Windows 10: So Very Disappointed With Win 10

OK that's interesting I think I saw on my Back-up Hard Drive something that said (Backup image) dated 2013..... But I cant get to it right now because I am backing up my 15,000 pictures and it is going to take at least 40 more minutes..... Hmmmmmmm

 

From my perspective, Windows 10 is a downgrade from 7, but 7 was a downgrade from XP. The main thing that irritated me about 7 was the loss of direct access to the fundamental tabbed settings boxes. Starting in 7 (or did it start with Vista?) they often put "wizard"-type pages between you and the settings boxes, and it is worse than ever in Windows 10. One example is the should-be-simple act of manually synch'ing your clock with an internet time server. In XP, you double-clicked the clock display in your system tray, which directly brought up the tabbed settings box:





Then you clicked the "Internet Time" tab and the "Update Now" button:

As for Windows 10:

1. Double-click the clock display in your system tray.
2. Click the "Date and time settings" link.
3. Click the "Additional date, time, and regional settings" link.
4. Click the "Set the time and date" link.

After step 4 we are finally at the actual tabbed settings box which XP (and 2000, and so on) brought up after step 1, but even then, there is one additional step after you click the "Internet Time" tab (the "Update Now" button isn't there, you have to click the "Change settings" button to bring it up).

There are countless examples of crap like this. Windows has become like those automated customer service phone systems where you have to press a number to select such and such from a list of options, and then press another number to select such and such, and so on, about forty-eleven times, before you can actually speak to a human. Windows XP was like the old days, when a human always answered the phone directly.

Then there is the reduced functionality. For example, previous versions of Windows had settings in the UI for changing the default UI font. To do this in Windows 10, you have to hack the registry. In previous versions of Windows on things where you had an option to change the color of something (such as the desktop background), you could specify any possible color (out of 16,581,375 possible colors) by directly inputting the RGB values:





In Windows 10, you have a whopping 24 pre-selected color options:





Then there is the Start menu, which they screwed up in Vista by not having an option for a flyout menu for "All Programs", which continued with Windows 7. But the Start menu was still halfway decent in those versions of Windows; at least you could still pin program shortcuts to the left side of the menu. In Windows 10, they screwed the Start menu up royally (which, fortunately, can be fixed by installing a third-party program called "Classic Shell"), i.e., no option to pin program shortcuts to the left side of the menu, and the method to see the "All Programs" list is even worse than in Vista and 7. You have to click "All apps" ("Apps" being the "hip" new word I guess), which takes you to a different "page" of the wannabe Start menu, and then have a long list to scroll through because those asinine "tile" icons are taking up way too much space.

I could go on, but I'll stop there for now.

LOL!

 

Apps is not just a hip word, they are defacto standard on all other devices and once they get unified thru all windows devices and same ones work on all of them, they will come handy. Apps work in their own space, only problem is that there's not enough of good ones yet. They could be removed from start if you don't want them.
Coming from W8/8.1 I'm quite used to them, specially Live tiles that are replacement (and even better) for Gadgets, that many are so fond of. Never liked them as you had to drop all the way to desktop to see them. Live tiles are much easier to get to, only a click on Start button, no closing all the open windows. I made a combination of tiles to go with All programs, most used programs are set to start from tiles, much easier to find than to dig thru menu in W7.

 

If your PC works correctly, I don't think that tabbed settings boxes were important then. 7 was one of the best releases of Windows in a long time, considering how much of a mess Vista was, and how insecure and slow XP was. For me, 10 is what 8 should have been, however, 8 was badly executed. As someone who still uses 7 on a secondary computer, I still think it's good. But, Windows 10 is not bad either. I think what many people don't like is change. The more there is change, the more people will dislike it.
To me, I take functionality and security over something as small as color personalization and the way settings are presented.

 

Or, just type "date and time" (you don't even have to type the whole thing) in the search box and hit enter. Then click Internet time tab which looks similar to the dialog you listed above.

 

Date and time is still at same place in Control panel as it was in W7.

 

I can't find windows.old folder where do I look? I also went to your page ShowKey and don't really understand that either...

 

It should be in main folder on system drive.

 

Hi there

You obviously don't understand how an IMAGE RESTORE works --the computer is RESTORED to EXACTLY the state it was BEFORE you did the upgrade -- could be 5,000 YEARS EARLIER --assuming the hardware lasted that long.

