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Windows 10 - Deeper Impressions


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Couple of sublimely epic comments to the article 10 reasons NOT to upgrade to Windows 10 by some 'blah blah' guy, worth reposting here:

 

 

 

"Let's just state the obvious... PC Master Race is over. MS killed PC gaming with xbox. PC is killing desktop with Win 8+. Win 10 is just a glorified patch to Win 8. MS is seeing that there's still some hold-outs on PC, so they're trying to bring xbox gaming to pc.

 

But, PC is not their target audience anymore. We are red-headed step children now. PC power users are taken-aback by all of this, because computers used to be complex things we could manage and tweak and such. When smartphones went viral, all the companies realized that if you give folks a dumbed-down device you will unlock a huge demographic of customers that just want computers as appliances.

 

They've now been trying to herd us into that slaughter house, too. I'm not saying it's a bad thing ... having a computer take care of itself is nice. But, they're trying to simplify and get everyone and everything on-board with single-source and what-not.

 

And that's p***ing off the PC Master race, because they're realizing they are no longer the favorites.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

The other "read between the lines" stuff is that...

 

1) MS has a track record of stagnating if you let them. IE6 stagnated like crazy until other browsers lit a fire under their a** to evolve. With Win 10, MS is not longer going to do this "make up dumb things to give an excuse to buy new upgraded versions." However, they are no longer going to advance it or make it robust. They had all kinds of promises with Ultimate editions of Windows that never came true. They have a track record of saying great things, then never delivering. Win 10 will stagnate into an old shoe that wears nice, and is constantly patched to be wearable, but will no longer pave the future (or try to keep up with it) unless a competitor really comes out with something spectacular to light a fire under their butt.

 

2) but maybe that's ok ... because what OS you use is no longer relevant. Every OS can do the same stuff ... media, stream, office work, etc ... linux, unix, apple, win, chrome ... they all can do it. So, what OS you're sporting doesn't really matter so much these days. That's why they can get away with saying Win 10 will be the last Win. It's good enough... because people don't care bout the OS, they just care about the services it can run. And they can all run them all these days.

 

3) However, your OS is goign to turn into a walled-garden with app stores and services it can provide. That's MS trying to get you into a single-source login. MS learned from the 80's and 90's that lockin is what keeps customers. Keep a "good enough, cheap enough" solution to get folks in, then lock them in. Generations of kids grew up on Windows PC's, which is why it made it hard for them to try something different. However, as more and more OS look/act/feel the same these days, it's easier to jump ship. So, they have to find more ways to keep you locked in ... services. Get all of your files stored on our cloud. Use our movie / music streaming service, use our office service, use our personal assistant service that you've already spent years training to know exactly what you like, etc, etc.

 

4) Google has shown that monetization from personal information is far more lucrative then monetization from products. So, MS is geared towards all of that now. Their privacy statement is ludicrous, because they want to track everything you do so they can target advertising to you. They're getting paid for this. In fact, they're going to get so much money from this they should just give Win 10 away for free forever. Win 10 is just getting you locked in on MS' own tracking system that monitors what you're doing and lets them sell your personal info to whomever wants it for targetted advertising. This was Ubuntu Linux's profit model... free OS, but monetize everythign around it. MS has finally taken a page and realized if they give away the OS for free they get a ton of folks locked in ... onto their own information tracking service.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

This is a wake up call to a lot of folks. PC Master Race folks are coming to terms with being irrelevant now (from a corporate consumer demographic). If you want to "work" on a PC they expect you to go get a tech job and have your IT guys manage all the updates and things with enterprise-level windows. Otherwise, as a personal consumer... they want you to get on the "dumb consumer" band wagon.

 

The wake up call to the "dumb consumer" is that MS, Apple, etc are no longer OS'. They are information gathering hubs, and they want to keep you. The OS is just a tool. Everything around it is being monetized ... especially you. You are not the customer. You are a piece of cattle out in the pasture with a tag on your ear that they track info off of. The real customers are other large corporations that will pay dearly to get that information to figure out how to target advertising to you, do market research on you, etc.

 

This is actually what's sadly ironic and funny. Cows get chips and tags forcefully implanted onto them to do all this s***. Humans, however, are more then happy to go out and spend HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS ON THEIR OWN PERSONAL TRACKING DEVICES. Just because your tracking device does whiz-bang stuff doesn't mean it's any less of a tracking device.

 

We are all just cattle. We're just too stupid to make the companies GIVE US a tracking device, instead we still shell out money to get them and be part of their great social tracking experiment."

