Over a week with Windows 10 - some observations.
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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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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
This doesn't surprise me at all. The direction MS has been going with Windows has pretty much convinced me that W7 is the last Microsoft Windows version I will use. When that is no longer feasible my VM Linuxes will become my mainstay.
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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 ran it for a day then reverted back to Win 7. Then, after reading about the privacy and the poor performance issues I know I will never install it again. As a personal protest, I wiped windows off my backup PC and installed Ubuntu.
73
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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.
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I've noticed something very important, so EVERYONE PAY ATTENTION, GOD DAMN IT!... which is that Windows 10 works much, much better as a clean install than as an upgrade. But do the upgrade anyway, then reinstall it from scratch, wiping everything out. Here's why: When Windows 10 first activates, it registers your PC on Microsoft's servers. By "your PC" I mean the motherboard, or the serial number in the processor, or something - not sure what (it'd be interesting to see how much of the PC you can change without breaking the process). But then, you can wipe your PC completely and reinstall Windows 10 WITHOUT entering a serial number (just keep selecting "skip" or "do this later" when it asks) and it'll auto-activate itself again once the installation is done, without you having to do anything: Microsoft's servers will recognize your hardware and make it happen, and you won't waste a serial number, or an installation, or whatever. Alles Klaar?
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Ah, yes - that's the one. I knew I'd seen it somewhere...
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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
Excellent observations; I pretty much have had the same experience and feelings. As for the loss of the Windows 7 look & feel, I'm most annoyed by the loss of the colored top bar. And the part about me using my E-mail address as my login was horrid; I managed to find an article that detailed how to get rid of it. One lingering problem I seem to be having is the the User Security, as some of my files seem to need to be changed to being owned by me (or whatever.) I bought a system that had 8.1 installed ( couldn't find one with 7), and I decided to completely rebuild it with 7; this has caused a lot of strange hardware issues, including not being able to use my MagicJack dongle. What do you know In 10, it works perfectly. There are still some issues that bug me, like not having file & icon associations persist through updates, but learned to live with 10, and hopefully Micro$oft will grt the hint to fix the remaining issues.
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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
That's one of the most inciteful summaries I've seen so far. With all its foibles, WinNT was the easiest to manage. Microsoft will have Win10 sorted out by 2020, just in time to make it obsolete and force us on to the next mistake.
The difficult may take time, the impossible a little longer.
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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
Well, I am still running windows XP and will do so for as long as I can before switching to Mac. I have used windows 7 on client computers and it's fine, though the nwer vesrions of Office with that agonising Ribbon of death are not. However, mainstream support has, I believe, already ended as have sales of windows 7 (correct me if I am wrong). At least with XP I don't have to have a coffee, my old PC boots quick as a flash. The only downside is I cannot use the latest versions of VS express and Netbeans, but then I don't need to at the moment. Eventually my IDE will be too many versions behind and then I will have to switch. This old PC does what I want - the OS is easy to use, I can write the applications I need, I can do the computer graphics I spend so much time on, I can manage my website, and it generally works very well. (It can overheat when doing graphics intensive tasks on a very hot day though, but I monitor its temperature and pause it if necessary). What would make me buy a new PC with a Microsoft OS? One that is like Windows XP, only newer, more powerful, faster, respected my privacy and was more secure. Basically a better version of Windows XP would make me buy a new PC today (or as soon as I have a day off work). No hope there then.
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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
