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Windows - Why is it so bad?
- Thread starter jamoor
- Start date
Soldato
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- 30 Sep 2005
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well for starters a lot of very talented people from the windows team were made redundant. Some of the staff who kept their jobs left soon after.
Windows is held back due to it needing legacy compatibility, file system limitations, microsoft now being run from business rather than technical and their obsession with abandoning platforms rather than maintaining and improving them. NTFS for example. If someone comes up with an idea on how to increase kernel performance by 5%, it's put at the bottom of the pile in favour of anything to generate ad revenue.
don't take my word for it tho, search youtube and various IT forums to hear from people who know about this stuff.
Not entirely sure what the windows insider program actually does. There are blatant bugs found in public releases which should have been ironed out within said program.
Perhaps it's too big of a beast to control now.
Windows is held back due to it needing legacy compatibility, file system limitations, microsoft now being run from business rather than technical and their obsession with abandoning platforms rather than maintaining and improving them. NTFS for example. If someone comes up with an idea on how to increase kernel performance by 5%, it's put at the bottom of the pile in favour of anything to generate ad revenue.
don't take my word for it tho, search youtube and various IT forums to hear from people who know about this stuff.
Not entirely sure what the windows insider program actually does. There are blatant bugs found in public releases which should have been ironed out within said program.
Perhaps it's too big of a beast to control now.
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^^ My brother found a fairly big issue both security wise and potential to cause system instability with the language toolbar/keyboard stuff - it took over 9 months after being reported via the Insider program before it was addressed. Meanwhile a lot of time was spent on ***** features that pretty much no one will ever use.
Legacy compatibility is certainly a massive thorn in the side for Windows/MS but that doesn't excuse the shockingly poor execution of some actually great ideas.
Very obviously a lot of experienced people have left due to how often stuff is done i.e. that goes against 20-30 years of good UI practises - I'm not against trying things that fly in the face of conventional wisdom as sometimes the results can be surprising (and even just a better understanding of why something is bad can help you to better produce things that are good) but that is precisely what the Insider program should be there for that kind of stuff should be skunkworks type projects and not being seen in public releases.
Legacy compatibility is certainly a massive thorn in the side for Windows/MS but that doesn't excuse the shockingly poor execution of some actually great ideas.
Very obviously a lot of experienced people have left due to how often stuff is done i.e. that goes against 20-30 years of good UI practises - I'm not against trying things that fly in the face of conventional wisdom as sometimes the results can be surprising (and even just a better understanding of why something is bad can help you to better produce things that are good) but that is precisely what the Insider program should be there for that kind of stuff should be skunkworks type projects and not being seen in public releases.
Soldato
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- 10 May 2004
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My ratings (subjective of course):
Windows 3.1 - mainly ok, but didn't like that you couldn't have more than 16 colours (DOS supported 256 colours at the time). 5/10.
Windows 95 - liked it a lot, although it crashed a lot too. 7/10
Windows 98 - liked this too, as long as it was Second Edition. Some tweaks over 95, crashed a bit less. 6/10
Windows NT 4 - wasn't keen on this at all, extremely locked down if you weren't admin. Hell, you couldn't even open the clock to see the calendar! 4/10
Windows 2000 (NT 5) - my fave out of all of them. Basic looking, but it took all of the best bits of Win 98, rolled into an NT OS. Good sense of control over the OS (if admin) and no dumbing down. Even worked well for games. 10/10.
Windows Millennium - absolutely useless. Tried it briefly on 2 machines and it was blue-screen disco on both of them! 0/10.
Windows XP (NT 5.1) - 'twas ok, could still be made good as long as you turned off the dumbing down aspects like the doggy search and changed control panel category view back to icon view etc. 8/10.
Windows Vista (NT 6.0) - this one annoyed a lot of users (e.g. UAC) but I wasn't that bothered. Still have Vista on one of my laptops. 6/10.
Windows 7 (NT 6.1) - a good 2nd place for me behind Win 2000. Took a lot of the good bits from 2000, but chunkier looking. I preferred the more basic look of 2000. 9/10.
Windows 8 (NT 6.2) - Metro had a lot of hate, but I quite liked it as both a touchscreen user and a non-touchscreen user (have used both). Then 99% of the time, it looked like Win 7 anyway. 9/10.
Windows 10 (NT ??) - following the bad press about Big Brother, I didn't bother with the 'free' upgrade. I just stuck with Vista, 7 and 8.1 on my 3 laptops.
Windows 3.1 - mainly ok, but didn't like that you couldn't have more than 16 colours (DOS supported 256 colours at the time). 5/10.
Windows 95 - liked it a lot, although it crashed a lot too. 7/10
Windows 98 - liked this too, as long as it was Second Edition. Some tweaks over 95, crashed a bit less. 6/10
Windows NT 4 - wasn't keen on this at all, extremely locked down if you weren't admin. Hell, you couldn't even open the clock to see the calendar! 4/10
Windows 2000 (NT 5) - my fave out of all of them. Basic looking, but it took all of the best bits of Win 98, rolled into an NT OS. Good sense of control over the OS (if admin) and no dumbing down. Even worked well for games. 10/10.
Windows Millennium - absolutely useless. Tried it briefly on 2 machines and it was blue-screen disco on both of them! 0/10.
Windows XP (NT 5.1) - 'twas ok, could still be made good as long as you turned off the dumbing down aspects like the doggy search and changed control panel category view back to icon view etc. 8/10.
Windows Vista (NT 6.0) - this one annoyed a lot of users (e.g. UAC) but I wasn't that bothered. Still have Vista on one of my laptops. 6/10.
Windows 7 (NT 6.1) - a good 2nd place for me behind Win 2000. Took a lot of the good bits from 2000, but chunkier looking. I preferred the more basic look of 2000. 9/10.
Windows 8 (NT 6.2) - Metro had a lot of hate, but I quite liked it as both a touchscreen user and a non-touchscreen user (have used both). Then 99% of the time, it looked like Win 7 anyway. 9/10.
Windows 10 (NT ??) - following the bad press about Big Brother, I didn't bother with the 'free' upgrade. I just stuck with Vista, 7 and 8.1 on my 3 laptops.
Windows 3.1 supported true colour (16.7million with 24bit depth) if you had the hardware for it. One of the good things about Windows back then was the level of customisation/ui management options you had - something I sorely miss when I have to use Windows 10.
ME was hilarious - I remember well the horror on people's face at work when it inevitably BSOD'd - which it did atleast once most days - knowing if they were lucky it would be booted back to a functional desktop in 15-20 minutes or so.
In the advanced options (you might need to do a bit of low level tweaking as well) you can make Windows 7 look pretty much like Windows 2000 BTW.
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Associate
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i think Win XP and Win7 are pretty good. 
Vista: terrible, i can't use it a single day.
Win 10: i don't have much to say about this, some of my favorite games aren't supported but ok, i will be waiting.
Vista: terrible, i can't use it a single day.
Win 10: i don't have much to say about this, some of my favorite games aren't supported but ok, i will be waiting.