I honestly think that the new tab/news/spam page in IE/Edge is (and has been, forever) the single biggest factor driving people to Chrome and Firefox. Every time you open it you’re greeted with all this complete junk, making the whole experience stuttering and slowing down your flow. I dread having to open IE on systems with no alternative just because it’s always so bad. Edge might actually be pretty good, but I will never know it because the initial experience is just so bad.
That, and the in-app "make Chrome/FF the default browser" popup redirecting to a Windows settings page where when you choose anything else than Edge, you get yet another popup asking you to confirm that you really don't want to use the awesome browser that Edge is.
All this junk they've been doing to Windows lately is making me feel like a restricted guest in my own computer. I'll definitely be exploring alternatives next go around
If you've used Edge for more than a few minutes, it won't prompt you to "try Edge" or whatever it says.
They changed how default programs are set in Windows 10 so that malware can't change default file associations by itself anymore. That required moving away from using the Win32 API for that, and that is kind of the whole purpose of UWP-style apps and The New Settings pages within Windows 10.
You're goddamn right it's well thought out. But it's not thought out in the user's favor at all.
Because how many fucking times is it going to ask me "ARE YOU SURE YOU DONT WANT TO TRY EDGE?" "EDGE IS SAFEST" "EDGE IS MADE FOR WINDOWS 10, ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO SWITCH?" You literally have to click no 3 times just to get your default to something else.
None of the other "default apps" do the same thing. And still nothing stopping the file extensions from getting remapped. So that's kinda not thought out.
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.
Edge lets you turn that off - on the New Tab page, click on the cog symbol (Customize) and you can choose from New Tab page display settings: Top Sites & My Feed, Top Sites, or Blank Page.
ChrEdge Beta can hide the news feed if you choose Focused view, but currently all they do is put it after the page fold, so you see it if you merely scroll down. I've sent a Feedback request saying that's something that might keep me using Firefox as my default, and supposedly that's a feature they're working on.
The Firefox page doesn’t cause the browser to freeze up for 30 seconds while it loads all the crap. That’s my point with IE/Edge, not that the page exists to begin with.
You have a horribly under-specced PC or something. Edge tabs load for me in around 1 second when I launch the browser cold, and I don't have a particularly powerful PC or anything.
1 second is still too much time, and 30 seconds is indicative of either an exaggeration or a somewhat severe problem.
For some reason I decided to try Edge for a bit, and spent far too long trying to switch off this mess (googling for a solution) and never managed it. I gave up on the "use Edge" idea.
> Edge lets you turn that off - on the New Tab page, click on the cog symbol (Customize) and you can choose from New Tab page display settings: Top Sites & My Feed, Top Sites, or Blank Page.
I shouldn't have to turn off whatever spam they build into a paid for product. It should also be in the browser settings, not a confusingly placed and easy to miss hieroglyph. For me I don't even get those options, it's just a toggle to turn the news feed on or off, off leaves you with just a search bar, and bing is the only option builtin.
On my windows 10 computer, the browser settings have an option called "Open new tabs with", defaulting to "Top sites and suggested content". This can be changed to "A blank page", right there in the browser settings.
On the same computer, on the default start page ("Top Sites and suggested content"), the hieroglyph cog referenced above is conveniently place at the top right, and even has a label, too. It's called "Hide Feed".
Unfortunately Microsoft are the ones who decided to make Windows 10 a free upgrade for Windows 7/8 users, so we all bear the awfulness of them needing to sell sponsored spots in the OS to compensate for that loss of revenue. At least if the OS basically makes money on its own on an ongoing basis, we won’t need to ever pay for Windows updates again? Still, ugh.
edit: I’m agreeing with you guys here. I’d spend more on an “ad-free” Windows license if I had a choice, but that doesn’t exist unless you’re a volume license customer (LTSC) I wish they’d find some way to let people avoid the ads, like having them in Home and disabling them in Pro, as most laptops (even my Dell XPS) ship with Home. (They did try “Windows 8.1 with Bing” once. I guess it didn’t work out?)
For every previous version of windows you typically bought a new licence only when you purchased a new PC.
The fact that MS allowed upgrades to Widows 10 on old machines should not have affected their revenue to any great extent, those machines were never going to have a paid upgrade anyway.
I may be completely off-base since Microsoft surely has some numbers we don’t that justify their choice of licensing model, but from my perspective, and from a few real experiences helping family and friends, people figure their PCs were at the end of their life and needed an entire replacement. Installing the free Windows 10 upgrade changes their mind - now they think their computer is perfectly up to date, at least for a few more years. These are machines with specs that look like Core 2 Duo or 1st gen Core i3, 250 GB spinning rust drive, 4 GB RAM. Those specs are especially prolific in decommissioned office PCs sent to recyclers who give them a fresh 7 or 10 license. They’re cheap, plentiful, and come with warranty, so plenty of people go for them.
Another thing to consider is volume licenses weren’t able to take up the offer - the company had to pay for their Windows 10 upgrade. Enterprise licensing is the Microsoft money maker.
Not using Windows, but I have some machines with similar specs and they are quite useful even for browsing many if not most websites. But, you must have NoScript and ad blocking.
So to be fair to Microsoft, at least some, if not all of the blame must go to web developers.
I have always wondered how many big syndicates and governments actually push their malware via the msn homepage.
(Given that 99% of sysadmins will at some point be forced via msn, on the malware-portal that is Internet Explorer, to install a proper browser).
I really think, even if this isn't happening at scale, that this would be a great way to pwn even some of the biggest firms.
Scareware is distributed via ads on MSN. Normal users cant even close them, as soon as you close that ad it opens again, have to quit IE in the task manager to get rid of it.
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 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)
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 autoupdates some years ago. The foresight, i'm envious. But it's too late now and I think I can never have that.
I also remember some time there was an anti trust proceeding against Microsoft for shipping IE with windows as default. WTF happened to that and how is all this not a 1000x worse.
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.
They don't. [0] Ordinary people install Chrome, and FOSS-aware people install Firefox or one of its variants. Not many use IE/Edge.
I second the parent comment to yours: it's a pity Microsoft vandalise solid technology. Perhaps something could've become of Edge, had they done otherwise.
There's a certain irony in the way we avoid Edge to avoid its insufferable ads, given that they only make ad money if we decide to use it.
I always set the default page to about:blank as part of the initial configuration in all the browsers I've ever used. Edge is MS's poor clone of Chrome --- it neither appeals to those who actually want Chrome, nor those who want Firefox, nor even those who want IE. Of those I know who don't use Chrome or Firefox (and are not good with computer) but IE, I've heard them refer to Edge as "that weird ugly thing" when they manage to accidentally open it.
Side note, the Edge (not the ChromeEdge) has a nice feature where you can set aside all the tabs so that you can view them later with pretty much the same state, much like a tmux server. I couldn’t find similar features in other browser.
What's fun is that it's even the default on Windows Server systems. Why I'm forced to watch CSS animations on msn.com over an RPD session instead of defaulting to about:blank, I'll never know.
Because the layman windows server user would think the internet is broken if it stayed stuck on a blank page.
By the way, it should be easy enough to change the home page with a group policy or something if anybody actually cared about that. Companies usually change the homepage of all desktops to the intranet homepage.
What drives me away from Chrome on Windows is the very short freeze you have after you let the page idle for a while and try to scroll again. It was introduced earlier this year, I think.
I am using a decent gaming rig, so I don’t think it is the performance issue. I think it might be related to the touchpad. Are you using mouse for scrolling?
I agree with this article, but I think it can be summed up as, "People need the option to buy the LTSB release of Windows 10". Microsoft refuses to sell it to consumers. It is an enterprise only option (unless that has recently changed and I am not aware of it).
I have one windows 7 machine for playing WoW and it will stay on 7 until I can get the LTSB release of Windows 10 and the ability to turn off 100% of the telemetry, for real. If Blizzard would build an unsupported 64 bit ELF binary for WoW, then I would not even have windows. I'm not using wine.
According to people who have purchased from there, they're VL keys that can be used many times (e.g. 2500 times), so they just sell the same key over and over to multiple people:
> ...sellers on eBay are probably people that work for companies that get GVLK and MAK Product Keys from MSDN/Microsoft and then just sell 'em off because the companies they work for more than likely would never even notice? I mean, with MAK Product Keys having from 2500 to 5000 activations per key, at least if they still work the same way they did in Vista/7 days, most companies that pay for volume licensing never ever actually use anywhere near that many. [0]
> after about 3 hours I got a mail with a key and a link to download "LTSCX64.2019.ENU.JAN2019.iso" from googledrive.
I did not download the ISO, so I cannot comment on that, but I typed the key into VAMT and its description is "Win 10 RTM EnterpriseS Volume:MAK" and the key had 50 activations left.
I tried it on one of my LTSC 2019 installations and it worked fine.
I assume that the remaining activation count will decrease over time, even when I do not use the key on my other installations, as I suspect that the seller sells the same key to more than one buyer.. [0]
> so, after about a week all 50 activations of the key I got are gone.
since I only used 8 activations, one can be sure that the key was sold to multiple buyers.
business as usual on ebay.. [0]
It's probably against some contract somewhere, but IANAL.
They are pirating windows. They could be fined anywhere from hundreds of dollars to 150k per installation.
