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It’s 2018 and I still see people walking around with Windows laptop lids open because they presumably have no confidence in Windows’ ability to sensibly preserv

It’s 2018 and I still see people walking around with Windows laptop lids open because they presumably have no confidence in Windows’ ability to sensibly preserve state after closing the lid. Software matters, and how it integrates with hardware. And I keep waiting for them to fix just the basics in Windows 10. Not utterly losing both the sizes and positions of all windows just because the laptop was undocked. Not failing to recognize the external display upon docking, despite the display working a few minutes earlier. Not completely failing to find files and apps based on how I typed them (“A” brings up “abc” but typing “ab” makes “abc” go away!?). Such a long list.

dzhiurgis 8y ago
Author uses IntelliJ which is a $1000 IDE ghat steals focus as you type in it...
cornellwright 8y ago
These are fair criticisms, but I don't think anybody has this nailed. I use a mix of Windows, Mac, and Linux, and have found myself walking around with the lid open in all three. Mac seems to handle what you describe better than everyone else, but it's far from perfect. I have one monitor that used to work fine on Windows and Mac. After a software update the Mac only recognizes it about 1 in 20 tries of plugging and unplugging.
- ghaff 8y ago
  Macs seem to be pretty good in my experience. It was something I really noticed about them when I first started using about 8 years ago. The only real monitor problem I've had was with an iMac that decided it didn't want to initialize the dual displays properly if the 2nd was plugged in when it was booted. Took me about a day to figure I needed to unplug the 2nd display. Eventually some OS update fixed it. Linux is a lot better than it used to be. I can reliably close the lid on my Lenovo X200 running Fedora. And anecdotally there seem to be fewer people going between meetings with laptops open these days so that's presumably a common experience with RHEL and Fedora on company-issued laptops.
  - gm-conspiracy 8y ago
    My G4 iBook was amazing at suspend/resume, but each revision, it has gotten progressively worse. I am afraid of my brand new MBP w/ touchbar. I use it with the lid shut as a powerful Mac Mini. It is too fragile to move frequently.
    - chipotle_coyote 8y ago
      People in my office (including me) move around with their MBPs pretty frequently. I know saying "other than the keyboard, they seem to be pretty well built" is the tech equivalent of "other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the show," but I've never had any issue with waking up from sleep, or display issues when I disconnect the external monitor, whether or not the laptop lid is closed at the time. (I generally run with the lid closed when I'm at my desk.)
      - gm-conspiracy 8y ago
        Definitely not my experience. I usually have to open and close the lid to get the external display to work properly. It could be my monitor or usb-c to displayport adapter, though. Also, this is my 2nd current gen MBP in less than 6 months.
    - athenot 8y ago
      man pmset OK, so RTFM jokes aren't funny anymore. Specifically, what you're looking for is to change the hibernation mode. Old macos used to keep the RAM powered during sleep, so there's a slight drain on the battery, and if it runned out, well state was lossed. BUT the upshot was that wakeup was instant. As it turns out, that's the default mode on desktop. And you can set your laptop to do that too (assuming you're ok with the tradeoff). sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0 Here's the relevant section from the man page: hibernatemode supports values of 0, 3, or 25. Whether or not a hibernation image gets written is also dependent on the values of standby and autopoweroff For example, on desktops that support standby a hibernation image will be written after the specified standbydelay time. To disable hibernation images completely, ensure hibernatemode standby and autopoweroff are all set to 0. hibernatemode = 0 by default on desktops. The system will not back memory up to persistent storage. The system must wake from the con- tents of memory; the system will lose context on power loss. This is, historically, plain old sleep. hibernatemode = 3 by default on portables. The system will store a copy of memory to persistent storage (the disk), and will power memory during sleep. The system will wake from memory, unless a power loss forces it to restore from hibernate image. hibernatemode = 25 is only settable via pmset. The system will store a copy of memory to persistent storage (the disk), and will remove power to memory. The system will restore from disk image. If you want "hibernation" - slower sleeps, slower wakes, and better battery life, you should use this setting.
Casseres 8y ago
The first thing I always do on a new laptop (or install) is go into Power Settings and change the Closing Lid action from putting the computer to sleep to just turning off the screen. It's surprising how many people never change the settings on their computers. Whenever I saw someone with the taskbar icons combined, I always asked them if they liked it that way, and they would say "No." So I always offered and they always accepted me going into the settings for them and changing it to 'never combine'.
- beagle3 8y ago
  If you put it in your bag, you're more likely to fry something. Was extremely common with spinning rust media. Incidentally, the common cause was "close lid" action set to "sleep", but Windows being unable to actually put the computer to sleep for some reason.
  - Casseres 8y ago
    True. In those instances, I would manually put it to sleep via the Start Menu button. However, I've had my laptop wake up from Sleep while in a bag several times, causing it to overheat. That pissed me off. If I recall correctly, I think it was a Bluetooth event causing it to wake up.
  - moolcool 8y ago
    You can sleep after n minutes of lid closed. I find this a good compromise of not toasting my laptop in a bag, and being able to head to a different room without losing any application state
    - coldtea 8y ago
      Sleep doesn't lose any application state.
      - txcwpalpha 8y ago
        Sleep isn't supposed to lose any application state, but I've certainly had many issues before with applications freaking out after waking up from sleep, on both a Mac and Windows machines. Sometimes it seems like more of an issue with the way the application handles sleep/network interruptions etc, but the end result is still the same.
JohnSully 8y ago
Sleep works great on my Lenovo P50. The only device that sometimes fails to come back up is the finger print reader.
vetinari 8y ago
> Not failing to recognize the external display upon docking, despite the display working a few minutes earlier. Now that you mention it... I have exactly the same problem with rMBP since upgrading to 10.13.5. Just this monday morning I've spent 20 minutes checking all the cables and why it doesn't work, until I rebooted the machine and then it suddenly worked.
- AgentOrange1234 8y ago
  It's so bad. My MBP used to work flawlessly here, connecting and disconnecting from monitors, shutting and opening the lid. Now every time it goes to sleep it loses the ability to talk to my mouse. I've given up and just set the display to remain on for an hour. Sigh.
  - NetOpWibby 8y ago
    UGH, it’s so frustrating!
- philjohn 8y ago
  I tend to do a PRAM and SMC reset after major updates ... seems to flush most of the kinks out.
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    That's one thing I don't get. Why doesn't apple do this periodically instead if the user having to do it? I have had several occasions where resetting PRAM or something else resolved problem. Why not do it once a day, week or whenever?
