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The woes of Windows 10

economist.com

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Re: The woes of Windows 10

#431

Post by NTripleOne »

SeanDav wrote: post #409
scholia wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot in the Control Panel. The more you move to the new Settings app, the more complicated Settings gets. And if Microsoft didn't provide all those settings, or dropped the whole Control Panel, there would be a tornado of criticism. Life is hard when you have 1.5 billion users, especially when a lot of them resist attempts to modernise or even update the system. Do it all at once, they'll complain bitterly.…

> "... especially when a lot of them resist attempts to modernise or even update the system." I am one of those holdouts, however I would have upgraded a long time ago if Windows 10 had allowed me control over upgrades/updates and had better privacy. After the tricks that Microsoft pulled, trying to force me to upgrade to Windows 10, I do not trust Windows 10 and you cannot feel that about an OS and install it.

Disable the windows update service and now you have manual control over updates (enable when you want to update).

There's also a billion and one "one click privacy fix" tools like TRONscript, etc.

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#432

Post by NTripleOne »

grogenaut wrote: post #394
Nition wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd understand that more if it was all esoteric power-user type stuff that was missing in the new system. But stuff like mouse pointer speed? Apparently Misrosoft has said that they do want to drop the old-style control panel eventually. I realise it's a huge job, but it feels very like a half-finished feature right now.

Mouse speed IS power user stuff. Poll the general populace, what percent actually know about mouse pointer speed or that you can adjust it. back in 2002 I went around bumping everyone's screen resolution from vga in college because it hurt my sole. at least 20% of people got pissed at me for "fucking up their settings". Almost all eventually came back and said "I can't read my whole doc, show me that thing again." Po…

Not to mention that it's not preferable to be adjusting mouse speed in windows anyway, 6/11 on the slider is basically the only setting that should be used, as every other option is no longer true 1:1 input.

(disabling "enhanced pointer precision" is preferable, but optional)

If your cursor is too fast you need a mouse with a lower DPI, and vice versa.

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#433

Post by chris_wot »

Jaruzel wrote: post #419
Nition wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dual control panels are ridiculous. I shouldn't have to go through two totally different interfaces just to change the mouse pointer speed. Type 'mouse' in the start menu, click the result, option isn't there, click 'Additional mouse options', totally different interface appears, go to the Pointer Options tab, drag the slider. And I know this one has been done to death, but the privacy issue really is a major one…

> The dual control panels are ridiculous. MS's roadmap is to migrate everything out of Control Panel into Settings at some point, so there are not two. For total control, activate 'GodeMode'... Create a folder and rename it to this: GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C} Then just double click it.

Doesn't need to be GodMode. Just pop on the dot and the GUID to the end of the folder and it will work.

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#434

Post by chris_wot »

mattmanser wrote: post #278
kupiakos wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most frustrating thing for me is the automatic updates that are difficult to turn off. If I leave a Windows 10 VM running on my laptop for too long, it will decide it's "idle" and start consuming my resources. Even if I let the updates finish, it then continues for another week, whenever I leave it "idle", to perform AoT .NET compilation, pegging my CPU. Incredibly annoying.

My laptop fan is a bit of a noisy bugger, if I leave windows 10 for 5 mins it thinks idle and the the fan just starts going. First I found that ngentask was repeatedly running 32-bit ngen and it's practically impossible to debug what's gone wrong so I've replace the ngen with a dummy exe. But it still does it, now instead of ngen it's simply "System" constantly burning 20% cpu for whatever utterly pointless maintenan…

Try using Process Monitor.

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#435

Post by kogepathic »

valine wrote: post #379

> There is no question that Windows 10 is an impressive piece of software, and quite the most secure operating system ever devised. This is simply not true. Windows is in no way the most secure operating system ever devised. Microsoft has support pages devoted to removing malware from Windows 10 , while there has never been a major malware outbreak on iOS. For the average user iOS is by far the most secure OS. Now ob…

> There is no question that Windows 10 is an impressive piece of software, and quite the most secure operating system ever devised.

I think the author should have said "the most secure version of Windows sever devised" instead, as it would be much harder to disagree with.

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#436

Post by E6300 »

Mithaldu wrote: post #426
E6300 wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The benchmarks I've seen don't really point to DX12 as being an optimization.

It's not about optimization, it's about the fact that games will come out that support only that because the game devs don't want to support multiple graphics APIs.

Developers won't do that for a good while if adoption rates continue at their current level.

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#437

Post by peatmoss »

oldsj wrote: post #254
bsder wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think you're overestimating how hard it is to get up and running with Arch Linux Not really. Arch was a PITA. FreeBSD has a smoother install (not a compliment to Arch).

And OpenBSD installation is even smoother than FreeBSD!

I didn't touch OpenBSD from, let's call it, the latter half of George Bush's presidency through the first half of the Obama administration. My first install of OpenBSD in years was a moment of "oh this old thing still?" followed by "huh, that was just as easy as I remembered."

It's all about audience. OpenBSD's installer is a thing of beauty for technical people. I can see where it would be daunting and texty to someone who's never touched a command line, but that isn't the audience.

At this point, I feel forcing technical users through a plodding GUI install wizard is as cruel as making grandma install OpenBSD with a complicated RAID configuration and volume encryption.

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#438

Post by chris_wot »

corin_ wrote: post #303
eikenberry wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She wasn't implying you should switch to Linux to get the UI alternatives available there. She was saying that there is nobody working on UI alternatives/innovations except for a few people in the Linux space. That everyone had settled on the same basic UI.

She was saying that the alternative UIs aren't popular, and my point is that their low market share is down not only to the UIs themselves but also because of the software they are compatible with.

Virtually all software that runs on Windows can be run on Linux via WINE. Often better.

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#439

Post by todd8 »

I am surprised by how hard it is to find reliable information about Window issues. Most pages I find look like thinly veiled pitches to get me to buy some stupid utility or online service. Its easy to find authoritative information on Mac OS or Linux issues, but I can't trust most of what I read about solving any Windows issue.

I would like to swap out my system dive and replace it with an SSD. Every discussion on the web I come across wants me to download some third party backup/restore or cloning software. Isn't there anything in Windows or that comes from Microsoft for me to do it?

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#440

Post by speeder »

bayeslives wrote: post #178

I've been using both Windows (work) and Linux (home) on the desktop for many years. I far prefer Linux (I tried many distros, settled on Arch and Mint now). Package management and window management is way better in Linux. To name just a few. To me, Windows10 is not better than Windows7. The package management is still a mess. Forced updates, no rollbacks, reboots, you name it. Permissions are also strange: why are ad…

I don't tried Win10 on a personal computer... but they made font rendering even worse than it was on Win7? (Win7 MS "assumed" everyone would have LCD screens, and changed not only the rendering code, but the default font themselves to one that doesn't work with CRT or LCDs that don't follow common patterns in pixel shapes... and my favourite screens are CRTs, because I am yet to find a LCD that I can afford that is superior to the CRTs I own).
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