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Windows 10 - Deeper Impressions


xper

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I mean, I think you can with SBS or similar OS. The user's complaint of not being able to stop the OS from going online prior to first boot up is wrong too. You just disconnect the Ethernet cable (or use a private LAN) and choose skip when asked to connect to a wireless network. I do that every time when I do Win10 testing.

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The OS atrocities (W8 etc.) happened after the extensive data minings started. Just by telemetry you won't get any good product. I don't uninstall programs often, but removing the uninstall function would be a catastrophe. But Microsoft is operating on exactly that premise (most networks are on DHCP, so let's remove any other options etc.) and this leads to just retarded results at the end.

 

Telemetry is dooming Microsoft.

 

 

They removed the Windows Backup UI from Windows 8.1 for that reason.  They stated only 6% of people use it.  "Only".  What's that, tens of millions of people?  Pfft, not something Microsoft feels it's important to even worry about.

 

Now I noticed it's back in Windows 10 as "Windows 7 Backup".  Apparently they wanted to remove all barriers people could identify to prevent an "upgrade" from Windows 7.

 

Telemetry is something Marketing and Managers should not have access to, since it just ends up like the old joke ending where the statistician responds "What would YOU like the answer to be?"

 

-Noel

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Just as an illustration of how asinine is the idea of removing features that "only a small percentage of people use," let's say that Windows has 100 features or functions that "only" five percent of customers use. (Probably way too small a number, but this is simply to illustrate the point.) Now, let's say that Microsoft managers decide to remove those little-used features/functions to end up with the lowest common denominator -- an OS focusing on the "popular" features, you might say. Who cares about these small minorities, we're shooting for the broadest possible appeal.

 

Uh-huh. Do the math: 0.95^100 = ~0.0059. If you remove 100 features, you will end up with a Windows OS that fills the needs of less than six-tenths of ONE PERCENT of your users. Yeah, real wide appeal.

 

An exaggeration? OK, let's say you set the threshold at 1%: remove a single feature valued by just 1% and you'll still be good for 99% of your users. Remove 100 such features, and -- all of a sudden you're below 36%. Almost two-thirds of your users are ticked off at you.

 

Smart (not!).

 

Oh, and that's before we factor in the addition of features/functions that are actively UNwanted by sizable portions of your audience, like Metro apps, telemetry, and forced automatic updates. Of course some of these will also be welcomed by sizable numbers of users, but if experience teaches us anything, it is that providing something new that's welcome typically doesn't make up for taking away something that's wanted.

 

--JorgeA

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But we can use multiple calculators at once now. ....

 

    Yeah right.  Like why did Microsoft waste all that valuable development time "revamping" Calculator in the first place?  The new monster Calculator app uses about 10x the amount of RAM that the old and faithful Win32 calc.exe used.  Certainly there were better priorities for the coding team!  Only this month did they finally fix the annoying bug that made it not always open the first time the [Calc] button was pressed on the keyboard.

Edited by Techie007
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But we can use multiple calculators at once now. ....

 

Assuming you mean Calculator Apps, speak for yourself.

 

And just because you can, doesn't mean you should.  I think of it as tazing yourself in the groin with multiple tazers at once.  Sure, you could, but...

 

What's ironic is that before I expunged that crapware from my system, Microsoft wouldn't let me even try to run it with UAC turned off.  Assuming that's an indication that Microsoft doesn't trust it's own Metro/Modern/Universal/XAML Apps...  Why?  Maybe because at some point it could deliver adware?

 

I'll bet no one who's actually capable of any sort of real engineering would actually work on Apps at Microsoft, even under pain of losing their jobs.

 

-Noel

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No worries, I gathered it was tongue-in-cheek, and I hope I didn't sound harsh toward you. 

 

Microsoft calling Windows 10 an operating system is a joke.

 

I suspect your cat wouldn't have sat long enough to open anywhere near that many Calculator Apps, even if there were enough resources.

 

-Noel

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I suspect your cat wouldn't have sat long enough to open anywhere near that many Calculator Apps, even if there were enough resources.

 

-Noel

 

Oh, I just got it!!!! ROFL

 

BTW I ended up reinstalling Windows 10 because of the dreaded "CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED" error. Lucky me, now I get to revisit all the fun I had adjusting settings, tweaking the UI, setting up applications and uninstalling apps.

 

--JorgeA

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Just as an illustration of how asinine is the idea of removing features that "only a small percentage of people use," let's say that Windows has 100 features or functions that "only" five percent of customers use. 

Not really :no:.

