windows 10, 2 Macbook pro, and 1 Macbook. I do all of my sketchup work on the Macs using the last sketchup make version available for the mac (17.3.116). Knock on wood ... I have never had any issues with any version of sketchup on the Macs. I do not use it on windows.

Both operating systems are fine and well supported.

Bob

Bob, do you use the Apple equivalent of MS Office products?

I've always been a hardcore supporter of Windows from NT up, until
they started with this subscription pricing for their products. Other
vendors are doing the same thing, especially the app's people. I
personally hate it even though I have seen some good things out of it.
Makes it impossible to stay at a certain software level lest you be
open to hacking, virii, or system failures.

So if you could, what are your general thoughts on the Apple/Unix
system other than their outrageous pricing.

I personally am thinking about an Apple or Linux system for various
reasons.

The thing that's going to drive me away from Microsoft is the damned
updates. They don't do beta testing anymore so half the ones that go
out are broken in some way, and they don't give any good way to
schedule them--I'm in the middle of doing something time critical and
the damned computer slows to a crawl as an update installs and then
insists on being rebooted. If this happened once every six months it
would be tolerable, but sometimes it happens several times in the same
week.

One of these days we're going to miss a deadline because of one of the
damned updates and there's going to be Hell to pay--somebody in IT
will get fired for not getting the updates under control and a serious
look will be taken at alternatives to Windows for mission-critical
workers.

John, if you are using Win 10 then you can schedule your updates to
update in off hours. Problem is your computer must be on in order for
it to work.

Not on my work machine I can't. That's controlled by the IT
department.


Oh, sorry, thought you were speaking of your home machine.

And there are times when we don't _have_ "off hours". There are
programs that take a couple of days to run--if an update decides to
install and dog down the machine, that could turn into a couple of
weeks, and if it decides to force a reboot ten minutes before that
process is done then we've lost two days, against a tight deadline.


That certainly constitutes an "OUCH"! Without knowing your work
environment and IT policies, and server availability I can't say
anything more, other than wonder why they don't at least off load that
work to cloud severs with very low costs and no downtime locally.

My department constitutes what is often called "Shadow IT". We do
have a cloud server and we can offload to it, but that becomes a real
dollars leaving the company issue. We aren't allowed a local server
and discussions of offloading the work to an internal company server
generally end up with IT wanting to recode a bunch of stuff that is
working fine and just needs a reliable computer underneath it.

Now as to it hogging your traffic on a large update, I don't know. It
can create communication problems if they both occur at the same time.

It's not just hogging traffic. Every now and then I notice that, for
example, Excel is taking forever to respond. When that happens I
reboot the machine and sure enough it wants to finish updating.


WHOA! I'd be seriously complaining at the next conference meeting.

We've complained, there was a whole huge project to address such
issues. The main result was that IT ran in circles, screamed and
shouted, and then went back to business as usual.

Under win updates you can schedule your active hours.
under advanced update options you can shut off automatically
downloading of updates, with subsequent setup getting ready to reboot
and do the actual install.

My "active hours" at work are the months of June and September.

PLUS, under advanced/advanced options you can even setup how you would
like things to occur, even the downloading of files.

How I would like things to occur is that when I am in a period when I
can afford to have the computer not work, I download and install
updates. That they don't allow unless I block Microsoft in my
firewall.

Biggest drawback to all of this, is not updating your system in a
timely fashion, or skipping daily update checks and be caught with
your pants down when a serious hack is in operation.

When a "serious hack" gets through the network firewall then I'll
worry about it. I have never had a machine that I use hacked. And if
having them behind a cheap Netgear or Linksys firewall provides that
degree of protection then I'm pretty sure that the stuff our IT
department uses provides the same degree of protection.


Given your description of how they do other things, I wouldn't be
counting on it.

Data Security is actually a separate department.

The biggest things you can do to prevent being hacked are to use a
real firewall and don't run in administrator mode. The constant
untested updates are as likely to introduce a vulnerability as to fix
one, or aren't you aware that Windows updates are distributed to most
users at the pre-beta stage?

Hope some of this helps you.

What would help me is Microsoft letting me make my own decisions about
what I want to install on my computer.

Yet you said that was under the control of your IT people.

I don't think the IT people are really doing much about to to tell the
truth. But they have the machines locked down so we don't get to
change settings. I suspect that if I hooked a Linksys firewall
between my computer and the LAN I wouldn't have a job much longer,
although it _is_ tempting.

On Sun, 22 Jul 2018 15:52:25 -0700, OFWW
wrote:

On Sat, 21 Jul 2018 09:04:15 -0400, J. Clarke
wrote:

On Thu, 19 Jul 2018 21:14:43 -0700, OFWW
wrote:

On Thu, 19 Jul 2018 22:54:08 -0400, J. Clarke
wrote:

On Wed, 18 Jul 2018 22:47:55 -0400, Bill wrote:

I accidentally deleted the post, but someone (Jack?) wrote that
he was tired of hardware systems lasting only 3 years.

