NoelC

Actually, it'll probably work just fine on January 15, 2020 too. -Noel

There are still reasonable people out there (Joel Cairo has my respect). Note that reasonable doesn't mean wishywashy. Reasonable people can have quite extreme opinions. Extreme is sometimes warranted. Psychological warfare indeed! -Noel

Sure, you're right, I'm sorry. The prevalent hype that Windows 10 is faster overall bothers me particularly. I tend to overreact. To be fair it IS a bit faster at several very specific operations that influence user opinions, such as hybrid bootup and 3D rendering for gaming. -Noel

Hats off to you for making a really nice dark theme that looks to be very workable. I imagine there are still some bright white windows that depart from the theme settings, but it's the first non-glass theme I've seen that tempts me to try it. That would look great with an astronomical background. Well done. -Noel

EXCELLENT example of my point. No one in their right mind would call that "tech that works". No decent engineer would design a system that would do that. Yet here it is. -Noel

No! That's exactly my point! No one here seems to give a **** whether the tech actually works any more. Maybe that's different here than where you are. You European lot seem less likely to be baffled by BS. -Noel

I suggest that your performance information is subjective, and possibly based on a system that's been clogged up with lots of programs over time being compared with a fresh new installation. I actually DO have a dual boot Win 7 and Win 10 system, with BOTH systems freshly set up. That system boots up Win 7 just as fast as Win 10 - at just about the time the swirly things come together into the Windows logo it starts the desktop. I have benchmarks and real world usage data that shows that most operations are actually slower on Windows 10 than they are on Windows 7. Disk access of all kinds is a good bit slower on Win 10. I'm sorry, but I'll wager I've done a LOT more scientific and controlled tests than you have. All I said was that the new system should be at least as good as those that came before. That's not too much to ask. -Noel

In fact, I'd strongly suggest doing a fresh install of the next Slow Ring release that comes out. By doing the upgrades I've accumulated problems that I've seen go away with fresh installs. -Noel

As someone who has also developed a lot of skills in knowing what they're looking at, I see no evidence that Microsoft has become capable of delivering Windows Updates of a quality level worthy of "primary utility" status. In fact, given their willingness to use Windows Update as a tool for shill delivery, lacking documentation, and the greater incidence of recent reports of broken systems, I'd have to judge that they're heading in just the opposite direction. Note that the Business Ring is published to delay updates for some time (months?) so that the [worthless] public will have the opportunity to find and report the alpha and beta level bugs, thereby preventing [slightly less worthless] business customers from having to deal with them directly. If that's not an admission that they're planning to deliver botched updates I don't know what is. But our opinions differ on whether the general public of consumers will suddenly wake up from their media-induced stupor and begin to demand better quality when it stops working. For those who can actually sense it's not working, I suspect they'll just drop their poorly-functioning or non-functional devices and go buy other ones. I don't know of anyone who has anything bad to say about their cell phones, yet I don't believe I've ever had or overheard a cell phone conversation in which "I didn't catch that" or "you're breaking up" or "what? huh?" didn't happen. It's not fashionable to complain about things not working. You're labeled a hater if you do that. -Noel

As are we all (willing to wait). But what if Microsoft makes it impossible for him to do so, or releases so many updates that break it that he just gives up? Please start a separate thread on why you think Win 10 is head and shoulders above the rest. You apparently don't understand that I'm here because I'm genuinely interested in using Windows 10 and whether it can be acceptable to be the next OS for me to use at my business (I'm presently fully on Win 8.1 x64). To date, very few people have been able to come up with any solid reasons why Win 10 is actually better than any prior versions. Such discussion needs to be had. And make no mistake - expect some criticism and lively debate. If it's just a "feeling" you have, that's okay too, but realize there are people who have looked into it very seriously. -Noel

Yet it is precisely a forum for discussing an essential replacement feature (elegant Aero Glass window border re-implementation). Remember when the software Microsoft delivered right out of the box did what we now have to hack into place with 3rd party software? Remember when you were having trouble making the orange color you chose show up in your window borders? -Noel

Thing is, no one will blame Mother Microsoft, because they have a huge budget for spin and hype. Glitz sells. Features are secondary. "To work" may be an option. Or not. Consider all this Spartan BS. What, exactly, does a "new browser" buy anyone? They've turned a reduced-feature browser that (as far as I can tell) works much WORSE than Internet Explorer, into a "feature" that they have people salivating about. There's really no way to educate consumers in this age of glitz and fashion. We can talk all we want about it here, and we can see exactly what's happening, but unlike in fairy tales no one wants to hear the little boy exclaiming the Emperor has no clothes. -Noel

Did someone secretly publish a memo that says it's okay to remove N features and replace them with N / 2 features re-implemented with big fonts and flat colors? I must have missed that. Perhaps that's the kind of thing that a company that has everyone by the short hairs feels justified in doing. We're supposed to be happy that they're providing us anything at all. I sometimes fantasize: What if everyone just refused to accept the Windows 10 upgrade - however free it seems to be - until it works as well as the operating system they currently have. But it's just a fantasy. Even though we live in a connected society, with unprecedented technology at our fingertips (e.g., the capability to test in a virtual machine), most people are too lazy or ignorant to realize Windows 10 is taking steps backwards, and many probably won't even notice the reduction in functionality after the upgrade. Sigh. -Noel

Unfortunately, John will not complain to Microsoft. He will complain to the author of Win 7 The Sequel who has charged him money. -Noel

