Is Windows 10 really this "bad"?

edited April 2017 in Software
Okay, there has been some threads here where we have bashed the hell out of Windows 10 since it was first released almost a year ago but I just want to ask... it really that bad? Yes, it has the worst UI possible (even with that Start Menu ffs) and yes it likes to know what you're up to. As of this post, the market share for it is now nearly 20% and, I'm guessing the number may increase as the months go on. I heard that it was getting major updates for last month and I wonder what they were... were they for improving the whole thing, even of the interface that looks like that a kid ate too much fruity yoghurts and spewed it all over? I don't know.

The main reason why I'm posting this thread is because later this month, I am expected to start work soon and I believe that most computers have upgraded to 10 and I even openly admitted that I wish to not use it for the reasons I and others had complained about but, things may be different for it within the workplace, I don't know. I certainly won't use it for home use though, and as if I'd ever would.
«1

Comments

  • After using Windows 10 for almost a year, I can say... yes and no.

    Some of its changes are completely unnecessary, but it's not like you can't modify it to your liking. If don't have it yet, you're not missing much, but we're not talking of a WinME-style trainwreck.
  • On certain devices it can be a little buggy.

    On my laptop (which was a Windows 8 machine originally btw) the start menu refuses to open and the taskbar goes off the screen sometimes. Before I reloaded it with the built in reinstaller the scan app wouldn't work. I have and still have proper Windows 10 drivers installed for my laptop and still have these problems.

    On a computer at my school one of the machines wouldn't EVER open the start menu and explorer didn't work at all.

    However, on my desktop machine it works fine, so I think I've just had bad luck with Windows 10.

    PS. Windows 10 home blocks you from stopping Windows Update and it's really difficult to uninstall updates. The Windows 10 Store blocks you from modding your games etc.
    PPS. Be a little concerned of Windows 10's spying
  • Well, there is one solution for the buggy Start Menu and Explorer... Classic Shell. Get it when you can, although that may be impossible for the school computer though. And yes, I am aware that it does spy on you, and I would be pissed off if it's going to happen on a work computer unless an employer or techie within the workplace does something about it.
  • Is it really that bad? No, not really. I personally like the interface just fine. What bothers me is that by default, Windows Updates are forced on and install automatically and of course the usual privacy issues.

    These issues can be dealt with and once you do that it's actually quite good. I still hold out hope that some future update will actually address these issues.
  • BlueSun wrote:
    I still hold out hope that some future update will actually address these issues.
    Maybe that would be for the major updates for October then? But just remember that I'm concerned on having to use this when I'm at work, not for home use.
  • BlueSun wrote:
    Is it really that bad? No, not really. I personally like the interface just fine. What bothers me is that by default, Windows Updates are forced on and install automatically and of course the usual privacy issues.

    These issues can be dealt with and once you do that it's actually quite good. I still hold out hope that some future update will actually address these issues.

    I suspect Windows Updates were forced for the masses, not people like ourselves. Many people out there don't really bother with updates whether for their smartphone or PC unless they are practically forced to. If I remember correctly over the years some viruses and security issues were exacerbated by these habits, simply because a large chunk of society didn't bother with software patches. Then of course the media targets Microsoft and/or some other corporate. I know a few people that just lament having to go through an iOS upgrade or wait for a few Windows updates to install.
    There is a "choice" though it comes in the form of needing to use the enterprise edition of Windows, so IT admin can control the flow of patches to their liking

    Privacy issues are no different to me than the likes of Google, Apple, and Facebook. Data that can be potentially sold for advertising and market research, and very specific advertising and content to the end user.

    I don't really have an issue with the shell either, though I tend to reduce the number of tiles on the Start menu. I still prefer the old style Control Panel though.

    Between an old Core 2 Duo, 1st gen i3, 2nd gen i5, and a Lenovo i7 laptop they have all upgraded to Windows 10 rather smoothly. I haven't had issues with those. The only issue was upgrading from WIn 7 on my Sharp netbook, as it used to crash during installation and would revert back to Win 7. After some time and another attempt it did eventually work, and while it's not fast it doesn't perform worse than Win 7 on it either.
  • I have no issue with the default being to automatically install updates. My issue is that even in the professional edition, in the GUI, I can't choose to selectively install updates. I would understand if that were a home edition limitation... but it's not.

    I haven't had a lot of hands on with enterprise though.
  • BlueSun wrote:
    Is it really that bad? No, not really. I personally like the interface just fine. What bothers me is that by default, Windows Updates are forced on and install automatically and of course the usual privacy issues.

    These issues can be dealt with and once you do that it's actually quite good. I still hold out hope that some future update will actually address these issues.
    For some dumb reason, you need Windows 10 pro to stop the updates, and such.
  • BlueSun wrote:
    Is it really that bad? No, not really. I personally like the interface just fine. What bothers me is that by default, Windows Updates are forced on and install automatically and of course the usual privacy issues.

