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The woes of Windows 10

economist.com

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Re: The woes of Windows 10

#291

Post by Infinitesimus »

cowardlydragon wrote: post #193
ZeroClickOk wrote: post #75

I dont know why name Windows 10 a fail, when the bigger competitors of Windows are... Windows! Mac and Linux mostly are used for niche users (as us). I'm really really happy we CAN upgrade for a new Windows version easily, just compare with Android. More: the reason to most people dont upgrade isn't why "Windows 7 is better than Windows 10", but the actual reason is they are comfortable with Win7 and dont want/can ta…

Android and iOS have probably surpassed windows in number of consumer installations. The PC will be invaded by Android at some point, and it will be like a blitzkreig when it happens. Google would make all their money back shortly off of appstore sales.

> The PC will be invaded by Android at some point

As much as I enjoy using Android on mobile, Google's horrible track record with security updates means I'll be appalled if after all the noise people have made about Win 10's privacy, they accept Android with Google everywhere + security updates EOL after 3 years...

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#292

Post by jimmaswell »

boznz wrote: post #88
jimmaswell wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can disable the Windows Update service.

I'm sure theres a hack but this is not possible in Windows 10 home.

Are you sure it doesn't let you just turn the service off in services.msc? I can't find any references online to the Home edition having that behavior.

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#293

Post by Infinitesimus »

acqq wrote: post #190
dmalvarado wrote: post #160

Well that was weird. tldr; Windows has 92% OS share. Windows 10 only accounts for 24% (maybe). Windows 10 is so, so secure. How to make people upgrade? Windows 10 new update will have advertising. Other OS's sure look good now. I feel like this section of the Economist doesn't get much editorial review.

> Windows 10 new update will have advertising. And I don't see anybody blinks here on HN about that. Why? https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-10/85341/microsoft-... "So Windows 10 pops-up little advertising windows—sorry, tips—on the Edge icon in the taskbar, or in the Action Center UI, or in the Settings interface where you can change your defaults, because it really, really, really doesn’t want you to exercise…

> And I don't see anybody blinks here on HN about that. Why?

People did complain about start menu ads a lot when it first came out.

I don't see their "Edge is faster/more battery friendly" ads as entirely bad though

1. Edge is more battery friendly on Windows laptops 2. Google does the same thing by prompting you to install Chrome does it not?

Difference is OS vs website but google.com is the default "internet" for an awful lot of people...

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#294

Post by Lio »

deburo wrote: post #155
Unbeliever69 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the time I've invested in acclimating to Windows 10 feels like a burden, while all the time I have spent tweaking OSx feels delightful. People don't hate change...we hate change that is painful. Windows 10 (to me) embodies painful change.

A lot of people resist change to things they are familiar with. Between each significant revision of Apple's desktop OS, my mother would get frustrated at settings that were moved elsewhere/renamed/removed entirely, for example. OSX is no stranger to unnecessary changes (or at least that's what my mother thinks of them).

Here's one small change to macOS that drives me nuts. At some point they changed how application hiding works.

It used to be that cmd-h hid an application and moved it to the end of the application stack. If you wanted it back you could use cmd-shift-tab.

Some suit, in their wisdom, decided to change that so cmd-h now only hides the app.

It's a tiny change ...that's a stone in my shoe every single day. IMHO that change is was completely unnecessary and breaks my workflow.

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#295

Post by sydd »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #172
hfsktr wrote: post #164

I must be in the huge minority. I haven't had a single issue with Windows 10 (if we disregard privacy). Literally everything has just worked. I will say thinking about it that my computer used for 99.99% gaming/internet/text documents. I keep anticipating that something is going to go horribly wrong but so far it's been great. I hate the menu and store that it shows so almost everything I tend to open has a shortcut…

I run - using the word very loosely - Win 10 on a mid-spec 8GB Dell Laptop. It's literally unusably slow. Opening File Manager takes many minutes. This is practically a fresh install. I have Office 365 installed, but very little else. I don't even have a mail client set up. I dual-boot to Ubuntu on the same machine, and the latter is perfectly usable.

Then something is wrong with your hardware. My brother runs it on a 10 year old (!) laptop with 2GB RAM and an Intel Dual Core CPU (these were before Core 2 Duos)

Windows runs okay, but scrolling lags like hell on more complex sites and you cant play more than 720p videos.

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#296

Post by scholia »

Nition wrote: post #290
cm2187 wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of bad parts too. The start menu keeps freezing regularly for me on multiple machines. Searching in the start menu returns random results. Settings scattered across multiple control panels is just absurd. In-OS advertising is a complete no go to me. The nagging to use edge too. The frequent forced reboots and full screen notifications are a nuisance. And it makes it really difficult to change default…

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…

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. Do it gradually, they'll complain bitterly. Don't do it at all, they'll complain bitterly. Which complaint would you like to make today> ;-)

On the good side, ordinary users have few problems with the Settings app, and it seems to do all they need -- or at least it comes close.

And the people who are resistant to change and are already familiar with the Control Panel can still use it.

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#297

Post by chrisper »

vacri wrote: post #217
dcdevito wrote: post #211

Windows 10 gets a lot of flak, but it's honestly the best OS I have ever used. It's fast, stable, reliable and secure. Oh, and I should mention I'm a developer, and WSL is getting better with every release. Is it perfect? Heck no, but it's sure a lot better than Linux on the desktop and Macs are just not worth my money anymore.

I don't really count a forced reboot "now or in 15 minutes, no delays" as reliable. There are people who've had this happen in the middle of presentations at meetings. Similarly, I've had these forced updates happen, and on relogin "click here to see what was updated" -> nothing listed.

I believe that behavior is going to change with the new big update.

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#298

Post by AnimalMuppet »

oldsj wrote: post #269
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compared to BSD? (One of the BSDs, that focuses on security, I forget which one.) Yeah, I don't buy it. But I bet the writer at The Economist never heard of BSD...

OpenBSD, if you weren't being sarcastic

No, I wasn't being sarcastic. I've never used BSD, of any flavor, but I recall that was was focused obsessively on security.

Absent evidence to the contrary, I presume that OpenBSD is more secure than any Windows, even Windows 10, but has considerably fewer features. Do you know of actual evidence?

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#299

Post by ihattendorf »

shmerl wrote: post #196
ihattendorf wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> large numbers

Absolute numbers are large. I'm more interested in the trend here. Still, there should be more push for Linux on the desktop. This sick situation exited for way too long.

That won't happen until desktop Linux is usable by non-tech people, and they have easy access to it (pre-installed, simple install, etc.). There's been a lot of progress, however there are still plenty of issues. Not to mention application support.

Re: The woes of Windows 10

#300

Post by jjcm »

kupiakos wrote: post #270
cm2187 wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of bad parts too. The start menu keeps freezing regularly for me on multiple machines. Searching in the start menu returns random results. Settings scattered across multiple control panels is just absurd. In-OS advertising is a complete no go to me. The nagging to use edge too. The frequent forced reboots and full screen notifications are a nuisance. And it makes it really difficult to change default…

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.
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