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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?
Windows 10 will go into the production environment at my job Really Soon(TM). What could possibly go wrong?
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.
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.
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
Let me go out and buy a copy right now to make you feel better.
I tend to rant.
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
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.
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!
Ah, so you have a Linux version of the software I have to use? Along with drivers for the hardware? Great, where I can I download them?
Sadly not all people are able to switch. Some of us need more than browser, mail, word processor and spreadsheet.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Because rewriting large business critical software or buying new million dollar hardware or software is not always an option. You may have infinite money but orgs often don't.
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
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.
2% is the count of machines with a purchased license.
Excuse me while I switch to Linux and broadcast my IP address, version of my distribution, repositories from which I'm using software, and the occasional download of specific software which I've actually installed to all of the us.distro.org mirrors partnered with my distribution maintainer.
Why not switch to something like www.archlinux.org if you're worried that a server somewhere has logs of you downloading software... it's not like windows where you have a rootkit and a million background "services" running for everything you install filled with bugs and vulnerabilities. If you don't turn it on, it doesn't run. And nobody's gonna be able to say "ohhh, ip X downloaded openssh, let's hax them." Because... well I'll leave that an exercise for you to figure out why that's a big barrel of nothing.
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
wrong, the UI GETS IN THE WAY for too many basic tasks. Maybe you don't do much?
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.
...I've still yet to see an accounting of what spying is happening on Windows 10...
You're not looking very hard, then. Indeed, Microsoft itself has published a partial list of the data being harvested. Even the partial list looked pretty bad. If the data being harvested is so benign, why didn't Microsoft publish the full list?
Microsoft, on the other hand, DO have infinite money, and they continue to demonstrate why rewriting large, business critical software isn't just a bad idea, it's great for shareholders.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
...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.
Excuse me while I switch to Linux and broadcast my IP address, version of my distribution, repositories from which I'm using software, and the occasional download of specific software which I've actually installed to all of the us.distro.org mirrors partnered with my distribution maintainer.
Just turn that off -- it's easy. Unlike Windows 10, where it's impossible.
Yes. While this is one of the lesser annoyances of W10, it does regularly irritate me and reminds me that Windows is now as much an advertising vehicle as an operating system.
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
Yes, if you have special needs that lock you into Windows, then stay with Windows. You have my sympathy, not my scorn.
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.
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.
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.
No, it utterly and completely fails at doing that.
Nobody knows what spying is happening, but the thing talks to the 'net so it obviously must be doing something unconscionable.
No need for conjecturbation. My conclusion Windows is spyware is based upon Microsoft's own documentation and privacy agreements.
there was also chatter about it being a file sniffer and keylogger, but that was debunked pretty hard.
Someone should tell Microsoft that debunked nonsense is still posted to their website. Some excerpts:
"If you turn on Speech, inking, & typing, we collect samples of your typing and handwriting info to improve our dictionaries and handwriting recognition for everybody who uses Windows"
"âAbility to run a limited, pre-approved list of Microsoft certified diagnostic tools, such as msinfo32.exe, powercfg.exe, and dxdiag.exe.
âAbility to get registry keys.
âAbility to gather user content, such as documents, if they might have been the trigger for the issue."
There's a short list of software that Windows 10 upgrades disable once at upgrade time, which lead people to conjecture that Microsoft gets a list of all third-party software you use continuously.
It's all on their website. Telemetry provides app usage data which is defined by Microsoft as:
"Includes how an app is used, including how long an app is used, when the app has focus, and when the app is started"
So far, nobody's clearly and definitively defined the spying; usually, when pressed, they give up
Personally I leave privacy statements, EULA and telemetry documentation Microsoft publishes speak for themselves.
arguing the conspiracy theories and say something about encrypted connections making it hard to identify what's being leaked, but that it must be something important if encryption is being used.
A conspiracy theory would be Microsoft installs Windows 10 when you dismiss the upgrade prompt. Microsoft collects information about the software you use. Or Microsoft has remote access facilities baked into windows that allow Microsoft to access configuration and content of individual systems without explicit consent or notification. These are all baseless conspiracy theories completely unsupported by documentation provided by Microsoft.
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.
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.
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.)
Let's try that again while logged in... 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.
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.
Install ClassicShell, & Cortana will be a separate app that you'd have to look for. Associated Spyware - look for downloadable utilities
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.
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.
General purpose operating systems are a mature industry. Regardless of your personal beliefs there is already great and increasing value in compatibility especially as ROI related to incremental increasingly hard won OS and hardware improvements tank. Markets will only accept disruptive change when there is a corresponding provision of new value to make up for their trouble.
Too much legacy shit means that windows never changes and old systemic problems don't get solved.
