The woes of Windows 10
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I will say thinking about it that my computer used for 99.99% gaming/internet/text documents. I keep anticipating that something is going to go horribly wrong but so far it's been great.
I hate the menu and store that it shows so almost everything I tend to open has a shortcut on the desktop or is pinned to the toolbar.
Having a functional toolbar on both monitors. That right there was all I wished windows 7 would do but otherwise I can barely tell that the OS is different.
I never used windows 8 so I don't have a comparison to that but I've seen Windows ME...
I just don't like it. It's not about visual design. I couldn't care less about flat design vs windows 7 menus, etc. But it is functionally really bad.
And I know this one has been done to death, but the privacy issue really is a major one - it seems to have expanded so much since the Win 7 days. There are several pages of scary privacy things to untick when installing Win 10, and then some optional ones are still enabled after you untick everything, so you've then got 16 (sixteen!) pages of privacy options in the control panel to check after install.
Start menu search seems slower and the returned results are worse than in Windows 7, Unity, XFCE, or any alternative I've experienced. Searching "irefox" doesn't find Firefox. Maybe it's because I've disabled a number of privacy-sensitive features in Windows 10, but Windows 7 managed to make this work without spying on me.
The lengths they go through to push Edge irk me quite a bit: tagging it "Microsoft Recommended Browser", adding an extra scare prompt when you switch away from it in the control panel, resetting it to default status as part of automatic updates. I've seen screenshots of a popup appearing on the task bar begging the user to switch to edge, but haven't experienced this myself.
This is one of the things when they announced was going to be a big part of Windows 10 I knew would turn a lot of people off. I used it sparingly on my WP8, and it was hit or miss most of the time with searches.
For instance, I always look for pizza places when I'm in a new city. I was in a new city and had some recommendations from clients. I asked Cortana like five times onmy WP8 and every time she would get it wrong or think I was saying something else. On my Android? One time, nailed it.
Also, the desktop integration is down right invasive compared to how the mobile version worked. I don't really use it at all anyways on my desktop, its not very accurate and my app launcher (executor: executor.dk) works way faster anyways for a majority of stuff I'm looking for.
This should be in the dictionary to illustrate the phrase "Damning with faint praise."
My computer has changed to be not comparable to those previous though because I now have a nice GPU, a nice CPU, and a SSD. So any speed improvements, graphic improvements, etc are skewed by the hardware changes I've made since.
I didn't turn off anything except the privacy that I could. It's just that I don't have a use case for most of the features (yet).
I don't go to my computer and think "oh great, I get to use Windows" (or Linux or any other OS), I'm there to run some application.
If Windows didn't arbitrarily send data to their servers, I might use the built in calendar or contacts. It feels like they want me to give up my privacy and they are offering nothing in return.
Memory pressure from 10 was lower than 7.
If you aren't paranoid (and completely understand why some people are) about the security possibilities, cortana is actually pretty nice too. And as they slowly tie it into xbox and their other platforms it will just become that much more useful. Virtual desktop support is finally there.
I mean, outside of that, what were you expecting from Windows? It's the most widely used desktop on the planet... it's not like there were any major feature gaps that were just deal breakers.
Those are some of the things that I find most annoying. I don't want my OS tied into other platforms. I don't want a local search to also be an online search. I don't want a file search to also be a Windows Store search. I don't want a dozen opportunities to link my local user account to be connected to my Windows Live ID. I want the OS to provide a convenient environment to run my software in, and no more.
WSL is cool, and I'd like it on my Windows 7 machine. It's a lot nicer to use than Cygwin, and it's enough that I'm not planning on setting up my Win10 netbook to dual boot Linux. The generally lower memory requirement is nice too. Other than that, 10 feels a lot like 7 with more things that I want to disable but can't.
I don't use an online id for logging in and use this tool to fix privacy settings: https://modzero.github.io/fix-windows-privacy/ (read the fine print, it's quite invasive!) there are powershell scripts for cleaning the start menu - I don't have a link handy, sorry.
After doing this it's a great system! Even Edge is somewhat usable if you install uBlock Origin (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/p/ublock-origin/9nblgg...)
However most regular users are stuck with the shiny and annonying defaults that make you feel you handed over your machine to Microsoft to show you annoying ads.
Really!
But attaching things there is nice. Even better than the KDE menu.
My workflow for a decade or more was to hit the Windows key then start typing to find indexed apps. It's almost useless to me now and I don't really get why.
I can't remember if its on or off by default (If its off then I switched it on long ago and can't remember) but on my setup with the option on (settings -> Personalization -> Start -> Show app list in Start Menu. Just in case it is turn off by default) I get a scrolling list on the left hand side of the start menu under "Most Used" (I have show recently added apps turned off) that feels like it behaves just like all programs has on <= 7 (Only briefly used 8 and I replaced its start menu with Classic Shell when I did) in that if during install you have the option to "add program to start menu" it appears in the start menu.
<EDIT> Here's a screen shot of what it looks like when I press the start button - http://i.imgur.com/0VdDm7v.jpg </EDIT>
Just like <= 7 (and presuming 8) its just a folder full of short cuts ("%programdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu") to the apps launchers/uninstallers/config/help/etc that you have installed.
