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'Windows 10 Is Failing Us' (betanews.com)
Reader BrianFagioli writes: While Windows 10 is arguably successful from a market share perspective, it is still failing in one big way -- the user experience. Windows 8.x was an absolute disaster, and Microsoft's latest is certainly better than that, but it is still not an enjoyable experience. Before the company tries to add new features (and misses deadlines) like Timeline and Cloud Clipboard, it should focus more on improving the existing user experience. Right now it is failing us and things are not getting better. Even the third-party solutions that aim to turn this spying off aren't 100-percent successful. Unless you unplug from the internet entirely, you can't stop Windows from phoning home to Microsoft. This is a shame, as some consumers are being made to feel violated when using their own computer. Another issue that I can't believe hasn't been resolved is having two locations for system settings. Seriously, Microsoft? We still have "Settings" and "Control Panel" Live Tiles are still worthless, and it is time for Microsoft to kill them. Nobody opens an app launcher and stares at the icons for information. It is distracting and pointless. If I want the weather, I'll open a weather app and see it -- not stare at the icon for the information. It sort of made sense in the Windows 8.x era since you were presented with a full screen of app icons more often, but with a more traditional start-button design in Windows 10, it is time to retire it. Another example: Microsoft doesn't force you to use Edge and Bing entirely, but it still does force you. Cortana is a hot mess, but if you opt to use her, she will only open things in Edge. Searches are Bing-only. In other words, the virtual assistant ignores your default browser settings. Why? Not for the user's benefit. Sadly, the Windows Store is a garbage dump -- many of the "legit" apps are total trash.
I think the author is being to nice and should tell us how he truly feels
Now what? I'm not quite sure I see the point of that post. If I want to hear someone rant, I'll talk to myself for half an hour.
I am in the process of banning windows to a mere gaming vm. I have enough stuff to rant about. So is there any useful information in the above?
Can no longer be disabled without removing the fucking taskbar. Screw Windows 10.
Windows 10 will go into the production environment at my job Really Soon(TM). What could possibly go wrong?
The spying is unconscionable. If Google did something like this they would be fined heavily. At least in Europe.
Modern app appers know that Appdows 10 S is the appiest apperating app, so anyone who disagrees is a LUDDITE who should be deported to LUDDITE Mexico by appy Appald Trump!
Make apps appy again!
Apps!
Another Windows 10 fuck job is that it doesn't really honor your choices for which application opens which files. If you haven't chosen Microsoft's preferred app, every week or two Windows will ask you again if you're really sure you want to use something else. It needs a "If it uses Metro/WinRT, please assume I want nothing to do with it, and stop asking!" checkbox.
get rid of the ribbon. It is a total disaster
It's just not as pleasant as you might like
But few have been willing to admit it. See Stockholm syndrome.
Windows 10 is arguably successful from a market share perspective
Arguably successful - 26% market share after 2 years of being given away FREE, sneakily ninja-installed on many people's computers without their consent or through ethically dubious tricks like requiring people to agree NOT to install it, and shipped as the standard OEM OS for all new PC's for at least the past year. No, Windows 10 is a MASSIVE failure in terms of market share.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I am sure that, averaged out, Windows 10 is more reliable than Windows 8.x. However, what continues to amaze me are the scatterings of regressions introduced in the code.
For example: I have several Windows 10 builds, including 2 on the same hardware [using swappable HDDs]. On one of these swappable drivers, the system boots with the "Menu Bar" appearing at the top of the centre of 3 monitors. When I go to the configuration settings, however, the system tells me that it thinks that the menu is supposed to appear at the bottom of the screen. If I then reposition the menu bar by hand, it sits happily at the bottom of the monitor. Until my next reboot, where the menu bar unilaterally repositions itself.
Or how about the fact that I configure my shared NTFS drives [I have an "Internal" drive, formatted to NTFS, that allows me to share files between my two swappable Windows builds] but each time I manually and forcibly configure the drive to not use drive caching, Windows 10 keeps turning it back on. Multiple times. These regressions seem to occur after updates.
Or the fact that now and then my audio reconfigures itself from optical out to using one of my HDMI monitors. Just because it feels like it...
I had *none* of these problems with Windows 7.
Please don't misunderstand me... I am not trying to bash Windows "because I can" - these are genuine, reproducible and repeating issues. I have raised bug reports with Microsoft for all of these - no responses, obviously - but they remain persistently un-fixed.
I would like to hope that Windows 10 will continue to evolve and "get better"... but from this user's perspective they need to be spending much more time on basics. And better regression testing.
If you don't like it then don't use it. I don't like my OS to seize my freedom so I run a GNU/Linux distro and configure it to my needs.
I seem to be able to make a good living by doing consulting - using Windows 10 and programs that are only available on Windows... Maybe it has little quirks some don't like - but please don't lump everyone in with "us".
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
The problem is that the PC Desktop is a dead market, it has gone to the Tablets and Phones for a normal personal computing. Thus the Windows 8/10 interface, is focused for this market. However the Table and Phone Market is dominated by Apple and Google, and Microsoft is a Distant Third.
What we need our x86 PC systems for is no longer a normal Personal Computer, but a Personal Workstation. For our Workstations, we don't need a Table OS, or a Server OS. But a work station OS, with UI features meant for people with a Keyboard, Large Screens, Who will be expected to have a lot of things going on at the same time.
I Personally would like to see less window decoration, and use the space for more application space. And be able to have many Apps running and visible at the same time. Perhaps in Re-sizable Frames vs Windows...
Normally now when I get out my PC it is because I have some real work to do, vs just goofing off.
This is different a decade ago. And the Windows 8/10 UI was an attempt to get into a market it never really go into.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
No problems here. Every system at work has been upgraded to Windows 10 and users adapted to it faster than any previous iteration of Windows. OneDrive is being used for automatic backup and synchronization of library folder (Desktop, Documents, etc...) and Office365 has made deployment of the Office suite easier then ever before. OP would be better off with an iPad.
I went to Microsoft Store and found that the google domains were blacklisted. You can't go to *.google.com, *.gmail.com and so on. I wonder what purpose does it serve. If I am a customer and I try news.google.com and I can't go there, will it increase my probability of buying a PC? What do they get out of it? Such egoistic attitude can ruin the company. I hope MS learns and stop forcing Edge, Bing etc.
I'm actually pretty happy with Microsoft's. "Shut the fuck up and take what we're giving you" attitude that has come with windows 10.
I'm of the opinion that the vista and windows 8 problems were caused by Microsoft caving in to orgs and loud individuals that were too invested in legacy software. People expected 20 year old software packages to work without errors and that is, frankly, fucking dumb. Too much legacy shit means that windows never changes and old systemic problems don't get solved.
Nobody expects their big linux distro to work that way. Or their Mac to work that way. Why is Microsoft the exception?
Microsoft sees the future of their offerings as services and I don't blame them one bit. If you want your perfect operating system go circlejerk and whine around your favorite distro or, fuck, build your own.
This summary seemed like a lot of whining to me. In particular, I though the wining about Live Tiles was off because I look at information on icons that is updated dynamically (on iOS and the Mac)..
But then it hit me - no I do not. I find dynamic updates of icons annoying at best, as thinking back I cannot recall in years the last time I gained information from anything presented.
So although I cannot whole-heartedly endorse the removal of features like Live Tiles, I'm at least more sympathetic to the request.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
..on completing the OS/2 open source OS clone :)
I'm open to help !!!
Even the third-party solutions that aim to turn this spying off aren't 100-percent successful. Unless you unplug from the internet entirely, you can't stop Windows from phoning home to Microsoft.
-----
I use VMWare "Fusion" to run Windows 10 on Mac hardware and the app "Little Snitch" will alert me of any connections over the Internet for any application so I can allow or deny the connection. Not sure if there is any Windows app that does the same.