It's a false choice to assume one must necessarily suffer at the hand of the other. Proper planning prevents piss poor performance. One could elect to take steps to architect systems to account for and manage change up front. It is entirely possible to retain compatibility while enabling flexibility to address the future.
Nobody expects their big linux distro to work that way. Or their Mac to work that way. Why is Microsoft the exception?
I do, Linus does. Try sending in a patch that breaks Linux ABI and see what happens to it/you.
Cortana can still be disabled with a registry tweak as of the Anniversary Update. (Or through Group Policies if you have the Pro version.)
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Search]
AllowCortana=dword:00000000
Is it bullshit that we have to do that? Signs point to yes.
Are they going to take that away in Fall Creator's? Reply hazy. Try again.
Not the PC Market, PC usage.
We still have a market for Mainframes. But for the most part new usage of computing people will not invest into a state of the art mainframe, but a server farm. However if you were a mainframe shop, upgrading to the newest and fastest mainframe would be advantageous, and you will probably be just as competitive as your non-mainframe counterparts.
What I call the PC, isn't the actual hardware, but how it is used. PC stands for Personal Computer, and our Personal Computer is our Smart Phone, or Tablet now. However these devices cannot do everything that the traditional PC had done, but these these have been workstation features.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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.
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.
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
With the correct hardware, ME was pretty good. Unfortunately, the correct hardware was most acquired by voodoo, long quests in dark dungeons, and a key hidden in a bowl of potato salad. I ran an OpenNap hub and had remarkably good uptime.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
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
Just noticed that I typed "Anniversary" instead of "Creator's."
Oh well.
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.
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.
How do you know that's the full list? Did you read the source code?
Oh, we have 400K users that are NOT going to Windows 10 (It was decided last week).
I know of one 70k employee enterprise that that also has decided early this year to replace Win7 with web-terminals eventually instead of going to Win10. They already have an all web-apps application landscape and Office was not enough to convince them to move to the mess that Win10 is.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
You seem to be a "happy slave", the most dangerous enemy of freedom.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
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.
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
How do you know it's the partial list other than an anti closed source tinfoil argument? There's one thing true, regardless of what happens people will bitch. MS could pay the source tomorrow and some twat will post about us not knowing of that source code is really what was shipped.
Everything comes with faith, even open source.
it's not like windows where you have a rootkit
Logically, the OS doesn't need a "rootkit" because it is a rootkit. Most other software (Chrome, Firefox, etc.) is either an open-source browser (no rootkit) or something running in an open-source browser.
My point was we generally leak a lot of (mostly-benign) information upstream, and that nobody has actually described the data fished from Windows 10. People complained about Microsoft knowing what software you install for a while (which turned out to be false: the installer has a short blacklist), so that's become my de-facto example of information leaking upstream, largely to avoid the first round of exchanges and move onto the next suggestion of what might be leaking upstream.
Honestly I'm just waiting for people to stop with the hallucinated bullshit and actually put down what exactly Microsoft is pulling from their machines. There's currently a list of things you can turn off, and then an ambiguous list of shit you can't turn off that amounts to "whatever evilness I imagined today in my little fantasy world." I'm waiting for real talk on that last bit, instead of just frothing insanity.
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> there was also chatter about it being a file sniffer and keylogger, but that was debunked pretty hard
Here's how to disable the keylogger you claim doesn't exist:
http://www.pcworld.com/article...
Here's the file sniffer that probably exists, or at least, you give them permission for one at any time:
https://privacy.microsoft.com/...
"When you provide payment data to make a purchase, we will share payment data with banks and other entities that process payment transactions or provide other financial services, and for fraud prevention and credit risk reduction. ...In addition, we share personal data among Microsoft-controlled affiliates and subsidiaries...
Finally, we will access, transfer, disclose, and preserve personal data, including your content (such as the content of your emails in Outlook.com, or files in private folders on OneDrive), when we have a good faith belief that doing so is necessary to: ...protect the rights or property of Microsoft, including enforcing the terms governing the use of the services - however, if we receive information indicating that someone is using our services to traffic in stolen intellectual or physical property of Microsoft, we will not inspect a customer's private content ourselves, but we may refer the matter to law enforcement. "
So maybe they can't sniff your hard drive, but if they do, you have suspiciously granted them permission. Hrm...
Yeah, turn off updates and never install software again.
Were you being serious, or do you just not know how computers work?
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....nobody would ever go back to the site.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
So your bug report, when submitted, can include the document and registry keys, and some diagnostic information. So don't submit the crash report, then.
I wasn't talking about attached data to bug reports; that's a hazard you should be aware of--even Fedora and Ubuntu collect that kind of data (and I daresay more of it) when a package manager failure or an application crash occurs. There was a large, alarmist scream when Windows 10 came out that it was vacuuming up every keypress, every password, and even all of your files, digging through all personal data. Not selectively; all of it.
