JorgeA

You want too much....The sad thing is that what I want, we already had prior to Windows 8. --JorgeA That was meant as sarcasm Oops, sorry! I agree with the sentiment BTW. As @NoelC pointed out about Aero Glass, it probably is too much to ask for all these features to be brought back. --JorgeA

Thanks, in case you haven't noticed already, I am wastingtimewithforums. I suspected as much. Wow, amazing. This really illustrates how too many of them think (if we can call it thinking). Metro fans often accuse the other side of "hating" Metro just because it's new or different or unfamiliar. And you will always some people like that. Then Metro fans lump folks like us, who offer substantive critiques, into that group. It's a (poor) substitute for actually thinking and considering the other side's arguments. But it's also the case that there will always be an element that does go all-in for something, simply because it's different from what came just before it. Mind you, I didn't even say that they support it because it's innovative, but merely because it's something other than what we currently have. (And then of course you have the novelty addicts, who like something precisely because it's new, whether or not it's actually better.) Finally, there is (I suppose ) a substantive case to be made in favor of Metro. But in more than three years of following the discussion, IMO the arguments for are vastly outweighed by the arguments against. --JorgeA

Have you noticed how they're calling these various "new build" tracks by names such as "awesome" and "impressive"? Gotta wonder if they really believe they're coming up with awesome and impressive achievements, or if it's a case of trying to convince themselves by the power of labeling. --JorgeA

The way the new OS is shaping up, I'd rather use Win8 than Win10. I can't believe I'm writing this, but in a couple of years I might actually buy a Windows 8.1 system (or license) to extend the time that I can keep working without either submitting to Win10 or taking the big plunge into Linux. --JorgeA

You want too much.... The sad thing is that what I want, we already had prior to Windows 8. --JorgeA

Don't worry, resizable Start menu will be available in Windows 10 RTM Good, but are they going to let me delete the Metro Tiles from the right panel and replace them with links? Will the whole thing still be a single hideous color? Will I be able to hit Escape to close the Start Menu? Will hovering the mouse pointer over All Programs Apps once again expose the list of installed programs without clicking? Inquiring minds want to know... --JorgeA

Life in the cloud takes more anti-aircraft fire: It's not just you - Microsoft acknowledges Outlook.com email issues As an added bonus, this problem affected (among others) users trying to access their mail via Windows 8 Mail Client and Windows Phone 8.1. --JorgeA

Go ahead. All right, here goes that no-holds-barred assessment: [emphasis in original] One for the ages. --JorgeA

Another flare-up in the war, I see. BTW the first post on that page is a fabulous rundown of the many problems with Windows 10 -- among the very best I've seen! Do you think that @wastingtimewithforums would mind us quoting it here? Meantime, here's this one-liner (all right, two-liner) by @NoelC regarding that mystery Windows Update from last week that prepares Windows 7 machines to receive Win10: --JorgeA P.S. The analogy in that thread about "being offered a glass of water" would work better if it said you were offered a glass of water and were given a jar of p*ss instead...

You should be OK with Win7 for several years. Maybe by then either MSFT will have come to its senses or someone else will have created a viable compatible alternative. --JorgeA

No conclusions, no, except that the system is loaded up with fluff that needs to be trimmed out with some prejudice before it can begin to be considered a useful animal. There's an unprecedented amount of it so far. Brokers? Hosts? Wrappers? Only a very few of which seem to exit on their own when the system is idle. Of course I hope that Microsoft will optimize it before release, but they have a long tradition of leaving things *barely* completed. After all, it's not THEIR computers being slowed down by all the garbage. Manufacturers may even love them for it, since it means users have to buy more hardware - though frankly I thought maybe they'd get a little more careful once they started building their own hardware. Still, what harm is it to have users pining for 16 or 32 GB of RAM. Just sells bigger Surface models. -Noel On the face of it, that would run counter to the supposed purpose of "One Windows" that would fit on 32GB SD cards. (Not that the geniuses at MSFT have thought it through, necessarily.) Unless they fix it, these cards will quickly fill up with debris, rendering the phone or tablet unusable. --JorgeA P.S. The available space on my Win10 drive is down half a GB from yesterday.

It is now literally the case that Microsoft is pushing PUPs (Potentially Unwanted Programs). I can imagine the uproar that's bound to come when all these people who set their PCs to automatically download updates, suddenly get this alien-looking stuff on their screens. Could become a PR disaster for Microsoft. --JorgeA

Recent 'recommended' patch for Windows 7 and 8.1 lets you know when Windows 10 becomes available Ah, so this is the mysterious patch that popped up in Windows Update last week. I suspected it had to do with Win10. Of course I hid the Update as soon as I read the KB article. Not gonna install anything with such a vague description. Another reason it's outrageous that Win10 updates don't come with working links to KB articles. Evidently they would like users to just accept whatever comes down the pike. Nice remark down in the comments section: --JorgeA

Thanks for the update. Have you been able to draw any further conclusions in the time since? --JorgeA