They are also participating in a commercial piracy endeavor that the company who was issued the key AND Microsoft have an interest in shutting down. Ms because such endeavors attract customers who could otherwise trivially be converted into buyers. Companies because they could get audited and fined.
This is as illegal and higher risk than torrent sites.
Depends on the country. I think the EU declared the resale of Windows licenses legal a few years ago. Microsoft trying to fight that doesn't make it illegal.
When you bought a physical item in a store you have a right to resell it be that a computer or a disk.
Even if you can resell a key as part of selling a copy of windows you paid for you can't sell your employers property, can't sell part of a contract, can't sell more than you actually paid for.
If the company purchased the right to have n machines at their company run windows and each key can be activated n * x times nobody sold you the right to sell n * x copies of windows to everyone on the internet.
Like it or not those agreements aren't sales and the keys aren't a physical item you have purchased they are just a technical measure to constrain users from sharing a single ISO file to their million closest friends.
Even if true, I rather doubt that extends to an employee selling access to their employer's volume licensing key (it seems clear that's what's happening here)
> According to people who have purchased from there, they're VL keys that can be used many times (e.g. 2500 times), so they just sell the same key over and over to multiple people
Erm, no - that's not how Microsoft's volume licensing works. Volume keys are issued to enterprises that buy them, and only that organisation is licensed to use them.
Unscrupulous employees have been known to sell the keys.
Did I say otherwise? That is exactly my point. The keys - bought by the enterprises - can be used many times, on their machines. However, people find those keys and sell them on eBay.
> The real solution is for Microsoft to treat its customers with a bit more respect.
This company (like most other companies) operates out of greed, and that doesn't go well with respect. They're just trying to milk as much as they can from you.
I feel like this attitude lets big companies off the hook in a way. Yes, as the company grows it becomes more likely that they'll make these compromises, but that doesn't mean it's inevitable.
While I agree it seems like it lets them off the hook, that's not on them, it's on the society that shrugs that off as "normal".
But if you follow the logical path from capitalism, it is most definitely inevitable. There is no way to maximize profits without hurting the users.
If one company does the right thing, another will take it's place because it will generate more profit.
Can you imagine a CEO constantly telling it's shareholders that they will not increase profits because they want to "treat customers more fairly"? He'd be sacked in the first opportunity.
Why would they when people keep buying it regardless? Why would a company ever change when they're making more money than ever and the consumers don't care?
You should check out Valve's Proton. It's wine, but not wine... It's another abstraction layer built on top and it is pretty amazing. For the most part it just works. Doing some quick searching it looks like people have WoW running on it.
I keep hearing this, but I have so far not been able to get a single game (even ones marked with excellent support) to work on proton. I really, really, really want it to work, though!
You can buy it for a couple of hundred bucks or thereabouts. You also need to buy some filler Microsoft stuff equivalent to paper clips to make up for the minimum requirement of 25 products. You will then be an Enterprise.
You can do it half legally with an MSDN subscription. Big one off cost but if you regularly toy with windows VMs or re-installing OS on hardware it might be a good option. The license restricts you to testing only.
Windows firewall will actually block the telemetry requests if you add all the telemetry hosts to it. Hosts file hacking doesn’t work because it bypasses that somehow.
Ugh, you know that the list of telemetry hosts is a moving target? How often do you update that list? How do you know your list is complete? How do you know that Windows firewall blocks all connections?
Then pirate it. What do you care? This is like pirating a show they refuse to put on Netflix. They don't give you the option to conveniently buy what you want, so pirate it.
Pirate KMS servers will go offline eventually right? Even if the legality isn’t a concern, the reliability and maintenance overhead is a problem. There are trust/malware concerns with client-side cracks as well.
If you want to skip straight to the piracy, here's an open source package for you, complete with keys, hosted ironically on Microsoft servers, that uses vlmcsd: https://github.com/ekistece/vlmcsd-autokms
It's a pretty clever hack. It runs the KMS emulator locally and fakes the network connection with a TAP device from OpenVPN. Works perfectly.
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.
NVIDIA ones. I tried with proprietary, MESA and Nouveau. Never managed to get the same experience as on Windows.
It's a shame, because it literally can't be anything but the software. It's the same hardware with different OSes.
Might even be windows specific optimizations on the games part, but in the end it doesn't matter.
The bottom line unfortunately is: it's significantly worse.
I wonder if you are actually using the nvidia driver or just installed it. You could trivially have installed the nvidia driver but actually be using nouveau. Running glxinfo in a terminal would probably be informative.
The complexity of setting this up would be a good point to address. Linux Mint for example has a tool to do this for you. This is logically a workaround for nvidia actually contributing an open source driver that doesn't suck.
There is a supposedly much better supported open source driver for new AMD hardware as well. Another thing the community is doing.
If the problem is with the closed source driver there isn't much the community can do. It's very hard to reverse engineer a complex device like a gpu. If the problem isn't games in general but that particular game there again isn't much the community can do.
That one hasn't gone offline in years, so I've never thought of this. Perhaps you are right, but I assume that it should be easy enough to find new ones if you need them. I wouldn't consider this approach to be "high maintenance".
Is this supposed to sound as nonsensical as those 90s "You wouldn't DOWNLOAD a CAR!" anti-piracy posters, or is this just a pleasant side effect of your poor analogy?
If I had billions in the bank and you gave detailed instructions on how to pick up the breadcrumbs I leave on the table of a restaurant, I wouldn't give a shit. But if they care so much they are welcome to break into my house and take my computer
Most of these are similar manifestations of the same root evil (not specific to Microsoft): Users don’t want Feature X but Company wants users to want Feature X. They release Feature X to the world. It’s a failure—nobody uses it. The PM or developers who invested in that feature need to justify the investment. So they make Feature X enabled by default. Users disable it. So they remove the disable option. Users ignore it. They add flashing notifications begging users to use it. They’re ignored too. They give Feature X a prominent, always on button right on the main screen. They add more keyboard and mouse shortcuts so there are more ways to invoke Feature X. They add dedicate hardware keys/buttons to invoke Feature X. They add full-screen reminders to remind users Feature X is so cool! They even make it so it’s easy to invoke Feature X by accident. While these things may slightly juice Feature X’s usage metrics, it just never takes off because users fundamentally don’t want it and nobody wants to admit failure.
Look at the software your company makes and I bet you can quickly find an example of this. It’s everywhere and it’s shameful.
This is painfully accurate, and in my experience working at large companies it will always be a "pet feature" of some executive, who is pushing it through ignoring all the data, user research or any other process that the company has in place. And all the rank-and-file employees have no choice but to roll their eyes and spend time and energy working on it while ignoring actual bugs and highly-requested features because it couldn't get prioritized high enough.
I actually wanted to like Cortana and really tried, but between the service actually being down, somehow not being available just from my device other times and the phone assistant app straight up not being available in my region it was just never good enough to like.
My company makes no software people don't want. I'm actually sort of surprised because my company is exactly the type of company that one would expect to do such a thing. I suspect it's more likely that we're not mature enough yet to have someone justify stupid options rather than benevolence.
Compatibility is absolutely essential; that's why there's only room for about two and a bit mobile OSs.
Competition can only work for things that are componentised and un-bundled. Since both profitability and security work against this, we end up with competing monoliths where you have to take the entire bundle of features and anti-features.
Competition doesn't necessarily imply that it bypasses sunk cost fallacy, or even that the competition won't do the same nonsense in a belief that feature X must be wanted.
I've installed Win10 on dozens of machines and I've never seen ads on the lock screen, in the taskbar, and in notifications like the article talks about. Maybe because I always say "no" to all those creepy tracking/advertising ID type options on the initial config screen and I always say no to Cortana at the same time.
What I heard (and it seems reasonable) is that MS included games like Solitaire and Minesweeper in 3.1 as a soft way of training the enormous user base who were using PCs for the first time in mouse functions like click, drag, right click and click precision. I guess now that everybody knows that , MS sees no practical reason to keep those games free.
Same here, but maybe the difference is that we install Windows 10 Pro whereas the author is a Windows 10 Home user? The article doesn't seem to state the version they are using.
Most annoying is that there are a large number of little bits of functionality that phone home or send information out into the ether: Windows Defender and its submitting of samples, searching via the Windows button, Task Scheduled telemetry items, a plethora of Control Panel privacy settings, etc. etc. etc.
Also annoying on Windows 10 Pro is that the same windows builds have slightly different functionality --- even if the machines have the exact same hardware.
For example, the Search History and Permissions is sometimes named Change the permissions and history of search, even for the same Windows 10 build. It's bizarre.
Also, don't get me started on the intellisense typing when the windows menu is open. (Really Windows, when I press the Start button and then type in Update, you search the web and show me Wikipedia information? And it takes like 5 seconds?)
Don't forget the lame This PC icon...
Sorry, this turned into a cathartic listing of Win 10 grievances. :)
> maybe the difference is that we install Windows 10 Pro whereas the author is a Windows 10 Home user
No, every installation of Windows 10 Pro I've seen had a start menu that was mostly ads (links to Candy Crush, Spotify, Office etc.) - I've also had the OS nag me about giving Edge a second chance.
This is in Germany, in case the region matters, and I always deny all spyware as far as possible using the GUI.
It removes nothing of any importance. The terrible WinRT photo viewer can be replaced with the classic one, which is still installed along with the OS and just needs to be enabled:
Most of those you can right click on and select uninstall now. It takes longer, but it feels safer to me because I have to take a second for each to think if I want it or not.
