Over a week with Windows 10 - some observations.
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Over a week with Win10, and…well…here it is. And I wish it wasn't so negative. I've been putting this off, because I wanted to be positive about it, but...it's at best halved my productivity since I installed it. Let me start by saying: I hated Win 8.0, and thought that Win8.1 was “too little, too late”. But I really wanted Win 10 to make me go “Wow!” It didn’t. If you come from Win 8.x, then Win 10 is better. But frankly, anything is better than Win 8.x, that's not difficult. If you come from Win 7, or Win XP then…oh dear. 1) It’s ugly. Very ugly. It’s flat, it’s dull, and all the apps that used to look good on Windows don’t anymore – all the 3D elements (including indented panels) are gone, all the rounded corners are gone. Everything is square, flat, and surrounded by a black line. Not nice to sit and look at, when you are used to prettiness – and all the more unpleasant when you wrote the apps and know how much work you put into making them pretty and pleasant to use. And the buttons look like they were sketched in as placeholders. All the new icons are monochrome: white on black. I’m guessing that this is to look “simplistic” and “fresh” – but if that’s the case, why is Edges icon Blue, and curly? Consistency is not an MS trait here… Tiles are horrible – particularly the “live” ones. Fortunately, they are easy to get rid of, and never see again. 2) It doesn’t like you. Like me, you probably had a local login on your system – in theory that is still available, but Win 10 doesn’t make it easy to do, so you give in and sign in with your Microsoft ID. Which works fine! Until you try to edit a file in Word (which works, Office 2010 is still running under Win 10) and notice (too late) that it’s read only. Everything in your documents folder – which for me is everything (including projects) to make it easy to back up – is read only. You can fix this – I explained how a week ago – but it’s unnecessary, and if you aren’t computer literate it’s going to be a problem. 3) It doesn’t care about your backups. In fact, the default power scheme puts the computer to sleep about fifteen minutes in, which breaks the backup… It’s fixable…but why? Was the computer set to do that before? No. No, Microsoft, it wasn’t… 4) It doesn’t like your browser. So it sets Edge as your default. And Edge is…um…nasty. It’s ugly (so it fits right in with Win 10), but its toolbar takes too much room. It is faster than Chrome and Firefox – slightly – but that’s pretty irrelevant compared to the discomfort of using it. I went ba
I'll bite: 1. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, apparently. I think the flat design is the best Windows has looked ever. If I never see an unnecessary drop shadow or rounded corner, it'll be too soon. 4. It's not only browsers, Win 10 changed a lot of my default applications. I don't mind Edge, except that it's not usable until it gets plugins/extensions. 6. Cortana: it only works when the language of the OS and the culture match. So it won't ever work for me. 7. metro apps weren't full-screen in Win 8.1. While 10 is not perfect, I don't see any reason to go back to 8.1 or 7.
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Over a week with Win10, and…well…here it is. And I wish it wasn't so negative. I've been putting this off, because I wanted to be positive about it, but...it's at best halved my productivity since I installed it. Let me start by saying: I hated Win 8.0, and thought that Win8.1 was “too little, too late”. But I really wanted Win 10 to make me go “Wow!” It didn’t. If you come from Win 8.x, then Win 10 is better. But frankly, anything is better than Win 8.x, that's not difficult. If you come from Win 7, or Win XP then…oh dear. 1) It’s ugly. Very ugly. It’s flat, it’s dull, and all the apps that used to look good on Windows don’t anymore – all the 3D elements (including indented panels) are gone, all the rounded corners are gone. Everything is square, flat, and surrounded by a black line. Not nice to sit and look at, when you are used to prettiness – and all the more unpleasant when you wrote the apps and know how much work you put into making them pretty and pleasant to use. And the buttons look like they were sketched in as placeholders. All the new icons are monochrome: white on black. I’m guessing that this is to look “simplistic” and “fresh” – but if that’s the case, why is Edges icon Blue, and curly? Consistency is not an MS trait here… Tiles are horrible – particularly the “live” ones. Fortunately, they are easy to get rid of, and never see again. 2) It doesn’t like you. Like me, you probably had a local login on your system – in theory that is still available, but Win 10 doesn’t make it easy to do, so you give in and sign in with your Microsoft ID. Which works fine! Until you try to edit a file in Word (which works, Office 2010 is still running under Win 10) and notice (too late) that it’s read only. Everything in your documents folder – which for me is everything (including projects) to make it easy to back up – is read only. You can fix this – I explained how a week ago – but it’s unnecessary, and if you aren’t computer literate it’s going to be a problem. 3) It doesn’t care about your backups. In fact, the default power scheme puts the computer to sleep about fifteen minutes in, which breaks the backup… It’s fixable…but why? Was the computer set to do that before? No. No, Microsoft, it wasn’t… 4) It doesn’t like your browser. So it sets Edge as your default. And Edge is…um…nasty. It’s ugly (so it fits right in with Win 10), but its toolbar takes too much room. It is faster than Chrome and Firefox – slightly – but that’s pretty irrelevant compared to the discomfort of using it. I went ba
Why am I not surprised... Microsoft appears to be taking a path whereby every product has to some how be everything o everyone. I am finding this especially true with their Visual Studio releases. I was hoping that Windows 10 would be somewhat of a return to the Windows 7 style. However, with the rush for everything new it appears from your observations and others that I have read that Microsoft is attempting to satisfy those who prefer the Windows 7 experience while providing for those that want to experience the latest in digital technologies. Unfortunately, all such attempts land up pleasing no one...
