10 ms·

Totally agreed. I really like Windows 10 - and then you have things like the advertising, forced resets of default browsers, forced reboots, and other things wh

by cheald 10y ago

Totally agreed. I really like Windows 10 - and then you have things like the advertising, forced resets of default browsers, forced reboots, and other things which, as a power user, do exactly nothing except piss me off. If they just focused on the feature delivery and stopped trying to push their crap, it would be a legitimately great OS. Every time something like this happens, I get a little closer to jumping to a Linux desktop for good.

elementalest 10y ago
I'm just curios, disregarding performance aspects, what is there to like about w10 over, say w7? Two things that have put me off upgrading to w10 is the inconsistency of the UI, and the fact the user has less control over the system in a variety of ways.
- username223 10y ago
  W10 gets rid of w7's endless, sneaky "upgrade to w10" crap.
  - andrepd 10y ago
    Can't tell if facetious
    - justusthane 10y ago
      Yes.
- nerdy 10y ago
  I truly think these things are overblown. This article references "sync" providers, but having sync disabled I've never seen the ads they show. I also disabled Cortana and most of the new W10 stuff but never looked back after switching. Edit: I do have Windows 10 Pro, which other users mention does not show ads. W10 has multi-desktop support, which is great when you're doing distinctly different things with an overwhelming number of programs open. It also has better use of windowing if you use those features (snap works by quadrant, etc). So by pressing Win+Ctrl+D it creates a whole new desktop (empty taskbar), and you can switch between them with Win+Tab. I don't use this often but it was amazing the few times I reached for it. Another small thing which bothered me but I've learned to rely on in W10 is if you have two monitors and are moving your cursor from the left monitor onto the right monitor near the top of the screen, it will be "blocked" at the rightmost edge of the left monitor, preventing your cursor from changing from the left monitor to the right monitor. This is useful for quickly minimizing or closing applications on the left monitor without mistakenly moving the cursor onto the right monitor. I have not yet found anything which I've "lost control" over except item-level customization of the left-hand side of the start menu, which is where pinned programs would sometimes end up. Having the entire right-hand side of the start menu plus the task bar is really sufficient though so this isn't a big deal. There are some other welcome improvements like the process list and/or performance monitor are improved, I can't remember specifically what wasn't available before though.
  - wtallis 10y ago
    Of the three things you can find to praise Windows 10 for, two are power user features that Microsoft has long provided through power toys and sysinternals utilities. The last one sounds like Microsoft rediscovered Fitt's Law. I'm not prepared to give them any kudos for fixing such a glaringly obvious and simple flaw. But on the other hand, the list of things that a typical power user or privacy-conscious user needs to tweak continues to grow, and some of them can only be disabled on editions that aren't available to consumers.
    - sandworm101 10y ago
      There is only one switch on a win10 machine that needs tweeking by the privacy-conscious user. If you really care about privacy you really need a non-proprietary OS.
      - wtallis 10y ago
        The Windows 10 Settings app has a Privacy section. On its General tab, there are 6 options. There are also 15 more pages of options for different categories. Where's the one big switch you claim covers everything of potential concern?
        Nomentatus 10y ago
        The switch to Linux, I presume...
        sandworm101 10y ago
        The off switch.
        cm2187 10y ago
        And the problem is not just to cover everything (I set up a script for that). But also to actively maintain the list for all the new intrusions on every "security" update. This is an absolute waste of my time by Microsoft.
      - 10y ago
- Silhouette 10y ago
  As far as I can tell, 10 has no killer feature, but has incremental improvements in a few areas that will be more relevant to some than others. It has better built-in support for modern hardware: common examples are USB3, NVMe, high-dpi monitors and touchscreens. It has some improvements under the hood in terms of security. It has DirectX 12 for gamers.
  - tracker1 10y ago
    Well, I happen to like Hyper-V in the box, it tends to work better than VirtualBox or VMWare for that matter (at least in my experience)... Windows 8 pro comes with it too, but Win10's UX is finally there, where I hated windows 8's and would always revert to Classic Shell. I also disabled Cortana and most of the search features beyond basic indexing and likewise don't use sync... I don't like the occasional Edge browser ad above my Chrome icon in the taskbar though. I'd still rather W10 than Linux... I use Ubuntu on my HTPC, and really like Unity, but it's just not quite as good, and there's the pretty regular quirk after updates run that I spend hours hunting down a solution for a few times a year. I also happen to mostly like my macbook, but there's not a viable solution to replace my main desktop.
