10 ms·

I'm using Windows 10 because I want to run modern programs, but I still don't see the usability of the operating system to be as good that it was with Windows 7

I'm using Windows 10 because I want to run modern programs, but I still don't see the usability of the operating system to be as good that it was with Windows 7. If I go to settings, or open the start menu, I have latencies measured in seconds, even though I have a fast gaming laptop. As a comparision on my iPad most of the settings windows have about 0.2s rendering latency (some shorter, some longer), but in reality I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be the part of the continuous testing of any operating system. Another important example is that I find it harder to find installed programs in Windows 10 than what it was in Windows 7, as Windows 7 grouped shortcuts installed by programs into folders, now I just see a big mess of shortcuts where I have to remember the name of the shortcut to be able to run it.

wayf 6y ago
Agreed. Windows 7's UI is blazing fast compared to Windows 10. Windows 7 inherited all the good things of Windows XP, while Windows 10 tried to look similar to both Windows 8 and Windows 7
rileyteige 6y ago
just to counter... i'm on a desktop that's a few years old, i7. win10. start menu loads instantly, settings loads in maybe 1/4 of a second. YMMV?
- Kye 6y ago
  Same, but on a new laptop. Ryzen 5 4500U. Maybe it'll degrade with time, but I remember how bad the Windows 10 start menu used to be on a fresh install. Nearly unusable. It's fine now for me.
- xiphias2 6y ago
  Probably the icons for the Windows Store entries were already in the cache for you. Things work the second time, but the fact that it's unpredictable makes the experience less smooth than what it was before. Also I have things like ,,Candy Crash Friends'' icon that's very bright, takes my focus away on what I want to do, and I don't know how to turn it off, as I don't find it in the settings (to tell you the truth, I haven't even played it, but I'm waiting for Cyberpunk 2077, so I don't want to try other games right now).
  - Grazester 6y ago
    Why don't you remove those things?
cblconfederate 6y ago
agree to this. They had a good going with windows 7. The freaking windows 10 photos app intermittently hangs forever when opening a simple image file. I was just using Videos and it crashed when opening settings. Skype is still a disaster years after swinching from skype classic. The abomination that replaced control panel is designed intentionally like a maze from which you cant get out. I dare you to find the bluetooth pair button, or your wifi passwords. They are not all bad, but the Modern UI is crap, stupid animations blocking the user from doing things. If i wanted eyecandy i 'd buy a mac or use a wobbly linux WM. MS please go back to making boring things that work.
- codeulike 6y ago
  omg its so annoying when you click on an image and the photo viewer hangs forever. I've installed 'One Photo Viewer' instead, nice and simple and works instantly https://www.microsoft.com/store/productId/9PM6W4F0XW3H https://www.microsoft.com/store/productId/9PM6W4F0XW3H
  - cblconfederate 6y ago
    I have the old app binaries from upgrading one of my pcs and treasuring them.
  - Wistar 6y ago
    Photo viewer worked perfectly for a year and then started hanging on about every third photo. None of the "fixes" worked so I just lived with it. About a week ago, it started to work perfectly again and I have no idea why.
- skeletal88 6y ago
  I was invited to interview for a position working on the Skype backend. I have no idea if it is a good idea.. since I personally can't take Skype seriously or believe that it is something good to work on. Is that something people at huge companies have to think about often? Good money vs working on a product you believe in.
kwanbix 6y ago
I cannot disagree more. Yes, Windows 7 is more polished in some ways, for example the control panel vs the thing they have created now. But the rest, I don't have any of the problems you describe. And I run Windows 10 on a ThinkPad P50, which is 5 years old. Also, the start menu is reasonable, although I prefer the simplicity of XP.
mopsi 6y ago
I find it ironic that an operating system called Windows won't let me open Settings in multiple windows. It's perhaps the greatest illustration of how Microsoft has lost their way in UI design.
- lupinglade 6y ago
  To be fair, they were never good at it.
metalliqaz 6y ago
I dunno man, maybe there's something wrong with your rig. My machine doesn't have lag like that. The start menu always opens immediately. As for finding programs, I never have trouble. I just press the windows key (brings up start menu) and start typing the name of the program I want. It shows up at the top of the search.
- xiphias2 6y ago
  As I'm getting older it's getting harder for me to remember the names of the programs that I have. It's great that the search is working well, but it shouldn't be the only efficient way to find programs on my computer.
wenc 6y ago
What are your specs? I upgraded my Core 2 Duo machine from Windows 7 to Windows 10 and it definitely struggled. But my Core i7 machine has no trouble with Windows 10.
- xiphias2 6y ago
  Intel Core I7-8750 H, 16 GB RAM, 2 TB SSD, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080. It's a beast when it comes to mathematical computations on a laptop, that's why it's so frustrating that simple things are so laggy.
