I have been using Windows 10 off and on since October of 2014, and as the operating system on my main computer since January 22nd of this year. I honestly could not see me moving back to an older version ever. The improvements to Windows 10 are both dramatic and subtle, and the improvements keep occurring even this shortly after launch. Better for the desktop, better for the tablet, and a platform than runs on practically any computer system. Windows 10 is here, and Microsoft has made a bold statement with it. It is the return of the old, plus the addition of the new, all in a package that works very well on a huge variety of devices.
Just be sure to ignore all the crappy Metro applications, and you’ll be fine with Windows 10.
“Just be sure to ignore all the crappy Metro applications, and you’ll be fine with Windows 10.”
Avoiding Metro applications is actually a very easy thing to do with Windows 10 considering that nobody is forcing you to use them. Traditional desktop applications work just fine on Windows 10, so I’m not sure why you feel the need to continue to complain about “Metro” applications every time Windows 10 gets mentioned.
Even Microsoft has obviously acknowledged that they aren’t the be all, end all. (See Skype deprecating their “Metro” app in favor of their desktop version.)
Not to mention the fact that they’re not all crappy. The Windows 10 calculator is frankly awesome, and I dare you to find a better stock calculator app anywhere. The calendar and mail apps need to bake for a bit longer, but they are usable, and it’s not like there aren’t literally dozens of alternatives available. Edge is actually shaping up very nicely.
Also, for devices like the Surface Pro 3, some of the “Metro” apps are a godsend when you want to ditch the keyboard for some couch surfing and light productivity work. This is what makes Windows 10 awesome. Full blown desktop and gaming capabilities when you need it, and simple, lightweight touch screen tablet functionality when you want it. Let me know when Apple and Google catch up to Microsoft on this one.
Windows 10 isn’t perfect, but I honestly think it’s miles ahead of its competition.
Edited 2015-08-31 17:25 UTC
Windows 10 isn’t perfect, but I honestly think it’s miles ahead of its competition.
That is if you don’t mind being spied upon and giving your soul to Microsoft!
What NSA proof OS do you run Sauron?
From where I’m sitting, Android, Chrome OS, Mac OS X, iOS, and Ubuntu don’t look a whole lot better regarding privacy.
Amiga OS 3x mostly and BeOS max/Haiku. Using Win7 at the moment which I usually use for internet use, my internet use though doesn’t include facebook, twitter, or any of that crap so has a small footprint. I also run a firewall that blocks outward crap without permission.
Fair enough, but I would say that your setup would hardly be considered “usable” by most people.
Sadly, I’ve given up on the expectation of privacy when it comes to any Internet facing device I own.
Not usable for business use definitely, but for home use it’s more than enough. Plus it’s OS’s that are fun to use unlike this latest spyware rubbish. I’m sorry, some people can probably put up with all the shit coming from the corporations, but I certainly can’t, and won’t use anything they push out that reduces peoples rights!
AFAIK, Chrome OS (As used on chromebooks) phones Home to the Chocolate Factory Mothership
Ubuntu comes with searched heading to Amazon ny default but is easily used.
There are far better Linux distro’s than Ubuntu available these days that don’t phone home to the disto keeper and the NSA at every opportunity.
And now wih Microsoft increading the Telemetry on Windows 7, 8/8.1 and even Server 2012 (wtf)
http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2015/08/30/windows-10-spyin…
They are really out to shoot themselves in the foot with both barrels.
If you use W10 without forcibly disabling the snooping then frankly you deserve all the targetted adverts you get. By forcibly disabling I mean blocking 60+ MS Domains at your router and not just in the hosts file (which apparently can be bypassed)
I mostly like Windows 10, but I did think they went too far with some of the default settings that are clearly not in the best interests of users. It also looks like they are listening and adjusting to the backlash they have received. For example the setting to “share back windows updates” used to be configured as “everyone, even on the internet” but is now “local network only” by default, as it should have been from the start.