I was forced to upgrade my workstation to windows 10 and that’s exactly what i was doing yesterday after unsuccesfully trying to remove bloatware via control panel.
I am fumbling in windows 10. I have lost so much muscle memory due to this upgrade. While i know i’ll build it back I’m frustrated that I have to relearn things I was doing with my eyes closed.
Yeah don't do this - I did this once and I ended up having to reinstall since it broke enough stuff that the control panel wouldn't even work afterwards.
I've just done it to a VM and Control Panel is still there. I suggest you run:
get-appxpackage -allusers | fl name
and curate the list first and pipe that through remove-appxpackage. Quite a few appx thingies refused to uninstall due to being important! On the other hand so far this VM is working fine and by following a few of the other suggestions from howtogeek eg remove Bing from your start menu, it seems almost usable.
For some reasons I had varied results with this (within the same region). I've had installs where the Start menu was really polluted with all kinds of games, and installs where none of them were present. All of them are usually done from the latest ISO I could download from the MS page.
All of the installs were made on OEM machines (HP, Lenovo) that already came with a Pro license or upgrade option. This was done in a home environment so no AD/enterprise options, and never logging on with MS account. So I wonder if there's the possibility that specific OEMs, models, license keys get the treatment while others do not. I'm not sure if the behavior was tied to particular machines or not since I didn't follow the scientific method while doing installations (will do in the future).
Web results are still toggled, if you do not agree to Microsoft's data processing during installation you won't get that "feature". That said, search is downgraded from 7s. For instance, it doesn't look at start menu folder names nor executable name anymore...
Control panel items not showing in the start menu results anymore when you search is also in Win10 and it drives me crazy. It literally looks like the guys designing windows must be using a Mac themselves, or just aren’t computer guys. I just don’t get how things like than wouldn’t annoy them too.
My guess is that decision making in large companies is so slow, so bureaucratic, that everyone has given up on shipping anything else than a mediocre product, even if people individually would design it very differently if they could.
> It literally looks like the guys designing windows must be using a Mac themselves, or just aren’t computer guys.
Or maybe they're trying to kill the Control Panel all together and switch everyone to the new Settings app, but are aware that doing so immediately would lead to a lot of complaints? So they have both, while slowly nudging you towards using the Settings app so you wouldn't be too angry when you wake up one day in the future and find the Control Panel completely gone.
Except that until the functionalities of the control panel have been replicated in the new settings, we still need a way to access the control panel. Hiding those functionalities from search in between just doesn't make sense at all.
This. I think they removed at least half of the items from "Control Panel\All Control Panel Items" compared to Windows 7/8/first builds of 10. In a few years Control Panel will be removed altogether.
I'm reasonably sure Cortana is what displays the ads on the task bar. I've only seen them on others' home systems. I've absolutely seen ads on my start menu for Candy Crush and other MS Store games, but I shut them down with registry tweaks and the like..
> MS sees no practical reason to keep those games free.
It's a removed feature that essentially all users expect to be present. Charging for something like that is a good way to make unhappy customers.
Exactly. It's similar to providing trivial things at work. Don't offer free coffee - meh. Offer free coffee - that's cool. Take away free coffee - the world's ending, are people going to be fired soon?
I doubt they'll get more from the game sales than they lost in bad PR. But maybe I'm wrong, I don't do marketing.
> Charging for something like that is a good way to make unhappy customers.
I don't mean to sound snobby but I have the feeling that people who are emotionally invested in playing solitaire on a PC are the ones who are least likely to uninstall windows on favour of Linux or equivalent
Sorry - I should have been more general in my snobbery. I think that hardcore solitaire players are unlikely to want to learn an entirely new OS regardless of who made it
I turn Cortana off as much as I can as well, and still nearly every single Windows 10 Pro install so far, be it on hardware or in a VM, has gotten ads on the lock screen and in the Start Menu at some point. The only installs that were not affected are not allowed to speak to the internet directly. I don't use Windows as my daily driver, neither at work nor at home. But every time I start up one of the Windows 10s with their creepy features, I'm glad I don't have to put up with this all day.
Maybe it works for other people to continually futz around with the registry, changing values they don't really know what they are good for. But I don't want to feel like I have to fight the OS every time, just to do they same things I get hassle free from other OSes.
> What I heard (and it seems reasonable) is that MS included games like Solitaire and Minesweeper in 3.1 as a soft way of training the enormous user base who were using PCs for the first time in mouse functions like click, drag, right click and click precision. I guess now that everybody knows that , MS sees no practical reason to keep those games free.
That's fine, take them out of the OS. I'm not sure an OS should come preinstalled with games anyway.
But don't remove the games and then show me ads for them.
Me too, i never ever seen any ad on win10 - both home and pro versions(on a side note - home version is nigh unusable when it starts it's anti-malware scan - even on fresh install))
I do always turn off every possible telemetry setting.
I've never ever seen them at my work too - we use pro version of windows10 for most PCs.
I've tended to always chose the defaults and Yes to everything :) and have never seen any kind of Ads either. I don't have the people tab either! (although it appears like something i would have instantly flicked off without thinking)
I wonder if Microsoft engages in some kind of personification of OS settings...
I suspect most of the advertisers are going for big markets, if you live in a small non English speaking country then they might not have signed any advertisers on.
How about all the ways windows goes out of its way to hide the home folder, and then is now generating multiple places it calls “Documents”, “Pictures”, etc so you’re never really sure where anything is?
I think this is godsend. Before they do this people litter their files all over the filesystem. These magic folders reside in a user's home folder by default anyway.
Most Windows users don't really have much clue about the filesystem like everyone here does.
And is that desirable? Why do we want users to know less about how their computer works? Is it really a problem to know that you have a user directory with a bunch of other directories inside that hold certain classes of information by default?
When I open a command prompt (yes, I'm not the average user), I'm in my home directory, and if I create any files or folders, they'll be there by default. To access those files/folders, I used to go through the root of the filesystem (Users -> <username>), but I eventually just made a link in the file explorer to my home directory. Why doesn't that link at least exist by default? I've used enough GUI tools that default to that directory (i.e. WinSCP IIRC) that getting to it should be easy.
I think the reason that "most Windows users don't have a clue" is because Microsoft wants it that way for some reason. People were able to figure out DOS, yet these days giving them a link to their home directory is "too complicated"?
The modern developer mindset is that users are cattle. Explore pretty much anywhere developers hang out and ask them why things are the way they are and they'll tell you it's because users are morons. Developers used to want to actually help users make better use of their tools. Hell, computers used to boot into BASIC. Now developers just want to force carefully crafted single-purpose appliances on people so they have total control over what they do with it and can track everything for the purpose of making money. Then they lament that they are "forced" to do this. Jackasses.
As time has gone by, more and more people are starting to use computers. Before, only technically-minded people that were willing to invest in a learning curve would buy and use computers, but now even toddlers are users. People need computers, but they have other work to do, other things to learn. They don't want to have to invest time in learning how to use a computer, and I believe that's what's driving the dumbing-down of user interfaces. I don't think this was initiated by developers, and in that sense, they are forced to comply to market forces.
I still hate developing GUI apps on Web technology. Most of the stuff I program would best be used on a CLI. It would be simpler to program and would provide much more productivity benefits to an experienced user. However, it's not really an option, when most users don't even know how to make a bookmark or have little notion of what files are, much less how to use a terminal.
There's a difference between making things easier to understand and turning them into a nigh-useless playschool-brand version of themselves. The original Macintosh is what the former looks like: coherent metaphors, expected behavior, simple design. Today's "apps" are what the latter looks like.
> 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?
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.
Agreed. The average user loses a file when it falls out of the recent documents list, so it'd be nice if a power user at least had some clue where it might be found. Windows "search" is also buggered, as mentioned in the article, and only shows a handful of documents and a thousand irrelevant Bing search results when you're looking for a document.
> To access those files/folders, I used to go through the root of the filesystem (Users -> <username>), but I eventually just made a link in the file explorer to my home directory.
I just don't use the folders at all, and create my own directories off of the root, instead. It's much more convenient and has never caused me a problem.
I think a user does care if they can’t easily know if a document is on the cloud. Like you’re at a conference where you discover your desktop wasn’t saving to the cloud for some reason. The interface is identical between cases.
That is a UI problem. Overlay icon or something like it - or setting to make sure all documents are also present on your machine. I absolutely do not want to know how it's implemented and where to look if it's cloud or not.
They did sort-of roll back the Library stuff that Windows 7+ (or Vista+?) had. They’re still there but they’re no longer in “This PC”. So that’s now okay IMHO.
You can quickly access your user folder by going to the address bar and starting to type your user’s display name.
The "they don't screw with the path to things" makes a world of difference, IMO.
In macOS, the Music folder is literally ~/Music, and the Downloads folder is literally ~/Downloads. While your home folder isn't listed in Finder's sidebar by default, it can be enabled very easily in Finder's preferences.
It’s hard to believe how despite all the telemetry, Microsoft still manages to be so out of touch with their users’ actual needs. It’s almost like there’s a hidden agenda somewhere.
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 on. So instead of what most companies would do, which would be to figure out how these goals line up against a broader strategic vision of what Windows should be, at Microsoft they just let both tribes do their thing simultaneously until the leader of one tribe rises up high enough in the org chart to raze the other tribe’s villages and scatter its people to the four winds via a reorg.
