Ask Slashdot: Share Your Experiences With Windows 10

Long-time Slashdot reader shanen writes: The Start button is broken on one of my Windows 10 machines. Left click is dead. Fairly well known problem, but none of the solutions from non-Microsoft web pages has fixed it... My little meta-problem of the day is being locked out of Microsoft's so-called support. The email part (on outlook.live.com) works as usual, but every attempt to access the support part returns "Something went wrong and we can't sign you in right now. Please try again later." It's a black hole page with no links or options or suggestions. Once you get there, you are dead to Microsoft. Whenever I try to go to Microsoft support, that's all I've seen for several weeks now. ..

In general, Windows 10 seems to be a good thing -- but I don't really know how much it is abusing my personal information and privacy. The abusive relationship with Microsoft support is clearly the same, bad as it ever was.
The original submission has more thoughts on the market for consumer operating systems, and asks for suggestions about these two previously-known issues -- a start button that ignores left clicks, and an ongoing lock-out from Microsoft support. But there's obviously much more to talk about -- so share your thoughts in the comments. Have you had any interesting recent experiences with Windows 10?

Comments

Comes and goes

[magarity]

Twice now I've had updates kill minor programs such as the built in photo editor. But a couple of weeks later, another update brings it back to life. Perhaps this is an artifact of the faster release cycle. Fortunately this computer isn't use for any actual work. I can understand why my employer is still just barely finished rolling out 7 to all company laptops.

Re:Comes and goes

[Anonymous Coward]

Twice now I've had updates kill minor programs such as the built in photo editor. But a couple of weeks later, another update brings it back to life. Perhaps this is an artifact of the faster release cycle. Fortunately this computer isn't use for any actual work. I can understand why my employer is still just barely finished rolling out 7 to all company laptops.

Remember, MS has no QA left anywhere in the company. They were all cut in the first round of layoffs a couple years ago.

*You*, the public, are their QA department now, the same way FOSS works.

Re: Comes and goes

[Billly Gates]

You can still use the old windows 7 photo editor. Go to Microsoft.com and search Windows essentials 2012?

Adobe Photoshop express is available via the app store and it is the same one on your phone? I use that one for viewing and the old 7 version.

For editing I downloaded paint.net. You can grab a copy at ninite.com.

Re:Comes and goes

[Anonymous Coward]

Several Store apps, or modern apps are like that. Why MS designed them to be so fragile and easy to end up in a non-functioning state is beyond me.

Re: Comes and goes

[Anonymous Coward]

GIMP runs fine on Windows too.

Re: Comes and goes

[hackwrench]

I'm doubly so as I am in the fast ring of Windows Insider builds. I waited until after the drivers situation settled some. Cortana on my Android device and on my computer is great. I can use it to find my device or get text messages sent to me on the computer.
People keep requesting tabs on file explorer and Microsoft still hasn't come through. I keep requesting that instead of a dialog when you attempt to go back to a directory that no longer exists and a dialog and closing the window when a device isn't found, display a resource not currently available message in the file view pane. Also, there should be an option for folder windows to all run in separate processes from each other and not just from the taskbar and every attempt should be made to let the user decide what folder views to restore afte r a crash.

Re: Comes and goes

[Anonymous Coward]

You are so full of shit. Testers who had no ability to develop or build/support test tools were prone to layoff. Testers still exist, including those who are not focused on test dev, but in smaller proportion. They are just putting greater emphasis on test as part of the agile development process.

QA is very far from gone as you'd like to convince people.

Re: Comes and goes

[Anonymous Coward]

You are the one who is full of shit. I was an SDET at MS for 8 years before leaving in 2013. Two of my friends who stayed were let go during the purge. 12 and 15 years with the company. One with a Master's. Both expert testers who had built test frameworks with C++ and C#. These guys are _really_ good.

Re: Comes and goes

[Anonymous Coward]

Directory Opus...

Re:Comes and goes

[Anonymous Coward]

My Start Menu randomly stops working. When this happens, my task bar and tray icons no longer react to mouse clicks, but not locked up. Killing explorer does not help, only a restart works. VLANs still don't work. I can't manage my switch and have internet access at the same time.

Re:Comes and goes

[BronsCon]

DRM. They'd rather you pay them and not be able to use the app than not pay them and be able to use the app. Shortsighted, as people will just not use the Windows Store if it becomes a common problem. Gates himself named ability to openly pirate software as one of the major contributing factors to the success of Windows; that they're working so hard to kill that ability should be telling.

Re:Comes and goes

[RicktheBrick]

I have a windows 10 computer that when I boot it, it will boot to a screen that says my computer is blocked and I need to call a 800 number. It will not x out so I needed to ctrl-alt-del. I found that edge was running and when I ended that app the screen went away. Windows defender is no help with this. I do not use Chrome anymore because it is infected with so much malware that at times I have more than one using my speakers to try to sell my something. Again Windows defender is no use. I am trying to setup homegroup. I get to the point where it asks for a password. I got the password from another computer but after typing it in, it tells me that it can no longer detect a homegroup until I restart and go through the experience again. I use Microsoft jigsaw game and it must expect a expensive graphic interface card since some times it will not move a piece unless I click on it several times thus making it very hard when the games gives me a time limit to finish a puzzle. The game makes me watch advertising but most of them are for other Microsoft games and a lot of them I already have on my computer. Of course if I pay them around $10 a year they will skip the advertising but I think the game is only worth the $10 so after the first year I would be over paying them.

Re:Comes and goes

[thunderclap]

I gather you are unaware of Chrome's reset button in the settings that deletes everything. Its great when people load useless spammy extensions onto shared systems.

Re: Comes and goes

[dwywit]

Hear hear! I can run explorer like this:

"%windir%\explorer.exe " /separate

but it would be better to have a single-click option.

Re: Comes and goes

[flink]

Also, there should be an option for folder windows to all run in separate processes from each other and not just from the taskbar and every attempt should be made to let the user decide what folder views to restore afte r a crash.

The ability to separate explorer windows into individual processes has been around at least since 2000. It's been slightly buried in the latest version, but you can find it under View/Options/Change Folder and Search Options, View Tab, under "Advanced Settings", check "Launch folder windows in a separate process"

Re:Comes and goes

[unixisc]

I had a few issues the first month after I installed 10. There was an app that I ran which sometimes needed to be up overnight until I got to work the next day. The auto updates of Windows 10 caused real damage.

I've not had issues b'cos I've not struggled to keep/retain Windows 7 or XP. In fact, the only issue that I had was upgrading my Winbook to Windows 10, and had to take it to the Microsoft Store to get it done.

As for the privacy/telemetry issues, I no longer use Windows 10 for important things like banking: for that, I use PC-BSD. I had a different issue here - it choked while upgrading to 10.3, and so I had to reinstall from the CD, and now, it's stuck at 10.2. I've lost Lumina, and my system no longer recognizes the PC-BSD update server. The browsers are also no longer supported by some sites, but that's what I have to do my banking and shopping

Re: Comes and goes

[DoofusOfDeath]

You are so full of shit. Testers who had no ability to develop or build/support test tools were prone to layoff. Testers still exist, including those who are not focused on test dev, but in smaller proportion. They are just putting greater emphasis on test as part of the agile development process.

QA is very far from gone as you'd like to convince people.

With some of the bugs that are getting non-optionally pushed onto end-users' systems, it clear that either Microsoft's QA team, or product managers, or both, are (at best) incompetent, and should be fired.

I'll leave it to the Microsoft insiders to figure out who.

Re:Comes and goes

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember, MS has no QA left anywhere in the company. They were all cut in the first round of layoffs a couple years ago.

Where do you even get that idea? Not only are there plenty of SDET positions in Microsoft they are still actively hiring more of them. Nowhere did they ever cut all their QA and the idea that there is no QA left is complete rubbish.

Re:Comes and goes

[arglebargle_xiv]

I had a friend who was captured by ISIS. They used pliers to pull out his fingernails, put rats in a bowl against his stomach and dropped hot coals on the back of it to agitate them and encourage them to eat their way out, had his legs crushed under a tank, had some hard, pipe-hitting niggas go to work on him with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch, and was forced to listen to the Spice Girls on loop play.

After his release, when presented with a laptop running Windows 10, he asked if he could go back to ISIS instead.

Re: Comes and goes

[Anonymous Coward]

That you need vlan support on your PC to manage a switch without losing internet access just shows that you aren't good at managing switches!

Re:Comes and goes

[Marxist Hacker 42]

There's an easy option for this called "System Restore". Works for both Chrome and Edge.

Re:Comes and goes

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember, MS has no QA left anywhere in the company. They were all cut in the first round of layoffs a couple years ago.

Where do you even get that idea? Not only are there plenty of SDET positions in Microsoft they are still actively hiring more of them. Nowhere did they ever cut all their QA and the idea that there is no QA left is complete rubbish.

Go to https://careers.microsoft.com/search.aspx

Number of test jobs: 14
Number of dev jobs: "Only the first 500 search results are shown"

This is at a pure software company of ~120,000 people. Testing at MS is *dead*. Nadella killed it.

Re: Comes and goes

[Christopher_G_Lewis]

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced]
"SeparateProcess"=dword:00000001

FTW

Re:Comes and goes

[beastofburdon]

There is a major difference between the two now. FOSS projects do not force you to accept the updates, so you can wait for the stable ones. Micro$oft forces the updates on you in Win10.

Re: Comes and goes

[mandy2tom]

After repairing windows computers professionally 15 years. I quit using windows 10 years ago, except to run Solidworks in Parallels on a Mac I looked at windows 10 and thought nah

The user interface.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't stand the ui. I also find the system user hostile. I can understand simplifying the os for the masses but not at the power users expense.

Re: The user interface.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm yet to see windows 10. I have to use Windows 8 at work as of a few month ago when we finally upgraded from XP. I have never hated an operating system so much. It is horrible and slow as I generally have multiple programs open that I need to switch between really frequently and oh god it is it beyond awful. I have slowed down so much.

I was quite happy with Windows 7, on my last laptop. I dual booted that for steam and Diablo 3 and would consider it the best version of Windows I have ever used.

But windows 8 has pissed me off so much I am only using Ubuntu again (I had solely used Linux at home for 10 years before windows 7)

I won't be using Windows 10 in the foreseeable future. Which is sad because windows 7 and Sataya Nadalla had finally made me stop hating Microsoft.

Now my Google Nexus 6p. This is the best device I have ever used.

Re: The user interface.

[nukenerd]

Sataya Nadalla had finally made me stop hating Microsoft.

Each to his own, but he's not on my screen when I jack off.

Re: The user interface.

[Anonymous Coward]

Who is then? Ballmer or Gates?

Re: The user interface.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, that developers, developers, developers video with Steve ballmer is a lot more hot and sweaty...

Re:The user interface.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that I like Windows much or that there aren't things that got worse, but some things also improved a lot.
The task manager for example has much better information now, and the Linux subsystem with Ubuntu is also fairly nice to have (though it would have most use for it on my tablet which runs Linux badly, but can't use it as it's not supported on 32 bit OS versions and in difference to Linux you can't install 64 bit Windows when the UEFI is 32 bit).

Re: The user interface.

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen on the Nexus 6p, brother.

Re:The user interface.

[Psyko]

I can't stand the ui. I also find the system user hostile. I can understand simplifying the os for the masses but not at the power users expense.

Your post sum's up my feelings pretty well... Generally it goes like this.... On most Nix's/Nix like platforms, I fire it up, and the amount of crap that I have to remove/disable/discard is really pretty minimal. It's more like after baseline config/tuning slam in some apps for it's function and it's ready to rock.... On a windows box, drop in the os, then FIGHT'S ON to not have it try to do stupid things all the time. On windows 10, I pretty much cant get it to the kind of minimalist place where I want it (I've only been at it on win10 for a couple of weeks though...).

Re:The user interface.

[iampiti]

Congrats on the comment, it seems as if you could read my mind. user hostile is the best description one can give of Win 10

Fail

[thundercattt]

When it came out I thought hey lets see what the hub bub was about. Loaded up a VM with Windows 7. Proceeded to upgrade. End of upgrade.... failed, os unusable. Luckily it was only a VM on my Debian machine. Reinstalled 7 and said F 10. Although, it's been good $ of people willing to pay to reinstall 7 instead of 10.

Re:Fail

[fizzer06]

Windows 10 is the reason I changed my Windows 7 computers at home to Linux Mint 18.

Yes, I could have stayed with "7" if I kept all of Microsoft's updates turned off. But security issues.

Re: Fail

[thundercattt]

Good call. I've been Debian since 03. With VirtualBox I was curious how the upgrade would go, what Windoze10 looked like, how it ran etc. I'm SO glad I only used a Virtual Machine, or I would of been PISSED having a failed upgrade and losing it all.

Re:Fail

[OzPeter]

Windows 10 is the reason I changed my Windows 7 computers at home to Linux Mint 18.

Yes, I could have stayed with "7" if I kept all of Microsoft's updates turned off. But security issues.

I'll throw in the usual "some of us are stuck with MS due to the applications we use" comment to get it out of the way.

And forget Windows 7 .. I just fired up an XP VM in order to work on my current project.

Re:Fail

[Espectr0]

I tried installing Mint 18 in a VM, but if the installer detects internet it will try to download updates and translations, even if you choose not to update packages. Had to reinstall with the network cable disconnected.

Re:Fail

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Windows 10 is the reason I changed my Windows 7 computers at home to Linux Mint 18.

Ditto. Installed it, love it, and never looked back.

Re: Fail

[Anonymous Coward]

And I'll throw in the usual " you guys are full of shit". Every MS artlce draws out the usual faux outrage how THIS is the last straw, now I'm switching to .

Oh, and to GP, maybe your virtual box is screwed up if you are being honest because I've installed 10 on numerous pieces of hardware and different virtualization platforms and it is boringly reliable to set up.

Re: Fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Boringly reliable to set up it might be, but it takes twice as long to install as any Linux distro. No idea why it needs to be so slow.

Re:Fail

[hambone142]

I've done the same on one of my laptops. My only complaint is no easy solution to get Canon wireless printer drivers installed. Wired, yes but so far, wireless has been a problem.

Re: Fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 10 on my desktop has been quite dodgy. It never figured out how to install the update from last November. When I tried to install the anniversary update, that failed even faster. Microsoft's support forums are full of people reporting the same error code; Microsoft suggests about four different possible solutions, but the only one that worked for me was to make a new full install thumb drive and let that do the upgrade.

My laptop has been better, probably because it's COTS rather than homebrew and shipped with 10, but it still told me one time that there was no hard drive in my device. Technically correct, but it was running off the SSD that came with the laptop (and is the only mass storage device that has ever been inside my laptop).

Re:Fail

[HiThere]

With most VMs you can set the VM to not see the network...you shouldn't need to pull the physical plug.

Re:Fail

[Anonymous Coward]

You didn't have to leave Windows 7 entirely that's the beauty of Windows 7 (or even 8 really) you can disable certain updates that cause you problems while still getting the rest of the security patches. Honestly I'm surprised Windows 10 reception has been as positive as it has been. In my experience it's close to as unstable as Vista* was and the force updates are one of the worse things Microsoft has ever done some of us have work to do not to mention it seem Microsoft is constantly pushing botched updates that you can't disable.

If they don't get their shit together by 2020 (Windows 7 Extended supported end date) I'll be considering moving to Windows 8 or Linux as well.

*start menu doesn't work, explorer.exe crashing constantly I could go on but I won't.

Re:Fail

[Anonymous Coward]

But security issues.

That sentence no verb.

Re:Fail

[kruug]

Don't go with Mint: https://lwn.net/Articles/67666...

Re:Fail

[kruug]

Don't go with Mint: https://lwn.net/Articles/67666...

Re:Fail

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Don't go with Mint: https://lwn.net/Articles/67666...

Interesting read.

I don't know if it's enough to get me to abandon Mint, but I'd definitely be interested to know what distro(s) you'd suggest as an alternative?

Re:Fail

[Espectr0]

I just clicked on the lower right section of virtualbox where the network adapter is, and just unchecked the "network cable attached" option.

Re:Fail

[kruug]

Personally, I find nothing wrong with a trusty Debian Testing install...but feel free to hit up any of the top 3 (Debian, Slackware, RedHat/Fedora). https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

Re:Fail

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Personally, I find nothing wrong with a trusty Debian Testing install...but feel free to hit up any of the top 3 (Debian, Slackware, RedHat/Fedora).

All my servers run Debian, but for use at home, Mint just seemed right. I don't know why.

Re:Fail

[kruug]

You can always do Debian with Cinnamon for the DE...that way it's the security/stability of Debian but the interface of Mint.

Re:Fail

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

You can always do Debian with Cinnamon for the DE...that way it's the security/stability of Debian but the interface of Mint.

Hmmm, I may give that a spin someday if I get the urge to experiment.

Hiding...

[Anonymous Coward]

I still come across the odd statement "Windows 7" that seems to been overlooked in 10. :)

Windows is approaching usability

[Pathwalker]

I keep a Windows laptop around, to both keep up to date with how recent updates are coming along, as well as to play old games.

Windows is approaching the point where it might be workable for day to day use.

For work purposes, I don't need much, A bunch of terminal windows, a ssh client that can handle private keys stored on a Yubikey, and a web browser.
While the terminal emulation of the Bash prompt in the Ubuntu subsystem is still very poor, I could probably manage most of what I need for work from a windows box.

For my most common hobby, I need a few more things. Good NFS performance, a working automounter, an Xserver that supports hardware accelleration, and for the OS to not intercept any function keys for its own use.

The NFS performance of Windows 10 is decent, but alas if you install autofs into the Linux subsystem, it is unable to mount files. The few attempts I've made at mounting a NFS server from inside of the Linux subsystem have all failed. It appears that all mounts need to be done from Windows itself.

There are decent Xserver options for windows, but they (along with most other programs) suffer from Windows intercepting any press of F1 and using it to pop up a useless help screen, rather than passing it to the underlying application.

As far as I can tell, any program that doesn't make the right system call to indicate that it intends to use F1, will never see those keypresses as windows will intercept them.

If the automounter was working, and if there was a way to disable Window's interception of F1, I might actually be able to use it for hobby use as well.

Until then, I mainly use it for old games, and keep any productive work on Linux, BSD, and OSX.

Re:Windows is approaching usability

[The MAZZTer]

F1 is always handled by the underlying application. I suspect in this case it is simply being handled by the WRONG application... this is not Windows' fault, but the application you're using.

Re:Windows is approaching usability

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, he's saying F1 should be passed through. Therefore Windows shouldn't be messing with it, this is either broken design or implementation on Microsoft's part.

Re:Windows is approaching usability

[Anonymous Coward]

There's nothing broken about a published API saying you need to indicate that you're handling certain events.

And, while it's annoying, if you can't write a script which interfaces with the Windows system for mounting, you probably don't have any business in the Linux subsystem.

These come under the category of little niggles as one finds with every single system, and works around with a few minutes of brainpower.

Re:Windows is approaching usability

[arth1]

The NFS performance of Windows 10 is decent, but alas if you install autofs into the Linux subsystem, it is unable to mount files.

Mounting files with nfs is not supported under Unix or Linux either - only what acts like directories. (PC-NFS might have allowed individual file access, but that doesn't count)
You may be able to do a bind mount on a file in a directory that's already been nfs mounted, if a symlink won't do.

Re:Windows is approaching usability

[nameer]

HAHAHAHA...

Why isn't anybody getting this?! I don't have mod points, but if I did, you would get a +1 funny. Need a UID of less than 1e6 to get it?

Re:Windows is approaching usability

[nameer]

The post is a gentle joke. It's a parody / satire of the 2005 "Windows rapidly approaching desktop usability" article that Roblimo wrote in 2005, which was a parody / satire of all the "Linux approaching usability" articles that every tech reporter hack was writing about Linux and its apparent emergence as a legitimate desktop alternative at the time. Don't think too hard about it.

Re:Windows is approaching usability

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I admit that I missed it initially, probably because it was a bit too close to the truth for my humour sensors to activate...

Re:Windows is approaching usability

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed but my compatibility test suite consists of: :(){ :|: & };:

When it reliably simulates a standard Windows blue-screen from a subsystem shell, then I'll know Windows is ready for day-to-day usage.

Re:Windows is approaching usability

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, the priceless things we slashdotters carry around with us.

Enough to keep a Beowulf cluster of shrinks happy for years.

Re:Windows is approaching usability

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

My shrink IS a Beowulf cluster, you insensitive clod!

Re:Windows is approaching usability

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, Beowulf cluster shrinks YOU!

Re:Windows is approaching usability

[bn-7bc]

Is that a fork bomb i see ther? Well playd sir

Re:Windows is approaching usability

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Your ideas about Soviet Russia are intriguing to me sir, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

(As a rip from the Simpsons, I think that one was originally my own on /. and Everything)

Re:Windows is approaching usability

[Anonymous Coward]

2005... Johnny-come-lately

One nice feature

[Crashmarik]

That I actually use. Storage spaces is about the only thing that gives it an advantage over windows 7.

Windows 7 trumps it in user interface and experience, multimedia was superior in 7 (Media streaming was destroyed, and the player no longer plays dvds/svcds)

Re:One nice feature

[Anonymous Coward]

A vanilla Windows 7 installation couldn't actually play back DVDs either, unless you had a 3rd party DVD playback application or codec pack installed, because of licensing issues.

