New Windows 10 Features • Hacker News Board

Re: New Windows 10 Features

#21

Post by khedoros1 » Sat, Apr 28, 2018, 5:06 AM UTC

dblohm7 wrote: post #9

cordite wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think they’ll add a “please don’t restart for updates forcefully while I have a full screen presentation on projector for my peers” setting either.

It's there as a group policy, fyi.

I thought that was only available in the enterprise versions? My Windows 10 Pro laptop has the group policy editor, but it doesn't seem like it helps.

Re: New Windows 10 Features

#22

Post by InclinedPlane » Sat, Apr 28, 2018, 5:08 AM UTC

taneq wrote: post #5

Are they going to add a new Power Management setting saying "Don't randomly lock the screen and/or sleep the computer while you're actively using it"?

My favorite power management bug is in the Windows 7 original release. The default configuration was to put the computer to sleep after 30 minutes of inactivity. In many situations this was fine however what is the first thing that you do with a new OS installation? Install patches of course. And the way that Windows works is it does this in two phases, it'll do some installation work while a user is a logged in, and it'll do additional installation and configuration stuff after a reboot but before a user can login. Which the OS isn't smart enough to understand doesn't count as "idle time". So at some point after Windows 7 came out the size and installation time of all the patches (especially on a spinning hard drive) would cause the OS to get into a reboot loop. It would boot, immediately try to apply the configuration updates for installed patches, timeout and be triggered to go to sleep, rollback the changes, and then it would start again. Eventually some failure threshold would get triggered and you could actually login and fix the stupid power management settings before trying to patch again but it was always a nasty surprise if you forgot about it and simply assumed MS wouldn't ever do something so braindead.

Re: New Windows 10 Features

#23

Post by supernes » Sat, Apr 28, 2018, 5:09 AM UTC

booleandilemma wrote: post #13

philliphaydon wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When has this ever been the case? Serious question...

My biggest problem with Windows is the automatic restarts. Under no circumstances should my computer restart without me telling it to.

My Surface Pro 4 recently tried to commit suicide by installing a feature update while having 2% battery left, after I explicitly postponed it. They are never going to learn.

Re: New Windows 10 Features

#24

Post by pfarnsworth » Sat, Apr 28, 2018, 5:12 AM UTC

My computer is from 2012 with Windows 7 and they will pry that out of my cold dark hands. I was going to upgrade but literally the week I was going to buy my new computer, the Meltdown/Spectre exploit came out, so I'm waiting for an entirely new chip, if it can even be fixed.

Re: New Windows 10 Features

#25

Post by kyriakos » Sat, Apr 28, 2018, 5:14 AM UTC

stephengillie wrote: post #11

New features: - Voice as text entry for any text input, across the OS. (Surprised this has taken so long; the speech recognition libraries have been in .NET since 2014.) - Ecobee, Honeywell, Nest integration with Cortana. -Timeline... Tracks your "stuff" (files? online activity? It's unclear) across all Windows devices. It has 30 days of history. I'm interested in knowing how much of my file and URL history is being…

Timeline, calling it stuff is kinda lame marketing. Been using it as a Windows insider, it keeps track what documents were open in which application. Works great with office but I guess will take a while before all applications add support for it. Generally it's a good idea even if using only one device, think of it as "recent files" on steroids.

Re: New Windows 10 Features

#26

Post by ktpsns » Sat, Apr 28, 2018, 5:20 AM UTC

SwellJoe wrote: post #17

I don't think Microsoft and I have the same idea about focus and distraction. I just got a small Windows laptop for a couple of tasks I can't do well on Linux, and after it updated to the latest Windows stuff it had dozens of notifications enabled. All kinds of ridiculous crap popping up while I'm trying to do things. Like, a constant battery of interruptions, with noise and visual bubbles over in the notifications c…

Full ACK. Ever been on a presentation by someone with a windows computer? It's amusing how much popups appear and chimes ring out after startup and even while presenting. As I'm not an active Windows user, I don't know if there is a proper way to hide them all. At least for Mac OS X, Android (LineageOS) and the two infamous linux desktop environments I know they can be fine-tuned.

As you write, I think applications who abuse their permission to interrupt the user lose their credibility and usefulness. It is just the equivalent of having a word processor putting advertisement on a printout. It renders it useless.

Re: New Windows 10 Features

#27

Post by khedoros1 » Sat, Apr 28, 2018, 5:20 AM UTC

navjack27 wrote: post #19

booleandilemma wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My biggest problem with Windows is the automatic restarts. Under no circumstances should my computer restart without me telling it to.

If you aren't at the computer and your computer isn't doing anything then Windows sets a usernotpresent flag. Fold@home or something, make your computer do shit.

Hmm. What's the threshold of activity? And is there a way to clear the flag without doing something wasteful like pegging some CPU cores?

Re: New Windows 10 Features

#28

Post by shiado » Sat, Apr 28, 2018, 5:22 AM UTC

I had a Windows 10 installation sitting around on a spare drive that was used for a few games for a while until I discovered all the malware that it installed automatically (Candy Crush Soda Saga is malware don't even try to deny it). Needless to say that drive has since been zeroed.

It really is a shame how abusive Windows 10 is to users because I know there are some extremely talented people doing great things at Microsoft.

Re: New Windows 10 Features

#29

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 28, 2018, 5:23 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: New Windows 10 Features

#30

Post by Yaggo » Sat, Apr 28, 2018, 5:32 AM UTC

ktpsns wrote: post #26

SwellJoe wrote: post #17

I don't think Microsoft and I have the same idea about focus and distraction. I just got a small Windows laptop for a couple of tasks I can't do well on Linux, and after it updated to the latest Windows stuff it had dozens of notifications enabled. All kinds of ridiculous crap popping up while I'm trying to do things. Like, a constant battery of interruptions, with noise and visual bubbles over in the notifications c…

Full ACK. Ever been on a presentation by someone with a windows computer? It's amusing how much popups appear and chimes ring out after startup and even while presenting. As I'm not an active Windows user, I don't know if there is a proper way to hide them all. At least for Mac OS X, Android (LineageOS) and the two infamous linux desktop environments I know they can be fine-tuned. As you write, I think applications w…

macOS has 'Do not disturb' mode which is activated automatically when mirroring to TVs and projectors (configurable), a feature very neat.