    - Zardoz84 10y ago
      Try KDE. You can customize everything!
      - tracker1 10y ago
        I don't want to customize everything, I want nice defaults, where advanced features are tucked away... I also don't want to spend another 2 hours a few times a year fixing whatever problem the latest round of updates have caused. much more rare in windows in my own experience, I know two people who have had bad aftermath from updates, but one turned out to be bad ram that caused the issue. All the same, I would much rather have macOS with a start/taskbar a little closer to windows... the instance previews are nice, and it's a bit easier to work across multiple monitors... Most of my time is spent in VS Code and a couple browsers, so as long as I have bash (comes with git in windows), I'm pretty much good in any OS...
- kevin_thibedeau 10y ago
  Faster booting to a truly usable desktop rather than 1 minute to get a non-functional screen then another minute for enough of the OS to be brought up to do anything. Page compression for low memory PC's is nice to have too.
  - enraged_camel 10y ago
    Boot time is a non-issue if your boot partition is on an SSD, which is the case for most serious users today. I actually measured the difference. My Windows 7 used to boot in ~20-22 seconds. With Windows 10 it went down to ~15-17 seconds. Sure, Windows 7 was a bit slower. However, it also didn't have forced reboots like Windows 10 does, which in my eyes more than makes up for it.
    - xaldir 10y ago
      Clearly 5 sec on the occasional normal boot is meaningless. Unexpected reboots with awful long "installing updates" screen is an issue however.
- lewisl9029 10y ago
  There are a lot of legitimately great features that have been added for power users and developers since Windows 7. To give a few examples of things I make use of literally every single day: - Windows Subsystems for Linux. I don't think this needs any further introduction. - Client Hyper-V. It's a type-1 hypervisor that just works out of the box with completely seamless GPU passthrough (only to the root OS, i.e. the Windows 10 instance with Hyper-V enabled, but it's enough for gaming and running neural nets). Docker for Windows depends on this. - Storage Spaces. A storage pooling system that supports thin provisioning, mirrored and parity redundancy, tiered caching, bit rot detection and correction (when used with their new ReFS filesystem), and works seamlessly with removable drives (I use a cluster of 2 2.5" external 4TB drives in mirror mode because I travel a decent amount, and 2 2.5" external drives are so much more pleasant to travel with than any NAS on the market). - Huge improvements to window management, including virtual desktops, arrangement by snapping to all 4 corners on every monitor on multi-monitor systems, a super intuitive UI that lets you choose a different window to snap to the other side with 1 additional click, along with keyboard shortcuts for everything. - First class pen support. I have a convertible laptop with a Wacom pen, and some of the features in the ink workspace like sketchpad and screen sketch have become indispensable to my workflow, and so damn convenient to use. Windows 10 really is an excellent OS in its own right. It's such a shame that they keep undermining all the progress they've made by pulling crap like this.
  - chrisper 10y ago
    You forgot the great and updated CMD where you can finally select and copy properly ;)
    - DaiPlusPlus 10y ago
      Honestly, I prefer the old rectangular-selections because it's great for copying individual columns of output from `dir`, for example.
      - grrowl 10y ago
        In many applications you can Alt+drag to select vertically.
- cheald 10y ago
  Performance is the big one. Win 10 - when it's good - feels like a super-polished Win 8. They fixed the "metro" app stuff to not be awful. It does a good job of getting out my way and letting me run what I want to run. It's when it intentionally gets into my way that I get cranky.
ReverseCold 10y ago
As a power user, pay for Windows 10 pro. It's not free like regular windows 10, but "look ma, no ads!"
- greenhouse_gas 10y ago
  But what about Telemetry?
  - vetinari 10y ago
    Still there. Actually, even Enterprise edition has it, although labelled 'Security'. There is no off.
- chrisper 10y ago
  Windows 10 Pro was free if you upgraded from a Pro edition.
- gurkendoktor 10y ago
  My Windows 10 Pro VMs always had some Candy Crush bullshit in the start menu and happily displayed celebrity news every time I had to open Edge (mostly to download Firefox).
  - ReverseCold 10y ago
    Right, candy crush and edge are still there, but it's not like the ads in explorer.
andrepd 10y ago
If there are all those problems then... why do you like Windows 10?