What I do find annoying compared to <=7 is the ability to right click and just remove things from the list (perhaps its an option in group policies and I've just not found it, tbh I've not looked) without going to the folder I included above and deleting the shortcut.
I'm super happy with it.
Hah. You're lucky your Cortana bar still works. They aren't as easy to find when your Cortana bar disappears when you click it. Tried all the random fixes on the internet to no avail. I never even tried to fix privacy concerns -- it just broke.
Since I've typed out a small list of my problems with Win 10 before, they are here to read: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13418573
But frustration comes from the fact that Win 10 is just so random. I've had two installations (the second after the loss of my primary HDD). The first was great, it just worked. The second however keeps doing things I don't want.
- Initial installation immediately downloading video driver during initial updates, locking me for hours from installing the correct Nvidia driver. So I was sitting there in the default low resolution unable to really do anything.
- Disabled the annoying language bar? It'll be back tomorrow.
- Disabled fast boot (which causes my pc to shut down on startup every second startup)? It'll be back next week.
There's a number of other smaller things as well. Overall I don't hate it, I just wish it would stop trying to mess with itself/me.
But, honestly, comparing to something like Windows NT 4.0, I can't really say, why Windows 10 is better. There might be tiny things here and there, but overall experience is similar. The only Windows releases I remember were those particularly bad (Vista, 8) and those, which accumulated large userbase (XP, 7). Other than that, I don't see much progress. If Windows NT 4.0 would be supported today on current hardware and software, I'm not sure if I would use anything else. It was good enough.
May be those only my memories, I don't know.
Beyond that Windows NT's interface is just perfect. And TBH none of the above are really essential, just small quality of life things. But even without those i'd be fine.
I think modern Windows add too many little distractions with icons, notifications/popups, gadgets, etc everywhere.
Also the classic theme. I want that back. I run Win7 with the classic theme and Windows 9x/NT4 color scheme (the one with the soft light in the 3d elements, not the "Windows Classic" in 2K/XP/Vista/7 which lacks it - i had to import the colors through a reg file from NT to get them) and i like how it looks. I used Win8 and Win8.1 for a while and ran a hack that disabled theme files (which forced Windows to fallback to the classic theme) but that broke Metro/UWP apps. It wasn't an issue with Win8.x but Win10 uses UWP apps everywhere and it becomes unusable. It might sound a frivolous reason, but i reverted back to Win7 because i don't like how newer Windows look like.
Since i don't expect Microsoft to do any of the above, my long term plan is to make my own environment that looks like Windows NT 4 in Linux :-P.
This is practically a fresh install. I have Office 365 installed, but very little else. I don't even have a mail client set up.
I dual-boot to Ubuntu on the same machine, and the latter is perfectly usable.
So, while I don't doubt your story, I can't help thinking that it may not represent the general experience.(Maybe I'm just lucky, though.)
8GB with even a several years old CPU should be perfectly usable. SSD is absolutely required though. No number of cores and gigs will compensate for the lack of ssd.
Not a fan of the UI changes, or the advertising. If I didn't buy Office 365 every other day for the last year, what are the odds your popup will get me to buy today?
Windows 10 cannot work on a hard drive?
In a way, it makes sense: when my father upgraded from Seven to W10, W10 never worked properly and killed the hard drive in a matter of 3 days.
I fully agree with you, though. An SSD this day and age is mandatory.
I think Windows 10 can be a really nice OS, considering MS would stop with the telemetry/ads BS and make it more accessible to opt out. Until then O&O Shutup 10 tool is indispensible in that matter.
Try right clicking a slow folder, selecting properties, select the customize tab, then change "optimise this folder for:" from whatever it is to "general". Apply that to all sub-folders.
Please let me know if it works, because I have a bit of a rant for MS if it does.
Perhaps this is me finally getting old and curmedgeony at the ripe old age of twenty-three, but I'll be damned if I'm switching my personal computer away from Windows 7 anytime soon.
If you were able to move to Linux - more power to you. Some of us are stuck with mighty machines and horrible system image with 10 kinds of disk/processor heavy background "management and security" apps running on boot.
Windows runs okay, but scrolling lags like hell on more complex sites and you cant play more than 720p videos.
p.s. the laptop has an SSD installed.
I almost feel as at home as I did in Windows 7, but not entirely. Windows 10 feels a little all over the place at times. As the below comments say, the control panel is a mess. But when you learn you can just search for mouse settings, or anything for that matter then you don't ever have to find yourself wading through all their ridiculous setting screens.
You have to get Keypirinha! http://keypirinha.com/ Set ALT+Space to launch Keypirinha, then type the name of your application to launch it. Keypirinha adapts to how you use it. Often frequently launched programs will only take a couple keystrokes. For example TH launches Thunderbird.
The disk usage is incredibly high for atleast 10 minutes after startup; tried turning search on and off, cortana on and off, nothing works.
What's more annoying is the fact that there are no official troubleshooting guidelines for this issued by Microsoft. You end up visiting a bunch of sites and very randomly trying out myriad methods to get it working.
I accidentally downloaded it from MSDN after my laptop's hard drive failed and I couldn't find any of my previously-burned DVDs or USB sticks.
So a good OS, great by M$ standards, with some annoying "features" baked in.
>I hate the menu and store that it shows so almost everything I tend to open has a shortcut on the desktop or is pinned to the toolbar
Some people would consider being unable to use a KEY feature of the OS a problem.