Re:One nice feature

[Anonymous Coward]

A vanilla Windows 7 installation couldn't actually play back DVDs either, unless you had a 3rd party DVD playback application or codec pack installed, because of licensing issues.

Which is why most Windows users I know, just install VLC and call it a day. The DVD and media player "licensing" is beyond stupid. Although, VLC is much better than what most OS vendors would throw in by default, so maybe we should thank them after all.

Re:One nice feature

[Anonymous Coward]

VLC, the Win32 version not the app. Free. Works in Win10, for now at least, though every time there's a major update of Windows your defaults get reset and you have to change them back to VLC.

Re:One nice feature

[Anonymous Coward]

iOS has a good UI, you can configure most flavors of Linux to have a magnificent UI, Microsoft just generally sucks at that (Windows 7 included). Also, if you're using any default Windows app, you're computering wrong.

Re:One nice feature

[Doke]

Storage Spaces first appeared in Win 8. It was a rewrite of Drive Extender from Windows Home Server. It's sort of like Linux's LVM. SS doesn't have as much functionality, but it's easier to use.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/10/storage-spaces-explained-a-great-feature-when-it-works/3/

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/07/windows-home-server-is-dead-but-we-shouldnt-mourn-it/

https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html/Logical_Volume_Manager_Administration/raid_volumes.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_Volume_Manager_%28Linux%29

It raped me

[Anonymous Coward]

No, this is not a metaphor. The OS took over my computer and had it infect other WIFI appliances in my house. Then they all merged together into one being and proceeded to hold me down and rape me. I tried to scream but my mouth was covered. The raping lasted three hours.

Afterwards, it said I had to keep using Windows, because my work software demanded it. I cried myself to sleep.

Re: It raped me

[Anonymous Coward]

This happened to me too! I thought I was the only one...

Re:It raped me

[Anonymous Coward]

The most unbelievable part of this story is that it ran for three hours without crashing.

Re: It raped me

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what I told your mom when she was held down for three hours too!

Meh

[BLToday]

It's better than Windows 8. Still a lot of consistency problems, why is there two control panel/settings?

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's due to the OS having the tablet mode. The only feature I use is the right click at the lower left of the screen for the quick menu of mostly used system functions. That or typing in ***.cpl to bring up a specific mmc. It's very keyboard friendly as I try not to use the mouse when I can.

Re:Meh

[AmiMoJo]

It's not better than 8.1 with Classic Start Menu.

Re:Meh

[swb]

The consistency thing is a problem with Windows generally -- you can see it on Server 2012r2 where you need to use Server Manager to perform certain tasks, but many others are still handled by MMCs that haven't changed much if any since 2003 Server. Many don't even appear to use updated display APIs and look weird when subject to display scaling.

And where they have new features that require Server Manager, the Server Manager GUI can only partially configure them, the more specific configuration details require PowerShell commands, with all of their obscure, multi-syllable options. So the GUI isn't feature complete.

Compounding this is that some new features, like Storage Spaces, are really just disk management features. So Server Manager can do some of those, too, but you end up asking yourself -- how much effort did it take to create an entirely new GUI management system that only partially implements old management tool features, which you still need to do a lot of tasks? Wouldn't it have been simpler to simply add new features to the existing GUI tools?

Personally, I'm fairly cynical -- I think that so much management effort is put into scheming, trying to create lock-in scenarios and creating an illusion of newness that there's little human capital left for *engineering* the product. So you end up with something that may have some worthwhile enhancements from a core technology perspective, but it has so many cosmetic changes that the entire thing feels designed by committees whose leadership doesn't communicate. It's like if you work for a group under Windows, you think of something and submit it to a committee to get included in the next release, but the person who decides what to include is more focused on market share and looks, so there's just no coordination.

Re:Meh

[dunkelfalke]

It is. Much better, in fact. Windows 8 is worse than Vista.

Re:Meh

[fox171171]

It's not better than 8.1 with Classic Start Menu.

Agreed. Win8.1. Set to boot to desktop. Use Classic Start. Replace all metro apps with real software. That brings it mostly back to normal.

Re:Meh

[AmiMoJo]

8.1 is as fast as 10 in terms of boot times, resume from hibernation etc. It supports self-encrypting drives. It's got a recent version of Direct X for gaming. They fixed some of the slow networking issues in 7. The UI is fine, all settings accessible via the Windows 7 control panel. Good high DPI support, allowing different DPI settings per monitor. Improved font rendering.

With Classic Start Menu installed you will never see the Start Screen. What's not to like about it?

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

It is.

No, it isn't. See, I can play that game too.

Much better, in fact.

That's not a fact. That's your opinion.

Windows 8 is worse than Vista.

Are you drunk? On heavy medication? Trolling?

Re:Meh

[shanen]

Wish I had a mod point to give you.

Hmm... How about if the contributor of an article was rewarded with extra mod points in that article?

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

Based on what exactly?

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh, 8.1 isn't so bad. Bar a few tiny vestiges, all things Metro and 'Windows Store' can be removed/ignored in 8.1. I've used 8.1 for years and except for two or three forays into the 'Settings' thing I've never once used any metro app. And call me crazy, but I actually prefer the full-screen "Start" thing to the equivalent functionality in other versions (though not the Start *Menu*, which is an incomprehensibly idiotic clusterfuck). Now if only I could get rid of the stupid "charms" bar that pops up whenever I accidentally put my mouse in the wrong place, or that giant-ass clock that pops up with it apparently intended for those too nearsighted to read that *other* clock right next to it...

(But fuck 10. I've already converted one machine to Mint because of it, and will do the same for every future machine I ever own until/unless Microsoft gets its shit together again)

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe a better term is degeneracy? Multiple ways of performing the same action, each with subtle differences? On one of those tidy little 32GB EMMC drive ultras - an Acer ES1-111M - The pop up Windows Upgrade (to Build 1511) fails due to lack of space (of course) and gives no option to use SD card or USB stick for the install. Media Creation Tool also fails the same way. But Settings->Windows Update works. Only took me/the tools 6 or 7 hours to discover this (man, EMMC is slow). Partly my fault for having slow 8Mbit broadband I guess. I had nothing better to do Microsoft. Thanks for listening.

I think that so much management effort is put into scheming, trying to create lock-in scenarios and creating an illusion of newness that there's little human capital left for *engineering* the product. So you end up with something that may have some worthwhile enhancements from a core technology perspective, but it has so many cosmetic changes that the entire thing feels designed by committees whose leadership doesn't communicate. It's like if you work for a group under Windows, you think of something and submit it to a committee to get included in the next release, but the person who decides what to include is more focused on market share and looks, so there's just no coordination.

This hits nail on head.

Re:Meh

[iampiti]

Don't fret, it's been said the setting will all migrate to the Settings (the mobile like app) in the future.
Me, I just find the mobile-like UIs out of place on a desktop.

Re:Meh

[david_thornley]

I didn't find Vista, when first released, to be as annoying as Windows 10 has been.

Win10 day again?

[Jack_the_Tripper]

Installed it on my laptop when it first came out, it sucked ass at playing videos (the primary usage of said laptop), put Fedora back.

Full experience

[thegarbz]

I installed Windows 10 on multiple machines and upgraded a Windows 8 on one. Disabled that stupid search bar. Don't use that windows store. Turned off the advertising and tracking options.

My experience: Zero. It's an operating system. It works. My software works just like it did on Windows 7, the Settings panel took a bit of figuring out on day 1, but then I haven't opened settings or control panel since.

Oh I did have the girlfriend's computer inexplicably suicide on day one where no startup repair options worked anymore, but then reinstalled Windows 10 and haven't had an issue on that machine since either.

Re:Full experience

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, it's just an OS and does do what it's supposed to. But in the big picture I'm still trying to figure out how Microsoft survived two failed major product releases like Vista and Windows 8. It would have severely injured any other company.

A testament to monopoly power and brute-force licensing schemes I guess.

Re:Full experience

[thegarbz]

2? Man you have a bad memory. Windows ME ring a bell?

Microsoft survives in that they have cash cows and complete capture. If you buy a new computer now from a big brand, regardless if you run Linux on it you've paid the Microsoft tax and license. If Microsoft killed it's OS division right now they are still being fed loads of money from Office.

And all of that is ignoring the XBox, or the many millions they get in royalties from Android.

Re: Full experience

[Anonymous Coward]

The public has also been conditioned by nerds to believe that the reason things dont work for them is because they are stupid and UI ts their fault they are having problems. They don't feel they know enough to say hey "this system sucks". Also for the most part they don't care.

Re: Full experience

[thundercattt]

Paid for OS yes. Have the optionto call said laptop company requesting refund for OS. Done it for 7 multiple times,done for 8 once. Suspect I will on my next laptop also.

Re:Full experience

[Espectr0]

Windows 8-10 stupid decision to disable the F8 key by default, therefore can't use safe mode unless you can boot into windows, then what's the point? Enable F8 support by disabling Fast Boot, boot will only be a few seconds more but it's worth it.

Re:Full experience

[CptLoRes]

Only one problem. Next forced update, your stupid search bar and windows store etc. will be turned on with no possibility of turning them off again.. Enjoy your 'operating system'..

Re:Full experience

[Solandri]

Windows 95 sucked as well (numerous lockups - most people's first introduction to blue screens). Everyone just tolerated it because it was the first time Microsoft included a TCP/IP stack in Windows. (Contrary to popular belief, the Internet/Web did not become big when Windows joined. It became big in 1994, when I started seeing URLs being advertised on billboards, trucks, and TV commercials. Gates was convinced the walled garden approach that AOL used was the future. MSN was their version of AOL - it was a pay service initially. User demand dragged him kicking and screaming into adding Internet capability to Windows.)

Microsoft has had a pretty reliable pattern of every other release of Windows sucking.

Windows 3.0 (mid-1990) - sucked
Windows 3.1 (mid-1992) - decent
Windows 95 (mid-1995) - sucked
Windows 98 (mid-1998) - decent
Windows ME (late-2000) - sucked, probably the worst one they've made
Windows XP (late-2001) - decent
Windows Vista (early 2007) - sucked on the hardware of the time
Windows 7 (late-2009) - decent
Windows 8.x (late-2012) - sucked (I don't really count 8.1 as separate since all they really did was tweak the UI)
Windows 10 (mid-2015) - remains to be seen

Oddly, it seems like the longer they have to work on a release, the worse it is. Either they're biting off more than they can chew, or they know it sucks from internal testing and take more time trying to make it better but not really succeeding. (I left out Windows NT and 2000 since those were really enterprise releases, not general use. NT was ok, 2000 was really good and formed the basis of XP.)

Re:Full experience

[Paradigma11]

Only one problem. Next forced update, your stupid search bar and windows store etc. will be turned on with no possibility of turning them off again.. Enjoy your 'operating system'..

Source?

Re:Full experience

[Anonymous Coward]

I had 3.11, 95 and ME, which made me move away from Windows. I still feel that every ME user should have got a free upgrade to XP, just to deliver what was promised. Windows 98 was pretty decent and ME was sold as an improvement to 98. I paid money to receive something better than 98 and I didn't receive it, I received something that was worse than Windows 95.

My main problem with MS is not the poor quality of some releases. My main problem with them is that they promoted several products as if they woud be better than good sex. That causes some disappointment even if the release is decent but not that good, and severe disappointment when it turns out to be something like ME. You could of course point out that I shouldn't believe marketing. I know that, but I do notice when I have been lied to, and I refuse to go along with this strange cognitive dissonance that makes people accept lies when salespeople tell them. Those lies are still lies and it is still Microsoft that told them.

Microsoft now acknowledges that ME and Vista were bad. That may appear as if they are being honest and open, but the pattern seems to be that they only start to acknowledge these things when enough time has passed for it not to matter anymore. That is a cheap way to be honest about your mistakes. I never got that free upgrade to XP, it would have made a difference if they had taken responsibility for their product then.

As a result I've been a happy Debian user for over 15 years now. It isn't perfect (although it is very stable), especially in the first years some software was a bit limited, but as nobody ever promised me more than was delivered I have never had a problem with that. I'm perfectly capable to work around limitations, but I get a bad temper from working arount limitations where excellence was promised.

Re:Full experience

[thegarbz]

It became big in 1994, when I started seeing URLs being advertised on billboards, trucks, and TV commercials.

I call shenanigans. I didn't see URLs on anything well into the Windows 98 era. Why would anyone advertise or work online for something that was accessible to 8 million people world wide at the time when there was essentially nothing called a "global economy". You're saying that people went out of their way to plaster billboards with URLs to talk to potential customers you could literally count on one hand. I think you have your history confused, and for pretty much most of the consumer world the "Web" most definitely did become big when Windows joined. Prior to that the few lucky above average Joes who were online were typing in AOL keywords (something that unlike URLs WAS plastered on billboards in around the 1995 era).

Re:Full experience

[thegarbz]

Why what's the point? For problems that F8 can help you with the startup recovery will either take you there or your system was so hosed that it won't even get that far. (F8 wouldn't have helped me as the problem was to do with drive encryption).

Re:Full experience

[thegarbz]

No. Your search bar will not be turned on without the ability to disable. Cortana will not be able to be disabled, but that is a different thing which isn't actually disabled on my system right now.
Also you can't disable your Windows Store now, and haven't been able to on Windows 10 except for enterprise editions where you still can.

I'm going to conclude the "etc" also describes a list of things that are wrong.

Re:Full experience

[Anonymous Coward]

WinME and Vista both could have been good.

WinME suffers from a problem with its PnP subsystem re-enumerating everything constantly. A dude I worked with figured that out. He limited the .inf files to *just* the hardware on his box and the thing stopped locking up and running like crap. It ran pretty smooth. But took a *lot* of work to get it to do that.

I was really into win98. However, what flipped me to XP (the cotton candy version of windows) was a friend 'I have not had a crash in 3 months'. I ordered it that day and had it installed by the end of the week.

XP at first was kinda flakey. It would just do 'weird' things. Like corrupt a disk or crap vid drivers. It was not until about sp2 that they finally worked out the kinks. People seem to want to think XP was the only good version of windows. It took them a *long* ass time to get it just right.

Vista had a problem with 3 programs. The superfetcher, the indexer, and the built in virus scanner. Turn those three things off and Vista ran very well. They basically were slamming out the disk. Win7 is basically Vista sp2. I used both and honestly *very* little changed between the two from an end user perspective. It was a rebranding to get away from the vista name.

I skipped win8 the GUI was just broken and unusable. 8.1 was a bit better. I interacted with it as little as possible sticking to win7 for my main computers.

With win10 what they just pushed out would basically be win10 sp2 in the old world. They usually did not get things really solid until sp4. Current rumor mill says end of next year.

The crap we are seeing come out of MS is a clear sign they have changed their testing methodology and it is not as good as what they had. They claim to have 350 million active devices. If just 1% of those have issues that is still millions of people having issues. Millions of people bitching on the internet about it. They have the telemetry and should concentrate on that. That is why they SAID they had the telemetry. It is why I allow it thru my firewalls.

Re:Full experience

[thunderclap]

Windows anniversary update:

http://www.howtogeek.com/24817...

Some useful group policy options no longer function on Windows 10 Professional and require Windows 10 Enterprise or Education. These include the ability to disable the lock screen, tips, and “Microsoft consumer experience” that downloads apps like Candy Crush Saga.

https://blogs.windows.com/wind...

http://www.pcworld.com/article...

http://www.ghacks.net/2016/07/...
Basically, all those things you turned off, you did through the group policy editor.

Store? Its on permanenty and you won't be able to disable it unless on enterprise.

That search bar? Its cortana and you won't be able to disable it for the same reason.

  All that tracking and ads same reason. So Aftre the 9th when all your hard work is undone and you get the real taste of 10 come back and share.

Re:Full experience

[shanen]

Highly informative summary and again I wish I had a mod point for you. Informative to the point of insight?

Re:Full experience

[Espectr0]

in my experience the only problems that windows 8/10 detect is when windows is hosed due to a HDD problem. But just last week, i couldn't get windows 10 to boot properly, windows loaded but before the ctrl-alt-del screen it just freezed therefore windows "thought" it loaded properly and wouldn't get me the safe mode.

If i had F8 enabled i could have used safe mode to use system restore to an earlier day instead of having to reformat.

Re:Full experience

[thegarbz]

And yet hitting the reset button will bring up the recovery menu on next boot. Even if you're stuck in a grey area where windows may think you've booted you can always force the issue by resetting during boot for your rare event.

Also there are many things that can cause the recovery menu to come up that aren't HDD problem (which I've never had). Bad drivers, malware, accidentally removed or damaged windows files, or the aforementioned not letting a boot cycle complete.

Re:Full experience

[aristofeles]

You must show the OS that there is something wrong. Pull your power cord off during boot, before the OS freezes. This is the "Modern" way to F8. It may broke something on your hardware if you are really unlucky, but since you choose to use Windows 8 or 10, your fault I guess.

Re:Full experience

[Anonymous Coward]

The F8 key is fucked up on Windows 7 too. Can't boot into Safe Mode. Fuck Microsoft.

Re:Full experience

[Espectr0]

I yank the power cable 2 times, and it didn't work, honest. I tried everything in my knowledge to get to the F8 menu and couldn't do it. Why leave to MS to decide when to launch the F8 menu? Disabling fast startup is cheap.

Re:Full experience

[Espectr0]

Brand name machines don't have a reset button, but i tried yanking the power cable and it didn't work.

Re:Full experience

[thegarbz]

Hold the power button in. I don't have a reset button on any of my machines other than one desktop either.

Re:Full experience

[thegarbz]

Offtopic mod? Man they give modpoints to any idiot these days.

Re:Full experience

[Static]

A lot of the "suck" effect of particular versions was dependant on the underlying hardware. In my experience, Windows ME on a laptop that was properly supported by OEM drivers was actually quite a dream. Similarly, Windows 3.x on a VLB machine was very stable. It was on a PCI box that it was considerably less than glorious.

Re:Full experience

[Anonymous Coward]

I installed Windows 10 on multiple machines and upgraded a Windows 8 on one. Disabled that stupid search bar. Don't use that windows store. Turned off the advertising and tracking options.

My experience: Zero. It's an operating system. It works. My software works just like it did on Windows 7, the Settings panel took a bit of figuring out on day 1, but then I haven't opened settings or control panel since.

Oh I did have the girlfriend's computer inexplicably suicide on day one where no startup repair options worked anymore, but then reinstalled Windows 10 and haven't had an issue on that machine since either.

I like your first line. That's first action.

Waiting for lawsuit to break out due to MS sharing info but saying it's not if you chose negative on all of those.

Reverting settings

[The MAZZTer]

The update has the bad habit of reverting settings that you specifically configured, and persisting settings that should be reverted. For example, if you use other virtualization solutions, you probably turned Hyper-V off since there's conflicts. The update turns it back on for some reason without telling you which can really mess you up. Next, Fast Startup is re-enabled even if you disabled it because it's broken (which it is for me). Lastly, Cortana is designed to be enabled all the time with this update, and the UI switch to disable it is gone. The problem is it should turn itself back on, otherwise it is difficult to determine how to do it without the UI. Sure, keep the registry setting so users who want to risk going into unsupported territory can keep turning her off, but the update really should switch things back to supported territory...

Re:Reverting settings

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention changing privacy settings back to Microsoft's benefit on every update...

Re:Reverting settings

[Mashiki]

The update has the bad habit of reverting settings that you specifically configured, and persisting settings that should be reverted.

Yeah that's really the big one that I see. That along with the default apps, which revert. Or you can't change because the UI crashes when you try to select an app that isn't a default app.

Re:Reverting settings

[Anonymous Coward]

This is actually the reason I decided not to upgrade. I was already a bit skeptical regarding all the privacy issues, but OK, provided you configure it well that could be worked around. Then some reports about compatibility issues and crashes here and there, less eager to upgrade, but OK eventually that should be fixed/worked around too. But after hearing about auto-reverting many settings (a lot of people I know reported this) I decided that no way in hell am I going to upgrade my fine working 8.1 install to a newer system bringing me zero actual benefits.

10 aint so bad, you can make sangria turlet...

[steak]

of course it's shank or be shanked.

update broke old driver

[Anonymous Coward]

Work has an all in one with a mobility radeon 5000 series. Constantly had the windows display driver failure popup until I installed a windows 7 driver, then it ran fine. That is until windows updated something that broke that dirver and now I'm forced to use provided driver from windows update. It doesn't crash as often but it still crashes. Also it updated the arduino driver over one weekend and now I cannot upload to any mega boards.

Re: update broke old driver

[Billly Gates]

No your hardware is broken.

ATI no longer supports the 5000 after they killed catalyst in favor of Crimson. Crimson is 10 compatible, but only supports 7000 series forward.

Best to downgrade to 7 as it is not supported and buy a newer PC by 2020 when it is time to upgrade

Re: update broke old driver

[fustakrakich]

No, the hardware isn't "broken". In the cases of perfectly good hardware being trashed for lack of driver support, Microsoft and/or manufacturers should be told to offer a *cash for clunkers* solution, or lose copyright privileges that are used against third party support and distribution.

Re: update broke old driver

[Billly Gates]

No, the hardware isn't "broken". In the cases of perfectly good hardware being trashed for lack of driver support, Microsoft and/or manufacturers should be told to offer a *cash for clunkers* solution, or lose copyright privileges that are used against third party support and distribution.