It seems that systems sold at retail (Best Buy?) are built that
way, so that you come back to replace them. If you assemble your
own, using quality components, you can expect it to have a
lifetime alot longer than 3 years..long enough the you'll
probably be ready to replace the system for other reasons before
it stops. The purchase price will be a bit higher. But you will
also be in a much better position to service it if you want to
upgrade it. I just wanted to mention that this alternative option
is available. I think that once you do it, you'll never again
settle for someone else's choices (in a system).

FWIW, my 200 Mhz Pentium Thinkpad still works fine. It's not really
useful today but it boots and runs. One doesn't have to build a
machine to get quality, one does though have to get a machine that
isn't intended to be a loss-leader.

And it takes a long time for a system to become obsolete due to
inadequate performance today. At work we replaced our 3 year old
laptops with new ones with higher spec and there is no noticeable
difference in performance. Performance improvements have been coming
slowly for a long time--having more gates at the same clockspeed
builds paper performance but you don't see it in the real world unless
you have a process that can be parallelized.

You can really tell the difference when processing, converting, etc.
Graphics, or responses from a db and on large spreadsheets, but most
notable with graphics.

Our old machines had Intel graphics, our new machines have Intel
graphics. If graphics mattered to us we would have nvidia.


Intel does have the option of nice graphics suitable for gamers and
video processing, although my favorite has always been Nvidia.

So Intel claims. Some games can bring a dual 1080ti to its knees. It
isn't just looking nice that matters, it has to be able to render in
realtime.

As for responses from a db and on large spreadsheets, there are times
when we have all cores of the machine running 100% for hours at a
time. We work these machines hard. The only significant performance
gain in our new machines is that they have two more cores than the old
machines--that gets us a performance boost but to get the two more
cores we had to get management approval for the enhanced
configuration--if we had just gone with the ordinary refresh we would
have had the same number of cores as previously.

Are you running your db's and spreadsheets locally?

We aren't running spreadsheets, we're running APL, Python, or C# code.
The spreadsheet is just used to format the output and give us an
easily comprehensible record of the setup.

And yes, we are running locally. What would be the benefit of running
a spreadsheet remotely?

Network I/O is not our bottleneck--we shadow all data to a local solid
state drive before we run.

On Sun, 22 Jul 2018 20:41:47 -0400, J. Clarke
wrote:

On Sun, 22 Jul 2018 16:06:53 -0700, OFWW
wrote:

On Sat, 21 Jul 2018 09:12:07 -0500, dpb wrote:

On 7/21/2018 7:56 AM, J. Clarke wrote:
On Thu, 19 Jul 2018 20:48:49 -0700, OFWW
wrote:
...

John, if you are using Win 10 then you can schedule your updates to
update in off hours. Problem is your computer must be on in order for
it to work.

Not on my work machine I can't. That's controlled by the IT
department.

And there are times when we don't _have_ "off hours". There are
programs that take a couple of days to run--if an update decides to
install and dog down the machine, that could turn into a couple of
weeks, and if it decides to force a reboot ten minutes before that
process is done then we've lost two days, against a tight deadline.
...

That's a management problem in IT not being in synch with production --
a common complaint and one I saw all the time in consulting. Sometimes
one could educate upper management and get something done; other times
"not so much", unfortunately. IT departments are extremely good at
using the fear factor to be able to browbeat technically unsophisticated
managers.

What would help me is Microsoft letting me make my own decisions about
what I want to install on my computer.

There's the rub, too -- MS doesn't like the idea that anything is
"yours", whether it's the OS, Office applications, or even the computer
itself. From their viewpoint it's all "theirs".

Unfortunately, the mindset is growing amongst all the other vendors as
well as they see the only way to maintain revenue stream is by forcible
means--once applications are "good enough" there's no incentive to
upgrade so the only recourse is obsolescence or subscription.

Subscription, there's the rub. Nickel and dime you to death, mixed
with promises.

The subscription price is actually quite reasonable for what you get.
5 seats of Office for 10 bucks a month is not bad. There was a time
when you would have paid 2500 bucks for that.


I've owned MS Office, full product ever since it was made available in
all its shapes, I can not ever remember paying that much.

In any case, Windows is not sold by subscription.

Yes, there are subscription options for it, and has been commercially
for a few years.

I am going to stop with this. I probably went too far even answering
these last two posts today.

On Sun, 22 Jul 2018 20:48:13 -0400, J. Clarke
wrote:

On Sun, 22 Jul 2018 16:01:52 -0700, OFWW
wrote:

On Sat, 21 Jul 2018 08:56:50 -0400, J. Clarke
wrote:

On Thu, 19 Jul 2018 20:48:49 -0700, OFWW
wrote:

On Wed, 18 Jul 2018 22:18:54 -0400, J. Clarke
wrote:

On Wed, 18 Jul 2018 12:23:39 -0700, OFWW
wrote:

On Tue, 17 Jul 2018 08:21:00 -0700 (PDT), Bob Davis
wrote:

On Monday, July 16, 2018 at 1:59:13 PM UTC-5, Leon wrote:
On 7/16/2018 10:03 AM, Jack wrote:
On 7/15/2018 11:24 PM, Bill wrote:

Remembering Leon's suggestion to "Make Components" is worth remembering
(or you'll be forever frustrated when trying to change a model--at that
point it's too late).