- squeaky-clean 8y ago
  Just so we can have all parties involved here, this morning I had the same issue with a Dell notebook running Ubuntu (and nvidia graphics which are probably to blame). Couldn't get my external monitor to work until I rebooted.
  - 8y ago
gamblor956 8y ago
I use Windows 10 at work and at home, and in my experience it's been more stable than Windows 7, which I similarly used at home and at work for years. Annoying mandatory updates aside (and now less annoying since you can control when they happen), Windows 10 is pretty much the same Windows experience as before, in a slightly different skin. One thing I noticed that was fixed with Windows 10 that was a problem in Windows 7: my laptops now handle state properly after the lid is closed (assuming you use hibernate or sleep rather than just screen-off).
- asshole15 8y ago
  > lol i wish MS and Windows QC is such a shit show. I had like 25% battery left on my surface and the fan is running like a mofo. What is the POS doing? Installing updates. What time was it? 10am.. Was after hours enabled (or whatever they call that feature)... Yes it was.. I was so close to flinging that piece of crap across the room.
- ilikehurdles 8y ago
  Completely the opposite experience. I paid for windows 10 because I was going through a gaming streak and hoped that the more premium version would be more configurable from the privacy-invasion standpoint, switching from Linux. What a mistake. After a miserable experience of figuring out how to disable the spyware and the auto-updating bundleware crap, it worked fine for a while... then: BSOD after BSOD. Sometimes it was once a month, toward the end it was multiple times a day. Pretty much it would grind to a halt over the course of a few seconds and stay completely frozen for a few minutes before totally giving up. I ran memtests and they checked out. Put CPU at stock speeds and kept having problems. Disabled all non-essential hard drives, reinstalled drivers, it still persisted. Yes, I absolutely get that it's probably a hardware issue, but I couldn't figure it out based on the logs and driver installs/reinstalls. I had nearly identical hardware with Windows 7 and Linux and never encountered these problems. I get that these things happen but I'm a lot more confident in 1) it almost never happening on modern linux distributions and 2) it being more-or-less diagnosable if it does. There were other issues as well. Mysterious microstutters on top-level hardware, more and more unwanted crap being installed and re-enabled after each major update, the update system as a whole.... After a while I got tired of it and switched back, regretting wasting the money.
BinaryIdiot 8y ago
> It’s 2018 and I still see people walking around with Windows laptop lids open because they presumably have no confidence in Windows’ ability to sensibly preserve state after closing the lid. Software matters, and how it integrates with hardware. Interesting. I've never seen or even heard of this. Windows didn't do a great job at this in general like a decade ago and the Surface Pros had a bug that was eventually fixed relating to it but I've never heard or seen an issue beyond those. I have multiple Windows and Mac machines and they both do great at preserving state when closing the lid.
- olyjohn 8y ago
  I manage a few hundred Windows notebooks. Probably about half of them have issues hibernating. Despite the fact that they are identical systems, identical image, etc. I just tell everybody to shut it down before you put it in your bag. Otherwise we end up with overheated, melted laptops. It's always been this way in my experience. Windows is certainly better than it used to be at this, but I would be willing to believe that the hardware vendors aren't implementing things properly. I guess that's the downside of not controlling your hardware.
  - wdn 8y ago
    Are you sure it is Windows not Chrome? If you closed the lid while Chrome is running, it prevents Windows from sleeping. https://techjourney.net/chrome-prevents-windows-from-going-into-sleep-standby-or-hibernation-mode/ https://techjourney.net/chrome-prevents-windows-from-going-i...
    - dep_b 8y ago
      Chrome has a very parasitic relationship with it's host OS's. Stopped using it when it halved the amount of hours a brand new MacBook lasted on a battery. My apologies for the webdevs that have to maintain Safari compatibility for me but the difference is just too big to ignore.
      - giobox 8y ago
alexbeloi 8y ago
> Not completely failing to find files and apps based on how I typed them (“A” brings up “abc” but typing “ab” makes “abc” go away!?). It's the 'basic' stuff like this and bizarre feeling UI pauses at blank windows that make it unbearable to work with. It's the opposite of snappy and constantly interrupts a productive workflow making me wonder 'why is it doing this' rather than thinking about my work. It's like having an essentially perfect phone that inexorably buzzes every 1-5 minutes (at random), you would throw it against the wall in less than a day.
wilde 8y ago
I have literally this same list of problems on MacOS. Connecting to external screens is apparently hard. MacOS also ignores commands to lock the screen until it’s done changing screens. :(
- coldtea 8y ago
  >I have literally this same list of problems on MacOS. Connecting to external screens is apparently hard. Never had any problem connecting 3 different MacBook Pro's (across the years) to 3-4 different external monitors (Dell, LG, Samsung, etc) and to several projectors (including through a VGA adaptor and HDMI ones). >MacOS also ignores commands to lock the screen until it’s done changing screens. So for all of 2 seconds it takes?
  - Rebelgecko 8y ago
    Have you used multiple external monitors at the same time? My MBP often gets confused about which one belongs on which side
    - Implicated 8y ago
      I ended up labeling the cables and making sure to use them in the same configuration this has mostly been solved. Still get's confused at times.
  - cmorgan31 8y ago
    I personally enjoy my MacBook Pro (15-inch, Late 2016) but it has a problem with going to sleep after being plugged into an external monitor all day. I find at least 1/3rd of the time it has frozen after being disconnected from the monitor and I am forced to do a hard restart. Perhaps this is user error, but I do not remember having as much issue with the older generation. I use two Dell IPS monitors which are relatively new and connect via HDMI => USB-C adapter. It's an inconvenience which you shouldn't have to deal with on several thousand dollar laptops.
  - Implicated 8y ago
    > Never had any problem connecting 3 different MacBook Pro's (across the years) to 3-4 different external monitors (Dell, LG, Samsung, etc) and to several projectors (including through a VGA adaptor and HDMI ones). Consider yourself lucky. > So for all of 2 seconds it takes? Most times. But occasionally I've seen the OS seemingly get confused/stuck in the process. Flickering, moving windows into various locations on the screen, taking 10-15 seconds to get back to functional/usable.
martin_ky 8y ago
> It’s 2018 and I still see people walking around with Windows laptop lids open because they presumably have no confidence in Windows’ ability to sensibly preserve state after closing the lid. At my workplace it's about 60:40 Windows to Mac user ratio. Regardless of the machine, nobody closes the lid when moving in the office between desks and meeting rooms. So, I'd say it's probably not that.
- ams6110 8y ago
  Probably don't want to lose their ssh connections.
  - synthmeat 8y ago
    https://mosh.org https://mosh.org
    - Xeoncross 8y ago
