Useless Windows 10 Features • Hacker News Board

Re: Useless Windows 10 Features

#431

Post by boring_twenties » Thu, Aug 29, 2019, 4:15 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #208

philliphaydon wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but he doesn't want to pay and doesn't want some other app. So just accepts it.

I wouldn't call it being content, I'd call it being stuck in a situation that sucks. I mean, if I gave you a script that would patch up Solitaire executable to remove any and all ads and telemetry with a single click, wouldn't your dad want it if you offered?

There's almost certainly a free app for Windows that's even better than the Microsoft version. He said his dad doesn't want "some other app," for whatever reason, but he's not stuck if they are available.

Hell if push came to shove you could probably get GNOME's solitaire running which at least has the advantage of supporting something like 100 different solitaire games.

Lastly I was curious how much the Microsoft solitaire costs and OMG. They want you to pay an ongoing subscription for it. Wow.

Re: Useless Windows 10 Features

#432

Post by agumonkey » Thu, Aug 29, 2019, 9:33 AM UTC

technion wrote: post #409

agumonkey wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To you but I don't think that's true for the laymen. I've seen a few old neighbors that expects a news as homepage. Some people are extremely confused about internet, a webpage, a tab, a link .. a bookmark. A news page sounds logical and/or familiar enough it seems. If you remove it they may even despise you.

This statement is accurate based on my interactions with general users. It's not just "junk news" though. People can and have been caught out by things like Microsoft tech support scams, fake virus alarms and prominently displayed on the Microsoft news feed. I've reported to Microsoft before direct links to ransomware advertised on their news feed.

Oh wow, I'd be shocked if I see this. There's already to many malware vectors to have it from your OS and browser supplier ..

Crazy.

Re: Useless Windows 10 Features

#433

Post by benjaminvalmont » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 6:18 AM UTC

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…

UX designers are the problem of the Windows OS. Hilarious!

Re: Useless Windows 10 Features

#434

Post by solstice » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 7:54 AM UTC

mice wrote: post #383

grepballsoffire wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kept on wondering why I hadn't seen any of this, and then remembered that I'd installed Classic Shell start menu, which provides a Windows 7 style menu. It doesn't disable the Windows 10 menu, just hides it. Makes for a much more pleasant experience though. (No affiliation)

Does it still work reliably? I used it on a Windows 10 machine a few years ago, but then it stopped being maintained: http://www.classicshell.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=8147 ... which is a huge shame, as that single app alone made Windows 10 a significantly less frustrating experience.

It's been replaced by Open Shell which works well: https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu

Re: Useless Windows 10 Features

#435

Post by muddi900 » Mon, Sep 02, 2019, 9:15 AM UTC

tuco86 wrote: post #312

baroffoos wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. Microsoft products are horrendous for this. Every time I have to start up my windows VM to test an IE bug I get assaulted by advertising and "news" in the start menu with bright moving blocks and then I open IE and get hit with it even worse. I don't know why people put up with it tbh.

I followed some 2x reboot windows components uninstall magic some while ago to remove ie and some other "features" i don't remember.. then recently edge was auto installed and made default, Autologin stopped to work, start button got redesign and has an annoying delay. It's a total shitshow by now again until I sacrifice an evening to fix most of this. I was venting to a friend. He told me he'd deactivated autoupdate…

There was a ruling against MS, but the judge decided to give an interview that showed he may have been biased. MS got a mistrial, and settled the next one.

Re: Useless Windows 10 Features

#436

Post by jiveturkey » Tue, Sep 03, 2019, 3:23 PM UTC

projektfu wrote: post #397

jiveturkey wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why do we want users to know less about how their computer works? It's not what we want, it's an appreciation for reality. You can want all kinds of things, like people to read documentation, not install malware toolbars, not click reply-all, not answer "I don't know" to product questions on Amazon, use their turn signals, I could go on for hours if not days.

How does making things more complicated make it easier? How does windows explain to users that folders they can see don’t actually exist and ones they can’t do?

You need to step beyond yourself.

It's complicated to you (and me, and probably literally every single reader of HN) because we understand that it's an indirection and the reality is hidden. We are accustomed to that reality and virtual folders without a "physical" root are, to us, an obfuscation.

But step into the shoes of someone who doesn't understand what a file even is. Someone that would be more at home on a tablet, without a filesystem at all. Home folder? What's that? For that user, just having a Documents folder is great. They don't need to know, nor do they care, where it is.

You've apparently never had to support someone whose desktop is clogged with all their files. They know a file by its location on the desktop, not by its name. If it moves for whatever reason, they are screwed. It is for these people, who are surely now the majority of users, that removing the link from "Documents" to some actual location in the filesystem, is a win. To those of us who know better, it took all of 5s to figure it out the first time you encountered it.

Re: Useless Windows 10 Features

#437

Post by kelnos » Wed, Sep 04, 2019, 3:19 AM UTC

Draiken wrote: post #250

kelnos wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure it does: wine. Whether or not it works (and works performantly enough) for what any given person needs it for is another matter, of course.

Honestly I think it's sad how much the community still underestimates gaming. I tried using wine or even using Steam directly on Linux, but playing any game with 30-40% less performance is ridiculous. If you really like games, Linux is unusable for anything big. I've had to dual boot Windows for the last 10 years just to play a game without stuttering, lag, huge FPS drops, etc. Nothing would make me happier than bein…

Sure, if you want to run a recent game, or one that's graphics-intensive, yeah, it might not run well enough for you on wine, and you'll need to dual-boot.

Personally, I don't have that kind of problem, and I suspect I'm not alone. Of the games I play that don't have Linux ports, they run well enough under wine, even on my (recent) laptop with Intel graphics. But I'm a pretty casual gamer, and honestly find it rare that I just must play the type of games that require a high-end Windows rig.