But you're right, aside from the glaring lack of tires, it's a great car.
The menu I found functional (and someone else mentioned I can actually remove the crap on there I didn't want). I am mostly against the flat UI (I hate it everywhere though) and the settings that moved to random places. I never had a problem with search not working or anything of that nature.
Yes, the new version might enable a more efficient workflow, or might be faster to boot-up.
But people hate changes and you need to invest considerable time in upgrading a piece of software (the upgrade itself + learning to navigate the new system + solving whatever goes wrong during the process). And that this is not just limited to "novices": I've heard wonderful things about Arch Linux, but my Ubuntu system works well enough and I've been using it for forever, so the incentives are pretty low and the time to be invested pretty high.
When you have no real, defined product that solves specific problems to sell anymore, you sell garbage that pretends to be a real product. Microsoft is far from alone here. Almost every successful software product that doesn't know when to stop building and start maintaining suffers from this degradation later on in life.
Specifically the Surface Book does a really good job of making the windows "experience" work in a keyboardless scenario. I'm sure the same is true of the other convertable hardware that's been popping up lately.
I'll concede that this isn't the majority of users but I would argue it's not just a rewrapping of existing software.
It's very apparent to me, it puts itself back in tablet mode after every restart, it's a pain to get that slide out menu working with a mouse. I bet a lot of people unknowingly get stuck in it.
OSX/macOS promoted their point releases to be something between service packs and major version releases, keeping it at version "X" for marketing purposes. From what I can see, between Cheetah and Sierra the expected workflow of the system has changed strongly a few times.
I don't recall them saying that.
Imagine if it was 1955 and we thought it was a good idea to randomly go into every company every year or two and say "Alright, this inventory system, this time tracking system, this customer service system... All of it, right out. Progress is here folks, and you don't want to be change averse. Time for some new fresh paper."
It's ludicrous. One thing you learn very quickly in business is that companies have little or not stomach for doing things that do not make them money. Every minute or dollar you spend on them appears to be money down the toilet. So if Microsoft wants people to use Windows 10 they need to offer more than hand-wavey bullshit about features and progress and security, because all of that stinks to high heaven of a company trying to convince its customers to give it more money because it wants more money - not because it's offering anything of real value to the customer.
I find I care about the applications I use: my IDE, git client, console, and the various web apps I use. I don't so much care about my browser UI, as long as it gets out of the way and shows me what URL I'm on and renders the page.
Likewise, I don't care about the UI of the OS itself, as long as it does its job properly: lets me start and switch between apps, connects to wifi, manages the display power, and sleeps and wakes up.
When I'm looking at the computer screen, I'm looking at what I'm doing, not the UI chrome. Even now, I'm only paying attention to this comment text box and your original message.. Everything else -- all the other tabs I have open, the visible bits of the OS, the other window open on my next monitor -- all blends into the background and gets ignored.
For example, Target and Home Depot were hacked because they failed to upgrade their point-of-sale hardware from Windows XP embedded to Windows 7 embedded or later which was an upgrade recommended by Microsoft. Windows XP embedded had a security flaw later patched in later versions of Windows.
I've worked with people very used to working with enormously complex systems and even they say Walmart etc is on the higher end of that scale. We're talking weeks of people on site to get new software stood up.
This isn't to diminish your point about the need for upgrades, but it's nothing like a push button process.
Also, they should pay the vendors contracts for maintenance instead of trying to do the upgrades themselves. The vendors are generally more likely to do the testing necessary and have the skills for upgrading systems across from various customers.
At any rate, as you put it, eventually they still should do the upgrade.
Just to make what I'm saying more concrete: most people in my home town in Sicily think it's perfectly OK to bring their phones and laptops to some random guy owning a tech-assistance shop and tell him their Facebook/Email passwords straight away so he can reinstall stuff and save their login for them. Do you think they care about upgrading because of "improved security"? I'm not sure they even understand what a security issue is...
One can always hire experts with a proven track record to help with the install of the new OS.
Incidentally, many people may have trouble with upgrades to the new OS because 1. Running old hardware 2. Not running quality hardware -- e.g. for Windows laptops traditionally Thinkpads. 3. Do a fresh install. E.g. don't upgrade, but backup the data, clean the disk, do a fresh install.
I use Mac and did the fresh install of Sierra 10.12.1 and then upgrades for point version updates.
I also have been running Windows under Parallels and on Thinkpads prior to 2011 and not had problems with new versions of Windows.
http://www.dailytech.com/Appalling+Negligence+DecadeOld+Wind...
Between each significant revision of Apple's desktop OS, my mother would get frustrated at settings that were moved elsewhere/renamed/removed entirely, for example. OSX is no stranger to unnecessary changes (or at least that's what my mother thinks of them).
It used to be that cmd-h hid an application and moved it to the end of the application stack. If you wanted it back you could use cmd-shift-tab.
Some suit, in their wisdom, decided to change that so cmd-h now only hides the app.
It's a tiny change ...that's a stone in my shoe every single day. IMHO that change is was completely unnecessary and breaks my workflow.
You should try it. It's fun!
Now, of course, you could just go old-school and "manual install" whatever you want. But let's say you didn't want to do that, because you got tired of having a system full of cruft due to all these funky pieces of software scattered about the system that the package manager had no clue about - oh my!