Right now, we're sticking with Windows 7. Luckily, there are still tons and tons and tons of extremely cheap licenses out there. After that, we don't know what we'll do.
I don't respond to AC's.
"And these are the GOOD sides of that train wreck!"
The problem is that Microsoft doesn't give a shit about your "user experience". They care about their bottom line and that means milking you dry. They know you can't easily move away, so they can milk you for all you're worth.
There is a reason many people are still using Win7. And will do so for as long as it's humanely possible, most likely long after EOL is reached, before they will actually start looking around for alternatives.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
A) How dare you question what Microsoft thinks is best for your use.
B) Who the hell 'enjoys the experience' of using an OS anymore? I stopped noticing the tool (which is what it is) ~20 years ago.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Why post this useless rant?
Yeah, the Store UI is unusable and the content is crap. Even the content made by MS is junky. It's really embarrassing for Microsoft I think. A real failure.
But Windows 10 is, in my opinion, the best Windows so far despite all the known problems.
Let me go out and buy a copy right now to make you feel better.
I tend to rant.
I actually like Windows 10. The update from 8 was a mess but since then I have come to really like it, dare I say, better than my Linux distros of choice. Its stable, fast and mostly keeps out of my way. What a good OS should do. The only thing I miss is decent package management, I know it's new but it will take years for the package ecosystem to become mature.
Uh, when you are the only player the masses know, of COURSE it's a "commercial" success. It's like you need food, you have no garden, you see McDonald's, and you know it's unhealthy, you've seen "super size me" but you go anyway because you aren't aware of the family run restaurant a block down the road that uses organic ingredients because they don't have a big yellow sign visible from a mile away.
Also, many people were "upgraded" without the system owner's consent. That is not commercial success, that is force feeding because the customer didn't fully lock the door.. Again, time to educate and help others implement Linux (Mint or ElementaryOS is a great first timer's choice, Ubuntu I think has still sold out to Amazon in user connection data). In addition, the new aggressive "subscription only " model that MS will shortly try to force feed, will be screwing the consumer big time.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
This is a shame, as some consumers are being made to feel violated when using their own computer
No... they are CHOOSING to be violated when using their own computer. I took one look at Win3.1, decided it sucked, moved to other OSs and have not looked back.
If you are feeling abused by your OS, use a different one. If you insist on making one OS a near monopoly, then don't complain when it turns against you. You voted against having user choice.
See single platform software more like. No one uses Windows because they like it, they use it because the stuff they want to use only runs on Windows.
It's like the health care bill. Who would have believed that it would be so hard?
What MS should do is hire an actual User Interface Designer. I know they haven't had one since at the latest 2002. Vista, 7, 8 and now 10 are all progressively more painful to use and hostile to the user, so it's obvious they don't have one on staff.
I'm not even talking about the crap they try to shove down our throats for marketing purposes, but even down to the little things. The login screen in xp/2000 era was simple: username, password, domain. Then you got vista, where you had to click a button to get the login interface, or click another to change the default user, then hit the right button to login ( instead of the more obvious button which allowed you to change your login account ).
It's absurd. So much so I don't know an admin who doesn't cringe with each new release of windows and office. We know they changed some small UX thing that's going to confuse our users and will result in untold hours in support.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Windows. OK, it probably existed, but I didn't notice at the time.
Windows 3.11 for Workgroups. Well... network functionality. That's something useful!
Windows 95. Hey, it actually makes some sense and has a usable interface! (But it crashes a lot)
Windows NT workstation. Not as friendly, but rock solid in comparison to the 9x product.
Windows 98, now with fewer crashes.
Windows 2000. Windows NT, but with the 98 interface. Nice upgrade.
Windows ME. Because Bill Gates tried mixing LSD and crack.
Windows XP. Tell me again why I need the prettier interface that sucks up all my CPU?
Windows Vista. Because XP unexpectedly kept running and MS wanted a new round of licensing sales.
Windows 7/8/10 - Because you're going to take unnecessary interface changes right up the ass. What are you going to do, switch to Linux? SURE it's the year of the Linux desktop.
Everything after XP has been change for the sake of milking more money out of you. Same with the Office line. And since that didn't really work out so well, now they're going to shift as much as possible online so you have to rent cycles from their servers and they get constant, uninterrupted access to your bank account.
That Msft wants the same UI on tablets and phones, where some of the rant items (icons) makes sense
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
Its only job is to basically stay the hell out of the way and not draw attention to itself. And, like pretty much every other OS on the market, it does that. End of story.
How is that a failure?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Decrying W10 is pure Heresy. Windows 10 is the best OS out there. Nothing comes even close to it in its user experience, security and flexibility.
{the above was written with my tongue in my cheek}
What you want me to be honest?
Ok, W10 is a pile of stinking dog poo. You'd have to pay me $1000/day to use it now and I spent much of the last 20years writing software for Windows systems.
Edge is a joke even compared to IE. Sites that work with IE fail miserably with Edge.
As for the stupid tiled interface... It works on a phone. I have a W8.1 phone but MS promised that it could be upgraded to W10 but the renaged.
On a traditional desktop is it IMHO a pile of shite. I used to install an alternative shell but the final straw was an update to W10 that removed the other shell. Thankfully that was a matter of weeks before my job went to India and I retired.
For years I helped people with Wibdows problems. I don't touch anything past W7 these days.
Windows 10 is a pile of stinking do poo.
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
Why do so many "BetaNews" submissions end up on the front page here at Slashdot?
Just look at this list of them if you don't believe me.
There were two on July 11. Two on July 8. Two on June 26. Two on May 22.
And that doesn't include all of the other days where there was only one.
Most of them seem to be submitted by "Mark Wilson" or "BrianFagioli".
In this case the article linked to in this submission's summary is credited to a "Brian Fagioli", and this submission was submitted by "BrianFagioli".
I don't think that Slashdot should be putting self-promotion submissions like this on the front page. They should be discarded.
And it should be explained to us why these "BetaNews" submissions end up on the Slashdot front page so often.
They're not very impressive, in my opinion. This one is just an opinion piece, from what I can see.
It's not like there aren't other submissions that could be selected instead. The Firehose is full of submissions that are better than these "BetaNews" ones.
Frankly, I'd be happy never seeing another "BetaNews" submission on the front page here ever again.
Unusable ribbon toolbars, awkward browser style links, and settings buried in a deep hierarchy of poorly named items. I think that sentence would identify windows 10 to most expert users. Clearly there was no usability testing. Desktop computers are not tablets. Trying to mutate desktop interfaces to embody tablet ideas is doomed to fail. Even after giving it away, users don't want it. Being malware doesn't help. I guess the technical users have mostly already jumped ship. At least in my team of 62 C++ and Fortran developers, we have only a few windows users left. It's not something ever really discuss. Windows has just quietly vanished.
2% is the count of machines with a purchased license.
The new Control Panel add users is missing the user search (for domain users) that the old Control Panel has.
Windows 2016R2 is missing the level of update control that 2012R2 gives you. and the windows 10 desktop Active Hours on a server???
I have been feeling like an old guy for years. When Microsoft eliminated the plain old start menu in 8, I decided that they'd have to drag me kicking and screaming away from 7. I'm still using 7. I have even decided to forgo an upgrade to Ryzen because I do not want 10.
Hopefully, enough old guy nerd rage will convince Microsoft that they made a mistake (like with Vista) and that they should do something to fix it.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Would it not be possable to connect an external firewall inline ? Running on something like a Raspberry PI and blacklisting all the Microsoft addresses on the outbound side. You could also use it to run tcpdump and wireshark.
I got so lost. First you start talking about the user experience, then shift to third parties trying to turn off spying?
I'm sorry, but this is one of the worst written articles I've seen here. I can't get past that.
NSA CIA FBI etc.
