13 ms·

I must be in the huge minority. I haven't had a single issue with Windows 10 (if we disregard privacy). Literally everything has just worked. I will say thinki

by hfsktr 10y ago

I must be in the huge minority. I haven't had a single issue with Windows 10 (if we disregard privacy). Literally everything has just worked. I will say thinking about it that my computer used for 99.99% gaming/internet/text documents. I keep anticipating that something is going to go horribly wrong but so far it's been great. I hate the menu and store that it shows so almost everything I tend to open has a shortcut on the desktop or is pinned to the toolbar. Having a functional toolbar on both monitors. That right there was all I wished windows 7 would do but otherwise I can barely tell that the OS is different. I never used windows 8 so I don't have a comparison to that but I've seen Windows ME...

distantsounds 10y ago
You can remove just about all the tiles and extra bloat from the Start Menu, bringing on a more familiar return of what it used to be. Just right-click and 'remove' every tile until there's nothing left.
- Pica_soO 10y ago
  If i wanted to work to customize my OS, i would have Nuxed it.
  - freehunter 10y ago
    If you don't want to work to customize your OS, you accept the defaults. Those are your two options, and you've already ruled out one of them.
    - khedoros1 10y ago
      Option 3: Use an OS (or at least OS version) that offers better defaults, while still running the software that you need.
      - freehunter 10y ago
        Well then the OS that you're complaining about isn't exactly "your OS" is it? It's now someone else's OS and you're just complaining about something you don't even use.
        khedoros1 10y ago
        You want to play word games? Fine. Scenario: I'm using X 2.0. The defaults are shit, and I complain. Nothing happens. At this point, I've got three options. Deal with the shitty defaults, customize the OS, or move elsewhere.
- marcosdumay 10y ago
  What you can't do, no matter what you try, is to make the Start Menu show all the programs you have installed. But attaching things there is nice. Even better than the KDE menu.
  - swozey 10y ago
    I can't get over this. It doesn't help that the search (start>type) constantly doesn't find apps I'm looking for. It's to the point where I'm pinning everything to my taskbar. My workflow for a decade or more was to hit the Windows key then start typing to find indexed apps. It's almost useless to me now and I don't really get why.
    - marcosdumay 10y ago
      > I don't really get why I got looking. It's an acknowledged bug. MS isn't even calling it a feature. It's just about as old as Windows 10, and unfixed.
      - pzone 10y ago
        I'm not what the point is, given there are probably hundreds of bugs that somebody would say "This is the #1 worst bug in Windows 10." But for me, this is the #1 worst bug in Windows 10.
      - nikanj 10y ago
        Assuming they're honest, and in their defence, MS has been much more honest and transparent recently: could you imagine being the one poor soul who's been working on that bug for almost two years now? People keep reporting that bug, and you keep ruling out possible explanations.
        marcosdumay 10y ago
        I've indeed seen that kind of thing happen, so yes, there can be some poor soul doing this. But it's still more likely that MS doesn't think Windows not letting you run your programs is a high priority problem.
mundo 10y ago
Thousands of programmer years went in to Win10, and the most positive comment on it is "It's perfectly tolerable if you turn off all that stuff they added." This should be in the dictionary to illustrate the phrase "Damning with faint praise."
- freehunter 10y ago
  If they change things in noticeable way, damn them for changing things. If they don't change things in a noticeable way, damn them for not making it more noticeable.
- uncletaco 10y ago
  It's called "throwing shade".
- vondur 10y ago
  I'd imagine those features that the programmers implemented was not something they had a say in. I imagine Microsoft has a large bureaucracy that determines what features that make it into a Windows release.
- hfsktr 10y ago
  I think it's the best OS I've used yet really. I remember getting BSOD many times on Windows XP and several times on Win 7 (although they were so rare they were the exception). Almost always those previous iterations had some peripheral that needed help being configured but with Win 10 I haven't had to touch almost anything. My computer has changed to be not comparable to those previous though because I now have a nice GPU, a nice CPU, and a SSD. So any speed improvements, graphic improvements, etc are skewed by the hardware changes I've made since. I didn't turn off anything except the privacy that I could. It's just that I don't have a use case for most of the features (yet).
  - computerex 10y ago
    Am I the only one who never had issues with BSOD's, outside of hardware malfunctions?
TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
I run - using the word very loosely - Win 10 on a mid-spec 8GB Dell Laptop. It's literally unusably slow. Opening File Manager takes many minutes. This is practically a fresh install. I have Office 365 installed, but very little else. I don't even have a mail client set up. I dual-boot to Ubuntu on the same machine, and the latter is perfectly usable.
- 67726e 10y ago
  I've had fresh Windows 10 (no crapware) installs on two different development machines at two different companies. Both times it was slower than hell, and I immediately asked for a Linux install. Perhaps this is me finally getting old and curmedgeony at the ripe old age of twenty-three, but I'll be damned if I'm switching my personal computer away from Windows 7 anytime soon.
  - chadgeidel 10y ago