So - you want to install the software as a package under Arch. Oh - and just to make things more fun, the software is something proprietary and closed-source. There is more than a few bits of useful Linux software out there like this - much of it niche areas where a) probably no one else in the Arch community uses, and b) it's proprietary - so you can't distribute it anyhow.
What does Arch require you to do in this situation? Well - last time I looked anyhow - and that was a couple of years ago, so maybe something has changed... It seemed to me to create an install package for a piece of software, the process (according to the docs) was to install the software "manually" and keep track of where everything goes. Then, once you have done that (and the software is running fine), you are supposed to create your package manifesto (or whatever it was called) that tells the system how to install it, then take all the parts and bundle them up (as a compressed file of some sort) with that manifesto. Oh - and then manually "uninstall" your software you installed, then use your new package to re-install your now-packaged proprietary software.
That's basically the process I read about for any kind of software package for Arch; it was a very heavy manual process. While other package management schemes do require some manual effort, none of them that I recall seemed to require as much effort as Arch's did. This wouldn't normally be an issue with most open-source software, because once you made that package, it could be distributed and used by the community. But for a proprietary software package, only you could use it - so it was a ton of extra work for little gain in the end.
Don't get me wrong - I liked Arch, and their community support and forums, wiki, etc - is pretty top-notch (I like to use that part of the ecosystem myself for help and hint purposes when I need it). I honestly think it is a great distro, but it does have some drawbacks to it (and they probably don't have good solutions, either).
This might be technically correct (not completely sure), but hugely misleading. Packages are defined by PKGBUILD scripts. When you run `makepkg` to create a package, it creates a directory called $pkgdir. In your PKGBUILD, you just delegate to whatever installer came with the source code & tell it to install into $pkgdir. e.g. `make install --prefix=$pkgdir`. makepkg takes all the files in $pkgdir and tars them and bam - there's your package.
If you look in most PKGBUILDs, they contain some metadata (where to get the sources, etc), and then it's more or less:
build() {
cd "$srcdir" && make
}
package() {
cd "$srcdir" && make install --prefix="$pkgdir"
}
It's manifest, by the way.
> Now, of course, you could just go old-school and "manual install" whatever you want.
Yep, stop right there, do that.
This is why I switched back to Debian. Updating is stress-free and there's no downside to doing it as often as you like.
Not really.
Arch was a PITA. FreeBSD has a smoother install (not a compliment to Arch).
Followed the instructions, hit a few snags, and resolved them by reading the wiki.
There's also the factor of familiarity to consider. People buying new machines will learn the new system, and overtime as they learn how to use it, they will prefer it to older system versions. However, this is another long-term factor, and as such Windows 10 seems doomed to only slowly gain adoption.
Note:
Considering the reputation Windows 10 got for itself at launch, this is less surprising. For non-technical users, the upgrade to Win10 has probably been pointless or frustrating: new concepts, new default applications and system UIs these users have learn to perform their ordinary tasks. What's more, for many users, upgrading their system to Win10 left them with an unusable machine. Win10's launch was a mess.
Then, almost 8 years after WinXP's launch, MS released Win7. There's a lot of improvements between the 2, but I wonder what were the major factors that made users upgrade to Win7. I only remember a few pain points in XP that were relieved in Win7: file/app search, connecting to the internet, system updates, and window management.
But in reality, we're rapidly approaching the point where we absolutely need to be able to sandbox apps and segregate them from the platform like with UWP.
While the basic functionality of the OS you need may not change much, the constantly moving target of security definitely will, and both 8 and 10 introduced significant improvements in security.
If you have hardware that only runs in XP you don't care.
I have more than a few Windows 7 installations that are nothing but hosts for virtual machines that run XP.
Windows 10 has moved heavily into mobile, touch-screen operations, use of sandboxed apps from online stores, AI assistants, cloud integration, biometric security etc etc.
Maybe in place upgrades are fine now, but I haven't trusted anything but a fresh install for as long as Windows has existed.
Given that the upgrade was free just as in the case of a linux upgrade the good enough point should consider these factors as well.
I've never had the experience you describe; which app(s) are you talking about which need to be bought repeatedly with no new functionality?
EDIT: I should probably reference the single small command that stops the bugging notifications and upgrade. Open admin level command line:
wusa /uninstall /KB:3035583
You know a OS is in a bad spot, if it gathers followers, who attack criticizing experience reports and anecdotes. Who needs truth if one has beauty?
Windows job was to provide a easy, trap-free OS, one where you wouldn't spend weeks with a bomb-defusal kit, looking at the upgrades blowing up systems.
Well at least the victims of the landmine dont have to worry about shipjumping converts of the holy church of the foreboding fruit snapping at them for heresy.
Temporarily stops; that update didn't reliably stay dead.
Then it would pop up and say "Hey, do you want to upgrade?" and if you said no it would leave you alone but if you closed it it would assume you were okay with it.
I know a lot of people who woke up one morning and their computer was running Windows 10 without their approval, despite having said 'no' to previous questions.
This technology works (almost) flawlessly for hundreds of thousands of people and organizations, the idea that the issues you're experiencing are legitimately the fault of the technology feels... unlikely.
I get that the best technology adapts perfectly to your individual needs, but the idea that you don't have to change a single thing about your business to use a technology just feels, on its face, absurd.
