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> The negative is changing preferences... Windows is so poorly designed that I still wonder why there's Settings as well as Control Panel offering mostly the s

> The negative is changing preferences... Windows is so poorly designed that I still wonder why there's Settings as well as Control Panel offering mostly the same settings, and old settings dialogs from Windows XP or Windows 2000 are still around!

bluedino 7y ago
The double control panels is such a Microsoft-ism. The network control panel has become so convulted...
pcr910303 7y ago
> Windows is so poorly designed that I still wonder why there's Settings as well as Control Panel offering mostly the same settings, and old settings dialogs from Windows XP or Windows 2000 are still around! Mostly due to backward compatibility, as there were a fair amount of Windows applications that loaded DLLs to add a custom panel to Control Panel. Well, many people on HN hate that Apple has a poor record on managing backward compatibility (like deprecating 32-bit apps or Carbon), but if they do to the scale of Microsoft, this is what happens.
pix64 7y ago
Control Panel has been around for 24+ years and on top of that some (older) driver packages and apps install third party control panel applets as well. It's going to be a long rough road deprecating Control Panel and replacing it with Settings.
- alecmg 7y ago
  Why deprecate and replace something that a) works b) doesn't have any immediate problems c) is familiar to everyone and their granny with something with less functionality and even less logic on where to look for a particular setting?
hnick 7y ago
Yes it's becoming a bit of a mess. I wanted to associate a file type with a program in Windows 10 recently, and I found at least 4 different menu items that lead to the same unhelpful modern screen. Unhelpful because it only let me pick 'App Store' Apps, not anything else I have installed. Some answers online suggested these very item as ways to go to the old screen but it looks like they closed that escape hatch. I was having trouble because it was a 'special' file type (CMD) so the context menu didn't offer the Open With option, I suppose to save this clueless user from himself. So instead I dove into the registry and did a manual hack which will hopefully stick around between updates.

bluedino 7y ago

The double control panels is such a Microsoft-ism. The network control panel has become so convulted...

pcr910303 7y ago

> Windows is so poorly designed that I still wonder why there's Settings as well as Control Panel offering mostly the same settings, and old settings dialogs from Windows XP or Windows 2000 are still around! Mostly due to backward compatibility, as there were a fair amount of Windows applications that loaded DLLs to add a custom panel to Control Panel. Well, many people on HN hate that Apple has a poor record on managing backward compatibility (like deprecating 32-bit apps or Carbon), but if they do to the scale of Microsoft, this is what happens.

pix64 7y ago

Control Panel has been around for 24+ years and on top of that some (older) driver packages and apps install third party control panel applets as well. It's going to be a long rough road deprecating Control Panel and replacing it with Settings.

alecmg 7y ago
Why deprecate and replace something that a) works b) doesn't have any immediate problems c) is familiar to everyone and their granny with something with less functionality and even less logic on where to look for a particular setting?

hnick 7y ago

Yes it's becoming a bit of a mess. I wanted to associate a file type with a program in Windows 10 recently, and I found at least 4 different menu items that lead to the same unhelpful modern screen. Unhelpful because it only let me pick 'App Store' Apps, not anything else I have installed. Some answers online suggested these very item as ways to go to the old screen but it looks like they closed that escape hatch. I was having trouble because it was a 'special' file type (CMD) so the context menu didn't offer the Open With option, I suppose to save this clueless user from himself. So instead I dove into the registry and did a manual hack which will hopefully stick around between updates.