I am wondering about the ads. I disable the “unique advertisement ID” during installation immediately, but I don’t know which kinds of ads that actually affects. Would “forcibly disabling” actually mean I get NO ads, or just not targeted anymore? In the last case I don’t know what would be better for most users: More privacy but also more annoying ads or less privacy but ads that are at least slightly relevant.
Say, exactly what ads are you referring to? I have yet to see a single ad on my Windows – installation.
You haven’t seen ad tiles in the Start menu? That’s one of the first things I noticed about it, and I didn’t sign in with a Microsoft account, just a local one. I had also turned off the advertising ID, and still saw the advertising tiles every time I clicked on the Start button.
No, I haven’t seen anything like that. I thought it was just someone spreading false rumours. There have been no ads in the Start-menu on any of the machines I’ve tried Windows 10 on. Are you perhaps talking about some specific app’s tile instead, like e.g. the Windows Store’s tile? It does show ads for stuff on the Store, but I just removed the tile.
That, and I recall a tile that was random ads for personal hygiene stuff like razors and deodorant, as well as a pretty large ad that was showing clickbait “articles” on rotation.
Interestingly, I didn’t see these when I was running the Insider Preview, it was only after I’d upgraded from Windows 7 to the final release.
I’m not going to upgrade again just to see it (I downgraded for unrelated issues), but if I come across any Windows 10 machines in the near future I’ll be sure to screenshot any ads I see and follow up here.
I think that’s the tile for that Microsoft’s news-website whatever-the-cock-it’s-called. They do have a lot of clickbait articles there and the tile does do try to display them prominently. I dunno, I can only say the only “ads” stuff I’ve seen were the tiles for specific apps and it took literally two clicks to remove each tile *shrug* And none of the tiles even seemed to actually do any sort of targeted advertising, either; they certainly didn’t know fuck all about my tastes.
Uninstall the tiles. Done, no more ads.
Scrape the pile of dog poop off of your plate. Done, no more fecal matter next to your burger. So why are you complaining about the meal?
I understand that you were trying to provide a solution, but it cuts to the heart of the matter: Microsoft gets a pass on things that would have gotten Apple skewered by the press and the public had they done them.
Ubuntu phones to NSA? Yeah, right.
There’s a difference between being spied on by the NSA or GCHQ (which you can’t do anything about) and being spied on by Microsoft in addition.
On the bright side they’ve now backported their spying to Windows 8 & Windows 7, so you may as well just use Windows 10 anyway.
But… At least (for the time being) we have total control over when and what updates get applied.
For that alone I won’t ever move to W10.
When Windows 7 goes out of support then that’s it, I’m finished with MS and I know I won’t be alone.
Rather sad really because MS has enabled be to earn a crust for a good number of years.
Adding this Telemetry to Server 2012 is also bad IMHO.
I know my current employers are really considering moving to a different server OS for the back end stuff.
Enough already!
Because you would know it just by looking at the screen from where you are sitting? Duh
I run Linux, and it will still phone repository servers for application updates. So by that definition, there is no such a thing as a NSA-proof OS since all OS(except those disconnected OSes/embedded) will connect to public servers,and NSA spy bots can snoop on those data.
But Windows 10 really was crossing the line, it stores your personal data and sell them. In this way, Microsoft have this moral responsibility to release Windows at no cost to all users as long as they agree on this adverts on their machine. Windows 10 now becomes the Facebook of OS.
How about the one from Windows XP?
Actually one of the first things I did on my Windows 10 was to replace the new calculator with Microsoft’s Calculator Plus.
I find the new calculator a good example of everything I hate about all the metro apps: big huge buttons (made for touch, not my mouse), silly narrow/inefficient window size (made for a phone), hamburger menu hiding half the functionality (because a phone couldn’t display it, but my 27″ surely can and should!), ugly brown colors that makes me wonder why my display has 10 bits per component.
Well that about says it all. When the best example you can come up with in 2015 is “the calculator is good” then nothing more needs to be said about the quality of the apps.
I don’t even know what is so great about the calculator app. To me it actually stands out negatively.