Well Windows 7 is still supported and 8 to a limited extent as well. Nvidia did the same thing from hardware from that 2009 era. Still 6 to 7 years is still good, but yes manufacturers have a financial incentive obviously not to want to support something for more than 5 years out.

MS can't make them do jack. The thing is operating systems are complex. Linux too would have trouble with drivers from 2009/2010 on the recent kernel. Things change. DirectX 12 is very different and so is the WDDM 2.0 which is low level that handles aero and all the effects and font rendering on the screen from the older 7. Drivers do have to be written and test cases QA'd to make sure things work without bugs.

Re: update broke old driver

[Anonymous Coward]

Translation: The hardware works fine, but Windows 10 likes to remove the correct driver and install an incorrect one instead.

Re: update broke old driver

[fustakrakich]

Still 6 to 7 years is still good

My newest machine is 8. The real issue is planned obsolescence. It is unfortunate that the market collective finds it perfectly acceptable.

but yes manufacturers have a financial incentive obviously not to want to support something for more than 5 years out.

Yes, this is why I believe that copyright/patent privileges should never extend beyond that support. I'm not singling out Microsoft. In fact, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't hesitate to produce and distribute working drivers if they were allowed to. When they do, it still requires a license from the manufacturer. That's not right.

Re: update broke old driver

[Billly Gates]

My philosophy is with Microsoft operating systems is it is best to install the OS around the time (maybe a year or two after) when the hardware came out. Otherwise you will have problems.

Linux runs great on good quality older hardware. Better quality hardware generally may run in later versions of windows with less bugs but not all is guaranteed. ATI, hard disks with old firmware that do not run well on AHCI, and other issues I remember where problems when Windows 7 came out. 8 had similar problems.

If you have new hardware and try to backhoe an older OS like Windows 7 you will have problems too. NVMe is just broken under 7 and Bluetooth and USB 3 support is terrible! I dunno.

Linux Mint might be fine in such a case or just keep 7 if you need win32 apps and do not want to deal with putting a ton of ram to run a virtualizer. I do wish there was an opensource competitor to Hyper-V? Virtualbox is terrible and a type 2 and VMware workstation is buggy and no longer made and $$$$ where it drops support for win10 and Latest Linux versions unless you shell out more cash. That would make Linux more appealing for me as I run VM's and for those who need a win32 app.

Re: update broke old driver

[slashdot_commentator]

1) Windows 7 will be supported to 2020. I think they'll stop issuing security updates in 2018.

2) You won't be buying PCs with OSes in 2020. Consumers will be using cloud computing by then, similar to the chromebook. Standalone computing will be charged at a premium, and seem archaic. Perhaps then, linux will become the predominant computing desktop.

Problem free here.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure I'm just a shill for saying so, though. So no point in providing details.

Shit

[Billly Gates]

This is slashdot. You might as well ask how your experience is with SystemD while you are on it. ... To be a smartass I will say with Windows 10 anniversary edition I have systemD running after I did a Sudo apt-get install gdm :-)

No issues here

[Anonymous Coward]

On 6 different machines (3 desktop, 2 laptops, 1 tablet), I never had a single issues with Windows 10, be it upgrade or clean install. Nor do I personally know anyone who had issues. Lucky I guess?

Re:No issues here

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably rather normal than lucky. I had no issues with 3 systems.
But a friend had issues that Win10 refused to install on both his computers (which worthless error message, as you expect from Microsoft).
One of them was fixed by unplugging all USB devices, the other needed a complete reinstall.
No issues with Win10 itself though.

As a botnet operator and telemetry hacker...

[Anonymous Coward]

I say...not bad at all!

Time for another round of Anti-Trust oversight.

[SirDrinksAlot]

This keeps happening, big update comes out and all of the defaults reset to Microsoft products. It's been a constant problem since I've installed Windows 10 and at this point I'm willing to call this a feature rather than a bug. No I do not want to use your PDF viewer, Media player or Edge browser, stop forcing it on me Microsoft.

Re:Time for another round of Anti-Trust oversight.

[fustakrakich]

This keeps happening, big update comes out and all of the defaults reset to Microsoft products.

That's only if you use the "quick" setup. I turned all that off, along with most of the telemetry, when doing the upgrades.

Re:Time for another round of Anti-Trust oversight.

[Anonymous Coward]

Odd, mine didn't revert and haven't reverted even once on two machines since first installing Win10 over a year ago. I have read about this happening before with a specific earlier build, but I thought then, and I think now that this is a bug that was introduced during that build and just hasn't been addressed yet.

Re:Time for another round of Anti-Trust oversight.

[Calydor]

Which leads to the question of why you have to do MORE work to maintain the choices you've already stated are your preference.

That's like saying that unless you go to a job interview with your employer every month they will take it to mean you don't want your pay check anymore.

Re:Time for another round of Anti-Trust oversight.

[fustakrakich]

Well, to be honest, I don't like upgrades at all. Something always gets buggered. I have the same issues with Linux. I always get better results with a fresh install that I know is clean.

Unlock password entry

[wvmarle]

A recurring problem I have is with the unlock password. I commonly deactivate the screen saver (and bring up the unlock prompt) by hitting the space bar - then the space is considered the first character of my password. More frustrating though is that very often when I'm two or three characters into my password, the cursor jumps back to the left and the rest is entered there, at the beginning rather than appended to the end. So a password of 12345678 becomes 45678123 - and I have to type it again. Very irritating.

Re:Unlock password entry

[jader3rd]

Really? I've never had it recognize the key I hit to turn off the screen saver as the first key of the password. I'd love it if it did. Try using Num Lock to wake your machine.

Re:Unlock password entry

[Anonymous Coward]

So a password of 12345678 becomes 45678123 - and I have to type it again. Very irritating.

Well, there's your problem. You need to stop using 12345678 as your password, along with 60% of the rest of the world

Re:Unlock password entry

[wvmarle]

It's not always like that indeed... Sometimes it does. Sometimes not. Maybe I pressed it twice as it was slow in reacting or so. Just like the cursor jumping around, that's also seemingly random.

My Linux Mint box unlocks a lot more reliable, that's one thing for sure.

Re:Unlock password entry

[bruce_the_loon]

The delay is caused by the NSA chap having to log off so you aren't suspicious about the mouse moving by itself. Normally they can see you coming into the room, but that depends on whether you have your webcam taped over.

Re:Unlock password entry

[Anonymous Coward]

a laptop pre-installed with adware from manufacturer?

Re:Unlock password entry

[shanen]

I wish I had a mod point to give you.

Then again, it should be a "sinister" mod point.

The paranoia is getting to me, but time for another plug for Data and Goliath by Bruce Schneier.

Re:Unlock password entry

[flink]

Re-enable Ctrl+Alt+Del for logins. Start/Run/netplwiz, Advanced tab, check require Ctrl+Alt+Del to login. Then it will be unambiguous when you are logging in vs cat ran across the keyboard.

Fix to dead start button

[Anonymous Coward]

To fix the dead start button if you did no bork your PC more with the fixes proposed on the net, all you need to do is take the MediaCreationTool and Upgrade (even if it's the same version it will go ahead and install). This will repair all broken links to the UI from Windows Store and the famous Start button.

This fix has not been posted anywhere but is well known among PC techs. I don't know why, it's not like it's a state secret.

Re:Fix to dead start button

[Anonymous Coward]

Or install ClassicShell and get rid of the Microsoft Puke

Re:Fix to dead start button

[Deathlizard]

Another method (although honestly it doesn't always work, but its worth a shot with more non techy users afraid of installing windows) is leave the System on for an entire day or two.

Tried this with about 10 machines now and it worked on 8 of them as long as you didn't do any of the "Fixes" that are out there. Apparently Windows will fix itself with one of the maintenance routines it does when it is idle. Of course with Anniversary out there now it would be fixed as soon as it upgrades itself. I've also had luck with the tweaking.com all in one utility repairing this issue, but that's a last resort before reinstalling windows.

As for my personal experience with win10. so far so good. It runs better especially on lower ram systems, and there is definitely improvements in app performance and startup. Got it on all my machines and the only problem I had was an issue with VIA audio, which was fixed with anniversary. As for other issues I'll quote my older post on this.

1) Update your BIOS! Especially if its a Laptop: There are issues with the screen going black after updating to 10 that are caused by an outdated BIOS, especially on older Dell Vostro and some ASUS systems. If you forget chances are you can get a screen by plugging in a monitor but update the BIOS to avoid it in the first place.

2) if you have IDT audio installed on your PC, remove the driver NOW from programs and features!: Older Versions of this driver is FUBARed and will cause explorer to crash infinitely while it is migrating your profile, which will screw it up to the point where you will have to rollback to 7. Cheap Dells, HP's and Toshiba's usually have this sound card. 10 Will detect it as a HD audio codec and will work fine without the crashing, or use the latest 8.1 driver if your manufacturer actually has one. Not sure why MS doesn't detect this as incompatible during its check.

3) Windows update on windows 7 will screw you out of time: Windows update is so FUBARed on 7. it alone is a reason to upgrade to 10. I've found the best way to update from 7 is to install windows 10 setup to a flash drive, keep the upgrading system off the network until you see the installing windows circle, and open a administrative command prompt and "net stop wuauserv" about every 5 minutes during install. This will cut load times down significantly because the install process will start a windows update session every 5 minutes and with win7 taking about 2 hours a checkin the above will get 10 installed in minutes rather than hours

4) Profiles may not migrate on first run and run temporary profile: Seems to happen to a lot of 2010-2011 HP units for some reason. Boot with safe mode and the profile should fix itself although the start menu will be clean of Squares.

5) Wifi card goes AWOL after Shutdown/Sleep: See this one constantly with 2013-2015 Dell laptops with a dell customized broadcom driver. Some people say removing the Dell driver altogether and using the 10 driver works but YMMV also the latest Dell driver does not fix this issue. I typically disable fast startup and Wifi Power saving options to get around this one but it will still happen from time to time.

Re: Fix to dead start button

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't sound like windows is ready for the desktop to me.

Re:Fix to dead start button

[Anonymous Coward]

Update your BIOS! Especially if its a Laptop: There are issues with the screen going black after updating to 10 that are caused by an outdated BIOS,

Some old motherboards without BIOS updates are able to install the update by reverting the disk controller to IDE mode. The symptom is the same like with the other driver issues: black screen during update.

Re:Fix to dead start button

[shanen]

Thanks and noted. Will explore the idea when I have time, though the first cursory search doesn't seem to find such a tool installed on the afflicted machine.

Re:Fix to dead start button

[BurningFeetMan]

So how long until Windows 10 updates screw users and force them to update? ... oh wait.

Phrasing!

[NonUniqueNickname]

Are you inviting people to share their experiences, or promoting Windows 10 as a tool for to share experiences not-so-voluntary?

It's ok

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that the annoying bug of max 240 symbols path length is still there, the spying it does on me, the non-existent driver support for older hardware, the constant thrashing on the disk (I have 6GB of RAM available), being unable to uninstall certain apps (xbox app comes to mind here) which come bundled with windows, not allowing me to customize things to my heart's desire and let's not forget about the occasional update requiring a reboot (which invariably takes forever).

Oh, and did I mention the app uninstaller sucks (try to uninstall a particularly bloated install of visual studio and you'll understand what I mean).

Otherwise it works just fine.

Re:It's ok

[Anonymous Coward]

regarding the disk thrashing, one thing i found in cases where workstations were having pegged disk IO at work is if you go into settings->notifications and turn off the whatever the hell option it is that's like "Provide tips for using windows" in 90% of cases this would stop.

Not precisely sure why but it is now set that way on our default images and no further problems on that front in most cases.

All my friends have updated and don't seem to care

[Kjella]

I'm the one hold-out on Windows 7, all my closest friends have upgraded. They don't see a problem with it, but they also use the cloud and whatnot they don't care that it's all sent to Apple and Google so why Microsoft? I have it on my laptop because I bought it with Win8 and apart from the pages and pages of services I want to turn off or can't turn off it seems to work well enough. Probably heading to Linux when Win7 expires, but I don't expect any big following. I expect I'll need a "Wintendo" box for games though. On the positive side for Linux, my group of friends moved from Skype to Discord for gaming. Looks like Discord has much better support under Linux, now it's only the games...

Meh

[ControlsGeek]

So I'm still getting used to this but so far... Turned off all the tiles and Cortana and do dads and gegaws so its much like the old Win & that I upgraded. Can't see what all the fuss is about. It seemed a little snappier until it overheated this old thinkpad several times. I had to crank back the CPU usage to 70% and now just as slow as Windows 7 was. Meh why bother.

Anniversary update lockup issues

[ITRambo]

The Anniversary update has caused my ThinkPad laptop (gen 5 Core i3) to occasionally freeze up. A hard reset then takes over a minute on a black screen after the splash screen shows up. This machine has an SSD and normally boots in about 15 seconds. So, this is an annoyance that I hope gets fixed fast.

Re:Anniversary update lockup issues

[Anonymous Coward]

I am having the same (or similar issue). My computer is guaranteed to restart multiple times a day. Screen freezes and if there is sound playing at the time it gets stuck on an endless loop of whatever sound was on... eventually it restarts. I keep seeing my wireless get disconnected randomly for about a second or two.

I looked at my event viewer and it's a Critical Kernel Power issue apparently. (sorry, don't know exact error. I cleared all my logs so I can start emailing MSoft after my next restart and not have a huge log). The computer is about 8 months old at most. It worked perfectly until after the anniversary update. Could be coincidence.

Success

[Anonymous Coward]

I've successfully avoided Win 10 completely. My Win7 gaming machine can stay where it is, though I rarely get time to play.

I got sick of OSX too, converting my MBA 2012 to Linux Mint 18 this week by fitting an aftermarket 1TB SSD in it.. This is my daily machine.
Was thinking about getting a Dell XPS13 but this is still working well. I like bits of OSX but there is too much "Apple's Way" about it getting in the way. Feel the same about Win10 and that awful menu, and the concerns about it phoning home..

Fortunately the PCs at work are still Win7, only updated from XP recently! We have custom software that may bork at 10.

OpenCL problems

[JamesKauffman]

Windows 10 recent versions, including the Anniversary release, apparently install a corrupted version of opencl.dll. Microsoft has acknowledged the problem, but hasn't fixed it to date. I use madVR as my video renderer in all my video players. Certain settings use OpenCL, and madVR correctly uses the opencl.dll that come with the graphics card drivers. I have one player, though, that must be loading the corrupt version first, preventing madVR from loading the good one. The devs don't seem to be interested in the issue, so I'm just using other players. How about a fix, MS? You've been aware of this for months.

Sound Issues

[Bigbutt]

Too many problems with the upgrade on my Windows 7 system and as I built (and upgraded a couple of times) it in 2008, I went ahead and built a new system.

Computer Case: Thermaltake LEVEL 10 GT, White
Power Supply: EVGA Supernova 850 watt G2 80 Plus Gold
Motherboard: Asus Maximus VIII Hero
CPU: Intel 4 Core i7-6700K
CPU Cooler: Corsair H90 (Hydro 90; Water based cooler)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series DDR4 PC2666 (4x8G: 32GB)
Video: MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G (2x)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO (500GB SSD) (Boot disk)
Storage: Seagate 2TB Internal Desktop Hard Drive- 3.5" Form Factor, SATA III 6 Gb/s, 64 MB Cache (x2)
Monitor: Wasabi Mango UHD430 Real 4K HDMI 2.0 SE 43 LG AH-IPS Panel UHD 3840×2160 Displayport 1.2 43-Inch 10Bit Monitor
Monitor: Acer G235H (2x)
Keyboard: IBM Model M (1986)
Mouse: Logitech Wireless Trackball M570
WebCam: Logitech WebCam Pro 9000
Speakers: Logitech X-540
OS: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
Blu-Ray: LG Black Blu-ray Disc Drive SATA Model UH12NS30

The main issue is the sound buzzes if something plays that is running in shared space such as YouTube, iTunes, or the Windows Video Player. The buzzing coincides with the system pausing as if the issue is taking full control of the system. In games that take over control of the sound, no buzzing.

I checked out the 'net and tried pretty much everything suggested with no success. But everything seemed to point to the Realtec on board sound. My old system had a Soundblaster X-Fi which had problems with the Windows 10 upgrade from Windows 7. Realtec points to the motherboard vendor for drivers and the Republic of Gamers folks seem to keep the system updated pretty often.

I'll also note that the 5.1 sound system doesn't work either. Just two speakers function regardless of the setting.

Finally I sprung for a SoundBlaster X card. I installed it and the drivers and voices sound muted but music is clear. Then I updated to the drivers from last week and it reversed. Voices are clear but music is muted. I even disabled the Realtec on board sound at the BIOS. No change.

Eventually I simply disabled the SoundBlaster card, enabled the Realtec, and at least games work.

With the Windows Anniversary download that just was installed, now there's buzzing and the pause in games which now kills the experience.

I'm going to poke at the drivers a bit more and then maybe roll back and maybe roll all the way back to Windows 7 on the new system.

[John]

Re: Sound Issues

[Anonymous Coward]

Creative drivers have always been a shit fest that forces you to buy new hardware with every os release

Re:Sound Issues

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you tried disallowing windows to "turn off the device to save power" in device manager?

Re: Sound Issues

[Bigbutt]

This was new hardware and I'd held back in buying a Sound Blaster because many folks say the on board audio is actually good enough for most things. My gaming isn't high end craziness with a need for super sound determination. Rocksmith, Carmageddon, and Doom are the extent, at least for the moment. I certainly won't be getting others until this gets sorted.

[John]

Re:Sound Issues

[Bigbutt]

It only seems to be an option for the Network interface but I've disabled it an the 'Wake on LAN' setting. We'll see...

[John]

Re:Sound Issues

[Bigbutt]

Thought maybe it was the Wireless Mouse but removing it and plugging in my USB mouse didn't fix the problem.

[John]

Re: Sound Issues

[BLToday]

You're lucky if Creative drivers only forces you to buy new hardware. I remember a driver update that nuked my NT4 partition, I lost so much work and this was before the days of easy backup to external drives. I'm never touching another Creative product ever again.

Re:Sound Issues

[Anonymous Coward]

The main issue is the sound buzzes if something plays that is running in shared space such as YouTube, iTunes, or the Windows Video Player. The buzzing coincides with the system pausing as if the issue is taking full control of the system. In games that take over control of the sound, no buzzing.

I checked out the 'net and tried pretty much everything suggested with no success. But everything seemed to point to the Realtec on board sound.

Yes, it does. It sounds like there is an issue with the muxing of the various sound being played at once. This may be a defective bit of hardware, not a software problem, or it may be the software, I don't have your motherboard, so I can't test it's drivers directly, but I can do all of that on my system using a Realtec chipset, and no issues. But I think it's a different version of the chip.

Anyway, it isn't a problem I can attribute to Windows in itself.

My old system had a Soundblaster X-Fi which had problems with the Windows 10 upgrade from Windows 7. Realtec points to the motherboard vendor for drivers and the Republic of Gamers folks seem to keep the system updated pretty often.

I'll also note that the 5.1 sound system doesn't work either. Just two speakers function regardless of the setting.

Do you get any sound out of the other ports at all? If not, I'd say your motherboard likely has a defect in the hardware.

Finally I sprung for a SoundBlaster X card. I installed it and the drivers and voices sound muted but music is clear. Then I updated to the drivers from last week and it reversed. Voices are clear but music is muted. I even disabled the Realtec on board sound at the BIOS. No change.

Eventually I simply disabled the SoundBlaster card, enabled the Realtec, and at least games work.

I had a problem similar to this, all of a sudden the sounds on a computer turned weird. It was because of some speaker/audio processing settings being enabled. I can't remember the setting, but it was a computer with a Creative Labs sound card, and somehow a preset had become enabled that made everything go wacky.

That's where I'd look for your problem, in Creative's control panel.

I've also had similar issues when enabling headphone mode, or some other such mode, so it's not uncommon.

With the Windows Anniversary download that just was installed, now there's buzzing and the pause in games which now kills the experience.

I'm going to poke at the drivers a bit more and then maybe roll back and maybe roll all the way back to Windows 7 on the new system.

[John]

I'm not sure it'll fix all of your problems, but it's your time to spend, however I'd at least try it on a spare HDD or even use a Live USB stick for a version of Windows or Linux as a test.

Re:Sound Issues

[thejynxed]

It's the Realtek chipset + drivers. My wife has this same issue, as do other people I know. Even with it being supposedly disabled in UEFI/BIOS, something is still going on, and I can't tell if it's a manufacturing defect (or they cheaped out and the parts aren't properly pathed, soldered, and shielded) and there is some sort of current leakage causing this or it is Windows deciding to ignore what UEFI/BIOS is telling it regarding the chipset and still polling it when it is disabled (causing an audio response that is the buzzing on the audiopath because of signal interference with other devices assigned to the same internal IRQ, usually USB hubs and Bluetooth). This bug has been around for awhile (I had it on a previous machine running Windows 7 64-bit that had Realtek audio, and on one of those old P4 XP machines that were a dime a dozen from Dell).

Re:Sound Issues

[dywolf]

people still use add-in soundcards?