  - wenc 6y ago
    That's unusual. You have better specs than I do, and I certainly don't experience any latency on Windows 10 at all -- definitely not any in the seconds range. Anecdotally at my workplace, I haven't heard any complaints either. There might be something that is idiosyncratic to your setup.
kelvin0 6y ago
I noticed a horrendous slowdown of the default image viewer. Double-clicking on a small JPEG file (less then 1MB) can take up to 20s to finally view. Got so bad, that I now have MS Paint as default image viewer. I kinda like the image viewer's ability to view other pictures in the same directory, but the performance and waiting time to view anything was just way too terrible.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  It's all those little things where Apple really shines. Preview on the Mac is a fantastic piece of software. Another example is Time Machine compared to the backup which comes with Windows. Microsoft have constantly mucked about with backup but have never managed to get it right. I can't imagine anybody relying on it. Time Machine is fantastic in comparison.
- diarrhea 6y ago
  I can recommend ImageGlass.
- GordonS 6y ago
  Someone on HN recently said that was some kind of problem with the image viewer being. UWP app. Don't recall the details tho. Definitely drives me nuts though - how hard is it to show a JPEG?!
- drewzero1 6y ago
  I use a Windows 8.1 tablet for work and really like that while 8.1 has the same excruciatingly long load time for the default image viewer, the old one from 7 (or maybe going back to XP?) is still available to set as the default. As long as I avoid the fullscreen apps, I think I like 8.1 better than 10 for usability.
- Answerawake 6y ago
  Are you referring to the WIndows 10 image viewer? Yes it is now a "Metro" app I think. The good news is that you can restore the old Windows 7 picture viewer. There are instructions on how to restore this if you Google. Think its a registry change.
natural20s 6y ago
Thanks for posting this. I thought it was just me or my laptop or my hardward config. Or the thousands of photos. YES the lag after hitting the windows icon... or searching or trying to open a folder with more than 100 items... it is very real and annoying.
MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
Windows 2000 was peak Windows UX. XP was tolerable, but already started the decline with gimmicky UI stuff that made things actually worse. I'll die on this hill.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  Give me Windows 2000 with WiFi support and security fixes and I'd be happy forever.
  - eezurr 6y ago
    Here you go: https://w2k.phreaknet.org/guide/ https://w2k.phreaknet.org/guide/ http://blog.livedoor.jp/blackwingcat/archives/1299806.html http://blog.livedoor.jp/blackwingcat/archives/1299806.html There's a person in Japan that is actively (edit: maybe not active) working on modernizing windows 2000
- asveikau 6y ago
  XP through 7 at least had Classic mode, so you could get it looking like 2k. RIP classic mode.
  - abhinav22 6y ago
    Exactly :) Classic Mode made Win7!
  - MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
    Oh right, I forgot! The Good Place switch. Didn't fix everything afaik.
lebaux 6y ago
Microsoft ≠ Windows There is Azure, Office 365, Xbox, Bing, servers any many others properties that are money makers.
sbayeta 6y ago
I've changed the way I launch applications since W10. Now I just hit the Windows key and type the name of the app or setting I'm looking for. The search is very quick and usually throws what I'm looking for. Here are two examples of how I use this that I think are great: I created a quick ppt or xls file yesterday, not sure how I named it. I hit the Windows key, type Excel (usually you don't need to type the whole word, specially if it's a frequent search) and it immediately shows the Excel shortcut and a list of the last few files I've opened. The other case is I wanted to modify the action when closing the laptop lid. I know that setting is somewhere in the power configuration, but can't remember exactly where. So I just hit the Windows key, type lid and voila! there's the setting
- diarrhea 6y ago
  This is the way to go and so much more efficient. I don't understand or use the new Settings because I don't have to. The search is good enough, albeit barely. What really rustled my jimmies was when Bing was down (which I don't care for and don't use), but it caused your local search (from SUPER-key) to also be down, due to its tight integration with Bing. Silent failure with an all-black window, the worst of all.
wtetzner 6y ago
The main problem I have with Windows 10 is the forced restarts.
- gburdell3 6y ago
  I've been using Win10 on multiple machines since release day and I have never once seen a forced restart. That was a problem on Windows 7, but I honestly don't know how people are still having this problem with 10.
  - wtetzner 6y ago
    Do you regularly restart? I typically don't restart my MBP for months at a time. With Windows 10, it'll tell me I need to restart after updates. I can ignore it to a point, but eventually it just reboots without asking, and whatever was opened at the time is lost.
Moeg 6y ago