It's buggy as hell. The shortcut icons on the desktop and taskbar kept going away (replacing all the icons with a "not found" placeholder), forcing me to reinstall the OS. Now none of the search functions work (e.g. windows key -> search for app.. no results). Whatever, I just use 2 apps anyways (Chrome and Steam).
Windows settings panels have at least 2 diff ways to configure anything, the "old" and the "new". Graphics settings have 4 places to change stuff (Intel, Nvidia, built in old and new). It's just a jumbled mess.
Bluetooth never recognizes device names (it's a guessing game as to which "Unknown Device" is the one I want). The trackpad is mediocre, and the config panel from Synaptics probably hasn't changed since Windows 95.
With the tech press in love with Windows 10, I was definitely expecting more. Feels like people just want to love every other version of Windows (7 "good", 8 "bad", 10 "good again).
They're well aware of that, and if you follow the insider previews, every new build is moving more of the features into the "new" way of doing things. Is it annoying there are two places? Absolutely... but the alternative is not changing anything and waiting 5 years while everything gets rolle dup.
>Bluetooth never recognizes device names (it's a guessing game as to which "Unknown Device" is the one I want). The trackpad is mediocre, and the config panel from Synaptics probably hasn't changed since Windows 95.
Not sure what to tell you there other than a buggy driver on your laptop. All of my bluetooth devices tell me exactly what they are before and after adding them.
The trackpad thing isn't Windows, it's the trackpad razer chose to use, or the driver. One of the reasons that MS finally said f-it and introduced precision touchpad. If you still have the old-school synaptics panel, then Razer chose not to participate.
Windows 7 was released 7.5 years ago, and Windows 8 was released 4.5 years ago. Whether or not they make interim releases, Microsoft clearly cannot pull off a user interface overhaul in any reasonable span of time.
The Control Panel started transitioning to a 'browser-style' interface with Windows Vista. 10 years later, I'm still waiting for everything to be 'rolled up'.
In both cases, the old paradigm was 'fine', and a bifurcated UI made for a worse experience than either alternative.
In the current state, tons of settings are only available in one of three UIs, where all three are named identically and serve the same purpose. EG: To change the name of your computer, you might go, Settings > System > About > 'System Info' --> System [Vista] > 'change settings' --> System Properties [Win95].
I'd rather have the Windows 95 control panel workflow to this mess. If it takes 5 years, they'll take 5 years. There's no reason to make the system worse in the meantime.
1) It's not just MS pushing the flat-UI trend. Apple and Google are too, along with every other Web/UI designer out there. Everyone's doing it. MS's version does seem to be the ugliest though, mainly because of the horrible color picks.
2) The users you seem concerned about like this stuff. They're all buying and using Windows, along with Macs, iOS, Android, etc. devices. There's simply no serious effort being put into any UI alternatives. There's some stuff going on in Linux-land that has a minuscule marketshare, but that's about it; even there, the most popular desktop is Gnome3, which is on the same bandwagon in many ways.
For whatever it's worth, Windows 10 is one of my favorite looking user interfaces, especially with its dark theme. I am not sure why so many mainstream operating systems do not offer viable dark themes.
I actually don't mind the Windows 10 UI as it happens, but if there were the variety of options for Windows that there are for Linux, I'd certainly see if I could find one I liked more.
Oh, and the whole "spyware" trope is becoming overworn. User analytics is here to stay, and practically every website and browser does it anyway. At least you can disable it in Win 10 if you are so inclined. Me - I would gladly give Microsoft my data to they can prioritize features for windows 10.
I think we shouldn't take the defeatist position with respect to surveillance. I know that techies like us can block this kind of traffic at the network edge or chase down the multiple settings it takes to turn this off, but not all users will be this sophisticated.
We should be pushing back against surveillance in how we use our own computers.
Where is that option? Also, it's easy to get a browser that doesn't phone home and a plugin that stops websites from doing it.
User analytics and tracking everywhere (including IRL with for instance face recog in shops), Facebook curious to know if they can manipulate the mood of their users, Google/Microsoft/Amazon investing in "big AI", Money doesn't grow on trees, Do the maths.
You calling things "tropes" or "user analytics" doesn't change anything, and having to use euphemisms tells me deep down inside you know this, too.
Also, no.
Design language is getting an update.
The Windows 7 machine is only for gaming / steam, I never browse the internet on there and have pretty strict firewall ruleset. To be honest, I would consider upgrading it to 10, but I missed the free window, so I really don't fancy paying for it.
My hope is that by the time that Windows 7 goes EOL, I can delete it and game just on Linux. Either that or I will get a console (as most of my gaming takes place in my living room anyhow, using a steam box).
But I've decided that this is the end of the line for me and Microsoft. They lost me forever due to the spyware / monitoring debacle of Win10. If ever there is a technological forced upgrade to 10, then I'm simply out of luck -- no more upgrades past 7. I'm done.
It will replace the start menu with one that is actually functional and usable. With it installed, I actually rather quite like Windows 10 now.
Linux gets refugees both from Windows and MacOS because MS just keeps messing Windows up (seems to be happening every other version), and Apple simply lets MacOS rot by not giving it any attention.
https://www.netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=9&qpcustom=...
> Apple updates macOS every year.
