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Windows 10 Fall Creators Update: the 10 best new features

36 points by plurby 9y ago

marklit 9y ago
I find the Windows 10 Task Manager very useful. Good to see GPUs will be listed as well now.
rbanffy 9y ago
It'd be nice if the reviewer were familiar with other OSs. A lot of these best new features are stuff that other proprietary desktop OS had for some time now.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
UnoriginalGuy 9y ago
While I am overall pretty positive about Windows 10; has anyone else been having ongoing issues with this large "upgrade" updates? For example my work machine is outright refusing to install the last one, and Googling suggests the only way to get around it is a manual install via USB. A family member's home machine also got corrupted during an install, and I had to wipe it to recover (since it couldn't roll back or complete the installation). I like the concept of these "big bang" updates with new features, but there's something wrong with how they're delivered.
- rjsw 9y ago
  I haven't been able to install the last update either.
- tjoff 9y ago
  I couldn't install creators update at first either on my laptop (old sony vaio, so I wasn't terribly surprised). Windows nagged me a few months later and I let it and everything went perfectly. I guess it is reasonable to assume that MS works out issues with the updates as failures are reported. But yes, the way they are forced upon users is sickening.
  - dawnerd 9y ago
    I think for most home users forced updates is a good thing. I just wish there was better options to have manual control. The other day I was rendering a video file and wouldn’t you know it, windows 10 restarted and interrupted it. Far as I can tell my options are to set away hours but that doesn’t help when you’re doing a 20+ hour encode.
    - to3m 9y ago
      After trying various supposed solutions to this, most involving toggling some arcane Group Policy setting somewhere, all of which I dutifully toggled, only to find many days later that actually it made no difference, eventually I managed to hit on the right combination, and now I now get prompted for each update! So it is possible, at least with Windows 10 Enterprise... even if I'm not quite sure how. I've ticked so many damn boxes in that stupid policy editor. But, if you ever find yourself losing faith as you click through another advert-infested Windows "help" site, stay strong! A solution is out there! (It still isn't perfect, though. Sometimes the updates are downloaded before I get prompted; other times, I'm prompted and then they download. More than once, the "download" process has used 100% CPU for an hour, which makes me suspicious that it's doing a bit more than it claims. And a couple of times when I've had the Security & Updates page open in the background, I've seen things just install themselves without asking, suggesting that certain updates are able to bypass this. But: no forced reboots.)
- mileycyrusXOXO 9y ago
  My issue with the "upgrade" updates is that they have a habit of nuking my boot loader. So I have to wait to update until I know I have a chunk of time set aside to repair GRUB.
- Ono-Sendai 9y ago
  Yup, my laptop is stuck trying to install the same update every day.
- seanwilson 9y ago
  Also, is there a reason they take so long to install? I've had to wait a solid 15 minutes involving multiple reboots and multiple cycles of it showing 0 to 100% progress where you think it's done but it just keeps going.
  - WorldMaker 9y ago
    My lay understanding is the big updates like this include a full Windows image rather than a delta, and basically replace the existing Windows image entirely, then replay the registry and settings into the new image. It's somewhat akin to provisioning an entire new VM template and then replaying an automated install script to bring it up to date. As someone that remembers how long in-place upgrades of that sort used to take (something like 98-ish to XP I recall taking hours), it's amazing they've got it down to "just" 15 minutes and a couple reboots. (It feels like most Insider Preview builds get installed in this full image in-place upgrade system, too, and it's fascinating to see it happen sometimes two or three times in a week.)
