Windows 10 - The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly (part I

[madbadgalaxyman]

Windows 10 – The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

by madbadgalaxyman, 3rd November 2016

After three days customizing two new installations of Windows 10, this article was going to describe the bad points and the good points of this Operating System. But the ease-of-use and intuitiveness and User Experience when using the brand new Graphical User Interface of Windows 10 is not any better than the user experience when using the Windows 7 interface, so there isn't that much that comes under the category of “The Good”,

So this review will only describe the many frustrations & limitations of using this new operating system; the bad things, and the really bad things.....in other words, all you will read about here is ”the Bad” and “The Ugly”.


THE BAD


Windows 10 is Bloatware that takes up a lot of memory & resources ::

This O.S. is Bloatware, as compared for instance to the spare simplicity of Windows 7, but there is little significant gain in usability. Win 10 uses a large space on your disk drive. The very large size of this program isn’t a problem for those with 500GB and greater Hard Disk Drives, but if you have a small Solid State Disk (60 GB to 240 GB) instead of a larger Hard Disk Drive, you will be really annoyed at how much drive space Win 10 uses up.

Win10 also has a distressing tendency to use a lot of RAM, for instance my system memory use was never less than 20 percent, and apparently some installs have it even worse due to a memory leak problem.(go to Task Manager; then click on “Performance” then click on “Memory” to bring up memory usage. Windows Geeks then click on “Resource Monitor” to get the gory details of CPU, Memory and Disk usage.)

The original purpose of the User Interface of an Operating System, that its job is to allow you to get your job done quickly and efficiently, without too much tweaking of the OS, has been lost in Win 10 ::

Win 10 has an inefficient user Interface that needs cleaning up. The brand new Graphical User Interface is too crowded, and arguably not as intuitive to use as the much simpler Graphical User Interface of Windows 7, nor are essential commands easy to find in Win 10, leading to slower operation of this OS by the new user ::

(1)Win 10 has vast numbers of (mostly not strictly necessary) apps & programs & features pre-installed, filling up the Graphical User Interface and the Start Menu, thereby making it harder to find the actual program that you do want to run. To achieve efficiency, the first thing the user has to do is to spend a long time removing/inactivating large numbers of unwanted programs and apps, and removing some of the large numbers of programs in the Start Menu.
(2) There is nothing intuitive about the new command structure, so trying to accomplish relatively simple tasks can have the new user of Win 10 reaching for the Help file .
(3) The windows that pop up for the giving of commands are radically oversimplified in Win 10, so that commands that bring into effect simple Management changes in Settings & Configurations are often not even available in the first-order command structure. Therefore, you often have to figure out what to do, or give commands to Windows, by using nerdy/geeky utilities like gpedit.msc, msconfig, and the Task Manager.
(4) Thus, the original Really Good Idea of having a single Control Panel enabling the user to easily accomplish all of the most important Operating System management tasks has been deprecated (and just about lost) in Win 10. The (new design) Win 10 Control Panel leaves out the commands needed for many common tasks.
(5) If you do run into trouble and you want to figure out how do something in this OS, there is no longer a comprehensive Windows Help facility to answer your questions, and instead you have to use the fairly useless Cortana application, which can hardly solve any problem except for the most trivial ones. (See next paragraph)

“Windows Help” is replaced by the much less useful “Cortana” ::

Windows 10 doesn't have a comprehensive “Windows Help” facility anymore. It's got Cortana instead, and this friendly new “Artificial Intelligence friend & helper” is like that Talking Vending Machine that annoys everybody with its chatter in “The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy”;
more of an annoyance than a serious piece of software that actually does what you want it to do properly! Too often, Cortana gives much worse answers than an old-fashioned Help facility! But if you do want answers, you might be stuck with it, as it is very very difficult to remove.

Too many unnecessary apps & programs are turned “on” by default ::

The vast multitude of bundled apps & programs are actually pretty poor on average, often intrusive and trivial. Some are all too similar to spyware & adware. You are never going to use many of these apps & programs, as there are much better alternatives available, and they tend to use up considerable system resources. These “rubbish” Apps should be easy to remove, but actually Windows tries to make it hard for the user to uninstall them.......so what is there to distinguish many of the Very Trivial bundled apps from spyware and adware?

CONTINUED IN NEXT TWO POSTS - PARTS 2 AND 3

[madbadgalaxyman]

THE BAD (continued)


Numerous background Processes and Programs and Software Updaters and Apps can slow down your system, and they often use significant system and bandwidth resources ::

As installed, Win 10 can slow down your system, or slow down your web browsing, at least in some circumstances, and it can sometimes use up significant portions of the data allowance that is provided to you by your ISP, due to many unnecessary things going on in the background. Dozens of unnecessary things are turned “on” by default after a fresh OS install, causing major frustration, so you really have to spend a very long time reconfiguring Windows 10 in order to restrain these bad tendencies of this O.S.

