Jump to content

Windows 10 - Deeper Impressions


xper

Recommended Posts

6 minutes ago, NoelC said:

I think AMD must be struggling to pay its engineers, and thus looking to cut costs in any way they can.

They're dropping features with each new release of Crimson, which is the driver suite that followed their Catalyst drivers.  Calling them out on it only results in the support drones telling you to do something different, even when that something doesn't address the functionality they eliminated.

-Noel

My main gripe with the new Crimson suite is that it's too unstable... always crashing. For example, if explorer.exe crashes and then starts right back up, the tray icon for Crimson will no longer be there. You'll have to end the process for it, and start again. Also, when you change the default language, it has a 50/50 chance of not oppening after restart.

But yeah, I wish AMD would support atleast Vista. It got dropped before XP! (last driver for Vista was 13.12 and XP was 14.4). They could atleast launch some sort of legacy drivers, like, once a year or something for those old OSs.

There are also a lot of games that just work better on XP. For example, any game that uses DirectSound3D, or games that use weird shader calls from DirectX 8/9 (Far Cry 1 does not render montain reflections on water on anything but XP! And there's no fix in sight.)

Oh well... guess I'll stick with Windows 8.1. It's still the best OS for gaming IMO. Light, fast, and it doesn't randomly start spinning my HDD, or using my Internet for some callback to the motherbase (I'm looking at you, Windows 10)

Link to comment
Share on other sites


4 hours ago, NoelC said:

FYI, I have read that the Windows 10 anniversary release is likely to be AFTER the drop dead date for the free "upgrade".

Yeah, I already have a Windows 10 license secured, but honestly, I don't see a whole lot of improvement on this Anniversary Update. Sure, the UI will be more consistent, but Cortana will be more integrated, which means harder to disable or remove (thank god my country doesn't have Cortana :thumbup), the new start menu looks like s*** IMO, and there will be all around more bloat accompanying the OS. I don't see any kernel or performance improvements, and I've had the "System and Compressed Memory" process take up all of my RAM, and making my system unusable for a minute, so the OS really needs those improvements.

Dunno... maybe some decent DirectX 12 games will force me to upgrade in the future, but for know, Windows 8.1 is very good to me.

Edited by greenhillmaniac
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 6/19/2016 at 0:39 AM, Glenn9999 said:

If it all works fine, I wonder how fruitful it would be to throw together a simple control panel style applet to expose these settings?

I just had to go and play.   It's pretty rough in general, but this seems to work okay on Windows 8.1 and induces quite a lot of squawking from the notification area.  Don't know about 10 of course.

Download Removed.

Edited by Glenn9999
Download Removed.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Windows 10 upgrade will soon be easier to reject

newgetwindows10prompt-640x430.jpg


 

Quote

... Mary Jo Foley reports that a clearer upgrade promotion will roll out this week. It will have three options—"Upgrade now," "Choose time," and "Decline free offer"—with the last of these options dismissing the update altogether. Critically, pressing the X in the corner of the window will have the same effect as the decline option ...

... The change is a long time coming. The aggression of the Windows 10 upgrade offer has been causing discontent and annoyance since its introduction, and while many people have taken advantage of the upgrade, there are plenty who don't want it and don't like being nagged by it. Microsoft paid an unhappy upgrader $10,000 after the company was sued for loss of earnings; the new, less aggressive Get Windows 10 promotion should prevent recurrences of this problem ...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Is it just me or does the mixing of a big bold button with smaller text in the form of links say that Microsoft is pulling back just as little as possible from their predatory stance?

And what do the other screens (available via the > on the right side) look like???

-Noel

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am more dissatisfied with the:

"Over 300 million people have already upgraded"

As always meaningless (and very far from being reliable/credible)

https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2016/05/05/windows-10-now-on-300-million-active-devices-free-upgrade-offer-to-end-soon/


 

is 300 million the WHOLE Windows 10 installs or just those that upgraded? :dubbio:

Or in some two months since May 2016 hoards (literally) of people upgraded, tricked by the previous sneaky approach? :unsure:

The growth rate has been evidently (from the data available):
https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-10/65759/build-2016-now-270-million-active-windows-10-devices

around 34 million/month increase (whole install base), 8 months * 34= 272 =~ 270 million until 30 March 2016, then since 1st April to 5 May 2016 (roughly one month) it went up again to around 30 million/month increase.

To be picky (as I am), in January it was (reportedly):
https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2016/01/04/windows-10-now-active-on-over-200-million-devices/

already 200 million, so the rate is 70 million in roughly three months, i.e. around 23 million/month in the first three months of 2016.

And earlier than that it was 110 million in October:
http://www.windowscentral.com/windows-10-officially-installed-over-110-million-devices-over-125-billion-visits-windows-stor

So:
August 2015-September 2015 2 months x 55 million/month=110

October 2015-December 2015 3 months x 30 million/month=90

January 2016-March 2016 3 months x 23 million month = 70

April 2016  1 months x 30 million month= 30

Not really a "growing trend", rather an initial spike then stabilizing to arounf 25-30 million/month.

Now how many devices might have been sold with Windows 10 pre-installed (not "upgraded") since August 2015?

I would guess tens of millions, that should be detracted from the "whole" 300 millions reported in early May 2016, unless all those machines had been "downgraded" to an earlier MS OS or installed a different OS, and I doubt that all those devices could be compensated by "upgrades" in May and June....

To be fair, there may be a lot of people (like many members here) that did upgrade (to get the free license) and then promptly re-imaged the previous Windows 7 or 8/8.1, but I doubt that they are millions...

jaclaz

 

Edited by jaclaz
Link to comment
Share on other sites

That graphic may only be correct for a few days, if it is still the same as previous. People who had upgraded to 10240 prior to 10586 being released, who then were updated to 10586, found that the "go back to your previous OS" feature was either missing or would put them back to 10240. If there is a new Win10 update coming on August 2, a similar scenario could happen again.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

23 hours ago, Tripredacus said:

That graphic may only be correct for a few days, if it is still the same as previous. People who had upgraded to 10240 prior to 10586 being released, who then were updated to 10586, found that the "go back to your previous OS" feature was either missing or would put them back to 10240. If there is a new Win10 update coming on August 2, a similar scenario could happen again.

Ah, that'll make for a bunch of happy customers when they realize that they thought they could roll back to Win7 but could not.  :angry:

--JorgeA

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, NoelC said:

What about the offer some people are reporting happening at bootup now?  Is that separate?

I think a leap to stating it will be easier to reject is overstepping.

You ain't seen nuthin' yet meets a sucker born every minute.

-Noel

Yeah, that seems to be a separate phenomenon. MSFT is throwing a bit of a blizzard of sh*t at people, possibly in the hope/expectation that something will stick.

Woody Leonhard has emerged as the tech press's most comprehensive and reliable reporter on these tricks and shenanigans:

New Get Windows 10 nagware screen arrives -- no need to install anything

Win7 and 8.1 patch KB 3173040 throws full-screen Win10 upgrade warning

MSFT fullscreen Win10 nag.png

[source]

--JorgeA

Edited by JorgeA
added image source
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...