    Company supplied image? There's your problem. :-D If you were able to move to Linux - more power to you. Some of us are stuck with mighty machines and horrible system image with 10 kinds of disk/processor heavy background "management and security" apps running on boot.
  - khedoros1 10y ago
    My company's Windows 7 image craps up awesome hardware, and so did the XP image before it. Lenovo T450s with an SSD? Yeah, that'll take a solid 5 minutes to reboot.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  Conversely, I have Windows 10 running quite well on low-spec (for the time, not just for now) 6GB Acer laptop that I got when Windows 8 (not 8.1) was current, that went through in-place upgrades to 8.1 and then 10, and it's got a ludicrous amount of cruft that I keep meaning to clean up. So, while I don't doubt your story, I can't help thinking that it may not represent the general experience.(Maybe I'm just lucky, though.)
- kyriakos 10y ago
kyriakos 10y ago
You are not alone, I run 3 PCs with Windows 10 all 3 had zero problems - everything works fine. I understand people being privacy concern but as an android user I feel like that ship has sailed a long time ago.
- dublinben 10y ago
  You can use Android without sacrificing your privacy. You should be able to use your computer the same way. Sadly, Microsoft disagrees.
  - kyriakos 10y ago
    Can you though? I mean out of the box? I think you can't unless you buy a handset that you can use Cyanogenmod on it. Which I'd say it's as complicated for the average user than the hacks needed to turn off telemetry in Windows 10.
  - khedoros1 10y ago
    Sure. Install an image without an app store or Google services. That ought to get you most of the way there.
gambiting 10y ago
I've literally never had a system as buggy as Windows 10, every day I switch on my computer I wonder what's going to be broken today. Stuff which works on the same hardware on Windows 7 is just unreliable on Windows 10. Not to mention that 10 is a usability mess and a massive step back in pretty much every corner of the system. Since I've typed out a small list of my problems with Win 10 before, they are here to read: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13418573 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13418573
- NetStrikeForce 10y ago
  Holy sh*t. Are you sure you don't have some malware screwing things up? None of those things are even close to "normal" or "acceptable".
  - gambiting 10y ago
    I've literally wiped the whole drive, went back to Win 7 - everything was fine. Upgraded back to Win 10 and had all the same problems again.
    - tempestn 10y ago
      Have you tried a fresh install of Windows 10, rather than an upgrade? (Once you've upgraded once, you should be able to install fresh as the Win 10 license is tied to the hardware.) Perhaps the problem is related to the upgrade process.
    - braveo 10y ago
      you can install win10 directly using your win7 license key if you've already upgraded. I would definitely try that. It's what I did specifically because I've never trusted an OS upgrade. OS's are too complex for that to work reliably in my opinion.
ciaranm 10y ago
I really, really like Windows 10. I spend most of my work days in OS X on a Macbook Pro - but I also spend a lot of my free time gaming. Windows 10 is so much more user-friendly than any other OS I use. Settings are easy to find, generally easy to understand and change. Search is great. It boots super fast. It's about to get a 'game-mode' to restrict resources from background apps. Installing stuff from the Windows store has slow download speeds (compared to steam, apple) - but I have much fewer 'app is stuck in update' issues compared to OS X. I'm super happy with it.
- daveguy 10y ago
  > Settings are easy to find Hah. You're lucky your Cortana bar still works. They aren't as easy to find when your Cortana bar disappears when you click it. Tried all the random fixes on the internet to no avail. I never even tried to fix privacy concerns -- it just broke.
  - cheald 10y ago
    I have Cortana turned completely off and settings are really easy to get to. Win key -> sett<enter> isn't particularly difficult. Or just typing in part of the setting usually finds it right away.
    - E6300 10y ago
      Maybe you're just lucky, or you're the sort of user MS is targeting with their new UI design. Whenever I'm configuring a W10 machine I find myself going back and forth between two completely different configuration interfaces. I.e. the Control Panel and the Settings app.
      - NamTaf 10y ago
        To be far I'm the same as the grandparent post, but I tend to stick to the legacy settings menus which still have everything and only encounter the new ones occasionally (ie: updates). I've learned enough of the new one to navigate it, but I can still basically type my way through settings in the old style menus still so it doesn't bother me.
runabout 10y ago
> I hate the menu [...] everything I tend to open has a shortcut on the desktop or is pinned to the toolbar. You have to get Keypirinha! http://keypirinha.com/ http://keypirinha.com/ Set ALT+Space to launch Keypirinha, then type the name of your application to launch it. Keypirinha adapts to how you use it. Often frequently launched programs will only take a couple keystrokes. For example TH launches Thunderbird.
zekevermillion 10y ago
That is the tragedy of win10. It's actually a great OS but the lack of respect for user preferences around privacy and updates ruins it for power users. I have to think that the engineers who did the work to make win10 as efficient and stable as it is had cortana and dark UI patterns shoved down their throats. cortana is clippy, we all know that. Who thought it was a good idea to bring back clippy?! Could not have been the team that does powershell!
- cm2187 10y ago