Sounds really whiney.
not draw attention to itself.
you mean by transmitting everything that happens on the machine to Microsoft?
we are ALL laughing at your ignorance
And yet, the Windows' grip is as strong always. The .Net port to macOS is a mess, too. This is all because MS don't care (and never did) about the user experience. Most of their revenue comes from the enterprise, where the IT paradigm has shifted back to the old client-server model (now called cloud computing and cloud storage). With cloud computing, the end user doesn't get to, or need to, experience the UX of the OS. We, the consumer crowd, will forever remain the guinea pig of MS and their OS.
There is a mass misconception that this is version TEN; it is version one-[dot]-Oh.
We have now come full circle. Rumor has it that version 3 is when they hit their target.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
"Windows 8.x was an absolute disaster, and Microsoft's latest is certainly better than that"
I don't know what you are drinking but windows 8 is much better than windows 10 in the user experience department. You can stay on the desktop of windows 8 all the time, and the start screen, I kind of like that, though admitedly I have only 3 tiles - pictures, desktop and weather all at the largest possible size, and i exclusively use the search functionality on the win 8 start screen, that is unparalleled with any other version of windows - it matches spotlight in terms of usefulness. Windows 10 search just does not work. And don't get me started on the ugly icons and windows 3.1 look that win 10 has.
Puh-lease. Spyware, phone home, sneaky M$. All dog-whistle phrases for the ABMers.
You all use Linux, so why are you even complaining?
...for everyday use. Needed to upgrade my laptop (dual boot Win10/ubuntu) which I used Linux on most of the time since Windows ate up the battery with background processes but had to use Windows for Office. Now I have office, a bash shell, and all day battery life in exchange for USB ports. Still worth it.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
I mean, ever since computers became a commodity item, the operating systems they shipped with turned to trash. Even if you were happy with the (by current standards) clean and neat UI in Windows 7? Most PC manufacturers still loaded it up with garbage bloatware apps and utilities, killing the performance and taking your hours to uninstall. (Lenovo and HP often had items installed that refused to uninstall unless other pieces were removed first, so eliminating all of it was like playing a puzzle game.)
My workplace tried to migrate everyone from Win 7 to 10 and it's still a work in progress. It's incompatible with some software made by EMC that we still need for processing invoices for Finance (trying to use a new application instead, but it's still getting customized for our workflow and won't be ready for 6 more months). We acquired and merged with another firm that was still all on Win 7, so that, too, complicated the migration plan.
So far though? Lots of little things in 10 constantly frustrate. That garbage with having the classic Control Panel AND the new Settings menu is a big one. But also irritated with changes to the VPN options. (In the past, we had a custom VPN connection package built using Microsoft's CMAK wizard/tool. That no longer really works well in Win 10. You can still install the custom package, but you wind up with a confusing mess: You have one customized dialog box to connect the VPN and to manage multiple connection locations -- but the blue Windows 10 control panel/strip still opens up next and duplicates your connect or disconnect buttons.)
I'm also not liking the Windows Update services in 10. I can't really put my finger on it, but it seems like it can really mess things up in its effort to do things silently in the background? On my Surface Pro 4, for example? I went through a phase where every time I left it running, docked on my desk to a full size display, keyboard and mouse - I'd come back a day or two later and find a black screen with just a flickering mouse pointer I could move around. Clicking did nothing. Had to hard power off and back on to get back into Windows. It seemed to be a result of something Windows Updates was trying to do automatically, overnight - leaving the PC in a screwed up state.
1) Start 10
2) Spybot Anti-Beacon
Then you pretty much have the operating system that everyone actually wanted. Name me a Windows operating system that didn't require this level of customization in order to make it what consumers wanted. Keep in the mind, the first one that didn't crash on a regular basis was Windows 2000. I really wish *nix would get equal or better game support because then all of Microsoft's shenanigans would be a thing of the past. Why can't *nix seem to get past that one? I'd really love to know what's in the way of that.
We'll make great pets
I agree, but what's the point here? I think we can all agree Windows in general is a hot mess. I personally gave up on Microsoft with Windows 2000. With the promise of "ringed memory" I was excited to pop the CD in and install. Upon installation it took me minutes how to hack my normal account right up to admin level ring 0. It hasn't gotten much better IMHO. Do what I did -- format and install Linux.
And then I bought I Mac. Never looked back.
Un*x runs my office and household. Windows are for looking through and simply not allowed otherwise. It is a very pleasurable world to be Microsoft free...
apple store is to locked down and has censorship issues
I'm a Windows 10 user, and am reasonably happy. I'm able to use the Enterprise edition so a lot of the more annoying consumer features can be controlled. What I wish Microsoft would do is give more control back to the end user in general.
The person posting that ranty article actually has a valid point -- Windows 10 is currently a take-it-or-leave-it proposition with dwindling alternatives if you're tied to a Windows platform. The user interface is just one aspect; the non-Enterprise versions of the product don't allow you to control the update cycle, you can't disable a lot of the advertising features, and Microsoft is collecting a lot of data for something that's still a "personal" computer. Unfortunately, they must have just taken a massive internal charge to upgrade every Windows 7 and 8 user for "free." This will need to be made back somehow, and I think this is part of the long-term strategy. If they can get people used to this method of operation, then they can treat Windows PCs just like Apple treats iOS devices -- locked down walled gardens that users can't do anything with.
I think Microsoft would get a lot of happy customers dutifully paying their Windows 365 subscription fees if they did this:
- Allow all customers to buy access to the Enterprise feature set instead of locking it up behind enterprise agreements. This would keep most of the consumer users under control but allow power users to take back some control.
- Relax the UI controls. Windows Phone is dead, and Windows tablets aren't going to rule the entire market -- you don't need a locked down single experience. Don't ship themes, but enable full third party theming support. I would actually use a Windows Classic 2K-style theme if it were available, even though I'm reasonably happy with what comes in the box now.
- Relax the forced cumulative feature updates - again, let everyone have access to the CBB and the LTSB by paying for it
Unfortunately, this would be difficult to do because Microsoft has to earn the revenue back for all those free upgrades and loss of future revenues, and they would have to admit that enterprise customers are the ones actually paying for the development.
what the fuck is this guy smoking?
do ONE little thing.. just ONE.. install a third-party start menu. and BOOM. instantly. it's a million times better than 10. (and better than 7, too, because of that extra three years of life 8.1 has over 7).
and honestly, if i had to choose a stock 8.1 vs a stock 10. i'd choose that horrible-for-the-desktop full sized start screen over windows 10 bullshit any day.
Windows 10 is fine, just get blackbird and quit whining.
PC Market is dead? Delusional.
Not seeing any real void at the moment, as anyone dissatisfied can turn to the Mac if they need a lot of commercial software, or to Linux if they want something far more technical. I mean, where is there even a gap between those two? That's why Windows is suffering, because it is not as good at being commercial as the Mac is, and it's not as good as being technically rich as Linux is. It's presence at this point is just coasting on history and will fall by the wayside as corporate IT heads retire or die.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
When my employer (a *ahem* large chipmaker and major partner of Microsoft) literally FORCED Windows 10 on me and many others (literally -- they disabled our Win7 computers) I spent at least 2 weeks trying to 'sanitize' Windows 10, literally and intentionally breaking things in the OS (like Cortana) to protect myself and to make it behave the way I wanted it to behave. I had to resort to some 3rd-party add-ons to get rid of horribly broken things like the way they changed the Start menu. There are problems I couldn't quite iron out and just work around them as best I can. It's a horrible mess, I'd never own a computer that runs this mess of an OS. If it were a choice between this and nothing, I'd take nothing. This is the Enterprise version and probably doesn't spy anywhere near as much as the 'Professional' and lower versions so no way.
...They are all MOUTH, and no EARS.
