Totally agree with you, Pete (and the others too).
The one silver lining of VB6 dying was that I was just about to migrate from QuickBasic 7.1 to VB6, when VB6 was dropped. So while looking around for options, and using DOSbox as a temporary workaround (big performance hit), I discovered QB64.
And not just that. But the one most important computer model I developed in QuickBasic worked first time, no problems, graphics included. Damn that was great! I really had my fingers crossed. Some other programs were slightly less successful, but I managed to fix all the glitches quickly enough. (Since then, most of these have been updated to use QB64 features, so there's no going back.)
M$ used to have a really good Windows Media Center, in Windows 7, and then they became thoroughly incompetent with media, in Win10. It's amazing. They even sold (maybe still do) some sort of DVD Player in the Windows Store, and it doesn't even work! At least, not for most copyrighted material. I'd be embarrassed working there, honestly.
Ditto with Windows Live Mail. It was a very decent e-mail client, where instead, Win10 Mail is amazingly primitive. I realize you can continue to use Live Mail, but when it's dropped from the menu, sooner or later, it won't work.
I like Win10 well enough, although I have to say, some changes were quite obviously made "just for the sake of change." It's just hard to understand how M$ can deliberately show this new level of incompetence, for things like media and mail. Like they don't matter, or people don't use any of it. Pretty dumbass, if you ask me.
I guess most people know this. VLC Player is very good, for playing CDs and DVDs. They must have very good decoders, because CDs sound great. Better than they do with the Windows Media Player, last time I did a test. And VLC Player was recently updated to work with 4K monitors and High Dynamic Range (HDR). So, easy workaround.