Re:Sound Issues

[Anonymous Coward]

Something trivial to check: did you reconfigure the "speakers" after the device change? I'm using headphones and every time the drivers are changed, like during Windows updates, the speaker configuration changes to not include the full range of the frequency response. Try also playing with the sound device sharing settings related to the default sound device, although it probably doesn't do anything interesting. Then there is the "telecommunication detection" setting, with the automatic volume reduction.

Really like it

[tezbobobo]

So I really like it. I do a lot of design work and rely heavily on the Adobe range plus C4D. I can't complain - I prefer it to 7 as well. Cortana works really well and the search functionality is excellent. Doing work with a LOT of resources I find the system spritely and responsive. Start menu is the best it has ever been. Further, when I setting up computers for other people I find it easy to group the resources thy use together so its easy for them,

UX is OK

[Anonymous Coward]

From a purely user experience perspective, Windows 10 is OK. It's better than Win 8 in every way. It's a little quicker and lighter than Win 7. That said, I only keep Windows around for some weekly Excel usage. I think Win 10 is OK enough to get rid of Win 7 (and definitely Win 8). Win 10 does feel a bit chaotic. Overall, it should be fine and usable for a moderate-to-savy user.

Of course, Linux Mint is still better than Win 10 in every way--except for Excel support. It's easier, cheaper, free-er (speech + beer), more powerful, doesn't upgrade itself, more stable, more secure, doesn't track you, doesn't show you ads, comes with a massive software repository, more supportable, more configurable. Etc.

Re: UX is OK

[Anonymous Coward]

You may be interested in finding an upgraded version of Excel such as 2003 or 2007 or newer.
Then Linux support will be flawless.

Personally I'd recommend Excel 2007 (no matter which OS), but that's just my personal preference, not for any technical or compatibility reasons.

Utter failure

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried updating one laptop from Windows 7. It blue screened during the update and didn't reboot. I forced a power off and tried again and it seemed to finish. Booted up and it would reset on me many times before I could log in and do anything. Eventually could log in and play with it a bit, but I ended up just restoring my Windows 7 backup.

A few annoying bugs

[WDot]

I'm still a sucker for OS upgrades, especially free ones, so I upgraded both Windows machines in my home (one laptop, one PC) to Windows 10 soon after it was released. I just recently upgraded the laptop to Anniversary edition. Overall the OS seems functional, and loses the annoying Windows 8/8.1 start screen, but I'm probably not taking full advantage of the features. I was interested in using Cortana, but not so interested that I would tie my local logins to a Windows Live account. Why not let me use the Cortana features with a local login? It's not like I'm lugging my PC everywhere or replacing it like a tablet.

Also one minor comment about the Windows 10-specific options dialogs is that they seem to have a lot fewer options, so 99% of the time I just use the search bar to get to the Windows 7-style options dialog.

Now the main reason I wanted to post was three pretty annoying bugs. One was with vanilla Windows 10 (haven't seen it yet in Anniversary, but the upgrade is young). That is that the start button and widgets on the start bar would sometimes stop working. This ranged from mildly annoying (I can't set the system volume!) to basically dealbreaking (I can't do any work with NO start bar!) Sometimes a reboot would fix this, but sometimes it wouldn't. In the worst case, after trying a bunch of online remedies, I basically had to do an in-place reinstall. That worked, but that shouldn't have to happen for such a basic piece of functionality. Perhaps a more effective repair install that fixes the start bar?

The second annoying bug (again, in vanilla Windows 10, don't know if this was fixed in Anniversary), but my laptop tends to wake up from sleep in tablet mode. It's a Lenovo Yoga, so it can theoretically be used as a tablet. However, I practically never use it as such and never put it in the tablet "position," and yet I have to keep dealing with the initial disorientation of the UI not being what I expect when I open it.

The last annoying bug just started happening with Windows 10 Anniversary on my laptop. It seems like the pointer keeps jiggling nonstop. Now, I don't visually see the cursor move, but if, say, I'm watching Netflix in full screen, the player UI keeps popping up every second as if I'm continuing to move the mouse. Moreover, the screen never sleeps (I assume for the same reason).

I'm willing to put up with this nonsense (and foist it upon my poor wife), because I still have some fun fixing up OS issues (see many hours of toying around with Linux). But for my mother, I made sure that her system did not get the free update, because I thought there was very little gain for her in exchange for a lot of new issues.

Re: Jesus fucking lord christ!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you dislike a technology website discussing technical things, perhaps you'd prefer a different business seo type site like Fortune or Time.

Either way you certainly should avoid technology websites at all cost, as non-technical people like yourself will be quite unhappy. Or quite angry as your post clearly indicates.

Worth it for the environment variables window :)

[ET3D]

I filed that feature suggestion for several Windows beta, and finally Microsoft made good. Not only are the environment variable window and the editing windows resizable (which is what I asked for), but the path environment variable is edited as a list of directories. Amazing!

As for my general experience: It's okay on most PC's I tried it on. Sometimes loses the tooltips on the recent documents on the task bar on my work PC, which annoys me when when using Visual Studio. On my tablet it freed quite a bit of storage space. On my HTPC I reverted to 7 because there were some software problems.

confused much?

[Anonymous Coward]

you list all these things that are broken in windows 10, some of which are rather important and the total lack of support or caring on microsofts part and yet then you exclaim how much of a good thing windows 10 appears to you.

Sounds like someone is in denial.

so truthfully windows 10 is a disgusting hot mess.

Windows 10 experience

[Anonymous Coward]

I updated a W7 machine so I could deteermine whether my wife would be pleased or pissed at W10 (determination - she would probably be pissed).

I wasn't having any problem with it, so I kept it, but then I decided to take the laptop with me on a trip. First night at the hotel, I tried using it, but it couldn't access the hotel's network (ya see, that requires actually accepting terms and conditions, so it's not automatic), so it asked for the password I had used last time I logged on. (fuck me loop:) I supplied it, and it asked again. (go to fuck me loop;)

It seems that the wizards at Micro$oft need to have access to a network connection to verify my password, but the hotels' network wasn't accessible until after I accepted the EULA, so I couldn't log in. For the entire trip. When I got home, it connected just fine to my home network and accepted the same password it didn't accept before. Thanks, Micro$oft!

This wouldn't be much of a problem for a desktop machine, but I have a laptop, so it's supposed to be able to travel around. There's a workaround for this (I set it up, but haven't tried it out yet - I'm suspect I won't like at least part of the outcome).

This part of the design is totally brain dead.

Re:Windows 10 experience

[fuzznutz]

That is precisely why I give MS the ole middle finger on every machine I set up when it wants me to create a Microsoft account. I NEVER use a Microsoft account as part of the login of the main user. I always also add a second user for emergencies. I have seen too many people get locked out of their AD machines at work to ever use cloud authentication. It's just plain stupid on a home laptop.

Gave up on it

[Anonymous Coward]

Couldn't stand the dumbed down interface, and contextual toolbars that require extra clicks. Hate the whole user experience - build something for idiots, and only idiots will want to use it. Switched to Linux, and have never looked back, although already knew it very well from using at work, since my whole company dumped Windows a few years back, due to repeated virus outbreaks, high maintenance overhead, and high cost. The quality of windows has really slipped, I don't trust it with my data, having lost filesystems and suffered OS corruption after failed upgrades. Also hate windows store, and new windows apps.

What OS X was

[Photonmaker]

I recently built a new home machine and bit the bullet and used 10. My user base (the family) are just that - users. They don't care what they are running as long as it's running and safe. That said, running on a gen 4 i5 processor with 8 GB of RAM and an SSD (which is probably the true magic) it runs amazingly well. I shut off everything (Cortana etc) during the install - was easy to do. I'm sure I missed some things, but I'll get back to those at some point. Getting back to my subject line, my main work computer runs OS X; been using Apple products for 8 years now and used to be a major fan, but am getting sick of the OS. The walled garden was fine several iterations of ago of OS X - it provided a nice stable work environment (still is stable), had easy access to Unix-like functionality when needed (love my grep), and the laptop hardware could not be beat - still using a 6 year old Macbook pro and it's still a great piece of gear. That said the walls of the garden started to collapse a few years ago, and the patches they've been putting up are ugly and poorly functioning. Things like iTunes (which is forbidden on the home Windows machines) and the Photos app are insanely painful to use and seem to go out of their way to keep you from your own media. The Windows 10 hook - as one example, it was trivial to set up a decent file structure that is accessible in many ways to the owner of those files, and it organized in a way that makes sense. It may be that I grew up in a DOS world and that impacted my thinking - most likely reason. That said 10 provides a solid user experience, similar to what I used to like about OS X. It was pretty easy to configure to look like a classic Win interface, I've had no complaints from my user community (the fam). Why not Linux? I don't have the time to play Linux admin for the house, and no one else is inclined to do so. My nerd cred runs deep (optical communications systems development), but the computer is a tool, not a task for me and this is doubly true with my Win 10 users.

Re:What OS X was

[Anonymous Coward]

Wnjoyt the
Advertising
Spyware
No control over when your pataches are applied
Disabling settings
Cortana always on
Even more spyware to come
your $9.99/month subscriptions

W10 is not a solid user experience. It is a horrible mismtach of competing elements.
As a long term computer user, designer and developer W10 is by far and away the worst OS I've seen since Windows-ME

MS ought to be ashamed of themselves for releasing such a pile us stinking dog poo.

Re:What OS X was

[shanen]

Again I wish I had a mod point to give you, but main curiosity and motivation for replying is to ask why your comment has such a low score?

Here are mine:

[Qbertino]

- I've seen it running on my collegues machines. It looks good. The last few releases of windows look way less shitty than WinXP and all that. Win 10 seems to build on that. That's nice, I like it.

- I like some of the ms powershell stuff of recent years - I've done some stunts already with that and it was cool.

- I like the Ubuntu / Linux layer they are working on. Looks intriguing - especially for those who need to use Windows at work but rather would use a *nix.

- I heard it's for free or something like that. I like that MS is somewhat following Google Suit in that it at least gives you their OS for free for spying on you. In my opinion though Google still has a headstart with Chrome OS and Android in that area. All computer n00bs that ask me I recommend the Google ecosystem. Price-performance of chromebooks is very hard to beat.

- MS seems to have the professional tablet thing pretty much squared away. More than a decade of work in that field seems to finally pay of. However, their Hardware is very expensive if you want to use it with a stylus and high-power specs.

- Win 10 and other Windows Systems seem to be the only ones that can run "Homeworld - Deserts of Kharak" - a nice bonus.

- I don't like that MS has been spying on it's users since Win XP. That's why I don't use it. Same goes for Win 10 - that's a shame. Google does this too, that's a given, but at least their stuff has always been "for free" and will continue to be. And Chrome OS boots fast. Really fast.

Other than this I can't say much about Windows because the last time I actually used it for everyday work was back in 2002 or something. Win2K it was.
Here are the systems I recommend - in order of recommendation:

- Refurbished SSD'd Corprorate Lenovo Thinkpad (or something like that) with added RAM running x86 Linux (Xubuntu LTS, Evolution, Mint or something ...).
- Chromebook (price/performance very interesting, downside: spyware)
- Remix OS Tablet or Desktop system
- High-Power Android Tablet (Lenovo yoga pro 3 or something) with HMI & Keyboard adapter. Mobile leads in ubiquity and it's hard to beat USB power/charging, 15+ hours of battery time and the ubiquity of HDMI screens.

- Apple MB Air (Price performance still OK/bearable)

- Windows Tablets/Laptops/Machines

Generally speaking today I would only recomment Apple or MS in cases where software is needed that only runs on one of those systems. For clueles endusers I recommend the Google stuff and for regular users wo don't cry of confusion when they see a context menu or for actual computer professionals I recommend Linux. For instance, I'm pretty certain that my next computer will not be an Apple. They are nice, but I just don't need it for my work anymore - although I will miss Kaleidoskope Diff - that's for sure.

My 2 cents.

Re:Here are mine:

[shanen]

Mod points, mod points, wherefore art thou mod points?

I have no experience with Win10

[Anonymous Coward]

Because I'm not stupid.

No problems at all.

[Fragnet]

Been using it since release. No problems worth mentioning. You're soliciting a biased sample here, by the way.

Re:No problems at all.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're soliciting a biased sample here, by the way.

If by "biased" you mean "actually knowing something about computers and operating systems" then I'm with ya on that.

Re: Jesus fucking lord christ!!!

[jfbilodeau]

This isn't just another 'technology website.' It's Slashdot. I use to come here because it was frequented by like-minded individuals that loved Linux, open source and occasionally bash MS. Now it seems to be the opposite.

But I guess you're right. Slashdot did become 'just another technology website' and not even a good one at that. Thank you for making me realize that I may have to move on now. The Slashdot that I enjoyed years ago is gone.

Edge extensions broken

[Anonymous Coward]

Edge extensions are broken and the only help avaliable is unanswered forum posts.. If Microsoft can't release a decent browser then Google will take over the whole web with Chrome.

You asked...

[wbr1]

I work in a small IT shop. Mostly residential and small to mid biz clients. a very large percentage have upgraded to win 10. with the initial release, a significant percentage (2-4%) of upgrades failed in some fashion, many requiring an OS reload and reintegration of backed up profile data. Within a few months that worked itself out to a much lower percentage.

A small percentage (very small) do suffer issues like broken start menus or broken metro apps that tools like SFC and DISM or ACL mods will not repair, requiring reload. Again this has been VERY few. There have been times that Windows 7 updates hammered a much larger proportion of users.

Yes, it snoops. But IMHO it does so no more so than your smartphone. I would wager that most of the people here have a smart phone and do not bitch to the level that they do about MS snooping. Is that level of snooping by OS, devices, or even web pages correct or ethical? Probably not, but it is the society we live in, and it is up to us to change it rather than just bitch. In the interim, if you have data you are concerned about, there are ways to mitigate the risk, although they do take a fair amount of technical skill.

As to defaults resetting on updates. That was another early issue. In my shops experience it has not recurred. Personally I have Win 10 on 5 PCs and it has not happened to them at all, could it again? Of course, but then again systemd could update and stop launching your critical daemons. This could be accidental or intentional. There is no way an OS vendor, even of MS size can test against every use case and hardware layout. As long as the issues are of a fairly low percentage, then I would wager it to be a bug and not an intentional feature.

In case anyone is interested, here are the PCs I run win10 on with no issue:

6 Core AMD Bulldozer, 16GB RAM, nvidia 1070 GPU, multiple SSD and HDD drives. Has VMs for linux mint running 24/7 (one for teamspeak server and other servers, the other for private torrent seeding) ,machine is rock solid
i7-4th gen mobile, 8 GB Ram, nvidia 960m GPU, ssd. Has had occasional blue screens seemingly due to hybrid graphics. This has resolved with newer drivers.
6-core AMD bulldozer, 32GB RAM, elcheapo AMD gpu, dual boot mint and win 10 preview channel. Used as a data recovery box in linux and Win 10 testing. has been very stable
6 core AMD bulldozer, 16GB Ram, 2x mid range AMD gpus (6550 and R5 260 i think), ssd and HDD. Main work desktop with 3 displays (one is qhd) - rock solid
intel core 2 duo mobile, 4GB RAM, intel GPU, SSD. Girlfriends laptop. A bit sluggish due to age of CPU, but stable as you could like. She is terrible about running updates, Win 10 fixed this, and buggy driver issues went away, which she had frequently under win 7.

Re:You asked...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not all smart phones snoop apples devices snoop orders of magnitude less than the others and even provide you ways to get out of snooping.

Re:You asked...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it snoops. But IMHO it does so no more so than your smartphone. I would wager that most of the people here have a smart phone and do not bitch to the level that they do about MS snooping.

Here is where I both agree with what you're saying and disagree with your conclusion.

Yes, I have avoided Win 10 because of the privacy issues. Yes, I have an Android phone that also has its own privacy issues.

The catch is that I need to have at least one platform on which I can work on sensitive stuff without being spied upon. Even for common stuff like banking and book keeping I don't want anyone looking over my shoulder. Thus I do not have my bank's app installed on my phone and do a fair amount of banking on my computer. I think most people need to have at least one reasonably secure system. They just don't know it.

For me the right solution is to stick with Windows 7 to maintain compatibility with older software and games and to run Linux Mint in a VM in order to get comfortable with it and be prepared in case I need to switch entirely in the future.

When my dad's current Win 7 computer finally dies I will be moving him to Linux Mint. His computing needs are very modest. Mostly just browsing the web and sending email. Aside from icons looking a bit different the change will hardly impact him at all. He only has one piece of software that he will miss (a genealogy package) and I'm hopeful that I may be able to find a suitable Linux replacement for it when the time comes. His computer is working fine now though so there is no rush.

Re:You asked...

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, if you ran your critical systems on Slackware, you would not care what Systemd is up to.

Re: Jesus fucking lord christ!!!

[hackwrench]

Linux has its good points but a lot of us are more familiar with Windows and it is more likely to run all our games, WINE aside. Microsoft finally implemented the Windows Insider program for people who actually want to be involved in the Windows development process. In the most recent Windows Insider builds, Windows has a subsystem to actually run programs built to run natively on Windows.

Re: Jesus fucking lord christ!!!

[hackwrench]

I meal natively on Linux. Curses!

Good after my "Standard Windows 10 Protocol"

[C0L0PH0N]

I'm a retired computer guy, and I support a couple of large communities of retired folks, basically old people with computers. Naturally most got upgraded to Windows 10, whether by choice or by MS trickery. I have developed a standard protocol after which Windows 10 operates much like an improved Windows 7, and it works very well, and is less confusing for my customers (and me :)).

* Local Account - Ensure a local account, preferably with no password, boot straight to desktop
* Install and configure Chrome (or Firefox) - Add ad-blocking, turn on and populate bookmark bar, make friendly for user (I use "Disconnect" and "Ublock Origin")
* Install Classic Shell - Friendlier Start Button
* Install Spybot Anti-Beacon - Turns off a lot of Windows telemetry (fancy word for spying on the consumer's dime)
* Hide Cortana and unpin Store from the Task Bar
* Install old Windows 7 style Games - Available from 3rd party sources, Spider Solitaire anyone?
* Turn off as much of Quick Access as possible, and unpin what's there, and change the Options to default to "This PC" instead - QA is not controllable by the user, try to remove a dead link, I couldn't. Using "This PC" is dead reliable.

Re:Good after my "Standard Windows 10 Protocol"

[LVSlushdat]

I too, am a retired computer guy, and I also support a fairly large group of retired folks, but I have converted quite a few of these folks over to Linux, namely XUbuntu. When I tell them about the blatant spyware aspects of 10, and the great lengths MS goes to getting 10 on everybodys computer, and MS now veering dangerously into the malware domain with 10, most of these older folks will gladly take the extremely minor "learning curve" of XUbuntu vs the "turd_in_the_punchbowl" Windows 10. On that note, I've had quite a few people who bought new systems from a bigbox store come to me and want to be upgraded to Linux, after hearing about it from others.

Re:Good after my "Standard Windows 10 Protocol"

[Anonymous Coward]

That you need to download a 3rd party shell to get the same start menu functionality says it all in terms of the user experience on this dog-turd of an OS.

That you need to specifically turn off telemetry and other aspects of the OS for security/privacy concerns instead of it being turned off by default with an opt-in says it all in terms of the focus of Microsoft's view of the user.

Re: Good after my "Standard Windows 10 Protocol"

[Anonymous Coward]

Very poor troll.

Re:Good after my "Standard Windows 10 Protocol"

[shanen]

We should start a club? Not sure I want to be retired yet, however...

Re:Good after my "Standard Windows 10 Protocol"

[StormReaver]

My experience with Windows 10 has been awesome. It's helped me convert many people over to Linux.

Re:Good after my "Standard Windows 10 Protocol"

[Zontar The Mindless]

I can't believe you spent all that time and effort assembling such a huge, piss-poor excuse for a troll.

Re:Good after my "Standard Windows 10 Protocol"

[Anonymous Coward]

it's not a troll - it's the truth - M$ software is dung - pure and simple

Re:Good after my "Standard Windows 10 Protocol"

[MrNiceguy_KS]

Not retired, but I do a bit of in-home support for people in my area. (Most of them are older users - I used to work in the IT department of the local retirement home.) I've had a few that unintentionally upgraded that I helped roll back, one that I had to reload Win7 since he waited more than 30 days to decide he didn't like 10.

I got a lot of calls from people asking about the upgrade. Most of them decided to stay with Window 7 after I told them that 7 would be supported until 2020 - they figured they'd be getting a new computer before then. (Several of my elderly users half-joked about whether they'd still be around by then.) I had several that moved from Windows 8 to 10 and thought it was a big improvement. I didn't have any Linux conversions because of Windows 10, but years ago I had one because of Vista. He was a happy Ubuntu user for a couple of years, then switched to a Mac.

As for my personal experience, I upgraded my laptop shortly after 10 released, partly to see how it would perform on older hardware. Turns out that Windows 10 is painful on a Core2 Duo with 2GB RAM, but no more so than Windows 7. I upgraded my desktops within the last week of the free upgrade. The only problem I've found so far is that Infrarecorder - an Open-Source CD/DVD burning program - won't run. The splash screen flashes up briefly, then nothing. I've only tested this on one of my desktops, and this was a pretty well-worn, crufty machine that was my daily driver for years. Haven't tried it on another machine yet, so it may be a fluke.

Re:Good after my "Standard Windows 10 Protocol"

[Zontar The Mindless]

WTF? Do you actually know how to read?