      mosh doesn't support port forwarding. There is a $400+ bounty for the feature.
      - koko775 8y ago
        EternalTerminal does though, and it integrates better with tmux.
      - wslh 8y ago
        ~$ 400 ? Not tempting at all.
      - brotherjerky 8y ago
        Link? I'll throw in $100 right now
        Xeoncross 8y ago
        I'm sure many people would appreciate that gesture https://github.com/mobile-shell/mosh/issues/337 https://github.com/mobile-shell/mosh/issues/337
eco 8y ago
I used to leave my (very old) laptop lid open not because I didn't think it would restore properly but because it took much longer than I liked to come back from suspension. My new Thinkpad X1 Carbon restore quickly (much quicker than my much more powerful desktop even). My understanding is that window size and positioning issues on Windows are a graphics card driver issue and it's up to the graphics card maker to finally fix it. I don't know the details though, that's just what I've read. It's obnoxious for sure.
- Const-me 8y ago
  It probably sleeps too deep. Because it takes that long to resume, It looks like your laptop hibernates instead of sleeping. It can be quick enough with a fast SSD and not too much RAM. I usually disable hibernation on my PCs, the sleep consumes some power maintaining RAM state but the amount is low, a laptop can sleep for days. Wake up from that state takes about 1-2 seconds.
perseusprime11 8y ago
Mac has similar issues. Keeps losing bluetooth connections with mouse & keyboard, sometimes have to restart to recognize the display. Still does not have simple way to hide icons on desktop or to dock multiple windows and resize them without using a third party solution.
- makecheck 8y ago
  Which desktop items? Using Preferences in Finder, you can hide any automatic ones (disks, servers), and everything else is just a question of whether you put files in the Desktop folder.
a_lieb 8y ago
> (“A” brings up “abc” but typing “ab” makes “abc” go away!?) To be fair, this one happens to me with Spotlight all the time.
andrei_says_ 8y ago
Not spying on me and not transmitting unknown to me personal information to unknown parties would be a killer feature. I treat any windows machine as if it has a keylogger and submits all my activity to all major governments (maybe only one today and “all” in a few years when my data gets sold, shared or stolen). This is a serious issue for me.
- 2bitencryption 8y ago
  > I treat any windows machine as if it has a keylogger I found the problem
- KirinDave 8y ago
  > I treat any windows machine as if it has a keylogger and submits all my activity to all major governments (maybe only one today and “all” in a few years when my data gets sold, shared or stolen). Why is Apple's OSX, which exhibits a lot of the same behavior with spotlight, exempt from this concern? Don't get me wrong, I don't like these as-you-type-send-it-up search interfaces. But if we're gonna call companies on doing this, Microsoft has scaled back its analytics more than Apple and its App store have.
  - ymse 8y ago
    > Why is Apple's OSX, which exhibits a lot of the same behavior with spotlight, exempt from this concern? They aren't. Neither is Ubuntu[0]. Luckily there are plenty of other operating systems that take your privacy seriously. Join the bright side. [0] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/ubuntu-spyware.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/ubuntu-spyware.en.html
    - nailer 8y ago
      Realistically, you probably shouldn't be running them on anything with Intel Management Engine, which has a Minix OS with an IP stack that you don't control.
      - 8y ago
agentdrtran 8y ago
The window resizing on dock/undock absolutely kills me.
dchest 8y ago
That reminded me that I once had Windows XP and Vista RC1 installed as dual-boot. I was finishing slides in XP and closed the lid. When I opened it a few minutes later to give my presentation, it was running Vista.
walterstucco 8y ago
I don't disconnect my MBP from power because it could go to sleep and disconnect the WI-FI after a few minutes regardless of network activity I guess it's just that Windows users know the system they use and its flaws (even perceived so) better than Apple users
e40 8y ago
Yeah, I saw a dude in the elevator (this year) because his Windows 10 started installing updates when he shut it down, but he needed to leave the office. I get so much crap when I say this online, but Windows is a complete shit show. Yeah, there are issues with macOS, but it is lightyears better. Yeah, I know Apple has dropped the ball on hardware, but my 5 year old MBP is just fine.
- blt 8y ago
  My 5 year old MBP is more than fine, it's great, but I am worried about what I will be able to buy to replace it. Eventually it will break; if not then someday I'll want something with more computing power.
  - justanothernerd 8y ago
    My mid-2012 MBP was one of the best laptops I've ever owned. Unfortunately I eventually broke the screen and it was going to be $800 to replace it. This happened about the time the MBP line got refreshed in 2016 so I got one of the new ones. My 2016 MBP has been the worst laptop I've ever owned... fails to sleep, fails to wake, physical keys keep dying, touchbar freezes and won't unlock the machine, it can't keep external monitors straight (to be fair, that might be more of an OS issue than hardware?) Keep that old one as long as you can! I wish I hadn't "upgraded".
    - bubblebauble 8y ago
      Sell it and buy a refurb from a reseller. I did to replace my busted 2013 with a 2015, and now I'm set hopefully for another few years until Apple comes to their senses. I use Windows just for games, and the sheer frustration even there is enough to turn me off of it. Basic things like launching apps and control panels from the search bar don't work. It fails to pick up the right resolution on my external monitor sometimes. "Geforce experience" is a piece of crap that requires an account to use. Everything feels like I'm at a mall, instead of on my own PC: tacky, hostile, fake, noisy, incoherent. There is no Mission Control, no Time Machine, no Spaces, the UI still thinks of document windows as applications, there is no Application menu, the keyboard shortcuts are crap, application installs dump stuff all over, settings don't apply immediately, resolution scaling is broken, ... People who think Windows is on par with macOS don't know jack about macs and never bothered to get good at them. It'll be a cold day in hell before an NT-derived windows can compete. MS needs to clean house and commit to doing what Apple did with OSX in 2001... Get rid of the cruft, put the user first, and make everything work. The article's mention that ejecting the screen takes a software release and that certain apps can prevent it is the kind of bullshit Steve Jobs would've mocked and told the developers to fix if they expect to be taken seriously. A product should serve the user and provide affordances, not hold them hostage. Migrating to my new MacBook was trivial, and the machines set up an adhoc WiFi network automatically to transfer all the files. Once done, everything worked as before. All without my involvement. That's why people use and want Macs.
blinkingled 8y ago
Probably a moot issue with Connected Standby enabled laptops. It doesn't actually sleep - just puts everything in low power mode - my X1 consumes 0.3W in that mode and the desktop is right there as soon as I open the lid and place my finger on the FP reader!
0x00000000 8y ago
The instantaneous system wide search is my number one favorite thing about Mac OS. I wonder how many hours of my life I have spent waiting for a Windows explorer search to complete only to accidentally click on one of the results, hit back, and have it start the search all over.
- phonon 8y ago