Does ANYBODY in Redmond have the capacity to listen, hear and understand?
Apparently NOT.
I'm on Win7, and it's adequate, although nowhere near up-to-date because Update STILL is not Reliable!!!
They are more arrogant that even Gates or Ballmer, at their worst, could be.
Maybe some of us should go back a bit and support https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReactOS and help them create a simplified Windows clone as open- and free-ware. I suspect that if enough of us were to do that, M$ would HAVE to take notice!
In 2011 I bought an AMD Phenom II X6 with 8 GB RAM and Windows 7 Professional (64 bit) OEM.
I tried Windows 10 but I soon enough reverted.
No regrets.
So to summarize, Microsoft continues to dominate the market and release the same quality software we have come to expect...
I'm running Windows 7. Windows 8 was an abomination and Windows 10 isn't any better.
Unless Microsoft starts giving a damn about their customers and reverts back to a usable OS, I'll stay on Win7 until it's unusable and migrate to Linux Mint.
I've already done it on one of my machines to get used to it and it works fine.
So long, Microsoft.
More whining from a person with nothing better to fight about (don't you have something to bitch about between Gnome/Xfce/KDE/Cinnamon/Unity/etc.? or god-forbid SYSTEMD?)
If you don't like Windows 10 don't use it. I am SO SICK of people bitching about the W10 Desktop GUI.
BTW - Live Tiles are awesome in Tablet mode (which is what they are for) and you can TURN THEM OFF if you don't like them.
Hell, you can make the whole OS look just like Windows XP if you want.
(Change is SO Frightening to some people.)
Windows is NOT a priority for Microsoft... it is their biggest headache.
To bad apples hardware choice sucks and they don't have AMD systems.
The mini is like 4 years old and at the same price for the same hardware also the system before it had a choice for more cpu then this one has.
The mac pro is old (at least it got an price cut but still it sucks for games and it still pricey for what you get)
The upcoming imac pro starts at to high of an price and it will not easy to upgrade so you may be stuck paying alot for ram / cpu / storage upgrades. Also AMD systems with the same power may come it at less then half the cost as well.
They are gonna charge monthly for OS. Screw MS, I'm looking to virtualize all instances of M$ Windows and deploy *nix and Mac systems.
and basically would love to get back to that same level of OS functionality without bloat.
(And that statement applies to OS X as well.)
Windows 10 only really works, UI wise, on what I call "platypus" hardware - Systems that don't really know what they should be. I have a little crappy Asus 2-in-1 which provides the best Windows 10 experience I've had anywhere... It's small enough that reaching to use the elements that really only make sense with a Touch isn't a pain in the wrist/a$$, but can use a full keyboard and mouse for the other 85% of things which haven't evolved and were never designed for touch...
Most UI targets are too small to touch reliably, or require contextual interaction (right/2-finger click is easier and more reliable than the long-press of a touch interaction) but some are designed around gestures that are painful to use a mouse to enact (and don't have a touchpad gesture because nobody can assume anything on the fragmented marketplace of hardware)...
Windows 10 is a painful blend of design by committee, legacy software inertia, and bad UX.
The "spying" is there to stay, if you can't understand what telemetry is about, just get a mac, where they do it too but just don't tell you.
The rest is just you nitpicking.
File Explorer is still the same crappy app it has been for decades, with the same DECADES-OLD BUGS !
It cannot handle long file paths - even ones that it creates ITSELF !
Do Microsoft have any programmers who can, you know, fix stuff ?
OK, I am talking about Windows 10 here, although I also had 8.1 Pro that I added a "classic shell" to before I upgraded to Windows 10. I guess my take is that I've always had to tweak every OS to get it to the state that was tolerable for me, including various Linux flavors and Mac OS. So I start on the install by saying "no" to everything MS wants to to do to send back information to them. I remove all the default tiles from the start menu and only add what I want after installing. Like EVERY OTHER OS I install Chrome to use as my default browser.
I guess I'm simply cognizant of the fact that MS will keep trying to steer me towards MS products and just ignore it now. Yes, MS, I really DO want to set Chrome as my default browser. I also have disabled internet searches from Cortana - I only use it to quick launch some things that I may not use that often, the same way I do in Ubuntu's search.
Once you do all the tweaking, Windows 10 is no worse than Windows 7 for most people, and in some ways it is better. Often, when I point this out to people they say "but I shouldn't have to do all that tweaking," and they're right - but, as I mentioned, it seems I always have to do that kind of tweaking on pretty much every OS.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
For that to apply, Cortana would have to be in some way the dominant personal assistant.
If you don't want your personal assistant integrated with Edge and Bing, use another.
Some say this post is just whining when in fact it's good that it was brought up. People are starting to be quiet about some of the disturbing trends like spying/telemetry that are becoming more prevalent. This needs to be brought up more instead of force fed.
Microsoft HAS betrayed and shows it doesn't care about its users:
- Forced spying/telemetry. Some say - quit your whining. In reality - You can't turn it off completely. What are their motivations? They've proved themselves to be untrustworthy. Logging your keystrokes has no lawful use.
- Msoft no longer tells you what's inside Windows update - Wait, what?
- Msoft only offers cumulative updates - You must install everything even if it breaks something in your environment. Oh wait, you don't know what's in there now.
- Msoft forces a partial non-intuitive and poorly designed tablet interface on its users. Try connecting to a VPN, old style window where you USED to be able to use just the keyboard. Now you have to wait 4 seconds while the tablet UI loads (Which also looks stupid) just to hit connect. More mouse clicks, more frustration and most importantly more stupid-ness. This is just one example.
- Relates to above - Settings AND Control Panel.. What?!
Msoft - Allow spying = off, Allow PC users to retain old interface if they want to, Admin the Msoft Store is junk and only allows you more power over the user that is already F'd todays age.
Why not try to regain trust?
Oh, we have 400K users that are NOT going to Windows 10 (It was decided last week).
Yes, you make some excellent points. But after 20+ years, I got tired and eventually gave up fighting Microsoft's 'we know best and you are going to do things our way' attitude.
MS is clearly moving towards a subscription model. Their recent announcement of a combined Windows and Office 365 subscription points to the way they want to go.
I don't want to be part of that. As I've now retired (wrote my first commercial program in 1972) the matter of W10 is moot. I use now use Linux and MacOS.
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
Widows 10 is a complete failure because you as the user are no longer in control of your computer.
I do not want Cortana installed. I do not want Edge, Internet Explorer or any other Microsoft browser installed. I do not want whirring, spinning, whizzing desktop animations popping up telling me crap I'm not interested in. I don't want crappy sub Clippy "help" facilities.
I don't want applications being able to pop up and steal focus when I'm in the middle of working and I sure as hell don't want an operating system that decides when it's going to install updates and reboot. Fuck that..
I want to be able to turn off and completely uninstall any and all programs or services that I do not require. I want an operating system that allows me to cut it down to the bare minimum. Then I want to install the software that I want to use and nothing else.
My main use for a desktop computer is to run high end audio software or development tools. I currently have three machines for this. A non networked Windows XP box for audio, a Windows 7 desktop for development and a Linux desktop for development.
A computer operating system should be what it used to be. A tool which can be customised by the end user to do what they want.
Windows 10 is like a grotesque Fisher Price activity centre riddled with spyware. No thanks. I won't even allow Windows 10 devices to connect to my network. Not even on the guest WiFi.
Microsoft knows we hate windows 10, they dont care, they used their dying monopoly to force windows 10 down our throat to lock us into a subscription based service they can milk us on for years while mining our data for additional profit. I hate being requried to use Win10 at work, every update i need to reconfigure every printer on our network, in addition to every other problem the OS has, thats why I will never use it as my home OS, when Win7 dies, ill learn linux. However since my buisness is locked in, the money microsoft looses from me jumping ship is more than made up in recurring fees.