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/network_traffic_view.html Of course cannot say if it would work on your 10 "beta" install. jaclaz Thanks jaclaz, I'll take a look at that utility. I've been learning a lot by using the Network tab in the Win10 Resource Monitor. It tells you what connections are being made to where at a given moment, with the local and remote addresses involved and the number of bytes sent and received. One thing that's clear is that the number of bytes being downloaded (according to the Network Monitor gadget) is much larger than the ones that Resource Monitor shows. Assuming that the Gadget's numbers are accurate (and my HDD has lost 100MB of free space over the last day or so), then there are "hidden" connections taking place that Resource Monitor doesn't see. I'll install NetworkTrafficView and see how its info compares to Resource Monitor. --JorgeA

Thanks for the ideas, Noel. Here are some answers that I hope will help: Yes, I had disabled Supernode. Conceivable, but it seems an awful lot of downloading just to see if there are any updates. More so than the size of the updates themselves, even. Huh, I hadn't thought of that one. But if so, then why is the incoming activity so much bigger than the outgoing (P2P) activity? You'd think they would balance each other out? Responding to these three together: I installed Classic Shell's Start Menu, but I was down to four tiles in the right panel of the pseudo-Start Menu (Windows Feedback, Insider Hub, and two others that I can't remember now). But no "live" tiles were involved. Certainly I had disabled (or at least hidden) Cortana and that stupid "feature" where Search would give you headlines from Bing. Pretty much the only times I ever opened a Metro app (other than Feedback or Insider) was by mistake. Maybe the sheer act of clicking one of these will set off this continuous downloading of who-knows-what? Or maybe some of the other apps (like Weather) just automatically download data independently of the user's actions. However, if so, then that's bound to wreak havoc on people's computers down the road as their drives slowly fill up with stuff (as is happening to me). Hope this helps to narrow down the possibilities. Is there a way (native or third-party) to monitor where the bits getting downloaded are coming from? --JorgeA

Yeah, that's basically the idea -- too many things need to be fixed Might be an intriguing opportunity for the Classic Shell folks if they ever want to put together and sell a "Fix Broken Windows" package. Instant market of potentially hundreds of millions of users. Not everything can get fixed, but possibly enough to make Win10 tolerable. --JorgeA

Windows Update. They've dumbed it down to the point where (unless the user is comfortable with the Group Policy Editor) not only do you not get a choice as to whether the updates will be installed, you don't even get to see what they're about unless you agree to download them. And you no longer get a working link to a KB article. Not sure that this can be fixed by third parties, though. Opaque window borders (lack of Aero Glass). Crude, flat desktop icons (e.g., the Recycle Bin) and window controls (minimize/restore/close). Stop steering the user into signing into his own PC with a Microsoft Account. Again, though, I doubt that this could be fixed by third parties. I'd be interested in a quick and automated way to sweep away all Metro crapps and not have them taking up mental space or cluttering up my Start Menu. Bring back Windows Explorer navigation arrows that are visible, as opposed to the thin, barely discernible arrows they've put in the Win10 File Explorer. What usability advantage could the new hard-to-see arrows possibly have??? A simple program to disable the Skype SuperNode for users who don't want their PCs used by strangers around the world. An easy tweak to bring back an Internet Explorer scrollbar that stays visible at all times and also stands out visually from the web contents next to it. Having to rediscover the d*mn scrollbar every time I want to move around the page in small increments has turned surfing the Web into a tedious chore. Fixing these issues would be a good start. --JorgeA

Do you mean that, as a result of this, a future Win10 RTM user who uninstalled all his Metro crapps would see them coming back periodically despite his efforts? These would truly be "zombie" applications... --JorgeA

I'm pretty sure they're not Windows Updates, as I too tweaked the GP settings to ask before downloading them. The mystery continues. I should observe the downloading activity more systematically -- my impression is that it's amounting to ~100MB a day. Oh, wait: I do have that screenshot above to compare to! Whoa -- according to the Network Monitor gadget, I've downloaded an additional 217MB of whatever in the last 16 hours. --JorgeA

My Win10TP system has a network monitor Windows Gadget installed. Can anybody offer an educated guess as to why it's is downloading so much more stuff than it is uploading? I could understand the Technical Preview UPloading more than it's downloading, as it's intended to monitor how well the new OS works. But DOWNloading? What could account for that? Attaching a screenshot. I wasn't deliberately downloading anything at the time, nor are there are (AFAIK) any programs installed that would involve this sort of continuous small-scale downloading activity. --JorgeA

Another casualty of Microsoft's ill-conceived "all-in for mobile" strategy: Windows RT: Ambitious beginning, quick descent --JorgeA

Windows 7 still dominates in Windows market share, Windows 8.1 sees slight increase A year after its demise, Windows XP still has more users than Windows 8 and 8.1 combined As new PCs start coming out with Windows 10 once it's officially released, it'll be interesting to see how Windows 7 holds up. I sense it's going to maintain its majority share of the user base for years to come. --JorgeA

(Slightly OT) This had me going with a retro-chic sort of feeling... Microsoft releases MS-DOS Mobile: The nostalgia is strong in this one ...until I saw the date on the post. --JorgeA

I see that now the Microsoft thread we're talking about (?) has been closed... meaning that you won't be able to respond even when they let you out of the penalty box. Unbelievable. Evidently some (too many) people don't want to be confused by facts. --JorgeA P.S. They also edited my last post into a nonsensical statement, and removed the link to a YouTube video illustrating the point I was making. Oh yeah, an open discussion forum all right. Well, at least four people got the chance to see the video and Like my post.