10 ms·

What makes Microsoft software "much worse"?

Grimm665 6y ago
- Forced upgrades from windows 7,8 to 10 - Uncontrollable automatic updates on Windows 10 - Forced reboots for updates even if the computer is in the middle of a long-running task - Ruining of Windows search to the point it is basically unusable - Removal of Paint and deprecation of the Snipping Tool You know, just to name a few.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  > Forced reboots for updates even if the computer is in the middle of a long-running task Oh God don't get me started. Few days ago I was in the middle of a videoconference with some important people, when suddenly my screen went blue, flashed a Windows spinner and the word "Restarting", and boom. It just rebooted. With no warning, despite me being on a videocall, on Microsoft Teams of all things! And within the "active hours". How this behavior is acceptable is beyond me.
  - xeromal 6y ago
    That happened to me a few days ago. It was at like 5pm when my hours were set to 10pm. It didn't even give a countdown. It just restarted in an instant. I so annoyed as I was installing a game at the time and it completely corrupted the installation.
  - Grimm665 6y ago
    I came pretty close to playfully trying to have Microsoft cover a portion of my monthly electric bill. Why? Because I set my dual-GPU gaming rig to sleep every night, and Windows feels the need to wake it up about an hour later, fail to do updates, and then leave the machine on the rest of the night, even with auto-sleep set for 30 minutes. I noticed the problem a few weeks later, and by then my electricity bill had increased by 20 bucks.
  - ksk 6y ago
    I agree, they should add some kind of option to disable updates for pro users even if they warn you. For me, W10 has always given me an option to defer updates and let me pick a time. At work, we use WSUS to manage our machines and my W10 box regularly gets months of up-time. Crazily enough, we even have a W10 laptop (!) that does some critical stuff with a year and half of up-time. https://i.imgur.com/uRGmhTU.png https://i.imgur.com/uRGmhTU.png
  - p_l 6y ago
    I'd recommend checking if you don't have third-party code forcing that restart - for a pretty long time now, Windows 10 has a policy that it does not restart for updates unless it can't detect user activity for a longer time, and even then it defaults to updating at night. Corporate-forced updates, however...
hedora 6y ago
They made it impossible to opt out of telemetry unless you buy enterprise licenses and run a domain controller. Old Microsoft software had a simple toggle switch for this. By default, windows 10 lets Microsoft engineers remotely log into your box and browse your filesystem. They say they only use it for diagnostic purposes, but I don’t see how that could be true unless they’re in violation of US law, which compels them to give the same access to law enforcement. I’m not sure if you can opt out of that (or whether the opt out would survive a warrant). I switched away from windows over this sort of thing. There were dozens of other objectionable things they were caught doing, and efforts to build windows 10 “decrappifiers” made it clear they were adding new telemetry every month, and laundering the data through sock puppet domains.
- Stratoscope 6y ago
  > By default, windows 10 lets Microsoft engineers remotely log into your box and browse your filesystem. I'd like to see a reputable source for that claim.
  - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
    With provisos it seems right, they have remote support by default, no: https://winaero.com/blog/disable-remote-assistance-windows-10/ https://winaero.com/blog/disable-remote-assistance-windows-1....
    - Stratoscope 6y ago
      That article is talking about Remote Assistance, which lets you explicitly grant temporary permission to someone you trust (not just a Microsoft engineer, but anyone you choose) - and you can see what they are doing because you're sharing your screen. The GP comment seemed to imply that Microsoft engineers could log in remotely without your knowledge or consent.
      - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
        >"By default, windows 10 lets Microsoft engineers remotely log into your box and browse your filesystem." This is correct, they AFAIK need a password/acceptance from the user, that's the proviso, but the original comment didn't say "without anyone knowing" (and as it's closed source none of us knows for sure). Their quoted claim is true it's just of very limited value. This whole thread is going nowhere. The first question should've been "yes, but can they do it without a password or user-acceptance". The answer is "we don't know" AFAIAA.
blackandblue 6y ago
i think people tend to mean much worse "than before". for example, i have seen videos of ms word and ms visual studio, on old pentium, load instantly with a splashscreen flashing by. i was truly impressed indeed.
- vetinari 6y ago
  You needed a pretty hefty machine at the time for the splashscreen to flash by. For example, Word 6 on my 386DX with 4 MB RAM took some time to launch and I had ample time to admire the art that went into the splashscreen. On 486DX with 16 MB RAM, it did flash by.
anewdirection 6y ago
