5 ms·

Is it really that bad? It doesn't have my preference either, but I've never really understood why people think it's that bad. Especially with Windows 11, it's h

Is it really that bad? It doesn't have my preference either, but I've never really understood why people think it's that bad. Especially with Windows 11, it's honestly a nice visual improvement over 10 imo. The fact that it's spyware is a different discussion, I'm mainly talking about usability and stability here.

toyg 3y ago
I still use 10 every day. I think detractors are mostly annoyed that its terminal facilities are still subpar out of the box (even with Windows Terminal).
- MisterTea 3y ago
  > I think detractors are mostly annoyed that its terminal facilities are still subpar out of the box (even with Windows Terminal). All the spyware, forced updates and restarts causing loss of work forcing you to wrestle your own computer into submission via tweaking a plethora of knobs and levers that MS subverts with updates. But terminals...
  - toyg 3y ago
    I restart once a month, when compulsory updates are rolled out, and it's hardly a sacrifice if user programs are half-decent (i.e. sessions are restored, something every good browser or editor can do these days). As for spyware and subverted preferences, Apple does it worse; and many Linux updates will carelessly break DE stuff too... so it's all much of a muchness to me.
  - bdw5204 3y ago
    You can set "Active Hours" to include up to 18 hours of the day effectively limiting forced restarts to whenever you are sleeping. They also only seem to happen when you leave the computer idle. Combine this with hibernate and you can delay an update indefinitely. It is still annoying to deal with but manageable especially on single boot machines.
lproven 3y ago
> Is it really that bad? Yes! YES. > it's honestly a nice visual improvement over 10 imo O_O Good hypothetical gods. Long term Windows user here, before I defected to Linux (supplemented with Mac OS X) in about 2002. I started on Windows 2.01 in 1988. The best version of Windows ever was 2000, and it's been accelerating downhill since then. The last version that was pleasant to use, and the best-looking, was Windows 7. Win8.0 brought in the flat look that destroyed all visual appeal. Win 8.1 reinstated a broken crippled copy of the Start menu. Win10 formalised that and it was minimally usable. Now 11 is the one that I simply cannot bear to use at all. Broken taskbar, glamorised into uselessless, pinned at the bottom when it should be at the side. Fitt's law making it easy to find the Start menu in a corner, a big easy target, broken: it now moves around floating somewhere left of bottom centre. It has advertising in it, in a paid product! WTAF? Ribbons everywhere, destroying the usability of the world-beating Explorer UI that the entire industry copied. The return of the deeply useless desktop widgets. The b0rked up MS web based video-conferencing tool is always there, always open, although I never ever use it. It constantly nags me about low free space in my never-used OneDrive, and I can't turn it off. It is a horrible broken sh1tshow of an OS, the end of a proud dynasty. I am really seriously shocked to find anyone might prefer it.
- sumtechguy 3y ago
  > I am really seriously shocked to find anyone might prefer it. Prefer it? Not really. The core issue is they keep changing the GUI metaphors. Now at this point if you click on the right program you may see stuff from win3.11 all the way up to win11. With some GUI's stuck in 'the window is a max of 640x480 mode' and is crap to use on a even semi recent computer. Then is as tradition MS moves junk around into non logical places. Even the task manager has had junk moved around for no real reason and it really does not look better or worse than the win10 version it was however an 'ok' improvement upon the old win9x style. The win8 debacle was them not testing it on users and thinking everyone would have a touch tablet for windows?! It shows. Win9x and WinXP you can see they did their usability studies. Then just decided to not do it anymore. Discoverability is terrible, usability is skewed across at least 7 different windows idioms and things you are used to doing just randomly disappear and reappear somewhere else (if you are lucky). Then tools are deprecated and replaced with new shiny but do the exact same thing but not quite and usually surrounded by techno bable. Just fix the old ones and update it please. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/whats-new/deprecated-features https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/whats-new/deprecat... The only reason I still use it is I am fairly committed to this eco system. Moving to another one is possible but not something I really want to do. Just upgrading a computer is a painful thing for me to do at this point much less changing to another OS. It gets more and more tempting as WINE gets better and better.
Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
> Especially with Windows 11, it's honestly a nice visual improvement over 10 imo. You gotta be joking. IMO, Windows 11 is trying desperately to look like MacOS, which is probably the greatest bug Microsoft has ever introduced into Windows besides EternalBlue and MS08-067. Microsoft is completely ignoring a huge market segment that chooses Windows because it's not MacOS. Windows 7 with the Classic theme was hands-down the best Windows UI. The modern shift to flatness and hiding information/options is terrible UX. It absolutely destroys discoverability when it's not clear what elements are interactable. But it looks "clean", I guess, so somehow people prefer it.
- tremon 3y ago
  The modern shift to flatness and hiding information/options is terrible UX. It absolutely destroys discoverability Yes, but they're adding "helpful" hint dialogs that clutter the screen to compensate that loss of discoverability, so it's all good. /s

toyg 3y ago

I still use 10 every day. I think detractors are mostly annoyed that its terminal facilities are still subpar out of the box (even with Windows Terminal).