Steve Naidamast Sr. Software Engineer blackfalconsoftware@outlook.com
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Over a week with Win10, and…well…here it is. And I wish it wasn't so negative. I've been putting this off, because I wanted to be positive about it, but...it's at best halved my productivity since I installed it. Let me start by saying: I hated Win 8.0, and thought that Win8.1 was “too little, too late”. But I really wanted Win 10 to make me go “Wow!” It didn’t. If you come from Win 8.x, then Win 10 is better. But frankly, anything is better than Win 8.x, that's not difficult. If you come from Win 7, or Win XP then…oh dear. 1) It’s ugly. Very ugly. It’s flat, it’s dull, and all the apps that used to look good on Windows don’t anymore – all the 3D elements (including indented panels) are gone, all the rounded corners are gone. Everything is square, flat, and surrounded by a black line. Not nice to sit and look at, when you are used to prettiness – and all the more unpleasant when you wrote the apps and know how much work you put into making them pretty and pleasant to use. And the buttons look like they were sketched in as placeholders. All the new icons are monochrome: white on black. I’m guessing that this is to look “simplistic” and “fresh” – but if that’s the case, why is Edges icon Blue, and curly? Consistency is not an MS trait here… Tiles are horrible – particularly the “live” ones. Fortunately, they are easy to get rid of, and never see again. 2) It doesn’t like you. Like me, you probably had a local login on your system – in theory that is still available, but Win 10 doesn’t make it easy to do, so you give in and sign in with your Microsoft ID. Which works fine! Until you try to edit a file in Word (which works, Office 2010 is still running under Win 10) and notice (too late) that it’s read only. Everything in your documents folder – which for me is everything (including projects) to make it easy to back up – is read only. You can fix this – I explained how a week ago – but it’s unnecessary, and if you aren’t computer literate it’s going to be a problem. 3) It doesn’t care about your backups. In fact, the default power scheme puts the computer to sleep about fifteen minutes in, which breaks the backup… It’s fixable…but why? Was the computer set to do that before? No. No, Microsoft, it wasn’t… 4) It doesn’t like your browser. So it sets Edge as your default. And Edge is…um…nasty. It’s ugly (so it fits right in with Win 10), but its toolbar takes too much room. It is faster than Chrome and Firefox – slightly – but that’s pretty irrelevant compared to the discomfort of using it. I went ba
OriginalGriff wrote:
- It’s ugly. Very ugly. It’s flat, it’s dull, and all the apps that used to look good on Windows don’t anymore – all the 3D elements (including indented panels) are gone, all the rounded corners are gone. Everything is square, flat, and surrounded by a black line. Not nice to sit and look at, when you are used to prettiness – and all the more unpleasant when you wrote the apps and know how much work you put into making them pretty and pleasant to use. And the buttons look like they were sketched in as placeholders. All the new icons are monochrome: white on black. I’m guessing that this is to look “simplistic” and “fresh” – but if that’s the case, why is Edges icon Blue, and curly? Consistency is not an MS trait here…
My thinking on the ugly metro look is that all the niceties that went into Win7 and the Aero desktop took processing power. Trying to replicate that feature on a phone proved too problematic so they went the "It's a feature, not a bug route" and went flat with everything to keep the UI responsive. It seemed that almost immediately Android and Apple did the same thing.
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Another negative to add - it no longer highlights the title bar of the active window. Probably OK if you are using full screen apps, but awful if you're on multiple screens. It also broke my mouse.
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Over a week with Win10, and…well…here it is. And I wish it wasn't so negative. I've been putting this off, because I wanted to be positive about it, but...it's at best halved my productivity since I installed it. Let me start by saying: I hated Win 8.0, and thought that Win8.1 was “too little, too late”. But I really wanted Win 10 to make me go “Wow!” It didn’t. If you come from Win 8.x, then Win 10 is better. But frankly, anything is better than Win 8.x, that's not difficult. If you come from Win 7, or Win XP then…oh dear. 1) It’s ugly. Very ugly. It’s flat, it’s dull, and all the apps that used to look good on Windows don’t anymore – all the 3D elements (including indented panels) are gone, all the rounded corners are gone. Everything is square, flat, and surrounded by a black line. Not nice to sit and look at, when you are used to prettiness – and all the more unpleasant when you wrote the apps and know how much work you put into making them pretty and pleasant to use. And the buttons look like they were sketched in as placeholders. All the new icons are monochrome: white on black. I’m guessing that this is to look “simplistic” and “fresh” – but if that’s the case, why is Edges icon Blue, and curly? Consistency is not an MS trait here… Tiles are horrible – particularly the “live” ones. Fortunately, they are easy to get rid of, and never see again. 2) It doesn’t like you. Like me, you probably had a local login on your system – in theory that is still available, but Win 10 doesn’t make it easy to do, so you give in and sign in with your Microsoft ID. Which works fine! Until you try to edit a file in Word (which works, Office 2010 is still running under Win 10) and notice (too late) that it’s read only. Everything in your documents folder – which for me is everything (including projects) to make it easy to back up – is read only. You can fix this – I explained how a week ago – but it’s unnecessary, and if you aren’t computer literate it’s going to be a problem. 3) It doesn’t care about your backups. In fact, the default power scheme puts the computer to sleep about fifteen minutes in, which breaks the backup… It’s fixable…but why? Was the computer set to do that before? No. No, Microsoft, it wasn’t… 4) It doesn’t like your browser. So it sets Edge as your default. And Edge is…um…nasty. It’s ugly (so it fits right in with Win 10), but its toolbar takes too much room. It is faster than Chrome and Firefox – slightly – but that’s pretty irrelevant compared to the discomfort of using it. I went ba
I am not a Microsoft worker, employee and I have no relationship with them. This are my opinions as a user. I do not agree with you.
