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Useless Windows 10 Features

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Re: Useless Windows 10 Features

#161

Post by lozenge »

dagaci wrote: post #104
cookie_monsta wrote: post #85

I've installed Win10 on dozens of machines and I've never seen ads on the lock screen, in the taskbar, and in notifications like the article talks about. Maybe because I always say "no" to all those creepy tracking/advertising ID type options on the initial config screen and I always say no to Cortana at the same time. What I heard (and it seems reasonable) is that MS included games like Solitaire and Minesweeper in…

I've tended to always chose the defaults and Yes to everything :) and have never seen any kind of Ads either. I don't have the people tab either! (although it appears like something i would have instantly flicked off without thinking) I wonder if Microsoft engages in some kind of personification of OS settings...

I suspect most of the advertisers are going for big markets, if you live in a small non English speaking country then they might not have signed any advertisers on.

Re: Useless Windows 10 Features

#162

Post by krylon »

QuadrupleA wrote: post #121

Still using windows 7 for as long as I can. Pretty livid that they're discontinuing support and forcing people to 10 soon, I have 10 on another machine and it really feels like losing control of my PC. Very locked down, filled with ads and interruptions, affiliate software and marketing junk. Seems like one of the last bastions of autonomy and privacy in the computer world, the desktop OS, is jumping fully onto the s…

At work, I have been using Windows 10 Pro for a couple of months now after holding out on Windows 7 for a long while.

I have to say, I am surprisingly happy with it. It has native SSH, WSL, performance is decent, and our admin no longer installs 3rd party AV software on Windows 10.

Now if only Microsoft could get their act together when it comes to updates - it has been a mess a for a long time, but I got the feeling it has gotten much worse ever since they decided to bundle all their updates into single large packages, and especially with Windows 10.

Re: Useless Windows 10 Features

#163

Post by cm2187 »

AstralStorm wrote: post #156
zokier wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another major difference probably is people who log in to Microsoft account vs local account. I don't remember seeing web results in my start menu, is that a Cortana thing? I suspect that there are also regional differences, more crap being pushed to US consumers

Web results are still toggled, if you do not agree to Microsoft's data processing during installation you won't get that "feature". That said, search is downgraded from 7s. For instance, it doesn't look at start menu folder names nor executable name anymore...

Control panel items not showing in the start menu results anymore when you search is also in Win10 and it drives me crazy. It literally looks like the guys designing windows must be using a Mac themselves, or just aren’t computer guys. I just don’t get how things like than wouldn’t annoy them too.

My guess is that decision making in large companies is so slow, so bureaucratic, that everyone has given up on shipping anything else than a mediocre product, even if people individually would design it very differently if they could.

Re: Useless Windows 10 Features

#164

Post by zsrxx »

michaelmrose wrote: post #96
anon9001 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a KMS server emulator, all open source: https://github.com/Wind4/vlmcsd If you want to skip straight to the piracy, here's an open source package for you, complete with keys, hosted ironically on Microsoft servers, that uses vlmcsd: https://github.com/ekistece/vlmcsd-autokms It's a pretty clever hack. It runs the KMS emulator locally and fakes the network connection with a TAP device from OpenVPN. Works perfec…

Why not just run Linux

It does not have Win32 or DirectX, for starters

Re: Useless Windows 10 Features

#165

Post by AstralStorm »

59nadir wrote: post #141
smacktoward wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fundamental problem is that there is no singular, unified Microsoft; there is instead a loose confederation of warring tribes that happen to share a headquarters and a ticker symbol. And Windows is the battlefield on which these tribes hash out their disputes. Tribe A thinks Windows should appeal to people who use and love open source software. Tribe B thinks Windows’ ubiquity makes it a great platform to run ads…

For a moment there I thought this post was written by Bryan Cantrill. About the camps and their goals, the open source one is to some extent present, obviously, but the ad one I don't really see because I run Pro. There is a third camp that unquestionably won, though: The "UX/UI designer" camp. I assume all the garbage running in the background behind obscure registry toggles (because real configurability is bad for…

Even they lost. You cannot customize the colors in light mode even. Only dark mode allows it, and there of course the color is darkened.