Windows 10 search function is completely broken, it won't even find a program that's in start menu, not sure if it's because I disabled all the online functionality of search. If I want to find something online instead of my computer I use a browser. Thankfully there are great alternatives for the atrocity, such as Everything, it's mind-blowing how a third party program is orders of magnitude faster than native system search.
- oefrha 6y ago
  If you disable “Background Apps” in Settings, Windows 10 will “helpfully” disable indexing (backed by Cortana service?) as well, rendering your index completely stale, which manifests as items in start menu don’t show, apps deleted a year ago still show, etc. All the garbage “solutions” when you search for this problem online don’t help at all. This problem once wasted me hours.
  - atomicfiredoll 6y ago
    Dang. I thought you may have inadvertently pointed me in the right direction as to why I can't even get my indexing service to start. But, no luck. Maybe I'll get around to putting more hours in to fixing it someday.
- pier25 6y ago
  One of the reasons I won't switch from macOS to Windows 10 for work is how bad search is and the lack of a proper launcher like Alfred. It's absurd that Apple came up with Spotlight in 10.4 (15 years ago) and Microsoft still hasn't caught up with such a fundamental game changer.
  - snowwrestler 6y ago
    When I worked for a consultant to Microsoft in the early 2000s, they were excited about the powerful search features they were planning to deliver in Longhorn. But Apple beat them to market with Spotlight, and to my knowledge, search has never turned into a differentiating feature for Windows. It's kind of crazy to think back to those conversations with Microsoft about their long-range plans. Some they have delivered well, like the transition to a subscription model for client applications. Some they have not, like native peer-to-peer social networking in the OS.
Causality1 6y ago
To me nothing better exemplifies W10 "we know better than you" attitude than the desktop shortcut regressions. On W7 if you want a desktop shortcut to Notepad you open Start, begin typing Notepad, and when it shows up in the menu you either click and drag it onto the desktop or your right-click it and hit "send to desktop create shortcut". Neither of those work on Windows 10 without third party software.
kmfrk 6y ago
Yeah, I don't feel that Windows is meaningfully better than it's been in years, it just feels like the awful waterfall development is going to break it and introduce weird UI inconsistencies all the time and that's just the way it is. Gaming on Windows is almost more confusing than it's been due to all the things and settings you have to make sure are set up right.
- drewzero1 6y ago
  Meanwhile, I'm finding that gaming on Linux is easier than ever (at least on the limited selection, older titles I tend to play), and I no longer need to keep a Windows partition for that purpose. I still have a Windows 10 PC around, but I'm not really sure why I keep it.
kamilszybalski 6y ago
I think the points you're making are accurate and fair, however I also think these issues are solvable only because of the strategic direction Satya has led, specifically referring to the evolution of MSFTs business models.
zepearl 6y ago
Does anybody know how to fix the problem of the taskbar's icons getting stuck to "orange" (notification)? This is for me a problem especially with Skype as I never know if somebody posted a new message into the chat or not (but it happens as well with other programs). Better explanation of problem is for example here (none of the proposed workarounds work for me): https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/4qlgqp/taskbar_icons_stay_highlighted_orange_forever/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/4qlgqp/taskbar_i... I didn't have this problem in Win7.
WhompingWindows 6y ago
Amen. I've used all the versions of Windows for a couple decades and there seems to be a randomness to their improvements. Updating is just a fact of life, something we must do, it doesn't inherently come with "upgrades" for us as the consumers. What % of the improvement in computer technology has come on this slow crawl of OS, vs all the hardware, browser apps, etc?
- xiphias2 6y ago
  For me even with the newest Windows version installing PyTorch with compatible CUDA was not as easy as it should be, and even now I'm not sure if I can use mixed precision training. If I would have stayed on Windows 7, it adds one more uncertainty in the hardware-software configuration that I don't want to spend time with.
spaetzleesser 6y ago
The control panel is just a big mess of old and new with a set of overlapping functionality. You need to know both because some features are in the old control panel and some in the new. It's hard to comprehend how a multi-billion dollar company hasn't been able to straighten this out since Windows 8 release in 2012. The search function also still basically sucks.
pjettter 6y ago
I spent $10k on a computer in 2008 to get rid of latencies. Now computers are so much faster and some latencies just get greater? It's Windows that is broken. I don't see the same thing happening often on my Mac or iOS.
dartharva 6y ago
Yeah you just have to give up on the "modern" UWP apps and change back to classic ones, even when they are third-party. Use the Control Panel instead of settings, Everything for search, IrfanView for an image viewer... the list goes on. Just remove all UWP bloat and telemetry. You'll find many scripts on the internet to automate that.

