Windows - Why is it so bad?

jamoor said:
I am opening a can of worms here but..

I was windows user, and I pretty much stopped after XP.

I bought a macbook pro and used osx in 2010ish and have done ever since.

I tried a computer with vista installed - a complete horror show.
I use win 7 at work, it's "ok" but I had to install a piece of software (3cx client if anyone's interested) and to run that I needed some sort of .net framework that wouldn't install and just give an error with an error code. I googled it and couldn't really find much of an answer. I ended up just reinstalling windows and that fixed it.

A year ago I bought a refurbished X201 with win 7 preinstalled on an SSD. It worked fine and then began getting nagged to death suggesting I upgrade to win 10. I made an image of my HDD just in case and proceeded.

This operating system is a nightmare, it's slow on my laptop and randomly installs updates without my consent that take ages every time. I tried to do a very simple task such as download a PPT from my exchange email account and open it at a time critical moment (think showing it to someone important) and that turned into a big conflict.

To get away from Windows on my X201 I just installed ubuntu, it appears to work perfectly and is lightweight and seemingly bloatfree(ish).

Am I the only one that is plagued by these problems, I happily ran XP for years without trouble.

How can a company that does nothing but make software somehow manage to make such a bad job of it is beyond me.
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Can you play games?
 
It isn't bad, its certainly a lot more useful and usable than OSX for most tasks! And I say that as someone who does rather like OSX. OSX is impractical and incompatible, but pretty and reliable. Thats about it.

All the issues you have described don't really seem like issues to me... Slowness is rarely the fault of the OS and if it is, its because something has gone wrong, not because thats just how it is. I've never had that problem.

The re-start for updates thing can be disabled, as I have done.
 
Most of us will agree, that regardless of whatever improvements under the skin, or speed or things added on kernel level - purely as an end user experience - Windows 10, three (ok, two and a half) generations away from Windows 7 is waaaaay behind what Windows 7 brought to the table.

It was a step back when the whole flat Fisher Price design was revealed with Windows 8 and still remains step back today. Not just on visual level, but as a whole.

Some users are still asking me why Windows 10 removes programs they install every week and I can't quite figure it out why myself; nor do I really want to find a way of hacking my way to a setting that will prevent Microsoft from removing RAID configuration software from office machines or legacy Solitaire and Hearts from my mums computer - no OS should do it, especially not after user reinstalled it - do it once it's a bug, do it twice it's weird, do it three times, it's a flipping terrorism, on any other OS if something you specifically reinstalled on Monday vanished by next Monday you would start chasing chinese hackers and sweep for rootkits in the shell.

System wide "search" of Win 10 instead of coherent Programs menu of Win 7 was supposed to be improvement, but effectively isn't, simply because it's badly written (it's Bingish). Tile interface is terribly presented. As creatures of habit, in Win 7 people would click their start button and always find their daily stuff in the same place in the menu, now it's a random game of tiles with unrelated spam and cack added over night. Bingification of windows version of "Spotlight" makes it borderline unusable - user will type "epson" looking for printer and get a list of random internet stuff and system things of little to no relevance and at least two different ways to access exactly the same control panel menu, but each entry will be presented differently as if there was some sort of legacy classic control panel which was just obfuscated with weird, flat web interface.

It's still amazing that you can open system menus and discover different development teams couldn't agree on anything - random font sizes, random placements, everything looks like a free template web page from £5 a year package - bland, flat, meh.

It's a shame - they had a good OS in Win 7, and to throw it away for 'this ****' - just weird.
 
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Macro said:
Systems such as EPOS at check outs are hardly a typical representation of the general OS use and generally use embedded systems with customised hardware and requirements.
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Its just one example - but a lot of my experience corporate environment wise is in retail systems where there have been quite a few issues even in back office, etc. use.

The hard reality is though that many companies IT systems are stuck in the past and Windows 10 really doesn't cater for moving from that well. I still see even Windows ME systems, etc. in daily use on a regular basis.
 
Disco_P said:
So you've had 3 issues with windows in 6 years, and one of them was just the windows 10 update nag? Sounds like a dream!

My windows installs develop irreparable bugs after about a year and need reinstalling (start menu broke and windows update failed over and over again)

I really like windows 10 except for the update policy. No control over when they are downloading can be a PITA on slow internet as I can no longer watch online videos or play online for several hours and if the install hogs all the CPU power then games will become a choppy mess for a while. When I had the failing update, it would attempt to install every time I turned the computer on and off which would subsequently add another 5-10 minutes to both.
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Well it's quite impressive that I've had 3 issues with windows in 6 years. If I add up all the hours I've used windows in 6 years it will probably be less than 50.


hornetstinger said:
Can you play games?
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I've no idea as I don't play games.
 
Rroff said:
Its just one example - but a lot of my experience corporate environment wise is in retail systems where there have been quite a few issues even in back office, etc. use.