  There are plenty of bad parts too. The start menu keeps freezing regularly for me on multiple machines. Searching in the start menu returns random results. Settings scattered across multiple control panels is just absurd. In-OS advertising is a complete no go to me. The nagging to use edge too. The frequent forced reboots and full screen notifications are a nuisance. And it makes it really difficult to change default apps, on purpose I suspect. I just don't like it. It's not about visual design. I couldn't care less about flat design vs windows 7 menus, etc. But it is functionally really bad.
  - kupiakos 10y ago
    The most frustrating thing for me is the automatic updates that are difficult to turn off. If I leave a Windows 10 VM running on my laptop for too long, it will decide it's "idle" and start consuming my resources. Even if I let the updates finish, it then continues for another week, whenever I leave it "idle", to perform AoT .NET compilation, pegging my CPU. Incredibly annoying.
    - mattmanser 10y ago
      My laptop fan is a bit of a noisy bugger, if I leave windows 10 for 5 mins it thinks idle and the the fan just starts going. First I found that ngentask was repeatedly running 32-bit ngen and it's practically impossible to debug what's gone wrong so I've replace the ngen with a dummy exe. But it still does it, now instead of ngen it's simply "System" constantly burning 20% cpu for whatever utterly pointless maintenance task it's decided on that's obviously broken. It's just really frustrating, I swear that the "idle" mode of win 10 costs me far more money than actively using the laptop. And it's so hard to debug because as soon as the computer activates it stops whatever bullshit it was doing. On my desktop I tried ripping out all the privacy invasive stuff and have somehow managed to break the start menu search. I do like it more than Win 7, the startup time's great, but it's still really frustrating at times.
vbezhenar 10y ago
I somewhat agree. I have to use Windows from time to time and it's usually Windows 10. I disliked Windows 8 so much, but Windows 10 is overall good IMO. But, honestly, comparing to something like Windows NT 4.0, I can't really say, why Windows 10 is better. There might be tiny things here and there, but overall experience is similar. The only Windows releases I remember were those particularly bad (Vista, 8) and those, which accumulated large userbase (XP, 7). Other than that, I don't see much progress. If Windows NT 4.0 would be supported today on current hardware and software, I'm not sure if I would use anything else. It was good enough. May be those only my memories, I don't know.
- selectodude 10y ago
  When is the last time you used Windows NT? I find new features are so ingrained in my workflow that I don't even realize they're new.
  - badsectoracula 10y ago
    I use it in a VM now and then. The only thing from the later versions i'd want to see is adding thumbnails in the file browser, being able to right click in a start menu entry to show the file/folder properties without going through explorer , being able to search apps and recent documents with win+[text] and being able to drag the taskbar buttons to reorder them. Beyond that Windows NT's interface is just perfect. And TBH none of the above are really essential, just small quality of life things. But even without those i'd be fine. I think modern Windows add too many little distractions with icons, notifications/popups, gadgets, etc everywhere. Also the classic theme. I want that back. I run Win7 with the classic theme and Windows 9x/NT4 color scheme (the one with the soft light in the 3d elements, not the "Windows Classic" in 2K/XP/Vista/7 which lacks it - i had to import the colors through a reg file from NT to get them) and i like how it looks. I used Win8 and Win8.1 for a while and ran a hack that disabled theme files (which forced Windows to fallback to the classic theme) but that broke Metro/UWP apps. It wasn't an issue with Win8.x but Win10 uses UWP apps everywhere and it becomes unusable. It might sound a frivolous reason, but i reverted back to Win7 because i don't like how newer Windows look like. Since i don't expect Microsoft to do any of the above, my long term plan is to make my own environment that looks like Windows NT 4 in Linux :-P.
nisa 10y ago
I'm most of the time using Linux but Windows 10 is quite fast and usable if you are willing to do the dance to check all privacy settings and clean the Start Menu of the spam. I don't use an online id for logging in and use this tool to fix privacy settings: https://modzero.github.io/fix-windows-privacy/ https://modzero.github.io/fix-windows-privacy/ (read the fine print, it's quite invasive!) there are powershell scripts for cleaning the start menu - I don't have a link handy, sorry. After doing this it's a great system! Even Edge is somewhat usable if you install uBlock Origin (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/p/ublock-origin/9nblggh444l4 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/p/ublock-origin/9nblgg...) However most regular users are stuck with the shiny and annonying defaults that make you feel you handed over your machine to Microsoft to show you annoying ads.
- windows10rules 10y ago
  After neutering all the new "features" it's a GREAT system! Really!
  - SCdF 10y ago
    Shrug. I have to do the same thing in OSX. Every major update I google what's changed and then disable 90% of it. In what world do I want Siri on my laptop…
    - peatmoss 10y ago
      Same here, a couple years back I decided the effort needed to build linux up was less than the effort to tear OS X, Windows down. The end state is a little more customized to my prefs too.
windows10rules 10y ago
>I haven't had a single issue with Windows 10 >I hate the menu and store that it shows so almost everything I tend to open has a shortcut on the desktop or is pinned to the toolbar Some people would consider being unable to use a KEY feature of the OS a problem. But you're right, aside from the glaring lack of tires, it's a great car.