jakebasile 9y ago
I really dislike the weird "named update" thing Microsoft is doing here. There are now two "Creators Updates" and searching for info on them is problematic as they only differ by one word. I much prefer a simple "Service Pack N" or something like it. Also, it's difficult to know at a glance which came first. Also, what does it have to do with "Creators"? I'm not a Creator on my Windows machine, I just game on it. Is there going to be a "Consumer Update" later? Also, I'd be remiss to not bemoan the ridiculous fact that as a Windows 10 user I am not able to avoid updates if I so choose. These updates that are forced upon me routinely break my games until drivers/games are updated and I'd very much like the ability to only apply them when and if I choose. Oh, how I wish gaming on other platforms was viable. Sadly, I don't think that's ever going to happen with Apple not taking Mac gaming seriously and Linux gaming having been "almost there" for a decade. edit: typo and update to first paragraph
- stronglikedan 9y ago
  I'm sure you know about deferred updates (if that's available to you in your version). I don't game anymore, but I would imagine that most drivers would be updated by the end of the deferral period.
  - jakebasile 9y ago
    Unfortunately, I do not have the more expensive "Pro" version, so I am not able to defer updates and even then you can only defer updates for a time before Microsoft decides they know better than the user and forces the update. I think my issue with this is largely philosophical in that I should be able to choose what software is installed and which patches are applied to my system. Microsoft's controlling, patronizing decisions for me are grating and demeaning. I am well capable of making up my own mind about when and which updates to apply. I know this is a core argument for a Free OS, but I am unable to use one for gaming, and all Windows versions before 10 and all macOS versions allow the user to choose to update.
- sbx320 9y ago
  >Also, I'd be remiss to not bemoan the ridiculous fact that as a Windows 10 user I am not able to avoid updates if I so choose. These updates that are forced upon me routinely break my games until drivers/games are updated and I'd very much like the ability to only apply them when and if I choose. You actually can (partially) do that by simply disabling the Windows Update service. The only downside I've experienced thus far is that it also breaks the Windows Store. Apart from that you obviously need to reenable the service when you want to apply the updates. It's not quite ideal since you cannot apply individual (e.g. security) updates, but it works very well to avoid the random updates & included reboots.
megaman22 9y ago
Best new feature - Task Manager locks the system up completely for about five minutes when I go to launch it to see why another process is behaving sluggishly...
roesel 9y ago
I must say I am rather disappointed with most changes discussed here. They all seem very superficial changes and I wish they would solve/improve other things. Some examples include: 1. Bring the "power plan" (balanced/presentation/high performance) switching into the tray battery icon next to "Battery saver", which is independent of the "battery saver" power plan. This seems (!) like an easy change which many users would adore. 