- cheald 10y ago
  It's fast, does what I want almost all the time with no extra guesswork, and runs all the software I need to run without having to monkey around with WINE. I love Linux, I love Linux desktops, but they cut into my productivity because I spend time fighting <esoteric edge case> rather than getting my work done. Windows (mostly) just gets out of my way. It's cases like this - when it gets in my way - that make me reconsider it.
throwanem 10y ago
I'm about to have to switch from 7 to 10 at work. I haven't used 10 before. What's going to piss me off most? (You'd think there would be an answer to this somewhere, but I haven't found one that is more than a puff piece.)
- ohashi 10y ago
  Cortana, the tighter integrations of microsoft bullshit you don't want. Having to search a dozen times for how to disable/turn off things.
- roryisok 10y ago
  Probably the settings app which is there to replace the control panel of old. It's very dumbed down, and frequently has to launch cpls itself to allow you to do more complex things. FYI you can still get the control panel, just hit windows key and type "control panel". (Note, it appears for me after just CON, so you probably won't have to type the whole word, depending on what you have installed)
  - vetinari 10y ago
    Control panel and some of it's applets are available also by right-clicking the start menu. Since w8.1/2012r2, even.
    - chrisper 10y ago
      They removed that in the newest beta build. Now it has a menu option to the new settings app. Pretty stupid. They haven't even finished transferring everything yet.
  - runjake 10y ago
    Or just hit 'WIN+x', then 'p' to bring up the Control Panel. WIN+x, e for Explorer WIN+x, c for CMD (but configurable to launch Powershell instead) WIN+x, r to bring up the Run dialog. And so on... Learn to love WIN+X+Key... until Microsoft takes it away or otherwise nerfs it.
tonyedgecombe 10y ago
Come on over, the water is warm.
- cheald 10y ago
  I've been over several times, the water is great, but the sharks lurking about make the experience a little frictionful sometimes.
criddell 10y ago
> I get a little closer to jumping to a Linux desktop for good I wonder how bad Windows has to get before Linux on the desktop takes off? It's kind of depressing that as good as most Linux distributions / window managers are, they aren't compelling enough.
- arca_vorago 10y ago
  As someone who has managed to stay off windows for everything but gamedev (playing games on linux, only devving on windows because I find magical ways to crash the linux UE4 editor), I really think Vulkan is what will do it. Once we have Vulkan, it will be easier to get performance out of games and the underlying DE/WM, and it should simplify dev since we shoulnd't have to worry nearly as much about direct3d vs opengl. I have been dissapointed at Epic and Valve for not investing a bit more resources into the linux ecosystem, but I think they are just playing a longer game. While a freedom geek like myself will force myself to get used to the sometimes more difficult ecosystem, the genpop needs an excuse to chase the medium... I think gaming is it, and vulkan is the thing that should help linux gaming. Ryzen and it's low cost will also lower new pc barrier to entry, which should help, boosted along with lots of people wanting to dip into VR and therefore upgrading. More and more reasons for sections to move. If the CIA/NSA leaks keep up and MS keeps alienting users like they have since Vista/8/10, gnu/linux userbase will continue to rise. What would really make it though... is a killer AAA game or program that's on linux only. No port for windows, no bad windows gamers, you don't get to play, sorta thing. As for distros, I just want to make a quick plug for (xfce) Manjaro... normally I distrohop very frequently, but I haven't had such an easy linux experience ever. Really worth trying at least in a VM.
  - criddell 10y ago
    I respectfully disagree. I don't think there's some feature that is enough to dislodge Windows. I think it's going to take something like iOS on the desktop. By that, I'm not really talking about the touch-based UI (although that's part of it). I'm thinking about the app model. The model used by Windows is too complex (and Linux is even more so). There are a lot of things Apple got right with iOS, but I'm especially fond of the security measures. Apps are sandboxed, they hide filesystem details, inter-app communication is mediated by the OS, and updating happens mostly transparently. The tight integration between iOS and the hardware for security reasons is also something that should be copied but will be difficult to do. As a software developer, I couldn't use something like that to do my work, but most of the non-developers in my life could. Microsoft's current approach where they half-ass everything isn't going to work (IMHO). They are in no real danger though, because nothing else is challenging them today. Potential challengers are around though. Apple is pretty close with the iPad Pro. Valve's Steam box is also on that path.