- hfsktr 10y ago
  I meant I never had a problem with something not integrating when I expected it to. New mouse, new keyboard, new printer, headset, drives, etc. Everything has worked in that regard and painlessly (for me). The menu I found functional (and someone else mentioned I can actually remove the crap on there I didn't want). I am mostly against the flat UI (I hate it everywhere though) and the settings that moved to random places. I never had a problem with search not working or anything of that nature.
nikdaheratik 10y ago
I have had very few functionality issues. The main problem is the decision to self upgrade, constantly, without so much as an alert anytime you restart the machine. The dual control panels and ads are also really annoying and I can't imagine what a pain it would be for a laptop or tablet with more limited screen real estate. So a good OS, great by M$ standards, with some annoying "features" baked in.
wtetzner 10y ago
My biggest issue with it is the forced restarts.
reacharavindh 10y ago
Interesting. Is anyone aware of a set of hacks to get rid of selective annoyances/known privacy violations and turn Win 10 into something that feels like Win 7? - Cortana - Searches that connect to Internet/bing - call back to homeship - other features that not everyone wants that I haven't listed...
- douche 10y ago
  Find an ISO of the Long-Term Servicing Branch distribution - LTSB. It has all of the crap stripped out, and is quite fantastic. All the goodness, nothing that people complain about constantly with Win 10. No Edge, no Store, no Cortana, no ads or telemetry. I accidentally downloaded it from MSDN after my laptop's hard drive failed and I couldn't find any of my previously-burned DVDs or USB sticks.
  - arm 10y ago
    “No Edge, no Store, no Cortana, no ads or telemetry.” Unfortunately, telemetry still can’t be turned off even in Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB. The lowest level you can pick is Security¹². (Also, more info on Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB here³). ―――――― ¹ — https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/itpro/windows/manage/configure-windows-telemetry-in-your-organization#security-level https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/itpro/windows/manage/con... ² — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12959097 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12959097 ³ — http://www.howtogeek.com/273824/windows-10-without-the-cruft-windows-10-ltsb-explained/ http://www.howtogeek.com/273824/windows-10-without-the-cruft...
    - reacharavindh 10y ago
      LTSB seems better Windows for my needs. Curious though, can't we just wire trace the telemetry connects and drop their name resolution some how? (Don't know the equivalent of /etc/hosts in Windows)
      - arm 10y ago
        Windows does use a HOSTS file as well (located in %SYSTEM32%\drivers\etc\hosts), however, (since around Windows XP) Windows hardcodes certain IP addresses and hostnames related to updating and other Microsoft services into dnsapi.dll (located in %SYSTEM32%). This is checked before the hosts file is checked, so any entries in this DLL will override the corresponding hosts file entry if it exists. The safest way to block suspect IP addresses and hostnames is to simply not trust the OS and use separate hardware to block the traffic.
computerex 10y ago
Windows search is still so bad.
- pcunite 10y ago
  Try FileSearchEX
  - arm 10y ago
    There’s also Everything¹. ―――――― ¹ — http://www.voidtools.com/ http://www.voidtools.com/
romanovtexas 10y ago
Have had issues with the WiFi slowing down when the bluetooth is turned on in combination with location services; have ended up fixing it by toggling between turning off the bluetooth or the location services. The WiFi driver itself goes off randomly if I use my laptop for a long time. The disk usage is incredibly high for atleast 10 minutes after startup; tried turning search on and off, cortana on and off, nothing works. What's more annoying is the fact that there are no official troubleshooting guidelines for this issued by Microsoft. You end up visiting a bunch of sites and very randomly trying out myriad methods to get it working.
markatkinson 10y ago
I'm with you here. Sure there are a few irritations but overall I'm really enjoying Windows 10. If you turn web search off in the search bar then it's incredible. I don't have a single shortcut on my desktop, I just search for every thing I won't and it appears instantly. I almost feel as at home as I did in Windows 7, but not entirely. Windows 10 feels a little all over the place at times. As the below comments say, the control panel is a mess. But when you learn you can just search for mouse settings, or anything for that matter then you don't ever have to find yourself wading through all their ridiculous setting screens.
animal531 10y ago
I use mine probably very much the same way as you do. It's configured to look 99% the same as my Win7 installation had been. But frustration comes from the fact that Win 10 is just so random. I've had two installations (the second after the loss of my primary HDD). The first was great, it just worked. The second however keeps doing things I don't want. - Initial installation immediately downloading video driver during initial updates, locking me for hours from installing the correct Nvidia driver. So I was sitting there in the default low resolution unable to really do anything. - Disabled the annoying language bar? It'll be back tomorrow. - Disabled fast boot (which causes my pc to shut down on startup every second startup)? It'll be back next week. There's a number of other smaller things as well. Overall I don't hate it, I just wish it would stop trying to mess with itself/me.