  Use https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything_(software) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything_(software)
  - listenallyall 8y ago
    "Everything" is the among the greatest pieces of Windows software ever written. It is wonderful. I cannot figure out why, with all of their money, Microsoft doesn't just pay the guy a little cash and make it a built-in feature of Windows. It would increase the usability of Windows, especially among novice users, enormously.
    - phonon 8y ago
      I think they refuse to use the technique because it doesn't respect file permissions the way they prefer (IIRC).
ztjio 8y ago
This and other similar things are so often and easily ignored. I see people talking about Macs not supporting pro use. But hey, tell me, how am I going to power my 6 external displays on a Surface product of any kind? I get that people want some more variety and excitement, and maybe feel like the Thunderbolt port thing is problematic (despite absolutely enabling my most “pro” setup I’ve ever had on my ’17 13” TB MBP) and obviously the keyboard design has issues. But as a whole package it’s still the best commercial product you can buy in its space, and considering actual size, has no real competition even if you ignore the many, many software issues one faces when leaving the warm, design-loving embrace of the macOS software ecosystem. I’ll reconsider this situation after Microsoft releases a Surface product that isn’t almost guaranteed to require one or more returns to the store and oh, yeah, has Thunderbolt 3 support so I can plug in 2 cables to get: 6 external displays (1 4k, 5 2560x*), NVMe speeds to external storage, gigabit ethernet, digital audio, SD card reader, spare ports, etc. etc. (aka OWC TB3 Dock with nearly every port in use.) There are a few non-MS laptops that might handle the hardware requirements I meet with my current setup, but, nothing that couples the hardware with the Software. Show me even one single app that matches the care and design of Things for macOS + iOS, for example. These are things I use every. single. day. for nearly every. single task. Frankly, I look forward to Apple fixing some of their issues with the MBP line and hopefully by then the situation with mobile processors will be improved enough to allow for some bigger memory footprints and the like, though, honestly, despite running minikube based workflows locally, I’ve never ran out of RAM at 16GB. I guess it’s because I don’t use Slack.
- hug 8y ago
  > I see people talking about Macs not supporting pro use. But hey, tell me, how am I going to power my 6 external displays on a Surface product of any kind? I have many friends, most of whom are professionals, but none of whom are software devs. A bunch of them do devops and SRE work, a bunch of them are creative professionals, and a bunch of them are in other professional services, like finance and law. Personally, I work for an "IT services" company, essentially doing outsourced devops and ops for numerous other professional services companies. What I'm getting at is that I know literally hundreds of professionals, across my personal and work life. The sum total of those in my life who need or use 6 displays: Zero. You are not, in any way shape or form, a typical professional. If you need 6 displays (which you might, but I'd bet a dollar you don't) you're basically so far out of the ballpark of standard professional that you're on the moon. Let's not pretend that the Surface Pro — or the Macbook Pro, for that matter — are in any way not suitable for the vast majority of professionals.
jaysonelliot 8y ago
Not utterly losing both the sizes and positions of all windows just because the laptop was undocked. Not failing to recognize the external display upon docking, despite the display working a few minutes earlier. Both of my MacBook Pros (2015 and 2018, Sierra and High Sierra, respectively) exhibit this exact behavior. I deliberately avoid letting my laptops go to sleep, and try not to unplug them from their monitors because I don't want to spend time re-positioning every single window and tool palette. It really defeats the purpose of having a laptop.
hammock 8y ago
That's funny because I'm pretty sure Windows has a setting that you can set it to NOT go to sleep at all when you shut the lid, but MacBooks DO NOT have this feature.
- f3xy 8y ago
  The name of the mode escapes me , but they don’t sleep if you have an external display mouse and keyboard connected. I don’t normally use this mode as usually utilize the laptop hardware too when “docked” but when people ask I always help them with this and it works fine
brazzledazzle 8y ago
People do that with both operating systems where I work and they’re both hit or miss which is why people do that. Am I exchanging messages from HN users through some kind of time portal to the Snow Leopard era? Apple has been dropping the ball big time with macOS for a while now and if you haven’t run into window rearranging, bizarre monitor connecting issues or kernel panics from docking I am insanely jealous.
Lazare 8y ago
> And I keep waiting for them to fix just the basics in Windows 10. Not utterly losing both the sizes and positions of all windows just because the laptop was undocked. Not failing to recognize the external display upon docking, despite the display working a few minutes earlier. I use and seriously like OS X but...those are two of my biggest pet peeves with the OS. I constantly need to re-arrange my windows every time it notices that an external display had been added or removed, and it frequently (maybe 2 per week) will inexplicably refuse to recognise an external display until I go through a little dance of power cycling things, unplugging them, plugging them in, and trying again. Worse, it also periodically stops working with my (bog standard USB) keyboard and mouse until I unplug them and plug them back in. It's amazing how confusing it can be trying to debug why a UI element isn't working when clicked until you determine that the computer has decided a modifier key is stuck down. The Apple ecosystem was fantastically stable and reliable a few years back, but things are changing, sadly.
eksemplar 8y ago
I’ve used windows since 3.11. Sure I’ve had a stint of Linux here and there, especially when I was young enough not to be bothered by the configuration. I’ve never not liked windows, though I did skip both ME and 8, but windows 10 has been such an awful experience that I bought a mbp late 2015 version last year, and I doubt I’ll ever use windows as my main OS again. I still use it at work, and while you avoid a lot of the shit, like auto-installed pre-installers for Facebook styled games in an enterprise setup, it still lowers the brightness of my screen when I undock it, even though I’ve specifically told it not to in every setting I’ve been able to find. That’s just the tip of the iceberg, windows 10 is quite frankly the worst OS I’ve ever used.
- Angelore 8y ago
  Do you have Intel graphics in there by any chance? I've had the brightness issue on xps 15, and it turned out that the Intel drivers were responsible.
zumu 8y ago
This is exactly how I feel about my 2016 MacBook Pro
flamemyst 8y ago
Personal anecdote I like to walk short distance with lids open to maintain wifi connection as I usualy keep remote connection to server. For longer walk distance, close the lid for easier walking.
- tomcooks 8y ago
  Consider using MoSH[0] if you switch networks often [0](https://mosh.org/ https://mosh.org/)
krzat 8y ago
My favorite feature of Windows 10 is displaying ads for Minecraft or Candy Crush or whatever in the start menu.
- jkchu 8y ago
  To be fair, it is very easy to remove those adds.
fortyseven 8y ago
I can't even turn off my friggin' monitor without Windows losing track of my window sizes. Baaaaah.