That is - more or less - an application of Pareto's Principle:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle

it does have it merits.

 

The point is not at all about what they removed or changed, it is A LOT about the incredible number of preventive measure, unneeded complications (and what not)  they included to force every user to experience a sub-standard environment, making it extremely difficult for them to change the looks (which is IMHO a more marginal part) and the actual ergonomics of each and every tool, making a number of useful tools not working anymore, effectively changing some consolidated usage paradigms and re-setting users settings to a (stupid and in some ways also "dangerous") default they believe is a "one-size-fits-all" for every user.

 

I mean - and I know I will probably be flamed for this - I never liked the way the default Windows shell worked in 2K or XP, but that was (is) not a problem, there were quite a few alternative shells available and I soon found out that blackbox was perfect for my use of a system, and installing and configuring it was a piece of cake.

Then there is the issue of the calculator, I use RPN. (RPN is way better and faster if you do calculations so I use a third party RPN calculator).

More generally I have configured my system in such a way that it is perfectly configured for my needs (and it cost me very little time created very little issues), BUT if I have to use any other MS OS (up to 7) with its "standard" shell and built-in tools (as an example when I am visiting some customer and using theur computers) - while "losing" some "speed" and "convenience" - I can do the same things that I can do on my "custom configured" system.

 

This - with "stock" windows 8 and later - is simply not possible.

 

Of course someone will come out stating how I am old (which is true) and grumpy (which is also true) and that this is the reason why I cannot do even the simpler tasks on 8 and later without the greatest effort and waste of time, but really this is not the case, in all these years I have used (and sometimes still use) almost *any* OS that ever saw the light, including all versions of DOS, all versions of Windows, many different releases of Linux, even OS/2 and BeOS, and I never experienced the same sense of being forcefully led into a wrong usage paradigm as I experienced in the (admittedly brief) tests I made with 8/8.1 (and 10 seems like not any different in this).

 

Now I can understand that for *some reasons* I won't be able anymore to use other people's PC's :(, but at the very least I expect to be able to configure my own system the way I like it and it is more productive for me :yes:, without the risk of having all my settings and third party apps being reset/removed overnight :w00t::ph34r:: and without going through numberless loopholes to actually make a proper configuration :realmad: .

 

jaclaz

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I've been carefully reading everything in this topic so far. Even though I have not and will never be downloading and installing this POS called 'Windows 10', judging by all the comments in this topic and all other places linked to by various users, I can't help but ask myself a single burning question:

WHY THE HELL DOES MICROSOFT STILL EXIST???

 

Sorry for shouting but this has to be yelled from the bottom of every sane people's lungs.

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This - with "stock" windows 8 and later - is simply not possible

 

 

Fanboys would say we "grumpy old guys" have failed to keep pace.

 

We grumpy old guys, while we don't always agree with one another either, might say that keeping pace with lower life forms who insist on running the race backwards is just silly, and we are now wise enough to avoid being influenced by fashion and peer pressure.

 

Bottom line is this:  At various points we've chosen to jump off the bandwagon.  It's because the band insists on playing only kazoos and the wheels are wobbly.  Microsoft doesn't realize how much they need the wise, smart people supporting them.  They will.

 

-Noel

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Just as an illustration of how asinine is the idea of removing features that "only a small percentage of people use," let's say that Windows has 100 features or functions that "only" five percent of customers use. 

Not really :no:.

That is - more or less - an application of Pareto's Principle:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle

it does have it merits.

 

No question that the principle has its merits. As cited in the Wikipedia article, in the newsletter I used to publish many years ago I remember us commenting that 80% of the problems came from 20% of the subscribers.  :)

 

But I'm not sure that the Pareto principle is really what's going on in the case of what to put into Windows 10. The policy that Microsoft seems to be following is, "make an OS that includes only features that 'everyone' uses." So they start shedding features and capabilities that (they believe) are used by less than some undetermined threshold of users. But as the mathematical illustration suggests, the effort to make a complex product (Windows) that includes only features that "everyone" uses will ironically result in a product that disappoints or even outrages large segments of the using public. To borrow another well-known business principle, one-size-fits-all fits nobody in particular. ;)

 

The genius of Windows always was that it was enormously and easily customizable to suit the user's preferences. It included a ton of different things and there were multiple ways to accomplish the same task, and (as in your situation) anything that it didn't include could easily be added to it. This is becoming less and less the case as Microsoft seeks to channel users to its own one-size-fits-none preferences instead of catering to what the user wants.

 

--JorgeA

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