 

 

 

 

 

 

"1) Win 10 is just a glorified patch to 8 with extra layers of monitoring software, single-source login, and increased ways to try to monetize services around you

 

2) Win 10 is basically Microsoft turning your devices into nothing more then glorified ID tags on cows' ears. YOU ARE NO LONGER THE CUSTOMER. You are cattle that is being monitored, and the real customers, the marketing research companies, then pay MS for whatever info they've gathered off you.

 

3) MS has a track record of letting things stagnate. EG: IE6 until Google and Mozilla lit a fire under their a** with better browsers. MS will only add more features to Win 10 if it benefits them, not you. Other then that, it won't change.

 

This is why Win 10 is free. Their OS is no longer their bread and butter. It is merely a "good enough" tracking/monitoring solution.

 

They are not giving away a free gift. They are opening the gates on a walled garden and holding out a carrot on a stick to lure folks in. Then, they charge admission to the box seats of the stadium to let marketing researchers watch what you do... so they can create bells and whistles to try to sell stuff to you better.

 

MS is monetizing you ... they sell you services, they sell your info, etc, etc. The OS you use these days is irrelevant. All of the OS' can do the same thing. Companies have known that for a while, which is why they push for monetizing everything around it. MS can't monetize your pandora or netflix subscriptions. So, they want to sell you similar services that they own and can profit from. That is what this is all about.

 

If you're on 7 and you like it, stick with it. Because upgrading to 10 is just turning your PC into a glorified cow ear tag."

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If you're on 7 and you like it, stick with it. Because upgrading to 10 is just turning your PC into a glorified cow ear tag."

 

Only problem with this logic is that 7 was too, just not quite as good or exclusive one - so all you're doing is choosing between the style of tag.  They've been executing to this plan to turn Windows into what it is for quite some time.  Only real thing that's changed is that they used to think they had to provide value, then hype it.  Some bastard figured out that you can go almost the whole way on hype alone.

 

-Noel

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Couple of sublimely epic comments to the article 10 reasons NOT to upgrade to Windows 10 by some 'blah blah' guy, worth reposting here:

 

Those are great!

 

But I'm a bit dubious about the "PC Master Race" notion. If the writer had said "power users," or "people who like to tinker with their computers," then I'd be fully on board with him. And as a matter of fact, the rush to make the OS or the PC over into a closed-box "appliance" model is bound to hurt the computer industry over time, as it would slow to a trickle the influx of new computing enthusiasts, leaving that many fewer people participating in the tech community and contributing ideas. There would be no future Steve Jobs or Bill Gates working independently on the next big tech thing out of his garage. Forums such as MSFN, MDL, and so forth would eventually dwindle down to near nothing.

 

--JorgeA

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Couple of sublimely epic comments to the article 10 reasons NOT to upgrade to Windows 10 by some 'blah blah' guy, worth reposting here:

 

Those are great!

 

Yes, mostly level-headed thoughts.  Mine follow (maybe not level, who knows):

 

It’s a Work in Progress

 

Um, get used to it.  In the words of someone wayyy back, intended to be a joke, but which has unfortunately turned out to be serious:  "That's not a bug, that's a feature!"  Seriously.  Microsoft is now selling their process of "continuous updates" as an improvement.  As though not having the OS feature set remain a given quantity for any length of time could possibly be a good thing for anyone other than the programmers at Microsoft.

 

Does anyone really believe "continuous updates" will equate to "continuous improvement" (for anyone other than Microsoft)?  Seriously?

 

 

There Are Too Many Unanswered Questions

 

It's nothing new - either you partner with Microsoft and ride their roller coaster with them, or you camp out on an old version.  Support time frame?  Who, besides enterprise, gives a **** about that?  We're talking about the public here.

 

Beyond that...

 

The new normal:  No documentation.  Honestly, I blame Unix and its derivatives in all their forms for paving this path.  Everyone else has gotten away with not documenting anything anywhere near to the level it needs to be (Apple because they're arrogant bastards, and everyone else because they're just lazy, undisciplined lumps), and Microsoft finally noticed.  Now they don't feel as though they need to do the work either to succeed.  It means everything is going to go to s*** and we won't be able to know why.  Will there be a time when the demand for good documentation rises again?  Who can say.

 

Each Windows Update now comes with a whole page of boilerplate, with the closest thing to a description usually being "This update addresses issues in Windows".  Someone needs to take a whip to all the children in Redmond cubicles who think that's enough.

 

 

Not All Software/Hardware Will Work as Intended

 

This isn't really anything new or unexpected.  The author's question, "Who needs that hassle?" really alludes to his "Windows 7 Is Still Just as Good -- Or Better" point.  In the past we've come to expect disruption of continuity as a necessary expense to get the improvements.  Now, without improvements, he's saying, "why bother?"  It's pretty hard to fault that logic.