wayf 6y ago

Agreed. Windows 7's UI is blazing fast compared to Windows 10. Windows 7 inherited all the good things of Windows XP, while Windows 10 tried to look similar to both Windows 8 and Windows 7

rileyteige 6y ago

just to counter... i'm on a desktop that's a few years old, i7. win10. start menu loads instantly, settings loads in maybe 1/4 of a second. YMMV?

Kye 6y ago
Same, but on a new laptop. Ryzen 5 4500U. Maybe it'll degrade with time, but I remember how bad the Windows 10 start menu used to be on a fresh install. Nearly unusable. It's fine now for me.
xiphias2 6y ago
Probably the icons for the Windows Store entries were already in the cache for you. Things work the second time, but the fact that it's unpredictable makes the experience less smooth than what it was before. Also I have things like ,,Candy Crash Friends'' icon that's very bright, takes my focus away on what I want to do, and I don't know how to turn it off, as I don't find it in the settings (to tell you the truth, I haven't even played it, but I'm waiting for Cyberpunk 2077, so I don't want to try other games right now).
- Grazester 6y ago
  Why don't you remove those things?

cblconfederate 6y ago

agree to this. They had a good going with windows 7. The freaking windows 10 photos app intermittently hangs forever when opening a simple image file. I was just using Videos and it crashed when opening settings. Skype is still a disaster years after swinching from skype classic. The abomination that replaced control panel is designed intentionally like a maze from which you cant get out. I dare you to find the bluetooth pair button, or your wifi passwords. They are not all bad, but the Modern UI is crap, stupid animations blocking the user from doing things. If i wanted eyecandy i 'd buy a mac or use a wobbly linux WM. MS please go back to making boring things that work.

codeulike 6y ago
omg its so annoying when you click on an image and the photo viewer hangs forever. I've installed 'One Photo Viewer' instead, nice and simple and works instantly https://www.microsoft.com/store/productId/9PM6W4F0XW3H https://www.microsoft.com/store/productId/9PM6W4F0XW3H
- cblconfederate 6y ago
  I have the old app binaries from upgrading one of my pcs and treasuring them.
- Wistar 6y ago
  Photo viewer worked perfectly for a year and then started hanging on about every third photo. None of the "fixes" worked so I just lived with it. About a week ago, it started to work perfectly again and I have no idea why.
skeletal88 6y ago
I was invited to interview for a position working on the Skype backend. I have no idea if it is a good idea.. since I personally can't take Skype seriously or believe that it is something good to work on. Is that something people at huge companies have to think about often? Good money vs working on a product you believe in.

kwanbix 6y ago

I cannot disagree more. Yes, Windows 7 is more polished in some ways, for example the control panel vs the thing they have created now. But the rest, I don't have any of the problems you describe. And I run Windows 10 on a ThinkPad P50, which is 5 years old. Also, the start menu is reasonable, although I prefer the simplicity of XP.

mopsi 6y ago

I find it ironic that an operating system called Windows won't let me open Settings in multiple windows. It's perhaps the greatest illustration of how Microsoft has lost their way in UI design.

lupinglade 6y ago
To be fair, they were never good at it.

metalliqaz 6y ago

I dunno man, maybe there's something wrong with your rig. My machine doesn't have lag like that. The start menu always opens immediately. As for finding programs, I never have trouble. I just press the windows key (brings up start menu) and start typing the name of the program I want. It shows up at the top of the search.

xiphias2 6y ago
As I'm getting older it's getting harder for me to remember the names of the programs that I have. It's great that the search is working well, but it shouldn't be the only efficient way to find programs on my computer.

wenc 6y ago

What are your specs? I upgraded my Core 2 Duo machine from Windows 7 to Windows 10 and it definitely struggled. But my Core i7 machine has no trouble with Windows 10.

xiphias2 6y ago
Intel Core I7-8750 H, 16 GB RAM, 2 TB SSD, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080. It's a beast when it comes to mathematical computations on a laptop, that's why it's so frustrating that simple things are so laggy.
- wenc 6y ago
  That's unusual. You have better specs than I do, and I certainly don't experience any latency on Windows 10 at all -- definitely not any in the seconds range. Anecdotally at my workplace, I haven't heard any complaints either. There might be something that is idiosyncratic to your setup.