by hfsktr 10y ago

distantsounds 10y ago

You can remove just about all the tiles and extra bloat from the Start Menu, bringing on a more familiar return of what it used to be. Just right-click and 'remove' every tile until there's nothing left.

Pica_soO 10y ago
If i wanted to work to customize my OS, i would have Nuxed it.
- freehunter 10y ago
  If you don't want to work to customize your OS, you accept the defaults. Those are your two options, and you've already ruled out one of them.
  - khedoros1 10y ago
    Option 3: Use an OS (or at least OS version) that offers better defaults, while still running the software that you need.
    - freehunter 10y ago
      Well then the OS that you're complaining about isn't exactly "your OS" is it? It's now someone else's OS and you're just complaining about something you don't even use.
      - khedoros1 10y ago
        You want to play word games? Fine. Scenario: I'm using X 2.0. The defaults are shit, and I complain. Nothing happens. At this point, I've got three options. Deal with the shitty defaults, customize the OS, or move elsewhere.
marcosdumay 10y ago
What you can't do, no matter what you try, is to make the Start Menu show all the programs you have installed. But attaching things there is nice. Even better than the KDE menu.
- swozey 10y ago
  I can't get over this. It doesn't help that the search (start>type) constantly doesn't find apps I'm looking for. It's to the point where I'm pinning everything to my taskbar. My workflow for a decade or more was to hit the Windows key then start typing to find indexed apps. It's almost useless to me now and I don't really get why.
  - marcosdumay 10y ago
    > I don't really get why I got looking. It's an acknowledged bug. MS isn't even calling it a feature. It's just about as old as Windows 10, and unfixed.
    - pzone 10y ago
      I'm not what the point is, given there are probably hundreds of bugs that somebody would say "This is the #1 worst bug in Windows 10." But for me, this is the #1 worst bug in Windows 10.
    - nikanj 10y ago
      Assuming they're honest, and in their defence, MS has been much more honest and transparent recently: could you imagine being the one poor soul who's been working on that bug for almost two years now? People keep reporting that bug, and you keep ruling out possible explanations.
      - marcosdumay 10y ago
        I've indeed seen that kind of thing happen, so yes, there can be some poor soul doing this. But it's still more likely that MS doesn't think Windows not letting you run your programs is a high priority problem.

mundo 10y ago

Thousands of programmer years went in to Win10, and the most positive comment on it is "It's perfectly tolerable if you turn off all that stuff they added." This should be in the dictionary to illustrate the phrase "Damning with faint praise."

freehunter 10y ago
If they change things in noticeable way, damn them for changing things. If they don't change things in a noticeable way, damn them for not making it more noticeable.
uncletaco 10y ago
It's called "throwing shade".
vondur 10y ago
I'd imagine those features that the programmers implemented was not something they had a say in. I imagine Microsoft has a large bureaucracy that determines what features that make it into a Windows release.
hfsktr 10y ago
I think it's the best OS I've used yet really. I remember getting BSOD many times on Windows XP and several times on Win 7 (although they were so rare they were the exception). Almost always those previous iterations had some peripheral that needed help being configured but with Win 10 I haven't had to touch almost anything. My computer has changed to be not comparable to those previous though because I now have a nice GPU, a nice CPU, and a SSD. So any speed improvements, graphic improvements, etc are skewed by the hardware changes I've made since. I didn't turn off anything except the privacy that I could. It's just that I don't have a use case for most of the features (yet).
- computerex 10y ago
  Am I the only one who never had issues with BSOD's, outside of hardware malfunctions?

TheOtherHobbes 10y ago

I run - using the word very loosely - Win 10 on a mid-spec 8GB Dell Laptop. It's literally unusably slow. Opening File Manager takes many minutes. This is practically a fresh install. I have Office 365 installed, but very little else. I don't even have a mail client set up. I dual-boot to Ubuntu on the same machine, and the latter is perfectly usable.