by cheald 10y ago

elementalest 10y ago

I'm just curios, disregarding performance aspects, what is there to like about w10 over, say w7? Two things that have put me off upgrading to w10 is the inconsistency of the UI, and the fact the user has less control over the system in a variety of ways.

username223 10y ago
W10 gets rid of w7's endless, sneaky "upgrade to w10" crap.
- andrepd 10y ago
  Can't tell if facetious
  - justusthane 10y ago
    Yes.
nerdy 10y ago
I truly think these things are overblown. This article references "sync" providers, but having sync disabled I've never seen the ads they show. I also disabled Cortana and most of the new W10 stuff but never looked back after switching. Edit: I do have Windows 10 Pro, which other users mention does not show ads. W10 has multi-desktop support, which is great when you're doing distinctly different things with an overwhelming number of programs open. It also has better use of windowing if you use those features (snap works by quadrant, etc). So by pressing Win+Ctrl+D it creates a whole new desktop (empty taskbar), and you can switch between them with Win+Tab. I don't use this often but it was amazing the few times I reached for it. Another small thing which bothered me but I've learned to rely on in W10 is if you have two monitors and are moving your cursor from the left monitor onto the right monitor near the top of the screen, it will be "blocked" at the rightmost edge of the left monitor, preventing your cursor from changing from the left monitor to the right monitor. This is useful for quickly minimizing or closing applications on the left monitor without mistakenly moving the cursor onto the right monitor. I have not yet found anything which I've "lost control" over except item-level customization of the left-hand side of the start menu, which is where pinned programs would sometimes end up. Having the entire right-hand side of the start menu plus the task bar is really sufficient though so this isn't a big deal. There are some other welcome improvements like the process list and/or performance monitor are improved, I can't remember specifically what wasn't available before though.
- wtallis 10y ago
  Of the three things you can find to praise Windows 10 for, two are power user features that Microsoft has long provided through power toys and sysinternals utilities. The last one sounds like Microsoft rediscovered Fitt's Law. I'm not prepared to give them any kudos for fixing such a glaringly obvious and simple flaw. But on the other hand, the list of things that a typical power user or privacy-conscious user needs to tweak continues to grow, and some of them can only be disabled on editions that aren't available to consumers.
  - sandworm101 10y ago
    There is only one switch on a win10 machine that needs tweeking by the privacy-conscious user. If you really care about privacy you really need a non-proprietary OS.
    - wtallis 10y ago
      The Windows 10 Settings app has a Privacy section. On its General tab, there are 6 options. There are also 15 more pages of options for different categories. Where's the one big switch you claim covers everything of potential concern?
      - Nomentatus 10y ago
        The switch to Linux, I presume...
      - sandworm101 10y ago
        The off switch.
      - cm2187 10y ago
        And the problem is not just to cover everything (I set up a script for that). But also to actively maintain the list for all the new intrusions on every "security" update. This is an absolute waste of my time by Microsoft.
    - 10y ago
Silhouette 10y ago
As far as I can tell, 10 has no killer feature, but has incremental improvements in a few areas that will be more relevant to some than others. It has better built-in support for modern hardware: common examples are USB3, NVMe, high-dpi monitors and touchscreens. It has some improvements under the hood in terms of security. It has DirectX 12 for gamers.
- tracker1 10y ago
  Well, I happen to like Hyper-V in the box, it tends to work better than VirtualBox or VMWare for that matter (at least in my experience)... Windows 8 pro comes with it too, but Win10's UX is finally there, where I hated windows 8's and would always revert to Classic Shell. I also disabled Cortana and most of the search features beyond basic indexing and likewise don't use sync... I don't like the occasional Edge browser ad above my Chrome icon in the taskbar though. I'd still rather W10 than Linux... I use Ubuntu on my HTPC, and really like Unity, but it's just not quite as good, and there's the pretty regular quirk after updates run that I spend hours hunting down a solution for a few times a year. I also happen to mostly like my macbook, but there's not a viable solution to replace my main desktop.
