Two weeks of Windows 10: Just how is Microsoft doing? Microsoft released Windows 10 two weeks ago, on 29 July, encompassing an ambitious global rollout whereby users of Windows 7 and 8.1 receive an in-place upgrade via Windows Update. It was never going to be easy, and is playing out as expected. Some users want the upgrade but cannot get it; others do not want it but get it …
This post has been deleted by its author
I did say maybe. I was making a serious point : I firmly believe that Windows 10 cannot be trusted for anything involving sensitive / personal / valuable information. Furthermore, having spent some time clearing the 'GWX' and 'Preparation for upgrade' infestation out of my Windows 7 PCs, I don't believe Microsoft can be trusted even for Windows 7.
They seem very, very, determined to get people into an environment where they get to know everything they're up to.
Those who really care will not stay with Windows. It boils down to how many actually care, I guess.
This post has been deleted by its author
I have it running on 2 machines and everything seems fine, I don't like Edge because of the "semi-invisible " URL window.
There are already quite a few articles on the web into how to turn off the MS Spyware . I don't use a Live account, nor Onedrive etc... It also installs IIS which is a pain but easily resolved..
I don't like that Quick Access thing in the explorer but it is easy to point to "This PC" rather than quick access.. There are also some pointless file copy dialogs, on the whole it's pretty much BAU.
It's not quite as finished as Windows 7, but that will change with time, I like that it displays a taskbar on both screens. No major bugs, I don't find myself reaching for ctrl-alt-delete which is already a good thing.
Some things have been juggled about, some things are hidden but can eventually be found, not a major paradigm shift, it's kind of a bland update really...
I don't care about boot up speeds as my machines are on 24/24 with only a very occasional reboot.
I'm keeping it, I have now deleted the "windows.old" directory although I did clone my drive before upgrading, I will keep the clone for a month or so and then we'll see.
{I don't care about boot up speeds as my machines are on 24/24 with only a very occasional reboot.}
I hope by that you mean at least once a month, occasionally more than once for the glut of fixes, because developers don't know how to get it right the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and sometimes many additional tries!!
I jumped ship from Ubuntu for far a far lesser crime. No-one should ever have to turn OFF spyware built into an operating system. Spyware has no place in an operating system. The whole point of an operating system should be that it does what the user of that operating system wants it to do. So anything that potentially impacts on user privacy should be something that the user has to request to have installed.
It would have been better had MS modlled the user experience of Win10, from the point of customisation, on the way that Linux distros work - give people the basics, then give them a software management tool that shows them all the shinies they can, if they wish, download from the MS repository, to add extra functionality, and if they did that and explained the privacy issues even very briefly and in as non-scary a way as they could whilst still being truthful, my money would have been on a lot of people installing that stuff anyway. And I;d probably be simply shrugging and, as with 'social media', shrugging andmuttering under my breathabout how bizarre it seems that so many are willing to give up their privacy. Instead of which I'm lambasting MS for being underhand (as well as releasing software before it's fit to release), and activelywarning friends to stay away from Windows 10.
Oh well.. time to park myself on the sofa and watch as the disaster unfolds. Wouldn't like to be an MS shareholder just now.
I have not taken up the option to upgrade, though the reminder is persistent. Having seen decades of MS tomfoolery (I started with Windows 2x and miss WFW) I don't feel able to commit. I gave up on Ubuntu, Knoppix and a couple of others; perhaps a Linux-Windows dual boot is the solution. I blame the village idiot, Ballmer, for much of the silliness today. Like you I am watching with interest, if that is an apt description. Horrified fascination might be a better one.
A post on an earlier day brought NDA's to mind and there is no way I can reconcile them nor related Chinese Firewalls [the legal/securities/financial kind] on a "consumer version of Windows 10 at all. Even locking down the privacy settings will not prevent reversion without notice. Tinfoil hat thinking but with teeth: Microsoft has reserved rights in the EULA and Privacy Agreements around perceived threats.
I was already holding off around compatibility and stability issues. Add regulatory/governance settling time for now. [Yes, I'm well aware of the telemetry issue in Windows 7/8 Updates, audience. That's concerning in itself given WU lack of transparency, another long standing issue hand-waved away, likely to the good given issue of giving crims hacking lessons for free via transparency.]
I wonder why the Register is so negative about Windows 10, I loaded it onto a 4 year old Windows 7 Lenovo Laptop. I hardly ever used it because it was so slow, like treacle more like and it has been transformed into fast really usable machine - fast in starting and very fast in use. No problems, it is solid and reliable. much better than Windows 7(I never bothered with Windows 8). All I can say is very well done Microsoft!