 

With every new system some hardware is left behind (ever have a scanner that worked on even two different versions of Windows?). 

 

And antivirus/security programs?  Please.  Any software that cuts deeply into a system is necessarily system-specific.  Have you heard of any problems with the latest versions of the various AV packages that are touted Win 10 compatible not working in Win 10?  All the reputable ones work fine.  No one in their right mind should expect an old version to keep working.

 

Applications?  Not surprisingly, almost everything still works.  Windows 10 is proving to be VERY compatible with past applications.  Why?  Because Microsoft apparently hasn't actually done much of anything at the core system level.

 

 

The Start Menu

 

Who cares?  Two words: 

 

Classic Shell

 

Better than anything Microsoft ever implemented, in any version.

 

 

There’s Too Much Mobile Influence

 

Have to agree wholeheartedly here. 

 

Design choices?

 

I guess that makes sense if you consider a LACK OF DESIGN a design choice and want to blame the crap people have been willing to put up with on their tiny little mobile screens for it.

 

 

Apps

 

Tough to see the differentiation between some of these categories.  Rubbish, knock-off apps, blah blah...  All an indication that the Metro/Modern concept isn't anything special.  Almost all of Microsoft's strategy revolves around their making a STUNNING improvement in application development, introducing a whole new paradigm of "code the way you like and run anywhere".  Great idea, but the devil is in the details.

 

Surprise, surprise, it takes more work than that to make real improvements in the state of the art.  It takes complex development to create a powerful application - there's just no way around it.  If it were easy it would already be done.

 

 

Missing Features

 

As we know around here, there are hacks to get back most of what Microsoft is trying to leave behind.

 

But it's more difficult than ever, and the "continuous updates" process is only going to serve to make it less feasible to continue the practice.  This is possibly the most alarming thing about Windows 10.

 

From Microsoft's perspective, they want to make money re-inventing all that has come before.  It's difficult to invent new things now that advance the state of the art.  Might as well keep all the customers locked in and just make them pay again and again for the same things.

 

 

Windows 7 Is Still Just as Good -- Or Better

 

We all understand what he means, but...  Not really.

 

As one who tweaked and augmented Win 8.1 into a system that (after years of use I can confidently say) has turned out to be better (even if only subtly so) than 7, I can honestly say that there have been improvements that have lead to a better computing experience for me.  Are there such improvements in 10?  I can't say a strong yes yet nor point to any in particular as I have too little experience so far with Win 10.  But probably there are or will be.  New device support, bug fixes (not that I've personally seen too many system bugs in the past 5 years).

 

What Windows 10 isn't - right now - is prettier, faster, or substantially more stable.  Seems like Microsoft should have done at least ONE THING people could point to and say, "It has THAT, so clearly it's better".  That they didn't (couldn't?) speaks volumes.  Sorry, but running Modern Apps in (poorly integrated) windows on the desktop just isn't that something special.

 

 

Upgrades Will Be Forced on You

 

This is kind of being overly hyped up.  As expected, tools and methods for rationally managing updates - for those who have the wherewithal to do so - are already starting to appear. 

 

It's just another realm in which the user needs to tweak and augment Windows to make it perform better.

 

Should we HAVE to do that?  Absolutely not.  But it is what it is.

 

 

It’s Still Schizophrenic

 

Assuming the author is equating "Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality Disorder)" with Schizophrenia - which it is not - then he's absolutely right.

 

The New Normal is that it is somehow okay for things NOT to be integrated.  Who said that's good enough?

 

But we'd better get over expecting otherwise.

 

Microsoft may be thinking otherwise - that in the next 10 to 20 years they'll slowly grow all the Apps back into a cohesive, integrated whole by polishing away at the rough edges.  Problem is, technically speaking integration is something that takes a Real Plan and cannot be achieved by accident - and most certainly not by making everything look flat and plain and just ignoring UX standards.  Such things were once at the core of Microsoft's plan, but they're gone now and are not coming back any time soon.

 

 

So...  Should we accept what is and make the best of it, or just step back and wait...

 

Short term?  Hold off.  Give Win 10 a few months at least to mature.

Mid term?     ???

Long term?   ???

 

-Noel

Edited by NoelC
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Windows 10 kills thousands of older games. Strangely this hasn't made much news in the US-Media, so here are some German articles on this (Google Translator):

W10 kills games

Microsoft: Deal with it

 

Deal.with.it

 

And I love their excuses "It's because SECURITY!".

Yeah, where's the f***ing security from all the Spyware and ads in Windows 10 itself? That s*** is more annoying than most third-party malware.

