Windows 10 - Deeper Impressions

[JorgeA]

More joys of cloud computing:

 

I Don't Trust OneDrive After What Happened Today

 

But today I just about lost it. I was away from home and needed to check a file that I have literally been working on non-stop for the past month. I pulled it up on my Lumia 928 and was confused to see it was way outdated. I checked the date in OneDrive and it was weeks old. I thought it might be due to a sync error, so I headed back home to see why, only to find that OneDrive hadn't been syncing for weeks. Apparently, some backend update went out that 'reset' everything. I had to re-set up OneDrive, assuming it would merely take what was in my OneDrive folder on my computer, and then update it online (since it explicitly said it would 'merge' the two). Instead, it chose to erase everything in my OneDrive folder and replace it with the outdated files from the cloud!

 

More horror stories further down:

 

... I had to stop playing Age of Sparta for the exact same reason as OP. I had been playing the game on my Lumia for months before I started also playing it on my Windows 10 laptop. When I signed in it told me it couldn't sync. So I went back to my phone only to find it had replaced my 2 month old save file with the 2 minute Laptop version. I stopped playing immediately. The negatives of the cloud don't always get advertised.

 

 

I am losing trust in "the Cloud" in general for important stuff. Yesterday I was assisting someone applying for a job so I was uploading resumes, editing cover letters, etc. Despite a robust Internet connection that I use every day for work, there were constant delays in uploading, downloading, and syncing with OneDrive, and then MS Word online kept fouling things up too. It was just impossible to get rid of some strange formatting that online Word insisted on inserting. I eventually downloaded a copy, edited and saved it using desktop programs, and then uploaded it to OneDrive again. It was so much easier and faster to write and edit using the desktop programs. Also, where I work has now gone Office 365, and we have been encouraged to try out the online versions of Word, Excel, etc. in case we need to use them at some point, and they are just so much slower and awkward compared to using the desktop programs, plus you have endless upload/download problems with OneDrive. It is really a step back in terms of productivity.

 

 

... My wife had some odd sync errors with OneDrive too. She was working on a report for school on a Word doc stored on the cloud. One day she went to save the file and it would not save. Gave some weird sync error that I could not get around. Even recovery was a bust. Word said the recovery was there but because of the sync error, it could not be recovered. Long story short she lost an entire week of work in the process. What's worse, she never got any kind of warning from Word about auto sync not working or some kind of problem.

 

Yep, we should all ditch our desktop PCs and switch to 32GB smartphones.

 

--JorgeA

 

[Techie007]

 

Let's add one more to the fanboys' efforts: today only, in four occasions I had to retrieve MSFN mail notifications (most of them from this topic) from the Spam folder. And this is not the first time at all. It's an AOL account.

Are M$ fanboys massively marking MSFN notifications as spam, or is AOL under their stronghold? (I'd bet on both, though)

 

At least you're getting some kind of MSFN notification by e-mail. It's been months since I've gotten any.

 

--JorgeA

 

 

    I'm having the same problem too.  Email notifications worked for me until July 20, when I received the last one.  I tried to redo my email settings, but never got the confirmation emails to finish registering my email address.  I'm currently on here with a disposable email address.  My email provider is GMX, and they are giving me by far the best service I've had from an email provider.  I've had issues with Yahoo and Outlook, and don't trust Google.  I've private messaged xper several times with no response.  Quite frustrating.

Edited October 21, 2015 by Techie007

[vinifera]

i will never have trust in something that isn't in my own hands

cloud idea was retarded from the start

[JorgeA]

Windows 10: Extensions for Edge to arrive with Redstone in 2016

 

Microsoft is still committed to delivering extensions for Edge, but with the feature now several months away, will consumers care by the time they arrive? Once they’re available, Windows 10 will be over a year old. Insiders will get to play with extensions much sooner than that of course, but Insiders are not an accurate representation of the people who use Windows 10 day-to-day, and at this point we don’t know when Microsoft is planning to begin delivering Redstone builds for testing. Perhaps in early 2016, or if we’re lucky, towards the end of this year.