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- It’s ugly. Very ugly. It’s flat, it’s dull, and all the apps that used to look good on Windows don’t anymore – all the 3Delements (including indented panels) are gone, all the rounded corners are gone. Everything is square, flat, and surrounded by a black line. Not nice to sit and look at, when you are used to prettiness – and all the more unpleasant when you wrote the apps and know how much work you put into making them pretty and pleasant to use. And the buttons look like they were sketched in as placeholders. All the new icons are monochrome: white on black. I’m guessing that this is to look “simplistic” and “fresh” – but if that’s the case, why is Edges icon Blue, and curly? Consistency is not an MS trait here… Tiles are horrible – particularly the “live” ones. Fortunately, they are easy to get rid of, and never see again.
As I can see, you love the aereal and 3D multicolored Windows. Vista was the top in this and 7 continued the idea. I think they are beautiful and make the screen looks nice, but they swallow resources like giant. It is possible that great part of Vista's dislike was exactly this. Computers in 2007, the year of Vista, weren't so powerfull, so putting in them an OS like Vista made them run like a turtle and non responsive so users started to feel uncomfortable. When Vista appeared, I used to use a really powerful machine, (for that time :) ) and I had only a few problems with this OS (some drivers didn't work well one or two programs that needed to be adjusted...). I don't hate Vista, nor 7. Today we can find a slow machines, with 2 GB or less of RAM, and Atom or Celeron processors, which can make your live really hard if you need to work with them. If you use an OS with crystal and 3D and all that, an important part of the machine resources will be used in showing the windows, icons, etc. For this, I prefer a responsive plain OS over turtle 3D crystal OS.
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- It doesn’t like you. Like me, you probably had a local login on your system – in theory that is still available, but Win 10 doesn’t make it easy to do, so you give in and sign in with your Microsoft ID. Which works fine! Until you try to edit a file in Word (which works, Office 2010 is still running under Win 10) and notice (too late) that it’s read only. Everything in your
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Over a week with Win10, and…well…here it is. And I wish it wasn't so negative. I've been putting this off, because I wanted to be positive about it, but...it's at best halved my productivity since I installed it. Let me start by saying: I hated Win 8.0, and thought that Win8.1 was “too little, too late”. But I really wanted Win 10 to make me go “Wow!” It didn’t. If you come from Win 8.x, then Win 10 is better. But frankly, anything is better than Win 8.x, that's not difficult. If you come from Win 7, or Win XP then…oh dear. 1) It’s ugly. Very ugly. It’s flat, it’s dull, and all the apps that used to look good on Windows don’t anymore – all the 3D elements (including indented panels) are gone, all the rounded corners are gone. Everything is square, flat, and surrounded by a black line. Not nice to sit and look at, when you are used to prettiness – and all the more unpleasant when you wrote the apps and know how much work you put into making them pretty and pleasant to use. And the buttons look like they were sketched in as placeholders. All the new icons are monochrome: white on black. I’m guessing that this is to look “simplistic” and “fresh” – but if that’s the case, why is Edges icon Blue, and curly? Consistency is not an MS trait here… Tiles are horrible – particularly the “live” ones. Fortunately, they are easy to get rid of, and never see again. 2) It doesn’t like you. Like me, you probably had a local login on your system – in theory that is still available, but Win 10 doesn’t make it easy to do, so you give in and sign in with your Microsoft ID. Which works fine! Until you try to edit a file in Word (which works, Office 2010 is still running under Win 10) and notice (too late) that it’s read only. Everything in your documents folder – which for me is everything (including projects) to make it easy to back up – is read only. You can fix this – I explained how a week ago – but it’s unnecessary, and if you aren’t computer literate it’s going to be a problem. 3) It doesn’t care about your backups. In fact, the default power scheme puts the computer to sleep about fifteen minutes in, which breaks the backup… It’s fixable…but why? Was the computer set to do that before? No. No, Microsoft, it wasn’t… 4) It doesn’t like your browser. So it sets Edge as your default. And Edge is…um…nasty. It’s ugly (so it fits right in with Win 10), but its toolbar takes too much room. It is faster than Chrome and Firefox – slightly – but that’s pretty irrelevant compared to the discomfort of using it. I went ba
And then this... Apparently, MS is logging a LOT of information and transferring to their servers[^] Not sure how true or otherwise this is, but I am certainly not upgrading anytime soon.
