Windows 10; Is the tide turning into praise?

(NOTE:: These were initial launch responses) And by that, the comments section of this article really is a parade of disappointments (and this is on a Windows-centric site)

Even on my machine, the update that would allow me to upgrade to 10 when ready isn’t even functional (though it’s no big rush for me).

This is a litmus test for Microsoft as to see how serious they are in listening to their users If they’re not taking feedback into account and fixing issues, then I could no longer discount the possibility of a mass migration to Linux Mint at least (since it has the only distro team it seems that truly cares about GUI-driven usability and ease of use).

Anyone who has Windows 10 though as of now, are you satisfied or not?

One thing I find interesting, as you’ve probably already ascertained, is the forced updates. While there may be several motives for this, one that I’ve been hearing quite a bit is that it’s for developers. That is if everyone is getting their updates automatically then developers can worry less about incompatibilities with outdated systems and spend less on technical support fielding tickets with the “run windows update” solution.

Microsoft tried once before to cater more towards developers and less towards users with the Xbox One. It was announced that the Xbox One would not let users share their game discs or buy used games. The games would’ve become locked to the original Xbox One they were used on, or something like that, and this was a nod to developers who don’t make any money off the sale of used versions of their games.

Gamers were all up in arms over this, to such a degree that Microsoft made a full reversal shortly before releasing the Xbox One. Nonetheless that initial impression left a lasting effect on the consumers and is probably a big reason as to why the Xbox One has been performing so poorly against Sony’s Playstation which had come to be known as more gamer-friendly.

Now we see Microsoft doing basically the same thing with Windows.

P.S. I’ve also heard another reason is a nod towards businesses. Businesses often don’t upgrade their systems because there’s more emphasis on stability and they fear installing an update that breaks their proprietary software or might otherwise wreak temporary havok on their operations.

In this case Microsoft has chosen to force the regular consumer to update their systems while Enterprise edition allows businesses to enter into a tier which delays those updates. The idea is that the average consumer becomes a “guinea pig” testing the updates so by the time those updates arrive to Enterprise edition they’ve been tested by millions of users.

P.P.S. Interestingly Linux distributions do something similar. For instance Fedora has come to be known as the “move fast and break things” distribution. This is because Fedora tends to be on the bleeding edge of software releases, Fedora users often have access to the absolute latest releases of Linux software such as desktop environments and kernels.

Distributions such as Mint and Ubuntu are farther behind using older, but more stable and tested, versions of Linux software. The versions used by Ubuntu and Mint have been tested by users of distributions such as Fedora. However; Linux doesn’t force people to use Fedora nor are Fedora users forced to run their package updates.

Based on the information I have read, you at least have the ability to choose your update cycle (fast ring and slow ring).

A typical user might want to choose the slow ring (as the other option would mean very frequent updates). In the few years I had Windows 7 I just kept the automatic updating on (didn’t have any adverse impacts other than occasionally having to cancel a Cycles render).

Anyway, I found there’s actually a lot of people where the update that downloads the needed Win 10 update is failing

This wouldn’t actually install Windows 10, but will allow you to upgrade at your own time (providing it is within a year from now), but Microsoft wasn’t apparently able to get it working nice even with the staggered rollout meant to reduce pressure on the servers.

Really that still doesn’t help me a whole lot with my specific situation. Thing is my internet connection runs up to 25KB/s until I reach 1GB for the month at which point it is throttled down to 16KB/s. Running at those speeds updates usually take a good while to download and I really can’t do two things at once, such as download an update and browse the internet.

I’ve found that if I’m downloading updates and then open a web browser the browser never connects and eventually times out. Once the updates are downloaded then I can browse the net again.

On Windows regardless of whether I’m in a fast or slow update branch I’m probably going to be receiving new updates constantly and not being able to tell it not to download them then there’s no telling when I can and cannot use the internet, or whatever else I need the network for.

P.S. I use my mobile as a wireless access point and while it supports 4G I only have a 2G/EDGE plan.