This of course results in a deeply schizophrenic product, but that only matters to customers, and Microsoft gave up customers as a false god long ago. Now the only god that matters in Redmond is the God of Battle, and every PM sees his peers as obstacles that need to be cleared away for him to meet his destiny in Valhalla.
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) that's meant to make it easier for grandmas and end up making it worse for everyone else, like your computer isn't really fully yours (neither the resources of it or the freedom to decide to not run these daemons) comes from misguided UX designers who think they know better than you how a computer should be used and that they can earmark a fifth of your CPU at any time to do whatever they want.
The UI designers also won. Everything is a soulless black or white with one contrasting color. They managed to make this "There are two places you can modify settings with two disparate styles" because somehow that's better than one older looking but consistent place.
Even they lost. You cannot customize the colors in light mode even. Only dark mode allows it, and there of course the color is darkened.
The whole thing feels like a beta version. In fact, even Whistler betas were more polished than this.
OS cannot afford to break things, which apparently is MS modus operandi now.
It takes about 5 minutes of playing in settings to hit broken functionality. Bonus points if the breakage is forced by unchangeable domain policy in company.
I'm reading a book about the Vietnam War, A Bright Shining Lie, and it's making me realize how many problems are born out of how complicated large human organizations are.
I mean, it's obvious when I write it like that, but I think we have this platonic ideal of a company (or a government, or the military) somehow being this omniscient creature when instead it is filled with flawed humans who are seeing the world through various soda straws pointed in different directions.
Speaking of telemetry: I'm surprised Windows 10 is even allowed to be used in government or big corporations outside the US. If people were as paranoid as the US administration is about Huawei, Windows 10 would be on a black list of never to be installed software. Yet here we are.
As time goes on I feel more and more like this is the case. Not just in Windows, but in any application, power users are a minority.
There's also the issue with power users generally turning off as much telemetry as possible. To Microsoft we're much less visible than the average person who leaves everything on the default setting.
>It’s almost like there’s a hidden agenda somewhere.
It's not so much as a hidden agenda as sacrificing their primary product to be advertising for a different product and concept that consumers soundly rejected, and Microsoft's been trying to clean up the mess ever since. Ads and telemetry were just things that their new features supported, but weren't the driving force behind those features.
Wind the clock back to 2011. Desktop and laptop PC sales are declining and tablets are the new consumer hit. People are buying iPads (and to a lesser extent Android tablets) at an alarming rate, and this might be the end of a reliable revenue stream for Microsoft if people are replacing their old desktops and laptops with said iPads.
So, Microsoft comes up with the vision that their products will do more than an iPad can. Instead of having a standalone tablet as the home's primary computer, you'll buy a Microsoft tablet- which will not only be Just As Good as the iPad, but it'll also function as your main computer when you need it to. They even went so far as to create their own brand of tablet, but the extra hardware that needed to be provided for Windows to run smoothly (and the keyboard) meant that it would cost twice as much as the iPad (there was a neutered version that was comparable, but had no applications and outside of Office wasn't a suitable desktop replacement).
But there's another problem. Windows isn't a good tablet OS- the interface has been designed for a mouse and keyboard. So they come up with Metro and the brand new WinRT API with which to create applications, and spend a lot of time getting it ready.
Of course, since the entire vision of the future is "one Windows for everything", it made perfect sense for any system running this new version of Windows to use Metro. After all, they had just spent millions of dollars developing it and didn't want it to turn into another dead product.
So they made the fateful decision to deprecate the (already very much existing) desktop UI support in favor of Metro. It didn't matter that the interface was wholly unacceptable for desktop use, though it was Good Enough for the majority of the userbase- because people would be using Windows tablets and touchscreens in the near future anyway, in addition to their new Windows Phones (which would get quick application support because WinRT was a cross-platform solution).
That didn't turn out so well (Windows Phone is no more, UWP won't see further support as far as exclusive features go, and the only noteworthy Windows convertible tablet remains the Surface Pro) but it took a few years for that to become apparent- cue Windows 8.1 and later Windows 10 (the return of the Start Menu being a token gesture, since it lacked most of the functionality of the old Menu out of the box). There have been no major UI redesigns since, and everyone there's probably just trying to pick up the pieces until the next version arrives, if it indeed ever does.
If the telemetry says that many people use these features, are Microsoft out of touch? These are features we don’t use. But other people might.
My dad rang me once said that when playing solitaire it kept playing ads. I said he can buy it so the ads go away or find another app that doesn’t have ads. He’s like “ah what ever I’ll watch the ads”. He’s happy and content. Just wants solitaire.
I guess the ads in Solitaire may be less about making money off those ads themselves but more about reinforcing the idea that "ads are everywhere and that's OK" to get the masses used to ads (so they accept the other ads everywhere else).
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.
I'm talking about the obviously stupid features like the people hub or Bing search in start menu interfering with local results the user actually wants. Telemetry should obviously show that nobody uses these features successfully right?
They are the largest company by Market Cap. They're hardly out of touch with their users' needs. I use Windows 10 as my primary development system and it works great. Maybe you're out of touch?
I upgradet one Notebook at home to from Win7 to Win10. Besides of other things I couldn't believe the added Candy Crash in my Start Menu. In a home edition maybe .. but on Win Pro, serious?
I played back on the Win7 image pretty quick.
I'm anyway mostly Linux, but I don't think I'll ever move any machine to Win10.
You might think it's silly. Microsoft thinks it has massively cut down on malware installation. One of these is an aesthetic judgment. The other is a security judgment.
If your viewpoint is that of a power user who thinks everyone else should be one too, then it'd be fair to say they're orthogonal.
If your viewpoint is that of a product manager trying to give the most people the best experience you can, they're not orthogonal at all. You're trading a bit of scorn from a very small percentage of users for a larger number of very different users keeping their computers secure. Reducing the number of compromised windows installations is not silly at all.
The most critical useless feature (as it is now) is actually the Windows Store. What is Microsoft doing wrong that makes nobody use it? It could be a revolution (selling + updates).
In Windows 8, the Store and the not very good WinRT apps launched together. If they had launched with support for Win32 maybe it could have gotten traction. All your favorite desktop apps could be updated in a fell swoop without leaving junk on the system tray, extra updater services, or prompting you. But they assumed that WinRT would be successful and have popular apps, and instead what they got was a store to install mostly a bunch of apps nobody wanted.
All they needed to do was get a few popular apps available and people would get used to using the store. On a fresh Windows install, I usually want to following:
- Firefox
- office suite (Libre Office for me, Office for my wife)
- games (Steam)
- backup software
- video chat
- image/video editing
Some of these could work just fine with WinRt, others don't. If most of my frequently used programs aren't available through a store, I'll complain about the store. If most are and a couple aren't, I'll complain about those apps.
Most apps people want don't currently use WinRT (AFAIK), and many apps probably will never use it (heavy software like games, maya/blender, photoshop/gimp, etc). It's really telling that Microsoft's motivations are when they prioritize the least used platform (and the most beneficial to Microsoft) in a new app store.
> All they needed to do was get a few popular apps available and people would get used to using the store.
Maybe. But personally, if the store was successful then it would make Windows even more painful than it is now, because inevitably applications would just release to the store and not supply standalone installers. And I really, really want standalone installers.
I think the Windows Store is incredibly important. Worked as a technician for a while, and the amount of garbage people installed from random sites is mind-boggling. Or programs that hadn't been updated in five years. Non-tech people need a safe source for installing software (that also automatically updates it) and as long as the store wasn't providing a significant amount of useful software (all of which is Win32), it wasn't ever a viable solution. It might be soon.
The problem is that Win32 apps are inherently unsafe. If you want a safe source for installing software, you need a sandboxed app model, which on Windows means UWP or web apps. Unfortunately the Windows store eventually decided to compromise safety in the hopes of attracting more apps (the container format that Win32 apps in the store use isn't a real security sandbox).
Win32 apps have been supported in the Store for a couple years now. You'll find ("real") Office, Paint.NET, Inkscape, VLC, iTunes, iCloud, Photoshop, and more in the Microsoft Store today.
It does a simple word search, with some sort of sorting based on popularity on the store itself.
What MS should do is do a Google search (or a Bing search in their case) and filter out just the app results. Then find the download link, and get you that.
And that way the store becomes a storefront for not just "store" apps, but also non store apps, and therefore a comprehensive directory.
MS can still provide certain benefits to devs who store-ify their apps, such as updates, easy payments, slightly better placement, etc.
But the store needs to be a comprehensive directory for all apps.
The store couldn't have been great for enterprises too, replacing custom scripts, click once etc but it's gimped in a few critical ways, like cloud reliance and no way to push upgrades.
This is one of the reasons Linux is so popular for cloud clusters: it's really easy to completely control updates. Basically, host your own package repository, update on your schedule, then tell all your servers to update as well.
Windows has similar tooling for the OS, but it doesn't have an answer for everything else other than a ton of hand-rolled scripts. If the store doesn't make that easier, the enterprise won't use it. This seems like a huge missed opportunity. It should be trivial for an enterprise to curate the store like they can on Linux.
Totally agree. But also on workstations. It would simplify so many maintenance tasks (updates, new installation, synchronisation, reinstall, etc.). I cannot even grasp the potential.
How about giving us back the features we lost with Windows 10?