MisterTea 3y ago
> I think detractors are mostly annoyed that its terminal facilities are still subpar out of the box (even with Windows Terminal). All the spyware, forced updates and restarts causing loss of work forcing you to wrestle your own computer into submission via tweaking a plethora of knobs and levers that MS subverts with updates. But terminals...
- toyg 3y ago
  I restart once a month, when compulsory updates are rolled out, and it's hardly a sacrifice if user programs are half-decent (i.e. sessions are restored, something every good browser or editor can do these days). As for spyware and subverted preferences, Apple does it worse; and many Linux updates will carelessly break DE stuff too... so it's all much of a muchness to me.
- bdw5204 3y ago
  You can set "Active Hours" to include up to 18 hours of the day effectively limiting forced restarts to whenever you are sleeping. They also only seem to happen when you leave the computer idle. Combine this with hibernate and you can delay an update indefinitely. It is still annoying to deal with but manageable especially on single boot machines.

lproven 3y ago

> Is it really that bad? Yes! YES. > it's honestly a nice visual improvement over 10 imo O_O Good hypothetical gods. Long term Windows user here, before I defected to Linux (supplemented with Mac OS X) in about 2002. I started on Windows 2.01 in 1988. The best version of Windows ever was 2000, and it's been accelerating downhill since then. The last version that was pleasant to use, and the best-looking, was Windows 7. Win8.0 brought in the flat look that destroyed all visual appeal. Win 8.1 reinstated a broken crippled copy of the Start menu. Win10 formalised that and it was minimally usable. Now 11 is the one that I simply cannot bear to use at all. Broken taskbar, glamorised into uselessless, pinned at the bottom when it should be at the side. Fitt's law making it easy to find the Start menu in a corner, a big easy target, broken: it now moves around floating somewhere left of bottom centre. It has advertising in it, in a paid product! WTAF? Ribbons everywhere, destroying the usability of the world-beating Explorer UI that the entire industry copied. The return of the deeply useless desktop widgets. The b0rked up MS web based video-conferencing tool is always there, always open, although I never ever use it. It constantly nags me about low free space in my never-used OneDrive, and I can't turn it off. It is a horrible broken sh1tshow of an OS, the end of a proud dynasty. I am really seriously shocked to find anyone might prefer it.

sumtechguy 3y ago
> I am really seriously shocked to find anyone might prefer it. Prefer it? Not really. The core issue is they keep changing the GUI metaphors. Now at this point if you click on the right program you may see stuff from win3.11 all the way up to win11. With some GUI's stuck in 'the window is a max of 640x480 mode' and is crap to use on a even semi recent computer. Then is as tradition MS moves junk around into non logical places. Even the task manager has had junk moved around for no real reason and it really does not look better or worse than the win10 version it was however an 'ok' improvement upon the old win9x style. The win8 debacle was them not testing it on users and thinking everyone would have a touch tablet for windows?! It shows. Win9x and WinXP you can see they did their usability studies. Then just decided to not do it anymore. Discoverability is terrible, usability is skewed across at least 7 different windows idioms and things you are used to doing just randomly disappear and reappear somewhere else (if you are lucky). Then tools are deprecated and replaced with new shiny but do the exact same thing but not quite and usually surrounded by techno bable. Just fix the old ones and update it please. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/whats-new/deprecated-features https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/whats-new/deprecat... The only reason I still use it is I am fairly committed to this eco system. Moving to another one is possible but not something I really want to do. Just upgrading a computer is a painful thing for me to do at this point much less changing to another OS. It gets more and more tempting as WINE gets better and better.

Sohcahtoa82 3y ago

> Especially with Windows 11, it's honestly a nice visual improvement over 10 imo. You gotta be joking. IMO, Windows 11 is trying desperately to look like MacOS, which is probably the greatest bug Microsoft has ever introduced into Windows besides EternalBlue and MS08-067. Microsoft is completely ignoring a huge market segment that chooses Windows because it's not MacOS. Windows 7 with the Classic theme was hands-down the best Windows UI. The modern shift to flatness and hiding information/options is terrible UX. It absolutely destroys discoverability when it's not clear what elements are interactable. But it looks "clean", I guess, so somehow people prefer it.

tremon 3y ago
The modern shift to flatness and hiding information/options is terrible UX. It absolutely destroys discoverability Yes, but they're adding "helpful" hint dialogs that clutter the screen to compensate that loss of discoverability, so it's all good. /s