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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
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.
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.
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.
It's not that PC/Desktop is a "dead" market, it's simply no longer a mass CONSUMER market. We don't need more underpowered $199 1.1GHz laptops with 2gb and 64mb flash drives... we need more $2,000-4,000 laptops with specs that would have been absolutely jaw-dropping for a high-end workstation 5 years ago, and pushing the bleeding edge of high-end NOW. And Microsoft needs to concede that the needs of workstation users aren't the same as the needs of someone watching cat videos on the toilet using a tablet, even if it means requiring software to handle two different UI scenarios (high-res mouse, vs low-res touch).
The fact is, Microsoft has done a piss poor job of putting large, high-res displays to good use... something that's absolutely FUNDAMENTAL to workstation users:
* Gigantic ribbons, mostly dedicated to options Workstation users either don't care about, or learned the keyboard shortcuts for YEARS ago. Yeah, I'm looking at YOU, "Copy"...
* Tiny non-ribbon click zones that can almost require single-pixel aiming precision with some apps... IDEs, in particular...
* Mouse acceleration hasn't scaled well to scenarios where you have three 2560x1440 or larger monitors... disable it, and you'll need more mouse-movement space than your arm can reach to move the pointer from the left edge of the leftmost display to the right edge of the rightmost display. Enable it, and you'll be left feeling like you're constantly fighting with the mouse. The truth is, I don't know the solution to this problem... but if anyone has the resources to tackle it and find a good solution, it's Microsoft.
Note to Microsoft: get a copy of WinSplit Revolution, and learn from it. It's not perfect, but it's an app that basically MAKES multi-monitor Windows USABLE for lots of Workstation users.
And give manufacturers a reason to start pushing expensive, but high-powered computers again... let's call it, "Aero Diamond" (basically, Aero Glass, but with realtime-raytraced refraction and translucency). Let tablet and netbook users continue to rot with "Modern". Give us Aero Diamond so we can make those tablet and netbook users jealous & get THEM to buy high-end hardware too (so low-end shit won't soak up 99% of the economies of scale, and leave workstation users with $10,000 hardware that's only slightly better than $250 hardware).
Look, every OS has some stuff that pisses you off
XP didn't irk me too much. Windows 7 was straightforward and pleasant; I miss it. KDE 3, later versions of KDE 4 and KDE 5 were/are all pretty tolerable. It's not about "stuff that pisses you off," it's about actively hostile design: designs that impede users that aren't just printing emails all day. It is absolutely clear to me that the people responsible for the "start menu" in Windows have it as their mission to thwart and confound power users; they don't give fuck number one about what we want. They've messed up the taskbar by conflating launcher icons with running instances of applications. The "ribbon" crap has added nothing while creating bizarre and unintuitive behavior and unnecessary programming complexity. The split brain Settings/Control Panel stuff is just tragic; a drunken crew operating a rudderless ship. Making the start menu into Microsoft's/MSN app showcase is obnoxious; more and more bullshit in every direction you look. The update process is slow, glitchy and mysterious with incredibly long waits; every other operating system in wide use today has better update management than Windows 10.
There has been some good underlying work in Windows. Startup is fast, the OS is very stable, power management, sleep/hibernate seems rock solid, etc. But damn, the crazy UI people and the update management just ruin it. Then there's the whole telemetry thing and Microsoft's indifference to privacy...
"Windows 10 is failing us" is a fair assessment. The unnecessary, self-inflicted suck that permeates the OS deserves criticism.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!