Why even ask here, answers are goint to be hidden by the many people tasked with corprate image management who work all day on HN. Everyone who has ever administered a microsoft product long term knows first hand the underhanded tactics built into the Intergration, Interoperability, and Invoicing. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish was invented there. We can pretend the offset of higher productivity is worth it, but nobody seems to be having that discussion.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Discussing problems with software is fine for Hacker News, but claiming that there is no point because there is a cabal that hides answers requires evidence which should probably be directed at the site moderators instead.
- dang 6y ago
  This comment breaks the site guidelines. Would you mind reviewing them and sticking to the rules when posting here? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Nextgrid 6y ago
Simple things that used to work fine. Start menu search, for one. The start menu used to be blazing fast and search was consistent. Nowadays the start menu can be sluggish in certain cases and search might not return local results seemingly at random. The calculator used to be fast and load instantly, now it's one of those UWP monsters that even asks you to rate it in the Microsoft store... I don't recall hearing about updates bricking machines or causing data loss at scale back in the Windows 7 days but it seems like that is now a relatively common occurrence, amplified by the fact that you can no longer hide/defer updates on consumer versions of Windows. I think the firing of their QA team and delegating the work to unpaid "insiders" and telemetry might have something to do with this. The new Settings UI is absolutely disgusting both in looks and information density and is a clear downgrade from the previous version. I can go on and on. I would sympathize if they were pushing the boundaries of software engineering but what we're talking about isn't groundbreaking - these are problems that were mostly solved a decade ago and Microsoft intentionally backtracked on their progress by the looks of it.
- catalogia 6y ago
  > I don't recall hearing about updates bricking machines or causing data loss at scale back in the Windows 7 days but it seems like that is now a relatively common occurrence, This could also be explained by user expectations for software rising but quality of Microsoft code remaining constant. In the past users may have written off such events as 'just the way computers work sometimes' but perhaps now users realize that computers needn't be so unreliable.
  - myu701 6y ago
    > This could also be explained by user expectations for software rising but quality of Microsoft code remaining constant. I disagree. Evidence that supports MS code quality dropping includes a significant amount of users hanging on to Windows 7 with their cold dead hands even post years of MS marketing, arm twisting, GWX updates, and EOLing Windows 7, with users paying for ESUs via Ask Woody vendors and/or that 0patch tool. I myself moved to Windows 8.1 and from there am hem-hawing on whether to use KDE Neon or Linux mint XFCE and just leaving behind Windows except for the air-gapped Windows 7 VM I will no doubt need for things like Anime Studio. I will not allow Windows 10 (outside work devices) on my home network. (Maybe for Centaurus aka Courier Jr...but I'll put it on the guest wifi and make a bunch of throwaway accounts for it. )
im3w1l 6y ago
7 is widely recognized as the best Windows ever. And many people both devs and non-devs have moved to Apple.
- paulryanrogers 6y ago
  10 has some improvements like WSL, touch friendliness, game bar Of course what constitutes an improvement or regression may vary by person
toast0 6y ago
Let's see: How long does it take after boot for disk I/O to stop if you've got a 5400 rpm hard drive? It's maybe a few minutes after login on 7, and I've never seen it stop on 10. Why does the calculator take seconds to start? Why does it ignore keypresses when it has focus? How many clicks does it take to set my IP on an isolated network with no DHCPd? How many different contol interfaces will I see on the way? On Old Edge (I haven't tried Chrome based Edge), why does the stop button sometimes not stop until the page finishes loading over several seconds? Why do the back and forward, and url navigation interactions queue up in that case?
- xnyan 6y ago
  I'm sure this was your experience, but it was not mine: >How long does it take after boot for disk I/O to stop if you've got a 5400 rpm hard drive? It's maybe a few minutes after login on 7, and I've never seen it stop on 10. Unsure what you are saying. Windows is the only OS to write to disk after boot? I don't see anything hitting the disk after a few seconds. >Why does the calculator take seconds to start? Instant >Why does it ignore keypresses when it has focus? unable to reproduce >How many clicks does it take to set my IP on an isolated network with no DHCPd 4 >On Old Edge I don't use that particular piece of software so I can't tell you.
  - gruez 6y ago
    >>Why does the calculator take seconds to start? >Instant It's "instant" to show up, but you got to wait one to two seconds for the splash screen to disappear, whereas the windows 7 showed up instantly and was usable immediately.
    - xnyan 6y ago
      That’s not correct, at least it’s not for me. Maybe you need to defrag hard drive?

