An unpleasant experience

[Arch_Enemy]

Today my company is upgrading our Windows 7 machine to Windows 10.

You have my sympathy...

I'm on a W10 box right now. Let's face it, an operating system is an operating system, however...

While the interface is annoying, what REALLY PIFSES ME OFF is when I'm in the middle of something this insipid little blue box pops up and says, "There are updates available for your system". Right in the middle of the screen. Right in the middle of your work.

And there is no way to close it.

You hve to click "OK" and then it takes you to the update screen. THEN you can close it and get back to doing what you were doing. There are other minor annoyances, but this one really irritates the living daylights out of me.

[Telyx]

My (refurb) PC came with Win10 Pro. I immediately installed Mint 18.1 MATE as dual boot. Last weekend, I tried downloading the Windows Cumulative Update using my cellphone as a modem, which usually works great (at least 1.4MB/sec)--and after 4 hours, only 780MB or so of the 990+ MB update had downloaded. I killed the connection. it isn't worth my time. I could have had at least 4 fresh, complete Mint installs all done and updated in that time!

[BG405]

I thought they were supposed to have fixed the appallingly slooooooow updates.

Last time I worked on a mate's Win10 machine, the intention was to try a Linux live USB to see if it worked.
It did, after waiting about half an hour for the updates to install before the machine could be rebooted. Grrrr .. This would not be convenient if, for example, the Pub is about to close. Or you need to set out for work. I suppose Hibernate might be a workaround, or does the OS still insist on doing the updates first? it was bad enough waiting an age for Win7 to hibernate.

Which reminds me .. in Win7, when the battery reached critical level, the machine simply REFUSED to stay in hibernate. It would power down then immediately wake up again, forcing me to carry the machine home, ¾ mile, with it under my arm, before the battery died altogether. Otherwise it would cook itself in my bag. Hope they've fixed THAT stupid behaviour in Win10!

Overall, I'd rate the User Experience (0-9) for Linux Mint at 9, Win7 at about 7, xp about the same with 10 scoring a mighty zero, beating Vista at 1.

[VirusZero]

I haven't had a lot of experience with Windows 10. Most of it has been downgrading Windows 10 to 8... Like when my father powered up his laptop one day and found it had installed Windows 10 without asking. In the process it also broke his email program and a couple other programs he used. I had to downgrade back to 8.1, reinstall the broken programs and block it from just auto-upgrading again.

I never liked the idea of Windows just being able to start updates without giving the user any say in the matter. Not being able to defer them to a convenient time or even reject them completely. Which is something I especially didn't like about Windows 10... there's no way, by default, to turn off the updates. Which if they ended up with a part of an update that breaks things it could end up being auto pushed/installed to you and breaking your computer without anything you can do. Couple the auto-update feature with a lack of transparency of what the updates are/do... makes a real recipe for disaster. (Or at least the change logs used to be very minimal at best...)
They even had issues with this relatively recently with a patch meant for Intel processors getting applied to AMD ones and screwing them up.

I get the idea is that people don't keep on top of the security of their systems otherwise... but it should be their choice on that.

As for Windows 10 in the business world... I do fully expect that it will move towards a subscription service. This way they can charge a yearly fee instead of a one time cost per license.

[BG405]

my father powered up his laptop one day and found it had installed Windows 10 without asking

This is the reason I didn't reinstall Win7 when it was borked by plugging my scanner in, which, BTW works well on Linux and actually has all the options available, unlike with Windows' child's toy interface with severely restricted capabilities.

I never liked the idea of Windows just being able to start updates without giving the user any say in the matter. Not being able to defer them to a convenient time or even reject them completely. Which is something I especially didn't like about Windows 10... there's no way, by default, to turn off the updates.

People have been charged a fortune by satellite internet providers due to this. People who do charity & community work in rural Africa for example.

lack of transparency of what the updates are/do

That is what I found the most obnoxious. Some of those sparse descriptions have been outright LIES.

[killer de bug]

My condolences.

You have my sympathy...

Best day of my working life.
After more than 3 hours, the IT gave up and stopped investigating why my system doesn't work anymore. They gave me an empty system where I can only read my mails (useful...) and will reinstall W10 again today.

The IT guy told me: W10 is better than W7.
Indeed. Indeed. I already feel much less stress at work.

[Fiduggin67]

I was looking for somewhere to vent my frustration and I guess this is a good place.

I'm a Linux only guy, but the highest spec laptop we own is still a Windows 10 laptop (HP, A10 processor with 8GB memory.) My wife refuses to use Linux, so for the rare times she even EVER uses a computer, I leave windows on it and have not attempted the hoops you have to go through to dual boot a recent laptop (secure boot, UEFI, etc.)

About two weeks ago, I attempted to login with my password on this laptop and immediately received the error that my details were incorrect. After only one attempt, I was redirected to Microsoft's account page to change my password just to get into a machine that I owned. I thought it was extremely odd that I was only allowed one attempt before being directed to obtain a new password, but I went through the process and changed it. I might add that I am dead certain the password I used was CORRECT. This laptop is rarely used and when it is it is just for the occassional word processor document or to upload a file to my personal cloud drive.

Last night, I booted into Windows and once arriving at the desktop I found that no applications would open and the Edge web browser would not allow any links to be clicked. The screen wasn't frozen, but any activity was. I decided to restart the laptop, and lo and behold the Blue Screen of Death!! The error was "Kernel Security Failure". After at least half a dozen attempts, I was finally able to reach a blue screen which allowed me to enter my password. From there it coughed and stumbled its way to the desktop (although it took a good five full minutes to get there.) An expert on the Windows forum looked at the log I submitted and told me is was a driver for the Synaptics touch pad that caused the issue. The cure was to update the drive. Well, it turned out that I already had the latest driver. After at least three hours trolling the net looking for answers, I decided to shut it down. Today, when I started it up, the issue seems to have vanished and the laptop is operating normally, which is, as always, extremely slow.