And yeah, I knew about the cloud stuff for voice and tablet recognition. Nobody does that locally anymore; they use a cloud service, and it goes away when your internet connection goes away. It's kind of annoying. That's a far cry from "spying", though, albeit samples of handwriting can easily identify a person. Generally, I turn that part off, anyway.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
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.
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.
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"
Everything comes with faith, even open source.
Just the amount of faith varies.
Every thing is a poison, just to different extents. Polonium - 28 nanograms per hour. Water - 28 kilograms per hour. Both poisonous.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
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
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.
1) Post Windows 10 hate article on Slashdot. 2) ??? 3) Profit!
"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.
I have done so in the past. Details can be found here. And as you can see back there, nobody bothered to answer. Apparently there is no answer, so I didn't bother to write the whole list again.
The main problem why Windows isn't replaced by "the masses" with Linux is not the OS. It's the hardware that is still manufactured with Windows in mind, with Linux being, at best, an afterthought, more likely though, it's just being ignored, unless it's some kind of server stuff. You can actually find better RAID controllers for Linux now than for Windows, but as soon as you're dealing with hardware the average user will have at home, your chances for a sensible Linux driver vanishes.
But as long as you can't use your desktop hardware sensibly in Linux, the "normal" user will not switch. The "year of the Linux desktop" will not come until we finally get drivers for desktop hardware. Now, of course you can say "But who has those 'special' mice and keyboards, and how many people actually have touchpads and digitizing tablets?" Easy. The people that use their computer for more than just browsing and emails, i.e. people who WANT to use that machine. People who enjoy it. Those are also the people, though, that buy software. And they are the ones that actually care about the data trail they leave on the internet because they spend more time there than Joe Randomsurfer.
And it does not matter whether we're talking about a MMO mouse with 30 buttons, a studio sound card, a digitizing tablet or a braille display. As soon as someone needs (or even just wants) to use a special kind of hardware that requires its own driver, chances are good that using it sensibly (or at all) in Linux at the very least requires a lot more knowledge and time investment than the average user is willing to spend. If it is possible at all.
And until those drivers exist, people will not switch. And with none of those high-investment people moving away from Windows, there is little incentive for software creators to take any other platform serious.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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...
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.
Here's how to disable the keylogger you claim doesn't exist: http://www.pcworld.com/article... [pcworld.com]
That takes handwriting samples, not a full transcripted record. There's a difference. It's still an information leak, but it's not a keylogger in that it's not, you know, logging a transcript of everything you type, or selectively logging sensitive information (passwords), or whatnot.
Here's the file sniffer that probably exists, or at least, you give them permission for one at any time: https://privacy.microsoft.com/... [microsoft.com]
When we started down the road of "Windows 10 Is Spyware", there was a claim that it copied gigabytes and gigabytes of everything up to Microsoft because it copied all of the files on your hard drive to Microsoft's servers. Even Fedora and Ubuntu send memory contents and copies of configuration files up in automated bug reports (you should be freaked out by memory contents, which contain your private ssh keys and such).
When you provide payment data to make a purchase, we will share payment data with banks and other entities that process payment transactions or provide other financial services, and for fraud prevention and credit risk reduction.
Every entity who takes payments does this. The payment processor does this. It's done repeatedly up the entire chain.
Finally, we will access, transfer, disclose, and preserve personal data, including your content (such as the content of your emails in Outlook.com, or files in private folders on OneDrive)
This is stuff in The Cloud, not stuff on your PC. I can use these services from Ubuntu, and I can use Windows without using these services.
when we have a good faith belief that doing so is necessary to: ...protect the rights or property of Microsoft, including enforcing the terms governing the use of the services
Informing you that they have their hands on stuff they can rummage through for legal discovery if you're using their cloud services to store thats tuff on your servers, yes. Shocking revalation: Gmail also can dig through your e-mail for evidence if they file suit against you; Yahoo has access to your e-mail.
however, if we receive information indicating that someone is using our services to traffic in stolen intellectual or physical property of Microsoft, we will not inspect a customer's private content ourselves, but we may refer the matter to law enforcement.
That's actually an odd voluntary limitation.
None of this stuff is particularly-shocking. Siri, Google, and Alexa have voice samples and typing pattern vectors collected from cell phone and tablet users. Automated bug reporting systems collect files, memory dumps, and so forth. Payment processors run your credit data through all kinds of fraud checks (I used to use people's information to find their home address and the names of the people who lived with them when I was doing fraud checks at a Web host--we didn't like paying $25 for chargebacks, so we essentially investigated people before charging their card). Cloud services have your data and may rummage through it during investigations and legal discovery .
Where is the spyware? Where is the constant, continuous keylogging, the transcripting of everything you do? Where's the secret of every document you ever generate, the e-mails sucked from your Thunderbird desktop client that's linked to your Gmail account via IMAP? Where is it?
