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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 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.
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.
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
If it sucks, and it will, who's going to take the blame?
Microsoft. Maybe Dell. New workstations and laptops will only run Windows 10 after mid-September. Since there can only be one image, everyone is switching over to Windows 10.
If you're part of that chain, I hope you have someone lower on the chain to blame.
My responsibility is on the patching side of operations. Unless the SCCM client is FUBAR, I don't think I'll have a role in the upgrade process.
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.
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?
...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?
...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.
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'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.
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.
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.
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.