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Did Windows 10 slow down with each feature update?

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Re: Did Windows 10 slow down with each feature update?

#191

Over the past decade, software updates in general have mostly become another form of malware, as software makers care more about extracting money from their users or adding pointless shiny features than actually making their software fast, stable, or better able to serve the user. As a result, my default policy now is "If it ain't broke, NEVER fix it." Install, then disable all updates, forcibly if necessary. On Wind…

I can never relate to these posts. I always update all my stuff pretty much immediately when I see an update available. I run Windows, so I'm talking Windows Updates, browser updates, drivers, anything and everything. It actually gives me a pleasant feeling knowing I get bug fixes, security fixes, maybe some new feature every now and then. I'm definitely naive enough to hope for performance improvements rather than w…

I can never relate to these posts.

I can relate to them very well. I've wasted far too many hours cleaning up after one bad update or another. Windows and driver updates have been among the worst offenders. You could argue that the good updates might have protected me from malware that would have wasted even more, but I have no evidence to suggest this is the case.

As a result, I tend to be very binary about updates now. If it's something that involves direct contact with remote systems, it gets updated almost instantly, at least if the update is anything security related. Browsers, email clients, phones, publicly accessible servers, anything like that. The risk of not updating promptly in that situation is too high, even though I've seen many adverse changes when updating those kinds of products too. For most other things I use, if it's doing its job OK already, it probably gets updated if I have a specific reason to want a newer version and otherwise gets left alone.

I detest the modern trend for bundling essential updates like security patches together with other changes that users might not want, as the likes of Microsoft, Google and Apple all now do. Fixing a defective product is one thing. Changing it arbitrarily is something completely different.

Re: Did Windows 10 slow down with each feature update?

#192

Over the past decade, software updates in general have mostly become another form of malware, as software makers care more about extracting money from their users or adding pointless shiny features than actually making their software fast, stable, or better able to serve the user. As a result, my default policy now is "If it ain't broke, NEVER fix it." Install, then disable all updates, forcibly if necessary. On Wind…

I understand that it sucks to deal with bugs that may release with updates. That said, "never update" is both bad and irresponsible advice. It is important to ensure your systems are up-to-date, even if you choose to lag your updates by a week or a month.

Security is extremely important and in some cases can save your personal information and money from being needlessly stolen.

I can empathize with the slow downs, bugs and deprecation that may occur, but I can never agree that to never update is a good alternative.

Re: Did Windows 10 slow down with each feature update?

#193
post #71
post #5

Anyone finally willing to admit that w10 is unusable on Hard Drives while Linux and W7 work fine on them?

Why do people still expect modern software to run at incredible speeds on hard disk drives? Run old technology with old software. It is ridiculous that consumer hardware is still being sold with crappy 5400 RPM disks in 2021. No, I have no interest in optimising my software for speeds that are 1/10th of my broadband. Unless we're talking archival or huge storage necessities, stop complaining about modern OS or games…

I'm usually frustrated that I've got dozens of GB of unused RAM, and some horrible 32-bit app is thrashing and paging to disk because it's getting close to using 2 GB.

Re: Did Windows 10 slow down with each feature update?

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you expect Windows 10 to run on a Pentium II with 512MB RAM as well, because some version of Linux does? ...Yes? What is it doing that wouldn't fit in those constraints?

I do not absolutely get this obtuse question. It is not my place to justify why modern software is so inefficient, pointing the finger to Windows 10 in particular as if it's an outlier. Why are YOU using inefficient languages, heavyweight virtual machines, GB sized binaries, Electron and Javascript to write your applications? Why is your boss asking to add feature upon feature upon feature? There is a reason we're in…

Where do people even pick this sort of stuff up to take with them into industry? Are they teaching Electron development now in undergrad CSE programs instead of C?

Re: Did Windows 10 slow down with each feature update?

#195
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do people still expect modern software to run at incredible speeds on hard disk drives? Run old technology with old software. It is ridiculous that consumer hardware is still being sold with crappy 5400 RPM disks in 2021. No, I have no interest in optimising my software for speeds that are 1/10th of my broadband. Unless we're talking archival or huge storage necessities, stop complaining about modern OS or games…

My Linux box runs totally find on spinning drives. I'd like to upgrade but SSDs have gotten very expensive lately. A 2TB SSD is like $300 now.

On my 2012 mbp I have the OS and software running on the SSD in the drive bay, and a beefy hdd in the disk slot for storage. I set this up back when a 256gb SSD was pretty expensive, but maybe that sort of strategy would work for you now that SSD prices have gone up again, having a fast drive for software and the system and a big drive for storage.

Re: Did Windows 10 slow down with each feature update?

#196
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an older laptop with an hdd. It always was under powered but still usable for things like streaming to a tv every once in a while. The latest Win10 updates have it taking minutes to run a search or context switch. Feels like we are getting into phone territory of forced HW upgrades for everything now.

I'm upgrading computers in my University with 8GB of ram and ssd and poof, 2011 computers run W10 just fine once again.

I did this to all my family members macbook pros a few years ago, back when apple let you do that sort of thing to your hardware. These machines are 10 years old and still running modern stuff just fine.

Re: Did Windows 10 slow down with each feature update?

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> As I mentioned down thread, you can get 1TB Samsung SSDs right now for $80. You ever think about the college kid who can't afford that price? What about the family of five living on food stamps who can't just pony up the money for better hardware? What about large swaths of the population who are on fixed incomes? The way software companies are going and your general attitude is, "Eh, this is old technology, anybo…

So instead of helping her learn one of the many (free) web-based tax applications, you built her a new computer to run a new (paid) version of the tax software she was already using? How does that even make sense?

She tried several of the "Free" web based tax apps, and always had problems with them. And yeah, I built her a PC that could run a current version of the software she paid for.

It makes sense when you want to help someone to use the software they already paid for, instead of pointing an elderly person to the web and saying, "See? They have FREE versions, go grab one and figure it on your own!"

Sorry, but that to me is kind of a callous solution compared to what I did.

Re: Did Windows 10 slow down with each feature update?

#198
post #9

On my current gaming PC (i7-7700) I have installed W10 in 2017 and... no problem whatsoever? SSD, 10s boot. idk how do people end up with all the problems. I'm really curious because there must be an underlying reason

Well you do have a beefy workstation with a fast drive, most people on windows are running some anemic laptop or the cheapest dell desktop their employer is able to order by the pallet.

Re: Did Windows 10 slow down with each feature update?

#199

All I know is my Win 10 Pro laptop has 16gb RAM, yet if an application, most likely Google Chrome, uses more than about 4-5gb, it crashes. Yep, it's a lot of tabs. But not as many as you think, and often without warning, as certain ad-heavy sites, especially forum sites (flyertalk, rennlist), can sometimes require 1gb RAM alone.

All the more reason to install serious ad blockers not found with Chrome and to install extensions that deal with old tabs instead of letting them pollute your memory

Re: Did Windows 10 slow down with each feature update?

#200
post #24

I can't remember the last time I used Windows search because it's worse than useless - there have been multiple occasions in the past where it can't even find a file in the current folder right in front of my eyes. Nowadays I just use Everything which I think is one of the best piece of software ever.

An important thing that it took me a long time to realize is it doesn't search file names by default, only file contents. To search by name you have to use the 'name:' prefix. This is nonsense, but it's also easy to overcome once you know about it.

I don’t think this is right. I just did a test with a text file and Windows not only found a word only in the title (not in the document text), but also highlighted the title match in the results.
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