Yes, that's one of many "Keys" to learning sketchup.* More basic than
that however is nothing is very intuitive and trying to skip around
doesn't work, you must start small and take small steps. Draw a
rectangle with the rectangle tool, size it in the dimension panel.* Push
it into a box, size it, make it a component, etc, etc.

Start small, be patient, and you'll be able to learn how to do
everything.* I used to practice trying to build a 3-d house from scratch
everyday, Then I'd add a door, a window, furniture (from the "component
store), bushes, sidewalk, etc. One you figure it out, you can build
fast.* Take a few months off from it, and you won't be as fast.. ha.
Good luck!

I'll say.* I was really proficient at it but haven't used it in a year
or so.* I recently tried using it and while rusty, the damn app no
longer works correctly.* The select tool takes 30 seconds to make a
selection.* Turns out this problem was common with a WIN 10 update in
2017 (specifically KB4013429)* I'm current at ver. 1803 build 17134.165
and apparently the problem still exists, at least for me.

If one would try to learn SU with this problem occurring, they would
fail miserably before getting off the ground.

NO kidding!

The solution in 2017
appeared to be removing the win update, but it would return when WIN did
it's automatic update.* I haven't figured out the fix, if there is one,
yet.


I know that you can and or could have Windows wait for permission from
you to perform updates, you could look at the updates that were going to
be applied and uncheck the ones that would be a problem, that is how I
prevented Windows from updating my Win 7 to Win 10.

Have you checked with Sketchup?

I do not want to start an operating system war, just throw out some information. I see a post by Jack that there is a fix for the select issue under windows 10. That's great.

I own five personal computers - 2 windows 10, 2 Macbook pro, and 1 Macbook. I do all of my sketchup work on the Macs using the last sketchup make version available for the mac (17.3.116). Knock on wood ... I have never had any issues with any version of sketchup on the Macs. I do not use it on windows.

Both operating systems are fine and well supported.

Bob

Bob, do you use the Apple equivalent of MS Office products?

I've always been a hardcore supporter of Windows from NT up, until
they started with this subscription pricing for their products. Other
vendors are doing the same thing, especially the app's people. I
personally hate it even though I have seen some good things out of it.
Makes it impossible to stay at a certain software level lest you be
open to hacking, virii, or system failures.

So if you could, what are your general thoughts on the Apple/Unix
system other than their outrageous pricing.

I personally am thinking about an Apple or Linux system for various
reasons.

The thing that's going to drive me away from Microsoft is the damned
updates. They don't do beta testing anymore so half the ones that go
out are broken in some way, and they don't give any good way to
schedule them--I'm in the middle of doing something time critical and
the damned computer slows to a crawl as an update installs and then
insists on being rebooted. If this happened once every six months it
would be tolerable, but sometimes it happens several times in the same
week.

One of these days we're going to miss a deadline because of one of the
damned updates and there's going to be Hell to pay--somebody in IT
will get fired for not getting the updates under control and a serious
look will be taken at alternatives to Windows for mission-critical
workers.

John, if you are using Win 10 then you can schedule your updates to
update in off hours. Problem is your computer must be on in order for
it to work.

Not on my work machine I can't. That's controlled by the IT
department.


Oh, sorry, thought you were speaking of your home machine.

And there are times when we don't _have_ "off hours". There are
programs that take a couple of days to run--if an update decides to
install and dog down the machine, that could turn into a couple of
weeks, and if it decides to force a reboot ten minutes before that
process is done then we've lost two days, against a tight deadline.


That certainly constitutes an "OUCH"! Without knowing your work
environment and IT policies, and server availability I can't say
anything more, other than wonder why they don't at least off load that
work to cloud severs with very low costs and no downtime locally.

My department constitutes what is often called "Shadow IT". We do
have a cloud server and we can offload to it, but that becomes a real
dollars leaving the company issue. We aren't allowed a local server
and discussions of offloading the work to an internal company server
generally end up with IT wanting to recode a bunch of stuff that is
working fine and just needs a reliable computer underneath it.


With the new server systems from MS, free to many, and very low cost
for others who used it a lot, your IT people are behind the eight
ball. Redundancy is part of the product, as are bringing other servers
online as needed. I don't remember all the fine details, as I said
before, I have essentially dropped out of that line of business when I
retired. One of my sons is making use of that so that all my grand
kids can play online games together as a family project.

Now as to it hogging your traffic on a large update, I don't know. It
can create communication problems if they both occur at the same time.

It's not just hogging traffic. Every now and then I notice that, for
example, Excel is taking forever to respond. When that happens I
reboot the machine and sure enough it wants to finish updating.