Happiness will never come to those who fail to appreciate what they already have. -Anon
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Over a week with Win10, and…well…here it is. And I wish it wasn't so negative. I've been putting this off, because I wanted to be positive about it, but...it's at best halved my productivity since I installed it. Let me start by saying: I hated Win 8.0, and thought that Win8.1 was “too little, too late”. But I really wanted Win 10 to make me go “Wow!” It didn’t. If you come from Win 8.x, then Win 10 is better. But frankly, anything is better than Win 8.x, that's not difficult. If you come from Win 7, or Win XP then…oh dear. 1) It’s ugly. Very ugly. It’s flat, it’s dull, and all the apps that used to look good on Windows don’t anymore – all the 3D elements (including indented panels) are gone, all the rounded corners are gone. Everything is square, flat, and surrounded by a black line. Not nice to sit and look at, when you are used to prettiness – and all the more unpleasant when you wrote the apps and know how much work you put into making them pretty and pleasant to use. And the buttons look like they were sketched in as placeholders. All the new icons are monochrome: white on black. I’m guessing that this is to look “simplistic” and “fresh” – but if that’s the case, why is Edges icon Blue, and curly? Consistency is not an MS trait here… Tiles are horrible – particularly the “live” ones. Fortunately, they are easy to get rid of, and never see again. 2) It doesn’t like you. Like me, you probably had a local login on your system – in theory that is still available, but Win 10 doesn’t make it easy to do, so you give in and sign in with your Microsoft ID. Which works fine! Until you try to edit a file in Word (which works, Office 2010 is still running under Win 10) and notice (too late) that it’s read only. Everything in your documents folder – which for me is everything (including projects) to make it easy to back up – is read only. You can fix this – I explained how a week ago – but it’s unnecessary, and if you aren’t computer literate it’s going to be a problem. 3) It doesn’t care about your backups. In fact, the default power scheme puts the computer to sleep about fifteen minutes in, which breaks the backup… It’s fixable…but why? Was the computer set to do that before? No. No, Microsoft, it wasn’t… 4) It doesn’t like your browser. So it sets Edge as your default. And Edge is…um…nasty. It’s ugly (so it fits right in with Win 10), but its toolbar takes too much room. It is faster than Chrome and Firefox – slightly – but that’s pretty irrelevant compared to the discomfort of using it. I went ba
It seems most of your dislikes are about aesthetics, which, you know, are very personal. I personally like how it looks very much. Metro apps, I don't use them, so they don't bother me. I don't use Windows Defender, so it doesn't bother me as well. I don't think anybody should use Windows Defender, it's very badly rated by security firms. Use Karspersky or BitDefender instead (both have free versions). Cortana needs to collect your data to provide a better user experience, it needs to know you, to better serve you. I'm not really concerned with all that privacy paranoia. I don't really care, I'm not a criminal and have nothing to hide. And all the rest are all about fine tuning the OS to your taste, like power plan, security level, etc. Which you do it anyways in any fresh OS setup. By the way, don't forget to turn off the setting that makes your PC a P2P server for windows update. It's on by default and if you don't, you will be serving windows updates to the world, with your bandwidth. I love Windows 10, it has many cool features. Some I'm still to experiment with. Hopefully it will sink into you :)
To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems - Homer Simpson ---- Our heads are round so our thoughts can change direction - Francis Picabia
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Thank you for taking the time to write that great description. Very clearful and useful. I have W7 in my laptop but I only use it to play, for anything else I have my Linux (Fedora in my case). My wife's laptop came with W8, wich have been updated to W8.1, but never udes as my wife (thanks God) got used to use Fedora too. So, reading your post, I will conserve my well working Windows 7 for a long time.
You will probably want to upgrade your laptop to Windows 10 at some point, so your games can take advantage of DirectX 12 new features. Nvidia will soon release drivers that will cover a lot of the older graphics cards to take advantage of it. So, if you only use it for gaming, if you don't like it, it won't bother you.