67726e 10y ago
I've had fresh Windows 10 (no crapware) installs on two different development machines at two different companies. Both times it was slower than hell, and I immediately asked for a Linux install. Perhaps this is me finally getting old and curmedgeony at the ripe old age of twenty-three, but I'll be damned if I'm switching my personal computer away from Windows 7 anytime soon.
- chadgeidel 10y ago
  Company supplied image? There's your problem. :-D If you were able to move to Linux - more power to you. Some of us are stuck with mighty machines and horrible system image with 10 kinds of disk/processor heavy background "management and security" apps running on boot.
- khedoros1 10y ago
  My company's Windows 7 image craps up awesome hardware, and so did the XP image before it. Lenovo T450s with an SSD? Yeah, that'll take a solid 5 minutes to reboot.
dragonwriter 10y ago
Conversely, I have Windows 10 running quite well on low-spec (for the time, not just for now) 6GB Acer laptop that I got when Windows 8 (not 8.1) was current, that went through in-place upgrades to 8.1 and then 10, and it's got a ludicrous amount of cruft that I keep meaning to clean up. So, while I don't doubt your story, I can't help thinking that it may not represent the general experience.(Maybe I'm just lucky, though.)
kyriakos 10y ago

kyriakos 10y ago

You are not alone, I run 3 PCs with Windows 10 all 3 had zero problems - everything works fine. I understand people being privacy concern but as an android user I feel like that ship has sailed a long time ago.

dublinben 10y ago
You can use Android without sacrificing your privacy. You should be able to use your computer the same way. Sadly, Microsoft disagrees.
- kyriakos 10y ago
  Can you though? I mean out of the box? I think you can't unless you buy a handset that you can use Cyanogenmod on it. Which I'd say it's as complicated for the average user than the hacks needed to turn off telemetry in Windows 10.
- khedoros1 10y ago
  Sure. Install an image without an app store or Google services. That ought to get you most of the way there.

gambiting 10y ago

I've literally never had a system as buggy as Windows 10, every day I switch on my computer I wonder what's going to be broken today. Stuff which works on the same hardware on Windows 7 is just unreliable on Windows 10. Not to mention that 10 is a usability mess and a massive step back in pretty much every corner of the system. Since I've typed out a small list of my problems with Win 10 before, they are here to read: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13418573 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13418573

NetStrikeForce 10y ago
Holy sh*t. Are you sure you don't have some malware screwing things up? None of those things are even close to "normal" or "acceptable".
- gambiting 10y ago
  I've literally wiped the whole drive, went back to Win 7 - everything was fine. Upgraded back to Win 10 and had all the same problems again.
  - tempestn 10y ago
    Have you tried a fresh install of Windows 10, rather than an upgrade? (Once you've upgraded once, you should be able to install fresh as the Win 10 license is tied to the hardware.) Perhaps the problem is related to the upgrade process.
  - braveo 10y ago
    you can install win10 directly using your win7 license key if you've already upgraded. I would definitely try that. It's what I did specifically because I've never trusted an OS upgrade. OS's are too complex for that to work reliably in my opinion.

ciaranm 10y ago

I really, really like Windows 10. I spend most of my work days in OS X on a Macbook Pro - but I also spend a lot of my free time gaming. Windows 10 is so much more user-friendly than any other OS I use. Settings are easy to find, generally easy to understand and change. Search is great. It boots super fast. It's about to get a 'game-mode' to restrict resources from background apps. Installing stuff from the Windows store has slow download speeds (compared to steam, apple) - but I have much fewer 'app is stuck in update' issues compared to OS X. I'm super happy with it.

daveguy 10y ago
> Settings are easy to find Hah. You're lucky your Cortana bar still works. They aren't as easy to find when your Cortana bar disappears when you click it. Tried all the random fixes on the internet to no avail. I never even tried to fix privacy concerns -- it just broke.
- cheald 10y ago
  I have Cortana turned completely off and settings are really easy to get to. Win key -> sett<enter> isn't particularly difficult. Or just typing in part of the setting usually finds it right away.
  - E6300 10y ago
    Maybe you're just lucky, or you're the sort of user MS is targeting with their new UI design. Whenever I'm configuring a W10 machine I find myself going back and forth between two completely different configuration interfaces. I.e. the Control Panel and the Settings app.
    - NamTaf 10y ago
      To be far I'm the same as the grandparent post, but I tend to stick to the legacy settings menus which still have everything and only encounter the new ones occasionally (ie: updates). I've learned enough of the new one to navigate it, but I can still basically type my way through settings in the old style menus still so it doesn't bother me.

runabout 10y ago

> I hate the menu [...] everything I tend to open has a shortcut on the desktop or is pinned to the toolbar. You have to get Keypirinha! http://keypirinha.com/ http://keypirinha.com/ Set ALT+Space to launch Keypirinha, then type the name of your application to launch it. Keypirinha adapts to how you use it. Often frequently launched programs will only take a couple keystrokes. For example TH launches Thunderbird.

zekevermillion 10y ago

That is the tragedy of win10. It's actually a great OS but the lack of respect for user preferences around privacy and updates ruins it for power users. I have to think that the engineers who did the work to make win10 as efficient and stable as it is had cortana and dark UI patterns shoved down their throats. cortana is clippy, we all know that. Who thought it was a good idea to bring back clippy?! Could not have been the team that does powershell!