Where in the classic Windows calculator you used to be able to right click the entire digit entry field to paste something into it, in the ‘Trusted Windows Store App’ version you now have to specifically aim for any number that might be there (first time you use it, just a small 0) and then there is a small delay before the Copy/Paste context menu shows up.
Hardly a major workflow interruption. But an unwelcome little annoyance that just irritates several times a day.
Edited 2015-09-01 05:05 UTC
Python is my calculator. I guess I have no reason to use Windows 10, then…
Well, maybe because they s*ck balls?
It’s about as “awesome” as one-size-fits-all underwear.
Apple and Google long ago recognized that a mobile device with a touchscreen requires a very different GUI, both on the OS and the applications, than a personal computer with a precision pointing device.
That’s why Android and iOS mobile devices are so much more popular than Windows 10 mobile devices. Microsoft keeps trying to perpetuate the fiction that a one-size-fits-all OS is really desirable. But the Metro fiasco has clearly shown that very few users want a personal computer GUI that looks like a giant Windows Phone.
And Microsoft’s attempt to keep Windows Phone on life support by buying troubled Nokia for $7.2 billion in order to assure that someone continued to make a Windows phone was yet more evidence that their “One GUI to rule them all, one GUI to find them; one GUI to bring them all and in the darkness bind them” strategy is failing.
I like Windows 10. Lots, with a couple of caveats.
Searching the Start Menu is unreliable when you have focus follows mouse enabled – if you don’t start typing within the the time limit set in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\ActiveWndTrackTimeout, you can’t search the menu. This sucks for me, since I like XMouse.
So far, it’s unstable. An N64 emulator I use (Project64) causes blue screens, though running it in compatibility mode works fine.
A couple of days ago, I got a blue screen randomly. Not sure what caused it, couldn’t reproduce it. I can’t remember the last time I got a blue screen (apart from above).
I routinely switch to low-power mode, but I can’t do that by right-clicking the battery icon in the notification area anymore, requiring me to go into the Control Panel.
The mouse is frequently really choppy when I first boot. Not sure why. Startup time is inconsistent – sometimes it’s fast, sometimes it’s slow.
FWIW, I have not had the same issues. While I agree with much of the article—Windows 10 feels, very much, unfinished—Windows 10 has proven to be very stable for me with startup and shutdown times that are far better than Windows 7.
For me, It’s about 12.5 seconds to get to the login screen (Excluding post, time spent in GRUB), and 14.6 seconds to get to the desktop (Including the second or so it takes to type in my PIN).
Sometimes, though, it takes much longer, sitting at a black screen rather than the blue “Please wait” screen with the spinning dots.
Oddly, it can take longer to come out of standby to get a usable desktop – after the desktop appears, buttons don’t work, and mouse cursor movement is EXTREMELY choppy, to the point where if clicks on icons were to respond, I’d have trouble getting the cursor to land on an icon.
The blue screen problem with Project64 is a known bug with the emulator.
There is an easy workaround for the ActiveWndTrackTimeout issue: Use the search (WinKey+S)
http://superuser.com/questions/954021/how-do-you-enable-focus-follo…
And if you only use “focus-follows-mouse” to scroll inside inactive windows you might not need XMouse at all: https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-10/2435/windows-10-tip-scro…
FYI tools like this will allow you to remove the unremovable in Windows 10 https://github.com/Nummer/Destroy-Windows-10-Spying/releases
I’m waiting for two things: the first service pack, and the ability to run it offline. Sorry, but I just don’t trust Windows online.
There is not going to be a Service Pack, but there are going to be many cumulative updates (almost weekly) and it looks like there will be “Threshold releases” (quarterly?)
I have no idea what you mean by “using Windows 10 offline”, but you don’t need a Microsoft Account and you don’t even need an internet connection (although updating and activating Windows at home is quite hard to do without internet)
He means the ability to use it without it communicating over the internet without his consent!