I will probably never know what the issue was or if or when it will return. I have never been more glad to be a Linux guy.

Thanks for reading

Bob

[DAMIEN1307]

i am so distressed for you that your wife refuses to leave here beloved windows complete with 2 to 3 hour updates, reboots etc...i feel your pain...i told everyone here whos computers i work on...(75 of them to date)..."you have a choice"...if you want me to work on your systems...convert to linux...do not care what version, just convert to linux...NO MORE MICROCRAP WNDBLOES...74 of them listened to me, and really do not need me anymore because everything just works and thats fine with me, im getting to old now to stay up with all of this so im happy for them...the one left over that wont change...totally getting bsod, totally geting infected with malware, refuses to listen to me, i no longer will help her out because she will just not listen...btw...she went to the local computer store...she was told that they will charge her 80 dollars per hour...she then told them my name, you know it as DAMIEN1307 here...to my surprise, they said...DAMIEN...as in the guy on linux mint?...she said yep...the computer shop that makes their fortune working on windows systems told here they know of what ive been doing here on my own for the last 6 yrs...they are reading linux mint forums here in alamogordo nm...they told her again their shop rate was 80 dollars an hour to fix windows problems on win 10 systems...they asked her what i was charging...she told them...oh...hes a personal friend of my husbands...we take him out to dinner once in a while...long story short...i refuse to work on her system now...she also didnt let them work on it for 80 dollars an hour...lol...her husband said thanks...it about time someone said no to her...lol...of course i asked why he doesnt say no...all he said was "happy wife...Happy Life"...they are still best friends of mine but it is a unique situation...i get to say NO...NO....NO to my best friends wife at all times...and i get away with it...lol...lol...DAMIEN

[vansloneker]

You have to dig deep to make Windows 10 behave anywhere near reasonable. It takes me hours and hours honestly. There are a few pros, compared to older Windows versions. On a SSD it will boot in 10 seconds. If it once was registered, you never have to enter the key again on a re-install. Windows 10 installs the appropriate device drivers automatically.

Some cons:
Most of the time it's busy with itself, not with your tasks.
It seems to be an interpreter rather as an operating system.
It's slow. I use shortcuts for opening simple apps like notepad or calculator. On XP they appeared almost immediately. W10 has to think about it first.
Same when copying a file. Drag'n'drop on XP and it's done. W10 has to bring up a 'now copying interface' and is terribly slow at it.
Connect to a network and you have no connection. You have to search and tell the system that yes you really want to connect to that network.
Compared to the modern times W98 network was instantly fast.
Many apparent bugs and nags do not seem to get fixed. But the same can be said of many Linux versions.
Over the years, Microsoft developed the best possible interface to view on a flat screen. Lines, colours and shadows marking windows and fields, suggesting depth, visible feedback on clicks and actions. With W10 they threw it all away and went for nursery school graphics.

I got to say, after installing it to a SSD on my laptop, I didn't touch the device for a couple of weeks. Until after I set up the planned dual boot with Mint.

[vansloneker]

...
About two weeks ago, I attempted to login with my password on this laptop and immediately received the error that my details were incorrect. After only one attempt, I was redirected to Microsoft's account page to change my password just to get into a machine that I owned. I thought it was extremely odd that I was only allowed one attempt before being directed to obtain a new password, but I went through the process and changed it. I might add that I am dead certain the password I used was CORRECT. This laptop is rarely used and when it is it is just for the occassional word processor document or to upload a file to my personal cloud drive.
...

People don't know and Windows doesn't clearly express you can have a local account. It suits MS better when you have a MS account.

[Fiduggin67]

...



Thanks for that. I have not been able to figure out how to do that. I would love to get Microsoft out of my life.

Bob

[AZgl1800]

Today my company is upgrading our Windows 7 machine to Windows 10.

Ouch! Condolences are required

My good friend up the road was forced to get a new Microsoft Surf when the one he had locked up and refused to work anymore. Warranty paid for that but Win10 came along with it.

I got drug into the matter when it needed to be set up on his company network, install the new printer he bought at the same time..... and he bought 2 of those printers, same exact model, and they are both on the network..... what a mess, which HP6090 printer do you want to print to? the shop, or the one in the house? "dunno, cant' tell which is which unless it don't print here".

Deleted both printers, reinstalled them from a CD via USB and forced the install to stay on the CD, not from "online", and then I named the Printers with a special name during the install.

argh!!!!

[coffee412]

Nice to hear from others that feel the same way I do about this lame operating system that M$ pushes.

Just learned today that by default when you first get your new lovely windows 10 computer that bitlocker is on by default and if you forget your login credentials then you are SOL. Cannot even mount the drive (in linux of course) and recover files. Most people do not even realize they have a M$ account where the recovery key file is actually stored to recover their system.

I have one of these M$ Surface pro 4's in my shop right now. It flat out died just after the warranty gave out. No power at all. I cannot mount the drive because of bitlocker. Client does not even realize they have a M$ account and of course do not remember any of their login credentials.

Just seems so idiotic to me that M$ believes people cannot handle their own computers and needs them to help. But then they have no problem encrypting the darn drive.

@vansloneker - Yep. True "Romper Room" graphics.