"I wonder why the Register is so negative about Windows 10"
I think they've been WAY too KIND about Windows 10, which looks more like 1.0, not 10. Take a look at a screenshot of the flatness of 1.01, you'll see what I mean:
http://www.guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/win101
yeah, those flat window decorations, the flat dialog controls, the limited color selections - all of those "features" now _BACK_ to haunt us, like zombie features, in Windows 10.
And yet 3D skeumorphic is GENERALLY preferred 3:1 over that 2D "flat look" which is called 'modern' to help exploit the STOCKHOLM SYNDROME (which was pointed out by a BRILLIANT commenter earlier), and basically call everyone NOT willing to jump in the bandwagon "stone age" or something. Yeah.
So *how* is the "start thing", the ADWARE, the SPYWARE, the various twisty little ways to trick you into GIVING! UP! YOUR! PRIVACY!, and worst of all, the 2D "flatness" and "the METRO" going to make THIS windows 10 ABOMINATION an actual *success* that people *want* ??
"I think they've been WAY too KIND about Windows 10, which looks more like 1.0, not 10. Take a look at a screenshot of the flatness of 1.01, you'll see what I mean:"
Well - at least Windows 1.01 had colours! Win 10 seems to want everything white.
Ultra-High resolution icons! But they're only allowed to be 1 bit color, it seems
IOW, like Jim it's sucks donkey dikk... I RDPd into a laptop running on one of three LCDs and the difference was so striking with Aero, I couldn't take it... I can't imagine that ancient thing on my 24" LCD...
The settings panel is even worse than the phone UI...
I think I'll pass... I mean what are the chances that AutoDesk will make a Modern AutoCAD...?
They need to take Windows Core and split off the UIs... I don't want a phone UI on my desktop and it's foolish to have a desktop UI on your phone...
I wonder why the Register is so negative about Windows 10, I loaded it onto a 4 year old Windows 7 Lenovo Laptop. I hardly ever used it because it was so slow, like treacle more like and it has been transformed into fast really usable machine - fast in starting and very fast in use. No problems, it is solid and reliable. much better than Windows 7(I never bothered with Windows 8). All I can say is very well done Microsoft!
Comeback in about ~Two Months, after you have installed Office, Acrobat, and or Photoshop, or a vary healthy internet tmp cache and say that again!
" I wonder why the Register is so negative about Windows 10, I loaded it onto a 4 year old Windows 7 Lenovo Laptop. I hardly ever used it because it was so slow, like treacle more like and it has been transformed into fast really usable machine - fast in starting and very fast in use. No problems, it is solid and reliable. much better than Windows 7(I never bothered with Windows 8). All I can say is very well done Microsoft!
Comeback in about ~Two Months, after you have installed Office, Acrobat, and or Photoshop, or a vary healthy internet tmp cache and say that again!"
Errm... I installed WIn 10 on top of a Win 8.1 install. That install already had Office 2013 and Adobe Creative Suite (NOT Cloud) installed. The same machine had a Win 7 install on another partition of that same hardware. I can say with absolute certainty that Win 8.1 was faster, on the same hardware, than Win 7, and that Win 10 is faster, on the same hardware, than Win 8.1, which makes it _much_ faster than Win 7. And it's not just faster at boot time, it's faster generally. It opens applications faster. It opens files faster. It's just faster. It's better behaved, it's easier to handle, it's just better. And, yes, I turned off the spyware while installing, and, yes, I have installed my own firewall so that I _know_ if stuff was still being exported, and, no, the firewall hasn't detected any naughty stuff.
System: Asus A53S laptop, 8 GB RAM, 1 TB drive (shipped with 4 GB and 750 GB, respectively)
Two partitions on the drive, one Win 7 Ultimate, one Win 10 Pro. The Win 10 partition used to be Win 8.1 Pro.
Kaspersky Internet Security 2015 for A/V and firewall
Office 2013 and Creative Suite 6 on the Win 10 partition.
Office 2013 and 2010 (yes, I know, Microsoft doesn't want you to have both. Screw them.) and Creative Suite 5.5 on the Win 7 partition. (Note: I haven't actually paid full price for either Office or anything Adobe since Office 98 for Mac. Since then I've had either free installs due to being a 'student' or reduced price installs, typically $10 for Microsoft stuff and $200-500 instead of umpty-ump thousand for Adobe stuff due to being 'faculty' at certain Institutions of Higher (it is to laugh) Education. Getting cheap software is one of the few perks to being an adjunct instructor.) I used to have the Office 2015 beta on both partitions, it's gone 'cause experience on Mac and iOS platforms indicates that Microsoft is going to start bleating about wanting Office 365 installs, which ain't gonna happen. (Yes, buyz'n'grrlz, I have actual Windows and Office install DVDs actually from Microsoft, going back to Office 2000 and Win XP, which were either free or cost $10. I have ISOs downloaded from Microsoft sources which were free, and which cost me only download time and the cost of blank media. I didn't even use my own bandwidth to download 'em, why bother when the school had a 100 Mb/s (now a 1000 Mb/s) Internet connection.)