For that matter, where's the stuff that separates Windows from iOS, Android, Ubuntu, and Fedora? Where's the differentiation between Microsoft and the likes of Apple, Google, and Yahoo?
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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.
The trick with WinME was to apply 98Lite, then turn off System Restore. Before -- couldn't even crash properly. After -- never crashed again, and had an uptime close to 2 years (at which point it was retired in favor of XP). Resource heap management still sucked, being about on par with Win3.1, but even so it never quite fell over.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
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?
And no, other than non-technical users like you, real nerds don't give a shit about it. We can figure out whats happening just fine by slapping a debugger on that shit.
I have other things to do with my life than scroll through a lot of uncommented assembly.
Way to show off your e-peen; we care so much and we're all really impressed.
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.
NO!!! I loved Restore - you could actually restore from *outside* the OS. I had surprisingly good success with that.
The funny thing is, the hardware was just an inexpensive Acer. Well, inexpensive for the time. It had an AMD K6-2 350, OCed to a bit under 500 mhz. It was stable as a rock, comparatively speaking. Well, until I did stupid things that hosed it and then the above mentioned restoration came in handy.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
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.
My WinME was the first RTM and was never updated. Maybe they fixed the issues with System Restore in an update, I dunno. It certainly works great as of XP.
How did you restore from outside the OS? I know about restoring the registry from CLI, I've used that, but not a full system restore.
I never liked those K6-2 CPUs, but back then Acer used Supermicro mainboards and they were really solid. Had one in my W95 box, never a bit of trouble.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Hate the spying, forced updates and unable to use UEFI as upgraded from win7 home so cannot duel boot.
I like windows 10.
IIRC - and it has been a lot of years - you booted with the floppy that ME made - the boot disk/DOS. In that, there was a restore command - I believe. I'm not 100% positive, but there may have been a way to do so by pressing one of the function keys (F8, probably - perhaps?) during the boot, after the POST, but before the OS loaded. There (perhaps as well) was a restore option by CLI.
Again, that was so many years ago. I haven't used Windows in years, I was a Unix user, then some Windows, and have long since sorta returned to my roots and use Linux. Err... Except my phone. My phone is Windows. Yes, I know my shame. However, I kinda like it.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Huh. Thanks. I still have the WinME system (albeit in pieces in a box) and if I ever get around to setting it back up, I'll have to give that a look. I wonder if XP has such a function hidden somewhere?
I'm an old DOS-head myself, but got along good with Windows (I beat it into submission and it never dared misbehave)... until it left XP for parts unknown. Been trying for 18 years to find a linux that did as well for me, been damn frustrating, but lately some are to where I could live with 'em if I had to. In fact yonder frankenputer-in-progress is probably going to run PCLinuxOS with Trinity or KDE (or both), as my current favorite of the full-featured models. If I just need a boot disk, I use Puppy (Wary). I guess I like contrast. :)
I might have to try a Windows phone, given I don't like Android much. Then again, if it's basically Win8/10, I might not like it any better! but at least I'd know where to find its body parts.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
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.
Ha! I did some looking around - you couldn't restore from an unbootable state - UNLESS you have a third party method (if you can't get into the OS by any means, including safe mode). I'm thinking that it may have been a feature on the Acer recovery disks, at this point. I know, beyond all doubt, that I restored from outside the OS - I'm 100% certain of this.
I know, because I also know the damned thing did not, back then, preserve *my* files - only system files and settings, meaning not needing to update all over again.
(I also checked online to confirm much of this. Winternals offered such a restore method, as well as a few other proprietary means.)
Anyhow, I don't use my phone for anything but calling, texting, taking a few pictures, and browsing. I have zero apps installed - but there are apps available. I do no banking, no secure anything, and use it just as a pacifier when needed. For me, Windows is perfect. There's not a lot of choices, however. My phone can update to 10. I should probably do that. It runs well. It does what I need. It has GPS, but I have dedicated devices and there's GPS in my daily driver.
I should add that I'm *REALLY* remotely located. If I go about 20 minutes up the road, it's another 1.5 hours before I get cell service again. So, I don't actually rely on my phone very much. In fact, I frequently don't take it with me and don't have it powered on.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Ah, might have had a hidden recovery partition, and dealt with existing installs fairly sanely.
I only use a phone as a phone, no apps or crap (in fact for the past couple years I've had the world's dumbest flipphone, what do you want for 12 bucks). I've also lived where the nearest connection was a fair drive away, nothing at home at all. Got a Wilson booster and went from zero bars to two bars (albeit rather spotty since it had to piggyback on the volunteer fire dept's booster), which at least sufficed for emergencies. It's USB-powered so can be used wherever you can plug it in.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?