Like if I want a desktop shortcut to Notepad in W7 I open the Start menu, begin typing Notepad, and when it shows up in the search results I drag the icon onto the desktop or right click on it and hit "send to desktop". Neither of those work in Windows 10. Clicking and dragging does nothing, and right clicking doesn't let you make a desktop shortcut either. You have to add it to the Start menu, then drag it to to the desktop, then delete it off the Start menu.
Yeah, they keep making trivial things harder to do for no reason. You used to be able to right-click the icon and go directly to the classic control panel. Not anymore. The whole start menu is a failure and they need to overhaul it.
> Windows 10 has more built-in advertisements than Google’s Android and Chrome OS do.
It's still hard to believe that after paying a few hundreds of dollars for a new OS you will be treated with advertisements, as if it were freeware.. I'll never buy that shit.
It's increasingly common everywhere on-line (and off-line). Companies consider advertising an additional revenue stream, and see no reason to not add it regardless of whether the product is paid for or distributed for free.
You can see further community norms in software breaking down. There are already semi-ads in Ubuntu's MOTD.
Few days ago I did `npm install` on a project and saw literal ads spamming my console, asking to maybe support some library's author on Patreon and notifying me (a dozen times) that said author "is looking for a good job".
Apple has no problems with regularly spamming me with notifications to use iCloud, upgrade to new macOS or to use AppStore features. It's coming there too.
I use a macbook, an iphone and an ipad - I get notified about the the MacOS update about once a year or whenever it comes out. I've never seen the other notifications that you mentioned.
> It's still hard to believe that after paying a few hundreds of dollars for a new OS
I haven't checked, but are the ads in the enterprise versions? Otherwise, I'd guess that the vast majority of home consumers have an OEM key that came with their laptop or PC (or upgraded from Win7), and they didn't pay hundreds of dollars for. While the price of Win10 is included in some way in the price of the device, it wouldn't be nearly as much. Also, from what I remember, 1903 has gotten rid of most of the ads on a fresh installation, so it seems to be improving.
edit: Actually, I didn't realize there were actual ad notifications at all in Win10. Never seen them before. Maybe region/setting dependent? I only meant the games and other third party stuff that show up in the start menu.
As a freelancer, I'm not some home consumer, but someone with a business laptop. A business laptop I need to take to meetings. I need to show my business partners what is on my screen. This is not the time for some bloody Candy Crush ad popping up. And this is not the time to realise that last night's forced update borked your presentation.
As a freelancer, however, I cannot get the enterprise version of Windows 10 unless I buy at least n instances of it. I'd rather use that money to buy a real business laptop like a Mac Book Pro. No ads. No work ruining updates. Professionally maintainable without having a Windows Server sitting next to it. Backups that work. Real UNIX underneath.
I also was very happy with a Thinkpad plus Ubuntu LTS. Professionally maintainable, UNIX like underneath, smooth updates. I set up backups myself, but at least I had full control over it.
I had to settle on the Mac because of the availability of MS Office. I got tired of having to run that using a VM inside which I, yet again, had to maintain a Windows.
I tried Windows 10 for a while. At first I was pleasantly surprised, but then all the problems piled up. Fighting shitty drivers just to get sound working properly, constant updates, ads popping up again and again in the start menu and even on the lock screen, fighting to get at least a semblance of a usable command line.
> Otherwise, I'd guess that the vast majority of home consumers have an OEM key that came with their laptop or PC (or upgraded from Win7), and they didn't pay hundreds of dollars for.
They do pay for it, as you acknowledge in your next sentence. Most OEMs explicitly include the price of Windows in their device pricing (which is made clear if the product is customizable to the point of choosing Linux or no OS - that pretty much always drops the price).
My point being that the price is far lower than what you'd pay in a store. Still no excuse for all the ads and tracking, but if you're going to impale Microsoft, at least be honest about what the context is. Their behaviour is abhorrent enough that you don't need to make shit up.
And that's why I don't pay for it. If Microsoft is going to include ads regardless, I might as well not pay. I'm not pirating, I'm just skipping the license phase of the installer and have an "Activate Windows" tab in the settings.
I used to pay for Windows (have never pirated), but since I use Linux mostly full-time, I don't see why I should if they're going to give me the option to not pay and still get updates. I got a license for my wife and my laptop has one, but I just don't bother for my desktop partition and VMs.
In other news, I still cannot disable Windows update on the home edition. I've spent hours and hours and virtually every solution I can find other than giving MS more money to upgrade.
Updates keep failing on my machine, which means it just tried again the next day and forces a restart, closing everything I have. Fails day after day after day. I'm not sure why, I frankly don't care. Just ridiculous how impossible it is to disable.
By any chance did you run some script or random "de-bloat" tool someone linked? Half of those break Windows Update and cause it to keep failing (either via setting permissions, host file changes, or registry alterations).
The entire consumer oriented line of Windows 10 feels like a bad trip to a US strip mall. It's preinstalled with loads of junk you can't remove easily. For a while I spent some time putting together a small workflow to clean up Windows 10 builds for a project I was working on. If your hand is forced and you need a minimum amount of tools to get rid of as much bloat and telemetry there are two tools you need:
1) Geek Uninstaller [0]
2) O&O Shutup10 [1]
Both are free. Maybe there's better options now, but... They helped tremendously a short time ago.
Great post. I don't use windows but my girl does. Her compi (Win 10, SSD, 8 GB Ram, i7) has become unusable slow. She does not much besides watching Movies, surfing and using Word. I installed a free reliable antivirus (Avira) when she got it. I will have to look into this problem soon.
Any further suggestion? I will definitely try your recommended programs.
I say this in all seriousness, Linux is probably a better experience if that's all she does. Give something like Ubuntu or elementary os test run with a live version and see if she's missing anything you'll either find out she needs Office specifically or it will probably work for her. Linux right now is in a great spot for people who need little customization and people who really love to tinker. If you're in the middle of that group is where friction lives. If linux won't work for you then the suggestions above are great.
Story: when my partner's several year old computer was running slowly, I convinced them to try dual booting Linux. Encountered a few problems here or there, but I could help with those. A couple years on, they wiped the old Windows partition because they weren't using it any more. Today they're still using the (now 6-7 year old) computer because it's running fast enough.
On the other hand, they ended up learning some Python and shell scripting as a result, and will probably switch to Arch Linux when the computer is eventually replaced (soon). So while your S.O. might handle Linux just fine, you also run the risk of turning them into an OS nerd. ;-)
When my daughter was a teenager, I bought her a laptop and put Debian on it, configured to mimic the Windows look-and-feel. She never noticed, until the day that she wanted to install a AAA game.
Manjaro comes OOTB with MS Office 365, and it's super easy to install, easier than Ubuntu if you're doing Nvidia drivers. I personally can't comment on how well their Office works as I avoid anything Microsoft makes, but it's an option.
AMD laptops with Vega are becoming more available [0]. I'd guess, with all the positive media push around AMD, we're going to see a lot of new AMD laptops hit the market later this year into early next. I mean Intel's latest NUC even has AMD Vega in it. NVidia shot themselves in the foot with regard to a horrid Linux driver experience. In general it's fine for desktop systems but when you're forced to log out of a session to do a driver context switch on a laptop it gets old fast.
I disagree as well. A little while ago, my parents complained that their computer was getting too slow. I took a look and its a little old and they had Windows 10 on it. I removed it, installed Ubuntu 18.04 and since then, they have never even mentioned it.
All they do is check email, watch Netflix, and do some word documents sometimes. I had to initially show them where to find LibreOffice but other than that, they've been happy since.
Ubuntu has reached that soft spot where its perfect for anyone who is in need of a simple, easy to use computer that does not do work using some specialized software.
In many cases you can get by with the built-in Windows Defender. I’m not sure I trust the free AV vendors, seeing as everyone is jumping on the data-hoovering bandwagon.
Windows defender goes from consistently being one of the best options to no good and then back to one of the best regularly. Generally browsing Gavin are the thing that saves you not than antivirus these days.
From years of experience dealing with "slow Windows machine" complaints for family, I can tell you that in 2019 the builtin Windows antivirus is much better (performance + security wise) than any of the free services. Uninstalling Avira (and especially crap like CCleaner) will probably improve performance on its own.
Disable anti-virus, enable controlled folders. This should block common viruses. Anti-viruses programs, especially the cheaper ones, reduce IOPS while doing other tasks.
It doesn’t hurt to scan with Trend Micro’s Housecall scanner.
1. Suggestions to use other paid microsoft products like onedrive and office 365. Apple does something similar with icloud, apple music, but microsoft is more annoying about it because they'll pop up those suggestions all over the place whereas apple will typically put this in more logical places. Overall this makes sense though, and sometimes I've used this to quickly get to one of these services (because I use all of them anyway).
2. Promoted apps from the windows store that they push in the start menu. I find this quite annoying, and I'm not aware of another OS that does it. I'm also doubtful it actually makes them that much money. It probably harms their bottom line more than it helps, which is why nobody else is doing it.
I've tried to change my video settings the other day. Bam! A nice guy with a big smile on his face filled my entire screen selling me Xbox and other junk. I've told my girlfriend I'm feeling like shopping in the mall while using Windows 10.
I still laugh whenever I can't remember the exact name of my bittorrent client and Windows has no clue what I'm looking for when I enter "torrent" or "bittorrent".
Absolutely agree. How hard is it to find the closest match? On my OS of choice, I can type pretty much anything resembling Firefox in the search bar ("ffx", "fref", "ref", "fox"...) and it'll output a proper result — instantly.