dzhiurgis 8y ago

Author uses IntelliJ which is a $1000 IDE ghat steals focus as you type in it...

cornellwright 8y ago

These are fair criticisms, but I don't think anybody has this nailed. I use a mix of Windows, Mac, and Linux, and have found myself walking around with the lid open in all three. Mac seems to handle what you describe better than everyone else, but it's far from perfect. I have one monitor that used to work fine on Windows and Mac. After a software update the Mac only recognizes it about 1 in 20 tries of plugging and unplugging.

ghaff 8y ago
Macs seem to be pretty good in my experience. It was something I really noticed about them when I first started using about 8 years ago. The only real monitor problem I've had was with an iMac that decided it didn't want to initialize the dual displays properly if the 2nd was plugged in when it was booted. Took me about a day to figure I needed to unplug the 2nd display. Eventually some OS update fixed it. Linux is a lot better than it used to be. I can reliably close the lid on my Lenovo X200 running Fedora. And anecdotally there seem to be fewer people going between meetings with laptops open these days so that's presumably a common experience with RHEL and Fedora on company-issued laptops.
- gm-conspiracy 8y ago
  My G4 iBook was amazing at suspend/resume, but each revision, it has gotten progressively worse. I am afraid of my brand new MBP w/ touchbar. I use it with the lid shut as a powerful Mac Mini. It is too fragile to move frequently.
  - chipotle_coyote 8y ago
    People in my office (including me) move around with their MBPs pretty frequently. I know saying "other than the keyboard, they seem to be pretty well built" is the tech equivalent of "other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the show," but I've never had any issue with waking up from sleep, or display issues when I disconnect the external monitor, whether or not the laptop lid is closed at the time. (I generally run with the lid closed when I'm at my desk.)
    - gm-conspiracy 8y ago
      Definitely not my experience. I usually have to open and close the lid to get the external display to work properly. It could be my monitor or usb-c to displayport adapter, though. Also, this is my 2nd current gen MBP in less than 6 months.
  - athenot 8y ago
    man pmset OK, so RTFM jokes aren't funny anymore. Specifically, what you're looking for is to change the hibernation mode. Old macos used to keep the RAM powered during sleep, so there's a slight drain on the battery, and if it runned out, well state was lossed. BUT the upshot was that wakeup was instant. As it turns out, that's the default mode on desktop. And you can set your laptop to do that too (assuming you're ok with the tradeoff). sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0 Here's the relevant section from the man page: hibernatemode supports values of 0, 3, or 25. Whether or not a hibernation image gets written is also dependent on the values of standby and autopoweroff For example, on desktops that support standby a hibernation image will be written after the specified standbydelay time. To disable hibernation images completely, ensure hibernatemode standby and autopoweroff are all set to 0. hibernatemode = 0 by default on desktops. The system will not back memory up to persistent storage. The system must wake from the con- tents of memory; the system will lose context on power loss. This is, historically, plain old sleep. hibernatemode = 3 by default on portables. The system will store a copy of memory to persistent storage (the disk), and will power memory during sleep. The system will wake from memory, unless a power loss forces it to restore from hibernate image. hibernatemode = 25 is only settable via pmset. The system will store a copy of memory to persistent storage (the disk), and will remove power to memory. The system will restore from disk image. If you want "hibernation" - slower sleeps, slower wakes, and better battery life, you should use this setting.

Casseres 8y ago

The first thing I always do on a new laptop (or install) is go into Power Settings and change the Closing Lid action from putting the computer to sleep to just turning off the screen. It's surprising how many people never change the settings on their computers. Whenever I saw someone with the taskbar icons combined, I always asked them if they liked it that way, and they would say "No." So I always offered and they always accepted me going into the settings for them and changing it to 'never combine'.

beagle3 8y ago
If you put it in your bag, you're more likely to fry something. Was extremely common with spinning rust media. Incidentally, the common cause was "close lid" action set to "sleep", but Windows being unable to actually put the computer to sleep for some reason.
- Casseres 8y ago
  True. In those instances, I would manually put it to sleep via the Start Menu button. However, I've had my laptop wake up from Sleep while in a bag several times, causing it to overheat. That pissed me off. If I recall correctly, I think it was a Bluetooth event causing it to wake up.
- moolcool 8y ago
  You can sleep after n minutes of lid closed. I find this a good compromise of not toasting my laptop in a bag, and being able to head to a different room without losing any application state
  - coldtea 8y ago
    Sleep doesn't lose any application state.
    - txcwpalpha 8y ago
      Sleep isn't supposed to lose any application state, but I've certainly had many issues before with applications freaking out after waking up from sleep, on both a Mac and Windows machines. Sometimes it seems like more of an issue with the way the application handles sleep/network interruptions etc, but the end result is still the same.

JohnSully 8y ago

Sleep works great on my Lenovo P50. The only device that sometimes fails to come back up is the finger print reader.

vetinari 8y ago

> Not failing to recognize the external display upon docking, despite the display working a few minutes earlier. Now that you mention it... I have exactly the same problem with rMBP since upgrading to 10.13.5. Just this monday morning I've spent 20 minutes checking all the cables and why it doesn't work, until I rebooted the machine and then it suddenly worked.