Microsoft UI's always sucked. But, over time people got used to them and found work-arounds and short-cuts. As long as MS doesn't change them and fixes clear-cut flaws, people will just grow accustomed to the current Windows and stop complaining.
For example, MS-Office tool-bars always seemed arbitrary to me, but I got used them out of shear rote...UNTIL the "ribbon" versions came and shuffled everything into different arbitrary combos. Cussville. Some claim the ribbon is better, I don't see that*, but unless it's Yuuugely better, I'll value familiarity. Some of their changes seem logical, but many are probably marketing gimmicks or PHB's just inventing themselves a job.
It's a two-way deal with MS: don't move our cheese, and we'll stop bitchin'.
As far as the privacy issue, hopefully 3rd parties will start to sell blockers or scramblers for a decent price.
* I've been in rather long debates on the ribbon and doubt objective proof they are significantly better can be produced. It probably comes down to subjective opinions in UI design.
Table-ized A.I.
USERS: 0
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
For all the griping, doing a clean install of Windows 10 sans bloatware is a piece of cake. First you download Windows 10 (for free) to a handy thumb drive with at least 4 Gig free.
If you have an activated Windows license that is Windows 10 upgrade eligible, you just do an Update Install by selecting it from the thumb drive. This affords you a digital-signature-based activation of Windows 10 for your processor/motherboard combination. Next, you get into your boot setup and boot from your Windows 10 thumb drive to do the clean install.
You don't need to save CD-ROMS or serial number cards or anything in your sock drawer anymore. You don't even need to remember where you kept the thumb drive -- you can always re-download the Windows 10 installer to a fresh thumb drive. So if your system is compromised and you want to start over, you can reinstall Windows anytime you want to.
So I guess there is some value to the telemetry sent to Redmond, WA. Cool!
The company's CEO was promoted because he successfully created the Azure platform. And then both Azure and the company suffered. Azure stagnated at the same market share while Microsoft hasn't gained a successful leadership team. In fact, it lost it.
Windows 10 is pushing users to accept the paradigm that your PC is just a cloud terminal. Which is entirely out of the question for anyone who makes any niche technical products or has legitimate secrecy needs. Which makes Windows 10 the domain of the clueless or those who hope for security through obscurity (really through over-complexity).
Meanwhile, half the researchers were reassigned to pure development roles and slowly left. The company repositioned for here-and-now reaping of profits from what they already developed and can control. But they lost any ability to lead the future.
Windows 7 was the best UI. Windows 8 was a drivers upgrade with downgrade in UI. Windows 10 is... well, you can't even tell what it is because any experience with it is different depending on who you are. And, of course, there is the slow creep of its worst telemetry practices to earlier versions of the OS and its flagship office tools.
And this hot mess is exactly what you'd expect when you lack leadership.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
"Windows 10 is arguably successful from a market share perspective"
But how many of those users switched to Win10 even though they personally do not like it at all?
Seriously it's getting old and unprofessional. I feel slashdot is turning into the ITs version of info wars or Rush Limbaugh with Microsoft as the liberal to rail against complete with it's own alternative reality and facts and everyone else is fake news.
News flash. Don't like Windows don't run it. I may have go to the register or somewhere else if this keeps up.
http://saveie6.com/
I still miss Program Manager. That was so much more intuitive than the idiotic Start menu. As a Windows 10 user I have the start screen and am more productive. I don't understand the hate towards Windows OSX.
Loved the Windows mobile, but that ship has sailed.
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
Having to tweak settings to get things 'just right' is vastly different from having to tweak a lot to get back to a usable state - which you would get from start with an earlier version of the same product. Not to mention, you can only do all this customization on your own system and not when you're doing tech support for friends/family :(
If you think Win8 is not a complete disaster at launch, I suspect you are actually on 8.1. Windows 8 on release was nearly as big of a disaster as Vista, if not bigger. Was it functional? Yes, it was, but it was a hot mess of an interface and in terms of usability it was an unmitigated disaster, which is a must work for most users, especially if you were on Windows 7 and comparing the usability between 7 and 8...
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
How Satya Nadella is still CEO is beyond me. He has ruined Windows 10 (spyware, mandatory updates, etc.), Skype, Office 365 (it is now not software, it is a service), Xbox one/xbox marketplace, and the list goes on.
I get what MS wants out of windows 10 in terms of their monetization, but until they fix all the undesirable crap they jammed into 10, I won't be upgrading. Competent users demand things like privacy (MS, GTFO of my personal files and activities, wasn't this MS' criticism of gmail/google?), reliability (let me choose to update or not, especially if your shit update breaks things), and usability. Thus, they have lost me as a customer. When/if they break my windows 7 machine, I will buy an Apple and game exclusively on console and MS will not see another dime from me, ever. Maybe when they go bankrupt some smaller companies will tear apart their corpse and resurrect an updated version of Windows 7. I might buy that.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
Editors, even in minimal-work aggregation sites like slashdot, you still sort of need to back-up a screed like this with the ranter's credentials to tell me why I should care what he thinks.
...okay, so I Googled him, and see he is a basement-dwelling tech-blogger who looks like a Despicable Me "Minion" but with longer legs. In other words, Walt Mossberg he ain't.
There is no spying and nobody but a tinfoiler feels violated. All that nonsense has been debunked many times.
That was pretty obvious right from the beginning. This time it is not MS having technological issues doing the right thing, it is MS intentionally and with determination doing the wrong thing. I am already planning to have a Win10 PC only for gaming and a Linux-Box (with wirtualized Win10 with not network access for Office) for everything else. The only other set-up that I am considering after Win7 stops getting security patches is fully virtualized Win10 for Gaming, and that needs secure GPU passthrough or Vulcan passthrough. That is not quite there yet. But I will never, under any circumstances let Win10 see my email or my browsing habits.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
about Windows "phoning home". Microsoft has a long term strategy that involves making Windows a service where you pay a monthly or annual fee just like they did with Office in the consumer and small business space. The majority of computer users are not geeks, and as a result do not care about the usual geek issues like privacy and superuser control. They want computers that "work" and easily run the software that they want to use. Trusting the users to understand every configuration option is risky and absurd - just look at the security issues we've had even with systems run by experts. Microsoft responded to these issues by removing control from users who dont want it and cant handle it. If you are in the minority 1-2% who care, then get something else.
I gave up on Windows over 20 years ago and have been using Linux and, later, MacOS since. Yes, both of those are also getting more annoying but I am still very much in control and understand how things work under the hood. Apart from a browser and very occasionally a few other programs I still use the command-line on both to do about 95% of what I do, which is mostly writing code for a living. I even start watching movies by using a command-line alias and the path to the video file. I don't get all the whining. It's not as if you'd die if you gave up Windows. A long time ago a smart friend of mine told me "I refuse to learn anything about Windows and therefore I can only get good jobs". That made a lot of sense to me as I was writing code on 2 Windows platforms at the time and always being frustrated by how much harder many things seemed to be compared to UNIX. I decided to follow his example.
Today I write C++, Python, Java and PHP (yuck!) on Linux at work and use MacOS at home. I suspect I am a lot less frustrated than if I would have stayed w/ Windows at work. I made enough money working on Linux to retire extremely comfortably when I'll reach 60.
When 1person suffers from a delusion,it is called insanity.When many people suffer from a delusion,it is called religion
Before the company tries to add new features (and misses deadlines) like Timeline and Cloud Clipboard, it should focus more on improving the existing user experience.
Microsoft has ALWAYS done this! They so often opt to add the next cool feature rather than cleaning up the mess they made from the last major revision. This, in turn, makes Windows less usable over time, making it slower, bloated, more unstable and more prone to security hacks (which they frantically make a quick fix for, but then open who knows how many other security holes).
