Software, especially Microsoft software became much worse in the past 5 years or so despite their heavy push on telemetry. Therefore I don't think telemetry is a magic bullet that will make software better.
The calculator used to be fast and load instantly, now it's one of those UWP monsters that even asks you to rate it in the Microsoft store...
I don't recall hearing about updates bricking machines or causing data loss at scale back in the Windows 7 days but it seems like that is now a relatively common occurrence, amplified by the fact that you can no longer hide/defer updates on consumer versions of Windows. I think the firing of their QA team and delegating the work to unpaid "insiders" and telemetry might have something to do with this.
The new Settings UI is absolutely disgusting both in looks and information density and is a clear downgrade from the previous version.
I can go on and on. I would sympathize if they were pushing the boundaries of software engineering but what we're talking about isn't groundbreaking - these are problems that were mostly solved a decade ago and Microsoft intentionally backtracked on their progress by the looks of it.
This could also be explained by user expectations for software rising but quality of Microsoft code remaining constant. In the past users may have written off such events as 'just the way computers work sometimes' but perhaps now users realize that computers needn't be so unreliable.
I disagree. Evidence that supports MS code quality dropping includes a significant amount of users hanging on to Windows 7 with their cold dead hands even post years of MS marketing, arm twisting, GWX updates, and EOLing Windows 7, with users paying for ESUs via Ask Woody vendors and/or that 0patch tool.
I myself moved to Windows 8.1 and from there am hem-hawing on whether to use KDE Neon or Linux mint XFCE and just leaving behind Windows except for the air-gapped Windows 7 VM I will no doubt need for things like Anime Studio. I will not allow Windows 10 (outside work devices) on my home network.
(Maybe for Centaurus aka Courier Jr...but I'll put it on the guest wifi and make a bunch of throwaway accounts for it. )
How long does it take after boot for disk I/O to stop if you've got a 5400 rpm hard drive? It's maybe a few minutes after login on 7, and I've never seen it stop on 10.
Why does the calculator take seconds to start? Why does it ignore keypresses when it has focus?
How many clicks does it take to set my IP on an isolated network with no DHCPd? How many different contol interfaces will I see on the way?
On Old Edge (I haven't tried Chrome based Edge), why does the stop button sometimes not stop until the page finishes loading over several seconds? Why do the back and forward, and url navigation interactions queue up in that case?
>How long does it take after boot for disk I/O to stop if you've got a 5400 rpm hard drive? It's maybe a few minutes after login on 7, and I've never seen it stop on 10.
Unsure what you are saying. Windows is the only OS to write to disk after boot? I don't see anything hitting the disk after a few seconds.
>Why does the calculator take seconds to start?
Instant
>Why does it ignore keypresses when it has focus?
unable to reproduce
>How many clicks does it take to set my IP on an isolated network with no DHCPd
4
>On Old Edge I don't use that particular piece of software so I can't tell you.
>Instant
It's "instant" to show up, but you got to wait one to two seconds for the splash screen to disappear, whereas the windows 7 showed up instantly and was usable immediately.
- Uncontrollable automatic updates on Windows 10
- Forced reboots for updates even if the computer is in the middle of a long-running task
- Ruining of Windows search to the point it is basically unusable
- Removal of Paint and deprecation of the Snipping Tool
You know, just to name a few.
Oh God don't get me started. Few days ago I was in the middle of a videoconference with some important people, when suddenly my screen went blue, flashed a Windows spinner and the word "Restarting", and boom. It just rebooted. With no warning, despite me being on a videocall, on Microsoft Teams of all things! And within the "active hours". How this behavior is acceptable is beyond me.
Corporate-forced updates, however...
Why? Because I set my dual-GPU gaming rig to sleep every night, and Windows feels the need to wake it up about an hour later, fail to do updates, and then leave the machine on the rest of the night, even with auto-sleep set for 30 minutes.
I noticed the problem a few weeks later, and by then my electricity bill had increased by 20 bucks.
for example, i have seen videos of ms word and ms visual studio, on old pentium, load instantly with a splashscreen flashing by. i was truly impressed indeed.
For example, Word 6 on my 386DX with 4 MB RAM took some time to launch and I had ample time to admire the art that went into the splashscreen. On 486DX with 16 MB RAM, it did flash by.
Of course what constitutes an improvement or regression may vary by person
Old Microsoft software had a simple toggle switch for this.
By default, windows 10 lets Microsoft engineers remotely log into your box and browse your filesystem. They say they only use it for diagnostic purposes, but I don’t see how that could be true unless they’re in violation of US law, which compels them to give the same access to law enforcement.
I’m not sure if you can opt out of that (or whether the opt out would survive a warrant).
I switched away from windows over this sort of thing. There were dozens of other objectionable things they were caught doing, and efforts to build windows 10 “decrappifiers” made it clear they were adding new telemetry every month, and laundering the data through sock puppet domains.
I'd like to see a reputable source for that claim.
> Full: All data necessary to identify and help to fix problems, plus data from the Security, Basic, and Enhanced levels.
In the Windows 8 days, they claimed that engineers couldn’t silently pull individual files from machines without managerial approval. I can’t find the source. It was some old news article with an interview with a Microsoft manager.
Anyway, “All data necessary to identify and help to fix problems” pretty clearly implies they can pull whatever they want as they debug. I don’t see how they could implement that without exposing customers to warrant requests.
This page outlines everything additional they recieve on the Full setting.
> In the Windows 8 days, they claimed that engineers couldn’t silently pull individual files from machines without managerial approval. I can’t find the source. It was some old news article with an interview with a Microsoft manager.
I recall reading something similar, but for Windows 10. AFAIK it said that engineers diagnosing a difficult problem can select a group of machines to receive raw telemetry from, after getting permission from managers + microsoft's privacy team. I have a feeling it was for insider builds only though.
The GP comment seemed to imply that Microsoft engineers could log in remotely without your knowledge or consent.
This is correct, they AFAIK need a password/acceptance from the user, that's the proviso, but the original comment didn't say "without anyone knowing" (and as it's closed source none of us knows for sure). Their quoted claim is true it's just of very limited value.
This whole thread is going nowhere.
The first question should've been "yes, but can they do it without a password or user-acceptance". The answer is "we don't know" AFAIAA.