AgentOrange1234 8y ago
It's so bad. My MBP used to work flawlessly here, connecting and disconnecting from monitors, shutting and opening the lid. Now every time it goes to sleep it loses the ability to talk to my mouse. I've given up and just set the display to remain on for an hour. Sigh.
- NetOpWibby 8y ago
  UGH, it’s so frustrating!
philjohn 8y ago
I tend to do a PRAM and SMC reset after major updates ... seems to flush most of the kinks out.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  That's one thing I don't get. Why doesn't apple do this periodically instead if the user having to do it? I have had several occasions where resetting PRAM or something else resolved problem. Why not do it once a day, week or whenever?
squeaky-clean 8y ago
Just so we can have all parties involved here, this morning I had the same issue with a Dell notebook running Ubuntu (and nvidia graphics which are probably to blame). Couldn't get my external monitor to work until I rebooted.
- 8y ago

gamblor956 8y ago

I use Windows 10 at work and at home, and in my experience it's been more stable than Windows 7, which I similarly used at home and at work for years. Annoying mandatory updates aside (and now less annoying since you can control when they happen), Windows 10 is pretty much the same Windows experience as before, in a slightly different skin. One thing I noticed that was fixed with Windows 10 that was a problem in Windows 7: my laptops now handle state properly after the lid is closed (assuming you use hibernate or sleep rather than just screen-off).

asshole15 8y ago
> lol i wish MS and Windows QC is such a shit show. I had like 25% battery left on my surface and the fan is running like a mofo. What is the POS doing? Installing updates. What time was it? 10am.. Was after hours enabled (or whatever they call that feature)... Yes it was.. I was so close to flinging that piece of crap across the room.
ilikehurdles 8y ago
Completely the opposite experience. I paid for windows 10 because I was going through a gaming streak and hoped that the more premium version would be more configurable from the privacy-invasion standpoint, switching from Linux. What a mistake. After a miserable experience of figuring out how to disable the spyware and the auto-updating bundleware crap, it worked fine for a while... then: BSOD after BSOD. Sometimes it was once a month, toward the end it was multiple times a day. Pretty much it would grind to a halt over the course of a few seconds and stay completely frozen for a few minutes before totally giving up. I ran memtests and they checked out. Put CPU at stock speeds and kept having problems. Disabled all non-essential hard drives, reinstalled drivers, it still persisted. Yes, I absolutely get that it's probably a hardware issue, but I couldn't figure it out based on the logs and driver installs/reinstalls. I had nearly identical hardware with Windows 7 and Linux and never encountered these problems. I get that these things happen but I'm a lot more confident in 1) it almost never happening on modern linux distributions and 2) it being more-or-less diagnosable if it does. There were other issues as well. Mysterious microstutters on top-level hardware, more and more unwanted crap being installed and re-enabled after each major update, the update system as a whole.... After a while I got tired of it and switched back, regretting wasting the money.

BinaryIdiot 8y ago

> It’s 2018 and I still see people walking around with Windows laptop lids open because they presumably have no confidence in Windows’ ability to sensibly preserve state after closing the lid. Software matters, and how it integrates with hardware. Interesting. I've never seen or even heard of this. Windows didn't do a great job at this in general like a decade ago and the Surface Pros had a bug that was eventually fixed relating to it but I've never heard or seen an issue beyond those. I have multiple Windows and Mac machines and they both do great at preserving state when closing the lid.

olyjohn 8y ago
I manage a few hundred Windows notebooks. Probably about half of them have issues hibernating. Despite the fact that they are identical systems, identical image, etc. I just tell everybody to shut it down before you put it in your bag. Otherwise we end up with overheated, melted laptops. It's always been this way in my experience. Windows is certainly better than it used to be at this, but I would be willing to believe that the hardware vendors aren't implementing things properly. I guess that's the downside of not controlling your hardware.
- wdn 8y ago
  Are you sure it is Windows not Chrome? If you closed the lid while Chrome is running, it prevents Windows from sleeping. https://techjourney.net/chrome-prevents-windows-from-going-into-sleep-standby-or-hibernation-mode/ https://techjourney.net/chrome-prevents-windows-from-going-i...
  - dep_b 8y ago
    Chrome has a very parasitic relationship with it's host OS's. Stopped using it when it halved the amount of hours a brand new MacBook lasted on a battery. My apologies for the webdevs that have to maintain Safari compatibility for me but the difference is just too big to ignore.
    - giobox 8y ago

alexbeloi 8y ago

> Not completely failing to find files and apps based on how I typed them (“A” brings up “abc” but typing “ab” makes “abc” go away!?). It's the 'basic' stuff like this and bizarre feeling UI pauses at blank windows that make it unbearable to work with. It's the opposite of snappy and constantly interrupts a productive workflow making me wonder 'why is it doing this' rather than thinking about my work. It's like having an essentially perfect phone that inexorably buzzes every 1-5 minutes (at random), you would throw it against the wall in less than a day.

wilde 8y ago

I have literally this same list of problems on MacOS. Connecting to external screens is apparently hard. MacOS also ignores commands to lock the screen until it’s done changing screens. :(

coldtea 8y ago
>I have literally this same list of problems on MacOS. Connecting to external screens is apparently hard. Never had any problem connecting 3 different MacBook Pro's (across the years) to 3-4 different external monitors (Dell, LG, Samsung, etc) and to several projectors (including through a VGA adaptor and HDMI ones). >MacOS also ignores commands to lock the screen until it’s done changing screens. So for all of 2 seconds it takes?
- Rebelgecko 8y ago
  Have you used multiple external monitors at the same time? My MBP often gets confused about which one belongs on which side
  - Implicated 8y ago
    I ended up labeling the cables and making sure to use them in the same configuration this has mostly been solved. Still get's confused at times.
- cmorgan31 8y ago
  I personally enjoy my MacBook Pro (15-inch, Late 2016) but it has a problem with going to sleep after being plugged into an external monitor all day. I find at least 1/3rd of the time it has frozen after being disconnected from the monitor and I am forced to do a hard restart. Perhaps this is user error, but I do not remember having as much issue with the older generation. I use two Dell IPS monitors which are relatively new and connect via HDMI => USB-C adapter. It's an inconvenience which you shouldn't have to deal with on several thousand dollar laptops.
- Implicated 8y ago
  > Never had any problem connecting 3 different MacBook Pro's (across the years) to 3-4 different external monitors (Dell, LG, Samsung, etc) and to several projectors (including through a VGA adaptor and HDMI ones). Consider yourself lucky. > So for all of 2 seconds it takes? Most times. But occasionally I've seen the OS seemingly get confused/stuck in the process. Flickering, moving windows into various locations on the screen, taking 10-15 seconds to get back to functional/usable.

martin_ky 8y ago

> It’s 2018 and I still see people walking around with Windows laptop lids open because they presumably have no confidence in Windows’ ability to sensibly preserve state after closing the lid. At my workplace it's about 60:40 Windows to Mac user ratio. Regardless of the machine, nobody closes the lid when moving in the office between desks and meeting rooms. So, I'd say it's probably not that.

ams6110 8y ago
Probably don't want to lose their ssh connections.
- synthmeat 8y ago
  https://mosh.org https://mosh.org
  - Xeoncross 8y ago
    mosh doesn't support port forwarding. There is a $400+ bounty for the feature.
    - koko775 8y ago
      EternalTerminal does though, and it integrates better with tmux.
    - wslh 8y ago
      ~$ 400 ? Not tempting at all.
    - brotherjerky 8y ago
      Link? I'll throw in $100 right now
      - Xeoncross 8y ago
        I'm sure many people would appreciate that gesture https://github.com/mobile-shell/mosh/issues/337 https://github.com/mobile-shell/mosh/issues/337

eco 8y ago

I used to leave my (very old) laptop lid open not because I didn't think it would restore properly but because it took much longer than I liked to come back from suspension. My new Thinkpad X1 Carbon restore quickly (much quicker than my much more powerful desktop even). My understanding is that window size and positioning issues on Windows are a graphics card driver issue and it's up to the graphics card maker to finally fix it. I don't know the details though, that's just what I've read. It's obnoxious for sure.