- Forced upgrades from windows 7,8 to 10 - Uncontrollable automatic updates on Windows 10 - Forced reboots for updates even if the computer is in the middle of a long-running task - Ruining of Windows search to the point it is basically unusable - Removal of Paint and deprecation of the Snipping Tool You know, just to name a few.

TeMPOraL 6y ago
> Forced reboots for updates even if the computer is in the middle of a long-running task Oh God don't get me started. Few days ago I was in the middle of a videoconference with some important people, when suddenly my screen went blue, flashed a Windows spinner and the word "Restarting", and boom. It just rebooted. With no warning, despite me being on a videocall, on Microsoft Teams of all things! And within the "active hours". How this behavior is acceptable is beyond me.
- xeromal 6y ago
  That happened to me a few days ago. It was at like 5pm when my hours were set to 10pm. It didn't even give a countdown. It just restarted in an instant. I so annoyed as I was installing a game at the time and it completely corrupted the installation.
- Grimm665 6y ago
  I came pretty close to playfully trying to have Microsoft cover a portion of my monthly electric bill. Why? Because I set my dual-GPU gaming rig to sleep every night, and Windows feels the need to wake it up about an hour later, fail to do updates, and then leave the machine on the rest of the night, even with auto-sleep set for 30 minutes. I noticed the problem a few weeks later, and by then my electricity bill had increased by 20 bucks.
- ksk 6y ago
  I agree, they should add some kind of option to disable updates for pro users even if they warn you. For me, W10 has always given me an option to defer updates and let me pick a time. At work, we use WSUS to manage our machines and my W10 box regularly gets months of up-time. Crazily enough, we even have a W10 laptop (!) that does some critical stuff with a year and half of up-time. https://i.imgur.com/uRGmhTU.png https://i.imgur.com/uRGmhTU.png
- p_l 6y ago
  I'd recommend checking if you don't have third-party code forcing that restart - for a pretty long time now, Windows 10 has a policy that it does not restart for updates unless it can't detect user activity for a longer time, and even then it defaults to updating at night. Corporate-forced updates, however...

hedora 6y ago

They made it impossible to opt out of telemetry unless you buy enterprise licenses and run a domain controller. Old Microsoft software had a simple toggle switch for this. By default, windows 10 lets Microsoft engineers remotely log into your box and browse your filesystem. They say they only use it for diagnostic purposes, but I don’t see how that could be true unless they’re in violation of US law, which compels them to give the same access to law enforcement. I’m not sure if you can opt out of that (or whether the opt out would survive a warrant). I switched away from windows over this sort of thing. There were dozens of other objectionable things they were caught doing, and efforts to build windows 10 “decrappifiers” made it clear they were adding new telemetry every month, and laundering the data through sock puppet domains.

Stratoscope 6y ago
> By default, windows 10 lets Microsoft engineers remotely log into your box and browse your filesystem. I'd like to see a reputable source for that claim.
- pbhjpbhj 6y ago
  With provisos it seems right, they have remote support by default, no: https://winaero.com/blog/disable-remote-assistance-windows-10/ https://winaero.com/blog/disable-remote-assistance-windows-1....
  - Stratoscope 6y ago
    That article is talking about Remote Assistance, which lets you explicitly grant temporary permission to someone you trust (not just a Microsoft engineer, but anyone you choose) - and you can see what they are doing because you're sharing your screen. The GP comment seemed to imply that Microsoft engineers could log in remotely without your knowledge or consent.
    - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
      >"By default, windows 10 lets Microsoft engineers remotely log into your box and browse your filesystem." This is correct, they AFAIK need a password/acceptance from the user, that's the proviso, but the original comment didn't say "without anyone knowing" (and as it's closed source none of us knows for sure). Their quoted claim is true it's just of very limited value. This whole thread is going nowhere. The first question should've been "yes, but can they do it without a password or user-acceptance". The answer is "we don't know" AFAIAA.

blackandblue 6y ago

i think people tend to mean much worse "than before". for example, i have seen videos of ms word and ms visual studio, on old pentium, load instantly with a splashscreen flashing by. i was truly impressed indeed.

vetinari 6y ago
You needed a pretty hefty machine at the time for the splashscreen to flash by. For example, Word 6 on my 386DX with 4 MB RAM took some time to launch and I had ample time to admire the art that went into the splashscreen. On 486DX with 16 MB RAM, it did flash by.