The BACKUP IMAGE doesn't even know that you've attempted an upgrade and no activation of your existing (i.e previous OS - be it W7 / W8 or W8.1) is lost or even changed.

Also provided you use the SAME computer you can attempt as many upgrade attempts as you like for up to ONE YEAR from Jul 26 2015.

Cheers
jimbo

 

Go to this web page and download the program called "Everything" it will search your windows hard drive for any file name you put in, then give you options to go to the file location, delete file, view, all kinds of options. Its a FREE search engine.
voidtools
Then install everything and just type windows.old if its any where on your hard drive you will see it. I've been using this search tool for last 3 or 4 years now. Really great little tool to have.

 

That's still more steps than just double-clicking on the clock to bring it up, plus there is an additional step within the Windows 10 version of that settings box to get to the "Update Now" button. And the concept of a search function is supposed to be for something which is hard to find or hard to get to. So they made this hard to find / get to so that resorting to a search becomes the easier method ... brilliant.

It is just a program, which has also always been known as an application. Any distinction made between a program and an "app" is arbitrary.

As do programs, if they are programmed to do so.

It has nothing to do with "working correctly". Settings are for configuration. If something is actually broken, settings won't help.

XP was not even remotely "slow", especially if you disabled the Themes service and the "visual effects". I first ran XP on a 733 Mhz Celeron machine with 256 MB of RAM in 2002, and it had good responsiveness. By eliminating a lot of unnecessary services, I've had it running reasonably well on a machine with 64 MB of RAM, ironically better than Windows 2000 on the exact same machine. As for security; I ran XP for 13 years with no security problems. Security is mainly between your ears.

I love change, when it's for the better. For example, I was thrilled with the change when I went from WinMe to XP.

Except, functionality has been reduced. I've given examples, which are not an exhaustive list, and the added steps in the paths to settings boxes do not constitute an exhaustive list of complaints (which I made clear when I said, "I could go on ..."). In other words, your summary isn't accurate, because I didn't provide enough information to summarize (I don't want to write a novel).

 

I agree with both sides.
Windows 7 was (as far as my opinion has any value) the best OS so far.
Win 8 was a disaster and for my laptop (which I can't downgrade to Win7) Win10 is the best option.

For my Desktop both are possible, but to tweak Windows10, you need to have a PRO edition
The Home version of 10 has a lot less options in settings compared to what we had in Win7 Home.
So I tend to agree with the majority of responders here.

Win7 - Win10 (HOME edition only) is a downgrade
Win8(1) - Win10 is an upgrade (even when just a Home edition)

What is a concern (at least for me) is the amount of data and information that Microsoft wants to get their hands on.
In Windows 10 it took me really over 45 minutes (that included searching the net) to switch off all sharing of data.
And even now I am not sure that indeed my data is not shared.

I will go back to Win7 on my Desktop PC
I simply fail te see the advantages of Win10 (Home)

I will remain on Win10 (Home) on my Asus Zenbook and buy a PRO license.
The tiles thing does not make sense to me (at all)
The possibility to "speak" to my computer I find personally a Toy and also very disturbing for people around me
The need for automatic updates and absolutely no influence on what is updated (In Home editions) I find frustrating.

For me enough reasons to roll-back to Win7 on Monday *Smile

 

No, in this case App is not just a short name for application or a program, don't go into semantics. It's very different way they are coded and used. .
Windows ME was working for me just fine but yes XP was better because it took advantage of new HW better than W95 series. Not that there was no resistance to it when it was introduced.
I could also go on and on with good things in W10, better than in 7, personal preferences notwithstanding. There's a lot of room for improvement though but expected to be done sooner or later.

 

And you obviously don't understand the difference between rollback and restore...*Rolleyes

 

Yes, it is.

Not necessarily. The arbitrary category of programs now known as "apps" has more limitations than a standard Windows program. In other words, a program can be anything that an "app" can be, plus it can go beyond that, making the idea of an "app" an exercise in redundancy.

If WinMe worked fine for you, you were in the minority. WinMe was infamously bad. I had to reboot it frequently every time I used it, because it would either slow down to a crawl, freeze, or crash within a half hour or a couple of hours at most. It could rarely finish a hard drive defragmentation without a background Windows process interrupting it, making it start over from the beginning. The stability of XP seemed like a miracle in comparison.