This makes people accept a user experience which is not what it should be. A user experience where they make inexplicable UI changes which are more annoying than helpful, especially if you've gotten used to what you were doing before.
A user experience where your computer eventually gets so slow it becomes unusable ("Oh, gee, I guess I need a new computer and the next revision of Microsoft Windows"; I don't think that's by accident).
A user experience where your computer crashes so bad, you need to reboot it to get it to work properly again. To be fair, as I understand it, those incidences are much less frequent nowadays. But having them shove automatic updates down your throat that you cannot reschedule, in order to avoid those types of crashes, is just as bad, if not worse than, the crashes themselves. I'd rather deal with a crash than that nonsense!
None of this happens on other operating systems! Well, except maybe for the inexplicable UI changes; Linux Gnome3 was pretty bad. But despite all that, people continue to use Windows because people often don't have a choice. So many specialty apps are available only for Windows because it is the #1 operating system, so people continue to buy Windows in order to use the apps they need for work or other activities. It's a vicious cycle that Microsoft takes advantage of. A declining user experience? That's standard operating procedure at Microsoft. It has been for decades now.
Oh, and "Cloud Clipboard"? That sounds scary! It sounds like a vector for people to accidentally put stuff out on the internet they either shouldn't or don't mean to so other people can go out and steal that information. That's another hallmark of Microsoft; inventing features that they think sound really cool and probably nobody asked for, but turn out to be really bad ideas.
I think you're just splitting hairs - how is Windows 10 "unusable" out of the box? I'm no MS fanboy, and I freely admit Windows 10 has problems - but given all the working around I've always had to do with every OS I've ever installed, I've never understood the hate.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
As a long time linux user, I have been having consistent similiar and consistently shitty experiences similiar to that with Fedora, SUSE, Ubuntu, and debian. Kernel versions that break working hardware. Boot time options that are necessary to complete booting and ignored. sysvinit vs systemd issues where the latter refuses to boot the system, but the former will (on systems which optionally have both installed.)
The latest issue is breakage in the ATI/Radeon/RadeonSI/AMDGPU drivers, leading to a 5xxx/6xxx card running in radeondrmfb mode failing to boot to x-windows after upgrading the kernel from 4.10 to 4.11. It just throws an error about 'drm device cannot be found for this pci slot' or something similiar and refuses to start the graphical login server. Setting it to fbcon gets the GUI but leads to a crash as soon as you attempt to login. Just occurred to me the modesetting driver is baked in the server now, so I might manually try that, but the point is: Xorg/the Linux kernel has become a morass of regressions and 'why should we fix the old crap when we're just going to replace it anyways' rather than a professional cadre of code jockeys working to make the best software possible.
There are many things wrong with X11, just like there had been with X10 and other GUIs prior, but it still does a great job for many of us until some code jockeys trying to warrant their jobs go and break it again.
Not un-analogous to Microsoft's behavior with Windows XP to Vista, then 7 to 8, 8.1, and finally 10.
UI can be fixed with apps like ClassicShell The BIGGEST frackin' nuisance is the forced updates that spontaneously restart your computer, in the middle of a large download/upload, render, etc. There is very little you can do to stop it without delving deep into system settings and even then, it's not guaranteed. Irritating as a donkey in a night club
....nobody would ever go back to the site.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
"Sadly, the Windows Store is a garbage dump -- many of the "legit" apps are total trash." The reason for this is because Microsoft decided to follow Apple's pricing model of $99/year for publishing to the Windows Store (including Windows Phone Store) instead of Google Play's one time fee of $25 to keep the trolls out. Apple can demand $99/year from every iOS developer because they already have the market share. Developers can choose to use the Windows Store and waste $99/year OR just publish their Windows applications for free on their own website. I've talked to the Windows Store Product Manager to point out the serious price/market share discrepancy but the only thing that happened was a short-lived promo code for reduced pricing for the first year. Individuals and small businesses can usually get started for free via a BizSpark or DreamSpark MSDN license. However, Microsoft just doesn't "get it" when it comes to building market share from the ground up. They assume that every developer will be as excited about their platform(s) as they are. Windows Phone died for the same reason: $99/year is not a valid value proposition for most mobile app developers + all the overhead for building and maintaining for one more platform + no third-party libraries since they also have to shell out $99/year.
On the plus side, since the Microsoft Windows Stores are so underutilized, developers get amazing application support from Microsoft reps. If Microsoft rejects a submitted application, the support person sends the dev a lengthy document containing test screenshots and detailed, clearly spelled out reasons for the rejection. My guess? The Windows Store app publishing support folks are bored and are overly excited when they get to do the job for which they are being paid.
Part of the reason I bought a retail box copy of Windows 10 now is to bank against the future when they go to subscription only. My copy is not the OEM version. I can install and use it on the system of my choice indefinitely. I hope. They've never doublecrossed me with retail box in the past. And it was only about $30 more than an OEM copy. The people who accepted the 'free upgrade' to Windows 10 are likely trapped when MS goes subscription.
Slashdot is so fucking pathetic. First it was the blatant and widespread Hillary support during the election, and now it is another one of these advertisements posing as a post type attacks against Microsoft. Pathetic.
Not unlike other periods in history of Microsoft, the company is dead set in following trends, cloning the crap, and ignoring user input for Windows 10.
We've been warning Microsoft since Windows 8 that the direction they were taking was anti-consumer.
Microsoft keeps ignoring input and focusing on crap no one asked for.
Windows Phone, Surface RT, and now this incredibly stupid Surface Laptop with the turd on top that's Windows 10S.
They had the problematic aggressive update scheme, they put ads everywhere, they still keep trying to force the bankrupt Windows Store that no one cares about.
It's too bad really. Microsoft always had a huge talent pool inside the company, particularly inside Microsoft Research, but they keep ignoring the good stuff to force this idiocy that no one cares for. They seemed to be turning to a better direction with Windows 7, but then they let crap hit the fan and are only getting worse now.
I've been using Windows since 3.11, and Windows 10 finally did it for me. I have two other machines running Ubuntu, and if things keep going the direction they are I'll be moving to it entirely. Guess I'll need virtualization or a separate machine only to run games and a few other apps.
It's ALWAYS a HUGELY marketing success full of zero day exploits they take no responsibility for. Meet the new article same as the old article.
"Fall Update" = "FU" right?
Well, we stopped updating our Win7 machines about 18 months ago when MSFT tried to change the EULA. We didn't accept the changes and took steps to prevent any disruptive modifications by them.
FU has many meanings.
TFA is very entertaining, and the part of me that desperately wants Microsoft to fail grinned at some of it, but I'm not sure I agree with all the conclusions. But I recognize that I'm not the user that the article is directed at. I only use Windows 10 for a few applications, a suite that only runs on Windows or Mac (and at the moment runs better on Windows) an app that only runs on Windows, and a browser that uses Google as the search engine. I don't care a lot about the OS except it manage my resources, be reliable, and run my apps.
All that said, I don't have a lot of problems with Windows 10. Yes, it's irritating to have settings in two different places. Sometimes I have to google how to set something if I haven't done it in awhile. But I don't have to make changes very often so that's not egregious.
10 fires up fast, (faster in my estimation, than did Win7) stays up, and runs my apps. I have never even looked in the app store, so it could be entirely filled with fecal matter and biohazards and I wouldn't know or care. I haven't been inclined to touch Cortana, despite the OS pleading with me to try it on every boot, so its insistence to use Edge and Bing don't affect me. (Although, now that I know Cortana will only use Edge and Bing, I'm even less likely to try it.) Speaking of which, I have no inclination to use Edge for anything, so its reliance on Bing is also not an issue.
I don't bring up Windows 10 to fondle and admire it, but to run the apps I need to get work done. And it seems to do that. I suspect the vast majority of users are only using it for that. And if so, and if they don't do their own administration, they probably care even less about the points in TFA than do I.