anewdirection 6y ago

Why even ask here, answers are goint to be hidden by the many people tasked with corprate image management who work all day on HN. Everyone who has ever administered a microsoft product long term knows first hand the underhanded tactics built into the Intergration, Interoperability, and Invoicing. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish was invented there. We can pretend the offset of higher productivity is worth it, but nobody seems to be having that discussion.

saagarjha 6y ago
Discussing problems with software is fine for Hacker News, but claiming that there is no point because there is a cabal that hides answers requires evidence which should probably be directed at the site moderators instead.
dang 6y ago
This comment breaks the site guidelines. Would you mind reviewing them and sticking to the rules when posting here? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Nextgrid 6y ago

Simple things that used to work fine. Start menu search, for one. The start menu used to be blazing fast and search was consistent. Nowadays the start menu can be sluggish in certain cases and search might not return local results seemingly at random. The calculator used to be fast and load instantly, now it's one of those UWP monsters that even asks you to rate it in the Microsoft store... I don't recall hearing about updates bricking machines or causing data loss at scale back in the Windows 7 days but it seems like that is now a relatively common occurrence, amplified by the fact that you can no longer hide/defer updates on consumer versions of Windows. I think the firing of their QA team and delegating the work to unpaid "insiders" and telemetry might have something to do with this. The new Settings UI is absolutely disgusting both in looks and information density and is a clear downgrade from the previous version. I can go on and on. I would sympathize if they were pushing the boundaries of software engineering but what we're talking about isn't groundbreaking - these are problems that were mostly solved a decade ago and Microsoft intentionally backtracked on their progress by the looks of it.

catalogia 6y ago
> I don't recall hearing about updates bricking machines or causing data loss at scale back in the Windows 7 days but it seems like that is now a relatively common occurrence, This could also be explained by user expectations for software rising but quality of Microsoft code remaining constant. In the past users may have written off such events as 'just the way computers work sometimes' but perhaps now users realize that computers needn't be so unreliable.
- myu701 6y ago
  > This could also be explained by user expectations for software rising but quality of Microsoft code remaining constant. I disagree. Evidence that supports MS code quality dropping includes a significant amount of users hanging on to Windows 7 with their cold dead hands even post years of MS marketing, arm twisting, GWX updates, and EOLing Windows 7, with users paying for ESUs via Ask Woody vendors and/or that 0patch tool. I myself moved to Windows 8.1 and from there am hem-hawing on whether to use KDE Neon or Linux mint XFCE and just leaving behind Windows except for the air-gapped Windows 7 VM I will no doubt need for things like Anime Studio. I will not allow Windows 10 (outside work devices) on my home network. (Maybe for Centaurus aka Courier Jr...but I'll put it on the guest wifi and make a bunch of throwaway accounts for it. )

im3w1l 6y ago

7 is widely recognized as the best Windows ever. And many people both devs and non-devs have moved to Apple.

paulryanrogers 6y ago
10 has some improvements like WSL, touch friendliness, game bar Of course what constitutes an improvement or regression may vary by person

toast0 6y ago

Let's see: How long does it take after boot for disk I/O to stop if you've got a 5400 rpm hard drive? It's maybe a few minutes after login on 7, and I've never seen it stop on 10. Why does the calculator take seconds to start? Why does it ignore keypresses when it has focus? How many clicks does it take to set my IP on an isolated network with no DHCPd? How many different contol interfaces will I see on the way? On Old Edge (I haven't tried Chrome based Edge), why does the stop button sometimes not stop until the page finishes loading over several seconds? Why do the back and forward, and url navigation interactions queue up in that case?

xnyan 6y ago
I'm sure this was your experience, but it was not mine: >How long does it take after boot for disk I/O to stop if you've got a 5400 rpm hard drive? It's maybe a few minutes after login on 7, and I've never seen it stop on 10. Unsure what you are saying. Windows is the only OS to write to disk after boot? I don't see anything hitting the disk after a few seconds. >Why does the calculator take seconds to start? Instant >Why does it ignore keypresses when it has focus? unable to reproduce >How many clicks does it take to set my IP on an isolated network with no DHCPd 4 >On Old Edge I don't use that particular piece of software so I can't tell you.
- gruez 6y ago
  >>Why does the calculator take seconds to start? >Instant It's "instant" to show up, but you got to wait one to two seconds for the splash screen to disappear, whereas the windows 7 showed up instantly and was usable immediately.
  - xnyan 6y ago
    That’s not correct, at least it’s not for me. Maybe you need to defrag hard drive?