Const-me 8y ago
It probably sleeps too deep. Because it takes that long to resume, It looks like your laptop hibernates instead of sleeping. It can be quick enough with a fast SSD and not too much RAM. I usually disable hibernation on my PCs, the sleep consumes some power maintaining RAM state but the amount is low, a laptop can sleep for days. Wake up from that state takes about 1-2 seconds.

perseusprime11 8y ago

Mac has similar issues. Keeps losing bluetooth connections with mouse & keyboard, sometimes have to restart to recognize the display. Still does not have simple way to hide icons on desktop or to dock multiple windows and resize them without using a third party solution.

makecheck 8y ago
Which desktop items? Using Preferences in Finder, you can hide any automatic ones (disks, servers), and everything else is just a question of whether you put files in the Desktop folder.

a_lieb 8y ago

> (“A” brings up “abc” but typing “ab” makes “abc” go away!?) To be fair, this one happens to me with Spotlight all the time.

andrei_says_ 8y ago

Not spying on me and not transmitting unknown to me personal information to unknown parties would be a killer feature. I treat any windows machine as if it has a keylogger and submits all my activity to all major governments (maybe only one today and “all” in a few years when my data gets sold, shared or stolen). This is a serious issue for me.

2bitencryption 8y ago
> I treat any windows machine as if it has a keylogger I found the problem
KirinDave 8y ago
> I treat any windows machine as if it has a keylogger and submits all my activity to all major governments (maybe only one today and “all” in a few years when my data gets sold, shared or stolen). Why is Apple's OSX, which exhibits a lot of the same behavior with spotlight, exempt from this concern? Don't get me wrong, I don't like these as-you-type-send-it-up search interfaces. But if we're gonna call companies on doing this, Microsoft has scaled back its analytics more than Apple and its App store have.
- ymse 8y ago
  > Why is Apple's OSX, which exhibits a lot of the same behavior with spotlight, exempt from this concern? They aren't. Neither is Ubuntu[0]. Luckily there are plenty of other operating systems that take your privacy seriously. Join the bright side. [0] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/ubuntu-spyware.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/ubuntu-spyware.en.html
  - nailer 8y ago
    Realistically, you probably shouldn't be running them on anything with Intel Management Engine, which has a Minix OS with an IP stack that you don't control.
    - 8y ago

agentdrtran 8y ago

The window resizing on dock/undock absolutely kills me.

dchest 8y ago

That reminded me that I once had Windows XP and Vista RC1 installed as dual-boot. I was finishing slides in XP and closed the lid. When I opened it a few minutes later to give my presentation, it was running Vista.

walterstucco 8y ago

I don't disconnect my MBP from power because it could go to sleep and disconnect the WI-FI after a few minutes regardless of network activity I guess it's just that Windows users know the system they use and its flaws (even perceived so) better than Apple users

e40 8y ago

Yeah, I saw a dude in the elevator (this year) because his Windows 10 started installing updates when he shut it down, but he needed to leave the office. I get so much crap when I say this online, but Windows is a complete shit show. Yeah, there are issues with macOS, but it is lightyears better. Yeah, I know Apple has dropped the ball on hardware, but my 5 year old MBP is just fine.

blt 8y ago
My 5 year old MBP is more than fine, it's great, but I am worried about what I will be able to buy to replace it. Eventually it will break; if not then someday I'll want something with more computing power.
- justanothernerd 8y ago
  My mid-2012 MBP was one of the best laptops I've ever owned. Unfortunately I eventually broke the screen and it was going to be $800 to replace it. This happened about the time the MBP line got refreshed in 2016 so I got one of the new ones. My 2016 MBP has been the worst laptop I've ever owned... fails to sleep, fails to wake, physical keys keep dying, touchbar freezes and won't unlock the machine, it can't keep external monitors straight (to be fair, that might be more of an OS issue than hardware?) Keep that old one as long as you can! I wish I hadn't "upgraded".
  - bubblebauble 8y ago
    Sell it and buy a refurb from a reseller. I did to replace my busted 2013 with a 2015, and now I'm set hopefully for another few years until Apple comes to their senses. I use Windows just for games, and the sheer frustration even there is enough to turn me off of it. Basic things like launching apps and control panels from the search bar don't work. It fails to pick up the right resolution on my external monitor sometimes. "Geforce experience" is a piece of crap that requires an account to use. Everything feels like I'm at a mall, instead of on my own PC: tacky, hostile, fake, noisy, incoherent. There is no Mission Control, no Time Machine, no Spaces, the UI still thinks of document windows as applications, there is no Application menu, the keyboard shortcuts are crap, application installs dump stuff all over, settings don't apply immediately, resolution scaling is broken, ... People who think Windows is on par with macOS don't know jack about macs and never bothered to get good at them. It'll be a cold day in hell before an NT-derived windows can compete. MS needs to clean house and commit to doing what Apple did with OSX in 2001... Get rid of the cruft, put the user first, and make everything work. The article's mention that ejecting the screen takes a software release and that certain apps can prevent it is the kind of bullshit Steve Jobs would've mocked and told the developers to fix if they expect to be taken seriously. A product should serve the user and provide affordances, not hold them hostage. Migrating to my new MacBook was trivial, and the machines set up an adhoc WiFi network automatically to transfer all the files. Once done, everything worked as before. All without my involvement. That's why people use and want Macs.

blinkingled 8y ago

Probably a moot issue with Connected Standby enabled laptops. It doesn't actually sleep - just puts everything in low power mode - my X1 consumes 0.3W in that mode and the desktop is right there as soon as I open the lid and place my finger on the FP reader!