I hear complaints from MacOS users about the bit rot all the time. Where is OpenGL 4.5 for instance? And not just graphics. Many simply feel it's completely stagnated, because Apple are too busy with their mobile delirium, and don't care about desktop anymore.
Here's a 2 minute demo of "Snap Assist" which is turned on by default in Windows 10. Near the end you can see the user snapping three documents into place. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bk8yTBLEj3c
It gets a major update every year?
Yeah, so where is OpenGL 4.5?
To me, Windows10 is not better than Windows7. The package management is still a mess. Forced updates, no rollbacks, reboots, you name it. Permissions are also strange: why are admin rights needed to install some fonts? We still have this "Registry" with its voodoo. We still miss tools like dmesg. When thing go wrong, Windows gives some sort of simple log file, of course not in txt-form but in some proprietary format that needs it's own reader (to read some flat text, for crying out loud). The file manager ("Explorer") is still confusing. Microsoft seems hellbent in obfuscating where files are stored. Going to the terminal, the difference is even clearer. Linux offers first rate terminals; Windows look like an afterthought. Is it even possible to use a terminal full screen in Windows, nowadays? Tab completion, a decent history, pipes?
The funny thing is that Ranger, my favorite file manager, is able to give previews of files in MS formats (such as .docx) where Windows Explorer is unable to do so.... ????
Two big steps back are privacy and font rendering. It's bad enough that apps spy on me, I don't want my OS to"phone home". The font rendering is optimized for the few Windows on mobile devices users, at the expense of the bulk of the users (like me) who use it on the desktop and are now confronted with blurry fonts.
My OS must help me with my personal computer tasks. Personal means a) I want to customize the hell out of it, and b) my data is _mine_. Also, I'd like a nice readable font on my screen. Sadly, Windows10 does not meet those requirements.
What's more easier then clicking an .exe ?
You first have to open a browser, then find the sotware's website. Then find the download page, then download it. Then open explorer to where the .exe was downloaded. Then double click it. Then click next a bunch of times. And if the software's dependencies are not bundled in the installer, then you have to redo this whole process again.
On Linux you just open your terminal and execute a single command.
Lmao, yes speculating that it includes that certain software package or that it's the latest version.
That burden is on the developer (if there's no maintainer) which has to waste time packaging same thing for X distros. Windows developer uploads the .exe to the web and he's done.
The PC will be invaded by Android at some point, and it will be like a blitzkreig when it happens. Google would make all their money back shortly off of appstore sales.
As much as I enjoy using Android on mobile, Google's horrible track record with security updates means I'll be appalled if after all the noise people have made about Win 10's privacy, they accept Android with Google everywhere + security updates EOL after 3 years...
As always Microsoft ignored their current users in pursue of new users. I haven't seen this attitude from any other company. I haven't seen apple make font rendering on old MacBook worse to force people to switch to new MacBooks. Or I haven't seen something similar from Google.
This is fucking total disaster.
As someone who reads text for whole day (programmer) I care about my eyes and it fucking hurts my eye to see font rendering in new UI (UWP) and Edge.
p.s. Old/win32 application do use old rendering engine and are acceptable.
I don't want to piss off our customers by making their usage experience poorer under Windows 10, so I would really appreciate any input you can provide.
Traditionally Windows does have problem with high dpi monitors, but I think there is workaround it (scaling and etc), but with windows 10, fonts on low dpi (by low dpi I mean most of the monitors sold until 1,2 years ago, 20+ inch with 1080p) windows looks like shit (literally). If you are using old framework (WPF and etc) it is okay, because underlying framework is same. Same good old rendering (not in par with Mac or FreeType, but quite acceptable). But if you are using UWP, then quite honestly you are in trouble, in low-dpi monitors. Because Microsoft UWP only does have DirectWrite engine.
The problem with old engine (which is used in Win32, WPF, etc) was it was slow on mobile, and as always Microsoft wanted to compete with Apple and Google on Mobile platform and because they have 99% market share of mobile os. So what is better option than ruining people experience in desktop to force them to switch to WinRT/UWP bullshit ? (I am being sarcastic)
I use Ubuntu at work and my other Windows 10 machine has 1920x1200 monitors at a distance that makes the rendering regression not easily noticeable.
It's great for small 1080p screens on laptops and 4k monitors though. :-/
Do you see the irony? Microsoft does suffer from mismanagement.
You should never ever mess with your current user experience to improve your imaginary users experience.
UWP (which most of the internal app are porting into it), does use DirectWrite and there is no way to change its font rendering engine to ClearType.
Discussion of technical challenge is here: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20150129-00/?p=...
While 8 tried to make tablet the priority use case, and thus breaking the muscle memory of many long term users, 10 abandons the notion of the owner of the hardware being in charge (sadly one that is increasingly taking root in FOSS circles as well).
Thus you have things like updates being ramrodded through even if the user says no, and keep saying no.
Damn it, i keep having to roll back the driver of my igpu because for some reason MS keep trying to update it along with the dgpu. This even though the support has been discontinued by AMD...
What are you talking about? The modern prevalence of binary firmware blobs is the only concern I can think of in this area.
https://www.pcgamesn.com/steam-hardware-survey-windows-10-ad...
