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The woes of Windows 10

economist.com

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Re: The woes of Windows 10

#71
post #4

I have a dual boot PC which is Arch Linux and Windows 7. The Windows 7 machine is only for gaming / steam, I never browse the internet on there and have pretty strict firewall ruleset. To be honest, I would consider upgrading it to 10, but I missed the free window, so I really don't fancy paying for it. My hope is that by the time that Windows 7 goes EOL, I can delete it and game just on Linux. Either that or I will…

There's a way to still get a free upgrade to windows 10. You just have to make use of assistive/accessibility software: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/accessibility/windows10upgra...

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#72
post #4

I have a dual boot PC which is Arch Linux and Windows 7. The Windows 7 machine is only for gaming / steam, I never browse the internet on there and have pretty strict firewall ruleset. To be honest, I would consider upgrading it to 10, but I missed the free window, so I really don't fancy paying for it. My hope is that by the time that Windows 7 goes EOL, I can delete it and game just on Linux. Either that or I will…

If you DO upgrade to windows 10, I highly recommend installing Classic Shell as one of the first things you do.

It will replace the start menu with one that is actually functional and usable. With it installed, I actually rather quite like Windows 10 now.

http://www.classicshell.net/

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#73
>The business world has been even more recalcitrant. In a recent study by Softchoice, an info-tech consultancy, corporate computers were found to be running a whole gamut of legacy versions of Windows. Fewer than 1% of them had been upgraded to Windows 10.

One thing I've learned over the years: you don't need a high IQ to run a successful business. Without a lot of smarts you're never going to compete with google, but you don't need to compete with google to make a living running your own business.

>Chromebooks are now outselling MacBooks in the crucial education market, where long-term preferences tend to be established.

It's unfortunate that proprietary software ever came to dominate schooling. Hopefully ChromeOS will open things up just enough so that cross platform tools become the norm. Schools using both Windows and Chrome will be more aware of proprietary/incompatible software and file formats and choose to use open formats.

>It is impossible to retrofit older Windows versions with the sort of defense-in-depth that has been built into Windows 10. Nor would Microsoft do so even if it could. If anything, it is about to do the opposite. Windows 7 users will soon lose access to a stand-alone toolkit for mitigating zero-day exploits.

Another reason why Windows is a joke OS for serious tech enthusiasts.

>A word of warning, though: such upgrades do not necessarily go without a hitch. A Windows 10 tablet your correspondent relied upon for much of his mobile computing was broken irreparably when a recent update corrupted the display driver, rendering the touchscreen useless.

......... makes you wonder why they lock these things down, are tech enthusiasts even designing them?

>But he has also dusted down his four-year-old Apple MacBook Pro and upgraded his Windows 7 desktop to the latest version of Linux Mint rather than Windows 10.

Yes I prefer Linux to Windows in most cases too. I never have good long term experiences with Windows.

>It used to be that only free software came with advertising; users paid a fee, if they chose to do so, to get the software free of advertising. Microsoft charges top dollar for Windows 10 ($120 or $200, depending on the edition) and now wants to bombard users with sales pitches to boot—without so much as by your leave, let alone the option to turn the nuisance off. Despite their idiosyncrasies, Macintosh and Linux have never looked so attractive.

Yeah these days pretty much the only people who are using Windows are people who don't know any better. Most people aren't even exposed to Linux except those of us in the tech sector, and it seems to be just as popular as windows and OS X at the shops I've worked at.

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#74
post #30

Just fix fucking font rendering, I did use Windows machine as my workstation for 4 year (although being in love with linux), But I had to switch to Ubuntu, because of ridiculous font rendering. I don't have money to pay for new monitor every 2 year, and I am quite happy with my dual monitor 27 inch 1080p until windows 10 changed font rendering to DirectWrite. It is fucking disaster in low dpi monitor. As always Micro…

We're re-vamping some of our Windows products this year to support high-DPI usage under Windows 10, so if you could be so kind, I would be curious as to what exactly you're seeing that is causing your issue: is it that older Windows applications look blurry because they aren't high-DPI-aware and Windows 10 auto-scales them, or is it that you don't like the high-DPI look because it's too sharp/jagged, looks weird on older monitors, etc. ?

I don't want to piss off our customers by making their usage experience poorer under Windows 10, so I would really appreciate any input you can provide.

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#75
I dont know why name Windows 10 a fail, when the bigger competitors of Windows are... Windows! Mac and Linux mostly are used for niche users (as us). I'm really really happy we CAN upgrade for a new Windows version easily, just compare with Android. More: the reason to most people dont upgrade isn't why "Windows 7 is better than Windows 10", but the actual reason is they are comfortable with Win7 and dont want/can take time to "learn" a new OS. Even Win7 being an awesome OS, took years to take most of XP users (even today there are a lot of loyal XP users out there...)