For instance:
- even shortly after installation, Windows 10 tried to download several Operating System updates.
- there were several apps and system modules using my internet connection without me knowing about them, shortly after I installed Win 10.
- apps were running in the background, quite unnecessarily.
- Windows even tried to do a disk defrag (!!) within a few days of me installing it (bizarre!).
- The bundled Antivirus software, which is on by default and which is very difficult to turn off permanently, noticeably slowed down some of the tasks that I was trying to undertake with my computer.
- there are dozens of Services & Applications & Programs & Apps & Modules that are often trying to update or reconfigure themselves by accessing the internet , and they often do these bandwidth-hogging updates without the user's knowledge! (most of these “program updaters” are unnecessary, and should be turned off.....)
- There are very many Background programs & services & processes, running without you being aware of them, the names of which can be revealed by running utilities such as msconfig & gpedit.msc & Task Manager. Some of these are critically important system processes, but good numbers of them run secretly in the background without you having any need for them whatsoever. (a good firewall is essential for finding “hidden” apps & programs & services that are using your internet connection......many firewalls can block access to the internet by specific programs and services.)

Because of large numbers of hidden “background” processes & softwares in Win 10, the Programs that I was working with, and the Operating System itself, slowed down drastically on several occasions (from time to time) ; the many background programs/processes sometimes used up too much of the Ram Memory & CPU resources, and they also frequently helped themselves to my internet connection.

So if you want Win 10 to run efficiently, you have to get rid of bucketloads of this unnecessary “stuff”, as Win 10 and Win 10 Programs can use up a lot of RAM and internet bandwidth.(the “Resource Monitor” utility can help to isolate resource hogs)


THE UGLY


Win 10 compromises your privacy ::

Windows 10, and many of its components, and many apps, radically compromise your privacy by “reporting” back lots of information to various organizations & people & computer programs on the internet. Partial solutions to this problem can be found on the World Wide Web.

Incompatibility with a lot of Windows XP and “early 2000s” software ::

Win 10 is not compatible with a lot of early-2000s software, especially software that was designed for Windows XP (a good example is MS Word 1997-2003). One solution is to have another computer running Windows 7 or Windows XP, which are more compatible with old software. But perhaps there is an “uber-nerd” out there who can think of a better solution to this significant problem! (Yeah, I know, you can actually run a virtual version of XP)

Microsoft has made the removal of the vast quantity of unnecessary pre-installed Software & Operating System Features very difficult, and sometimes these features are nearly impossible to remove or turn off ::

It is a very-time-consuming task in Win 10 (too often requiring you to read lots of technical information) to reconfigure this OS by removing or turning off the many annoying and unwanted programs/processes/apps that hog system resources or use your data allowance. Microsoft often makes it incredibly difficult (or impossible) to remove programs or services!!

For instance, this O.S. comes with the newly-created browser “Edge” which is still pretty rough at the edges and not-very-fast compared with the competition; yet Edge is nearly impossible to get rid of.

As another example, many would like to remove the useless system-resource-hogging application known as Cortana, and again this is a Very difficult task to accomplish. There is no moderately easy way to Exterminate or turn off Cortana in some versions of Windows 10, though I note that thousands of pages tech-speak have been written about to “how to Kill off Cortana”.

Many of us would also like to remove the bundled Antivirus Software (Windows Defender) because other antivirus software is more powerful & configurable, but all the obvious commands which were supposed to “turn it off” didn't actually turn off Windows Defender completely, leaving plenty of residual activity going on in the background.

It should not be necessary for the user to do significant amounts of research, and to play around with the operating system for an extended period, in order to turn off Windows Defender and other unwanted features. But the infernal Windows 10 had this experienced user scratching his head......

To remove or inactivate software & features & apps & services, I frequently needed to look up “how to” on the ‘Net, and I often had to use nerdy tools such as gpedit.msc and msconfig and Task Manager and the Registry Editor (regedit). (and don’t you forget to log on as The Administrator)
On one occasion, I even had to get really technical and modify/add/remove Windows System files in the Operating System Folder by using software in Linux, running outside of Windows!

Microsoft has thus made it a very difficult task for the average user to do simple customization and simple removal/deactivation of features and programs.

[madbadgalaxyman]

THE UGLY (Continued)


Constant, and often unnecessary, Operating System Updates are hard to turn off ::

A big annoyance when using Windows 10 is that the bl**dy thing frequently wants to download and install lots of updates. You can try obvious methods of stopping these frequent updates, which can use up your ISP data allowance, but these commands may not work, so you have search around for a way to completely stop those updates until such time as you really do want and need specific updates.

