Windows 10

[MancMike]

Fascinating reply for a non IT guy, i-CONICA, thank you. I hope I'd be forgiven for thinking that with MS dominating the internet for people like myself all these years, I'd assumed the were proprietorial in industry standards, so who sets these?

For domain names, it's ICANN, a non-profit (Internet corp for assigned names and numbers).

For web coding standards, it's W3. The world wide web consortium, founded by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, no less.
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
The World Wide Web Consortium is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web.

 

[MD5]

For domain names, it's ICANN, a non-profit (Internet corp for assigned names and numbers).

For web coding standards, it's W3. The world wide web consortium, founded by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, no less.
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
The World Wide Web Consortium is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web.

I did wonder if it would have been Sir Tim!

Next question, if you don't mind! Given the way the internet and search engines work, and with ICANN in mind, if I wanted to create a website (not so much) or domain name (more so) for an email address, is there any one turn to provider/supplier/what have you I should consider for such? I don't want to pay the dearest outfit that are clever enough to get to the top of a Google search!!

 

[MancMike]

You've mentioned a few things here;

A website costs the money it takes to pay someone to make it for you.

It'll need hosting on a server, which is a monthly or yearly cost anywhere from a few quid a month upwards. (I have a customer who pays £6/month, it's a bit sluggish, but works (most of the time). I personally pay £~100/month for a powerful dedicated server, and at work we pay in the region of £35k/year.

A domain name you can buy from any provider. ICANN is the authority on the conventions, but you'd buy a domain name from a domain name registrar, like nominet, or use any one of the countless resellers and providers such as 123-reg or domain.com.

A domain name will cost you anywhere from £3 a year to £~30/year. If it's already taken and up for sale then it's auction time and you'll pay what it's worth or valued at.

The last thing you're talking about is SEO (Search engine optimisation). That's another in-depth subject, but there's a wealth of reading material to learn more about it.

If you're just after a domain for a professional looking email address, like [email protected] then you'd probably want a website too. So just buy the domain name and use email forwarding to your regular email address for now. Or use Gmail with your domain name, so Gmail is the email provider but uses your domain name for the address. If you get cheap hosting too, then you can set up emails properly on that, but it all starts with a domain name.

 

[Dryce]

I must be in the minority in finding Win 8.1 a stable and easy OS. The charms bar is novelty only and serves no useful purpose as far as I can see.

I look at my use of desktops and laptops and really Win 8 offers nothing of tangible benefit over what they could of offered with an updated Win XP.

IMO the interface changes of Win8 have been more of an impediment than an an enabler.

 

[MD5]

You've mentioned a few things here;

And thanks for taking your time with a very helpful reply. It's something I want to do for a seasonal business, so I won't need anything heavy duty, but I do want domain names etc.

Thanks again.

 

[HughSurrey]

I am a fan of W8.1, run it on several machines and my phone. Not looking to rush into W10 until they have sorted out the inevitable teething problems, and probably not even then.

 

[grober]

Whether you should adopt WINDOWS 10 may depend on you accepting the premise that ---because something's new --- its necessarily better ---OR--- its simply a new set of problems to overcome.

 

[grober]

Another thing to look at very carefully is the hardware of your present computer--- processor memory etc. New operating systems are often resource hungry as software script kiddies get new toys to play with they tend to fill up available capacity with "stuff" The result is that older hardware cannot always utilise all the facilities newer software has to offer.

 

[MancMike]

script kiddies

That's not what the term "script kiddie" means, but your point is valid. As the populus moves onto faster hardware, OSs can get more advanced and be "doing more" - but that sucks for those still on older hardware. It's not a problem, as it's just that - that encourages people to invest in later hardware.

 

[John]

I must admit, I am sceptical about how MS intend to make money from Windows 10.

OK, they intend to charge for it after a year but I wonder which direction this will take users who move on to it.

Apparently, this will be the last Windows called Windows <insert number here> and will be just Windows with more frequent major updates like MAC OS X - albeit probably a subscription service instead of buying it outright each time.

OSaaS, sort of, I guess!

 

[Dryce]

As the populus moves onto faster hardware, OSs can get more advanced and be "doing more" - but that sucks for those still on older hardware. It's not a problem, as it's just that - that encourages people to invest in later hardware.

There's been very little real advance in terms of what an OS actually delivers to the customer over the last few iterations.

I have often said that modern computers seem very slow - all those cores and GHz but often little actual productivity enhancement.

One of the things that gets mixed up with Windows is the OS and the UI and anciliary services. It's hard to improve the underlying stuff that is the real OS. But there's an awful lot to tinker with and 'improve' with the UI - and for a lot of people Windows UI is the OS. And they always seem to find a way to clog up the system with more services.

I don't buy faster hardware because of the OS - but because I want things like Photoshop and Lightroom and Word and browser rendering to work better because I'm processing more information. If the OS demands more hardware then it's failing because it's competing with my applications for the hardware resources.

 

[Dryce]

I must admit, I am sceptical about how MS intend to make money from Windows 10.

Back in the late 1700s and 1800s the British Government didn't always want to expand the empire just for its own sake.

But they were in competition with the likes of the Dutch and French so you grabbed stuff and incurred costs to block your competition rather than because you really wanted it.

I suspect that a lot of the motivation behind Windows 10 is about holding and denying territory to the competition over the longer term.