  - Zardoz84 10y ago
    Try KDE. You can customize everything!
    - tracker1 10y ago
      I don't want to customize everything, I want nice defaults, where advanced features are tucked away... I also don't want to spend another 2 hours a few times a year fixing whatever problem the latest round of updates have caused. much more rare in windows in my own experience, I know two people who have had bad aftermath from updates, but one turned out to be bad ram that caused the issue. All the same, I would much rather have macOS with a start/taskbar a little closer to windows... the instance previews are nice, and it's a bit easier to work across multiple monitors... Most of my time is spent in VS Code and a couple browsers, so as long as I have bash (comes with git in windows), I'm pretty much good in any OS...
kevin_thibedeau 10y ago
Faster booting to a truly usable desktop rather than 1 minute to get a non-functional screen then another minute for enough of the OS to be brought up to do anything. Page compression for low memory PC's is nice to have too.
- enraged_camel 10y ago
  Boot time is a non-issue if your boot partition is on an SSD, which is the case for most serious users today. I actually measured the difference. My Windows 7 used to boot in ~20-22 seconds. With Windows 10 it went down to ~15-17 seconds. Sure, Windows 7 was a bit slower. However, it also didn't have forced reboots like Windows 10 does, which in my eyes more than makes up for it.
  - xaldir 10y ago
    Clearly 5 sec on the occasional normal boot is meaningless. Unexpected reboots with awful long "installing updates" screen is an issue however.
lewisl9029 10y ago
There are a lot of legitimately great features that have been added for power users and developers since Windows 7. To give a few examples of things I make use of literally every single day: - Windows Subsystems for Linux. I don't think this needs any further introduction. - Client Hyper-V. It's a type-1 hypervisor that just works out of the box with completely seamless GPU passthrough (only to the root OS, i.e. the Windows 10 instance with Hyper-V enabled, but it's enough for gaming and running neural nets). Docker for Windows depends on this. - Storage Spaces. A storage pooling system that supports thin provisioning, mirrored and parity redundancy, tiered caching, bit rot detection and correction (when used with their new ReFS filesystem), and works seamlessly with removable drives (I use a cluster of 2 2.5" external 4TB drives in mirror mode because I travel a decent amount, and 2 2.5" external drives are so much more pleasant to travel with than any NAS on the market). - Huge improvements to window management, including virtual desktops, arrangement by snapping to all 4 corners on every monitor on multi-monitor systems, a super intuitive UI that lets you choose a different window to snap to the other side with 1 additional click, along with keyboard shortcuts for everything. - First class pen support. I have a convertible laptop with a Wacom pen, and some of the features in the ink workspace like sketchpad and screen sketch have become indispensable to my workflow, and so damn convenient to use. Windows 10 really is an excellent OS in its own right. It's such a shame that they keep undermining all the progress they've made by pulling crap like this.
- chrisper 10y ago
  You forgot the great and updated CMD where you can finally select and copy properly ;)
  - DaiPlusPlus 10y ago
    Honestly, I prefer the old rectangular-selections because it's great for copying individual columns of output from `dir`, for example.
    - grrowl 10y ago
      In many applications you can Alt+drag to select vertically.
cheald 10y ago
Performance is the big one. Win 10 - when it's good - feels like a super-polished Win 8. They fixed the "metro" app stuff to not be awful. It does a good job of getting out my way and letting me run what I want to run. It's when it intentionally gets into my way that I get cranky.