This is simply not true. Windows is in no way the most secure operating system ever devised. Microsoft has support pages devoted to removing malware from Windows 10, while there has never been a major malware outbreak on iOS. For the average user iOS is by far the most secure OS.
Now obviously a lot of iOS's security can be attributed to Apple's walled garden approach to apps. If you limit the question to desktop operating systems I supose it's slightly less cut and dry, but I'd still rank macOS significantly higher than windows in terms of overall security.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/instantanswers/eed4ec56-...
I think the author should have said "the most secure version of Windows sever devised" instead, as it would be much harder to disagree with.
Apple has historically held a dominant position in the education market, so how does one square the "long-term preferences tend to be established" portion of that sentence with the 8% marketshare MacOS commands?
I think that "long-term preferences tend to be established" mantra is defensible in light of this, absent large market changes people tend to stick to what they're doing. The chromebook was a major market change for the ed space.
tldr;
Windows has 92% OS share. Windows 10 only accounts for 24% (maybe).
Windows 10 is so, so secure. How to make people upgrade?
Windows 10 new update will have advertising. Other OS's sure look good now.
I feel like this section of the Economist doesn't get much editorial review.
And I don't see anybody blinks here on HN about that. Why?
https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-10/85341/microsoft-...
"So Windows 10 pops-up little advertising windows—sorry, tips—on the Edge icon in the taskbar, or in the Action Center UI, or in the Settings interface where you can change your defaults, because it really, really, really doesn’t want you to exercise free will and make a better decision for yourself."
"For the next version of Windows 10, Microsoft is even experimenting with ads—sorry, tips—that will appear in File Explorer. You don’t get any more “in the OS user interface” than that, folks, unless Microsoft starts displaying ads in event logs next. Don’t laugh.
So repeat after me: There are ads all over Windows. And it’s just getting worse."
Similarly, I've had these forced updates happen, and on relogin "click here to see what was updated" -> nothing listed.
Telemetry aside, can anyone comment on this?
* BitLocker: Hard-drive encryption backed by TPM & Secure Boot
With the above two and DMA protection, physical access attacks become very difficult.
* Virtual Secure Mode (VSM) - separate OS running on the hypervisor that can perform sensitive operations. Which enables:
1. Device Guard - Runs code integrity protection, i.e. only allowing signed code to run, from within the VSM.
2. Credential Guard - Runs user-mode security subsystem (LSA) inside VSM.
A lot of security features found in the previously stand-alone EMET are slowly being ported over natively to Win10, for example. It comes with a built-in AV which is pretty good. Smartscreen is unusually good at warning about suspicious executables and I've seen it stop ransomware attacks. VBS makes it harder for hackers to modify system or protected files. Secureboot and bitlocker support are useful in some scenarios. Device guard is supposed to helpful but I'm not sure how it works. Windows hello can replace the traditional password with camera or fingerprint auth cooked-in, which is probably a step in the right direction, although I'd rather see passphrases become more common. Cameras and fingerprints seem gimmmicky and not all my computers have those things.
But for an RMS-level of paranoia, I might have to go with RTEMS on a FPGA acting as a J-Core (SuperH-2) CPU.
Part of the challenge of Windows 10 was the transformation of Windows from a large-release product into a trickle-release service with much faster cycle times with an incremental and continuously-learned approach to ongoing product changes.
At it's core, that's a valid and (I think) mostly welcome change, but Microsoft's solution to the impedance mismatch between the two categories of offering was to force it down and ask for forgiveness later. :/
I'm also not fond of the way Windows 10 updates are so aggressive, you'll essentially be replacing your OS every so often without any say-so. If I had any faith that this would be painless I might be tempted to try it, but see above. Windows 7 is darn near perfect, you can pry it from my cold dead hands.
If you have the pro version, you can control this. I don't even have regular updates install automatically.
Did you try with Mozilla Thunderbird?
Also many companies don't want the legal risk associated with telemetry (you never know what data leaves your premises and heads towards MS), and small-ish businesses are afraid of the non-disableable automatic updates - I certainly wouldn't want to get into the office and $essential_program has stopped working over night due to an update gone bad.
What are they smoking over there at the economist? Perhaps they meant "the most secure iteration of Windows yet".
I have both Windows and Mac hardware, and I prefer to update my Mac OS as soon as updates are available. On reflection, I suppose it's because the software quality is always high, and I know the core linux-based OS won't have any major changes. Upgrading, except for the occasional "I guess networking doesn't work now," is a pleasant and expected process. There are also rarely, at least for me, compatibility issues with existing software and newer Mac OS versions.
It seems like major versions of Windows are completely different operating systems, with "improvements" built on top of original hacks and poor code, and news reports of zero day crippling flaws in every new version. And of course, Windows 10 looks visually terrible. Flat design in general looks bad, but Windows 10 seems to have done something especially colorblind with it.
The current tirade against Windows 10 is not really that different to the period after Windows XP came out just because it is radically different to its predecessor, yet the latter eventually became the most long lived MS product ever. A similar torrent of FUD did kill Vista's reputation, but as we all know Windows 7 is just minor upgrade but this rebranding is enough to pacify the most vocal critics. Make me wonder if Jobs was right that users really have no idea whats the best for them.
They can't be both right and that is a huge divergence.
https://www.netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=9&qptimefra...
http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide/...