WHOA! I'd be seriously complaining at the next conference meeting.

We've complained, there was a whole huge project to address such
issues. The main result was that IT ran in circles, screamed and
shouted, and then went back to business as usual.


That is too bad, I feel sorry for you and your fellow employee's.

Under win updates you can schedule your active hours.
under advanced update options you can shut off automatically
downloading of updates, with subsequent setup getting ready to reboot
and do the actual install.

My "active hours" at work are the months of June and September.

PLUS, under advanced/advanced options you can even setup how you would
like things to occur, even the downloading of files.

How I would like things to occur is that when I am in a period when I
can afford to have the computer not work, I download and install
updates. That they don't allow unless I block Microsoft in my
firewall.

Biggest drawback to all of this, is not updating your system in a
timely fashion, or skipping daily update checks and be caught with
your pants down when a serious hack is in operation.

When a "serious hack" gets through the network firewall then I'll
worry about it. I have never had a machine that I use hacked. And if
having them behind a cheap Netgear or Linksys firewall provides that
degree of protection then I'm pretty sure that the stuff our IT
department uses provides the same degree of protection.


Given your description of how they do other things, I wouldn't be
counting on it.

Data Security is actually a separate department.


Hmmm, I can see issues there.

The biggest things you can do to prevent being hacked are to use a
real firewall and don't run in administrator mode. The constant
untested updates are as likely to introduce a vulnerability as to fix
one, or aren't you aware that Windows updates are distributed to most
users at the pre-beta stage?

Hope some of this helps you.

What would help me is Microsoft letting me make my own decisions about
what I want to install on my computer.

Yet you said that was under the control of your IT people.

I don't think the IT people are really doing much about to to tell the
truth. But they have the machines locked down so we don't get to
change settings. I suspect that if I hooked a Linksys firewall
between my computer and the LAN I wouldn't have a job much longer,
although it _is_ tempting.

I have a few hacking tools that can work around that and leave no
tracks, but it is far better to document the issues, dates, and times,
have another job lined up and then present it to the CAO or CEO. If
you can show a profit loss, of high cost associated with IT's way of
doing things I would bet my bottom dollar things would get changed
real fast, or they have family working in that department. IYKWIM

On Sun, 22 Jul 2018 20:59:32 -0400, J. Clarke
wrote:

On Sun, 22 Jul 2018 15:52:25 -0700, OFWW
wrote:

On Sat, 21 Jul 2018 09:04:15 -0400, J. Clarke
wrote:

On Thu, 19 Jul 2018 21:14:43 -0700, OFWW
wrote:

On Thu, 19 Jul 2018 22:54:08 -0400, J. Clarke
wrote:

On Wed, 18 Jul 2018 22:47:55 -0400, Bill wrote:

I accidentally deleted the post, but someone (Jack?) wrote that
he was tired of hardware systems lasting only 3 years.

It seems that systems sold at retail (Best Buy?) are built that
way, so that you come back to replace them. If you assemble your
own, using quality components, you can expect it to have a
lifetime alot longer than 3 years..long enough the you'll
probably be ready to replace the system for other reasons before
it stops. The purchase price will be a bit higher. But you will
also be in a much better position to service it if you want to
upgrade it. I just wanted to mention that this alternative option
is available. I think that once you do it, you'll never again
settle for someone else's choices (in a system).

FWIW, my 200 Mhz Pentium Thinkpad still works fine. It's not really
useful today but it boots and runs. One doesn't have to build a
machine to get quality, one does though have to get a machine that
isn't intended to be a loss-leader.

And it takes a long time for a system to become obsolete due to
inadequate performance today. At work we replaced our 3 year old
laptops with new ones with higher spec and there is no noticeable
difference in performance. Performance improvements have been coming
slowly for a long time--having more gates at the same clockspeed
builds paper performance but you don't see it in the real world unless
you have a process that can be parallelized.

You can really tell the difference when processing, converting, etc.
Graphics, or responses from a db and on large spreadsheets, but most
notable with graphics.

Our old machines had Intel graphics, our new machines have Intel
graphics. If graphics mattered to us we would have nvidia.


Intel does have the option of nice graphics suitable for gamers and
video processing, although my favorite has always been Nvidia.

So Intel claims. Some games can bring a dual 1080ti to its knees. It
isn't just looking nice that matters, it has to be able to render in
realtime.

As for responses from a db and on large spreadsheets, there are times
when we have all cores of the machine running 100% for hours at a
time. We work these machines hard. The only significant performance
gain in our new machines is that they have two more cores than the old
machines--that gets us a performance boost but to get the two more
cores we had to get management approval for the enhanced
configuration--if we had just gone with the ordinary refresh we would
have had the same number of cores as previously.

Are you running your db's and spreadsheets locally?

We aren't running spreadsheets, we're running APL, Python, or C# code.
The spreadsheet is just used to format the output and give us an
easily comprehensible record of the setup.

And yes, we are running locally. What would be the benefit of running
a spreadsheet remotely?