It's quite possible Windows 7 32 bit would run your 16 bit software. There are other things, having to do with changes to the security landscape, that could cause you problems, though. That being said, it's notable that up through Windows 7 you're allowed to disable UAC for purposes of remaining compatible with software that follows the old "application must modify Windows in order to be useful" philosophy. For what it's worth, for the software I create I made a single (32 bit) installer that chooses the proper versions to install into appropriate locations, depending on the capabilities of the system it's being run on. But that did take time and effort. -Noel

<In My Opinion> They're executing to a grand plan where they take over complete control of your computer to maximize their profits. Those of us on the bleeding edge went through the realizations you're seeing now back in 2009 when Win 7 released, then we watched in horror as things got steadily worse in 2012 with Windows 8. Now, with Windows 10, people are in disbelief that we're seeing no less than the end of the golden age of computing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CtjhWhw2I8 "There is nothing wrong with your computer..." </In My Opinion> -Noel

If Microsoft keeps Windows a moving target, essentially breaking the 3rd party integration tools with regular Windows Updates, do you think most people will consider those tools viable to use in the long term? Microsoft is no doubt thinking, "keeping control to ourselves maximizes our profits" and "now that we have our foot in the door, what can we do with tens of thousands of engineers that the world cannot keep pace with?" Suddenly the concept of a continuous stream of Windows Updates starts to make sense. -Noel

Trouble is, the Windows universe isn't just about starting and running applications. It's about integrating them, and to do that the Windows UI provides a lot of subtle things (the obvious cut/copy/paste, drag/drop, the less obvious shell extensions including right-click context menus, task switching, consistent look and feel, common controls, etc. etc.) What someone would have to do is to replicate ALL those things, and probably even re-implement some of the quirks, in order to have any hope of the various integrating features working as well as they do in Windows itself, however flawed. Applications themselves are designed to work in the integrated environment by providing the hooks into these various features. Unless a Win 7-like shell were to be immensely popular, attracting virtually everyone to use it, developers will de-focus on making integrated desktop applications and focus on doing whatever it seems that a new system provides. If I were starting a new project right now, I'd be hard pressed to justify funding a big desktop application development. It's a dark time now, since the "new system" doesn't really (yet?) provide anything of obvious merit. Very few people can think of good things to do with big fonts and auto-rearranging UIs. And those who ARE embracing it can't really do a very good job (so far) with these things either. So we continue to use what's already out there. Legacy applications. But that's not going to keep. Microsoft clearly is forcing our desktop experiences to degrade to the point where they just fall apart, and nothing can replace the desktop yet. Maybe it'll take another 20 or 30 years before something else gets mature enough to start bringing the state of the art forward again. It didn't really have to be like this. Microsoft could have continued developing the state of the art of the desktop AND push into brave new territory. They're just too simple and impatient in their thinking to do it. -Noel

I take it back. There is a definition of "fixed" that seems to apply... http://www.fixafriendclinic.org/ The changes we see in Win 10 cannot help but reduce the overpopulation of Windows 10. -Noel

Yes, build 10122. -Noel

I'm having trouble seeing a problem here with Windows 8.1... Win 8.1: And, LOL Andre, I'm not sure I'd call this "fixed" in any reasonable sense... Win 10: -Noel

It's what happens when you have (clearly inexperienced) people reinvent the wheel. Of course I reported it via Feedback, but should a beta tester have ever seen that in the first place? Thing is, back in the late 70s when I graduated college I had already written programs that did time and date management, and would not have made such a basic mistake. Microsoft must be employing some real no-talent people - and at multiple levels - to allow something like that to get out to the public. Where is their code review? Unit testing? System testing? I have this terrible, sinking feeling that good engineering practices have been thrown out on the premise that Windows is now free, so they don't have to treat the engineering with any kind of seriousness. It begs the question: What else in the OS has been done this badly? -Noel

That one pixel colored border is visually lost if you have anything other than a light colored background. The need for a good theme (or Big Muscle's software) is illustrated by the following A / B comparison. Which of these looks like a usable OS and which looks like a noisy collection of thin lines making you concentrate to figure out where the windows are? I can't figure out why Microsoft would be exposing such sloppy, shoddy work to the world. It's no longer the 1970s. Hell, I don't even commit software back to my code management system until I have it working better than that. Their people must be REALLY young / inexperienced / untrained / stupid to be making the kinds of basic mistakes they've been showing off. Earlier today I booted up Win 10 and had Windows Update tell me that the system was up to date and the last check was "Today, 9:18 PM". Trouble is, it was 9:13 AM at the time. -Noel

Thanks for that. Classic Shell will find that by searching for "change the color" in the search box... Though the bad news is it only changes the color in the Taskbar for me. It looks like for you as well - your window has a white title bar like those I'm seeing. -Noel

Thanks for your response, swampy. The registry settings I published above remove the items only from the tree in the Navigation pane. How did you do what you showed, where they're removed from the files pane? I'm just curious, because I prefer removing them only from the tree. I've updated the second set listed above so that it combines both the old and the new approaches, which gets them all out of the Navigation pane, including Desktop. That one file should thus work on both Win 8.1 and 10 systems. Now what's remaining is to find a way to hide Quick Access that has no negative side effects. I managed to actually hide it through changing the Attributes value in [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{679f85cb-0220-4080-b29b-5540cc05aab6}\ShellFolder] but that had the unfortunate side effect of breaking dragging and dropping into the Navigation pane. -Noel