ReverseCold 10y ago

As a power user, pay for Windows 10 pro. It's not free like regular windows 10, but "look ma, no ads!"

greenhouse_gas 10y ago
But what about Telemetry?
- vetinari 10y ago
  Still there. Actually, even Enterprise edition has it, although labelled 'Security'. There is no off.
chrisper 10y ago
Windows 10 Pro was free if you upgraded from a Pro edition.
gurkendoktor 10y ago
My Windows 10 Pro VMs always had some Candy Crush bullshit in the start menu and happily displayed celebrity news every time I had to open Edge (mostly to download Firefox).
- ReverseCold 10y ago
  Right, candy crush and edge are still there, but it's not like the ads in explorer.

andrepd 10y ago

If there are all those problems then... why do you like Windows 10?

cheald 10y ago
It's fast, does what I want almost all the time with no extra guesswork, and runs all the software I need to run without having to monkey around with WINE. I love Linux, I love Linux desktops, but they cut into my productivity because I spend time fighting <esoteric edge case> rather than getting my work done. Windows (mostly) just gets out of my way. It's cases like this - when it gets in my way - that make me reconsider it.

throwanem 10y ago

I'm about to have to switch from 7 to 10 at work. I haven't used 10 before. What's going to piss me off most? (You'd think there would be an answer to this somewhere, but I haven't found one that is more than a puff piece.)

ohashi 10y ago
Cortana, the tighter integrations of microsoft bullshit you don't want. Having to search a dozen times for how to disable/turn off things.
roryisok 10y ago
Probably the settings app which is there to replace the control panel of old. It's very dumbed down, and frequently has to launch cpls itself to allow you to do more complex things. FYI you can still get the control panel, just hit windows key and type "control panel". (Note, it appears for me after just CON, so you probably won't have to type the whole word, depending on what you have installed)
- vetinari 10y ago
  Control panel and some of it's applets are available also by right-clicking the start menu. Since w8.1/2012r2, even.
  - chrisper 10y ago
    They removed that in the newest beta build. Now it has a menu option to the new settings app. Pretty stupid. They haven't even finished transferring everything yet.
- runjake 10y ago
  Or just hit 'WIN+x', then 'p' to bring up the Control Panel. WIN+x, e for Explorer WIN+x, c for CMD (but configurable to launch Powershell instead) WIN+x, r to bring up the Run dialog. And so on... Learn to love WIN+X+Key... until Microsoft takes it away or otherwise nerfs it.

tonyedgecombe 10y ago

Come on over, the water is warm.

cheald 10y ago
I've been over several times, the water is great, but the sharks lurking about make the experience a little frictionful sometimes.

criddell 10y ago

> I get a little closer to jumping to a Linux desktop for good I wonder how bad Windows has to get before Linux on the desktop takes off? It's kind of depressing that as good as most Linux distributions / window managers are, they aren't compelling enough.

arca_vorago 10y ago
As someone who has managed to stay off windows for everything but gamedev (playing games on linux, only devving on windows because I find magical ways to crash the linux UE4 editor), I really think Vulkan is what will do it. Once we have Vulkan, it will be easier to get performance out of games and the underlying DE/WM, and it should simplify dev since we shoulnd't have to worry nearly as much about direct3d vs opengl. I have been dissapointed at Epic and Valve for not investing a bit more resources into the linux ecosystem, but I think they are just playing a longer game. While a freedom geek like myself will force myself to get used to the sometimes more difficult ecosystem, the genpop needs an excuse to chase the medium... I think gaming is it, and vulkan is the thing that should help linux gaming. Ryzen and it's low cost will also lower new pc barrier to entry, which should help, boosted along with lots of people wanting to dip into VR and therefore upgrading. More and more reasons for sections to move. If the CIA/NSA leaks keep up and MS keeps alienting users like they have since Vista/8/10, gnu/linux userbase will continue to rise. What would really make it though... is a killer AAA game or program that's on linux only. No port for windows, no bad windows gamers, you don't get to play, sorta thing. As for distros, I just want to make a quick plug for (xfce) Manjaro... normally I distrohop very frequently, but I haven't had such an easy linux experience ever. Really worth trying at least in a VM.
- criddell 10y ago
  I respectfully disagree. I don't think there's some feature that is enough to dislodge Windows. I think it's going to take something like iOS on the desktop. By that, I'm not really talking about the touch-based UI (although that's part of it). I'm thinking about the app model. The model used by Windows is too complex (and Linux is even more so). There are a lot of things Apple got right with iOS, but I'm especially fond of the security measures. Apps are sandboxed, they hide filesystem details, inter-app communication is mediated by the OS, and updating happens mostly transparently. The tight integration between iOS and the hardware for security reasons is also something that should be copied but will be difficult to do. As a software developer, I couldn't use something like that to do my work, but most of the non-developers in my life could. Microsoft's current approach where they half-ass everything isn't going to work (IMHO). They are in no real danger though, because nothing else is challenging them today. Potential challengers are around though. Apple is pretty close with the iPad Pro. Valve's Steam box is also on that path.