It depends on the use of the spreadsheet.

Network I/O is not our bottleneck--we shadow all data to a local solid
state drive before we run.

On Mon, 23 Jul 2018 16:35:54 -0700, OFWW
wrote:

On Sun, 22 Jul 2018 20:41:47 -0400, J. Clarke
wrote:

On Sun, 22 Jul 2018 16:06:53 -0700, OFWW
wrote:

On Sat, 21 Jul 2018 09:12:07 -0500, dpb wrote:

On 7/21/2018 7:56 AM, J. Clarke wrote:
On Thu, 19 Jul 2018 20:48:49 -0700, OFWW
wrote:
...

John, if you are using Win 10 then you can schedule your updates to
update in off hours. Problem is your computer must be on in order for
it to work.

Not on my work machine I can't. That's controlled by the IT
department.

And there are times when we don't _have_ "off hours". There are
programs that take a couple of days to run--if an update decides to
install and dog down the machine, that could turn into a couple of
weeks, and if it decides to force a reboot ten minutes before that
process is done then we've lost two days, against a tight deadline.
...

That's a management problem in IT not being in synch with production --
a common complaint and one I saw all the time in consulting. Sometimes
one could educate upper management and get something done; other times
"not so much", unfortunately. IT departments are extremely good at
using the fear factor to be able to browbeat technically unsophisticated
managers.

What would help me is Microsoft letting me make my own decisions about
what I want to install on my computer.

There's the rub, too -- MS doesn't like the idea that anything is
"yours", whether it's the OS, Office applications, or even the computer
itself. From their viewpoint it's all "theirs".

Unfortunately, the mindset is growing amongst all the other vendors as
well as they see the only way to maintain revenue stream is by forcible
means--once applications are "good enough" there's no incentive to
upgrade so the only recourse is obsolescence or subscription.

Subscription, there's the rub. Nickel and dime you to death, mixed
with promises.

The subscription price is actually quite reasonable for what you get.
5 seats of Office for 10 bucks a month is not bad. There was a time
when you would have paid 2500 bucks for that.


I've owned MS Office, full product ever since it was made available in
all its shapes, I can not ever remember paying that much.

500 bucks a pop for 5 copies of Office Pro? Don't remember those
days?

In any case, Windows is not sold by subscription.

Yes, there are subscription options for it, and has been commercially
for a few years.

There may be some way to subscribe to it but I don't pay a monthly or
yearly or any other kind of repeating charge for any copy of Windows I
use, and don't know anyone else who does either.

I am going to stop with this. I probably went too far even answering
these last two posts today.

On Mon, 23 Jul 2018 16:55:05 -0700, OFWW
wrote:

On Sun, 22 Jul 2018 20:48:13 -0400, J. Clarke
wrote:

On Sun, 22 Jul 2018 16:01:52 -0700, OFWW
wrote:

On Sat, 21 Jul 2018 08:56:50 -0400, J. Clarke
wrote:

On Thu, 19 Jul 2018 20:48:49 -0700, OFWW
wrote:

On Wed, 18 Jul 2018 22:18:54 -0400, J. Clarke
wrote:

On Wed, 18 Jul 2018 12:23:39 -0700, OFWW
wrote:

On Tue, 17 Jul 2018 08:21:00 -0700 (PDT), Bob Davis
wrote:

On Monday, July 16, 2018 at 1:59:13 PM UTC-5, Leon wrote:
On 7/16/2018 10:03 AM, Jack wrote:
On 7/15/2018 11:24 PM, Bill wrote:

Remembering Leon's suggestion to "Make Components" is worth remembering
(or you'll be forever frustrated when trying to change a model--at that
point it's too late).

Yes, that's one of many "Keys" to learning sketchup.* More basic than
that however is nothing is very intuitive and trying to skip around
doesn't work, you must start small and take small steps. Draw a
rectangle with the rectangle tool, size it in the dimension panel.* Push
it into a box, size it, make it a component, etc, etc.

Start small, be patient, and you'll be able to learn how to do
everything.* I used to practice trying to build a 3-d house from scratch
everyday, Then I'd add a door, a window, furniture (from the "component
store), bushes, sidewalk, etc. One you figure it out, you can build
fast.* Take a few months off from it, and you won't be as fast.. ha.
Good luck!

I'll say.* I was really proficient at it but haven't used it in a year
or so.* I recently tried using it and while rusty, the damn app no
longer works correctly.* The select tool takes 30 seconds to make a
selection.* Turns out this problem was common with a WIN 10 update in
2017 (specifically KB4013429)* I'm current at ver. 1803 build 17134.165
and apparently the problem still exists, at least for me.

If one would try to learn SU with this problem occurring, they would
fail miserably before getting off the ground.

NO kidding!

The solution in 2017
appeared to be removing the win update, but it would return when WIN did
it's automatic update.* I haven't figured out the fix, if there is one,
yet.