cm2187 10y ago
There are plenty of bad parts too. The start menu keeps freezing regularly for me on multiple machines. Searching in the start menu returns random results. Settings scattered across multiple control panels is just absurd. In-OS advertising is a complete no go to me. The nagging to use edge too. The frequent forced reboots and full screen notifications are a nuisance. And it makes it really difficult to change default apps, on purpose I suspect. I just don't like it. It's not about visual design. I couldn't care less about flat design vs windows 7 menus, etc. But it is functionally really bad.
- kupiakos 10y ago
  The most frustrating thing for me is the automatic updates that are difficult to turn off. If I leave a Windows 10 VM running on my laptop for too long, it will decide it's "idle" and start consuming my resources. Even if I let the updates finish, it then continues for another week, whenever I leave it "idle", to perform AoT .NET compilation, pegging my CPU. Incredibly annoying.
  - mattmanser 10y ago
    My laptop fan is a bit of a noisy bugger, if I leave windows 10 for 5 mins it thinks idle and the the fan just starts going. First I found that ngentask was repeatedly running 32-bit ngen and it's practically impossible to debug what's gone wrong so I've replace the ngen with a dummy exe. But it still does it, now instead of ngen it's simply "System" constantly burning 20% cpu for whatever utterly pointless maintenance task it's decided on that's obviously broken. It's just really frustrating, I swear that the "idle" mode of win 10 costs me far more money than actively using the laptop. And it's so hard to debug because as soon as the computer activates it stops whatever bullshit it was doing. On my desktop I tried ripping out all the privacy invasive stuff and have somehow managed to break the start menu search. I do like it more than Win 7, the startup time's great, but it's still really frustrating at times.

vbezhenar 10y ago

I somewhat agree. I have to use Windows from time to time and it's usually Windows 10. I disliked Windows 8 so much, but Windows 10 is overall good IMO. But, honestly, comparing to something like Windows NT 4.0, I can't really say, why Windows 10 is better. There might be tiny things here and there, but overall experience is similar. The only Windows releases I remember were those particularly bad (Vista, 8) and those, which accumulated large userbase (XP, 7). Other than that, I don't see much progress. If Windows NT 4.0 would be supported today on current hardware and software, I'm not sure if I would use anything else. It was good enough. May be those only my memories, I don't know.

selectodude 10y ago
When is the last time you used Windows NT? I find new features are so ingrained in my workflow that I don't even realize they're new.
- badsectoracula 10y ago
  I use it in a VM now and then. The only thing from the later versions i'd want to see is adding thumbnails in the file browser, being able to right click in a start menu entry to show the file/folder properties without going through explorer , being able to search apps and recent documents with win+[text] and being able to drag the taskbar buttons to reorder them. Beyond that Windows NT's interface is just perfect. And TBH none of the above are really essential, just small quality of life things. But even without those i'd be fine. I think modern Windows add too many little distractions with icons, notifications/popups, gadgets, etc everywhere. Also the classic theme. I want that back. I run Win7 with the classic theme and Windows 9x/NT4 color scheme (the one with the soft light in the 3d elements, not the "Windows Classic" in 2K/XP/Vista/7 which lacks it - i had to import the colors through a reg file from NT to get them) and i like how it looks. I used Win8 and Win8.1 for a while and ran a hack that disabled theme files (which forced Windows to fallback to the classic theme) but that broke Metro/UWP apps. It wasn't an issue with Win8.x but Win10 uses UWP apps everywhere and it becomes unusable. It might sound a frivolous reason, but i reverted back to Win7 because i don't like how newer Windows look like. Since i don't expect Microsoft to do any of the above, my long term plan is to make my own environment that looks like Windows NT 4 in Linux :-P.

nisa 10y ago

I'm most of the time using Linux but Windows 10 is quite fast and usable if you are willing to do the dance to check all privacy settings and clean the Start Menu of the spam. I don't use an online id for logging in and use this tool to fix privacy settings: https://modzero.github.io/fix-windows-privacy/ https://modzero.github.io/fix-windows-privacy/ (read the fine print, it's quite invasive!) there are powershell scripts for cleaning the start menu - I don't have a link handy, sorry. After doing this it's a great system! Even Edge is somewhat usable if you install uBlock Origin (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/p/ublock-origin/9nblggh444l4 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/p/ublock-origin/9nblgg...) However most regular users are stuck with the shiny and annonying defaults that make you feel you handed over your machine to Microsoft to show you annoying ads.

windows10rules 10y ago
After neutering all the new "features" it's a GREAT system! Really!
- SCdF 10y ago
  Shrug. I have to do the same thing in OSX. Every major update I google what's changed and then disable 90% of it. In what world do I want Siri on my laptop…
  - peatmoss 10y ago
    Same here, a couple years back I decided the effort needed to build linux up was less than the effort to tear OS X, Windows down. The end state is a little more customized to my prefs too.

windows10rules 10y ago

>I haven't had a single issue with Windows 10 >I hate the menu and store that it shows so almost everything I tend to open has a shortcut on the desktop or is pinned to the toolbar Some people would consider being unable to use a KEY feature of the OS a problem. But you're right, aside from the glaring lack of tires, it's a great car.

