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]

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

[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

[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

[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.

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

[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.

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

[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

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

My shrink IS a Beowulf cluster, you insensitive clod!

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)

Meh

[BLToday]

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

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.

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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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...

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.

[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.

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

[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.

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.

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]

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.

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.

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.

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: 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.

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: 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.

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"

[Zontar The Mindless]

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

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.

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: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.

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: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.

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: 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.

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: 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.

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: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.

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.