P.P.S. I find it quite common for a single update to run upwards of 100MB, that takes hours to download. Heh the Windows 10 upgrade itself is 3GB, we’re talking several days, maybe a week, of non-stop downloading.

Downloading Fedora wasn’t so bad for me, it’s only just over 1GB and you can torrent it so I was able to pause the download and resume it as needed.

I mean imagine for a moment that your operating system would only let you browse the internet or use the network sometimes and you never knew exactly when those times would be? Useless that’s what it’d be.

I like the first impressions of it, better than 8.1 anyways. Hoping to have a better experience on surface pro 3. Although I use chrome but Edge seems to be snappier, I’ll give it a good run.
I dont think i’ll be going back to 8.1, so good or bad, this is it for me.

I’m using it right now
and you can download it with a link,
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

Actually none of the “disappointments” were significant to me anyway.

A big 1 GB day 1 patch is out.

It may be wise to wait a little bit, it may take several more of these to iron everything out.

My only question is: Does it run Blender? I was really worried back when everyone was panicking about upgrading to Win8.1 from Win7/8. There were even compatibility tools that would check your system to find apps that might not run. Turns out, those fears were mostly unfounded so I’m hoping the same holds true with Win10.

@safety
yeah it does.

But some apps that used to run in the tech preview don’t run any more
and some games like Team fortress 2 now have heaps of graphical issues

Should’ve listen to Ace dragon…

Ace, the install didn’t fail for many people that I’m aware of. Instead, they staggered allowing the users to install it to avoid overloading servers with registration info. So far, I’m enjoying the OS quite a lot.

Windows 10 performance in apps. compared to 8.

Operations will take 1 to 2 percent longer in most cases, most people won’t care, but it’s still a slowdown (so it would seem that Linux further entrenches itself as the king in the performance area).

It also has some serious issues in computers with low end cards like the r7 240.

Windows 10 so far is pretty good. I like the interface and Edge is fantastic, especially considering that I was an Internet Explorer user anyway. (Edge also seems to be faster than IE, but I don’t know for certain if it actually is or not.) I haven’t had any issues either- the install worked just fine, and it’s been perfectly stable so far. (I have of course been having issues with Skyrim since yesterday, but that’s probably more the fault of having 30+ mods installed…)

Microsoft Re-invents the Iron Curtain


“When you upgrade to Windows 10, your default browser will automatically be changed to Edge if you choose the ‘express settings’ option, ignoring the preferences that you had previously chosen. There is an option to maintain your old browser, but you have to click the button that says ‘customize settings,’ which is much smaller than the express option, and then click another button later on to actually enable customization (hint: if you put on your reading glasses, you’ll find it at the bottom left of the screen)…”

“You can change your settings after you’ve upgraded to Windows 10, but it’s not easy. Supposedly, it takes much more effort and technical sophistication than previous versions…”

“Chris Beard, Mozilla’s CEO, is particularly displeased by this ‘aggressive’ action, which is expressed in both an open letter to Microsoft’s CEO as well as a blog post calling for them to fix the issue.”

Have you seen this, there’s reports of ads and 15-30 second commercials in a game that used to come free with Windows since 3.1.

The other option is to pay a yearly subscription to remove the ads. Now I don’t really play the built-in Windows games nowadays and Microsoft needs to get their money from somewhere, but it is a shock to those who were used to the free goodies.

And speaking of that, this is what you get when you become part of a generation that expects to receive everything for free. If companies can no longer make money from selling licenses (due to people not wanting to buy any), where else can they find revenue?

I think I may still upgrade one of these days, but I’m waiting for the dust to settle first.

Oh and by the way, for some reason I got to upgrade to windows 10 with no previous installation of windows other than the tech preview, so it’s a 100% free not just for upgrading, I think.

Believe it or not companies all over the world got by just fine for hundreds of years with ads that didn’t require reading your private emails.

So far the upgrade was smooth for me, no problem at all. And is very easy to change default browser…