2. Finally unifying settings into one and only one place instead of having a "Settings" app only to find that every other thing you want to change eventually leads to the old setting window which hasn't changed since at least Windows XP. 3. Fix the occassionally horrific Start search, which will do things like find "Word 2016" as "Best match" when having pressed "wo", but once another "r" is pressed to make the search string "wor", the "Best match" changes to "Wordpad". Way too often does it happen, that you notice the best match as you're typing and then hit Enter only to find that by the time another letter was pressed (still the right one considering the current "Best match"!!), the "Best match" changed to something else. That's in the cases where the Search only finds programs installed to a specific date and is not able to find anything newer, which has already happened on two computers I've seen. Not even mentioning that the "best match" gets updated with time even when no new keys are pressed. So the same can happen just due to the "Best match" changing between you start and finish the movement to hit "Enter". 4. Finish improving the horrific thing that is looking up a network drive/device using explorer.exe, leading to freezes and delayed error popups that feel very Windows 95ish. 5. Maybe change that a window of Explorer becomes unresponsive if waiting for a HDD to spin up. This happens regularly if your system is on an SSD and you have a second disk (HDD) mounted on another letter (D:\). When you haven't clicked that disk for a while, everything freezes between you clicking on it and it spinning up to start reading. But hey, let's add another presumably more sexy and unifying look to the uppermost layers of the system. Edit: Maybe they did other under-the-hood changes that are just not being discussed. If so, where would one find them?
- WorldMaker 9y ago
  > Maybe they did other under-the-hood changes that are just not being discussed. If so, where would one find them? Yeah the article here is explicitly "10 Best New Features" and so doesn't explicitly include improvements to old features, and clearly doesn't represent the breadth of changes in the Windows release. The easiest way to find hints about just about every change made in the update is probably to browse through the Windows Insider blogs. They are quite detailed and rather intimate looks into the changelog of Windows over time. I don't know if anyone is building a good summary of everything that changes. Some of the area-specific blogs will do summary posts just before the release of everything going into the release; in particular I'm thinking about summary posts I've seen from the Windows Subsystem for Linux team (biggest tl;dr: multiple distro support, side-by-side distro-support, no need for Developer Mode anymore, just download distro(s) of your choice from Windows Store) and Windows CLI/CMD.exe team. As with each previous update, more Settings have incrementally moved to the modern Settings app, per your point 2. That likely will remain a slower process than everyone would like (there are a lot of Windows settings), but they continue to work on it. I can't speak to most of your other points as they've not been personal pain points for me; I don't do most of them often enough to notice.
RandyRanderson 9y ago
Here are my 10 fantasy features: 1 Improved Cortana: you can now remove it in one click 2 Improved OneDrive: you can now remove it in one click 3 Improved resistance to featuritis: you cannot install anything AR or VR 4 Improved UI - will not freeze entire laptop for 3 secs by clicking the battery icon 5 Better Edge - downloads Chrome/Firefox 20% faster 6 Emojis - auto-bans contacts who use non-text emojis 7 Replaces Task Manager with much better MS Process Explorer that already has GPU stats 8 Does not try and gather all my contacts emails under the pretext of "People Integration" whatever that means 9 One button to turn off all the tracking/telemetry 10 Improved UI - Clicking on start does not result in times' square popping up. Windows 10 fall creators update: No one asked for any of this but here it is anyway. Windows 10 fall creators update: You should've seen the features we cut!
anotherevan 9y ago
The Windows Fall Creators Update, which they are calling the Autumn Creators Update outside of North America, including in the southern hemisphere where Spring is in the air. No apostrophe. Marketing fail on so many levels.