I admit, the lack of privacy bothers me. But being that the kind of work I do requires that I use apps the only practical OS for which is Windows, I don't really have any choice. So I try not to think about it.
So, is Windows 10 failing us? I don't see how one could come to that conclusion. It manages resources, and it loads programs, and it does all this in a reasonably reliable manner. It's not too painful or frustrating to use. I don't like it, but I can live with it.
I mean, it could be a *lot* worse. It could be Windows 8.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I agree. I'd switch to Mint in a heartbeat if my apps ran there, (and I have a laptop running Mint on which I do web surfing and email and so forth) but even I have to conclude that Windows 10 was ok out of the box. It was better once I deleted the active tiles but I don't remember having to do anything else to make it what I would consider "usable".
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Of course they're not. The proprietor determines how successful anyone's programs will be because with proprietary software the proprietor sets the rules. "Turning off" spying for proprietary software means nothing no matter what a GUI, configuration changes, or some admin tells you because none of these things can compete with the degree of control the proprietor has over the program or (in the case of proprietary OSes like Windows and MacOS) the system. One who uses such a system expecting privacy controls to respect the user's wishes is fighting a fight they cannot win, by design. That is the nature of proprietary (non-free, user-subjugating) software.
Therefore the decision has to be made: proprietors push you to consider what you really want. Do you want the freedoms of free software even if that means lacking some of the conveniences proprietary software ostensibly offers (some of those conveniences are genuine and robustly implemented but come with a heavy price of non-freedom, some of those conveniences are completely illusory and traps for people who write from the quoted perspective above like DRM)? Free software (software users are free to run, inspect, share, and modify) is available and meets a lot of modern needs even on older hardware that doesn't contain backdoors like the Intel AMT. Arguments against software freedom invariably come from those prioritizing convenience over the privacy users say they want (including standing by such speech by "jailbreaking" their phones; a telling word about the default status of the phone's user).
Digital Citizen
I don't see why live tiles are such a big problem. If you want to see your weather by opening up the app instead of looking at the icon, then just click the icon. If the fact that extra info shows up on the icon is still annoying you, just delete all the live tiles and leave just the application list.
Just computer games. Its all good then. Enjoy the advanced computer game support for a few hours then shut down.
Work on a real OS. Return to Windows for computer games again later.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
As a sysadmin I understandably only interact with Microsoft when a family member brings their 2 year old Toshiba laptop with a broken hinge and about 20 lbs brick of a charger.
They always whine "but this is a new machine" and then I explain to them they bought it 2 years ago but the CPU and other tech are more than 5 years old.
They attempt to run Windows on it, it came with 8 and got upgraded to 10 unbeknownst the user, even I can't find the freaking control panel anymore and the majority of crapware is now Microsoft's own and by installing about 10GB of Microsoft's "developer tools" you can enter a command line to hide the programs.
I try to keep people off Windows 10, all Windows machines where I work are now virtual machines which the users find so much better, boot into it, do your job, get out (and reset from snapshot)
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
My employer recently forced an upgrade (?) to Win 10. Functionality is a major issue. Some essential software is blocked by security settings. IT personnel have not yet solved the problem. The user interface stinks. Edge stinks. What more can I say. Bill and his cronies are getting richer. My Raspberry Pi 3 is a better computer with accessories that are nearly ten years old. fos
Lunch is free, because you can walk away without paying for it.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
There is something even worse than a bad UI: an UI changes on each release. Users have to learn it again and again, while wandering menus and panels is not their primary job.
More than making a good UI, I wish MS could stop changing it on every release.
And Unity on Ubuntu is better or Apple and whatever they call that? It's not cool to like Windows, we get it. I think all Microsoft cares about is money and they still make billions.
I'm going to give a sobering assessment about this.
Windows 10 is failing us. Microsoft DOES. NOT. CARE. And they don't have to.
They've got a monopoly and they're making up for lost time now that they're no longer under the microscope. They have that monopoly and they're using it, pushing Windows 10 and ONLY Windows 10 as the ONLY operating system available for most. No previous versions of Windows. And of course, Linux has a hard enough time; it's probably only going to get worse with things like Secure Boot. In fact, it already IS worse. They're trying to slowly make it so a PC can only boot OS's Microsoft blesses, primarily Windows. They're doing this with 'se
They're not putting out software to sell Windows 10. They already have all they need from the OEMs needing it, it's pre-installed on everything and your only choice in most cases is which version of Windows 10 you install. They've already got their sales. Instead they're putting out software to collect data. Data on you, data by you, and anything they can possibly monitize in any way, and to store it both now and in the future (rather unfortunately in a manner akin to many dystopian scenarios).
Worse, they're trying to permanently crystalize their place by putting in protection against "unauthorized" OS's from being put onto the computer, e.g. Secure Boot, which now makes putting alternate OS's on new computers a serious pain, and potentially non-viable (at the manufacturer's choice). They do this with "security enhancements," e.g. requiring kernels to be cryptographically signed and approved of. It should be noted that the security enhancements do, in fact, work; only thing is, you're not authorized to make changes to your machine that Microsoft does not approve of, or at least, that's the end goal they're aiming for.
Ultimately Microsoft wants to own your data, from the files you create to all the keystrokes you type. They want to be able to dictate what you can and cannot do with the computer, including preventing you from loading on alternative OS's, remove software they disapprove of, and prevent you from going to websites they dislike. They want to own and/or control and/or observe your computer, everything on your computer, everything you do around the computer, and everything done with the computer, while you pay for it, both in terms of hardware AND software.
Anyone telling you otherwise is highly unrealistic; this is all part of Microsoft's plan and they don't give a shit what you or anyone else thinks, because doing this is more important than selling individual copies now.
I'd say the fact that Win10 turned into a dynamic advertising platform pretty much sealed its fate. I have to use it for work because IAR and Keil embedded compilers only run on Windows, but other than that I avoid it like the fucking plague. Been on Linux since 97 & macOS for about 7 years now. macOS is like the UI linux has been struggling to produce for decades.
1) Post Windows 10 hate article on Slashdot. 2) ??? 3) Profit!
Windows 8 was bad, really bad, but windows 10 is pretty good. It takes a while to get used to it, but I use the find feature more to find apps (click on start button and type the command) instead of clicking them. Besides, if you want to secure your system, going for Windows 10S might be a good idea. Microsoft should have made upgrade from windows 7 free for ever.
"Unless you unplug from the internet entirely, you can't stop Windows from phoning home to Microsoft"
Really? Wouldn't a DNS blackhole work too, and be a little less drastic of a solution? I run a network-wide adblocker, Pihole, and I went ahead and added all the relevant IPs and addresses to the blacklist (not difficult, Pihole shows you the most commonly queried domains, some of which invariably are Microsoft's telemetry addresses). Seems to work just fine for me, and I get to keep the internet on.
No.
Windows 10 acts like any other Windows before it in the typical user experience. You have a very typical desktop, and you use the same user interfaces on pretty much all the settings and control panel items to modify your experience. The difference between Windows 7 and 10 to the end user is that Windows 10 is compatible with the latest programs and and APIs.
No real people care about esoteric rants about features they do not even see and do not effect them.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
FUD
Everyone seems to be mentioning Windows XP and 7, arguably some of Windows better work. Everyone seems to be forgetting Vista, 8, and 8.1 that shall we say, were not so great.
Compared to those, Windows 10 is a quite decent OS. Personally I didn't mind Vista so much, though it certainly did have a lot of compatibility issues, but I think that was more so because it was the first to follow XP which had been around for so long (and the transition was rushed with hardware folks due to MS development/deployment deadlines).
