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Ask Slashdot: Would You Recommend Updating To Windows 10?
Plenty of users are skeptical about upgrading to Windows 10. While they understand that Microsoft's newest desktop operating system comes with a range of interesting features, they are paranoid about the repeated update fiascos that have spoiled the experience for many users. Reader Quantus347 writes: Whenever I think of Windows 10 these days I, like so many others out there, immediately feel a swell of rage over the heavy-handed way the "upgrade" has been forced on me and so many others. I had to downgrade one of my computers that installed windows 10 over a weekend I was away, and as a result, I have been fending off the update ever since. I find myself wondering if Windows 10 is actually that bad. With the end of the "free" upgrade period quickly coming to an end, my fiscally conservative side is starting to overwhelm my fear and distrust of all things new, and I'm wondering if it's time to take the leap. I've been burned too many times for being an early adopter of something that proved to be an underdeveloped product, but Windows 10 has been around for long enough that I'm wondering if it might have it's kinks worked out.
So I ask you, Slashdot, what are your experiences with Windows 10 itself, aside from the auto-upgrade nonsense? How does it measure up to its predecessors, and is it a worthwhile OS in its own right?
So I ask you, Slashdot, what are your experiences with Windows 10 itself, aside from the auto-upgrade nonsense? How does it measure up to its predecessors, and is it a worthwhile OS in its own right?
Windows 10 has a number of default settings for privacy and security that are too permissive. If you upgrade to Windows 10 you have to know how to change the privacy and security defaults. Also you should be aware that Microsoft tries to force your hand to use a Microsoft Account as your local login. I recommend doing your homework before applying updating to Windows 10. The only reason why I use Windows 10 is because I bought a PC specifically for the purpose of learning how to support Windows 10. I plan to continue to use Windows 7 Professional on my main PC for as long as Microsoft provides support for Windows 7.
Yes I would - its a much better OS than either Win7 or Win8.
However, my frustrations centre around Windows 10 updates (not upgrades to Windows 10 but updates of Windows 10).
The number of times I have opened my laptop for a quick 5 minute task, only to be greeted by "we are installing a system update" and have the next half hour wasted, or the number of times I have rebooted and run into the same thing - oh, and while MS have added a "restart" option as well as the "install updates and restart" option, it doesnt work, updates are installed anyway.
For all the immediate frustrations I have with Windows 10, I wouldnt go back.
From an end-user perspective, avoid the "Metro" or "Universal" apps (or whatever the full-screen touch-friendly keyboard/mouse-unfriendly apps are called these days). The built-in PDF viewer and Photo Viewer are awful. The Edge browser is clearly a browser for a phone or tablet, with lots of absolutely basic options missing. But this advice applied to Windows 8 as well, and somewhat to prior versions, so this isn't really new.
Does the submitter even read Slashdot?
Over, and over, and over, every time Windows 10 comes up in Slashdot stories, there are multiple, +5 Insightful posts pointing out that Windows 10 comes loaded with telemetry. Just LOADED with it. I can't accept that a person submitting a question to Slashdot would not know this, and also would be okay with this notion of data collection ingrained so deeply in an operating system.
Regardless of the options a user chooses in Win10's Control Panel, the user is not TRULY opted-out of all the data collection. This has been discussed ad nauseam, and I have yet to see someone post a solution to block all telemetry collection while still allowing security updates.
Also, you can't infinitely defer reboots after updates are applied. You are going to be forced to reboot at some point that is not of your choosing, and that's a legitimate problem for many people. (Like, the ones who use computers as productivity tools.)
Windows 10 wrests control away from the user in ways that are unacceptable. I cannot compromise on these things. I will not use Windows 10.
...for most people.
Sure, there are going to be some people who'd be better of with *nix and who could cope with it, but they're not the ones asking. It's my grandma, uncle, cousin, sister, neighbor - all who care NOTHING about the "politics" of OSes, just want something that works.