I know that you can and or could have Windows wait for permission from
you to perform updates, you could look at the updates that were going to
be applied and uncheck the ones that would be a problem, that is how I
prevented Windows from updating my Win 7 to Win 10.

Have you checked with Sketchup?

I do not want to start an operating system war, just throw out some information. I see a post by Jack that there is a fix for the select issue under windows 10. That's great.

I own five personal computers - 2 windows 10, 2 Macbook pro, and 1 Macbook. I do all of my sketchup work on the Macs using the last sketchup make version available for the mac (17.3.116). Knock on wood ... I have never had any issues with any version of sketchup on the Macs. I do not use it on windows.

Both operating systems are fine and well supported.

Bob

Bob, do you use the Apple equivalent of MS Office products?

I've always been a hardcore supporter of Windows from NT up, until
they started with this subscription pricing for their products. Other
vendors are doing the same thing, especially the app's people. I
personally hate it even though I have seen some good things out of it.
Makes it impossible to stay at a certain software level lest you be
open to hacking, virii, or system failures.

So if you could, what are your general thoughts on the Apple/Unix
system other than their outrageous pricing.

I personally am thinking about an Apple or Linux system for various
reasons.

The thing that's going to drive me away from Microsoft is the damned
updates. They don't do beta testing anymore so half the ones that go
out are broken in some way, and they don't give any good way to
schedule them--I'm in the middle of doing something time critical and
the damned computer slows to a crawl as an update installs and then
insists on being rebooted. If this happened once every six months it
would be tolerable, but sometimes it happens several times in the same
week.

One of these days we're going to miss a deadline because of one of the
damned updates and there's going to be Hell to pay--somebody in IT
will get fired for not getting the updates under control and a serious
look will be taken at alternatives to Windows for mission-critical
workers.

John, if you are using Win 10 then you can schedule your updates to
update in off hours. Problem is your computer must be on in order for
it to work.

Not on my work machine I can't. That's controlled by the IT
department.


Oh, sorry, thought you were speaking of your home machine.

And there are times when we don't _have_ "off hours". There are
programs that take a couple of days to run--if an update decides to
install and dog down the machine, that could turn into a couple of
weeks, and if it decides to force a reboot ten minutes before that
process is done then we've lost two days, against a tight deadline.


That certainly constitutes an "OUCH"! Without knowing your work
environment and IT policies, and server availability I can't say
anything more, other than wonder why they don't at least off load that
work to cloud severs with very low costs and no downtime locally.

My department constitutes what is often called "Shadow IT". We do
have a cloud server and we can offload to it, but that becomes a real
dollars leaving the company issue. We aren't allowed a local server
and discussions of offloading the work to an internal company server
generally end up with IT wanting to recode a bunch of stuff that is
working fine and just needs a reliable computer underneath it.


With the new server systems from MS, free to many, and very low cost
for others who used it a lot, your IT people are behind the eight
ball. Redundancy is part of the product, as are bringing other servers
online as needed. I don't remember all the fine details, as I said
before, I have essentially dropped out of that line of business when I
retired. One of my sons is making use of that so that all my grand
kids can play online games together as a family project.

"Free to many" does not include Fortune 100. We pay. Whether it's
Microsoft, Google, or Amazon, when we run a server with a heavy load
it's dollars out the door.

Understand, we're not some hole in the wall. We have assets under
management that exceed the GDP of several European nations.

Now as to it hogging your traffic on a large update, I don't know. It
can create communication problems if they both occur at the same time.

It's not just hogging traffic. Every now and then I notice that, for
example, Excel is taking forever to respond. When that happens I
reboot the machine and sure enough it wants to finish updating.


WHOA! I'd be seriously complaining at the next conference meeting.

We've complained, there was a whole huge project to address such
issues. The main result was that IT ran in circles, screamed and
shouted, and then went back to business as usual.


That is too bad, I feel sorry for you and your fellow employee's.

Under win updates you can schedule your active hours.
under advanced update options you can shut off automatically
downloading of updates, with subsequent setup getting ready to reboot
and do the actual install.

My "active hours" at work are the months of June and September.

PLUS, under advanced/advanced options you can even setup how you would
like things to occur, even the downloading of files.

How I would like things to occur is that when I am in a period when I
can afford to have the computer not work, I download and install
updates. That they don't allow unless I block Microsoft in my
firewall.

Biggest drawback to all of this, is not updating your system in a
timely fashion, or skipping daily update checks and be caught with
your pants down when a serious hack is in operation.

When a "serious hack" gets through the network firewall then I'll
worry about it. I have never had a machine that I use hacked. And if
having them behind a cheap Netgear or Linksys firewall provides that
degree of protection then I'm pretty sure that the stuff our IT
department uses provides the same degree of protection.


Given your description of how they do other things, I wouldn't be
counting on it.

Data Security is actually a separate department.


Hmmm, I can see issues there.

The biggest things you can do to prevent being hacked are to use a
real firewall and don't run in administrator mode. The constant
untested updates are as likely to introduce a vulnerability as to fix
one, or aren't you aware that Windows updates are distributed to most
users at the pre-beta stage?