36 points by plurby 9y ago

I find the Windows 10 Task Manager very useful. Good to see GPUs will be listed as well now.

It'd be nice if the reviewer were familiar with other OSs. A lot of these best new features are stuff that other proprietary desktop OS had for some time now.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

UnoriginalGuy 9y ago

While I am overall pretty positive about Windows 10; has anyone else been having ongoing issues with this large "upgrade" updates? For example my work machine is outright refusing to install the last one, and Googling suggests the only way to get around it is a manual install via USB. A family member's home machine also got corrupted during an install, and I had to wipe it to recover (since it couldn't roll back or complete the installation). I like the concept of these "big bang" updates with new features, but there's something wrong with how they're delivered.

rjsw 9y ago
I haven't been able to install the last update either.
tjoff 9y ago
I couldn't install creators update at first either on my laptop (old sony vaio, so I wasn't terribly surprised). Windows nagged me a few months later and I let it and everything went perfectly. I guess it is reasonable to assume that MS works out issues with the updates as failures are reported. But yes, the way they are forced upon users is sickening.
- dawnerd 9y ago
  I think for most home users forced updates is a good thing. I just wish there was better options to have manual control. The other day I was rendering a video file and wouldn’t you know it, windows 10 restarted and interrupted it. Far as I can tell my options are to set away hours but that doesn’t help when you’re doing a 20+ hour encode.
  - to3m 9y ago
    After trying various supposed solutions to this, most involving toggling some arcane Group Policy setting somewhere, all of which I dutifully toggled, only to find many days later that actually it made no difference, eventually I managed to hit on the right combination, and now I now get prompted for each update! So it is possible, at least with Windows 10 Enterprise... even if I'm not quite sure how. I've ticked so many damn boxes in that stupid policy editor. But, if you ever find yourself losing faith as you click through another advert-infested Windows "help" site, stay strong! A solution is out there! (It still isn't perfect, though. Sometimes the updates are downloaded before I get prompted; other times, I'm prompted and then they download. More than once, the "download" process has used 100% CPU for an hour, which makes me suspicious that it's doing a bit more than it claims. And a couple of times when I've had the Security & Updates page open in the background, I've seen things just install themselves without asking, suggesting that certain updates are able to bypass this. But: no forced reboots.)
mileycyrusXOXO 9y ago
My issue with the "upgrade" updates is that they have a habit of nuking my boot loader. So I have to wait to update until I know I have a chunk of time set aside to repair GRUB.
Ono-Sendai 9y ago
Yup, my laptop is stuck trying to install the same update every day.
seanwilson 9y ago
Also, is there a reason they take so long to install? I've had to wait a solid 15 minutes involving multiple reboots and multiple cycles of it showing 0 to 100% progress where you think it's done but it just keeps going.
- WorldMaker 9y ago
  My lay understanding is the big updates like this include a full Windows image rather than a delta, and basically replace the existing Windows image entirely, then replay the registry and settings into the new image. It's somewhat akin to provisioning an entire new VM template and then replaying an automated install script to bring it up to date. As someone that remembers how long in-place upgrades of that sort used to take (something like 98-ish to XP I recall taking hours), it's amazing they've got it down to "just" 15 minutes and a couple reboots. (It feels like most Insider Preview builds get installed in this full image in-place upgrade system, too, and it's fascinating to see it happen sometimes two or three times in a week.)

jakebasile 9y ago

I really dislike the weird "named update" thing Microsoft is doing here. There are now two "Creators Updates" and searching for info on them is problematic as they only differ by one word. I much prefer a simple "Service Pack N" or something like it. Also, it's difficult to know at a glance which came first. Also, what does it have to do with "Creators"? I'm not a Creator on my Windows machine, I just game on it. Is there going to be a "Consumer Update" later? Also, I'd be remiss to not bemoan the ridiculous fact that as a Windows 10 user I am not able to avoid updates if I so choose. These updates that are forced upon me routinely break my games until drivers/games are updated and I'd very much like the ability to only apply them when and if I choose. Oh, how I wish gaming on other platforms was viable. Sadly, I don't think that's ever going to happen with Apple not taking Mac gaming seriously and Linux gaming having been "almost there" for a decade. edit: typo and update to first paragraph

stronglikedan 9y ago
I'm sure you know about deferred updates (if that's available to you in your version). I don't game anymore, but I would imagine that most drivers would be updated by the end of the deferral period.
- jakebasile 9y ago
  Unfortunately, I do not have the more expensive "Pro" version, so I am not able to defer updates and even then you can only defer updates for a time before Microsoft decides they know better than the user and forces the update. I think my issue with this is largely philosophical in that I should be able to choose what software is installed and which patches are applied to my system. Microsoft's controlling, patronizing decisions for me are grating and demeaning. I am well capable of making up my own mind about when and which updates to apply. I know this is a core argument for a Free OS, but I am unable to use one for gaming, and all Windows versions before 10 and all macOS versions allow the user to choose to update.
sbx320 9y ago
>Also, I'd be remiss to not bemoan the ridiculous fact that as a Windows 10 user I am not able to avoid updates if I so choose. These updates that are forced upon me routinely break my games until drivers/games are updated and I'd very much like the ability to only apply them when and if I choose. You actually can (partially) do that by simply disabling the Windows Update service. The only downside I've experienced thus far is that it also breaks the Windows Store. Apart from that you obviously need to reenable the service when you want to apply the updates. It's not quite ideal since you cannot apply individual (e.g. security) updates, but it works very well to avoid the random updates & included reboots.

megaman22 9y ago

Best new feature - Task Manager locks the system up completely for about five minutes when I go to launch it to see why another process is behaving sluggishly...