So my advice is this:
YES, I wholeheartedly advise upgrading to Win10. It is a robust, stable, modern OS. I've been running it on probably a dozen systems since January, and not one BSOD. That's pretty good. It's miles better than XP or 8, and reasonably better than 7. If you're running anything else (shudder, Vista, ME, 2000, etc) it's not even a question.
HOWEVER, *actually* read and attend the install process. TURN OFF shit that you don't need.
As a last resort, I'd rather come over and spend 10 mins cleaning out the Win10 settings cruft and then knowing you're running a decent OS than keep having to try to remember how the hell to do X in XP or Vista when your system goes down, again.
-Styopa
If you have a touchpad, then yes.
If you have a desktop, then no. It's not really suited as a desktop OS.
Clearly you haven't used it - it's not Windows 8 with the metro start menu rammed down your throat. There's nothing wrong with using it as a desktop computer, and I do so on all of my machines.
Windows 10, from a purely technical perspective, is great. It's fast, clean, stable, and relatively secure. Heck, it's the first ever Microsoft OS I've seen that is able to upgrade the average computer without turning it into goat vomit. Prior to Windows 10, this was practically a guarantee.
From a policy perspective.... To quote Darth Vader, "I have altered our agreement. Pray I do not alter it further."
That is basically Microsoft's slogan for Windows 10. Unless you are willing to drop $500 for the Enterprise edition of Windows 10, Microsoft has dictated very clearly that you do NOT have control of your machine. They *will* pull telemetry at their pleasure. They *will* force updates onto your machine whether you want them or not. Hell, they even have the power to copy any data you have on your machine. They will not permit you to block them, at least not at the OS level. If you want to block their shenanigans, your only realistic option is to either buy Enterprise or put a hardware router between your computer and the internet, and do your blocking from there. Or just use it as is and hope Microsoft doesn't continue to alter their agreement further. (Fat chance)
And we all know that Microsoft is far from perfect when it comes to releasing stable updates that don't brick people's machines.
Whether you are fine with this, is up to you. As a sysadmin who is ultimately responsible for the productivity of the employees under my charge, this is completely unacceptable, and we're going to be sticking with Windows 7 as our desktop standard.
What pisses me off the most is that Microsoft's obnoxious behaviour is forcing me to set up a WSUS server, because I now need to vet every single update Microsoft release.
I have also had quite a number of blue screens on my several computers upgraded to Windows 10. Not all the time, but I think all of them have blue screened at least once in the past year.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
I have it installed on a whole bunch of PCs and tablets. I haven't really had any major problems with it.
Do I have any reason to be excited about it? No, not really. I don't think anything significant has been added to the OS since Windows 7, at least not that I've ever found occasion to use much. Since Windows 8, it's pretty much been about getting the new stuff out of my face.
I find the UI to be clunky and inconsistent. The incessant updates can be annoying -- we're told they're "automatic," but when they actually get installed seems to be anybody's guess, except that it usually seems to happen when I've just switched on the machine to take care of some 10-minute task.
Windows Store/Universal apps are generally to be avoided. Few of them seem to have much value, particularly in a desktop computing scenario. They're either a repurposed version of a web page with an inferior UI (eg Wikipedia), or they're just the usual app store cash grab.
Performance-wise everything seems fine, and maybe a little improved from Windows 8.
If it doesn't sound like I'm really selling you on the upgrade, I guess it's because I'm not. But having taken the plunge, it's not like I have any major regrets. If anything, what's done is done and whether to install Windows 10 is one less thing I need to worry about.
Breakfast served all day!
Then the answer should be obvious.
Yes, if you aren't on a 7" tablet (Windows 8 still works best on a small touchscreen). There are numerous improvements to the kernel under the hood and from a user perspective:
- It boots way faster.
- It uses less battery.
- Command line and powershell are dramatically improved.
- Bash in Windows is incredibly useful.*
- God menu on the start menu through right click to directly go to all of the "deep" settings that are hard to get to in Windows 7 like "network Connections".
- Snap with rescale. If you snap a window to the left. It will automatically ask you what you want to snap to the right. And when you rescale a snapped app of the left it scales the app on the right to fit.