Removing trivial or unnecessary apps is often difficult or nearly impossible ::

Very large numbers of not very useful apps come pre-installed with Win10, unwanted apps that should be easy to remove or inactivate. But many apps under Win10, some of them running in the background and doing “secret” things on the internet, are not easy to remove or inactivate. Many apps resisted my multiple attempts to remove them.....forcing me to “bring out my inner geek” and enter obscure text commands into DOS-like Command Line utilities such as Windows PowerShell.

Getting permission to modify the System directories/folders is now a very difficult thing ::

In Windows 7 & Windows XP, you could play with the operating system and modify the operating system quite easily. In comparison, tweaking this Win 10 Beast is very difficult; try and do anything at all in the system directories and “permission withheld” is too often the result of your attempts to tinker and to modify. You can achieve control, but be prepared to fiddle around a lot.

Cortana is not very useful or helpful, and, worse still, it is nearly impossible to Inactivate or Exterminate it ::

Microsoft has removed the visually obvious “off switch” that used to be in Cortana, in some versions of Windows 10. So now there is a major industry figuring out ways to ex!!terminate Cortana.
But this Cortana Beast is as hard to slay as a hydra-headed monster; you can try your hardest to inactivate it or remove it, but soon enough it just starts up again.
So please Microsoft, spare us this “cute AI friend” and give us the option of using a really useful standard Help Facility!! Cortana is not even as good at answering questions as the old Windows Help facility.
___________________________________ ___

And lastly:
Win 10 has a Vicious habit of turning things back on..... after you had turned them off beforehand! You think you that you’ve killed off a program....but then, bingo!, it starts running again......so Windows tries to control you instead of you controlling Windows!



___________________________________ __

[garymck]

I had Windows 10 on 2 home computers, one day after a "compulsory update" I was unable to log in to either computer. My password was no longer accepted. This is happening to significant numbers of people and there is no resolution available. Apparently a particular file is becoming corrupted for reasons that Microsoft apparently don't understand and are unable to fix. The only way to recover is to reinstall and recover your data - assuming you have a backup. If you have no backup you lose EVERYTHING.

After losing data when the computers rebooted to install updates during imaging sessions despite trying everything to change times and defer updates.... I have given up,now use Linux Mint Cinnamon for pretty much everything with the occasional dual boot to Windows 7....

Windows 10 is crap....

My 2 Cents
Gary

[AstralTraveller]

I mostly gave up on Windows years ago. I now run Linux Mint Mate with Win7 in a virtual machine. That way if Win goes belly up it's just a matter of copying the last backup of the .vdi file back to the .VirtualBox folder and I'm going again. Linux installs themselves are small (I think my OS and apps total <12 GB) and the software tends to be quite frugal with resources (my 8GB of RAM is generally < 1/2 full and I can't remember the last time I used swap space). I've also found installing Linux easier than installing Win. Probably the biggest drawback is that sometimes implementation of new features is slow (eg Bluetooth was around for quite a while before Mate had a simple bug-free interface).

I need Win for some astronomy programs (Occult, OccultWatcher, Tangra, C2A) and my wife needs to use MS Word for highly formatted documents (otherwise LibreOffice Writer works OK). There are Linux versions of many programs (eg Stellarium, Cartes du Ciel) and equivalents of most things (eg GIMP for Photoshop).

[madbadgalaxyman]

Thanks, Gary and David,

Agreed, Win 10 is a bad version of Windows.
The number of "annoying or fatal issues" (such as those you have mentioned, and zillions of other problems) is absolutely enormous in Win 10.
Also , the sense of "loss of control" infuriates many experienced users.

But Win 7 is not too bad!
I am going to kill one of my Win 10 instals, as it is optional, and replace it with Win 7.

cheers
Robert

Browsers seem to have got more sluggish, too, at least when used with my slow mobile internet speeds:::

(1) the latest version of Firefox ran remarkably slowly on my machines, so I killed it and installed a much earlier version. Firefox nags you all the time to download updates ....so turn update off if you are happy with the version you have got.

(2) I switched to Opera browser in the last year, as it is fast, but the latest version of Opera doesn't work properly with both of my Win 10 installations; it has got a very bad case of memory leakage which caused massive overuse of RAM.

(3) I hate to say it, but Internet Explorer 11 works well with my slow internet speeds, and it has reasonable privacy and security features.

(4) I don't use Chrome, because of privacy issues.

Added in edit

I note that there are two new and interesting browsers available:

Vivaldi
http://au.pcmag.com/vivaldi/43225/review/vivaldi

Maxthon
http://au.pcmag.com/maxthon-cloud-browser/50/review/maxthon-cloud-browser

(Sorry about the advertisement that seems to appear over the face of these two software reviews, but it is worth getting rid of in order to read the reviews)

[tlgerdes]

I'm going against your opinion and giving W10 5 stars as an improvement over every other windows version.