Hope some of this helps you.

What would help me is Microsoft letting me make my own decisions about
what I want to install on my computer.

Yet you said that was under the control of your IT people.

I don't think the IT people are really doing much about to to tell the
truth. But they have the machines locked down so we don't get to
change settings. I suspect that if I hooked a Linksys firewall
between my computer and the LAN I wouldn't have a job much longer,
although it _is_ tempting.

I have a few hacking tools that can work around that and leave no
tracks, but it is far better to document the issues, dates, and times,
have another job lined up and then present it to the CAO or CEO. If
you can show a profit loss, of high cost associated with IT's way of
doing things I would bet my bottom dollar things would get changed
real fast, or they have family working in that department. IYKWIM

They fired the IT manager last year. The new guy doesn't seem to be a
huge improvement though.

And we have the kind of management that never learns. 20 years ago
they hired a consulting firm that was going to move all of our
products onto their wonderful new platform. A few million dollars
later they had one product moved. Ten years ago the same. Now we're
going through another round of it.

On Mon, 23 Jul 2018 21:59:33 -0400, J. Clarke
wrote:

On Mon, 23 Jul 2018 16:55:05 -0700, OFWW
wrote:

On Sun, 22 Jul 2018 20:48:13 -0400, J. Clarke
wrote:

On Sun, 22 Jul 2018 16:01:52 -0700, OFWW
wrote:

On Sat, 21 Jul 2018 08:56:50 -0400, J. Clarke
wrote:

On Thu, 19 Jul 2018 20:48:49 -0700, OFWW
wrote:

On Wed, 18 Jul 2018 22:18:54 -0400, J. Clarke
wrote:

On Wed, 18 Jul 2018 12:23:39 -0700, OFWW
wrote:

On Tue, 17 Jul 2018 08:21:00 -0700 (PDT), Bob Davis
wrote:

On Monday, July 16, 2018 at 1:59:13 PM UTC-5, Leon wrote:
On 7/16/2018 10:03 AM, Jack wrote:
On 7/15/2018 11:24 PM, Bill wrote:

Remembering Leon's suggestion to "Make Components" is worth remembering
(or you'll be forever frustrated when trying to change a model--at that
point it's too late).

Yes, that's one of many "Keys" to learning sketchup.* More basic than
that however is nothing is very intuitive and trying to skip around
doesn't work, you must start small and take small steps. Draw a
rectangle with the rectangle tool, size it in the dimension panel.* Push
it into a box, size it, make it a component, etc, etc.

Start small, be patient, and you'll be able to learn how to do
everything.* I used to practice trying to build a 3-d house from scratch
everyday, Then I'd add a door, a window, furniture (from the "component
store), bushes, sidewalk, etc. One you figure it out, you can build
fast.* Take a few months off from it, and you won't be as fast.. ha.
Good luck!

I'll say.* I was really proficient at it but haven't used it in a year
or so.* I recently tried using it and while rusty, the damn app no
longer works correctly.* The select tool takes 30 seconds to make a
selection.* Turns out this problem was common with a WIN 10 update in
2017 (specifically KB4013429)* I'm current at ver. 1803 build 17134.165
and apparently the problem still exists, at least for me.

If one would try to learn SU with this problem occurring, they would
fail miserably before getting off the ground.

NO kidding!

The solution in 2017
appeared to be removing the win update, but it would return when WIN did
it's automatic update.* I haven't figured out the fix, if there is one,
yet.


I know that you can and or could have Windows wait for permission from
you to perform updates, you could look at the updates that were going to
be applied and uncheck the ones that would be a problem, that is how I
prevented Windows from updating my Win 7 to Win 10.

Have you checked with Sketchup?

I do not want to start an operating system war, just throw out some information. I see a post by Jack that there is a fix for the select issue under windows 10. That's great.

I own five personal computers - 2 windows 10, 2 Macbook pro, and 1 Macbook. I do all of my sketchup work on the Macs using the last sketchup make version available for the mac (17.3.116). Knock on wood ... I have never had any issues with any version of sketchup on the Macs. I do not use it on windows.

Both operating systems are fine and well supported.

Bob

Bob, do you use the Apple equivalent of MS Office products?

I've always been a hardcore supporter of Windows from NT up, until
they started with this subscription pricing for their products. Other
vendors are doing the same thing, especially the app's people. I
personally hate it even though I have seen some good things out of it.
Makes it impossible to stay at a certain software level lest you be
open to hacking, virii, or system failures.

So if you could, what are your general thoughts on the Apple/Unix
system other than their outrageous pricing.

I personally am thinking about an Apple or Linux system for various
reasons.

The thing that's going to drive me away from Microsoft is the damned
updates. They don't do beta testing anymore so half the ones that go
out are broken in some way, and they don't give any good way to
schedule them--I'm in the middle of doing something time critical and
the damned computer slows to a crawl as an update installs and then
insists on being rebooted. If this happened once every six months it
would be tolerable, but sometimes it happens several times in the same
week.