    These issues can be dealt with and once you do that it's actually quite good. I still hold out hope that some future update will actually address these issues.
    For some dumb reason, you need Windows 10 pro to stop the updates, and such.

    It doesn't stop updates completely though, and plus all updates are bundled up which makes things worse.
  • I was a user of Windows 10 during the pre-release and beta test time, so I've gotten used to most of the ui bugs. However, I will say that in terms of performance, it tends to beat Win8/8.1, WinVista (obviously), and even Win7. This was even true before its release. I had the beta versions running on an AMD Phenom 9750 system (quad-core, 2.4GHz, x86_64) with 8GB of DDR2, and it killed even the boot-up times for Win7 and Ubuntu 12.04 at the time.
  • I was a user of Windows 10 during the pre-release and beta test time, so I've gotten used to most of the ui bugs. However, I will say that in terms of performance, it tends to beat Win8/8.1, WinVista (obviously), and even Win7. This was even true before its release. I had the beta versions running on an AMD Phenom 9750 system (quad-core, 2.4GHz, x86_64) with 8GB of DDR2, and it killed even the boot-up times for Win7 and Ubuntu 12.04 at the time.


    For me, Windows 7 was much faster than Windows 10.
  • For me, 8.1 is a straight improvement over 7 provided you're running reasonable hardware. 10 is even more so, but I find it's too buggy for me.
  • ampharos wrote:
    <snip> ...but I find it's too buggy for me.

    For me on Windows 10 I had constant issues with programs and games crashing and I've only had that issue occasionally on windows 7.
  • What... is it still having these bugs and crashes? When El Capitan was released last year, the bugs that came with it were cleared out in an instant if I remember correctly. Why are they still present for 10? That's just... pathetic. Guess that's another reason for me to avoid it.

    Oh, and for a bit of offtopicness, it seems that the free upgrade to 10 isn't offered through Windows Update anymore... didn't see that damned KB number when it came to this month's update when it kept reappearing each time. Well, I suppose that's good news, and maybe it's now safe to turn back on automatic updates.
  • ampharos wrote:
    For me, 8.1 is a straight improvement over 7 provided you're running reasonable hardware. 10 is even more so, but I find it's too buggy for me.
    I second this, I skipped 8.0 but the refinements in 8.1 made it much more useable. My home desktop uses StartIsBack so its interface looks nearly identical to 7, while still having the useful enhancements.

    I have 10 on a few machines and it works well enough, but there is always something wonky with them, didn't matter if they were new with 10 or upgraded. I recently found that I can't even open the store or any other apps on one of them, not sure when that broke, wsreset fails with permission errors and my google-fu efforts haven't yielded working fixes besides reinstalling.
  • The 1511 builds of Windows 10 are known to have an OS-breaking bug where using wsreset actually makes the Store problem worse.

    Why it's not fixed yet is beyond me.
  • ....but we're not talking of a WinME-style trainwreck.
    I don't get why people hate WinMe so much. It didn't have many problems not shared with 98. Most stability problems were from the kernel. Even though it didn't have many new features, it wasn't bad.

    Plus *most* DOS programs still run...
  • Magikarp wrote:
    I don't get why people hate WinMe so much. It didn't have many problems not shared with 98. Most stability problems were from the kernel. Even though it didn't have many new features, it wasn't bad.
    That's pretty much the reason why people hate windows ME. Windows ME unstableness is the main reason why many people (including my self) dis like it. It was pushed out originally as a windows 98 update, but had to many bugs with it they decided to push it out as a consumer edition of windows 2000. Even though Windows ME gave introduced a restore point application, it was too unstable for people to love it.
  • The reason I hated Windows ME was because they gimped DOS support. Make no mistake, it was all still there, they literally changed just a couple of lines of code to prevent users from booting to DOS mode or exiting to to DOS. And there were still some programs that needed that.

    Not everybody saw the same level of instability, it depended somewhat on the device drivers installed. OEMs often didn't bother to update their 98 drivers for ME since it was the end of the road. Why fix it if mostly works with just a few random BSODs? :P
  • My first experience with ME was in a virtual machine, so I didn't really see too many stability issues compared to other folks that ran it on physical hardware. To me, it was just more of the same crappy Windows 9x.

    Given that it's been years since I've messed around with it, the temptation is strong to give it another look in a VM. In fact, I may just do that if I get sufficiently bored.
  • Apologies for bumping this thread but, I wonder if the OS itself has improved on certain aspects since last time, and with it six months to go until its second anniversary. Well, as much as I hate for how it looks and behaves, I hope things have changed, even that October update I recalled. If not, well, that's Microsoft's problem.
  • Nothing has really changed. 10 still gathers telemetry by default and installs updates automatically by default. The GUI still looks the same with only slight changes. You can configure active hours now which lets you specify a time during which it's not allowed to reboot your system automatically to install updates.