The whole thing feels like a beta version. In fact, even Whistler betas were more polished than this.

OS cannot afford to break things, which apparently is MS modus operandi now.

It takes about 5 minutes of playing in settings to hit broken functionality. Bonus points if the breakage is forced by unchangeable domain policy in company.

Re: Useless Windows 10 Features

#166

Post by jotm »

ken wrote: post #102
_trampeltier wrote: post #15

Standart folders, does anybody really use them? I upgradet one Notebook at home to from Win7 to Win10. Besides of other things I couldn't believe the added Candy Crash in my Start Menu. In a home edition maybe .. but on Win Pro, serious? I played back on the Win7 image pretty quick. I'm anyway mostly Linux, but I don't think I'll ever move any machine to Win10.

> I couldn't believe the added Candy Crash in my Start Menu. In a home edition maybe .. but on Win Pro, serious? Are you surprised? The file search on Windows XP Professional used an animated cartoon dog. This is just what Microsoft does. As Steve Jobs once said, "The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste."

Haha, I totally forgot about that one. Though even using XP I used search without the dog, I forgot how.

Re: Useless Windows 10 Features

#167

Post by cm2187 »

Bender wrote: post #2

I agree with this article, but I think it can be summed up as, "People need the option to buy the LTSB release of Windows 10". Microsoft refuses to sell it to consumers. It is an enterprise only option (unless that has recently changed and I am not aware of it). I have one windows 7 machine for playing WoW and it will stay on 7 until I can get the LTSB release of Windows 10 and the ability to turn off 100% of the tel…

You can do it half legally with an MSDN subscription. Big one off cost but if you regularly toy with windows VMs or re-installing OS on hardware it might be a good option. The license restricts you to testing only.

Re: Useless Windows 10 Features

#168

Post by NikkiA »

ilaksh wrote: post #39
ryandrake wrote: post #5

Most of these are similar manifestations of the same root evil (not specific to Microsoft): Users don’t want Feature X but Company wants users to want Feature X. They release Feature X to the world. It’s a failure—nobody uses it. The PM or developers who invested in that feature need to justify the investment. So they make Feature X enabled by default. Users disable it. So they remove the disable option. Users ignore…

I think the solution is to have competition but everyone has given up on that because they like compatibility or something.

Competition doesn't necessarily imply that it bypasses sunk cost fallacy, or even that the competition won't do the same nonsense in a belief that feature X must be wanted.

See recent versions of Gnome and KDE Plasma

Re: Useless Windows 10 Features

#169

Post by browsermostly »

tdhttt wrote: post #153
orev wrote: post #18

I honestly think that the new tab/news/spam page in IE/Edge is (and has been, forever) the single biggest factor driving people to Chrome and Firefox. Every time you open it you’re greeted with all this complete junk, making the whole experience stuttering and slowing down your flow. I dread having to open IE on systems with no alternative just because it’s always so bad. Edge might actually be pretty good, but I wil…

What drives me away from Chrome on Windows is the very short freeze you have after you let the page idle for a while and try to scroll again. It was introduced earlier this year, I think.

That sounds more like your pc has performance issues. I have no short freezes when using chrome on windows.

Re: Useless Windows 10 Features

#170

Post by Nullabillity »

bhhaskin wrote: post #3
Bender wrote: post #2

I agree with this article, but I think it can be summed up as, "People need the option to buy the LTSB release of Windows 10". Microsoft refuses to sell it to consumers. It is an enterprise only option (unless that has recently changed and I am not aware of it). I have one windows 7 machine for playing WoW and it will stay on 7 until I can get the LTSB release of Windows 10 and the ability to turn off 100% of the tel…

You should check out Valve's Proton. It's wine, but not wine... It's another abstraction layer built on top and it is pretty amazing. For the most part it just works. Doing some quick searching it looks like people have WoW running on it.

WoW runs fine on regular Wine Staging, too (though DXVK in particular gives some rather ridiculous framerate improvements).
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