Windows 10

[AnnonUSA]

I am a SMB consultant. Most of my clients are still on Windows 7 because it is the easiest version to support for now. One of the most annoying issues with Windows 10 which I run on my own laptops and one office computer is the "Default Printer" option that vanished when 10 was installed. This was very convenient when traveling between sites. It allowed you to set your default printer based on the Wireless LAN you were connected to. The option disappeared for me (and apparently lots of others) and nothing suggested by Microsoft or anyone else, will make it come back. Microsoft on it's support forums have shown, to no ones surprise, a complete misunderstanding of the issue, and steadfastly insists the option is on the toolbar in the "Devices and printers" Control Panel App. It isn't. Explanations to the contrary to Microsoft causes the support thread to go cold and dark... Typical Microsoft support. I have also seen that in both Windows 8 and 10 a misplaced or mistaken double click in explorer will freeze explorer prompting an end task or waiting several minutes for a content menu to appear. And now conspiracy theory time: Since the giant push for Windows 10 upgrading, new and reloads of Windows 7 will no longer do Windows Updates. If you go into control panel and tell the system to search for updates it will search for hours and hours. The system needs to be left on overnight and hopefully it will update itself at 3AM.

Re:Windows 10

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the giant push for Windows 10 upgrading, new and reloads of Windows 7 will no longer do Windows Updates. If you go into control panel and tell the system to search for updates it will search for hours and hours. The system needs to be left on overnight and hopefully it will update itself at 3AM.

To fix the multi-hour Windows Update bug in Win7 x64, manually download the .MSU installer files for: KB3145739, then KB3153199 and KB3161608 (as of now, you may only need to do 3161608).

Install these magical patches first, and your scan times should go from hours/days to 10-15 minutes.

My experience was that for the past few months, every Windws Update attempt would break/hang until some apparently unrelated patch was installed first. Installing the unrelated patch made it possible to install the rest of the security patches for 7. )

It would not surprise me if this was a deliberate attempt by MS to get naive users to either (a) enable automatic updates and get all the malware from the mothership along with the updates, or (b) mistakenly conclude their computers were "broken" and downgrade to 10.

Anyways, I hope this helps. When you get to the point where you can download the updates, read read the KB article associated with every patch to 7 to ensure it's not one of the ones that enables 7/8 telemetry or downloads 10/malware. Although by this time you probably recognize the offending patches by KB number :)

Just as broken as Windows 8

[Khyber]

Within a week, either OS stops seeing keyboard and mouse upon OS load - they work fine before Windows boots, but once 8 or 10 boots up, they're totally gone. This problem has happened on more than just my system, I have customers come in going "This is a brand-new keyboard and mouse and the computer won't see it! This laptop is brand new and keyboard and mouse don't work!"

It's a fucking clusterfuck. When you update shit, settings that shouldn't get fucked with get fucked with.

Reading through a lot of documentation, the shit's still written for Windows 7.

Video and Sound performance have dropped, as well as file transfers (7 can saturate my SATA3 bus, 10 could not until I installed Win7 drivers for my chipset.)

UVC drivers changed somehow for some fucking reason, so now all of my UVC devices no longer work unless I have them on a 32-bit Windows 7 or XP machine. They won't even work under 32-bit Windows 8 any longer.

Like hell I'm upgrading past 7.

Re:Just as broken as Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

Within a week, either OS stops seeing keyboard and mouse upon OS load - they work fine before Windows boots, but once 8 or 10 boots up, they're totally gone. This problem has happened on more than just my system, I have customers come in going "This is a brand-new keyboard and mouse and the computer won't see it! This laptop is brand new and keyboard and mouse don't work!"

It's a fucking clusterfuck. When you update shit, settings that shouldn't get fucked with get fucked with.

Reading through a lot of documentation, the shit's still written for Windows 7.

Video and Sound performance have dropped, as well as file transfers (7 can saturate my SATA3 bus, 10 could not until I installed Win7 drivers for my chipset.)

UVC drivers changed somehow for some fucking reason, so now all of my UVC devices no longer work unless I have them on a 32-bit Windows 7 or XP machine. They won't even work under 32-bit Windows 8 any longer.

Like hell I'm upgrading past 7.

Hi, I know why this breaks. Turn off "USB compatibility mode" in the BIOS.
Also try turning off anything to do with power saving on the controllers.

My two experiences

[Espectr0]

I updated to win 10 AU (from win 10 1511) in both my laptop and work machine.

My laptop had an in place upgrade. Everything was left intact , the update was flawless, just as the one from 8.1 to 10 and 10 to 10 1511.

My work machine i decided to format from scratch. Installation worked, but windows update ran before i could apply the group policy and started to download updates from the internet instead of my WSUS server, and not even when i rebooted it got updates from WSUS. Had to wait for the first batch to finish before it started using WSUS.

Even after that and my customary deletion of metro apps, windows began to connect silently to a bunch of akamai ips such as 23.14.84.171, 23.14.84.160, 216.58.192.110, 208.65.155.48, 13.107.4.50, 23.14.84.161,23.14.84.177, 23.14.84.168, 8.253.0.30, 8.253.0.62, 8.253.0.78. Windows ignores the hosts file, so i had to create a rule in the windows firewall and each time i put a ip, Windows tried a new one. It drove me nuts for two days until it seems to have finished.

Re:My two experiences

[Espectr0]

Oh, i forgot about this one. On the work machine i installed SumatraPDF which is a very light pdf reader. The installer asks you if you would like to associate it with pdf files (how nice, instead of actually doing without asking). When it did, windows "detected some nasty attempt to change the default app to open pdf files, and for my security it would revert back to microsoft edge".

The nerve of microsoft to deny the user of choice.

Re:My two experiences

[shanen]

Forced optimization around MS's choice of the "best" user interface as defined by most profitable. Cf earlier reply, but time...

Mixed experience

[jon3k]

Once you remove all the stupid widgets/tiles/whatever from the startmenu and shrink it back to a normal size (resize it at the top left) and turn off all the animations that just slow the whole desktop down, it's not bad. I actually prefer it to Windows 7 in general because it feels faster, even thought I don't know that it is and I like the virtual desktops and darker/flat UI.

The problem I've had is about 2-3 times a week I'll get the dreaded DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION blue screen of death and have to reboot.

Re:Mixed experience

[Anonymous Coward]

had this issue as well and it was related to the touchpad driver...might be worth investigating

Not enough control over the OS

[skoskav]

Even with Windows 10 LTSB I couldn't figure out how to get as much control or information out of the system updates as I wanted. As all I need out of a Windows VM is Visual Studio and SourceTree, and I only found inconveniences over Windows 7 Pro, I switched back after a month.

I despised the daily screen-covering update window that, if allowing the mystery pack of updates, would almost always schedule a mandatory restart. Searching in the start menu was also considerably slower and filled with bogus results, and the OS was reluctant to easily fullscreen in Virtualbox. It also required about 512 MiB more RAM than Windows 7 Pro.

The host OS is Linux Mint 17.3, and I think they got most things right about the update manager: A lot of control over what gets patched, showing version numbers and, if available, even changelogs of the specific bugs/CVEs resolved.

Recommend "Clean Install" of Windows 10

[C0L0PH0N]

I "upgraded" my very fast Windows 7 laptop to Windows 10. I have an HP 17" Envy laptop with I7 8-core cpu and a 256 GB SSD (with 1TB HD). Under Windows 7, I always got a phenomenal 20 second full boot! After upgrading to Windows 10, my boot dragged out to over 40 seconds, and continued getting even slower. Worse, simple screens like the File Explorer or my photo editing program (Paint.Net) would take 15 or even 30 seconds to load. Under Windows 7, they had just snapped open. After several months of being disappointed by the deteriorating performance of my upgraded Windows 10 system, I bit the bullet, and went through all the hassles of a clean install of Windows 10 (downloading the ISO, reinstalling all my programs and data, etc). WOW!!! I got my 20 second boot back, all my programs just snap open, etc. Goes to show, the old wisdom that a "clean install" is just better than an "upgrade install" really applies to Windows 10 as well. This is significant because I will wager the vast majority of of Windows computers out there that were "upgraded" remain in the "upgraded" state, that is, very few (because of inertia or lack of know how) will have done the extra step of a "clean install". This would mean that the vast majority of upgrades are likely having a slightly to significantly inferior experience with Windows 10 than they would with a clean install. And most won't even realize it. This is admittedly a problem that will disappear automatically, as machines wear out and new ones come with Windows 10 installed. But it still affects tens of millions of folks.

The photos are the only good thing

[RogueWarrior65]

The log-in screen photos are the only thing I like about it and you can't even use them as desktop pictures without a third-party hack.
Sorry, but everything about the Windows/PC user experience is like a Yugo whereas working in the OSX environment is like any of Top Gear's best picks.

My ekspeeriense with Windoes Ten

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Windows 10 raped my dog and left the seat up in the bathroom. Then it threw out all of my toothbrushes and ate all my ice cream and left the dirty spoon on the carpet. It used a glass cutter to write "Microsawft RULEZ" on all of my windows and then, after plugging the drain in the upstairs tub, it turned on all the faucets and flooded my home. Before it left, it set fire to the roof, shot my wife, and got my nine-year old daughter pregnant.

So, all in all, not too bad compared to some Windows 10 stories I've heard.

Re:My ekspeeriense with Windoes Ten

[Anonymous Coward]

Your dog wanted it. You never gave it to him.
The seat was up as a treat to the dog.
You don't need multiple toothbrushes.
Ice cream isn't good for you.
Left a reminder to clean the carpet.
Your windows aren't the new scratch resistant, energy efficient versions.
Flooding a home kills the insects.
Heating the roof evaporates the water from the flood.
You wife was cheating on you and planning on taking half of everything. Now you get life insurance payouts.
Your daughter now knows the dangers of sleeping around before marriage. She won't do it again.

See? Windows 10 is your bestest friend. Everything it did it did to help you. It's just so misunderstood.

Re:My ekspeeriense with Windoes Ten

[shanen]

Wish I had a mod point for you.

Re:My ekspeeriense with Windoes Ten

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Wish I had a mod point for you.

It's the thought that counts. (And money- money counts too, so you could always send me money in lieu of mod points.)

Re:My ekspeeriense with Windoes Ten

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it a tad suspicious that you're the only one that wasn't raped or shot.

Re:My ekspeeriense with Windoes Ten

[shanen]

Okay, so what slashdot feature or ongoing cost would you like me to throw money at?

Oh wait. I'm still thinking in terms of economic models that aren't there yet.

Anyway, as it maps to the proximate problem, I think I would be most likely to donate towards a project that would simplify and unify the moderation system... I've posted my suggestions before, but no reason to bother with a detailed project proposal, even though it would be nice to see several of them to pick from.

Re:My ekspeeriense with Windoes Ten

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Okay, so what slashdot feature or ongoing cost would you like me to throw money at?

Fund the ability to edit posts, AKA, a standard feature of practically every forum and comment section in the world.

Re:My ekspeeriense with Windoes Ten

[shanen]

Hmm... I think I'd have to see the project proposal to make a decision whether or not I'd chip in for that. In the context of discussions, there is a potential for Sophistic abuse.

I think the specific version that I'd be most willing to support would freeze the editing capability as soon as someone starts working on a direct reply, but I'm not sure how to avoid deadlock. What if you open the comment for editing and then someone wants to reply? You have to put in a block on the reply "This comment is being edited"? Then with some kind of alert when it is saved and can be replied to?

However, the funding mechanism I'm advocating would have no problem with different versions of the feature. If enough people wanted to fund one version over another, then that version would be the one that got implemented. If that version had higher ongoing costs, it might be more likely to get suspended from time to time...

Re:My ekspeeriense with Windoes Ten

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Hmm... I think I'd have to see the project proposal to make a decision whether or not I'd chip in for that. In the context of discussions, there is a potential for Sophistic abuse

This has been discussed many many many many times here. To prevent abuse you could just show the edited comments through a link or some versioning/diff function, plus a "last edited" time stamp. I'd say that 99.999999% of the changes I'd ever want to make are to fix a typo or correct some grammar.

Even if people were just allowed a 3-minute grace period to fix typos, that would be enough. Then lock the post. That plus any quoting from the original post will put a stop to people that try to go back and change history or the meaning of what they said.

Seriously, are people so afraid that someone is going to try and edit their post to make someone else look foolish or to win an argument?

Every single forum in the world has the ability to edit posts, and it's not abused often enough to worry about. I've run close to 100 forums in my time, including some very active ones with close to 500,000 posts, and this kind of thing has never been an issue.

Re:My ekspeeriense with Windoes Ten

[fustakrakich]

The only form of acceptable editing is by appending a post with all the easy to identify indenting or whatever, but in the same box as the original. Any removal or any kind of change of original content must remain absolutely verboten. Slashdot's 17 years of intact archives are testimony to its success and what makes it unique, above all the rest. There simply is nothing better out there. I sincerely hope any attempt to change it will be met with great resistance.

not abused often enough

"Often enough" is not good enough, too vague, merely anecdotal. *Etched in stone* is impossible to abuse. I'll take those odds over anything thankyouverymuch. Editing original content is abuse, by default.

And the moderation system with its maximum 50 points of "karma" is perfectly fine also, it goes a long way to avoid forum poisoning by gangs of trolls that have attacked the other sites, which are usually just a circle jerk with their own political agenda anyway.

And furthermore, as you pointed out below "ghost banning" is too easy to spot. Fortunately I have seen no evidence of any of that here. If I do, I will raise holy hell about it.

Sorry to disagree with you, but Slashdot's system is by far the best, with SoylentNews being a very close number 2 (don't care for the old UI so much), so far.

No editing, no censorship, and no damn unicode! The PC snowflakes looking for a *safe space* and an echo chamber are quickly shooed away with well deserved ridicule and mockery. Slashdot subscribers can create their rubber room in semi private journal entries if and when they want. You just can't beat that.

Re-install works great

[psmoot]

I have a system which started out on Win7. Due to a flaky SSD, I had to re-install the OS a few times and have always had issues with getting the file permissions right afterwards.

Being another sucker for free upgrades, I upgraded to Win10 a few weeks ago. The upgrade worked, sorta, but still had problems. The biggest one was my backup software would freeze the system solid. I figured this was just another symptom of why one never upgrades systems, the upgraded system never works right.

Finally I tried the windows re-install process. It worked like a champ. Everything is running smoothly now, much better than it did before. That's a great feature.

I'm still getting used to some of the other file organization things but largely it seems good. There's one thing they added to the window manager: when I use windows-left or windows-right, it automatically figures out I probably wanted some other window to take the other half of the screen and basically tiles them. This is in fact exactly what I want. It's a nice bell.

It's been fine

[jader3rd]

The only issues I've had with Windows 10 is that the Anniversary update won't install because I have some DRM licensed wma files.

Re:It's been fine

[ArtemaOne]

I'd love to hear more about this. Why does that matter? I don't follow the DRM scene much.

Re:It's been fine

[jader3rd]

Here's the source: Windows 10 Anniversary Update: Loss of music and video.

Re:It's been fine

[ArtemaOne]

Is reencoding it an option? I imagine capturing the digital audio into an MP3 is possible. Dropping support for it shows a disregard for the customer and the format for all ethical purposes.

Re:It's been fine

[jader3rd]

Yes, it's an option. I just have had the files for about 10 years now, and this is the first time it's been an issue.

Don't know, never really will

[CyberLeader]

Microsoft's heavy-handed attempts to force it on to my Windows 7 machine, combined with the clear message that Microsoft intends to make money by selling user data to the highest bidder, led me to decide to never, ever willingly install Windows 10 on any of my machines. Some of my employees are forced to use it by their clients, and my teenage son accidentally upgraded his laptop, so I have enough familiarity with the UI to be unimpressed.

My current Windows 7 machines are my final Windows platforms for anything other than client-specific work, and in those cases I'll use a VM. Once these machines have aged beyond usefulness then I'll either go Mac OS full time or a hybrid of Mac OS and a Linux distro.

Yes, I know Apple isn't exactly pure of heart or mind either, but I've never had a macOS upgrade force itself down my throat.

Not a single problem for me

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't use Windows 10 though.

Win10Win8Win7

[mschaffer]

Windows 10 is horrible. The UI is, in a word, terrible. Maybe slightly worse than Win8. If it were not for Classic Start Menu (www.classicshell.net) I would be very unhappy. The rest of Win10 is a heap of junk. It's as if MS doesn't do any QA. Things break and then get fixed from update to update.
I just don't see what is better than Win7 here. Win10 is two steps back and no steps forward.

I lost the start button too

[NotSoHeavyD3]

And edge just stopped working as did calculator and the store and the account management tool. The only fix is apparently create a new account. Admittedly I haven't tried the anniversary edition so hopefully it's finally out of alpha. Just to be blunt no other modern (nt based) version of Windows has been as problematic for me as 10. (Vista was fine, it never gave me any trouble but 10, things just broke.)

As a contrast to this

[NotSoHeavyD3]

I had all my issues (start button, calculator, etc) after doing a clean install. (Installed Windows 7 on a new drive I just bought, upgraded to 10. Formatted the drive and installed 10 again.) Actually my second clean install also had issues. (I haven't tried anniversary though.)

Re:Jesus fucking lord christ!!!

[nukenerd]

How much is MS paying for this constant Windows10 crap on slashdot?!?!?!?

Are MS paying for this? If so they are not getting any value from it. Everything I read only make Win10 sound even worse than I thought it was.

It RAPED ME!

[Anonymous Coward]

and then it came back for more. And I let it!

I like it because I like Fails

[Anonymous Coward]

They're fun to watch.

Nice shill article and shill comments, by the way.

My experience so far

[RCourtney]

I have done two upgrades from Windows 7 to Windows 10 and three fresh installs. Mostly for relatives who didn't want to pass up the free upgrade.

The telemetry stuff still irks me, but a lot of it can be turned off. And the "can't disable/skip updates part is scary because trusting Microsoft to get updates right all the time seems foolish given history.

Having said and accepted all of that though, I am absolutely amazed how smooth and responsive Windows 10 is, especially on older hardware.

I did a laptop that was running Vista (Dell Insperon 1525 with Intel Pentium Dual Core 1.86GHz, 2GB RAM, and 120GB HDD). Fresh install of Vista ran so sluggish it made it a miserable and frustrating experience to boot up and use.

Fresh install of Windows 7 was a little better but not by much. When I installed Windows 10 on it, it now boots to the desktop in under 30 seconds and apps launch and respond virtually instantly again.

It has its warts, for sure, but the performance so far has been remarkable and I haven't had any of the issues mentioned in the original post on any of the five systems I've put Windows 10 on.

My only problem with it was that Cortana stays running even when you turn it off and that process sucked up 35% of my memory until I renamed the Cortana folder to prevent the process from respawning...I am dreading the next update that respawns Cortana despite my fix. was not found on this server.

Re:My experience so far

[shanen]

I think I would give you a "me, too" mod if there was such a thing and if I ever got mod points. Anyway, close to my experiences in many ways.

Reliability bad DNS

[Anonymous Coward]

One on going problem I have with all of my Windows 10 systems is that name resolution consistently fails, worse yet, the failure is cached and requires me to flush the DNS cache. This problem is present on multiple networks and is not a name server issue. This problem is not present on earlier versions of windows or other operating systems. I found a redit thread discussing the problem with no insight into root cause.

Wife's Laptop

[SirAudioMan]

Originally took my old Lenovo laptop that successfully ran Mint 18, set it up for my wife to use a regular machine for internet browsing, document editing, and some photo editing (Gimp, Inkscape, LibreOffice). Initially my wife liked it but the truth came out around the same time she needed to install a large software package that interface with a specialized craft printer (Window or OSX only). So I very reluctantly replaced it with Windows 10, disabled as much spyware as I could and set up everything for her (I knew Wine was not an option and setting up a VM would be too much a pain for her).

Things worked well for a month or so then randomly the specialize software just started to randomly crash (nothing obvious has changed, but it's Windows so know knows). Also, Window starts to randomly BSOD so I do a system restore, re-install and the like. After a restore, still not working and slower than molasses. Just trying to browse a SMB share would freeze explorer for 30 seconds. The CPU fan would run constantly, the system just ran like balls.

I decided enough is enough and put Windows 7 back on. But after installing from original OE CD, Windows took more than 24 hours to actually complete Windows updates! Now, it works as intended, doesn't crash, and doesn't run so hot. Honestly, I probably could have fixed it, but like everything in Windows it's such a PAIN IN THE ASS!

As a company, they have learned nothing in the last 20 years about:
a) making a responsive UI that doesn't choke up with even the slightest CPU load
b) fixing the damn dependency hell (I know Linux has issues too, but in my experience, I can usually fix it easily)
c) providing helpful error messages
d) software and OS updates that don't require constant reboots.Seriously, how damn hard to fix this! It's 2016, not 1985!

I just Subitted an Artical About Windows 10

[BrendaEM]

...and of course it wasn't posted.

When will I learn that Slashdot won't post my articles?

Re:I just Subitted an Artical About Windows 10

[shanen]

Mwaaa haa haa. So you are the enemy I defeated!

Just joking, but most of my submissions have been rejected.

In terms of thinking in terms of solutions, maybe rejected articles should be referenced into some kind of discussion area for improvement?

Re:I just Subitted an Artical About Windows 10

[Anonymous Coward]

If the spelling in your subject line is any guide I'm not surprised.