Every Windows encounter feels dreadful in comparison. It can't get the simplest tasks right.
There's an amazing OS program called Wox [0], which uses Everything [1] (an infinitely better search program) to produce an experience similar to Spotlight on Mac. Can't recommend it highly enough. (No affiliation, just a fan)
The first time I saw in the win10 update screen with "don't worry, your date is safe", I panicked thinking I had got some ransomware. The opposite of the intended effect.
In case people are really ambitious or adventurous and want to avoid all of this stuff completely, what Linux distro (or other open source OS) is currently trendiest/most useful/relevant? Is it still Ubuntu?
I would strongly vote in favor of Ubuntu for your first distribution. It's still wildly popular, and despite some mishaps, Canonical tries pretty hard to make sure it's a smooth installation process, and has enough standard applications installed to be useful right away. If you just want to get your feet wet, and especially if you'd rather not mess around with the command line unless absolutely necessary, Ubuntu is great.
Depending on your needs, Fedora is also quite usable. It leans more in the FOSS direction, and while it is fairly bleeding edge with regards to Linux specific tooling, it is somewhat more hesitant to include non-free software, which may include device drivers and firmware. Last I checked, Ubuntu still had a higher degree of Just Works(tm) than Fedora for this reason. Fedora is very similar to RedHat and CentOS, so if you're looking for a business-focused distribution, this is a strong contender. Might not be as useful as a casual desktop install though.
Linux Mint is also wildly popular. It's Ubuntu-based, but it leans much less in the pure-FOSS direction, and is willing to include more grey area tools like video codecs and non-free device drivers. It also uses the Cinnamon desktop environment, which may feel a bit more familiar if you're coming from Windows. Some of my colleagues swear by it, so I think it's worth checking out.
Of course, take this with a grain of salt. I run Arch Linux and am perfectly happy to tinker around with the deepest guts of my system when needed. I wouldn't actually recommend that to a new user though, while I enjoy the absolute freedom to dive that deep, it can occasionally be quite frustrating.
My experience has been that Fedora does better at "just works" than Ubuntu, over the working life of the installation. Ubuntu may install easily, but it builds up weird stuff over time - thing randomly crashing, stuff not working in weird ways after updates. Fedora just keeps on trucking.
+1 to Cinnamon - AFAICT it's the best way to preserve a classic desktop-style desktop, rather than having a desktop which is trying to be a giant mobile phone.
OK well just to be clear its not my first distro. I have been using Linux off and on for more than like 23 years. Slackware was my first distro. I have used CentOS and played with Red Hat and Fedora and Mint some.
I do use Debian (sometimes) and Ubuntu on my VPSs and on my Virtual Box in Windows.
I was just asking because its easy to get out of touch.
You're probably best off asking around on relevant forums about what works best on your particular machine. Of the mainstream distros, I found Fedora was by far the best OOB for my current laptop (XPS 15 9570), but I don't get the impression that's universally true.
(Tangent: though likeable in many ways, Fedora was still too much fart-arsing about for me & after a few months I went back to Windows. I don't like it, but then the sad state 2019 has brought us to is that all desktop OSs are rubbish, so 'not liking it' is an unusable choice criterion).
Fedora is absolutely amazing these days. The smoothest experience by far compared to Ubuntu which tends to break or dramatically slow down after each dist-upgrade.
I'm on Fedora since v.28 gradually upgrading packages and disto versions. I've seen no problems whatsoever.
For one thing it was the only distro I tried that gave me battery life comparable to Windows without me having to mess about with powertop etc. And everything very up-to-date. Impressed.
Does Fedora come with support for playing back common media formats these days? Last time I tried, it didn't even play MP3s, just showing some dialog box about how it can't play that due to patents or something. To solve that IIRC it was needed to add some 3rd-party repository (which is always a bit worrying with having to trust them) to install the codec packages. Is that still the case with Fedora?
I don't know at what point Fedora loosened up re the FOSS strictures, but the version I installed (30) did have non-free apps/codecs available by default, including for mp3s.
Yes of course. Wasn't there also some policy change at some point regarding what's available in the store by default? I had a vague memory of that but could be wrong.
Anyway, the upshot is that at least based on my experience (limited as I'm not a big media consumer), media playing does just work OOB with current Fedora.
If you want something lightweight and based off of Ubuntu, go with Xubuntu. It's more like Windows 95. I do not think it's the trendiest but it's been a stable workhorse for software development. Xubuntu is fast on older machines and virtual machines. I was turned off by the main Ubuntu distro a while ago as it baked Amazon search and other commercial offerings into the desktop environment. (I don't fault them for trying to make money but it should have been opt-in)
I am sort of getting used to pacman with msys2. Do Arch or Manjaro package registries (are they the same thing?) have good availability in general?
What I mean is, in Arch or Manjaro, how often are there already packages available for things that people normally want to do, versus needing to compile something manually or work around broken dependencies?
Can't speak for Manjaro, but basically every software I use has an Arch package.
This extends to some closed source projects other distros don't include on principle, like Steam [1].
Additionally, the AUR is basically a wrapper around "manually compiling" where users can submit scripts to do it for you. If you install a helper like `yay`, it's as seamless as installing from the official repo and extends coverage to things like the OpenTTD modpack I play [2] and its latest git commit [3]. That said, the AUR is still ultimately running user provided scripts so do make sure to take the offer to read the install script beforehand, most are maybe 5-10 lines.
I'm using Arch for 2 years (it's my first distro) and I've had only a handful of problems. Usually it's not packaging (deps etc) but rather corner cases and fresh bugs. For example recently kernel had a big that froze display on Intel Graphics. It's good to have a backup drive with minimal system for debugging.
Using Manjaro right now, and it is probably the most straightforward no-nonsense Linux distribution I’ve ever used. (I’m using the xfce desktop version)
Most importantly, I’ve had the least driver issues with Manjaro. (Especially with NVIDIA gpus, which I’ve had nightmares with it on Ubuntu.) It also comes with a nice GUI program in which you can change between kernel versions and GPU drivers (open source or proprietary)
Haven't used Windows for over 10 years and I'm surprised to see how far it has fallen.
It's weird to me that the author thinks of these problems as mere annoyances. To me it's utterly ridiculous to have any of these features be part of an OS.
It's like I bought a big advertisement machine.
Tried it out recently and was greeted with the usual endless automatic updates and messing up my dual boot.
What's with the "people" tab? This is the kind of half-drunk idea I've come to expect from Microsoft. When I want to talk to people on Skype, I open Skype. It might be a nice abstraction at a very high level mentally (these are apps I use to talk to "people"), but it seems pointless to have this in software.
I'm deliberately trying never to update to Windows 10 because I think Windows 7 had everything I could ever need from the OS.
I wish the hardware drivers weren't so restricted as for my latest laptop no driver exists for Windows 7 so had to be forced to install Win 10 nightmare.
One tip for you guys is that if you want to get rid of most bloat that comes bundled with Win 10, I found this freeware software to be pretty effective:
I once needed to test and debug my software on Win7. The app uses hardware video encoder, virtualization doesn't work, so I had to install Win7 on a hardware PC.
The hardware drivers are there. It just takes some time to find them, and then some time to integrate into Win7 ISO so the installer doesn't fail.
I liked Win7 very much for the first couple of days. However I've reverted to Win10. Too many things are broken on Win7 in comparison: high DPI support, usability features like Win+arrow keys, no MS Edge.
I genuinely think Win10 has made huge leaps in many areas compared to Win7. It's just that they make so many bone-headed design decisions across the OS that detract from it. I wish I could recommend Windows 10 wholeheartedly, and generally I do recommend upgrading to it, it's just a ... problematic OS.
Could it be MS deliberately trying to train users to read and understand messages, especially long ones, before clicking "I agree"? I think you can opt out of many problematic features if you pay attention where you click during the OS setup. The licenses are checked online in Win10, so you can download an ISO from Microsoft.com, do clean install, and if you've installed same edition on the same PC it will be activated.
No, I don't see it. I'm utterly annoyed with Windows 10 even after declining any and every ridiculous request from Microsoft. It has nothing to do with 'training users to read' that the start menu is terrible or the new control panel is an abomination. And their asking for permission to track you has nothing to do with want to train users. They just want to track you. And even if you decline everything, there's plenty of telemetry that isn't disabled.
One thing pisses me off to no end: When you drag a window and accidentally make a small "left-right-left" movement, everything on your screen is minimized to the tray. There is no button to restore this.
You can actually just grab the same window and make a corresponding "up-down-up" movement and it'll bring everything back. On personal machines I turn it off but if I'm doing something for someone else, this is a good thing to know.
The fact that it's defaulted to on and surprises users who don't even know about it is the problem.
"Minimize all other windows except this one" is a function that is rarely used and definitely not something a small movement of the mouse should trigger.
I would also add lock screen which is shown before login screen. It makes sense on mobile devices but I never understood the use for it on my desktop and laptop. Especially when my laptop and desktop does not have any bio authentication.
Oh, that's what that is supposed to be! The same thing is in CentOS. You literally click and drag the mouse upward to get the login screen. New users often think the computer is broken.
> You literally click and drag the mouse upward to get the login screen.
Yeah, you can, but hitting a space bar before typing in your password is so much easier. I think any "normal" key (as in letters, numbers, space) would work, but I'm not near a system to check.