To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems - Homer Simpson ---- Our heads are round so our thoughts can change direction - Francis Picabia
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Over a week with Win10, and…well…here it is. And I wish it wasn't so negative. I've been putting this off, because I wanted to be positive about it, but...it's at best halved my productivity since I installed it. Let me start by saying: I hated Win 8.0, and thought that Win8.1 was “too little, too late”. But I really wanted Win 10 to make me go “Wow!” It didn’t. If you come from Win 8.x, then Win 10 is better. But frankly, anything is better than Win 8.x, that's not difficult. If you come from Win 7, or Win XP then…oh dear. 1) It’s ugly. Very ugly. It’s flat, it’s dull, and all the apps that used to look good on Windows don’t anymore – all the 3D elements (including indented panels) are gone, all the rounded corners are gone. Everything is square, flat, and surrounded by a black line. Not nice to sit and look at, when you are used to prettiness – and all the more unpleasant when you wrote the apps and know how much work you put into making them pretty and pleasant to use. And the buttons look like they were sketched in as placeholders. All the new icons are monochrome: white on black. I’m guessing that this is to look “simplistic” and “fresh” – but if that’s the case, why is Edges icon Blue, and curly? Consistency is not an MS trait here… Tiles are horrible – particularly the “live” ones. Fortunately, they are easy to get rid of, and never see again. 2) It doesn’t like you. Like me, you probably had a local login on your system – in theory that is still available, but Win 10 doesn’t make it easy to do, so you give in and sign in with your Microsoft ID. Which works fine! Until you try to edit a file in Word (which works, Office 2010 is still running under Win 10) and notice (too late) that it’s read only. Everything in your documents folder – which for me is everything (including projects) to make it easy to back up – is read only. You can fix this – I explained how a week ago – but it’s unnecessary, and if you aren’t computer literate it’s going to be a problem. 3) It doesn’t care about your backups. In fact, the default power scheme puts the computer to sleep about fifteen minutes in, which breaks the backup… It’s fixable…but why? Was the computer set to do that before? No. No, Microsoft, it wasn’t… 4) It doesn’t like your browser. So it sets Edge as your default. And Edge is…um…nasty. It’s ugly (so it fits right in with Win 10), but its toolbar takes too much room. It is faster than Chrome and Firefox – slightly – but that’s pretty irrelevant compared to the discomfort of using it. I went ba
Griff, I get happier and happier that I decided to sit this one out. My systems were all set to upgrade and something in my head screamed DON'T so I removed that KB fix that would have performed the upgrade. The more I read in various places the more I realize I dodged a bullet. Win7 is on all of my machines except my main development box which has 8.1 and works FINE. I placed "Start8" on this guy and boot up in desktop mode. The desktop GUI in 8.1, although flattened compared with Win7 has actually grown on me a bit, it's certainly not a problem. My apps still look fine. I checked all this out on a VM with Win10 and found the same things you did with regard to the GUI and personally thought it sucked. Thanks for your detailed review. I'm convinced I made the right call by staying put. I've got better things to do than fiddle with the OS anymore anyway. Thanks, -ClockMeister
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Over a week with Win10, and…well…here it is. And I wish it wasn't so negative. I've been putting this off, because I wanted to be positive about it, but...it's at best halved my productivity since I installed it. Let me start by saying: I hated Win 8.0, and thought that Win8.1 was “too little, too late”. But I really wanted Win 10 to make me go “Wow!” It didn’t. If you come from Win 8.x, then Win 10 is better. But frankly, anything is better than Win 8.x, that's not difficult. If you come from Win 7, or Win XP then…oh dear. 1) It’s ugly. Very ugly. It’s flat, it’s dull, and all the apps that used to look good on Windows don’t anymore – all the 3D elements (including indented panels) are gone, all the rounded corners are gone. Everything is square, flat, and surrounded by a black line. Not nice to sit and look at, when you are used to prettiness – and all the more unpleasant when you wrote the apps and know how much work you put into making them pretty and pleasant to use. And the buttons look like they were sketched in as placeholders. All the new icons are monochrome: white on black. I’m guessing that this is to look “simplistic” and “fresh” – but if that’s the case, why is Edges icon Blue, and curly? Consistency is not an MS trait here… Tiles are horrible – particularly the “live” ones. Fortunately, they are easy to get rid of, and never see again. 2) It doesn’t like you. Like me, you probably had a local login on your system – in theory that is still available, but Win 10 doesn’t make it easy to do, so you give in and sign in with your Microsoft ID. Which works fine! Until you try to edit a file in Word (which works, Office 2010 is still running under Win 10) and notice (too late) that it’s read only. Everything in your documents folder – which for me is everything (including projects) to make it easy to back up – is read only. You can fix this – I explained how a week ago – but it’s unnecessary, and if you aren’t computer literate it’s going to be a problem. 3) It doesn’t care about your backups. In fact, the default power scheme puts the computer to sleep about fifteen minutes in, which breaks the backup… It’s fixable…but why? Was the computer set to do that before? No. No, Microsoft, it wasn’t… 4) It doesn’t like your browser. So it sets Edge as your default. And Edge is…um…nasty. It’s ugly (so it fits right in with Win 10), but its toolbar takes too much room. It is faster than Chrome and Firefox – slightly – but that’s pretty irrelevant compared to the discomfort of using it. I went ba
- Entirely a matter of opinion, surely? There will be just as many wondering what all that past beautification had to do with anything. Surely, they will opine, what matters is function? 2) I've said previously that this is a gripe which seems to be bordering on unique to you. I started with a local account, an option clearly available in the initial upgrade, I later transferred to the MS account to test out some synchronised elements, and have recently returned to a local account. None of these changes involved any difficulty. 3) Again, in my initial update the power scheme was retained exactly as I previously had configured it. 4) So, you've never had to change your default browser before? When you installed W7, for example? Edge has a way to go - didn't we all know that? 5) MS apps use MS search engine shock! At least it is tweakable even if it feels like too much trouble. 6) So why did you? 7) Doctor, doctor it hurts when I do this. Well don't do it then! 8) Nope. Defender has worked without the slightest hitch since the upgrade. Is W10 perfect? No. Is it, as you suggest, terrible, unusable and infinitely annoying? No. Not at all. I wasn't going to upgrade. I now have, after a bit of experimenting in a VM, and I really haven't had any problems. I fully anticipated having to do some tweaking as you would when installing any new OS and have been more than surprised by just how little I've had to do. I've no interest in reversing your decision but I do think it should be up to each of us to make that decision for ourselves on our own terms which requires a rather less biassed assessment than your diatribe provides.