Re: Jesus fucking lord christ!!!

[TechyImmigrant]

I meal natively on Linux. Curses!

Curses? I think there's a port of curses to windows, but termbox is better.

Windows 10 Update

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest problem I had on my desktop machine was the Classic Start program I use to get a "functional" Start Menu going had to be reinstalled. Outside of that I went through the app configuration screens to make sure everything was turned off again and most of them were. Cortana is lurking around somewhere but when I tried to kill her the one time she just restarted. If they're going to leave her on all the time the least they can do for me is have her dancing in the corner of my screen with a fireman pole. At least then I'll get a little something in return for all the invasive privacy issues she's dragging to the table in return.

I'm porting some of my Windows only games over to Linux that run via DOSBOX but don't have official setups in Steam. At this rate I may just wipe Windows 10 off my Desktop and use my Linux Laptop as a template for setting up a new Linux gaming desktop if anything major happens that really ticks me off with Microsoft. Maybe by next January I'll be ready to switch over after I get tired of an MMO I'm playing. SWTOR really needs a native Linux client.

My dilemma

[Anonymous Coward]

I did not think there would be a relevant place to post my situation, but this almost works.

I had a plan to upgrade my main machine to windows ten, then only use it for games and development. I would then upgrade my older but good machine to some form of linux, and use it for everything else.

So, I backed everything up, and upgraded. Then I went through everything I could find on how to remove the built in spyware, and other unsavory crap that comes with the OS. Everything seems to have worked fine.

And you know what? I cant bring myself to use it. You know I missed something somewhere...and god dammit, why did I have to do that anyway? I just went back to my old machine and stayed there.

So, new plan. Im going to make a vhd from ten, and switch my main machine to linux, and run ten virtually for development (and forget about windows gaming until and unless MS makes a usable OS again).

Im just one guy, but MS stepped over the line on this one, and Ive been slow to react properly. It is so sad that they were doing some important things right (open source .net anyone?), and then this crap. They may have picked up advertising and data from the rest of the planet, but they lost me. Only time will tell if the loss of buy in from technical folks and developers like myself will hurt them more tha they have gained in this debacle.

Wonder how they wi? get me back?

Haven't noticed any problems when I'm using it...

[Assmasher]

...but unless I'm building something for Windows or playing a game, I'm on Mint 18.

OSX is the one that breaks my sh** all the time.

the windows-way

[Anonymous Coward]

just let the broken software rot on your harddrive and install new one with it's own share of problems.

Broken online support?

[Anonymous Coward]

The OP should call the Microsoft Support phone number. The wait times have (for me) always been surprisingly short and the techs knowledgeable and efficient in fixing my problems.

I tried 10 for a few days, rolled back to 7. I don't use the cloud, which is what 10 is all about, and screw having to pay a monthly subscription to play Free Cell.

Re: Jesus fucking lord christ!!!

[neo00]

This article is relevant to Linux and the FOSS/FLOSS community.
Whether you love or hate MS, and whether or not you're exclusively interested in FOSS and Linux, Windows is the still biggest competitor to Linux in desktop and enterprise markets. Your position regarding Linux or Windows shouldn't stop you from looking at other competing software products.
Bashing Windows maybe fun and all and we all enjoy that every once int while, but constantly bashing for the purpose of bashing is simply unproductive. What I'm saying is that we should probably learn from others' successes or failures. Isolating ourselves from the rest of the technology world doesn't help advancing the FOSS technology and community.

Win 10 Anniversary broke HTC VIVE Steam VR support

[MindPrison]

After 2 days in hell trying to install Windows 10 that came brand new on an USB install disk without network drivers for a brand new MSI Gaming motherboard, I thought everything was fine...
On this machine everything worked brilliantly for months on Mint Linux 17.3 64 bit edition. But I was forced to go purchase Windows 10 for my shiny new Virtual Reality headset...HTC VIVE.

Finally windows 10 was stable for roughly 2 weeks, I was in Virtual Reality heaven playing the latest and the greatest, Raw Data, Space Pirate Trainer, The Lab, Portal stories VR and whatnot...

And there came Windows update 1607 that changed everything.

This is the anniversary update to Windows 10. After a long install, everything SEEMED to work fine, heck I even loved the speed and the look of it...except here came my first problem. All of a sudden - Steam VR froze up...the Virtual Reality image in the HDM goggles froze... Windows 10 ran fine despite this, but after restarting the Steam VR...it froze after a few minutes gameplay again. This hasn't happened A SINGLE DAY during those 2 weeks with the original Windows 10.

Panic time...Googling everywhere, and reads HUNDREDS of angry HTC Vive customers that now desperately try to warn others of DO NOT UPGRADE TO ANNIVERSARY 1607 Of Windows 10 - it will DESTROY your VR experience.

Unfortunately I read that too late, I'm now with windows support - and as I can read of this thread...and experience myself, Windows support is what windows support is...like read from a script. Being the polite dummy I am...I am following their instruction step by step, but my Windows 10 is fine...works perfect according to all tests. Except Steam VR that worked PERFECTLY before the update.

Now, I read the 100s of people and what they have tried, everything from re-installing the entire HTC VIVE packet and drivers, to removing and installing USB drivers, to reinstalling Steam and Steam VR... endless support threads with various game creators who are completely clueless to what's going on.

Ok, I'll go over to the corner and cry a little now and look at my 3500$ brick-VR computer. Thanks WINDOWS! Thanks MS!!!!

Re:Jesus fucking lord christ!!!

[rochrist]

Yeah, this. I'm so fucking glad I didn't get sucked in.

I boot it up about once a month HD grinds for hrs

[Anonymous Coward]

I usually run Linux, but I dual boot to let Windows update maybe once every month or so. This always seems to involve my hard drive grinding away for hours because I'm assuming Micro$oft has realized it hasn't seen all my files in awhile and needs to scan them all to update their metadata and download whatever they want copies of this time. By the time my system is done with this and returns to a state which would make it usable again, I am already bored and annoyed and go back to Linux.

On my 2 gig celeron machine it rocks.

[EmperorOfCanada]

I am shocked, but my new lenovo 100s runs it like a dream. Is it as good as my powerhouse desktop, nope. But shockingly I can run things like Visual Studio fast enough to be acceptable.

I wouldn't want to work with 7 or vista with anything less than 6 gigs and an i7 processor.

I hardy use any of the other features, as I don't even have a printer hooked up. I have crome, VS, QT Creator, a terminal program, and that is about it. I did run a script that someone suggested that turned pretty much everything off. Crap like cortana, bye bye.

Re: Jesus fucking lord christ!!!

[jfbilodeau]

I'm not discounting the importance of Windows, but there are more Windows/Microsoft stories in a day than you find about Linux/FLOSS in a week.

Bad

[Anonymous Coward]

- wifi drops and doesn't reconnect. Doesn't happen in Linux or on phone

- eq doesn't work often

- sometimes the login screen doesn't open for several minutes

- sometimes it takes 10+ minutes to boot for no apparent reason

- 99% of the time tries to login with the wrong name

- seems slow

- automatically updating & rebooting at 4am sucks. Pc is in my bed room and bootup sound is loud

- moved settings around for no reason

I hated it.

Driver compatibility issues

[MobyDisk]

Don't upgrade if you have an intel HD Graphics chip: I have a HTPC that ran Windows 7 just fine, but Windows 10 could not play any video because they dropped support for the Intel HD Graphics Chip. While the OS does run, no video playback software would work. I even installed the drivers for Windows 7/8, but it still didn't work. I had to revert to 7.

Camera drivers: One of the two Windows 10 computers in my home can't talk to cameras that use PTP. (That's the file transfer protocol most cameras use. It's being replaced by MTP now, but a decade+ of PTP cameras still exist.)

3D printers, serial devices: The driver signing issues are going to be a big deal for people using 3D printers or any other USB-to-serial device.

Unrelated: Edge sucks. It's a tablet browser that is nearly useless on the desktop. Simple things like bookmarks and history are difficult to access without being able to "swipe" from the side.

Re:Driver compatibility issues

[RMarguls]

Got new W10 tablet a month ago, camera worked ok, oops, W10 home updated and now camera is broken. I don't know why Microsoft messed with the camera drivers.

A roller-coaster ride to upgrade

[X!0mbarg]

Well, I finally bit the bullet and upgraded my system.

What broke me? When they neutered the Windows 7 Update system, and doing a clean install didn't even fix it.

Seriously. Windows 7 is still supported software! I could see them trying this with WinXP, but Win7? Ouch!

Pluses:
I only had to upgrade my video card to get the system to be eligible to upgrade.
It went well enough, and I managed to keep most of my software.
Boot time was phenomenal!

Negatives:
The invasiveness: trying to push for a Microsoft Login as my Windows login... No, sorry. Not happening.
Fix/customize/adjust the Start menu? Cryptic and frustrating to say the least.
All the bundled crapware: Cortana, Edge, OneDrive, Subscription-based Solitaire... the list goes on and on.
Disabling and/or uninstalling much of the crapware resulted in breaking the OS, and I had to go to the Microsoft Community to fix things... That's another story in and of itself.
Not all my software is compatible with Win10 and either has to be run in compatibility mode, or replaced with something more functional under the OS umbrella.

Ugh. What a nightmare. Be prepared to relearn nearly everything OS related so you can actually get going with this monstrosity.

Beyond that, the UI is fairly slick. I never had Win8 or 8.1, so I can't compare those to Win10, but at least it has a desktop mode, and it doesn't default to "tablet mode" on me. Again, the boot time is great, and I don't even have an SSD. It even has dual monitor taskbar support built in! Kudos!

Also, once I found you can do a clean install using my old Win7 Product Key, life was a lot easier! I just used a clean drive, and put the old Win7 drive as storage and all my data was in familiar folders. Just remember to get the "take ownership" add-in, and you're golden.

I also strongly recommend using 3rd party email clients, like Thunderbird, a good browser, like Firefox or Chrome, and stay as far away from the toxic cloud as you can! Cortana has nothing on Siri but still harvests your data! No good can come from this, I say! She's been chained to the lousy Edge browser and Bing for a search engine, so you already know how useful her assistance will be based on that alone.

So, here's a couple of grains of salt to go with this post, and have at!

Happy computing!

"The Microsoft Tax"

[westlake]

Walmart spent about a decade trying to make the OEM Linux desktop an affordable mass market product ---but it's only real success was in unloading truckloads of sweepings off the warehouse floors to the geek looking for a bargain.

To this day, marketing will go to any lengths to avoid Linux branding in the consumer market.

That is why you have "Android" in mobile and the "Steam Machine" in PC gaming. Though the strategy doesn't seem to be working out so well for Valve.

Re: Jesus fucking lord christ!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

And approximately 100â... of them, as in this post, are cast in a negative light. So how exactly is that sucking up to MS as the original poster asserted? This entire fucking post is a prime example of what GP is stating.

Two Happy Win 10 Boxes

[johnwerneken]

Two Happy Win 10 Boxes here.

not much in the way of issues. rarely is there a need to even reboot. all my software works.

each system has a quirk though involving windows defender. On one defender appears to be functioning, but either it does not think "privoxy" is malware, or privoxy beats it every time. a nuisance.

On the other, despite about 36 hours of support assistance, defender will not start 'real time protection'.

I can see where windows update might tend towards unifying the code base, easing support and maybe attracting more software developers.

But I do not like windows update - rebooting my machine, say what??? grrr Also it often fouls up...much easier, give me a patch or an iso to download.

Were it not for games ...

[Thanatiel]

I'm in the process of reinstalling my main computer with 7 (professionnal).
I would put a Linux on it if it were not for video games I still plan to start some day. (manjaro-openrc : I'd rather not be plagued by systemd)
As soon as a wine/kvm can properly run games, I'll keep only a windows as a virtual machine just for Steam, GoG (and even Origin, as I was foolish enough to buy a handful on that shop).
The last change on the Windows 10 pro was the proverbial last straw. It's borderline criminal.

Slow, clumsy, not intuitive

[mexsudo]

I suppose if I was a regular windows user it would be different... the clumsy and non intuitive part. BUT it is so damned S L O W. W7 is slow also but I think W10 is even slower. (LMDE Mate user)

Re: Jesus fucking lord christ!!!

[BronsCon]

I see that you meant Linux. Also, that feature left Insider status on the 2nd, when the Anniversary Update was release. Now, if they could just get the JVM running properly on it...

Re: Jesus fucking lord christ!!!

[BronsCon]

Might that have something to do with the fact that Microsoft is dong more with Windows lately than the entire Linux community has been doing with Linux? A lot of interest seems to have died down after everyone switched to systemd.

I know I'm going to be modded troll and/or flamebait for this, be really... think about it.

Upgrade worked, still can't clean install

[frooddude]

Upgrading to Win10 worked ok but I have reasons to want to do a clean install. I can't though, Win10 refuses to admit seeing my SSD. When I go to load the storage drivers one of the disks it allows me to pull drivers from is the SSD. Awesome job.

Then there's windows defender. The GPO that disables it doesn't actually. ffffff

Good thing I only boot this install occasionally to play video games.

Good OS, bad PR.

[duke_cheetah2003]

In my experience, Windows 10 has been a good operating system. It's only real drawback is all the negative PR it's been getting, some of it deserved, some of it not. The OS feels and runs pretty much the same as Windows 7, beneath the 'new start menu', all the familiar things are in there. The Anniversary update make the new 'Settings' a bit more useful, but I still feel like the old control panel is still the best way to tweak things. I run a myriad of programs on my Windows box, including Visual Studio, cygwin and cygwin's X server, VMware, Steam and a plethora of games. All of these Windows 10 has run without any issues.

I refurbish old laptops at my place of employment. I find that Windows 10 is more responsive and runs generally faster on older hardware, such as 2GB RAM Intel Core2 laptops. Windows 7 really seems to crawl on such machines, where 10 seems to deal with the limited system better.

Hands down, the Update mechanism for Windows 10 is much much faster than Windows 7, but that's easily attributed to the fact 10 hasn't gotten several years of updates slapped onto it. It's not without flaw in this area, I've encountered some issues with the forced update in Windows 10. In particular one model of laptop I had many duplicates of has video hardware that the latest drivers for cause it to malfunction, requiring me to use a tool to prohibit an update from being installed, and that was a bit of a bear because the timing of getting the update removed, and firing up the tool to 'hide' it had to be just right or Windows would just reinstall the update. I found that annoying.

I can easily understand the justification for the 'forced update' mechanism, and while I might find it a little annoying, I think it's a good thing. We've for too long allowed clueless users to control this stuff and we as IT professionals have to deal with the fallout. Malware getting into machines that should have been patched, but the user postponed updates, or turned them off all together. This was the right direction to take, updates are mandatory, for everyones protection. Malware not only hurts machines it's on, in many cases, it hurts everyone when botnets are used to attack other services and servers, or send out unwanted spam mail. I think Microsoft did the right thing here.

As for the telemetry and 'strongly encouraged update to Windows 10 campaign', I think Microsoft really shot themselves in the foot with that. It's definitely a MUCH better OS than Windows 8/8.1, and I often have people tell me they heard 'Windows 10 is bad.' It's not really bad, Microsoft just made it look bad with their upgrade campaign. I think if Microsoft hadn't pushed that campaign so aggressively, this OS would be heralded much like Windows 7 was. Back to telemetry, this is a place where I think the tech industry's commentators have cast an unfairly bad limelight on Windows 10. Android does just as much telemetry if not more and no one seems to mind. It's just the progression of our technology that most applications and now operating systems like to collect data. People freak out their information is being stolen, but I think that's silly, the data is most likely anonymized and shoved into databases with billions of other data points from other computers. Ultimately I think it's not being use nefariously, rather it's being used to help engineers and developers understand better how their software is operating in a myriad of environments, and what people are commonly using it for.

As a developer, networking specialist, and computer refurbisher, I overall give Windows 10 a thumbs-up. It does what I need it to do, and doesn't get in my way. That's my experience.

Re:Good OS, bad PR.

[shanen]

Once again, I wish I had a mod point for you.

Re:Good OS, bad PR.

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally, some decent commentary from someone who doesn't have an anti-Microsoft axe to grind!

Here's what I see. Windows 10 is actually very nice. Understand that I liked Windows 8.x too though, because MS gave some love to parts of the OS I use a lot. And I'm expert level IT, so I didn't ever want to do corporate support of Win 8. There were too many UI issues with Win 8 and retraining would have become important again.

Lots of haters bash Windows 10 for it's weaknesses, particularly the telemetry. The ironic part is, those people are highly aware of the telemetry and are in a good position to turn it off! However it's the old story, haters gonna hate. Seriously, if you dislike Windows that much, migrate to something else. Your hate isn't good for your blood pressure and you're a bore to listen to. You'll die prematurely and drive all sorts of friends and acquaintances away, so just switch to Mac or Linux or BSD or whatever. You have options so get on with it and do it already.

Re: Jesus fucking lord christ!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not discounting the importance of Windows, but there are more Windows/Microsoft stories in a day than you find about Linux/FLOSS in a week.

Why should there be? The year of Linux on the desktop never came[0]; it's just a server OS running Java crapplications for businesses that were slammed together by code monkeys using various shitty FOSS libraries. There's no excitement, no more "yeah, we're gonna take over the world!", no nothing anymore.

[0] Well, technically, the year of Linux on the desktop did come, if you don't mind that Microsoft is the one who actually did it.

Feedback Post-Upgrade & Anniversary too

[Anonymous Coward]

Anniversary Update, Minor Points:

- The latest iteration of the Windows 10 Start Menu is almost half as good as Windows 7's, they're getting there.
- I still went back to Classic Shell despite how much I like the Weather, News, and Money tiles or just large clicky icons in general. Classic Shell has an interface that feels more concretely reliable than Windows 10 Start Menu. Options, "Pictures", "Downloads", etc., the interface feels more inviting and accessible.
- You still have to click 'more' more than half the time to get contextual items you really want on the start menu, why are there nested menus for 2 options and then 3 options, this is insane! Pin to Start is top level but 'Pin to Taskbar' you have to click 'more' first?! Who designs this?!
- You still can't right-click explore the start menu to see your programs like you could for how many decades now?
- They still haven't put 'Windows Update' in Control Panel for obviously no good reason.
- You can finally right click on the taskbar and see the taskbar settings. My God.
- They're still breaking systems by not allowing interactivity with some 'recovery' issues. Windows 7 and 8.1 had more choices, Windows 10 automates recovery in such a way that you can easily lose your system if you encounter a problem that you could have manually fixed.

Overall it seems like they're inching slowly back to a Windows 7 quality ecosystem but they're still so far away that I don't regret keeping my productivity systems and gaming PC on Windows 7. The whole experience seems to lack the care and concern for UI efficiencies, it's like we've gone so far back and they're slowly restoring things people are missing. I could spend a half hour writing a long list describing how the OS UI still has deficiencies but I feel like Microsoft doesn't care.

Here's my feedback after updating four devices from Windows 7 & Windows 8.1

* Success: On my i5 HTPC flat mITX PC that basically hosts Kodi I upgraded from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 and I can't say that I notice a difference. Audio and video both work fine, the system is no quicker bringing up Kodi than before, it took a few seconds on this UEFI + SSD system with Win 8.1, takes the same amount of seconds now. No gains outside of support cycle.

* Failure: On my kitchen touch PC I reverted back to Windows 8.1 as both regular mode and tablet mode on Windows 10 are individually far worse in a hybrid environment than Win 8.1. I miss the swipes in Desktop mode and the keyboard icon is small and on the right hand side. Why?! Why is it so small!? It should be prominent as half the time you need the keyboard it doesn't pop up.

* Failure: On my workbench mITX PC I reverted back to Windows 8.1 as there were no sound drivers that worked properly with Windows 10 for the IDT 92xx chipset. You can force Microsoft's "High Definition Audio Device" and you'll get sound but you can only get 2 channels and it randomly pops with this horribly loud feedback sounding bang.

* Success: On a cheap non-name custom built ultrabook the experience was similarly smooth, no issues, I definitely prefer Windows 10 UI on this system than Windows 8.1 but overall I'd rather have Windows 7.

Mostly good

[Rinikusu]

Things I don't like:

Mandated updates overnight, killing stuff I was doing.
Phone home - I think I've killed everything, but one can never be sure with MS.
What the hell happened to calc? It doesn't even run anymore and the error messages are fucking insane. Why do I need a microsoft store account for something that used to come with the OS? Shit, I've resorted to using sbcl for my quick calcs.

Things I like:
It's basically windows, the metro screen that vexed me so in 8 is basically gone. It's a nice Win7 like OS.

Seriously, MS, you give me a headache. Visual Studio and the .NET dev environment is amazing. But your business practices with Windows, the pervasive data collection, etc etc make me not want to develop for your platform because I don't want to *use* your platform, but I am kinda stuck because I don't want to switch to Apple hardware. Sigh.

DO

[p51d007]

I've been using directory opus since windows XP. I won't use anything else! It got to be a pain managing zip, rar, 7zip, ftp, etc...stumbled onto it and was hooked from the start.