You can just start typing your password, it'll automatically unhide and put what you typed in the password field. Or you can press Esc to just unhide without starting to type your password.
That's right. It is GNOME. KDE takes you right to recent logins and a login/password prompt (without a transition). I primarily work via VNC or ssh, but get questions constantly from new users. Wiggling the mouse is universally benign. ESC, Space, or even clicking can be "destructive" in the wrong context.
Still using windows 7 for as long as I can. Pretty livid that they're discontinuing support and forcing people to 10 soon, I have 10 on another machine and it really feels like losing control of my PC. Very locked down, filled with ads and interruptions, affiliate software and marketing junk. Seems like one of the last bastions of autonomy and privacy in the computer world, the desktop OS, is jumping fully onto the surveillance capitalism bandwagon now. Pretty depressing. Would switch to Linux but it's pretty much a nonstarter for game dev.
At work, I have been using Windows 10 Pro for a couple of months now after holding out on Windows 7 for a long while.
I have to say, I am surprisingly happy with it. It has native SSH, WSL, performance is decent, and our admin no longer installs 3rd party AV software on Windows 10.
Now if only Microsoft could get their act together when it comes to updates - it has been a mess a for a long time, but I got the feeling it has gotten much worse ever since they decided to bundle all their updates into single large packages, and especially with Windows 10.
> They all have one thing in common: No one wanted them. Who wants a Windows PC that can’t run standard Windows applications?
People who want a tablet experience. Surface Go is tablet first, it can be used as a laptop substitute, but only a substitute. I can imagine there are many people who would be satisfied with a Windows S only device, using only the Microsoft Store apps.
This might seem minor in the scheme of things that Windows 10 has regressed on (compared to even Windows 8.1) but has anyone found a cure for the atrocious way Win 10 does the "Show windows side by side", now.
Previously it would just evenly split the existing windows into equal sized ones spread across the width of the screen. It worked beautifully! If there were two windows they would neatly fit into each half of the screen, fully sized respectively.
Now it does this strange quarter-stacking of the said windows on top of each other, squeezed into ONE HALF of the screen and leaves the other HALF EMPTY (exposing the destop) !! This absolutely drives me nuts. There are Chrome extensions ("Tab resize") to cure this but its a pointless added series of steps where you individually tweak each open window to the size you want. Its bonkers.
I don't get who in the right mind would come up with this as an enhancement when the previous one worked just fine !!
Surprised to not see Albums included. Every time my camera roll updates with photos from my phone or compact there's another notification about this new album that Windows created for me.
I. Never. Look. At. Their. Albums.
Writing this makes me wonder if there's a way to turn it off and why I've never thought to look...
Completely left Windows 10 (after several parallel years with Linux based systems such as openSuse/Ubuntu) for macOS.
I get a workstation that has sensible defaults and gets out of my way 99.999% of the time. I get why others prefer Linux systems in development but within my ecosystem I am simply happy I don't have to configure my fan speed and install fourth party drivers to get WLAN to connect after the machine sleeps.
The only things that Windows really excels in are gaming and office. Open source office suites are simply many levels below MS Office, and no I won't use LaTex at work although writing my thesis with it was indeed amazing. The macOS office variants (by Microsoft) are also severely lacking in comparison...
But other than that if you're not tinkering with .NET stuff...
Even if you ARE tinkering with .NET stuff. I work for a .NET shop on my MBP and the only things I remote into my Windows workstation for are some of the old .NET Framework projects we have that I still need to touch periodically and generating dacpac files from data projects (which is being worked on macOS so I'm really looking forward to that day). Many things (Docker is a huge example) just work better on macOS, and overall I find myself more productive. I feel that macOS is just a more "terminal-first" environment than Windows, and I'm more at home there. It's a shame.
I actually don't hate Windows, I used it for decades and still switch over to it as needed. But I really love macOS. I just wish they'd fix some of their hardware lately.
It has been about a decade since I used Windows (XP) as a daily driver, and I am shocked, and seriously disgusted, when I see my friends or co-workers using it.
Can I ask why anyone is paying for this pile of crap?
There are literally no improvements from Windows 7 vs. Windows 10, that could convince me this level of built-in telemetry, and, God forbid, built-in advertising is worth an 'upgrade'.
For God's sake, they are in the freaking start menu, and slow down several of my friends older computers who were force-upgraded.
And before you tell me what I already know, that you can 'opt out' - we should not have to opt out of advertising on an operating system we pay for, especially one that did not have advertising before.
As far as I'm concerned, for all the talk about Apple's 'walled garden,' folks are so addicted to Windows x86 and x64 apps, and so locked into that walled garden, they are now willing to accept being tracked, and to literally have a slower OS due to the baked in advertising.
The failure, and massive financial deficit, that occurred from Windows RT should be more than enough evidence of this. Without its history of apps, Windows isn't Windows.
Knowing that, Microsoft can pack whatever bullshit it wants, including, but not limited to, tracking and advertising, and we still buy.
The only inherently worse-for-the-user OS out there is Android. I will no longer use Google services, even by request. I'm literally trying to ween myself off YouTube, reporting a post on HN yesterday that was merely a YouTube link to a guy talking about how his wife left him that had somehow snuck it's way onto the front page.
I pray one year, we will have that 'year of Linux,' and Microsoft can go back to creating a quality product, instead of focusing on new ways to get information out of users.
Edit: I also pray for, and would even contribute code to, a meaningful third party mobile OS solution. I'm worried Apple will realize they are the last company to respect user privacy to even a reasonable degree, and get greedy.
However, there are so, so many issues with a new mobile OS, between devices, carriers, a bootloader compatible with said devices, licensing, and such, that at the moment, I am not seeing any of the projects in the works as feasible. To be honest - the world of commercial operating systems has never looked so grim.
>>Can I ask why anyone is paying for this pile of crap?
Because for certain areas of programming, Visual Studio is still king and if you want to develop for Playstation/Xbox then Windows is the only choice.
And of course playing video games in general requires Windows - it's less true than it was few years ago, but there's still plenty of games which give you very poor experience on anything but Windows.
You've contradicted yourself by displaying a pleasant alternative to Windows gaming - consoles.
Even as a game developer, for home brew like the Sega Saturn, as well as various Unity projects, I use a Windows XP VM maybe once a month for some obscure utility.
I never play games on PC's. I buy a console, it's good for ten or more years. I still play my Saturn and Dreamcast, whose emulation leaves much still to be desired.
If I want to purchase a game, I don't have to worry about if my video card is compatible, or if I have enough RAM, or, even if my OS will run it! I just play it.
You are part of a niche developer system, that, granted, you require Windows 10 for your very, very specific case.
Similarly, I am required to use a 2017 MacBook Pro with a touch bar at work, as I am an iOS developer. I would never, on principle alone, purchase such a unit. I use a Mac at home, but I use a 2012 model I have chosen to stick with for a number of reasons. I'm running the newest MacOS because it's actually offered me reasons to upgrade.
This has nothing to do with my personal preferences, or my point.
I'm not talking about the use of Windows itself, when I say 'why would anyone pay for this crap' - I'm talking about the "upgrade".
Windows 7 still more than meets my needs and the needs of most consumers.
Windows XP still more than meets my needs and the needs of most consumers, though it has security issues that make Windows 7 a better general option.
Windows 10 has added nothing, as far as I can see, beyond leaving behind some of the UI/UX disaster of Windows 8, the result being a slightly less usable Windows 7 (especially to the average Jane or Joe) - with baked in advertising and tracking that they know Jane or Joe, who got the OS pre-installed on the Asus they bought from Best Buy, is not going to disable.
In fact, they're counting on that.
When we pay for services, we expect no advertising, especially on services that did not contain it before. Cable television is an exception to this - what we pay for in that instance is more selection.
But can you imagine if Apple Music just suddenly started shoving ads in their stream? They'd lose two million subscribers overnight.
It baffles me that people have Stockholm Syndrome enough with Windows to stick with it through such obvious distaste for the users themselves.
Since 98SE, we've got a pattern of every other Windows release simply being an unmitigated disaster -
98SE - good / ME - awful / XP - good / Vista - awful / 7 - great / 8 - awful / 10 - at least not as shit as 8
What this shows me, is that Microsoft seems to not learn from mistakes until an entire version number later.
There have only been a handful of releases in MacOS/OS X's brilliant history since OSX came about in 2001 that have been shit. Since Tiger, we've praised virtually every release - and they are still adding meaningful and impactful features like dark mode. Now it's their laughable hardware options that is the issue.
>>You've contradicted yourself by displaying a pleasant alternative to Windows gaming - consoles.
But games aren't interchangable like some other media is. If a game that I want to play is only available on Windows, then I will put up with whatever bullshit Microsoft throws at me to play that game, I won't go "oh well, I'll just play something else on the PS4 instead".
And yes, Win10 is a disaster - but you can't use certain things like the latest GamePass subscription without it, or adjust your settings for the Xbox Elite controller without Windows 10.....sticking with Windows 7 forever is not the solution(as much as I would like it to be).
I'm both a consumer and a developer, and use windows for both - it's just the right choice for what I need at the moment. If those needs change then the operating system will change as well.
Exclusivity for games has always been the case, except for those who choose multiple platforms. When I was a kid, you had a Sega or a Nintendo, and so you had Mario, or Sonic.