Mostly what you said. If I don’t run a net application and ask for network service, I don’t want to see a single byte go through the router. With Windows, that means I normally unplug the ethernet cable unless I NEED to do something like update. Even then I would prefer to get as an installer I can save so that the next time I need to reinstall Windows, I can run the latest updater without needing to use the net again for EVERY LAST UPDATE.
I think those days are almost gone now. Microsoft is trying to take us back to the 1970’s and turn your PC’s in to dumb terminals that can’t do anything without being connected to their servers. Windows is now a service, I don’t think it will be long before it’s a terminal OS specifically aimed at data mining!
The more of this crap they get away with, the more they’re going to push it.
You know where to go if you don’t like MS’s re-incarnation of the Mainframe/3270 Terminal network.
I’m sure that there is a non snooping Linux Distro out there somewhere that would suit your needs.
Need Photoshop? Oh well, it looks like you are stuffed unless you defect to the Apple world.
[gazing into my crystal ball a bit]
I’m sure that MS would like a very thin client (stripped down Surface/RT) with a Credit card slot that has to be used and auth’d before it lets you connect to their Azure mothership where all your data is held. This results in a system where you end up paying by the byte or second of use. Perfect for their cash flow.
Run out of credit on the card? Deleting your data in 5…4…3..2..1..0
Bye sucker.
Linux? I’m sure your just joking right? I’ll stay where I am with what I’ve got thanks.
Ironically enough some of IBM’s actual mainframes are now being used to run swarms of virtual Linux machines.
> Photoshop
Running Adobe Photoshop on latest versions of Wine is qualified as “Gold”
https://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?appId=17
Note: I don’t use Photoshop :-), just Krita and Gimp, although I don’t need more 🙂
Has anybody run a traffic analysis on Win 10 after one of those “disable spying” tools has been run? It would be nice to know if we can actually kill the big brother components once and for all. I know simply using the privacy settings doesn’t work as Ars did a check after using the privacy settings and found it still phoned home and according to this article it is recording pretty much everything you do by default, and what is worse is somebody did a WHOIS on the first server it calls, its an anti-piracy troll called MarkMonitor…
http://localghost.org/posts/a-traffic-analysis-of-windows-10
So until somebody does an analysis and shows you can disable the spying? I’d recommend just waiting for the pirate version, which like the DRM stripped games will be the better alternative. Its not like the pirate groups haven’t done this before, there is Windows 7 Tiny and Gamer Edition as well as Windows 8 Gamer Edition which rips out all the cruft (and in the case of 8 the appstore as well) which leaves you with just the core OS without the BS.
Oh and its just insane how low resource Windows is without all the crap, XP tiny ran on 96Mb of RAM, Win 7 on 145Mb and Vista on 256Mb so you could just run the whole OS in RAM even on decade old PCs. Just to see how big a difference it was I slapped Win 7 Tiny on a 2003 Sempron with 756Mb of RAM, the OS was so snappy and boot times so short you’d have thought it was on an SSD.
Seriously? You unplug the ethernet cable unless you need to update anything? That is some dedication (and distrust). Wouldn’t you be much better of with a well configured firewall? This would allow you to do things like…receive email during the day. Or look up an online manual
The weather app is pretty good, as is Pictures. The wholesale bashing of Metro is getting old.
As Thom points out it is not as if they have not had time to make them really slick but they have not changed all that much barring a few exceptions.
…except when it’s not. I just wish I wouldn’t have to go to \ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs for links to dozens of software that never made it to the idiotic start menu, which I despise endelessly. Otherwise, besides having to manually disable tracking and telemetry stuff, setting wifi to be metered and using KB3073930, it seems to work OK. I wouldn’t go as far as saying it’s the best yet, but at least it didn’t cause any major headaches _yet_ (aside from a few days of battle to try to keep a certain video driver version from updating).
You might like this command: shell:appsfolder
Better yet, format C:
Very interesting command. It must be really useful because at first it gave me this:
Access Denied as you do not have sufficient privileges.
You have to invoke this utility running in elevated mode.