No money spent on UI

[Anonymous Coward]

The UI is a Frankenstein monster mess with multiple personality disorder. I'm intrigued by Microsoft's inability to get a damn drawing board and set up rules for every object in its OS. That's their damn job.
Additionally, why the hell is such a software company incapable of implementing an auto-detect feature? As in the OS auto-detecting whether it's being run from a desktop, a laptop, a tablet, or a smartphone; and disabling that Metro tumor for desktop users while properly auto-setting the UI for each format. The last thing a desktop user wants is touchscreen stupidity infecting his UI with oversized input boxes that touchscreen users need for their fingers, but desktop users don't, and desktop users certainly don't need that Metro cancer.

Overall great, but no anniversary update

[ArtemaOne]

I had to roll back the Anniversary Update on my MacBook Pro. My HFS volume had disappeared and the VPN was non-functional. Also connecting a monitor/tv had very little functionality for some reason. I couldn't make a non-existent desktop go away! Anniversary update aside, I have it running on multiple computers back in the USA, including my gaming PC. Only Steam game that I've tried that just wont run is Far Cry 3. It is a minor improvement on Windows 7 and a huge improvement over Windows 8. There were so many network issues for me in Windows 8 that I couldn't run it, though 8.1 fixed some of them, 10 eliminated them. I really see 8 as the Windows ME of the post-NT stage. Anyway, when I get back to the U.S. I'll see how the anniversary update works on my systems and evaluate if I should run it on my gaming PC.

Experiences With Windows 10? Nightmares!

[Futurepower(R)]

Technically knowledgeable people have been having nightmares about Windows. I've collected some of them here:

In the future, Windows will force your computer to be a dumb terminal. You will pay monthly.

All your data will be examined by Microsoft. Can it be sold to secret U.S. government agencies? Can it be sold to advertisers?

It will be revealed that Bill Gates has always been CEO of Microsoft. Former CEO Steve Ballmer, called Monkey Boy by BusinessWeek Magazine, was just a fake leader. So is CEO Satya Nadella.

There will be fights between secret U.S. government agencies. Microsoft will spy on one, against another. Microsoft will do the most spying for the U.S. secret agency that pays the most.

To use Windows, you will be forced to agree to a contract, as now. The future contract will include even more complicated language that only lawyers can understand. That future contract will say that Microsoft employees can go to your refrigerator and take anything they see. That will be an important clause in the contract because Microsoft employees won't be paid enough to buy their own food. They will still have to work 12 hours each day, except when there are special needs, then 15 hours. But there will always be special needs.

The rich will get richer, the poor will be made poorer, much worse than this: "The rich control everything in Seattle. Bill Gates ... wants obedient little workers that never, ever, EVER ask questions." Books will be published: Microsoft Is Filled With Abusive Managers And Overworked Employees, Says Tell-All Book (May 23, 2012) However, since the rich control everything, no protests will have any effect.

The nightmare will get worse, as IT gets worse:

The dumb terminals will be forced to have 360 degree cameras. Everything you do will be supervised by a Microsoft slave.

Eventually, most people won't be allowed to have money. Only billionaires and trillionaires will have money.

Trillionaires will own nuclear facilities. They will get into nuclear wars over who will have ALL of the money.

The nuclear wars will destroy all life on planet Earth.

All because of Windows 10. Abuse, if not stopped, tends to get worse.

Re: Experiences With Windows 10? Nightmares!

[shanen]

If only I had mod points? Maybe too long for funny?

hahaha

[stooo]

Windows 10 ??
Ahahahahhahiahahahhahahahahahahhhhalaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
no.

I like it, but the damned start menu is fragile...

[javabandit]

I really like how you can open the start menu and just start typing the name of the program you want to run. Not an original idea, but certainly wasn't a standard option in Windows for a long time. However...

The damned start menu is WAY too fragile. I might be exaggerating, but it has to be one of the most complained about parts of Windows 10. Without warning, your start menu can all of a sudden stop working. Or, it will work, but the type-to-search functionality won't work. So you get all sorts of cryptic workarounds like doing a full repair, or "sfc /scannow", or stopping the Cortana service... the list is endless it seems. I have been very happy with Windows 10 otherwise, but a constantly broken start menu is absolutely terrible.

Microsoft, if you're listening, you guys have to fix this.

Oh yeah, that new network thing for shared file...

[shanen]

Murphy's Law in action. Can't recall the last time a topic I suggested got top-paged on slashdot, so I feel strongly obliged to look over the responses, but I have a really heavy schedule today and just a short time this morning before I have to leave... Do what I can, but that's what they all say.

This post reminded me of experiences trying to share files over the network from a Windows 10 machine. Really a bad idea, even if the other machine is Windows 10. The idea of sharing over the network is great, but the security problems were difficult and Microsoft, in its infinite non-wisdom, decided to "cure" the problem by making it quite difficult to share files via network-shared folders or disks. My initial quest was to share some old files from a converted-to-Windows-10 machine with machines running Ubuntu and OS X, as well as other Windows machines. Finally reduced to using Dropbox with a bit of Google Drive on the side.

Conclusion? Maybe sharing storage is just too dangerous for "normal" people, even with a technical bent? Or maybe the foundation as implemented and populized way back in Windows 95 was just too rotten and poorly conceived? No, I don't know if this is a security problem that could have been prevented by better thinking up front, but it certainly seems to me that Microsoft has thrown in the towel.

Re: Jesus fucking lord christ!!!

[wjcofkc]

tongue-in-cheek adjective & adverb with ironic or flippant intent.

Secret of Linux's non-success--bad financial model

[shanen]

Not the topic I was looking for, but you set me off... The clock, oh the clock... (Need ekronomics.)

The success of Windows is NOT driven by technology, but by clever financial models, and the people supporting Linux and OSS have yet to come up with a good one. I would argue that the two most important keys to Microsoft's dominance are selling upstream to the makers, not the users, and more importantly, perfecting the denial of financial liability without any consideration of the damage inflicted or Microsoft's own incompetence. Windows 10 is mostly significant insofar as it represents an attempt to steal... Er, I mean copy and improve Apple's newer financial model.

I suffer from delusions of grand solutions. Crowdfunding a la Kickstarter is about 1/3 of the way towards an answer. I think the "charity share brokerage" approach could get at least 2/3 of the way there, but I am probably deluded about the wisdom of crowds, too.

Time, gentleman. (If there are interested responses or queries for details I should be able to reply later in the week.)

Re:Jesus fucking lord christ!!!

[shanen]

I wish I had a mod point to give you. (Also for some of the posts in the branch.)

Hmm... How about inherited score? An extra point if the branch of the thread is collecting lots of mod points?

Re:Win 10 Anniversary broke HTC VIVE Steam VR supp

[ArtemaOne]

You can just roll it back. I did, and it didn't take all that long. You can just wait until they fix.

Lambdas leaving W10 ?

[Thanatiel]

I just heard about a couple of friends who got rid of W10 by replacing it by a "Linux" (That's all I got for the OS name).
The husband is a bit above the average computer level of a lambda guy in his 30ies.
The wife's skills are around "reading mail, using word and surfing the web".
Both are happy with the new OS.

Also, this week-end I noticed that a couple of older (60+?) acquaintances started using an Apple computer.

Up to now, only some the geeks around me were kicking W10 out for an alternative.

I find the fact that at least some "normal" people are also moving away both surprising and heartwarming.

Re:Lambdas leaving W10 ?

[Anonymous Coward]

What the **** does lambda mean in this context?

(Gordon Freeman, is that you?)

Re:Lambdas leaving W10 ?

[Anonymous Coward]

From context, I'm guessing it means this.

... well, either that, or radioactive sheep.

Re:Lambdas leaving W10 ?

[Thanatiel]

It basically means "a normal user", and up to a minute ago I didn't realise it was a French expression (Utilisateur Lambda), or so it seems.
An accurate definition would be "a person who uses a system like the majority of its users without looking for advanced features".
It was first learned by yours truly trough an english native speaker, hence the confusion.

Almost seemless upgrade. Faster than Win7.

[erexx23]

In 3 steps:

1. Copy Window7 to another hard drive: Cloned Win7 from SSD to a M2 using Acronis. Then upgrade the M2 to Win10.

2. Upgrade Windows 7: Used the Windows10Upgrade9252.exe for an almost seamless single user profile upgrade.
Reloaded SSD drivers for proper Samsung HD magician detection and Video Card drivers for nvidia1080.
Most apps and games worked without reinstall. Only annoying thing was associating media files with Media Player. Not bad tho.

3. Custom GUI: Classic Shell + Winearo + Windows7 icons - imageres.dll [c:\icons] FTW.
Looks and runs very simliar to Windows 7. Someone even managed to fix the old Gadgets bug.
But I digress the win+x key is awesome sauce no matter the GUI used. Faster than Windows7.
This hardcore gamer with some old school apps is satisfied so far.

Who owns your machine? Apple or Microsoft?

[shanen]

I feel like that guy who lost all his time complaining about the time...

Anyway, this is related to the earlier comment I added about network sharing via Windows 10. Not in that earlier post, but I also tried to tackle it from the other side of sharing on Linux (Ubuntu) at one point.

My theory was that the Linux approach was sound and probably secure, too, but Microsoft had worked quite hard and probably even skillfully to make it a pain in the tukhus from the Windows 10 side. Kind of hard to summarize, but my conclusion was that I would have to tweak Windows 10 so hard to make it work that I would ever after be fighting with Microsoft for control of my own machine.

That's actually an aspect of the black box philosophy that you cannot, even in theory, understand what is going on under the covers of the computers (and smartphones) that you supposedly own. However, I don't blame Microsoft for this one. I think they stole that idea from Apple, who implemented it with the Mac (when they abandoned the open philosophy of the Apple II).

More haste, less speed in sharing

[shanen]

Reminded me of another Windows 10 problem that hasn't been mentioned here. On one of my dual boot (GRUB) machines, the upgraded Windows 7 disk became inaccessible from Ubuntu until the fast boot option of Windows 10 was disabled.

On this topic, I have to say that Apple seems to have the best approach, with the quick login. No, you aren't really able to do anything yet, but at least it feels like you've done everything you could, and quickly. The waiting time for the machine to actually be usable doesn't feel nearly as bad?

Re: Oh yeah, that new network thing for shared fil

[Anonymous Coward]

Were the usernames different? Using Microsoft account instead of local?

I own 5 computers at home running mix of 10 and 7 and as long as username and password are the same on all machines, networking is seamless. On Ubuntu, just had to make user with same username and password and also became seamless browsing/sharing.

Ownership of MY computer

[shanen]

Just so. Again, wish I had mod points to give. Earlier I made a comment about Apple and Microsoft taking over the real ownership of the hardware (including smartphones).

Time, gentleman.

I don't care for it

[Sperbels]

It corrupted a windows 8.1 installation I had on another drive that I was dual booting with. I've had the start menu problem where you left-click and nothing happens. When dual booting with Linux on my home machine it simply loves to overwrite grub, not just once, it has done it multiple times. Installed an application that required .net 3.5, but it wouldn't install....the actually 3.5 framework would not install. No matter how much googling I did and how many different approaches I tried, it would install. Finally I tried a third party program which worked, but now I'm paranoid it installed malware.

I've used windows 8.1 for over a year at home and work, and Windows 10 at home and at work for about 6 months, both OSes suck more than Windows 7.

Philosophy of exploiting scale

[shanen]

Growth gives you two choices. You can try to offer more variations to deal with the real differences among your growing number of users, or you can try to optimize around the most popular options and try to force all of the users to the single and best solution, where "best" means most profitable for us. You can see where that is going, can't you? The rules of the (business) game have been written by bribed politicians working for fans of cancer, because their companies are the biggest and most cancerous. They also suffer from the delusion that they are too big to fail, when the reality is that at some point they will fail so bigly that they will drag the government down with them...

If I had more time this morning I would even write about learning this lesson from two universities... The good university has a big intellectual space with room for all kinds of ideas, whereas the bad university is an optimizer and focused on forcing students into the right boxes. (The bad university had a good reputation anyway, but that was because it was also an elephants' graveyard.)

300+ machines later...

[Anonymous Coward]

As well as my own three machines (laptop, surface and an Intel Compute Stick), we've rolled out to 300+ computers at work and are about to do another 300+

The first computers to be updated were in January and they had some issues with builtin store apps. Other than that there have been no problems other than an update that broke a few things, but it did that for Win 8.x as well.

Windows 10 is pretty darn good, and the privacy concerns are just tinfoil hat stuff IMHO.

L8rs.

Windows 10 forced a Microsoft account

[shanen]

Actually that reminds me of one of the major annoyances of upgrading on one of my machines. Can't remember the details now, but I do remember that I wound up locked out of my primary admin account, and had to go through a different admin account to regain control.

That machine wound up with the primary admin account being tightly bound to the Microsoft network, which I still don't trust, but I left it that way mostly because it appeared that it would be a lot of trouble to fix it properly. Lesser reason was to see how Microsoft wants the machine to feel, or at least get a slightly closer feel to it. Turned out to be only moderately annoying and slightly seductive.

Time, gentleman. Running out of time, and only halfway through the comments...

Forced to the Microsoft account

[shanen]

Sounds very much like my experience summarized in an earlier reply. If I had more time this morning, I'd say more, but...

Welcome to Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

Updates constantly reverting settings was one of the annoyances that sent me searching for alternatives

Data and Goliath again?

[shanen]

Again I wish I had a mod point, but main reason to reply is that you seem especially likely to be interested in Data and Goliath by Bruce Schneier.

None

[Anonymous Coward]

I was hoping to go legit and score a free upgrade, but that didn't pan out, so I'll continue ti use this pirated copy of 7 until I *need* to upgrade.
I also never got any of the pop bs. Win/Win.

Supporting older machines

[shanen]

Interesting comment and maybe the only one (so far) to mention the support factor so directly. My main reaction is to note that the support topic was the main reason I decided to upgrade several machines. I had a couple of Windows XP machines that got forced over to Ubuntu, which is a sort of solution, but I've been increasingly disappointed with Ubuntu over the years, so I regarded that as a lesser solution... Also software and data compatibility issues in Ubuntu, but mostly it's the Japanese support that has annoyed me...

Getting too far afield and time problem.

Windows 10

[Kevin108]

My system was built to be a Hackintosh, but I could never get it to work because I missed step 1 in the process: have an existing Mac to make everything you need to install OSX on your Hackintosh.

Anyway...

Windows 10 was stable and fast but the harsh "flat" graphics of the UI ruin it for me. Why would a supposed cutting-edge OS not have cutting-edge visuals?

Thanks for the fish?

[shanen]

General thanks for the interesting comments, though this is not the discussion I was looking for. Oh well, such be the power of the editors in modifying my original question. The discussion did remind me of a bunch of Windows 10 problems that I'd already dealt with. (Should I be glad I'd already forgotten them?)

I still felt that I was sort of placed in the role of "host" and I tried to review all of the visible comments (around 130 when I arrived this morning) and replied to some of them. Unfortunately, I am having a Murphy's Law morning of unusual busyness and have to leave soon. Decided to tack this summary comment on rather than spend more time reading more carefully... I also feel like I was caught off guard because I have an almost perfect record of submissions that missed the boot (sic).

My main problem of the slightly crippled Start button wasn't much addressed, though I got one interesting angle to pursue (related to the media creation tool). I do suspect the underlying problem may involve Cortana, but I didn't get any solid evidence there. Just a bit more support for my impulsive feeling.

Speaking of support, that topic wasn't touched, though it was even more prominent in the edited version of my submission... Microsoft's so-called support is just too far beneath contempt to get a mention? Or maybe it's a projected fear inducing self-censorship? For what little it is worth, I think that censorship may be the reason I'm locked out of Microsoft's support. I give off too many bad vibes?

From the Microsoft perspective, why should they risk giving me (and such people) a platform to make Microsoft look even worse? I would not be surprised if there are many people who are proactively excluded from participation. With my enhanced paranoia (with special thanks to Bruce Schneier for Data and Goliath , which I read last week), I can even imagine using analysis of personal information to cautiously pick the most annoying or troublesome people to ban. Nothing so silly and naive as dumping obvious Microsoft haters, but a tailored approach considering writing skills and potential persuasiveness... Hey, it worked for finally killing the newsgroups.

Overall, very good

[Anonymous Coward]

Never had any real problems, done installs on a wide range of hardware in the last 12 months (probably 20+). The only problem I have run into is driver support for hardware that is 4+ years old. That was a Sony VAIO (go figure). The other was some old Intel Video Chipset drivers, so it uses a generic MS software rendering was was a bit shit.

Great interface, boots up fast and smooth, easy to use, familiar. Installs was easy and simple, including upgrades from Win7.

If people are nervous about the Win10 telemetry, install this https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10

Re: Jesus fucking lord christ!!!

[ArtemaOne]

I was under the impression that users can contribute articles to this site. Post something about Mint or whatever you feel like. I'd be interested in reading about some of those things.

Have they fixed the file selection bug yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Last time I tried Win 10 I set a folder view to Details List (and thanks for breaking the Alt-VD shortcut, MS), selected some files, changed the sort order and my file selection vanished. Used to work just fine in previous versions. Rather depressing that they broke the keys shortcut and can't get something that simple right :(

Doesn't bode well for the future. Let's hope more and more businesses wake up to FOSS alternatives.

Re:Have they fixed the file selection bug yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Last time I tried Win 10 I set a folder view to Details List (and thanks for breaking the Alt-VD shortcut, MS), selected some files, changed the sort order and my file selection vanished. Used to work just fine in previous versions. Rather depressing that they broke the keys shortcut and can't get something that simple right :(

Doesn't bode well for the future. Let's hope more and more businesses wake up to FOSS alternatives.

"I've changed out agreement (in my favor). Pray I don't change it further (in my favor)."

Dual boot...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why I upgraded, then rolled back, then clean installed on a new partition to dual boot. I refuse to upgrade until I know for a fact that it will reliably support my needs.

I do not like Win10

[fox171171]

I have 8.1 on my machine, and out of the box it was a disastrous mess (8.0 when I started). But I have been able to fix it to my liking (uninstall all the Metro Apps, replace with real desktop software, boot to desktop, Classic Shell).

Wife's new machine came with 10. I don't like it. I don't know if I can fix it. Edge locks up her whole computer a lot. MSIE does to a certain extent too. She is always complaining about it. The first time I tried figuring something out, I did a search, and it defaulted to BING and it could not find answers. I copied the search terms and pasted it into Google, and it answered my question on the results page. I didn't have to go further. Google knows more about Windows 10 than BING does. It's pathetic. I know I would probably get used to it, but I don't want to. Every time I see the "start tile menu", I wonder why anyone would like the design.

She was trying to print something and the dialog box was too big, and the buttons were off the bottom of the screen. Not an insurmountable problem, but she didn't know what to do. The title bar was touching the top of the screen, so can't just move it up; had to resize down, then move up. It really should never have appeared that way. This is not the dawn of the GUI. A modern OS should not have issues like that. Every website can find out from your browser what your screen resolution is, so the bloody OS should damn well know. Worse yet, the damned task bar is transparent, so she could see the PRINT button, but couldn't understand why she couldn't click on it! I hate the transparent crap, and I see no reason to have it.

Objective Review

[Anonymous Coward]

By Feature:
->Cortana: Can't I just freggin use Google?
->Edge: It's something you get used to.
->Start, then start typing and it searches the internet and your PC for apps: Confusing, and it'd be convenient if I could trust it.
->Resizable console windows with easier copy and paste: Big, huge, tremendous kudos here.
->Start button on every monitor on multi-montior setup and multiple desktops: Love it.
->Metro Apps: Take longer to load than traditional windows apps and are no more or less useful.
->Adjustable text and icon sizing for older users: Garbage. The Win7 UI customization was way better.
->Being able to remote into a terminal via rdp, play music on the remote machine, and do work on that machine have the space of 3 monitors on my machine at home to do the work and have it work: Freggin awesome.
->Automatic install of dependency binaries from Microsoft during App Install: Awesome.
->New Settings panel: Oversimplified garbage. You need to take the existing control panel and break the presentation down into like 7 or 8 basic items that make sense.
-> Powershell 4.0: Kicks ass.

Deal-Killers:
->Built-in Spyware: Needs to go. All of it. One button. On or Off.
->Replacing Windows search with Cortana: No.
->Removing Group Policy features unless you buy a MS Licensing level: Uh. What the fuck guys? We played this same BS game when MSOL became Office 365, remember when you wanted to use activesync in MSOL you needed to get upto the 500 user level? Utter Bullshit. Rackspace has handed your proverbial asses to you and my company ain't switching anytime soon even if there is a mark-up. If they solve the company address-book problem and buy out\provide a competing mail client, game over douchebags.
->Drivers and hardware issues: Given most of these are edge cases, but I've seen at least a few major hardware issues with MS in the last year go unresolved due to them pushing updates and intentionally breaking things in order to make manufacturers fix hardware. This is a serious issue.

Re:Objective Review

[Anonymous Coward]

Deal-Killers:
->Built-in Spyware: Needs to go. All of it. One button. On or Off.

I bet it will be easier getting a backup copy of your files from Micro$haft than from the NSA in the USA.....

Could have been better...

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 10 killed my mother, and raped my father!

Anniversary "update" does not respect settings

[blinkwing]

Upon installing the anniversary update, Windows has done the following:
* Enabled Remote Desktop despite me specifically turning this off when I initially installed it.
* Turned on Fastboot, rendering my Linux OS unable to read NTFS partitions, despite me specifically turning this setting off.
How hard can it be to respect user settings, really?
At this point, Microsoft is just being hilariously incompetent.