hfsktr 10y ago
I meant I never had a problem with something not integrating when I expected it to. New mouse, new keyboard, new printer, headset, drives, etc. Everything has worked in that regard and painlessly (for me). The menu I found functional (and someone else mentioned I can actually remove the crap on there I didn't want). I am mostly against the flat UI (I hate it everywhere though) and the settings that moved to random places. I never had a problem with search not working or anything of that nature.

nikdaheratik 10y ago

I have had very few functionality issues. The main problem is the decision to self upgrade, constantly, without so much as an alert anytime you restart the machine. The dual control panels and ads are also really annoying and I can't imagine what a pain it would be for a laptop or tablet with more limited screen real estate. So a good OS, great by M$ standards, with some annoying "features" baked in.

wtetzner 10y ago

My biggest issue with it is the forced restarts.

reacharavindh 10y ago

Interesting. Is anyone aware of a set of hacks to get rid of selective annoyances/known privacy violations and turn Win 10 into something that feels like Win 7? - Cortana - Searches that connect to Internet/bing - call back to homeship - other features that not everyone wants that I haven't listed...

douche 10y ago
Find an ISO of the Long-Term Servicing Branch distribution - LTSB. It has all of the crap stripped out, and is quite fantastic. All the goodness, nothing that people complain about constantly with Win 10. No Edge, no Store, no Cortana, no ads or telemetry. I accidentally downloaded it from MSDN after my laptop's hard drive failed and I couldn't find any of my previously-burned DVDs or USB sticks.
- arm 10y ago
  “No Edge, no Store, no Cortana, no ads or telemetry.” Unfortunately, telemetry still can’t be turned off even in Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB. The lowest level you can pick is Security¹². (Also, more info on Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB here³). ―――――― ¹ — https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/itpro/windows/manage/configure-windows-telemetry-in-your-organization#security-level https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/itpro/windows/manage/con... ² — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12959097 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12959097 ³ — http://www.howtogeek.com/273824/windows-10-without-the-cruft-windows-10-ltsb-explained/ http://www.howtogeek.com/273824/windows-10-without-the-cruft...
  - reacharavindh 10y ago
    LTSB seems better Windows for my needs. Curious though, can't we just wire trace the telemetry connects and drop their name resolution some how? (Don't know the equivalent of /etc/hosts in Windows)
    - arm 10y ago
      Windows does use a HOSTS file as well (located in %SYSTEM32%\drivers\etc\hosts), however, (since around Windows XP) Windows hardcodes certain IP addresses and hostnames related to updating and other Microsoft services into dnsapi.dll (located in %SYSTEM32%). This is checked before the hosts file is checked, so any entries in this DLL will override the corresponding hosts file entry if it exists. The safest way to block suspect IP addresses and hostnames is to simply not trust the OS and use separate hardware to block the traffic.

computerex 10y ago

Windows search is still so bad.

pcunite 10y ago
Try FileSearchEX
- arm 10y ago
  There’s also Everything¹. ―――――― ¹ — http://www.voidtools.com/ http://www.voidtools.com/

romanovtexas 10y ago

Have had issues with the WiFi slowing down when the bluetooth is turned on in combination with location services; have ended up fixing it by toggling between turning off the bluetooth or the location services. The WiFi driver itself goes off randomly if I use my laptop for a long time. The disk usage is incredibly high for atleast 10 minutes after startup; tried turning search on and off, cortana on and off, nothing works. What's more annoying is the fact that there are no official troubleshooting guidelines for this issued by Microsoft. You end up visiting a bunch of sites and very randomly trying out myriad methods to get it working.

markatkinson 10y ago

I'm with you here. Sure there are a few irritations but overall I'm really enjoying Windows 10. If you turn web search off in the search bar then it's incredible. I don't have a single shortcut on my desktop, I just search for every thing I won't and it appears instantly. I almost feel as at home as I did in Windows 7, but not entirely. Windows 10 feels a little all over the place at times. As the below comments say, the control panel is a mess. But when you learn you can just search for mouse settings, or anything for that matter then you don't ever have to find yourself wading through all their ridiculous setting screens.

animal531 10y ago

I use mine probably very much the same way as you do. It's configured to look 99% the same as my Win7 installation had been. But frustration comes from the fact that Win 10 is just so random. I've had two installations (the second after the loss of my primary HDD). The first was great, it just worked. The second however keeps doing things I don't want. - Initial installation immediately downloading video driver during initial updates, locking me for hours from installing the correct Nvidia driver. So I was sitting there in the default low resolution unable to really do anything. - Disabled the annoying language bar? It'll be back tomorrow. - Disabled fast boot (which causes my pc to shut down on startup every second startup)? It'll be back next week. There's a number of other smaller things as well. Overall I don't hate it, I just wish it would stop trying to mess with itself/me.