As far as Windows 10 goes, sure the APP thing is stupid, as is the whole Cortana thing, but all of that was A) MS misguided attempt to follow apple into the mobile market (and to a certain extent their own XBOX environment) and misapplied buzzwords such as "convergence" (and a holdover from the failure of 8 and 8.1), and B) you don't actually have to use any of those "features" and indeed, I like most people just ignore them. Perhaps in the next version they'll realize that the gains that had hoped to make through consolidation are not being realized because a PC or even a Laptop are not a gaming console, or a phone, or a tablet. They have different interfaces, users, uses, and trying to build one thing to fit them all is doomed to failure (the F35 seems like another case study on this paradigm). Case in point, how is that whole Windows phone thing working out for them these days...
Actually, this is too kind. As a sometime IT support person for my church and several non-profits in town, and a go-to guy for older folks from church with their computer problems, the frequency of Microsoft updates breaking Windows networking is astounding. Yes, and it irks me that all the diagnostic and settings menus are another couple of clicks deeper kin the mud. If it were not for certain apps that I can only run under Windows, I would be running Linux all of the time.
Bauermlb
this is just a rant by some random user, with no real merit. There is hardly any difference between Windows 8 and Windows 10, for that matter, even to windows 7 (if you turn of aero, you have the same flat look as in 8 and 10).
I agree the settings etc are just useless, great for dummies, but the 'old' config screens are way much better.
There are some very annoying things about Windows 8 and 10 (especially for non-English people with the autocorrect always being on in Edge and no way to disable it, which is very VERY annoying if you are typing a message in your own language, and No, turning off the setting in windows itself doesn't work).
If your solution is not "Let me install your favorite distro of Linux for you" you're part of the problem.
After the clusterfucks of Vista and 8, I had no hopes for 10. But then I have *switched* to using the full-screen start menu. It's my context-switch page. And yes, I do actually draw immense benefit from the live tiles because I've chosen apps with live tiles that actually suit me and help me keep my phone out of mind.
In a nutshell: A few seconds looking at my start screen replaces all kinds of other activities.
There are opportunities missed - like the ability to pin live tiles to the desktop, or the ability to pin a preview of an app as a live tile to the desktop or start screen/menu.
In particular, it's the long-running processes that would benefit here. Whether its a developer compiling a large project, someone converting a video or waiting on an upload. Progress dialogs would be a fantastic thing to be able to minimize an app to, especially when they are modal, and why not make that a tile?
But we're in agreement on the store. There's useful stuff in there, and as someone who trial-ran the Windows 7 Phone and watched it die because of the Windows 8 announcement and the immediate death of W7P app development, it's been forever clear that the Windows Store would never achieve the levels of usefulness of even PIP let alone something like the debian repos or brew.
-- A change is as good as a reboot.
My desktop died and my laptop is 7 years old so I got another Acer laptop at around the same price point ($300). All I need to do is surf the web, watch youtube videos, and hey this more modern processor can actually run Starcraft 2 at lowest graphics settings - so that's a great plus. Buuut... why is the actual user experience so glitchy and laggy? I get so many freezes, hangs and generally shit that I don't want. As someone who has had great luck with just buying computers on sale and then using them for 5-6 years, I feel like Windows 10 is a complete dud.
This really feels like Hooli and Gavin Belson - shiny new overhyped stuff that barely works. Hey MS, I hate Cortana, couldn't you just have given me Windows 7 with a few incremental tweaks?
I'm getting a lot of feelings of nastiness from the responses to this post, which wasn't exactly news, merely opinion... Slashdot is fast becoming just a stream of such opinions now, so I guess I'll go elsewhere for news... And maybe a friendlier community too.
I know, I know, but hang on:
Once you install Classic Shell or Start8 (my personal preference, well worth $5), which effectively hides the tiled "Metro" side of things, Win 8.1 is an excellent version of Windows. It's much faster and more stable than Win 7. It boots in about 4-5 sec. It's still fully supported with security updates. with Start8 the desktop, start menu, etc. are all just how you want them. The Win 10 crap is nowhere to be found.
I bought a laptop 3 years ago and fully intended to reformat and install Win 7 but thought I'd try Win 8 for a couple of weeks. Once I install the shell replacement, I was surprised at how good Win 8 was and I haven't had ANY problems with it. It's better that Win 7 in every way and good solution if you want to avoid Win 10.
Hate the spying, forced updates and unable to use UEFI as upgraded from win7 home so cannot duel boot.
I like windows 10.
Make a complaint with the EU anti-trust commission.
http://ec.europa.eu/competition/index_en.html
I couldn't agree more!
It is an obvious sign that there are total idiot morons calling for these designs at MS.
It makes absolutely no sense to drastically over-engineer and distort a user interface when the vast majority of users successfully use the simple XP/7 Start interface; which work fine for the masses.
Why not offer options for interfaces. And, KEEP IT SIMPLE!!!
To repeatedly ignore feedback for the disasters (Vista, Millenium, 8.x, and now 10) is like fulfilling the adage:
"To repeat the same actions time after time and expect a different outcome is a definition of stupidity."
(BTW: Einstein did not coin this adage; yet, it is as beautifully simple and elegant a truth as his many other discoveries!)
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
Gaming is one motive, but gaming-oriented PCs tend to emphasize GPUs over brute-force CPU, gigabytes of RAM, etc. And GPUs are unfortunately "1.25-trick" ponies that, outside of mining, do basically nothing for non-games.
Moore's law isn't quite dead yet, but Gresham's law will probably render it moot long before we get to the point of needing liquid nitrogen to run a future 16-core i7-descended CPU (with a gig or two of L1 & L2 cache) at 5 or 6 GHz without going up in literal blue smoke.
Microsoft has amazing engineering teams. Although the UI of Windows 8 and (to a lesser extent) 10 is not ideal, they pulled off massive tech improvements in those releases compared to Windows 7. Memory usage and performance are way improved. Then look at what they did on the Xbox One emulating PowerPC.
But, for desktop/professional use, Windows 7 still represents the high point of usability and UI refinement 8 years after release. The article highlights my biggest annoyance:
Live Tiles are still worthless, and it is time for Microsoft to kill them. Nobody opens an app launcher and stares at the icons for information. It is distracting and pointless. If I want the weather, I'll open a weather app and see it -- not stare at the icon for the information. It sort of made sense in the Windows 8.x era since you were presented with a full screen of app icons more often, but with a more traditional start-button design in Windows 10, it is time to retire it.
Totally this. Trying to combine an information portal and an app launcher just doesn't work. It's usability disaster. My guess is that the only reason they've not got rid of live tiles is because they do look attractive in screenshots and it is a very original piece of design that gives them an identity. But it's just not a good solution in practice.
I blame the product teams, or whoever the guys are at Microsoft that are telling the devs what to do. Outside of Phil Spencer, they haven't got a clue how to respectfully evolve a product and avoid alienating their user base.
Nobody gets Live Tiles. Nobody.
Live Tiles are the first UI that I know of, that is both malleable and accessible to ordinary users. It's a Lego-like interface. I always imagine a home user or a small business creating a monitoring interface out of apps that make decent use of Live Tiles. No need to be a programmer, it can be done cheaply and with an absolute minimum of training, skills and consultants.
If you are a Fortune 500 company then you probably don't need or want this. You'll purchase something or build it yourself. Your scaling needs alone will make Live Tiles the wrong solution for you. And you already know it.
No one else has anything like Live Tiles. Not Apple, not Linux, not legacy *ux, not mainframes, not minicomputers. No one. Oh, and the present Live Tiles system scales and adapts reasonably well between phones, tablets and desktops. Certainly better than any other UI out there.
Lots of people here on /. ragged on Microsoft for "never creating anything new." Now that Microsoft created something genuinely new, those same people rag on Microsoft for creating something entirely new. "It doesn't work for me and I can ignore the Live Tiles, therefore Live Tiles are useless." So... the needs of other people don't count?
Go figure.