Dial up was a thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, Winsock was not a thing. Nobody else could use the Internet until Win95 had Winsock installed. My god man. Did you not understand that the dialup companies had to provide the stack on the disk and provide support for the software, and a slip connection as well - (former small time re-seller if dial-up).

Microsoft did not make that decision, the decision was made by the University of Minnesota to charge licensing fees for Gopher in 1993, forcing everyone to the www.

Works great for me...

[eWarz]

Have no complaints really. Even my third party start menu (Start10) loads faster and with less issue. Loving WSL. Typically only use my Windows machine for gaming, but now i'm able to develop on it.

Going to get roasted alive for this...

[Sasayaki]

... but it's actually not that bad. Comparable to Windows 7.

The new backup features are cool. Having volume shadow copies/file history baked in is neat.

The automatic restarting whenever an update comes in pisses me off, but I recognise that this is a necessary feature because so, so many people don't keep their machines up to date and (similar to immunization) that compromises the entire ecosystem.

Given it's basically free for me because I have a whole bunch of Windows 7/8 keys collected over the years, I'm okay with it. It seems good.

OPs problem

[Anonymous Coward]

I had OPs problem on two systems and managed to fix it. No start button, no left click are the symptoms. A great many functions that used to be handled by Explorer.exe have been moved to WindowsShellExperience.exe. This crashes sometimes. Event Log has details. Online searches yield mostly discussion around pre-release builds with no decent follow up after RTM/Release. In both cases I found the only solution was to create an entirely new user profile, and then copy only data files over to that, no settings, and this cleared it up. It still freezes once in a while, often while clicking .LNK shortcuts or links to folders which typically invoke Explorer to show the directory, forcing a reboot since (stupidly) the Task Manager cannot even be called up with CTRL-SHIFT-ESC when this problem occurs as it is hooked into that exe. I hope this helps some folks. Make a brand new user profile and start clean.

Just when I though it turned into a nice OS...

[Anonymous Coward]

Had potential until Microsoft fucked it all up with the Anniversary release. I am running "Professional" edition with Cortana, One Drive, the Lock Screen and a few other things disabled via Group Policy.

Been a pretty good experience and I was just thinking about upgrading my home system from Windows 7 to 10.
Then I learned about the bait and switch that the Anniversary Update is going to be, removing features from the "Professional" edition of Windows 10 after the fact.

Updates a deferred now until someone figures out a way to enable the settings that Microsoft took from us. Still better then the OS X junk most other people use at work.

Re: Jesus fucking lord christ!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Killing Java is honestly a feature, not a bug - and good f***ing riddance.

Re:Jesus fucking lord christ!!!

[stealth_finger]

As most of it is generally negative, not enough.

OS that just seems to hate its users

[The_Revelation]

The number of times I've seen Windows 10 break on a Windows update on some machine in a new and interesting way is significantly higher that most Windows OS releases I've seen. Its outperforming Windows Millennium in this metric. Sometimes it also manages to break the user's apps at the same time. At issue seems to be MS ramming updates down people's throats. I'd say there is a benefit in waiting for patches to be tested thoroughly, and scheduling less aggressive restart times. MS needs to release control of this aspect as they clearly don't understand change management. I appreciate updates can be deferred, however I find after a while they apply regardless resulting in unexpected restarts on systems that are expected to always be available.

My Experience

[jandersen]

I've heard about it, and what I've heard doesn't sound attractive, even compared to Windows in general. Maybe I shouldn't contribute any comments, since I am a Linux user (as well as -developer, -adminstrator) of some 20 years or how ever long it has been since version 0.9 of the kernel; but even if you, like me, always avoid using Windows, you can't avoid forming an opinion from seeing how it affects people around you. Plus, of course, absurd at it may seem, I still get called on regularly to sort out problems that Windows users have with their systems, because at the end of the day, most problems with computers are or a generic nature - the difference is just that in Windows you are isolated from gaining an understanding of what a computer system is and does, and in Linux you are not, so I often have an edge there.

There are many people who seem to genuinely love Windows, and they often get up in arms when you criticise Windows, but I'm not trying to slag off Windows; I'm just putting my observations into words. Apart from that, I think I would be somewhat justified in being scornful; over the years, I have been at the receiving end of endless scorn (like the whole Linux community), especially from Windows users, the mildest being things like "You get what you pay for". My prediction from the start has always been that since the development of Linux does not depend on commercial success in the same way that Windows does, how could it fail to win in the end? FOSS developers may just be a bunch of amateurs and not professionals - but then what do these terms mean? "Amateur" means that you do this because you love to do it enough that you don't seek a profit; "professional" simply means you take payment for what you do, quite possibly implying that you don't actually like your job. In the beginning, an amateur may be less skilled, but amateurs keep learning simply by doing, and because they are not in it for the money, they can take the time to learn in depth, whereas professionals have to make ends meet - if the choice is between really perfecting something and getting on to the next money maker, it is the money that wins every time. The amateur ends up being the better craftsman and produces better things.

Re: Jesus fucking lord christ!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

as someone who has been here since the beginning (i still have my 'Sounds of Slashdot' CD) i have to agree - /. has gone down the proverbial honey hole and seems to be infested with non-free software types

You're always sharing your experience with Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

Because of Telemetry.

No major problems, generally positive experience

[sabbede]

Sure, I've run into the Start Menu issue the author describes on some computers. Found a fix in wiping the tile database, but it's been months since I last saw it happen. There have been some other small annoyances, like the "copy default profile" deployment bug, and how the "modern app" sandbox doesn't allow programs (like Edge) read a print code entered into a driver popup for our office printers, but other than those relatively minor issues I'm loving it.

It's my favorite Windows since 7, and there are new conveniences - like the right-click Start menu - whose absence infuriates me in 7.

It's too confusing to use

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure why, maybe it's the ‘flat’ look, but my eyes got lost constantly and I never seemed to know where to click. I mean, you figure it out after a few seconds, but having that experience on every click was just too painful. And there were some games that no longer worked. And changing anything about the configuration of the system is just too hard. They've reshuffled a lot of settings (again) and moved some to a second control panel and I never know which one I need. And the new shell is utter crap. And there are constantly things flying in from the screen edges, and stuff sometimes covering the entire screen and I never knew what I did to cause it or how to make it go away.
In the end I went back to Windows XP. I no longer even care about security, if I cannot use the bloody thing then what does it matter if it's secure? I'll just make regular backups and wait until some future operating system comes along that I do like.

so so

[Anonymous Coward]

Only one problem with gaming and most and keyboard commands being lost or delayed. One annoyance and that is with the lock screen. It use to come out of sleep by the press of any key or mouse movement. Now it is a pain in the ass as sometimes it wakes up and others I have to hit several keys. It sucks.

I've turned off all of the internet based searching to avoid cortana.

Oh yea, two more issues. Firewall settings keep getting turned back on for MS shit I don't want, and even though I have my wireless network set to not autoconnect the option keeps being turned on, and I fight to turn it back off.

Bricked the machine

[Anonymous Coward]

My brother-in-law upgraded his 4 y/o computer to windows 10. It installed correctly. Then it updated something and that is the last time it has booted up.

Now when the computer "starts", there is no POST test, the monitor stays black the whole time, and mice and keyboards are unrecognised. The only solution that had a chance of working was pulling the C-MOS battery and changing some jumpers on the mobo. However, that didn't work. I can't do anything from a windows 7 CD because there is no monitor or keyboard. There is literally nothing left that I can think of to fix the machine. The answers from the community for this windows 10 issue was that the BIOS drivers were not compatible with windows 10 and should have been updated prior to upgrading.

It is bricked. Windows 10 sucks!

Re: Jesus fucking lord christ!!!

[BronsCon]

Not when my IDE requires it...

Or are you thinking of the Java browser plugin? In which case, yes, I agree.

What my friends say

[LichtSpektren]

I never upgraded to Windows 10 because I consider it spyware, but I've had some friends beg me to install Linux on their laptops to avoid it. My coworkers who aren't tech savvy have all brought in their laptops for me to fix because Windows 10 borked something.

Because it has 100x as much in it?

[Anonymous Coward]

After all, you get a movie player (no DVD/BR decoding), sound player, picture editor and simple photo app and a couple of games in windows. In linux, you get several versions of all those, SVG and pixel graphics apps, full desktop office suite (and several of those), several games of a similar quality to Windows free ones, along with a full programmer suite of editors, languages and IDEs.

Full server systems, including powerful firewall, network diagnostics, vast driver suites and documentation on the disk.

Plus all the hundreds of other apps I never even bother with or never even notice (such as multiple filesystem support)

Nope!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope! Not ever going to use it. With every "update" it just gets worse and worse. Sticking with Windows 7 for now.

Perfect upgrade!

[dddux]

I upgraded just recently and it's been an absolutely smooth ride since. I love this OS so much! It's so simple to use and I don't have to spend hours to download and install additional programs and drivers from the Internet. Only the VGA driver was necessary to download and install. When I upgraded it took me like 20 minutes to install it and I was good to go! ;) Unbelievable! Big plus is that you don't have to use any antivirus or any antimalware as it is pretty safe by default. The only thing about safety is that you should at least turn on the firewall, and possibly adjust some settings if you want. Wait... are we talking about Debian Linux or Windows 10??? I upgraded to Debian 8.5. The last Windows I used were Windows 7. Since then MS is dead for me.

Long time windows user

[flappinbooger]

I've used windows since 3.1 / 3.11, I've used 95, 98se, 2000, NT4.1, xp, Vista (for like a month) 7 and now 10. Only used 8/8.1 on specific task systems. I've used linux a little bit, Ubuntu and mint most recently.

I've installed 10 standalone and as an upgrade, I found it easy to get a cheap copy of 7 or 8 and upgrade to 10 while it was a free upgrade. Installation is fast and easy either way.

I've had some friends, acquaintances and a few customer who were forced to upgrade unwillingly or unknowingly.

The most confusing things are:

Permissions are changed for file shares with networking. This broke some things for people, I told one to just go and apply the undo to go back to 7.
The other is how windows 10 installs many "apps" from Microsoft to do things and then will set them to be your default programs to do those things. This is difficult and confusing for some people and has caused problems. The default program settings is different in 10 and is squirreled away in the control panel.

I installed and worked with 10 on many computers and got a good feel for it, so then put it on mine.

The annoying stuff - Very little. I have applied the Windows10 Privacy tool and locked down the "spying" stuff and ALSO - Since I installed 10 pro because I had on 7 pro I was able to use the privacy app to force Win10 to NOT automatically reboot with updates. The win10 inability to not control when updates happen is a big annoyance for me, the tool allows that to be fixed.

Now that the free upgrade is over, when to get 10 is somewhat moot. I would not avoid it on a new system.

If you have 8 or 8.1 I would definitely consider moving to 10.

If you have 7, at this point I would just ride 7 until support is over in 2020 unless you want to spend the money??? I have a customer with 10+ workstations and I put on the GWX Control panel to stop the upgrade. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I have left our CAD workstations on 7 for the same reason.

What is better in 10 vs 7? I believe it is faster. The appearance is fresher. The UI has all the improvements from 8 but none of the annoyances.

I've had some things SEEM to work better with 10. Things are generally where they are in 7, but I put on Classic Shell anyway. I have an impression (whether real or not) that by having the newer OS it can be or is more secure.

I had been using the Cyberoam SSL VPN tool. It broke with 10 and I am unable to reinstall it at all on 10. I obtained the OpenVPN tool and find it to be better anyway. Installs fine with 10.

I have had no stability issues whatsoever.

I had a right click bug but fixed it by taking off my AV, have not reinstalled it yet.

Bottom line: Windows 10 is good
Caveat: For me I would NEVER EVER put it on without the win10 Privacy tool. http://www.winprivacy.de/

Re:Long time windows user

[flappinbooger]

I understand how it looks that I had to take off my AV to fix a right click bug. I figure that this is due to upgrading from 7 to 10 with the AV installed. I am not surprised that I would need to do a reinstall of the AV and I browse with no-script and Ublock so I'm not hung up on having antivirus right this minute. I have other machines with 10pro with this same AV installed fresh where there is no right click bug.

Re:Long time windows user

[flappinbooger]

One more thing -

I am prepared to move from windows 10 to linux or back to 7 to do my day to day computing. I don't have a problem right now with 10 but I do not trust Microsoft and I am still suspicious as to why they would GIVE US something for "FREE" because that is not like them.

I put it on because a) I have programs that need windows and b) I need to be familiar with it because people still pay me to fix computers so and 3) it's new and I wanted to.

Surface Pro 3 (5 stars) Other device (2 stars)

[rhyous]

My Surface Pro 3 upgraded flawlessly. Since upgrading my Surface Pro 3, I have seen longer battery life, near instant wake up times. Better tablet mode. Better desktop mode.

My Lenovo W530 also upgraded just fine, though it isn't a tablet or touchscreen. I still like the experience better than Windows 8.1. Unfortunately, I cannot create a new user and login. I can only use the one user that already exists. I put an hour into fixed this and couldn't. The suggestion is to copy the c:\users\default folder from another windows 10 computer. I haven't tried that yet.

Two of my devices failed to upgrade. One entered a boot loop and I had to boot off a Windows 10 install CD, go to repair and troubleshooting and recover it all myself from the command line. Not something the average user could do. The forums said to reformat and there wasn't a fix. I managed to put it back together without a reinstall and it is back to Windows 7. The issue were never resolved before the final date for the free upgrade came and went. Not sure if Microsoft will let me upgrade now. I have an MSDN subscription, so I don't necessarily need the free keys, but I would like my personal devices and their keys separate from my work's MSDN keys.

Not a fan

[Gregarious1]

i don't have all day to make a complete list - so we'll see how far I get before I become to disgusted to go on.... 1. Serious lag - even with most systems turned off 2. Changes to file access process have me stumbling around trying to figure out how to remove programs. 3. The gaming sucks because I get asked if I want to buy stuff between each game. 4. My son decided to fill out the account profile - which then locked the rest of the family out of our computer. He had to share his password - which accesses all of his Microsoft accounts - with he family. And also, all of the functions of 10 are now locked to him. 5. The pop-up blocker is not working for Firefox in some sites. I'm not sure if this was intentional, or simply an oversight, but it looks suspicious to me. There's more, but I need to get going. I'm seeking other alternatives right now to 10. I wish I could go back to 7 in the meantime. : ( ~S

Re: Oh yeah, that new network thing for shared fil

[shanen]

Almost missed your question because of the AC thing. Why the hide?

Anyway, in response to your question, my fuzzy recollection is that there was some problem with the workgroup name. Somehow Windows 10 had created a different kind and even the other Windows 10 machines didn't like it. There was a possible solution path with OS-level modifications, but I wasn't too comfortable with Windows 10 and that time, and I've mostly been discouraged from fighting against Microsoft. The time required for the struggle is almost always too much for the benefits received.

Can't even say if Microsoft is trying to make it as hard as possible or they are actively blocking the solutions. Don't see how that would matter. It's a pain in the tukhus in any case.

Custom shortcuts

[Anonymous Coward]

Why can't there be a simple way to pin custom shortcuts to the start menu?

Family Safety

[treczoks]

One of the things I liked in Win8.1 was the ability to limit my children's login time and web access, and I could prevent them from using certain software on the machine like the banking software.

With Win10, Family Safety has gone through the chimney. According to the net, I would have to use Microsoft accounts for all of us to be able to use something like the old Family Safety feature, but in good old Microsoft security manner, the kids would be able to just disable the whole package at login. WTF! On top of that, it would not work like the old system, as some features like "give them another 15 minutes once to finish what they were doing" do not exist anymore.

The safety of it reminds me of Microsoft Bob - if you entered your password wrong three times, it asked something like "You seem to have forgotten your password - do you want to set a new one?"

Improving slashdot as a last cause?

[shanen]

Extremely persuasive. Now I want to know which forums you're running? Can I join?

By the way, now I also want to run this 3-part suggestion past you. Posted it a couple of times, but it's not very visible on slashdot, so...

(1) A maturity filter. If you enable this option, then identities that are too young will become invisible. (My belief is that most sock puppets only last a few weeks, so a two-month maturity setting would remove them from my sight.)

(2) A kill filter of some kind. On slashdot, perhaps an invisibility option on the Foe setting would suffice? (Again, stop wasting my time.)

(3) A self-discredit tag for insincere replies. When you click on "Reply", the code would check to make sure the reply will be visible to the author you are replying to. If it's visible, no problem, but if your reply would not be visible (per (1) or (2) above), then you would get a warning and a suggestion you write elsewhere, perhaps at the top of the discussion. If you insist on replying to that comment, then the post will be preceded by a discrediting disclaimer such as "This reply is NOT part of a sincere discussion and the author of the reply was warned that the reply would not be visible to the person it pretends to reply to."

Re:Improving slashdot as a last cause?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

By the way, now I also want to run this 3-part suggestion past you. Posted it a couple of times, but it's not very visible on slashdot,

Honestly, I don't think any of that is necessary. A grace period with a 'last edited' tag is usually plenty to indicate what's going on. The newbie filter might be useful, but it might also discourage new users from participating.

The only other thing I've implemented in some of my more trouble-prone forums is "ghost posting", where if you don't like someone you can add them to your "ghost post list".

Depending on the setting you'll either never see any post they make, or you'll see all the words in their posts replaced with "Oooh... oooo... OoooooOOOoooooh!... oooOOooo!" so it looks like a ghost moaning. It's pretty funny.

An admin level ghost-ban simply makes all of their posts invisible to everyone but them. It's good for trolls and shit-stirrers. They don't realize anything has changed, except no one ever replies to them anymore (because no one can see their posts, lol). They can see their posts and everything looks normal to them, but no one else can see anything they post. The only way they can find out this is happening is if they log out and view the forum.

After posting away like a crazy fuck for a week or two and not getting any response, most of them move on to more fertile ground. :)

Re:Improving slashdot as a last cause?

[shanen]

While I agree with you about encouraging newbies, I think or hope that concern can be handled with cautious wording encouraging newbies to post at the top level or a perhaps default setting of off or a very short time period. Then again, whatever barriers you put in their way, the serious trolls will game the system...

The ghost thing reminds me of a BBS a friend did. He would banish troublemakers to a private universe part of his system. Long time ago.

Punchline? Microsoft fixed what they broke

[shanen]

Amusingly enough, after all the time I wasted trying to fix the problem, it simply went away after another forced Windows 10 upgrade. What Microsoft breaketh, they might fixith? Just be patient and keep hoping, eh?

The general topic of non-ownership of your own computers was raised a few times in the discussion. Just so.

In my lifetime we have gone from hacking the OS to totally sealed black boxes. (Yes, I know that Linux still permits access to the innards, but the failing economic models of Linux were also touched upon in the discussion.)

Only torture? Hah!

[Futurepower(R)]

That's nothing! In my joke, Windows 10 causes the end of all life on Earth! Experiences With Windows 10? Nightmares!

Okay, it's a competition. Can anyone do better than that?

I had the same problem today! Fixed it!

[Anonymous Coward]

I used stem restore to restored the os to before updates installed on july 22 2016 on my system and the problem went away, memory usage went way down as well.
chrisboozer@yahoo.com

chris boozer

Windows 10 made me switch

[HaraldWeiss]

Hello Community, basically I consider myself a educated windows user but the experience with windows 10 made me finally switch to an Mac OS X User. There is a lot Winfows 10 does ok on which is the reason why I keep Bootcamp Windows 10 and Parallels but for day to day use I use the iMac now and it has been a better choice because you can take all the advantages of every OS and develop for all OS out there without thinking to much. Windows has been since the early days lacking a feasable and competent Backup Solution. And yes I have tried Acronis , Justcloud, Genie 9 Backup and non of them fulfill the terms of an no headache backup of the running system. Each variation has its own pitfalls and will make issues in the case of failure. So besides the development aspect the time machine backup which has been proven to be reliable and easy to use are my main points for MAC OS X over Windows. For Games and some Apps I still have a Bootcamp Windows 10 which runs just as on a regular PC. I have seen in the more time I use the iMac the more alternatives to Windows Apps I do find on the Mac side. Booting a mac into Windows will show you the same behavior as on a PC and you will see the main difference - I can work short after the start with OS X - Windows 10 seems to be busy with itself - pulling updates at certain points or will make you wait for xyz program to finish its work before you can. So another point is MAC OS X seems more developed with the user in mind, There are some shortcommings on the Game side but for work it has been proven to be more reliable - drivers seem not to be an issue in the meantime and you can start work right from the start without waiting for the OS to operate. And with the fact that the MAC having the same issues as a PC when running Windows 10 it is not the Hardware that is the issue. So for me I would say if you can afford a MAC and it is far less expensive then 1st thought with the advantages above in mind, You can still develop for Windows , Linux or Android with the addition of all iOS ,OSX, WatchOS , MacOS and TvOS Plattforms. With Windows 10 you will need patience which I definately lost over the backup and the sudden death of one of my PCs before that- The best addition to a NAS System like Freenas running ZFS for all Data and Backup issues. Hope this was Helpfull to some people. So why not Linux ? Well to be truthfull I think Linux has its place and is valuable if you do not like Windows and can not afford a Mac. In all other cases the Mac will serve and add value- OS X beeing UNIX based and Freebsd (Freenas) beeing UNIX based I see no reason for Linux on my side for Home use. If you want a Systen that just works you can not find a better choice in my eyes. Best regards, Harald Weiss