IMHO the selection of games for consoles is much broader, and, overall, seem to generally have less initial issues. Furthermore, we don't get the awful DRM that causes us to go find a crack on launch day anyway, just because of the annoyance.
Microsoft's attempt to lock me into an OS I would never allow within ten feet of any of my computers, or any developer's, just means I won't use their software. No game title is worth having an awful experience with the rest of my OS, that's what dual booting is for.
Furthermore, Microsoft even offers its own console! If I want to use GamePass or an xBox controller, why am I not just using an xBox One (Pro?) - the lifespan of consoles and the length of time games will still work and be released for them, is far greater than the upgrade paths I had to suffer through with my PC growing up.
Microsoft is removing its own reason to use Windows as a gaming platform. I'd happily buy an xBox, but if I can't play a title on Windows 7, I'm just not going to purchase it.
If the developer doesn't care, and isn't willing to support it, sucks for them.
With tools like Unity and Unreal Engine, we have very, very little reason for anything but the biggest AAA games, which require seriously custom engines, which will have console versions anyway - to be Windows-exclusive.
Could you, off the top of your head, name five, significant PC-exclusive titles from the past five years that did not have a console equivalent? Not a rhetorical question, just genuinely curious. I've not heard of a single, standout Windows-exclusive title on any of the tech or gaming blogs I obsessively follow.
In fact, I've seen Microsoft make it even easier to directly port your games to xBox.
After switching to Archlinux and putting Windows 10 in a Qemu VM my life got way easier. One is driven by the corporation behind it to form and change user behaviour in order to make more money, and the other is made by like-minded hackers.
I just keep a crappy Windows laptop next to my desktop and use that whenever I absolutely need Windows for something. I don't need heavy software, just sometimes a program to reproduce an issue a consumer has. I have a Windows VM, but it stays off most of the time, and I have a separate disk in my desktop running Windows in case I need something more serious than my laptop can handle (I boot to it once a month or so to run updates).
I've tried making WSL work for me, but I just find Windows gets in my way more than it actually helps. I'm a little sad that I can't use Visual Studio (the number of times I've had to hack together a CMake build to make small change is way too high), but it's not worth the pain of using Windows. How to do X on Linux is usually much easier to remember and faster than the equivalent on Windows, and I spent enough time on WSL/git bash that I just stopped bothering.
Now, if I can get a hackintosh VM going, my life will be complete.
Why Microsoft expects me to voluntarily move from Windows 7 to this OS is beyond me. I will however be moving from Windows 7 to Windows Embedded POS Ready 2009, which due to contractual obligations will be supported a few more years.
After that? Either pure Debian KDE if I can stand to jump the gap from RPM-based to Apt-based linux, or Fedora Lxqt if not. (IMO -> if 'Linux' could just not be split down the middle between the two big families of Debian/XLUbuntu/Peppermint and RHEL/Fedora/CentOS/Manjaro we could get more grannies as it were)
I am the master of my computing fate, not Microsoft.
This all feels to me like Microsoft is getting desperate - it's the usual experience when the money in a niche is drying up: aggressive upsell and every damn thing trying to squeeze another dime out of you.
Nope, they just set an annual record and beat analysts expectations last quarter[1]. Azure is helping them a great deal and just overtook their PC division (which includes everything from Windows to the Surface laptop).
Android and Google Docs are overtaking their main turf, even if it is for regular consumers as of right now, it is still a huge change. The Azure stuff is recent and can't attempt vendor lock-in yet, maybe never, at least not to the extent Windows and Office were able to.
The dumbest windows feature? When you accidentally touch the top of a window to top of screen, it maximizes. On Mac it's sort of the opposite: you can't relocate a window to another screen if it's maximizes. It "helps" you by force partitioning the screen.
Resize a window and drag it to the top will increase total height of screen.
Drag a window to the top and it maximizes.
Drag to left to dock to left side. (repeat for right side)
Drag to top left to dock to top left corner. (repeat for all corners)
Win+Arrow (Up) to full screen.
Win+Arrow (Down) to un-full screen. Down again to minimum.
Win+Shift+Arrow (left/right) to change screen.
Win+Arrow (left/right) to move between docking left/right.
On a mac you cannot even maximum a window properly, and works differently in different apps. Window management is terrible on a mac. The only window management it does right is the way it handles the virtual desktops. Cos that still sucks on Windows.
It doesn’t work in every app. It doesn’t even work in a lot of apples own apps... you hold shift and click in 1 app, it works, try it in another app and it only resize vertically and not horizontally.
Sticky corners (with 2 monitors) annoy me more. Drag your mouse pointer to the top corner of the screen, trying to take it to the next monitor - nope, it gets stuck.
It goes from annoying to very frustrating when I am trying to click at the top left of the window on my 2nd screen, but someone at MS decided the mouse will get stuck on the X and close my current window instead. I have very good mouse accuracy from years of computing (and video games), so I can click very accurately and this would always catch me off guard until I slowed down my own actions to double check where the pointer is.
There is a setting, but it's not very fine grained and turning it off also turns off other useful settings. I can't remember which exactly, I just know I reverted fairly quickly since it was even more annoying.
In Win7, the one I was thinking of is called "Prevent windows from being automatically arranged when moved to the edge of the screen".
That one seems to be pretty specific, and for me is very useful.
KDE has a similar thing, which can also be disabled. Only thing I haven't figured out with KDE (yet) is how to disable automatically maximising a window after dragging it from the non-primary display to the primary one. That's pretty annoying too. :/
I disabled the allow Microsoft to send application history to their servers. They still do it. They just ignore the fact I have disabled it explicitly. It should be reason for me to be able to sue but I don't know where to start.
Out of interest: How do you know they send the application history? The connections to their servers are encrypted. So the only options you have are the MS information tool for telemetry and low level forensic tools.
You can view the history online on their privacy dashboard at privacy.microsoft.com
There I could see all the applications I launched even though I had denied them that permission. You should be able to do the same if you linked your Microsoft account to your Windows installation.
I feel deeply sorry, for those poor consumers who are unaware of other OS's. It should be a duty if you're in tech, to advise your fellow holoi polloi about Ubuntu since it's the most consumer friendly distro. Everything now days is done in a browser so that shouldn't be a problem. & at those who work at capitalistic corporations push for electron apps or apps that can be easily bundled and installed e.g snap apps / flatpaks.
do what? there are only 3 legitimate choices when it comes to operating systems (the thing that underpins every single computer). with that comes real social responsibility. this thread is evidence that microsoft is showing no regard for that responsibility.
With ad networks you cannot use the nature of the site to judge the respectability of the ad. Essentially individual sites rent a chunk of space out to the networks that auction that space to the highest bidder in real time. Even respected sites have from time to time even been used as vectors to infect visitors computers with malware. The only reason Linus Tech Tips isn't serving ads for the virtues of combining zoophilia and narcotics is there isn't much money in it.
The fact that you paid to pirate windows doesn't make your purchase any more legitimate because you paid someone who themselves never paid for it.There simply isn't a credible means for someone to have obtained the rights to sell such thousands of times over AND be able to sell it for a few bucks.
It's like when you see a crackhead selling valuables worth thousands of dollars for 50 bucks. The logical conclusion is that he broke into someone's house and stole it. Enjoy your Rolex for $50 but it's either fake or stolen.
Wow, I had to check that it's already been "years" since Windows 10 was first released --- a little over 4, to be precise. No one I know actually likes it, the closest has been "tolerate". MS has done a great job of dragging its users through the mud and beating them into submission.
Windows 7 is unrefined? I have the opposite experience. Windows 7 feels like a finished product, that in addition is designed to help me work. Windows 8+ feels more like a Linux distribution in comparison, with inconsistent features & UIs everywhere, as if they were just a mash-up of random packages made by random open-source developers with no leader nor common goal. Actually the only thing that can be compared to a goal is that all the features are in some way or another designed to get in my way, waste my time, compromise my privacy, and just in general prevent me from doing actual work.
Yeah, but only for the hardware you have - the upgrade path seems to force you to a 10 OEM license, I went 7 pro (non-oem) to 10 pro, then changed motherboard, so had to buy a new copy of 10 pro oem, then that CPU stopped working and had to buy a new CPU & motherboard, and so finally I'm on running my own KMS server - fuck paying for windows a 3rd time.
I've had a pretty good run of calling the MS support line and getting them to reactivate if Win10 deactivates due to a hardware change. Takes 5 minutes, maybe. Occasionally if you're on an upgraded-from-win7 or 8.1 OEM license the service agent will tell you that it can't be done for OEMs but hanging up, calling back and getting a less fastidious agent on the line is easily done.
Agreed, though - paying 3 times for the same software would be insane, especially at MS prices
Seems odd to see complaints of many Ads in an OS--analogous to buying a car and having advertisements show up in the instrument cluster when stopped or not being able to exit the vehicle until watching an Ad.
Haven't used Windows in recent memory (probably since these Ads appeared or I just didn't notice them).
I run Windows 10 Pro (English, region: Bulgaria), so I don't know if that's the reason, but I don't have any popups (notifications or otherwise) and I have 4 static gaming tiles that are essentially ads since I never asked for these games at all and they're 3rd party products. I assume those come with some bloatware deal that Microsoft made with King.
At work, I have been using Windows 10 Pro for a couple of months now after sticking with Windows 7 for as long as I could. I cannot remember seeing any ads so far.
