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The woes of Windows 10

economist.com

441–450 of 475 posts

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#441
post #300

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.

FWIW, automatic updates took me about 5 minutes of googling to figure out how to turn off. Haven't been nagged once since then. I can go in manually and update as I please.

I think this is only available in the pro edition, not home.

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#442
post #163

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Apple uses grayscale font rendering too, not even pixel aligned. It looks nice because all of their devices are high DPI.

Exactly, They know their hardware, and trying to optimize their software for their hardware. Microsoft do know what hardware people use (in third world country I would say 99% of people do use low dpi monitor), but they changed and ruined people experience anyway. That is the main point, they don't care about existing user. I bet if apple monitors was low-dpi monitor, apple would do everything they can to improve fon…

Unlike Windows 10, Mac OS X still supports subpixel font antialiasing (similar to ClearType in Windows 7), it is called LCD font smoothing there, e.g.: https://www.tekrevue.com/tip/os-x-yosemite-disable-lcd-font-...

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get (maybe) your argument when it comes to Windows 7 -> Windows 10, but I think you're overestimating how hard it is to get up and running with Arch Linux. Following an Arch install tutorial shouldn't take anyone here on Hackernews more than 2 hours to get their DE, networking etc. up and going. You should try it. It's fun!

I worry more about the long term support workload than the initial install.

I found this to be a real problem with using Arch in production. Updating is a bit of a catch-22: if you upgrade frequently, the workload of keeping up with the minutiae of not breaking your system is overwhelming. And the longer you leave it, the closer the chances of breakage when you do approach 100%. Result: you inevitably fall off the update treadmill at some point, usually during some sort of crunch time, and then never update again because who wants to tell their boss they spent a day debugging a self-inflicted problem? Safer to leave it alone and get on with your work.

This is why I switched back to Debian. Updating is stress-free and there's no downside to doing it as often as you like.

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people actually cared about it that much, at the very least there'd be some 3rd-party program available for Windows that would improve the UI, and it'd be selling like hotcakes. I've never heard of any. Same goes for MacOS, iOS, and Android.

How about WindowBlinds? http://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/

This is the first I've heard of it. Just like I said before, if the Windows UI were really that hated and unpopular, this thing would be common knowledge and selling like hotcakes. It isn't. Maybe the word just hasn't gotten out enough, but I doubt it.

I do have to say, $9.99 is a pretty good price for this. But this again reinforces my point: if people really hated the Win10 UI that much, a $10 purchase should be nothing to fix it.

Also, I only looked over the link cursorily, but does this fix the whole Metro interface? That's my big complaint with Win10; when you're on the regular desktop, it isn't much different from Win7. It's when you want to load a new program, or use the Settings, or stuff like that you suddenly find yourself in the purple hell that is the Metro UI. If this Windowblinds program is only letting you skin the desktop stuff and not changing the whole start menu, then it's not really fixing the problem, just making the crappy, clunky Win7 desktop more pleasant to use.

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#446
post #103

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BSD gets refugees from Linux because messing up with systemd.

And then TempleOS will get refugees from BSD because it losts its soul (almost-friday-level pun intended) :-)

No, no, first Haiku (the BeOS clone), then MorphOS, then KolibriOS, then KolibriOS ported to ARM and THEN TempleOS.

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#447

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.

Your loss. I trust Windows 10 a lot more than Android, and I use that as well ;-)

The future is more-or-less-continuous updates based on telemetry. That's how Google and Facebook work as well. Microsoft will never go back to a 3-year upgrade cycle, and no business should want to do that either.

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. That's true, but it's probably a lot harder when you've proven to be untrustworthy in what you include under "modernisation" or "updates". Plenty of techie people warned that user-hostile behaviour like the GWX campaign or including non-security things in updates advertised as security p…

Not to mention all the dark patterns around pushing the Win10 "upgrade" in the first place.

True. They pushed their luck, and got more than 400 million users onto a new OS. Not only that, it's a much better OS.

The only people who actually suffered were the OEMs, who didn't get to sell new PCs to all those people whose old PCs got a new lease of life.

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows 7 did get a majority of the Windows market. Windows 10 will get a majority of the Windows market. In fact, in some areas -- the USA and the UK, for example -- Windows 10 overtook Windows 7 late last year, on StatCounter's numbers.

Yes, when you trick and manipulate users into upgrading, it results in a substantial short-term boost in market share.

I don't think moving people from one version of Windows to another counts as an increase in market share.

And since they gave away a free upgrade for the life of the device, at a considerable cost in terms of servers and bandwidth, it wasn't profiteering either.

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#450
post #414
post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything he says is true because most people don't even fscking care the very least, even if the option were right in their face. Think BOFH dummy mode. People just want a zero-knob appliance for shit to get done. We are the damn exception to the rule.

My mum learned that if she did not like something she can just press the super button and start typing whatever the annoyance is related to. I am sometimes surprised by the specific settings she goes for. Based on this i think users at least check the options when they are easily available. (Linux obviously)

That works in Windows 10 too.
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