So after some effort I found out how to get into this elevatormode and now I get this message and a blinking cursor:
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Enter current volume label for drive C:
It took some help from my supportdesk, but finally i found out how to get that label, so I entered TrollingTrollsIsFun and I could finally continue:
WARNING, ALL DATA ON NON-REMOVABLE DISK
DRIVE C: WILL BE LOST!
Proceed with Format (Y/N)? y
Formatting 128,0 GB
Format cannot run because the volume is in use by another
process. Format may run if this volume is dismounted first.
ALL OPENED HANDLES TO THIS VOLUME WOULD THEN BE INVALID.
Would you like to force a dismount on this volume? (Y/N) y
Cannot lock the drive. The volume is still in use.
Format failed.
My supportdesk couldn’t help me any further. Please tell me what to do next
Take out the drive and hit it several times with a hammer or other heavy object, once sufficiently dented and mangled dowse with a flammable liquid and set it on fire. (Please note, this may invalidate your warranty)!
Download DBAN on a CD and slide it in.
I had trouble with the first part: “download DBAN on a CD”. Please provide more details.
I enjoyed the second part.
Also: Whoosh
This board is full of solutions.
This article, like many others, is laying out the claim that privacy is the cost of admission for many new features.
Why?
Is there something magical about Microsoft’s computers that makes it possible to do things that are impossible on personal computers?
A lot of the reasons brought up are not all that magical. Voice recognition, handwriting recognition, predictive keyboard entry, etc. can be done on a personal computer and have been done on a personal computer for decades. Maps data can, and historically has, be stored locally. Calendars are created locally and can be managed locally. Even when you make the argument that connectivity helps in these cases, data sets can be updated periodically and online queries can be made only when needed. There is also no need for things to be routed exclusively through Microsoft’s servers. Large businesses can managed their own servers in many cases. Individuals should be able to subscribe to other providers. And the user should always have the ability to turn off any online feature without loosing huge swaths of features. What they lose should be within reason, given the capabilities of technology.
Of course, that does not fit within business models so I’m not going to hold my breath for it.
So far i see its shitty remove the bloat and drivers fail to install , they did not bring classic theme back and the fake comeback of a startbutton in the horrible metrostart way is a mockery .
So we need classictheme.exe from user Ibmpad and classicshell from Ivo and then we need to remove cortana spyware and these rugged metro apps to make it usable.
It was heading downhill from windows 7 days the classic startbutton was gone and nobody complained because classicshell mod was already there and then they fucked up even more things that were not broken in the first place.
Funny how in earlier days all these ESSENTIAL features were there i could recall days when i switched off ugly aero themes to classic mode in seconds today they force it on you until somebody bring it back with an opensource mod like this one http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=113024 too bad it wont work 100% on windows 10
Well… Classic theme is now a REALLY old look and feel.
I can understand they still provided it in the vista/7 era as it wasn’t so long gone… But we’re in 2015 now and I’m not especially surprised or shocked that MS doesn’t provide it anymore.
We don’t have either the way to revert to the Win3.11 look and (almost) nobody complains
3.11 has nothing to do with windows the current windows 10 uses bitmaps over the classical gui , it reverts to system colors if anything else fails it is still possible to do so by disabling dwm , using handle and see what those pesky indians broke in GUI development. You like themes be blessed but don’t force that on me and btw classictheme mod works on windows 8.1 and partially on windows 10.
Also clasictheme and classicshell programs would never be there if Microsoft did not stop removing features that we all use.
As someone who still needs to use Windows at work, this Windows 10 upgrade has been a real improvement.
I’ve just upgraded my work notebook. It’s SSD based and I had only 9G left. Now, after the old Windows cleanup it’s more like 30G.
It’s not only smaller, but faster more responsive and more usable than Windows Vista through to 8.
My favorite new feature is the new Windows terminal.
I am a heavy MSYS user(can be as productive as any Unix system) and I used the standard console. Now it’s as good as any other terminal emulator.
I’d still rather not having to use MS products to begin with, but they are really doing a good job fixing the most annoying parts of their OS.