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Ouch... I'm currently running Win10 on my laptop, which came with Win8.1 and is only really used for vacations, LAN parties, and video chat while I'm doing something else on my Win7 desktop... Haven't tried upgrading anything important yet. Sounds to me like they focused on making it easy for all of the new installs and the computer-illiterates, while screwing over those of us who know what we're doing. Pretty dumb move, since when that "Upgrade to Windows 10" thing pops up, those illiterates ask US whether it's safe to click on. But hey... Weekly updates now, right? Maybe Microsoft will push a few upgrades and fix some of the headaches... I doubt they'll do anything about Google/Chrome vs. Bing/Edge, but the power settings, access rights, and malware things might get some attention.
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in?
Author of the Guardians Saga (Sci-Fi/Fantasy novels)Ian Shlasko wrote:
Sounds to me like they focused on making it easy for all of the new installs and the computer-illiterates, while screwing over those of us who know what we're doing. Pretty dumb move, since when that "Upgrade to Windows 10" thing pops up, those illiterates ask US whether it's safe to click on.
Ian, That's exactly what I was thinking. Glad I kept it confined to a VM to play with first. Was easy to delete: it's not going to touch any of my "live" systems!
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Very interesting: I have resisted the quite strong urge to upgrade and will not now do so. Windows 7 works very well, thank you and I see no need to cause myself a large dose of pain to upgrade to a system that, frankly, is not getting rave reviews here from anyone. I will wait until I buy a new machine that comes with it, perhaps after it has gone through a decent patching/upgrade/fix period. The urge to buy new shiny toys has lost it's appeal after being let down so many times by the promise of wonder but the delivery of disappointment.
Your post could have been written by me. Exactly. I sat here and watched (even played with it in a VM, checked to make sure my applications run there, etc.) Still ... there wasn't one (not ONE) feature offered that made me feel an OS retool was necessary; plus I hated the GUI!
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Over a week with Win10, and…well…here it is. And I wish it wasn't so negative. I've been putting this off, because I wanted to be positive about it, but...it's at best halved my productivity since I installed it. Let me start by saying: I hated Win 8.0, and thought that Win8.1 was “too little, too late”. But I really wanted Win 10 to make me go “Wow!” It didn’t. If you come from Win 8.x, then Win 10 is better. But frankly, anything is better than Win 8.x, that's not difficult. If you come from Win 7, or Win XP then…oh dear. 1) It’s ugly. Very ugly. It’s flat, it’s dull, and all the apps that used to look good on Windows don’t anymore – all the 3D elements (including indented panels) are gone, all the rounded corners are gone. Everything is square, flat, and surrounded by a black line. Not nice to sit and look at, when you are used to prettiness – and all the more unpleasant when you wrote the apps and know how much work you put into making them pretty and pleasant to use. And the buttons look like they were sketched in as placeholders. All the new icons are monochrome: white on black. I’m guessing that this is to look “simplistic” and “fresh” – but if that’s the case, why is Edges icon Blue, and curly? Consistency is not an MS trait here… Tiles are horrible – particularly the “live” ones. Fortunately, they are easy to get rid of, and never see again. 2) It doesn’t like you. Like me, you probably had a local login on your system – in theory that is still available, but Win 10 doesn’t make it easy to do, so you give in and sign in with your Microsoft ID. Which works fine! Until you try to edit a file in Word (which works, Office 2010 is still running under Win 10) and notice (too late) that it’s read only. Everything in your documents folder – which for me is everything (including projects) to make it easy to back up – is read only. You can fix this – I explained how a week ago – but it’s unnecessary, and if you aren’t computer literate it’s going to be a problem. 3) It doesn’t care about your backups. In fact, the default power scheme puts the computer to sleep about fifteen minutes in, which breaks the backup… It’s fixable…but why? Was the computer set to do that before? No. No, Microsoft, it wasn’t… 4) It doesn’t like your browser. So it sets Edge as your default. And Edge is…um…nasty. It’s ugly (so it fits right in with Win 10), but its toolbar takes too much room. It is faster than Chrome and Firefox – slightly – but that’s pretty irrelevant compared to the discomfort of using it. I went ba
One thing people need to keep in mind with Windows 10 is that YMMV. 1) I don't mind the new look, except for a couple of things, the difference between active and in-active windows needs to be less subtle and the borders need to be a bit thicker as it can be a PITA to resize windows when using a trackpad. Live tiles are fine, on a tablet, I don't need them on a desktop start menu. 2) If you're on a domain it doesn't ask for a Microsoft ID it just keeps the domain account, other than that enter a dummy account then continue without a Microsoft ID. 3) My backups are fine, scheduled task calling wbAdmin. 4) Take note, when upgrading there is a section where it tries to set the default apps, don't click next, instead click the link on the bottom left where it says "Customize default apps" or something similar and you can de-select all the new default apps. As for Edge, it is rough, one issue is that importing favourites causes them to be placed in alphabetical order with any folders placed at the bottom also there doesn't seem to be an easy way to re-order them. 5) I don't like Google either so not sure what the problem is here.. :-D 6) Cortana, well it works, personally I think it makes more sense on a phone than a desktop, I just can't get used to talking to my computer. 7) Don't use Metro apps except in tablet mode so no comment. 8) Never had Windows Defender do anything that weird, not even on my old Core2 duo laptop. Personally I don't have a problem with the majority of Win 10 except for Edge which does need work.