One of these days we're going to miss a deadline because of one of the
damned updates and there's going to be Hell to pay--somebody in IT
will get fired for not getting the updates under control and a serious
look will be taken at alternatives to Windows for mission-critical
workers.

John, if you are using Win 10 then you can schedule your updates to
update in off hours. Problem is your computer must be on in order for
it to work.

Not on my work machine I can't. That's controlled by the IT
department.


Oh, sorry, thought you were speaking of your home machine.

And there are times when we don't _have_ "off hours". There are
programs that take a couple of days to run--if an update decides to
install and dog down the machine, that could turn into a couple of
weeks, and if it decides to force a reboot ten minutes before that
process is done then we've lost two days, against a tight deadline.


That certainly constitutes an "OUCH"! Without knowing your work
environment and IT policies, and server availability I can't say
anything more, other than wonder why they don't at least off load that
work to cloud severs with very low costs and no downtime locally.

My department constitutes what is often called "Shadow IT". We do
have a cloud server and we can offload to it, but that becomes a real
dollars leaving the company issue. We aren't allowed a local server
and discussions of offloading the work to an internal company server
generally end up with IT wanting to recode a bunch of stuff that is
working fine and just needs a reliable computer underneath it.


With the new server systems from MS, free to many, and very low cost
for others who used it a lot, your IT people are behind the eight
ball. Redundancy is part of the product, as are bringing other servers
online as needed. I don't remember all the fine details, as I said
before, I have essentially dropped out of that line of business when I
retired. One of my sons is making use of that so that all my grand
kids can play online games together as a family project.

"Free to many" does not include Fortune 100. We pay. Whether it's
Microsoft, Google, or Amazon, when we run a server with a heavy load
it's dollars out the door.

Understand, we're not some hole in the wall. We have assets under
management that exceed the GDP of several European nations.


I'd bet a dollar against a nickel that some of the IT staff is
playing/using these servers for projects both personal and
professionally.

These servers, while free to many, do have a structured tier marketing
setup. It is very tempting.

Now as to it hogging your traffic on a large update, I don't know. It
can create communication problems if they both occur at the same time.

It's not just hogging traffic. Every now and then I notice that, for
example, Excel is taking forever to respond. When that happens I
reboot the machine and sure enough it wants to finish updating.


WHOA! I'd be seriously complaining at the next conference meeting.

We've complained, there was a whole huge project to address such
issues. The main result was that IT ran in circles, screamed and
shouted, and then went back to business as usual.


That is too bad, I feel sorry for you and your fellow employee's.

Under win updates you can schedule your active hours.
under advanced update options you can shut off automatically
downloading of updates, with subsequent setup getting ready to reboot
and do the actual install.

My "active hours" at work are the months of June and September.

PLUS, under advanced/advanced options you can even setup how you would
like things to occur, even the downloading of files.

How I would like things to occur is that when I am in a period when I
can afford to have the computer not work, I download and install
updates. That they don't allow unless I block Microsoft in my
firewall.

Biggest drawback to all of this, is not updating your system in a
timely fashion, or skipping daily update checks and be caught with
your pants down when a serious hack is in operation.

When a "serious hack" gets through the network firewall then I'll
worry about it. I have never had a machine that I use hacked. And if
having them behind a cheap Netgear or Linksys firewall provides that
degree of protection then I'm pretty sure that the stuff our IT
department uses provides the same degree of protection.


Given your description of how they do other things, I wouldn't be
counting on it.

Data Security is actually a separate department.


Hmmm, I can see issues there.

The biggest things you can do to prevent being hacked are to use a
real firewall and don't run in administrator mode. The constant
untested updates are as likely to introduce a vulnerability as to fix
one, or aren't you aware that Windows updates are distributed to most
users at the pre-beta stage?

Hope some of this helps you.

What would help me is Microsoft letting me make my own decisions about
what I want to install on my computer.

Yet you said that was under the control of your IT people.

I don't think the IT people are really doing much about to to tell the
truth. But they have the machines locked down so we don't get to
change settings. I suspect that if I hooked a Linksys firewall
between my computer and the LAN I wouldn't have a job much longer,
although it _is_ tempting.

I have a few hacking tools that can work around that and leave no
tracks, but it is far better to document the issues, dates, and times,
have another job lined up and then present it to the CAO or CEO. If
you can show a profit loss, of high cost associated with IT's way of
doing things I would bet my bottom dollar things would get changed
real fast, or they have family working in that department. IYKWIM

They fired the IT manager last year. The new guy doesn't seem to be a
huge improvement though.

And we have the kind of management that never learns. 20 years ago
they hired a consulting firm that was going to move all of our
products onto their wonderful new platform. A few million dollars
later they had one product moved. Ten years ago the same. Now we're
going through another round of it.

Hope you can ride it through. I've seen that happen on many occasions,
with the same results. Sad to hear the same games still being played
out even after having left that arena years ago.