4 ms·

The calculator in Windows 10 got a similar "upgrade". It now has a loading screen that eats keystrokes. The Windows 7 just launched instantly and took 10% the R

The calculator in Windows 10 got a similar "upgrade". It now has a loading screen that eats keystrokes. The Windows 7 just launched instantly and took 10% the RAM and threads (seriously, the Win10 calc.exe has 28 threads!) It would be one thing if these companies were making greenfield apps and choose Electron to make their calculator app. But both Apple and Microsoft had perfectly functional calculator apps before, why spend the effort to make them worse?

kristianp 9y ago
Both the lock screen and the start menu have loading delays that eat keystrokes. It seems to be acceptable to the Windows team that this happens.
- jasomill 9y ago
  I agree that this behavior is terrible, and arguably even worse when menu animations are disabled, yet the Start menu delay remains more or less the same. What appears to be happening — I have no idea what's actually happening, but my guess as to what the problem may be, is that there's no special handling of Start menu keyboard input, just a set of systemwide shortcuts that tell Explorer to open the Start menu and then to steal keyboard focus. My fear is that the reason that no special effort appears to have been made to fix this is not some significant technical difficulty, but out of some explicit or implicit management decision that time spent fixing a bug that's only visible to the very few users who even realize the Start menu accepts keyboard input in the first place would be better spent on "important stuff", like, um, making the taskbar "more social"[1]. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/26/windows-10-gets-more-social-with-my-people-a-taskbar-feature-focused-on-sharing-communication/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/26/windows-10-gets-more-socia...
- 22c 9y ago
  I used to be able to unlock my computer before the monitor even finished turning on but now there's an annoying delay where I have to press a button, wait for the screen to turn on, then sometimes press another button to activate the password input box, then type in my password. Also I can't for the life of me get rid of "Schedule a Restart" notifications from appearing (and hijacking focus), despite trying all the group policy/registry edits in the book. Yuck.
rootw0rm 9y ago
in windows 10 use Speedcrunch, a great little GPL calculator.
dingo_bat 9y ago
I was very annoyed with this. Then I chanced to use my wife's laptop. And Win10 was absolutely flying on it. No keystroke misses, no launch lag. I have since concluded that Win10 is impossible to run properly on a spinning drive. You must have an SSD. I once r4ead that the reason Vista was such an utter dog on old machines was because Microsoft dev machines were too highly spec'd. I guess the same has happened with Win10.
- scrollaway 9y ago
  Can confirm. I run W10 on my gaming machine, which still has a spinning drive. I cannot believe how frustrated I get every single time I use it. An operation as simple as opening the Windows menu and searching for an app can take up to 20 seconds. What a waste of time.
  - flukus 9y ago
    I think there's some network access in there too. When I was tethering to my phone on public transport (where the connection drops out periodically) I've had the windows menu freeze for a minute (or whatever the timeout is). I moved back to linux for a computer where basic things like this would work reliably. A good move for the most part, but for some reason the calculator in gnome doesn't do anything when you hit the '=' key, I have to reach for the mouse. Seems like no one can make a simple calculator app anymore.
    - jmiserez 9y ago
      Enter used to work in the GNOME calculator.

kristianp 9y ago

Both the lock screen and the start menu have loading delays that eat keystrokes. It seems to be acceptable to the Windows team that this happens.

jasomill 9y ago
I agree that this behavior is terrible, and arguably even worse when menu animations are disabled, yet the Start menu delay remains more or less the same. What appears to be happening — I have no idea what's actually happening, but my guess as to what the problem may be, is that there's no special handling of Start menu keyboard input, just a set of systemwide shortcuts that tell Explorer to open the Start menu and then to steal keyboard focus. My fear is that the reason that no special effort appears to have been made to fix this is not some significant technical difficulty, but out of some explicit or implicit management decision that time spent fixing a bug that's only visible to the very few users who even realize the Start menu accepts keyboard input in the first place would be better spent on "important stuff", like, um, making the taskbar "more social"[1]. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/26/windows-10-gets-more-social-with-my-people-a-taskbar-feature-focused-on-sharing-communication/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/26/windows-10-gets-more-socia...
22c 9y ago
I used to be able to unlock my computer before the monitor even finished turning on but now there's an annoying delay where I have to press a button, wait for the screen to turn on, then sometimes press another button to activate the password input box, then type in my password. Also I can't for the life of me get rid of "Schedule a Restart" notifications from appearing (and hijacking focus), despite trying all the group policy/registry edits in the book. Yuck.

rootw0rm 9y ago

in windows 10 use Speedcrunch, a great little GPL calculator.

dingo_bat 9y ago

I was very annoyed with this. Then I chanced to use my wife's laptop. And Win10 was absolutely flying on it. No keystroke misses, no launch lag. I have since concluded that Win10 is impossible to run properly on a spinning drive. You must have an SSD. I once r4ead that the reason Vista was such an utter dog on old machines was because Microsoft dev machines were too highly spec'd. I guess the same has happened with Win10.

scrollaway 9y ago
Can confirm. I run W10 on my gaming machine, which still has a spinning drive. I cannot believe how frustrated I get every single time I use it. An operation as simple as opening the Windows menu and searching for an app can take up to 20 seconds. What a waste of time.
- flukus 9y ago
  I think there's some network access in there too. When I was tethering to my phone on public transport (where the connection drops out periodically) I've had the windows menu freeze for a minute (or whatever the timeout is). I moved back to linux for a computer where basic things like this would work reliably. A good move for the most part, but for some reason the calculator in gnome doesn't do anything when you hit the '=' key, I have to reach for the mouse. Seems like no one can make a simple calculator app anymore.
  - jmiserez 9y ago
    Enter used to work in the GNOME calculator.