People are more violently opposed to fur than leather because it's safer to harass rich women than motorcycle gangs
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Indeed, I switched to Kubuntu; so thank you Microsoft for finally pushing me to make areal effort with Linux.
If I wasn't so deeply invested in development for the Microsoft platform (I.E. just a 'user') I'd have switched to my MacBook pro and OS/X. I really hate to say that. As it is, I think when it comes to upgrading ANYTHING Microsoft I'm at a wall that I'm simply not going to climb. I develop for the desktop and web using VS2008 and tools that came out right about then. Everything works. My applications even run on Win10 without any modification. Absolutely nothing I'm doing (either now or the foreseeable future) depends on upgrading the OS or those tools again.
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Nelek wrote:
I think I will start having a look in Linux
Also install both Mono and Wine. You'll miss having Visual Studio on there, regardless of what you do. The rest I did not miss. I love WinForms; they're predictable for anyone who has ever dealt with them, and it is nice to have a stable environment to put them in.
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^][](X-Clacks-Overhead: GNU Terry Pratchett)
Eddy Vluggen wrote:
I love WinForms; they're predictable for anyone who has ever dealt with them, and it is nice to have a stable environment to put them in.
Same here, it's what I base all my development on. My clients love the simple and reliable applications I develop for WinForms (and they run in Win10 too should anybody go there). Very mature development platform. I don't write "cute" games & stuff, just solid DB applications for small business.
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Thank you for your excellent report. The report itself being excellent, not the reported on. I too was hoping that Win10 would be a slightly better version of Win7. However, being only a better version of Win8 is not impetus enough to make me change. Back in the day I installed Win8 in a VM to test it. I gave it the mandatory two weeks and then... DELETED it while singing a happy working song! :laugh: I still have Vista running on a sandboxed machine along with DOS, Win95, Win98, XP and various Linii in offline VMs in case I ever needed them again. :sigh: But Win8 I deleted and erased every trace of it ever having been on any of my machines.:mad: I never bothered with Win8.1 even though I heard it was an improvement. :| I so wanted Win10 to be good as I fear that they will be dropping Win7 support as soon as they can, but... :(( :(( :((
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
Actually, Win8.1 with a couple of tweaks is fine. (Start8 and starting up in desktop mode). I never see the "metro" unless I specifically want to play a game that's there or something but as a work environment it's just fine. As I said in another post I get happier by the day I chose to sit this upgrade out. I'd rather get work done for my clients than screw around with the OS any more.
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One thing people need to keep in mind with Windows 10 is that YMMV. 1) I don't mind the new look, except for a couple of things, the difference between active and in-active windows needs to be less subtle and the borders need to be a bit thicker as it can be a PITA to resize windows when using a trackpad. Live tiles are fine, on a tablet, I don't need them on a desktop start menu. 2) If you're on a domain it doesn't ask for a Microsoft ID it just keeps the domain account, other than that enter a dummy account then continue without a Microsoft ID. 3) My backups are fine, scheduled task calling wbAdmin. 4) Take note, when upgrading there is a section where it tries to set the default apps, don't click next, instead click the link on the bottom left where it says "Customize default apps" or something similar and you can de-select all the new default apps. As for Edge, it is rough, one issue is that importing favourites causes them to be placed in alphabetical order with any folders placed at the bottom also there doesn't seem to be an easy way to re-order them. 5) I don't like Google either so not sure what the problem is here.. :-D 6) Cortana, well it works, personally I think it makes more sense on a phone than a desktop, I just can't get used to talking to my computer. 7) Don't use Metro apps except in tablet mode so no comment. 8) Never had Windows Defender do anything that weird, not even on my old Core2 duo laptop. Personally I don't have a problem with the majority of Win 10 except for Edge which does need work.
People are more violently opposed to fur than leather because it's safer to harass rich women than motorcycle gangs
I have spent almost as much time ranting about Win10 as I have trying to fix it. Now I have a stable install and I am gradually introducing it to my favourite programs (old school, don't like to call them applications). Yes I had a little issue with logins but it was easy to sort out. Dual booting was a problem until I killed fast start (didn't notice the difference). Generally it works. That's all I can honestly say. It hasn't blown me away with its wonderfulness and my personal preference is for the resource hungry Win7 look. Bearing in mind MS will probably stop supporting Win7 before too long I decided to bite the bullet and go for it. So far I haven't regretted it. The only bit that really doesn't work for me is Cortana.
I may not last forever but the mess I leave behind certainly will.