I also have LibreOffice and Open Office installed, but rarely use them, they're just too clunky compared to MS Office. (Memo to Microsoft: if you continue to yammer about Office 365, my attitude towards LibreOffice/Open Office can change.)
I have Hyper-V installed and park Win XP and Ubuntu on it. I don't usually use either one very much, it's just that certain software that the office uses requires XP and every now and again I test out Ubuntu to see if I could actually spend a day using it. So far, the answer is no. XP in Hyper-V under Win 10 behaves more-or-less like XP in Hyper-V under Win 8.1. Ubuntu might be a little faster. If so, it's not by much.
The whole reason I still have a Win 7 partition was that I made sure to have it when I installed Win 8... and Win 8 was so annoying that I went back to Win 7 almost immediately. When Win 8.1 came around, I updated my Win 8 partition, and found myself spending more and more and more time there instead of Win 7 because once I got rid of the damn tiles Win 8.1 behaved better than Win 7. Win 10 behaves better than Win 8.1. It's that simple.
I don't think it's an unfair comment. A rubber dick with a wig on it is a more acceptable productivity platform than Windows 8. If the bar for "success" is "we hate this less than Windows 8" then your measurement of success is pretty skewed.
The real question is "do we prefer it to Windows 7"? So far, every non-nerd I've talked to says no. The nerds seem 50/50 split. Those who believe novel has intrinsic value love Windows 10. Those who believe new things need to prove they are worth more than old things tend to stick with Windows 7.
From this I conclude that Windows 10 is - for the most part - "good enough" to people who don't care about privacy or control of their OS. It is not, however compelling enough to pull users away from Windows 7 in any great numbers.
Perhaps this is why trickery and skullduggery is being employed to nudge - or force - users off of Windows 7?
Either way, I am not making a pretty penny doing rollbacks from Windows 10 to Windows 7 and configuring the systems to block the Windows 10 download. Let's hope that revenue stream doesn't dry up for a while, as it pays well for easy work.
Do you have a link with instructions on how to do this? I'd really like to do it on my parents Windows 7 PCs, otherwise they'll click on the wrong thing someday and find themselves running Windows 10.
I did some googling a week ago and no one seemed to have a way to do this, since removing the KB update just caused it to re-download that update.
Oh, Trevor. Upvoted if only for the immortal phrase that is
A rubber dick with a wig on it is a more acceptable productivity platform than Windows 8
That is a mental image that will stay with me for a while. Thanks.
Not to mention raising scary questions about what constitutes "productivity" in the Reg offices.
Also known as damning by faint praise!
I think the initial target group is those who got tricked into Windows 8. Windows 7 users will want to wait for the first service pack equivalent. My corporate clients currently have no plans to upgrade but they are a cautious bunch anyway: IE 11 is still under evaluation to replace IE 8. Seeing as IE 8 may still be required for some intranet stuff which IE 11 can't handle, Windows 10 isn't an option anyway. Pity Edge hasn't been backported to Windows 7. I wonder if you can get it for a large envelope of cash? Otherwise only Mozilla seems to have understood the need of bug fixes only with Firefox ESR.
Nevertheless, I do wish Microsoft well with this release because it really is them putting their money where their mouth is in the post-Ballmer era. Let's hope they sort out the teething problems so that moaning about Windows 10 doesn't dominate conversation for the rest of the year.
Been running it on 3 desktops and 2 laptops, haven't seen anything to be alarmed about. No failed updates and systems seem to be pretty robust. On the downside I have one machine which resolutely refuses to upgrade, claims that the cpu is not supported, bollocks, and no trick or fudge seems to shift it. No big deal as my wife is probably happier on 7.
"No security-conscious business will allow this, so why does Microsoft not want to get feedback from these customers?"
Unless there is a way via Group Policy to override dumb users just clicking on the "OK" button, MS will get plenty of feedback from business customers. Any business dumb enough to upgrade their staff to Win10 in the first month or two is going to have all its employees all steamed up and *more* than willing to spend their lunch-break venting their spleen at the new OS.
Whether MS *want* this feedback is another matter. Win10, like Win8, appears to have been driven by feedback that was overwhelmingly from teenagers who don't have to get a job done with "legacy" apps.
To DanceMan, Go for it. I updated my 80 year old Dad to Mint 17.1 on a brand spanking new wide-screen HP laptop three months ago and have had one "support" call in all that time. (regarding a message about Flash and Firefox - resolved).
His old Doze laptop will be wiped next week as he has not used it in three months. Me, well I've been on Mint since 15 and use the Cinnamon desktop. Simple, clean and efficient. And... undemanding just like an OS should be.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
