The woes of Windows 10 • Hacker News Board

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#241

Post by vbezhenar » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 9:58 PM UTC

hfsktr wrote: post #164

I must be in the huge minority. I haven't had a single issue with Windows 10 (if we disregard privacy). Literally everything has just worked. I will say thinking about it that my computer used for 99.99% gaming/internet/text documents. I keep anticipating that something is going to go horribly wrong but so far it's been great. I hate the menu and store that it shows so almost everything I tend to open has a shortcut…

I somewhat agree. I have to use Windows from time to time and it's usually Windows 10. I disliked Windows 8 so much, but Windows 10 is overall good IMO.

But, honestly, comparing to something like Windows NT 4.0, I can't really say, why Windows 10 is better. There might be tiny things here and there, but overall experience is similar. The only Windows releases I remember were those particularly bad (Vista, 8) and those, which accumulated large userbase (XP, 7). Other than that, I don't see much progress. If Windows NT 4.0 would be supported today on current hardware and software, I'm not sure if I would use anything else. It was good enough.

May be those only my memories, I don't know.

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#242

Post by wtallis » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 9:59 PM UTC

tw04 wrote: post #207

jacquesc wrote: post #182

I got a Windows 10 laptop (Razer) for Christmas for gaming / media / browsing purposes (been a Mac user for 10+ yrs). It's buggy as hell. The shortcut icons on the desktop and taskbar kept going away (replacing all the icons with a "not found" placeholder), forcing me to reinstall the OS. Now none of the search functions work (e.g. windows key -> search for app.. no results). Whatever, I just use 2 apps anyways (Chro…

>Windows settings panels have at least 2 diff ways to configure anything, the "old" and the "new". Graphics settings have 4 places to change stuff (Intel, Nvidia, built in old and new). It's just a jumbled mess. They're well aware of that, and if you follow the insider previews, every new build is moving more of the features into the "new" way of doing things. Is it annoying there are two places? Absolutely... but th…

> but the alternative is not changing anything and waiting 5 years while everything gets rolle dup.

Windows 7 was released 7.5 years ago, and Windows 8 was released 4.5 years ago. Whether or not they make interim releases, Microsoft clearly cannot pull off a user interface overhaul in any reasonable span of time.

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#243

Post by wtallis » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 10:04 PM UTC

eumoria wrote: post #156

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!

Every time I hear about updates being "forced," yes, Microsoft did some shady things to trick non-tech people into the upgrade which I agree is shady. However any competent IT manager would know how to stop that from happening. Even a cursory google search shows you how to remove the windows update that starts the upgrade. Also all computers on a network domain will not auto update. Each time I read of an IT manager…

> I should probably reference the single small command that stops the bugging notifications and upgrade.

Temporarily stops; that update didn't reliably stay dead.

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#244

Post by eikenberry » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 10:06 PM UTC

digi_owl wrote: post #44

Win10 fails for different reacons than Win8. While 8 tried to make tablet the priority use case, and thus breaking the muscle memory of many long term users, 10 abandons the notion of the owner of the hardware being in charge (sadly one that is increasingly taking root in FOSS circles as well). Thus you have things like updates being ramrodded through even if the user says no, and keep saying no. Damn it, i keep havi…

> [..] (sadly one that is increasingly taking root in FOSS circles as well).

What are you talking about? The modern prevalence of binary firmware blobs is the only concern I can think of in this area.

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#245

Post by gambiting » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 10:06 PM UTC

NetStrikeForce wrote: post #237

gambiting wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've literally never had a system as buggy as Windows 10, every day I switch on my computer I wonder what's going to be broken today. Stuff which works on the same hardware on Windows 7 is just unreliable on Windows 10. Not to mention that 10 is a usability mess and a massive step back in pretty much every corner of the system. Since I've typed out a small list of my problems with Win 10 before, they are here to read…

Holy sh*t. Are you sure you don't have some malware screwing things up? None of those things are even close to "normal" or "acceptable".

I've literally wiped the whole drive, went back to Win 7 - everything was fine. Upgraded back to Win 10 and had all the same problems again.