What? Sorry had to have a bit of a chuckle. That being said it is the most secure version of Windows, well with the expection of collecting tons of your personal habits.
Windows 7 Home Premium (Upgrade) $119.99
Windows 7 Home Premium (Full) $199.99
Windows 7 Family Pack (Upgrade, retail only) $149.99
Windows 7 Professional (Upgrade) $199.99
Windows 7 Professional (Full) $299.99
Windows 7 Ultimate (Upgrade) $219.99
Windows 7 Ultimate (Full) $319.99
$150 seems completely in line with pricing of previous windows versions.
I would like to swap out my system dive and replace it with an SSD. Every discussion on the web I come across wants me to download some third party backup/restore or cloning software. Isn't there anything in Windows or that comes from Microsoft for me to do it?
Other than that, I really didn't like the UI. To change colors in menus you have to use a hack because the preselected list of colors is just dreadful, the start menu once again is all over the place and various other mishaps that give the impression that it's not a finished product. They try to build a unified OS for all devices when all I want is a simple desktop OS.
Somehow Chrome always freezes every few minutes. Didn't do this on Win8.1 or Win7 :/
1. After holding out until December 2016, and only really using Windows 10 on dev machines/VMs , I finally threw caution to the wind an attempted to upgrade my very heavily loaded (software wise) main Windows 7 machine to Windows 10. Upgrade went fine, absolutely zero issues, and everything still worked 100% afterwards. No-one was more surprised than I was about this. I actually think it's because the hardware is a brand name (HP) desktop, and not a self build.
2. I've turned everything off I don't wont, all the privacy snoops; Cortana is gone completely; and the OneDrive icon does nothing.
3. Since early Windows 7, I switched to a menu bar type launcher that sits on-top at the top edge of the screen, it's populated with links to everything I use. I never click on the start menu, so it's bad behavior and stupid tiles don't really bother me. Screenshot: https://www.weegeeks.com/upload/ApplicationBar-2014-09-29.pn...
4. The forced updates really irritate me. It's my PC why am I being dictated to on this?
5. VB6 apps still work without issue! (LOL!)
6. By comparison, whose bright idea was it not to include .NET runtime 2.0-3.5 by default? This leaves a schism for older apps - Run fine on Windows 7 and 8.1, but needs the runtime to (try) and auto install on Windows 10, or recompile the app targeting .NET 4.0+ and run fine on Windows 10, but completely fail on Windows 7/8.1 with a dialog saying the runtime is missing. Arrrgh.
Overall, I'm living with it, mainly because I've banished all the bad bits, so now it's doing what a good OS should - support me, but also not get in my way. I'm not sure I could use Windows 10 in it's default state though, which is why I'm slowly moving towards a completely customised shell (once I find/write one I like).
Edit: Forgot to mention - if you can lay your hands on it, have a look at 'Windows 10 2016 LTSB' edition - it's designed for corporates who don't want all the consumer crap, so a lot of the stupid stuff is not installed by default. It also ONLY accepts security updates, and refuses any updated that are 'feature updates'. Downside, it needs a KMS keyserver for activation.
WEAK.
Would be nice to get the free upgrade back.
You're not missing as much as you think :)
One thing I've learned over the years: you don't need a high IQ to run a successful business. Without a lot of smarts you're never going to compete with google, but you don't need to compete with google to make a living running your own business.
>Chromebooks are now outselling MacBooks in the crucial education market, where long-term preferences tend to be established.
It's unfortunate that proprietary software ever came to dominate schooling. Hopefully ChromeOS will open things up just enough so that cross platform tools become the norm. Schools using both Windows and Chrome will be more aware of proprietary/incompatible software and file formats and choose to use open formats.
>It is impossible to retrofit older Windows versions with the sort of defense-in-depth that has been built into Windows 10. Nor would Microsoft do so even if it could. If anything, it is about to do the opposite. Windows 7 users will soon lose access to a stand-alone toolkit for mitigating zero-day exploits.
Another reason why Windows is a joke OS for serious tech enthusiasts.
>A word of warning, though: such upgrades do not necessarily go without a hitch. A Windows 10 tablet your correspondent relied upon for much of his mobile computing was broken irreparably when a recent update corrupted the display driver, rendering the touchscreen useless.
......... makes you wonder why they lock these things down, are tech enthusiasts even designing them?
>But he has also dusted down his four-year-old Apple MacBook Pro and upgraded his Windows 7 desktop to the latest version of Linux Mint rather than Windows 10.
Yes I prefer Linux to Windows in most cases too. I never have good long term experiences with Windows.
>It used to be that only free software came with advertising; users paid a fee, if they chose to do so, to get the software free of advertising. Microsoft charges top dollar for Windows 10 ($120 or $200, depending on the edition) and now wants to bombard users with sales pitches to boot—without so much as by your leave, let alone the option to turn the nuisance off. Despite their idiosyncrasies, Macintosh and Linux have never looked so attractive.
Yeah these days pretty much the only people who are using Windows are people who don't know any better. Most people aren't even exposed to Linux except those of us in the tech sector, and it seems to be just as popular as windows and OS X at the shops I've worked at.
More than 700m of the world's 1.5bn or so computers continue
to run on Windows 7, a piece of software three generations old
How can I trust your nit-picky, pedantic complaint when you believe the article is in the WSJ rather than the Economist?