But supplying a driver that was even there in Windows 8.1 to keep hundreds of games working would totally kill the OS, huh.

Edited by Formfiller
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Windows 10 is a POS because it just cannot be trusted. That goes far beyond Windows 8's issues of shitty GUIs.

 

Forced updates are bad enough, but Windows 10 promises forced upgrades. If they cook-up something that's even worse than the default GUI in W8 and with even more spyware than W10 for some BS reason the W10 EULAs would make it totally OK to force that crap on you and cut you off from any security updates immediately if you try to block it with tools. That's just not rational basis for a PC OS, no matter what the current hype is: On a machine you spent so much time of the day working, this threat is just not acceptable.

 

Also, I am just sick of it to have to treat my own equipment as the enemy, but MS forces me to. The amount of tweaks to tame the spying and ugliness in W10 is just insane, especially given that at any moment they can force on you something with even more of it.

 

I will stay on W7 for the forseeable future and wait and see. I also think there is the possibility that MS will be forced to backtrack on some of the insanity, just like they had with the Xbone, the start screen and bleached out Office. The story of "NuMicrosoft" is full of failures and retreats. The forced updates seem to really cause havoc already.

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What backtracking did they do with the "bleached out Office"?

 

I had Office 365 for a year and a half, and saw no progress whatsoever.  I am happy to say that I finally UPgraded to Office 2010 and have found it a real pleasure by comparison.  And I no longer have to pay rent.

 

-Noel

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What backtracking did they do with the "bleached out Office"?

 

Office 2016 still can't hold a candle to 2010 in the beauty-department but at least it isn't bleached out anymore. It's just metrotarded.

 

0605_Microsoft_Office_2016_Public_Previe

Edited by Formfiller
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...  I am just sick of it to have to treat my own equipment as the enemy, but MS forces me to. The amount of tweaks to tame the spying and ugliness in W10 is just insane, especially given that at any moment they can force on you something with even more of it ...

 

^ Exactly. There's no logic in planting a polymorphic bomb on your desktop and then futilely trying to defuse it.

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On 10 threre are also some controls or joysticks not allowed because they have not been previously authorized.

Even if they work with previous versios of OS.

 

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.adslzone.net%2F2015%2F08%2F11%2Fwindows-10-podria-bloquear-juegos-pirata-y-perifericos-no-autorizados%2F&sandbox=1

 

 I guess next week update is going to block mouse and keyboard, and USB sticks next month. Because they are unsafe as they are not MS previously authorized, We should be glad MS is helping us to protect our system !!!!
 

There is no doubt it's only another way to force us use their store to buy their products.

 

And what is going to happend when they start selling MS Monitors on their store?

Are we going to get an update blocking our monitor forcing us to buy a MS monitor in order to can use our PC?

 

This is going to end even worst than Apple.

 

Edited by alacran
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I had Office 365 for a year and a half, and saw no progress whatsoever.  I am happy to say that I finally UPgraded to Office 2010 and have found it a real pleasure by comparison.  And I no longer have to pay rent.

 

-Noel

If you need an office program, you might try Libre Office 3.6, it works on Win2k, XP and 7 from my experience. B)

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I had Office 365 for a year and a half, and saw no progress whatsoever.  I am happy to say that I finally UPgraded to Office 2010 and have found it a real pleasure by comparison.  And I no longer have to pay rent.

 

-Noel

If you need an office program, you might try Libre Office 3.6, it works on Win2k, XP and 7 from my experience. B)

 

 

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

 

This might be unpopular to say, but LibreOffice is more of a problem than a soluton. Try Softmaker Office or Kingsoft Office. They look and feel far more like MS Office 2010. They also have better compatability with .docx

 

LibreOffice is like Microsoft's best argument. Softmaker and Kingsoft are far better alternatives, yet they get almost no attention because of that thing. Libre/Open Office only helps MS entrenching their monopoly - and that's not so funny anymore, given how MS uglifies all their products.

 

LibreOffice doesn't hold a candle against the other alternative offices, yet they are constantly neglected because LO and OO are in the publicity spotlight for no good reason and when people try to use them as the result of this publicity they flee back to MS.

 

LibreOffice fanboys are basically the biggest Microsoft enablers. I know my outburst does sound slightly crazy, but I've really come to hate software that makes metrotarded MS looks good. It only helps NuMicrosoft.

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This might be unpopular to say, but LibreOffice is more of a problem than a soluton. Try Softmaker Office or Kingsoft Office. They look and feel far more like MS Office 2010. They also have better compatability with .docx

 

Yep :), it might be unpopular, but truth often is unpopular.

 

jaclaz

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