Very nice shot.

Ah, good. There are several fraudulent companies that come up if you search for Microsoft support that have nothing at all to do with Microsoft.

I've been using Windows 10 since October 2014 and had absolutely zero issues with it.

Microsoft does not sell anything called a "tech help package" - are you SURE that you were talking to Microsoft?

That letter is worth less than the paper it will be written on.

If you have automatic updates turned on, then Windows 10 will be selected as an update, and since YOU agreed to turn on automatic updates, there is NOTHING you can do about it. You can turn off automatic updates, but that does not incur any liability on MS for updates that were installed prior to you turning automatic updates off.

Ignorance of how a software package works does not create a liability for the distributor of that software package.

Wishing it so does not make it "criminal behavior." In reality, you do not own your copy of Windows, MS does. They have merely granted you a license to use it. Your refusal to use it in accordance with that license makes YOU the law breaker, not MS.

Think about this from the viewpoint of the forum owner.

When you post your image on a forum, you have posted that image on the property of the forum owner, and when you do so you are agreeing to all of the terms of the forum owner.

Don't like the terms that the forum owner has stipulated? Then don't post your image. Why should the forum owner need to bend to your whim?

Start your own forum and make your own rules.

I have the Sigma 18-250mm f3.5-6.3 DC MACRO OS HSM on my D7200 and it's been a wonderful lens. It's about $350 at Amazon.

"It's no surprise that the RX10 III features a solid video specification, offering 4K video from 1.7X oversampled, full pixel readout without binning."

RAM is NOT causing your system pinwheel for 5-15 minutes. Are you getting out-of-RAM or out-of-memory errors in Photoshop? If not, then lack of RAM is not your issue AT ALL.

An external HD is GUARANTEED to slow down overall disk access, and being an Apple Certified Support Professional (ACSP) I would bet money that your problem is related to the external HD in some way (Drive going bad, plugged into a port that is going bad, bad cable, etc.)

Have you used the Efficiency Indicator to see how well Photoshop is performing? Have you checked how much of your RAM is allocated to Photoshop? Cache levels? History states? Purged memory? Purged clipboard?

Here's a good place to start AFTER you get the issue with your external HD resolved -

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/optimize-photoshop-cc-performance.html

THIS is the most useful answer I've read in this thread.

A bad photographer with the absolute best camera/lens combination is still a bad photographer. A good photographer with a mediocre camera/lens combination is still a good photographer.

If the HUMAN cannot utilize the tools properly, how much they spend on them, nor the specifications of the tools, make a damn bit of difference.

99% of people cannot tell a difference between a properly composed and shot image with a $400 lens and a properly composed and shot image with a $10,000 lens. It's the same idiocracy that makes people believe that a $500 digital cable is better than a $10 digital cable.

Excellent to see a fellow photographer thinking about the greater good of society while simultaneously honing his craft. I'm certain that you made an impression on this young couple that they will talk about the rest of their lives.

My dog in the fight started with YOUR STATEMENT "brain dead users" so take a long, hard look in the mirror to find the genesis of my response.

Calling people names such as "brain dead" is cyber bullying (I doubt that you would call someone such a name to their face), and I will call you out every single time you commit such an act.

Making such statements proves that you are borderline narcissistic and believe that you are superior to others. (And before you enquire as to my qualifications for making such a statement, my FIRST master's degree is in development psychology, my SECOND master's degree is in software design and programming.)

EVERY program that uses catalogs uses databases and record locks, so your point is moot. The method used by software such as iTunes and Windows Media Player works PERFECTLY for the MILLIONS OF USERS of those products, so there is zero rationale for Adobe to be different.

I happen to be a computer programmer, so I know EXACTLY what I am talking about. MOST software that uses any sort of collection system (iTunes, Windows Media Player are two examples) simply PROMPTS THE USER "Do you want to remove this file from the library or delete it permanently" THAT IS CALLED INTELLIGENT PROGRAMMING.

Your statement "and it prevents brain dead users from doing just what the OP did" is nonsensical and delusional, since if "and it prevents brain dead users from doing just what the OP did" then HOW did the OP do it? It PREVENTED NOTHING, and CAUSED A GREATER LOSS.

Feel free to continue your pathological defense of Adobe, thinking people can see that you are merely emotionally attached to an inanimate object, which is a pathological condition in it's own right.

It makes zero sense that you cannot delete a file via a pointer to that file. It's lazy programming plain and simple. Since the collection knows where to find that file based upon the pointer that it created, it can easily perform any file action on that photo. This is not a feature, it's called crap programming.

BTW - EVERY TIME you click on a filename on a computer, you are clicking on a POINTER FILE. That filename is NOT the file, it's a pointer that says "Go to this sector and read the xxx bytes back." Based upon this REALITY of computer science, Adobe's decision to not allow deleting files from a collection is pure BS.

That statement makes absolutely zero logical sense.

That is a spot-on assessment.