kelvin0 6y ago

I noticed a horrendous slowdown of the default image viewer. Double-clicking on a small JPEG file (less then 1MB) can take up to 20s to finally view. Got so bad, that I now have MS Paint as default image viewer. I kinda like the image viewer's ability to view other pictures in the same directory, but the performance and waiting time to view anything was just way too terrible.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago
It's all those little things where Apple really shines. Preview on the Mac is a fantastic piece of software. Another example is Time Machine compared to the backup which comes with Windows. Microsoft have constantly mucked about with backup but have never managed to get it right. I can't imagine anybody relying on it. Time Machine is fantastic in comparison.
diarrhea 6y ago
I can recommend ImageGlass.
GordonS 6y ago
Someone on HN recently said that was some kind of problem with the image viewer being. UWP app. Don't recall the details tho. Definitely drives me nuts though - how hard is it to show a JPEG?!
drewzero1 6y ago
I use a Windows 8.1 tablet for work and really like that while 8.1 has the same excruciatingly long load time for the default image viewer, the old one from 7 (or maybe going back to XP?) is still available to set as the default. As long as I avoid the fullscreen apps, I think I like 8.1 better than 10 for usability.
Answerawake 6y ago
Are you referring to the WIndows 10 image viewer? Yes it is now a "Metro" app I think. The good news is that you can restore the old Windows 7 picture viewer. There are instructions on how to restore this if you Google. Think its a registry change.

natural20s 6y ago

Thanks for posting this. I thought it was just me or my laptop or my hardward config. Or the thousands of photos. YES the lag after hitting the windows icon... or searching or trying to open a folder with more than 100 items... it is very real and annoying.

MrBuddyCasino 6y ago

Windows 2000 was peak Windows UX. XP was tolerable, but already started the decline with gimmicky UI stuff that made things actually worse. I'll die on this hill.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago
Give me Windows 2000 with WiFi support and security fixes and I'd be happy forever.
- eezurr 6y ago
  Here you go: https://w2k.phreaknet.org/guide/ https://w2k.phreaknet.org/guide/ http://blog.livedoor.jp/blackwingcat/archives/1299806.html http://blog.livedoor.jp/blackwingcat/archives/1299806.html There's a person in Japan that is actively (edit: maybe not active) working on modernizing windows 2000
asveikau 6y ago
XP through 7 at least had Classic mode, so you could get it looking like 2k. RIP classic mode.
- abhinav22 6y ago
  Exactly :) Classic Mode made Win7!
- MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
  Oh right, I forgot! The Good Place switch. Didn't fix everything afaik.

lebaux 6y ago

Microsoft ≠ Windows There is Azure, Office 365, Xbox, Bing, servers any many others properties that are money makers.

sbayeta 6y ago

I've changed the way I launch applications since W10. Now I just hit the Windows key and type the name of the app or setting I'm looking for. The search is very quick and usually throws what I'm looking for. Here are two examples of how I use this that I think are great: I created a quick ppt or xls file yesterday, not sure how I named it. I hit the Windows key, type Excel (usually you don't need to type the whole word, specially if it's a frequent search) and it immediately shows the Excel shortcut and a list of the last few files I've opened. The other case is I wanted to modify the action when closing the laptop lid. I know that setting is somewhere in the power configuration, but can't remember exactly where. So I just hit the Windows key, type lid and voila! there's the setting

diarrhea 6y ago
This is the way to go and so much more efficient. I don't understand or use the new Settings because I don't have to. The search is good enough, albeit barely. What really rustled my jimmies was when Bing was down (which I don't care for and don't use), but it caused your local search (from SUPER-key) to also be down, due to its tight integration with Bing. Silent failure with an all-black window, the worst of all.

wtetzner 6y ago

The main problem I have with Windows 10 is the forced restarts.

gburdell3 6y ago
I've been using Win10 on multiple machines since release day and I have never once seen a forced restart. That was a problem on Windows 7, but I honestly don't know how people are still having this problem with 10.
- wtetzner 6y ago
  Do you regularly restart? I typically don't restart my MBP for months at a time. With Windows 10, it'll tell me I need to restart after updates. I can ignore it to a point, but eventually it just reboots without asking, and whatever was opened at the time is lost.