roesel 9y ago

I must say I am rather disappointed with most changes discussed here. They all seem very superficial changes and I wish they would solve/improve other things. Some examples include: 1. Bring the "power plan" (balanced/presentation/high performance) switching into the tray battery icon next to "Battery saver", which is independent of the "battery saver" power plan. This seems (!) like an easy change which many users would adore. 2. Finally unifying settings into one and only one place instead of having a "Settings" app only to find that every other thing you want to change eventually leads to the old setting window which hasn't changed since at least Windows XP. 3. Fix the occassionally horrific Start search, which will do things like find "Word 2016" as "Best match" when having pressed "wo", but once another "r" is pressed to make the search string "wor", the "Best match" changes to "Wordpad". Way too often does it happen, that you notice the best match as you're typing and then hit Enter only to find that by the time another letter was pressed (still the right one considering the current "Best match"!!), the "Best match" changed to something else. That's in the cases where the Search only finds programs installed to a specific date and is not able to find anything newer, which has already happened on two computers I've seen. Not even mentioning that the "best match" gets updated with time even when no new keys are pressed. So the same can happen just due to the "Best match" changing between you start and finish the movement to hit "Enter". 4. Finish improving the horrific thing that is looking up a network drive/device using explorer.exe, leading to freezes and delayed error popups that feel very Windows 95ish. 5. Maybe change that a window of Explorer becomes unresponsive if waiting for a HDD to spin up. This happens regularly if your system is on an SSD and you have a second disk (HDD) mounted on another letter (D:\). When you haven't clicked that disk for a while, everything freezes between you clicking on it and it spinning up to start reading. But hey, let's add another presumably more sexy and unifying look to the uppermost layers of the system. Edit: Maybe they did other under-the-hood changes that are just not being discussed. If so, where would one find them?

WorldMaker 9y ago
> Maybe they did other under-the-hood changes that are just not being discussed. If so, where would one find them? Yeah the article here is explicitly "10 Best New Features" and so doesn't explicitly include improvements to old features, and clearly doesn't represent the breadth of changes in the Windows release. The easiest way to find hints about just about every change made in the update is probably to browse through the Windows Insider blogs. They are quite detailed and rather intimate looks into the changelog of Windows over time. I don't know if anyone is building a good summary of everything that changes. Some of the area-specific blogs will do summary posts just before the release of everything going into the release; in particular I'm thinking about summary posts I've seen from the Windows Subsystem for Linux team (biggest tl;dr: multiple distro support, side-by-side distro-support, no need for Developer Mode anymore, just download distro(s) of your choice from Windows Store) and Windows CLI/CMD.exe team. As with each previous update, more Settings have incrementally moved to the modern Settings app, per your point 2. That likely will remain a slower process than everyone would like (there are a lot of Windows settings), but they continue to work on it. I can't speak to most of your other points as they've not been personal pain points for me; I don't do most of them often enough to notice.

RandyRanderson 9y ago

Here are my 10 fantasy features: 1 Improved Cortana: you can now remove it in one click 2 Improved OneDrive: you can now remove it in one click 3 Improved resistance to featuritis: you cannot install anything AR or VR 4 Improved UI - will not freeze entire laptop for 3 secs by clicking the battery icon 5 Better Edge - downloads Chrome/Firefox 20% faster 6 Emojis - auto-bans contacts who use non-text emojis 7 Replaces Task Manager with much better MS Process Explorer that already has GPU stats 8 Does not try and gather all my contacts emails under the pretext of "People Integration" whatever that means 9 One button to turn off all the tracking/telemetry 10 Improved UI - Clicking on start does not result in times' square popping up. Windows 10 fall creators update: No one asked for any of this but here it is anyway. Windows 10 fall creators update: You should've seen the features we cut!

anotherevan 9y ago

The Windows Fall Creators Update, which they are calling the Autumn Creators Update outside of North America, including in the southern hemisphere where Spring is in the air. No apostrophe. Marketing fail on so many levels.