The woes of Windows 10 • Hacker News Board

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#91

Post by WorldMaker » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 6:39 PM UTC

ac29 wrote: post #81

mark-r wrote: 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…

Windows Live Mail was the replacement for Outlook Express. Microsoft ended support last month and pulled the download links, but I found a direct link here: http://wl.dlservice.microsoft.com/download/C/1/B/C1BA42D6-6A...

Outlook Mail and Calendar is the replacement for Windows Live Mail. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/p/mail-and-calendar/9w...

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#92

Post by godzillabrennus » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 6:39 PM UTC

chinathrow wrote: post #82

deburo wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, Win7 being good enough and not degrading in any way is a big challenge facing Win10 adoption, and that has been said times enough before. Once Win7 is out of support, may it be from popular applications or simply security updates, we may see things changing. There's also the factor of familiarity to consider. People buying new machines will learn the new system, and overtime as they learn how to use it, they…

Some say Windows 2000 was good enough already. Everything worked well.

Windows 2000 was the best version I've ever used. Back in the day, when XP was relatively new, if I bought a machine and it came with XP I would try and retro fit 2000 onto it. The 2000 installation would be noticeably faster for what appeared to be a similar set of features.

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#93

Post by 1_2__3 » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 6:41 PM UTC

akappa wrote: 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…

That's because in most cases the "change" is 90% costs externalized by the vendor, IT, or both.

Imagine if it was 1955 and we thought it was a good idea to randomly go into every company every year or two and say "Alright, this inventory system, this time tracking system, this customer service system... All of it, right out. Progress is here folks, and you don't want to be change averse. Time for some new fresh paper."

It's ludicrous. One thing you learn very quickly in business is that companies have little or not stomach for doing things that do not make them money. Every minute or dollar you spend on them appears to be money down the toilet. So if Microsoft wants people to use Windows 10 they need to offer more than hand-wavey bullshit about features and progress and security, because all of that stinks to high heaven of a company trying to convince its customers to give it more money because it wants more money - not because it's offering anything of real value to the customer.

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#94

Post by boznz » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 6:42 PM UTC

sgift wrote: post #5

mmanfrin wrote: post #3

More than 700m of the world's 1.5bn or so computers continue to run on Windows 7, a piece of software three generations old Win 7, Win 8, Win 10; 2 generations old. Preeeetty easy to check, WSJ. If your lede carries such a glaring mistake, why do I trust anything in this article.

They probably count 8.1 extra which was a pretty significant overhaul compared to 8.

significant in that they put the start menu back.

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#95

Post by rjbwork » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 6:42 PM UTC

Unbeliever69 wrote: post #57

I am a manager at a small architecture firm and Windows 10 has brought nothing but woe to my office. We have spent dozens of hours and thousands of dollars troubleshooting and fixing problems (many of which remain unresolved) that occurred as a result of this draconian forced upgrade (and updates that followed). So what if we got the upgrade for free. I've paid for it many times over in labor!

In light of so many hundreds of millions of people still using 7, how was it forced?

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#96

Post by k__ » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 6:43 PM UTC

I installed it yesterday for the first time and it still seems to have problems.

Somehow Chrome always freezes every few minutes. Didn't do this on Win8.1 or Win7 :/

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#97

Post by ashark » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 6:43 PM UTC

0xFFC wrote: 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…

Oh. Is that why the text on the Win10 lock screen on my 1080p monitor looks like it's rendering on a 640x480 display? I'd wondered why it seemed so damn ugly.

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#98

Post by gerbilly » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 6:44 PM UTC

happypants23 wrote: post #55

frik wrote: post #25

No wonder that Win10 fails like Win8 - Microsoft doesn't care about users, they only care about their shareholders. Win8 and Win10 looks like designed by color blind designers with a bad taste the brutalism of UI design plus the phone-home spyware features that cannot be deactivated. Windows 7 is too good and the perfect OS, if you don't install some recent spyware updates it will last at least until 2020 - and who k…

I rather like the clean aesthetic of Windows 10, and am now using it as my main OS. Sure, it's by no means perfect, and there is still work to be done. But by and large I am happier with Windows 10 than with MacOS, Ubuntu, GNOME, and so on. Oh, and the whole "spyware" trope is becoming overworn. User analytics is here to stay, and practically every website and browser does it anyway. At least you can disable it in Wi…

>Oh, and the whole "spyware" trope is becoming overworn. User analytics is here to stay, and practically every website and browser does it anyway.

I think we shouldn't take the defeatist position with respect to surveillance. I know that techies like us can block this kind of traffic at the network edge or chase down the multiple settings it takes to turn this off, but not all users will be this sophisticated.

We should be pushing back against surveillance in how we use our own computers.

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#99

Post by nu5500 » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 6:45 PM UTC

Unbeliever69 wrote: post #57

I am a manager at a small architecture firm and Windows 10 has brought nothing but woe to my office. We have spent dozens of hours and thousands of dollars troubleshooting and fixing problems (many of which remain unresolved) that occurred as a result of this draconian forced upgrade (and updates that followed). So what if we got the upgrade for free. I've paid for it many times over in labor!

How was this upgrade forced on you? I use several machines that are still happily running Win7 and 8.

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#100

Post by davidf18 » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 6:45 PM UTC

akappa wrote: 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…

Interesting, readers of HN should know that upgrades to the newest version of Windows and updates is essential for reasons of software security. Newer versions of Windows incorporates security measures not in older versions -- sometimes even taking advantages of new security features in Intel hardware.

For example, Target and Home Depot were hacked because they failed to upgrade their point-of-sale hardware from Windows XP embedded to Windows 7 embedded or later which was an upgrade recommended by Microsoft. Windows XP embedded had a security flaw later patched in later versions of Windows.