The hard reality is though that many companies IT systems are stuck in the past and Windows 10 really doesn't cater for moving from that well. I still see even Windows ME systems, etc. in daily use on a regular basis.
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i rolled it into back offices in my last job and worked like a charm.

office wise the only issues we had were with departments needing legacy apps (typically accounts who were still on XP anyway) or older hardware that had no driver support.

home wise 10 has been fine, only issue is an older 2nd gen i7 laptop which intel have retired the driver for the sata controller and MS stock one is a shower of poop for performance. so rolled back to 7 where it'll stay.

driver/hardware issues aside, i really do not know what people do to their windows installs that require regular rebuilds..

going back to the point at hand, OSX is far from perfect in its newer builds. its actually quite shocking when it comes to app compatibility, slightly older adobe apps for example have a multitude of issues.
 
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I have pretty much upgraded with every version of Windows from XP onwards.

Its impossible for me to say if its better than OSX or anything that Linux brings to the table because I have used Microsoft pretty exclusively. I had a play around with Ubuntu on a laptop I installed it on a few years ago when I was utilising a packet sniffing program for Everquest. Its was ok, but I didn't test it extensively.

In my experience Windows 7 was the biggest leap in respect of form and functionality than the previous generation, but that's not to say that I didn't enjoy Windows 8 and Windows 10.

Windows 10 under the bonnet is a better operating system than 7, but only if I avoid all of the metro tiles rubbish. With a fresh 10 install my first program is usually Start10, so I can get Windows back to that Windows 7 'feel'.
 
jamoor said:
I've also never heard of someone switching from OSX to Windows, I may be wrong however.
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Well I did so now you have :). In fact I went from Windows to Mac OS X to Arch Linux and back to Windows again.

I still run Linux in virtual machines but I don't use it as my desktop operating system anymore. I'll probably wait until I buy my new computer and run Windows 10 on that and then on my old computer I'll install Arch Linux so I get the best of both worlds.
 
Same, best OS I've ever used.

I've given OSX a fair crack a few times but it just drives me mad. It just seems actively user-hostile most of the time. Also hate having to look after the other half's Apple gear, she's ditching Apple first opportunity after getting fed up with the money-grabbing.
 
I use Windows 10 on my home PC, home tablet and work PC(s) and I <3 it.

Best OS Microsoft have ever come up with and never once had problems with it!

MacOS is just too complicated.
 
My biggest issue with Windows 10 is the updating. I'm sorry but forced restarts from updates are awful for UX. MS should be engineering Windows so it doesn't need a full-on reboot to install updates.
 
Everyone keeps saying that but my PC never does it because I disabled it. Maybe I have a different build or something?

If you are tech savvy there is surely a way to disable it in the registry. I know thats not the point as 99% of people wouldn't even know where to start but...
 
Burnsy2023 said:
My biggest issue with Windows 10 is the updating. I'm sorry but forced restarts from updates are awful for UX. MS should be engineering Windows so it doesn't need a full-on reboot to install updates.
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That is the one thing I have issues with when it comes to Windows 10 as well. Everything else works perfectly for me and I'm really happy with it. It is just a shame that I didn't buy the Pro version. I wish I had Bitlocker on my copy.

Oh well. Lesson learned. Next time make sure you buy the Pro copy :).
 
Acme said:
Everyone keeps saying that but my PC never does it because I disabled it. Maybe I have a different build or something?

If you are tech savvy there is surely a way to disable it in the registry. I know thats not the point as 99% of people wouldn't even know where to start but...
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They've increasingly made it difficult to disable it properly - there is no one registry tweak and many of the other methods have undesirable side effects, etc. for instance on my tablet it won't recognise my mobile connection as one that can be set to metering (despite that being possible on windows 8) and even using some registry tweaks to force it to a metered connection some updates still get pushed through ignoring that setting.

It is certainly my biggest problem with Windows 10 - for casual users it is probably just a minor irritant but with my kind of use (which is nothing particularly exceptional for a power user) and with multiple systems that is multiplied considerably.

End of the day it isn't just about disabling it though - but better ability to take control of it - I still want timely delivery of critical security updates, etc. but I don't want to turn my PC on and find it launching into a major feature update, or preparing for the next update using tons of CPU and HDD activity slowing the system to a crawl when I'm in a hurry (which has happened more than once). The options like quiet hours are laughable - I work different shifts, sometimes work entirely different hours of the day and often live completely different hours on my days off, etc. and so on whoever at MS is leading on this aspect of the OS seriously should be replaced.
 
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Acme said:
Everyone keeps saying that but my PC never does it because I disabled it. Maybe I have a different build or something?

If you are tech savvy there is surely a way to disable it in the registry. I know thats not the point as 99% of people wouldn't even know where to start but...
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I too have disabled forced restarts but I shouldn't need to do that. I don't restart very often and so updates aren't applied as often as would be preferable.
 
Burnsy2023 said:
I too have disabled forced restarts but I shouldn't need to do that. I don't restart very often and so updates aren't applied as often as would be preferable.
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Exactly, you turn it on and it just starts nagging and updating.
Seriously, what gives? People turn their computers on to use them, not go through a 20 minute update process.

I always sit and wonder if the people that make Windows ever use it, as I sure wouldn't.
 
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