    Also, it now includes bash (has to be enabled), which is kind of neat. I haven't switched over to 10 as a daily driver yet, so I'm not sure if I'll ever use this feature regularly or not. For now it's just an interesting feature with more interesting potential.
  • BlueSun wrote:
    Nothing has really changed. 10 still gathers telemetry by default and installs updates automatically by default. The GUI still looks the same with only slight changes. You can configure active hours now which lets you specify a time during which it's not allowed to reboot your system automatically to install updates.

    Also, it now includes bash (has to be enabled), which is kind of neat. I haven't switched over to 10 as a daily driver yet, so I'm not sure if I'll ever use this feature regularly or not. For now it's just an interesting feature with more interesting potential.

    'bash' is included from the Linux Subsystem for Windows - an element that converts Linux syscalls to WinNT syscalls. It stems from the failed and discontinued Bridge for Android.
  • I think I did know about Win10 having Linux support, which is a bit strange when years ago Microsoft had pure hatred for Linux itself many years back, once calling it the "cancer of the IT industry". Well, suppose that's all changed now.

    I suppose the hideous ballooned-up Start Menu and the dated folder/file icons are still there (they've been around since Vista, for god sake change them) but, what about the problem of updates turning back on settings if you changed them, even for the telemetry-based ones?
  • Bry89 wrote:
    I think I did know about Win10 having Linux support, which is a bit strange when years ago Microsoft had pure hatred for Linux itself many years back, once calling it the "cancer of the IT industry". Well, suppose that's all changed now.

    No, Microsoft still hates Linux and in fact fears Linux. WSL was a reactionary move to try and keep developers from leaving windows and moving over to linux completely. Also, a couple years ago Microsoft sent people over to Valve's HQ because they had fears that Steam for Linux would succeed.
    Bry89 wrote:
    I suppose the hideous ballooned-up Start Menu and the dated folder/file icons are still there (they've been around since Vista, for god sake change them) but, what about the problem of updates turning back on settings if you changed them, even for the telemetry-based ones?

    Don't forget about programs being uninstalled without the user's permission.
  • dosbox wrote:
    Bry89 wrote:
    I suppose the hideous ballooned-up Start Menu and the dated folder/file icons are still there (they've been around since Vista, for god sake change them) but, what about the problem of updates turning back on settings if you changed them, even for the telemetry-based ones?

    Don't forget about programs being uninstalled without the user's permission.
    What the hell... another problem? I heard about it removing third-party programs, but this? That's just beyond stupid. I don't know what programs it would purge by itself but if GIMP and Inkscape were amongst the unlucky ones, and in turn wants everyone to use Paint, then that would be another valid reason to hate on it. That kind of behaviour might not go to that extreme but still.

    And about WSL, if Microsoft really hates Linux with a passion, then I think adding that in seems a bit contradictory don't you think?
  • stitch wrote:
    BlueSun wrote:
    Nothing has really changed. 10 still gathers telemetry by default and installs updates automatically by default. The GUI still looks the same with only slight changes. You can configure active hours now which lets you specify a time during which it's not allowed to reboot your system automatically to install updates.

    Also, it now includes bash (has to be enabled), which is kind of neat. I haven't switched over to 10 as a daily driver yet, so I'm not sure if I'll ever use this feature regularly or not. For now it's just an interesting feature with more interesting potential.

    'bash' is included from the Linux Subsystem for Windows - an element that converts Linux syscalls to WinNT syscalls. It stems from the failed and discontinued Bridge for Android.

    I specifically mentioned bash rather than LXSS due to the fact that all of the linux stuff has to run under bash first... So regardless of what's going on behind the scenes, it still feels more like it's just a separate environment running within bash.
  • Windows 10 is fine in my opinion. I don't care about the spying, I haven't had any issues with that yet. And for the updates - as someone above me said, it's made for the masses. Do you know how many computers have I supported (mainly windows 7 and xp) which have updates disabled or (in the worst case) **no updates ever installed (not even win7 SP1)**. Most of these customers were complaining about viruses. So yeah, the automatic updates are a good decision in my opinion, but it'd be nice if there was a hidden switch or something (maybe something like the retail mode easter egg?)
  • I wonder... has anybody used this in their place of work/college/university yet? It seems that people are only getting an experience from it through home use. Might be different elsewhere like, for the Pro and Enterprise versions.
  • Bry89 wrote:
    I wonder... has anybody used this in their place of work/college/university yet? It seems that people are only getting an experience from it through home use. Might be different elsewhere like, for the Pro and Enterprise versions.

    As far as I know, most companies are still running on 7 due to not wanting to have to test compatibility with programs that they use...But, the Enterprise version allows you to disable updates if needed.
Sign In or Register to comment.