There are things from earlier Windows I wish they'd kept. Like the perfectly functional (actually more functional than their replacements) settings panels.

But I think the biggest thing I miss is the start menu being just a view of a folder hierarchy. The Windows 10 Start Menu is tied into the appstore and uses some kind of database that can easily get corrupted and cause it to stop working seemingly randomly. Sometimes performing the right voodoo magic can fix it, but usually it means an in-place upgrade (aka reinstall). Go on, look for "Windows 10 start button doesn't work" on google. Fun reads.

It's an example of how complexity meant to make things easier often just makes them rigid and unfixable when shit inevitably goes wrong. The original start menu was so stupidly simple that it was almost impossible for anything to go wrong in the first place, and if it did, it was easy to reason about because it was simple. I miss that kind of design in my software.

Except for three, humongous improvements that the Windows 10 start menu has over 95:

* It is flush bottom right with the screen, making it a true "mile button". In 95, there was a tiny non-clickable border around it, so if you just slammed your mouse into the corner, it would not work; someone who worked on Mac OS described MSFT as "narrowly snatching defeat from the jaws of victory" compared to the mac's menu bar, which was perfectly flush to the top of the screen and thus a "mile high bar". I think this was actually done with XP?

* After clicking it, you can immediately type the name of the program you want to run, instead of having to click the "Run" entry. I switched off of Gnome onto Windows after learning that this aspect of my workflow wouldn't need to change. I think this was actually done with Vista?

* Subfolders are opened by clicking instead of hovering. Nothing makes me more frustrated than accidentally mousing over the wrong part of the menu and closing a sub-sub-folder. [hyperbole]Whoever invented mouse-over menus should be shot.[/hyperbole]

> I think this was actually done with XP?

XP has a hack where if you click the bottom row of pixels on the screen, your mouse cursor is magically moved up enough pixels so you hit the buttons instead of the dead area.

> immediately type the name of the program you want to run, instead of having to click the "Run" entry

Why click anything at all if you're going to be typing anyway? Pressing Win + R has worked since the beginning, taking you directly to the "Run" dialog.

> mousing over the wrong part of the menu and closing a sub-sub-folder

The classic start menu (since Windows 98, or Windows 95 with IE 4) allows you to easily rearrange the entries by drag and drop. If you organize it such that it doesn't have any sub-sub-folders, it works much better. :)

On the other hand, if you just let things stay where the installers put them, it's pretty terrible. Each application takes something like 5 clicks: Start -> Applications -> SomeVendor -> SomeApplication -> SomeApplication. I guess this is the way most people had it, so that's why Microsoft gave up on structure and focused on search.

> Why click anything at all if you're going to be typing anyway? Pressing Win + R has worked since the beginning, taking you directly to the "Run" dialog.

Even fewer keystrokes, and less typing with Win 10: hit Win key, start typing Word (or settings, or mouse, or whatever), hit enter. The Start menu pops up, and is searched/filtered as you type. Compare this with the previous option (which still continues to work as well): Win key + R, type msword, hit enter. Not much in it with this example, but it's a neat way to access Start menu items rapidly.

For reasons I haven't yet explored, it occasionally fails to find an item, which is more puzzling than annoying. An item can be right there, and the keystroke search fails to find it. I miss the simplicity others have mentioned of the 95 Start menu simply being nested folders.

I found that Windows 10 search is not quite as good as 8.1. I know the problem you're talking about, and it never seemed to happen to me on 8.1, only 10. They jacked the program search indexing somewhat in 10, it was perfect in 8.1.

If you want to be extra fast, you can set Windows to open folders with a single click instead of a double click[1].

[1] http://www.thewindowsclub.com/how-to-change-double-click-to-...

That problem increases when you throw a 4k monitor into the mix.

Even worse: A 4K main monitor, and a secondary 1080p one

> Running the latest version of 10 it still feels very unfinished which I hope Microsoft intend to do something about.

Might depend on what particular parts of the OS you come across. I use Win10 on my work notebook [1] and besides the long startup times [2], I haven't noticed anything "unfinished". In fact, Windows very subjectively feels more polished than macOS which I used before (until December).

Then again, I don't use much of it: I only run Firefox, Slack, Outlook, and VirtualBox where the actual work is going on in a Linux VM.

[1] Probably not the "latest" version though. I get to use whatever our corporate update server hands out.

[2] Compared to my private Linux machines. macOS also took several minutes from turning on the machine to everything having fully settled in.

Pretty sure he is referring to the configuration structure. You get this fancy 8.1 sidebar configuration screens that may solve 80% of a average users tasks, but once you start digging you'll find configuration Windows in the style of W7, and if you dig even harder you'll even find stuff that looks straight out of 98.

I am a linux users myself, configuration inconsistency gives me nightmares.

> You get this fancy 8.1 sidebar configuration screens that may solve 80% of a average users tasks, but once you start digging you'll find configuration Windows in the style of W7, and if you dig even harder you'll even find stuff that looks straight out of 98.

Yes. And another really mind-boggling example is the Control Panel. There's actually two of them (or more, depending on how you see things). We have both the old Control Panel and the new Settings user interfaces for configuring various settings in the operating system. Some configuration options are in Control Panel and Settings, and some options are only available in one of the interfaces. That's a UX fk up if you ask me.

Imagine that situation in macOS, there being two System Preferences apps with completely different looks. They would both have some commonalities, but many options would only show up in one of the apps. Would. Not. Happen.

To be honest my impression of Mac is not to different. You have Gui only and terminal only config settings and some that mix both concepts in a painfully unobvious way (like xcode license agreements)

However it is still a lot cleaner and more consistent than win 10. Agreed.

That and high DPI inconsistencies make the Windows 10 experience pretty rough.

Honestly I much prefer the old control panel and use it whenever possible on Windows 10. There is very little you actually need the new Settings dialog for. But I completely understand why it exists, the control panel is way too complex for the average user.