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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.
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.
...Yes the HARDCORE FOLKS will cry "SECURITY! MALWARE! INVASION OF PRIVACY!!11!" and more nonsense. The average person who asks me if they should upgrade I say yes....
When I have been asked by "average persons" about the upgrade, I explain the data harvesting that Microsoft will be doing to them and their family. These are not the HARDCORE FOLKS you seem to look down upon, but regular computer users. I showed them Microsoft's comments on the data that are being harvested. I did not add my opinion, I just showed them what Microsoft was saying about the data harvesting.
.
So far, not one has said they wanted to go forward with the Windows 10 installation.
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.
There are absolutely no tiles in my Windows 10 start menu.
You ARE aware there's a text menu to the left of the tiles, and 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, right?
There are some things about 10's start menu that I don't like, but 'huge colorful tiles instead of a list of programs' is absolutely invalid.
I was initially a little wary of Windows 10 but when I started using it I was all right with it - for a while. It seemed to be stable, it ran the applications I needed (Pinnacle Studio and PaintShop Pro) and it seemed to be faster than Windows 7. Seemed like a good move for me.
But then I got a new computer with Windows 10 pre-installed. I thought, "great, now I can move my old computer to Linux like I planned and still run my important applications on the new one." Things were fine, until I realized that I was connected to the network without having entered my network password. And it knew my passwords on various websites that I had accessed with Edge. It knew how to access my bank, my social media - everything. Now, I am not a big fish by any means, but I do not like the idea of my passwords and keys being stashed on a server over which I have zero control.
Do I believe Microsoft will do Bad Things with that information? No, I don't. It's convenient to have it know what I need for me so I don't have to look it up. But, it's unnerving that they harvested that info without my knowledge. It also is unsettling to think that it's on a network computer somewhere.
On this basis alone I hesitate to recommend Windows 10.
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!