 

Another stunning Microsoft success that builds confidence (not!) in the company's ability to deliver.

 

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

 

 

Let's add one more to the fanboys' efforts: today only, in four occasions I had to retrieve MSFN mail notifications (most of them from this topic) from the Spam folder. And this is not the first time at all. It's an AOL account.

Are M$ fanboys massively marking MSFN notifications as spam, or is AOL under their stronghold? (I'd bet on both, though)

 

At least you're getting some kind of MSFN notification by e-mail. It's been months since I've gotten any.

 

--JorgeA

 

 

    I'm having the same problem too.  Email notifications worked for me until July 20, when I received the last one.  I tried to redo my email settings, but never got the confirmation emails to finish registering my email address.  I'm currently on here with a disposable email address.  My email provider is GMX, and they are giving me by far the best service I've had from an email provider.  I've had issues with Yahoo and Outlook, and don't trust Google.  I've private messaged xper several times with no response.  Quite frustrating.

 

 

Try posting the problem here. The e-mail problems all seem to have started with the most recent update to the forum software.

 

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

Microsoft Windows veteran Joe Belfiore takes a year leave-of-absence

 

My first thought was that he wants to create some distance between his cheerleading for Windows 10 and the looming disaster that it represents. OTOH we've probably all heard of radio DJs who go "on vacation" and then never come back on the air. Here's what Mary Jo has to say:

 

Belfiore had been noticeably missing from a few recent Microsoft events, with evangelist Bryan Roper filling in as "demo lead" for Windows 10, as of late.

 

Contacts are asking me if there's more to Belfiore's decision to take a break than meets the eye. I've heard some wondering whether Belfiore's absence offers clues about Microsoft's long-term commitment (or lack thereof) to Windows Phones. All I can say is with Microsoft's own executives talking up the company's growing interest in Android, even if it's just a "Plan B" at this point, it does give some of us Windows Phone faithful pause....

 

--JorgeA

[351837]

Microsoft Windows veteran Joe Belfiore takes a year leave-of-absence

 

My first thought was that he wants to create some distance between his cheerleading for Windows 10 and the looming disaster that it represents. OTOH we've probably all heard of radio DJs who go "on vacation" and then never come back on the air. Here's what Mary Jo has to say:

 

Belfiore had been noticeably missing from a few recent Microsoft events, with evangelist Bryan Roper filling in as "demo lead" for Windows 10, as of late.

 

Contacts are asking me if there's more to Belfiore's decision to take a break than meets the eye. I've heard some wondering whether Belfiore's absence offers clues about Microsoft's long-term commitment (or lack thereof) to Windows Phones. All I can say is with Microsoft's own executives talking up the company's growing interest in Android, even if it's just a "Plan B" at this point, it does give some of us Windows Phone faithful pause....

 

--JorgeA

 

Maybe someone at M$ in meantime implement something actually sane in Windows 10.

[Drugwash]

They've been working hard, they all deserve a break. Say, for a thousand years or so. Would that be enough (for the world to get back to normal)…?

[rn10950]

They've been working hard, they all deserve a break. Say, for a thousand years or so. Would that be enough (for the world to get back to normal)…?

 

Maybe they can get the old Windows team in as leave replacements?

[vinifera]

hopefully win 10 will fail miserably

they start doing crap software for other devices

and return to making NORMAL WinNT for PC's

[NoelC]

More joys of cloud computing:

 

I Don't Trust OneDrive After What Happened Today

 

I can't imagine why anyone would have trusted it before.

 

-Noel

[JorgeA]

^^

 

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

Backlash grows over Microsoft's Eternal Patch Tuesday plan

 

Now Susan Bradley, a Small Business Server and Security MVP and contributor to Windows Secrets, has taken her complaints more public, and so far 3,176 (and counting) other people agree with her. That’s how many people signed her Change.org petition asking for transparency and control over Windows 10 patches, prompted by forced bundling of separate patches.

 

[...]

 

But MVPs and other business customers are key to Microsoft’s revenue stream and pushing buggy software undermines the trust that has kept those customers loyal for years, sometimes decades — even if sometimes those users will, for better and worse, opt out of critical updates for years after they’re issued.