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Over a week with Win10, and…well…here it is. And I wish it wasn't so negative. I've been putting this off, because I wanted to be positive about it, but...it's at best halved my productivity since I installed it. Let me start by saying: I hated Win 8.0, and thought that Win8.1 was “too little, too late”. But I really wanted Win 10 to make me go “Wow!” It didn’t. If you come from Win 8.x, then Win 10 is better. But frankly, anything is better than Win 8.x, that's not difficult. If you come from Win 7, or Win XP then…oh dear. 1) It’s ugly. Very ugly. It’s flat, it’s dull, and all the apps that used to look good on Windows don’t anymore – all the 3D elements (including indented panels) are gone, all the rounded corners are gone. Everything is square, flat, and surrounded by a black line. Not nice to sit and look at, when you are used to prettiness – and all the more unpleasant when you wrote the apps and know how much work you put into making them pretty and pleasant to use. And the buttons look like they were sketched in as placeholders. All the new icons are monochrome: white on black. I’m guessing that this is to look “simplistic” and “fresh” – but if that’s the case, why is Edges icon Blue, and curly? Consistency is not an MS trait here… Tiles are horrible – particularly the “live” ones. Fortunately, they are easy to get rid of, and never see again. 2) It doesn’t like you. Like me, you probably had a local login on your system – in theory that is still available, but Win 10 doesn’t make it easy to do, so you give in and sign in with your Microsoft ID. Which works fine! Until you try to edit a file in Word (which works, Office 2010 is still running under Win 10) and notice (too late) that it’s read only. Everything in your documents folder – which for me is everything (including projects) to make it easy to back up – is read only. You can fix this – I explained how a week ago – but it’s unnecessary, and if you aren’t computer literate it’s going to be a problem. 3) It doesn’t care about your backups. In fact, the default power scheme puts the computer to sleep about fifteen minutes in, which breaks the backup… It’s fixable…but why? Was the computer set to do that before? No. No, Microsoft, it wasn’t… 4) It doesn’t like your browser. So it sets Edge as your default. And Edge is…um…nasty. It’s ugly (so it fits right in with Win 10), but its toolbar takes too much room. It is faster than Chrome and Firefox – slightly – but that’s pretty irrelevant compared to the discomfort of using it. I went ba
Your #1 point is mine too! I installed this hideous spectacle of a UI on my home PC. For my older eyes, everything is harder to discern. It works OK and I won't bother reverting but when I think about the Win 7 look and feel (which I stall have at work, hallelujah) I get pizzed off. Why, why, why did they do this to me? Who thought this look was an improvement? Part of it may be change for the sake of marketing, it must be significantly different to appear new. OMG, gag me with a spoon.
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Over a week with Win10, and…well…here it is. And I wish it wasn't so negative. I've been putting this off, because I wanted to be positive about it, but...it's at best halved my productivity since I installed it. Let me start by saying: I hated Win 8.0, and thought that Win8.1 was “too little, too late”. But I really wanted Win 10 to make me go “Wow!” It didn’t. If you come from Win 8.x, then Win 10 is better. But frankly, anything is better than Win 8.x, that's not difficult. If you come from Win 7, or Win XP then…oh dear. 1) It’s ugly. Very ugly. It’s flat, it’s dull, and all the apps that used to look good on Windows don’t anymore – all the 3D elements (including indented panels) are gone, all the rounded corners are gone. Everything is square, flat, and surrounded by a black line. Not nice to sit and look at, when you are used to prettiness – and all the more unpleasant when you wrote the apps and know how much work you put into making them pretty and pleasant to use. And the buttons look like they were sketched in as placeholders. All the new icons are monochrome: white on black. I’m guessing that this is to look “simplistic” and “fresh” – but if that’s the case, why is Edges icon Blue, and curly? Consistency is not an MS trait here… Tiles are horrible – particularly the “live” ones. Fortunately, they are easy to get rid of, and never see again. 2) It doesn’t like you. Like me, you probably had a local login on your system – in theory that is still available, but Win 10 doesn’t make it easy to do, so you give in and sign in with your Microsoft ID. Which works fine! Until you try to edit a file in Word (which works, Office 2010 is still running under Win 10) and notice (too late) that it’s read only. Everything in your documents folder – which for me is everything (including projects) to make it easy to back up – is read only. You can fix this – I explained how a week ago – but it’s unnecessary, and if you aren’t computer literate it’s going to be a problem. 3) It doesn’t care about your backups. In fact, the default power scheme puts the computer to sleep about fifteen minutes in, which breaks the backup… It’s fixable…but why? Was the computer set to do that before? No. No, Microsoft, it wasn’t… 4) It doesn’t like your browser. So it sets Edge as your default. And Edge is…um…nasty. It’s ugly (so it fits right in with Win 10), but its toolbar takes too much room. It is faster than Chrome and Firefox – slightly – but that’s pretty irrelevant compared to the discomfort of using it. I went ba
Thanks. I wondered. I need a computer that works good for development, photo and video editing, multiple browsers.... Win 7 is great, but I was open to 10. I hate the flat style and no borders. That style came with the excuse that they were distractions, but it is really that phones don't have the room. They aren't distractions, they are important information on a desktop. In that I have figured out already that Win 10 is mostly made for spying on you, I have been developing a Linux Mint installation for everything but VS and video editing. I'm in the middle of getting Wine in for 90% of what I do. Then I can install solitaire and NotePad++. 95% of the time I am just browsing, writing, playing solitaire or editing photos (Oh Gimp it all!). I'll turn on Windows when I need to.
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Eddy Vluggen wrote:
I love WinForms; they're predictable for anyone who has ever dealt with them, and it is nice to have a stable environment to put them in.
Same here, it's what I base all my development on. My clients love the simple and reliable applications I develop for WinForms (and they run in Win10 too should anybody go there). Very mature development platform. I don't write "cute" games & stuff, just solid DB applications for small business.