- Most consumer software is targeting it now as the primary OS for bug fixes and QA.
- The new Store deployment and update system is far superior to install/uninstall and when I start up a new system I just hit "Download" instead of tracking down installation media etc. I hope that all of my software migrates to the AppX deployment system. Also cross buy is nice when available. I bought my first game that runs on the Xbox and PC.
- I love being able to get text message notifications on my PC so that I can read texts without getting out my phone. And then even reply.*
- If you have a touchscreen tablet like a Surface it's nice to be able to mix touch apps with mouse/keyboard apps easily.
- Cortana is working well. It sucks in flight and package tracking information automatically which is nice from emails.
- Task bar icons have notifications so my mail app has a little (3) circle right on the taskbar.*
- Native multiple desktops.
- Miracast to PC. You can mirror your desktop to another PC's desktop as a window like teamviewer. Handy for presentations if you want to view on your own computer without huddling over their shoulder. *
- Notification center is just generally nice to finally have on Windows. I look forward though to the summer update when they add universal dismiss so that if I look at an email on my phone it doesn't have the notification at home.
- Lots of new HyperV functionality.
- native Photos app supports animated gifs and mp4s and webm.
- Windows Hello identity management is awesome where it's supported. I only have it on my phone but I want it desperately on my laptop and PC. Death to passwords. You just look at the screen and it unlocks and can (with developer support) even log you into your bank app etc.
- System wide spell checker.
- Vastly improved calculator app.
- Cortana will answer easy questions. "100 cm in inches" right in the task bar.
- Clock on multiple screens.*
- Calendar on taskbar has actual events and appointments since it is a real calendar not a generic date/time widget.*
- Screen capture. Integrated screen/video capture is a hotkey away.
- You won't have to worry about it unexpectedly upgrading.
- It's a rather stable development target. I like it as a developer because I know everybody on Windows 10 is on Windows 10 or Windows 10+6months. Mandatory updates means everybody supports the latest APIs within 6 months so it's not horribly fragmented.
- Updates are super easy. The guy who was playing CS:Go and had his system reboot wasn't upgrading from 7 to 10 he was upgrading from 10 to 10.1 and you can see how relatively painless that process was. It usually takes me about 15 minutes to upgrade to the latest OS with new features. Windows used to take 2-3 years to get a new feature, now they regularly add new things (the summer update is pretty substantial and has a lot of things I already miss not having on my "stable-branch" work machine. They've really streamlined the build and release system so that Windows can be iterated on quickly. I know internally how huge of a deal it can be for development to have a great automatic build and deployment system for accelerating feature development, I'm excited that windows has it now so that Microsoft can focus on add features going forward. It's generally just a new k
Any game that uses DirectX 9. Win 7 lets you have old versions of DirectX installed, and will run apps that use directX9 on the native codec. Win10 forces you to emulate the old DirX using the modern DirX codec, in a manner that is far less efficient than just running the codec native. Since 90% of my computer time is spent playing one title (SWTOR) that is Dx9 native, this is a huge deal. In fact, I am buying a new computer with top-end specs, but will be putting win 7 on it because it is the optimal OS for the game I play most.
- In Soviet Korea, only old people loose all their bases to Natalie Portman's petrified hot grits overlords.
Pros:
Cons:
So yes it's worth upgrading, but no it's not quite ready yet. But you don't have to decide by July 29. You can upgrade to it, and r
Gee, you'd almost think there was a difference between the operating system on my computer and a third-party website I don't have to use.
You think Google and Facebook only track when you're visiting their websites?
I always tell folks . . . I have Windows 7 installed on my system. With VMware. For serious work, I use Kali Linux. But there is a bunch of management crap that I have to do, which only runs on Windows . . . but now it runs on Apples, too!
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
you can right-click the tiles and Unpin them and they go away, leaving you with just an old-style all-text-with-little-icons Start Menu
...and a lot of unused menu real estate to the right of it... And even then it's not even close to what the Win7 menu used to be.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.