 

The comments are generally scathing, but check out this one:

 

I think we have only seen the tip of the iceberg with the update roll ups. With the CBB, the roadmaps seem to indicate that we will have to install new builds 2 times a year in order to get security updates. Anyone who has gone thru enterprise windows migrations can tell you that is totally unreasonable.

 

Are they serious??

 

--JorgeA

 

[JorgeA]

Dedoimedo tries out Win10 on a tablet:

 

HP Stream 7 - To Windows 10 and back

 

Here are some of his (printable ) observations. Bear in mind throughout that this is on a touch-enabled (even a touch-only) device.

 

Problems erupted after only a few minutes of use, adding to my frustration. Speed wise, Windows 10 was actually slower than Windows 8.1 on the HP Stream 7. Pressing the menu button would always result in laggy response. Moreover, you actually have two buttons, and I'm not sure what they do.

 

If you click the Windows logo in the bottom left corner, nothing happens. If you click the three-horizontal-stripes icon in the top left corner, the menu opens. Why, no idea. Furthermore, there are no applications shown on the taskbar. You do not know what programs you have open, and you must click the deck icon right of the search icon to actually get your application and program windows.

 

Hmm, I thought that Win10 was suppossed to deliver a uniform experience across device types, and that's what they wrecked the desktop experience for.

 

The biggest problem was the virtual keyboard. It did not work well. While the keyboard icon was always present in the system tray on Windows 8.1, and I could always summon it, there was no such equivalent in Windows 10. Making things worse, the keyboard did not work in quite a few programs. Firefox, Chrome, Windows Explorer, and PowerShell! I kid you not. These programs never displayed a prompt for keyboard.

 

In other words, I could only browse using the crappola called Edge, I could not rename files or use PowerShell to delete the built-in Metro applications. I was actually forced to use remote assistance and connect from my laptop to the tablet to be able to do some basic administration and delete the turdy apps.

 

However, on next reboot, they were back. When using the online account, Microsoft carefully replenished the loss of its default set of apps that I've had deleted by giving them back to them on next login. And yes, I did set the app updates to manual in the Store.

 

After about a total of three hours of having to endure this nonsense, I decided to revert back to Windows 8.1. This new operating system was not doing what it should be. It was intrusive, slower, buggier, with a wonky keyboard, and not a single useful aspect to it that would make me stay. The problems were so bad that sometimes it wouldn't even let me slide the screen down to power off the tablet. Without the keyboard, the desktop aspect of this operating system was horribly crippled. And that means everything.

 

 

Choice quotables:

 

This is the brave new world. Morons dictate how computers should be used.

 

Windows 8 sucks balls, but then in this particular case, it is less useless than Windows 10. However, that still makes it useless, and the end result is, a device plus an operating system that cannot be used in any meaningful, productive manner. The choice of the lesser cretinism.

 

Anything available in the Store is automatically inferior to its desktop equivalent, and it's one giant insult to computer science.

 

There's no saving this situation really. Microsoft should simply ctrl + alt + shift + delete everything it tried to do in this field, and focus on a brighter future. The hybrid model is the worst thing to affect humanity since the late Bubonic Plague in the 17th Century.

 

It might also work well on smartphones. In fact, I think it probably will. But in the gray area between touch and intelligence, it fails miserably. Just as badly as Windows 8.

 

--JorgeA

 

[Formfiller]

 

I think we have only seen the tip of the iceberg with the update roll ups. With the CBB, the roadmaps seem to indicate that we will have to install new builds 2 times a year in order to get security updates. Anyone who has gone thru enterprise windows migrations can tell you that is totally unreasonable.

 

Are they serious??

 

--JorgeA

 

 

Yes, they are serious.

 

Windows is basically a 90s Linux distro now. For the life of me, I don't get it why.

 

Just who the heck is wowed by the prospect of a changing Windows every 6 months or more? And the changes aren't under the hood, the new builds will change the GUI each time too.

 

This is madness.