0x00000000 8y ago

The instantaneous system wide search is my number one favorite thing about Mac OS. I wonder how many hours of my life I have spent waiting for a Windows explorer search to complete only to accidentally click on one of the results, hit back, and have it start the search all over.

phonon 8y ago
Use https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything_(software) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything_(software)
- listenallyall 8y ago
  "Everything" is the among the greatest pieces of Windows software ever written. It is wonderful. I cannot figure out why, with all of their money, Microsoft doesn't just pay the guy a little cash and make it a built-in feature of Windows. It would increase the usability of Windows, especially among novice users, enormously.
  - phonon 8y ago
    I think they refuse to use the technique because it doesn't respect file permissions the way they prefer (IIRC).

ztjio 8y ago

This and other similar things are so often and easily ignored. I see people talking about Macs not supporting pro use. But hey, tell me, how am I going to power my 6 external displays on a Surface product of any kind? I get that people want some more variety and excitement, and maybe feel like the Thunderbolt port thing is problematic (despite absolutely enabling my most “pro” setup I’ve ever had on my ’17 13” TB MBP) and obviously the keyboard design has issues. But as a whole package it’s still the best commercial product you can buy in its space, and considering actual size, has no real competition even if you ignore the many, many software issues one faces when leaving the warm, design-loving embrace of the macOS software ecosystem. I’ll reconsider this situation after Microsoft releases a Surface product that isn’t almost guaranteed to require one or more returns to the store and oh, yeah, has Thunderbolt 3 support so I can plug in 2 cables to get: 6 external displays (1 4k, 5 2560x*), NVMe speeds to external storage, gigabit ethernet, digital audio, SD card reader, spare ports, etc. etc. (aka OWC TB3 Dock with nearly every port in use.) There are a few non-MS laptops that might handle the hardware requirements I meet with my current setup, but, nothing that couples the hardware with the Software. Show me even one single app that matches the care and design of Things for macOS + iOS, for example. These are things I use every. single. day. for nearly every. single task. Frankly, I look forward to Apple fixing some of their issues with the MBP line and hopefully by then the situation with mobile processors will be improved enough to allow for some bigger memory footprints and the like, though, honestly, despite running minikube based workflows locally, I’ve never ran out of RAM at 16GB. I guess it’s because I don’t use Slack.

hug 8y ago
> I see people talking about Macs not supporting pro use. But hey, tell me, how am I going to power my 6 external displays on a Surface product of any kind? I have many friends, most of whom are professionals, but none of whom are software devs. A bunch of them do devops and SRE work, a bunch of them are creative professionals, and a bunch of them are in other professional services, like finance and law. Personally, I work for an "IT services" company, essentially doing outsourced devops and ops for numerous other professional services companies. What I'm getting at is that I know literally hundreds of professionals, across my personal and work life. The sum total of those in my life who need or use 6 displays: Zero. You are not, in any way shape or form, a typical professional. If you need 6 displays (which you might, but I'd bet a dollar you don't) you're basically so far out of the ballpark of standard professional that you're on the moon. Let's not pretend that the Surface Pro — or the Macbook Pro, for that matter — are in any way not suitable for the vast majority of professionals.

jaysonelliot 8y ago

Not utterly losing both the sizes and positions of all windows just because the laptop was undocked. Not failing to recognize the external display upon docking, despite the display working a few minutes earlier. Both of my MacBook Pros (2015 and 2018, Sierra and High Sierra, respectively) exhibit this exact behavior. I deliberately avoid letting my laptops go to sleep, and try not to unplug them from their monitors because I don't want to spend time re-positioning every single window and tool palette. It really defeats the purpose of having a laptop.

hammock 8y ago

That's funny because I'm pretty sure Windows has a setting that you can set it to NOT go to sleep at all when you shut the lid, but MacBooks DO NOT have this feature.

f3xy 8y ago
The name of the mode escapes me , but they don’t sleep if you have an external display mouse and keyboard connected. I don’t normally use this mode as usually utilize the laptop hardware too when “docked” but when people ask I always help them with this and it works fine

brazzledazzle 8y ago

People do that with both operating systems where I work and they’re both hit or miss which is why people do that. Am I exchanging messages from HN users through some kind of time portal to the Snow Leopard era? Apple has been dropping the ball big time with macOS for a while now and if you haven’t run into window rearranging, bizarre monitor connecting issues or kernel panics from docking I am insanely jealous.

Lazare 8y ago

> And I keep waiting for them to fix just the basics in Windows 10. Not utterly losing both the sizes and positions of all windows just because the laptop was undocked. Not failing to recognize the external display upon docking, despite the display working a few minutes earlier. I use and seriously like OS X but...those are two of my biggest pet peeves with the OS. I constantly need to re-arrange my windows every time it notices that an external display had been added or removed, and it frequently (maybe 2 per week) will inexplicably refuse to recognise an external display until I go through a little dance of power cycling things, unplugging them, plugging them in, and trying again. Worse, it also periodically stops working with my (bog standard USB) keyboard and mouse until I unplug them and plug them back in. It's amazing how confusing it can be trying to debug why a UI element isn't working when clicked until you determine that the computer has decided a modifier key is stuck down. The Apple ecosystem was fantastically stable and reliable a few years back, but things are changing, sadly.

eksemplar 8y ago

I’ve used windows since 3.11. Sure I’ve had a stint of Linux here and there, especially when I was young enough not to be bothered by the configuration. I’ve never not liked windows, though I did skip both ME and 8, but windows 10 has been such an awful experience that I bought a mbp late 2015 version last year, and I doubt I’ll ever use windows as my main OS again. I still use it at work, and while you avoid a lot of the shit, like auto-installed pre-installers for Facebook styled games in an enterprise setup, it still lowers the brightness of my screen when I undock it, even though I’ve specifically told it not to in every setting I’ve been able to find. That’s just the tip of the iceberg, windows 10 is quite frankly the worst OS I’ve ever used.

Angelore 8y ago
Do you have Intel graphics in there by any chance? I've had the brightness issue on xps 15, and it turned out that the Intel drivers were responsible.

zumu 8y ago

This is exactly how I feel about my 2016 MacBook Pro

flamemyst 8y ago

Personal anecdote I like to walk short distance with lids open to maintain wifi connection as I usualy keep remote connection to server. For longer walk distance, close the lid for easier walking.

tomcooks 8y ago
Consider using MoSH[0] if you switch networks often [0](https://mosh.org/ https://mosh.org/)

krzat 8y ago

My favorite feature of Windows 10 is displaying ads for Minecraft or Candy Crush or whatever in the start menu.

jkchu 8y ago
To be fair, it is very easy to remove those adds.

fortyseven 8y ago

I can't even turn off my friggin' monitor without Windows losing track of my window sizes. Baaaaah.