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#246

Post by cm2187 » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 10:11 PM UTC

zekevermillion wrote: post #239

hfsktr wrote: post #164

I must be in the huge minority. I haven't had a single issue with Windows 10 (if we disregard privacy). Literally everything has just worked. I will say thinking about it that my computer used for 99.99% gaming/internet/text documents. I keep anticipating that something is going to go horribly wrong but so far it's been great. I hate the menu and store that it shows so almost everything I tend to open has a shortcut…

That is the tragedy of win10. It's actually a great OS but the lack of respect for user preferences around privacy and updates ruins it for power users. I have to think that the engineers who did the work to make win10 as efficient and stable as it is had cortana and dark UI patterns shoved down their throats. cortana is clippy, we all know that. Who thought it was a good idea to bring back clippy?! Could not have be…

There are plenty of bad parts too. The start menu keeps freezing regularly for me on multiple machines. Searching in the start menu returns random results. Settings scattered across multiple control panels is just absurd. In-OS advertising is a complete no go to me. The nagging to use edge too. The frequent forced reboots and full screen notifications are a nuisance. And it makes it really difficult to change default apps, on purpose I suspect.

I just don't like it. It's not about visual design. I couldn't care less about flat design vs windows 7 menus, etc. But it is functionally really bad.

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#247

Post by hutzlibu » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 10:15 PM UTC

greedo wrote: post #219

ryanplant-au wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't quite follow. You seem to be saying that Microsoft make changes just to justify the release of a new OS version. But they announced quite a while ago that they would never release a new major version. There will never be a Windows 11, you will never pay to upgrade Windows to the new version again. They adopted the macOS platform, where the OS sticks to a single version and gets an incremental annual update (m…

Because MS makes money off of selling software vice Apple's model of making money off of selling hardware. If they continue to emulate Apple's policy of free upgrades, they'll see an eventual revenue drop since they'll be dependent upon users upgrading their hardware.

Main money comes from comercial support, not from single Win 10 disks ...

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#248

Post by gozur88 » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 10:15 PM UTC

alkonaut wrote: post #202

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run - using the word very loosely - Win 10 on a mid-spec 8GB Dell Laptop. It's literally unusably slow. Opening File Manager takes many minutes. This is practically a fresh install. I have Office 365 installed, but very little else. I don't even have a mail client set up. I dual-boot to Ubuntu on the same machine, and the latter is perfectly usable.

You either have a hardware problem (mechanical disk?) or a problem with some preinstalled software running in the background. 8GB with even a several years old CPU should be perfectly usable. SSD is absolutely required though. No number of cores and gigs will compensate for the lack of ssd.

I'm running Windows 10 on a machine that's about five years old. No SSD. It's quite snappy. The only issue with speed is startup times are long if you force it to do a full restart.

Not a fan of the UI changes, or the advertising. If I didn't buy Office 365 every other day for the last year, what are the odds your popup will get me to buy today?

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#249

Post by Sargos » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 10:18 PM UTC

wtallis wrote: post #242

tw04 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Windows settings panels have at least 2 diff ways to configure anything, the "old" and the "new". Graphics settings have 4 places to change stuff (Intel, Nvidia, built in old and new). It's just a jumbled mess. They're well aware of that, and if you follow the insider previews, every new build is moving more of the features into the "new" way of doing things. Is it annoying there are two places? Absolutely... but th…

> but the alternative is not changing anything and waiting 5 years while everything gets rolle dup. Windows 7 was released 7.5 years ago, and Windows 8 was released 4.5 years ago. Whether or not they make interim releases, Microsoft clearly cannot pull off a user interface overhaul in any reasonable span of time.

You underestimate the complexity and depth of Windows. There's a TON of forms and code out there and you literally cannot just port that 15-30 year old C code to C# without taking a step back to think about the design and functionality of the new screen. There's a LOT of work that goes into each transition from ancient Win32 to a modern interface.

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#250

Post by marcosdumay » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 10:21 PM UTC

swozey wrote: post #222

marcosdumay wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you can't do, no matter what you try, is to make the Start Menu show all the programs you have installed. But attaching things there is nice. Even better than the KDE menu.

I can't get over this. It doesn't help that the search (start>type) constantly doesn't find apps I'm looking for. It's to the point where I'm pinning everything to my taskbar. My workflow for a decade or more was to hit the Windows key then start typing to find indexed apps. It's almost useless to me now and I don't really get why.

> I don't really get why

I got looking. It's an acknowledged bug. MS isn't even calling it a feature. It's just about as old as Windows 10, and unfixed.