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#76
post #51
post #20

I think there's an obvious and more general question here to be answered: if a piece of software is good enough, namely, it "disappears" when you are trying to do your job, then why bother to change it? Yes, the new version might enable a more efficient workflow, or might be faster to boot-up. But people hate changes and you need to invest considerable time in upgrading a piece of software (the upgrade itself + learn…

I agree with you, but looking at the problem from Microsoft's perspective, they have to sell you something, whether you 'need' it or not. It's interesting that Microsoft is the only company still selling a consumer OS, everything else comes free with the device, including updates. This problem might be part of the reason for that.

The best way to maximize sales is to align your interests with that of your customers. I wish Microsoft would realize that, because Windows 10 is heading in the opposite direction.

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#77
post #70

Microsoft is their own worst enemy. My wife can't transition fully from XP to the Windows 7 PC I built for her, because it doesn't have Outlook Express or any reasonable substitute. We can't upgrade the living room PC because Windows 10 doesn't include Media Center. I'm also not fond of the way Windows 10 updates are so aggressive, you'll essentially be replacing your OS every so often without any say-so. If I had an…

You can disable the Windows Update service.

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#78
post #70

Microsoft is their own worst enemy. My wife can't transition fully from XP to the Windows 7 PC I built for her, because it doesn't have Outlook Express or any reasonable substitute. We can't upgrade the living room PC because Windows 10 doesn't include Media Center. I'm also not fond of the way Windows 10 updates are so aggressive, you'll essentially be replacing your OS every so often without any say-so. If I had an…

Media Center? Why dont you use Kodi (former XBMC)?

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#79
post #30

Just fix fucking font rendering, I did use Windows machine as my workstation for 4 year (although being in love with linux), But I had to switch to Ubuntu, because of ridiculous font rendering. I don't have money to pay for new monitor every 2 year, and I am quite happy with my dual monitor 27 inch 1080p until windows 10 changed font rendering to DirectWrite. It is fucking disaster in low dpi monitor. As always Micro…

We're re-vamping some of our Windows products this year to support high-DPI usage under Windows 10, so if you could be so kind, I would be curious as to what exactly you're seeing that is causing your issue: is it that older Windows applications look blurry because they aren't high-DPI-aware and Windows 10 auto-scales them, or is it that you don't like the high-DPI look because it's too sharp/jagged, looks weird on o…

Quite the opposite, Microsoft changed their font rendering engine to introduce GreyScale (IIRC), But the problem with this new engine is it is horrible on low-dpi monitor.

Traditionally Windows does have problem with high dpi monitors, but I think there is workaround it (scaling and etc), but with windows 10, fonts on low dpi (by low dpi I mean most of the monitors sold until 1,2 years ago, 20+ inch with 1080p) windows looks like shit (literally). If you are using old framework (WPF and etc) it is okay, because underlying framework is same. Same good old rendering (not in par with Mac or FreeType, but quite acceptable). But if you are using UWP, then quite honestly you are in trouble, in low-dpi monitors. Because Microsoft UWP only does have DirectWrite engine.

The problem with old engine (which is used in Win32, WPF, etc) was it was slow on mobile, and as always Microsoft wanted to compete with Apple and Google on Mobile platform and because they have 99% market share of mobile os. So what is better option than ruining people experience in desktop to force them to switch to WinRT/UWP bullshit ? (I am being sarcastic)

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#80
post #20

I think there's an obvious and more general question here to be answered: if a piece of software is good enough, namely, it "disappears" when you are trying to do your job, then why bother to change it? Yes, the new version might enable a more efficient workflow, or might be faster to boot-up. But people hate changes and you need to invest considerable time in upgrading a piece of software (the upgrade itself + learn…

Profit. How else is Microsoft (or any other company) going to make money off software no one needs or wants? Other than rehashing the same old product and pushing it onto users for more money, more surveillance, or both, they have nothing of value to sell on the software side. Even if they did have something of value to sell, over 90% of the people have already bought their product. Gotta keep the cash rolling in so they tweak the UI, maybe in a way that people hate like removing the start menu. Or they add surveillance features you can't turn off and monetize that way while pretending to somehow be secure. Or forget all that, let's just push the new update forcefully onto people's computers and pretend that it's not malware.

When you have no real, defined product that solves specific problems to sell anymore, you sell garbage that pretends to be a real product. Microsoft is far from alone here. Almost every successful software product that doesn't know when to stop building and start maintaining suffers from this degradation later on in life.

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