Moeg 6y ago

Windows 10 search function is completely broken, it won't even find a program that's in start menu, not sure if it's because I disabled all the online functionality of search. If I want to find something online instead of my computer I use a browser. Thankfully there are great alternatives for the atrocity, such as Everything, it's mind-blowing how a third party program is orders of magnitude faster than native system search.

oefrha 6y ago
If you disable “Background Apps” in Settings, Windows 10 will “helpfully” disable indexing (backed by Cortana service?) as well, rendering your index completely stale, which manifests as items in start menu don’t show, apps deleted a year ago still show, etc. All the garbage “solutions” when you search for this problem online don’t help at all. This problem once wasted me hours.
- atomicfiredoll 6y ago
  Dang. I thought you may have inadvertently pointed me in the right direction as to why I can't even get my indexing service to start. But, no luck. Maybe I'll get around to putting more hours in to fixing it someday.
pier25 6y ago
One of the reasons I won't switch from macOS to Windows 10 for work is how bad search is and the lack of a proper launcher like Alfred. It's absurd that Apple came up with Spotlight in 10.4 (15 years ago) and Microsoft still hasn't caught up with such a fundamental game changer.
- snowwrestler 6y ago
  When I worked for a consultant to Microsoft in the early 2000s, they were excited about the powerful search features they were planning to deliver in Longhorn. But Apple beat them to market with Spotlight, and to my knowledge, search has never turned into a differentiating feature for Windows. It's kind of crazy to think back to those conversations with Microsoft about their long-range plans. Some they have delivered well, like the transition to a subscription model for client applications. Some they have not, like native peer-to-peer social networking in the OS.

Causality1 6y ago

To me nothing better exemplifies W10 "we know better than you" attitude than the desktop shortcut regressions. On W7 if you want a desktop shortcut to Notepad you open Start, begin typing Notepad, and when it shows up in the menu you either click and drag it onto the desktop or your right-click it and hit "send to desktop create shortcut". Neither of those work on Windows 10 without third party software.

kmfrk 6y ago

Yeah, I don't feel that Windows is meaningfully better than it's been in years, it just feels like the awful waterfall development is going to break it and introduce weird UI inconsistencies all the time and that's just the way it is. Gaming on Windows is almost more confusing than it's been due to all the things and settings you have to make sure are set up right.

drewzero1 6y ago
Meanwhile, I'm finding that gaming on Linux is easier than ever (at least on the limited selection, older titles I tend to play), and I no longer need to keep a Windows partition for that purpose. I still have a Windows 10 PC around, but I'm not really sure why I keep it.

kamilszybalski 6y ago

I think the points you're making are accurate and fair, however I also think these issues are solvable only because of the strategic direction Satya has led, specifically referring to the evolution of MSFTs business models.

zepearl 6y ago

Does anybody know how to fix the problem of the taskbar's icons getting stuck to "orange" (notification)? This is for me a problem especially with Skype as I never know if somebody posted a new message into the chat or not (but it happens as well with other programs). Better explanation of problem is for example here (none of the proposed workarounds work for me): https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/4qlgqp/taskbar_icons_stay_highlighted_orange_forever/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/4qlgqp/taskbar_i... I didn't have this problem in Win7.

WhompingWindows 6y ago

Amen. I've used all the versions of Windows for a couple decades and there seems to be a randomness to their improvements. Updating is just a fact of life, something we must do, it doesn't inherently come with "upgrades" for us as the consumers. What % of the improvement in computer technology has come on this slow crawl of OS, vs all the hardware, browser apps, etc?

xiphias2 6y ago
For me even with the newest Windows version installing PyTorch with compatible CUDA was not as easy as it should be, and even now I'm not sure if I can use mixed precision training. If I would have stayed on Windows 7, it adds one more uncertainty in the hardware-software configuration that I don't want to spend time with.

spaetzleesser 6y ago

The control panel is just a big mess of old and new with a set of overlapping functionality. You need to know both because some features are in the old control panel and some in the new. It's hard to comprehend how a multi-billion dollar company hasn't been able to straighten this out since Windows 8 release in 2012. The search function also still basically sucks.

pjettter 6y ago

I spent $10k on a computer in 2008 to get rid of latencies. Now computers are so much faster and some latencies just get greater? It's Windows that is broken. I don't see the same thing happening often on my Mac or iOS.

dartharva 6y ago

Yeah you just have to give up on the "modern" UWP apps and change back to classic ones, even when they are third-party. Use the Control Panel instead of settings, Everything for search, IrfanView for an image viewer... the list goes on. Just remove all UWP bloat and telemetry. You'll find many scripts on the internet to automate that.