I find it so much more efficient to find little used apps by typing into the search bar. I find it much more resource efficient compared to W7, by at least 5% on memory resources alone. Disk, meh, who cares SSDs and spinning rust are cheap as chips (60 cappuccino's for 240G)

Works great with older hardware too.

I suppose though you still think your 1970s Ford Falcon is safer than a modern Hyundai because it doesn't fall apart in a crash. 😂

[madbadgalaxyman]

It can be a matter of individual taste, both with cars and operating systems!

Also, I note that my mobile data speeds are very limited, and that modern Operating systems and browsers and apps are designed to work well mainly with high data speeds.....so this reduces the quality of the user experience for many.

As a really really old bugger of the computing world (did a Fortran programming course in 1979 and we used Punched cards to enter the data) (and I can remember when DOS 6.1 was the state-of-the-art......) I prefer a very clean user interface with very few distractions. But I am not a cave dweller; the first hard disks seemed to fail every 6 months, I recall!

[julianh72]

+1
Windows 10 has gone fine for me on all of my family's computers, and has breathed "new life" into several older computers that were really struggling with Windows 7 or 8. I haven't encountered any fundamental problems.

[rustigsmed]

I agree with the OP.
updating from W8.1 to W10 was the biggest mistake I've made on my current pc.

IMO it is slower to load. you seem to have less control over settings and things seem to be hidden. programs uninstalled etc etc. I find it a mission to find files now as well. a ridiculous amount of "updates" is also annoying. it also stuffed around royally with my storage configuration. An OS shouldn't be annoying.

I would definitely recommend avoiding it if possible. the main reason I went in there was for DX12 and that doesn't even perform well (games).

[Regulus]

The most annoying thing are the updates.
The other night i turned the media-centre PC on to watch something, and it had downloaded the Anniversary update. I couldn't use the thing for 12 hours.
The other PC updated and the Start Menu didn't work except as a right mouse click menu. And now some Apps from the store don't run at all, even ones downloaded after the update.
I'm very over having to have MS's every new experiment and am rigging my gear for Linux. I thought I would have to keep a windows partition for my Music Composition program, but they have a version for my flavour of Linux.
And Dark Table and Rawtherapee are quite suitable for processing my terrestrial photos.
So it will soon be goodbye Windows.

Trev

[billdan]

Why can't Microsoft produce an operating system that works from the initial install? Back when Win95/98 was around there was no such thing as constant updates.
I'm using XP and they are still giving me updates everyday.

[cfranks]

I'm currently playing with mounting an Intel Compute Stick (only available with Win 10) on my OTA driving my cameras and focus controller directly and communicating with the Gemini2 wirelessly. The only dragging cable remaining is the 12v supply as the G11 has no facility for through-the-mount cables. The project was working perfectly until Wed last when those MS morons forced updates on me. They literally killed everything, stopped the Stick dead. I had to do a System Reset to get the Win 10 back, deleting all my installed software and what came back was very unstable for a few hours until MS found the Stick again and now it is dead again. I am now redesigning everything for my Intel NUC currently running Win 7. Up you MS!

Charles

[Exfso]

I am not sure how you are getting updates for XP, they stopped supporting that a fair while back.:confused2:

[acropolite]

I've heard the argument that you can easily find an application by typing in a search query, came from an IT guru who thought it quicker to type in application names than one or 2 mouse clicks.

If you think typing in an application name is quicker than a couple or in some instances just one mouse click, then IMO you are seriously deluded...

I see problems every day with our customers, usually the mantra is "my wifi is slow" or "my network is running slow, the cable must be faulty". Usually the problem is W10, most often on a PC that is used infrequently and due the aforementioned update regime, in some cases because of a buggy update.

As soon as I get some spare time I'll be installing Linux, W10 is a step too far.

[madbadgalaxyman]

I absolutely agree with you.

I had two different (fresh) Win 10 installations which experienced two different sets of problems.!.....as per the first post in this thread.



(Oh, and folks, there are ways and means to turn off the dreaded constant updates....google it!! )

[Regulus]

Windows 10 now pops up a notice to Rate It, and give feed back! I don't need an OS with an Identity Crisis.

[Davi5678]

Great post and write up!:thumbsup:

I'm a lifetime mac user, but I just bought an asus laptop to run some astro software that I can't use on the mac. ( I'm not interested in dual booting or running an emulator like Parallels. )
At this stage I'm planning on keeping it quarantined as much as possible by not letting it connect to the internet unless I have to.
I'd really appreciate any info regarding which programs are bloatware and which are essential as I'm not really familiar with any of them. I'm slowly working on setting it up and getting used to it. ( the trackpad is infuriating! ):shrug::thanx:

[issdaol]

I run windows 7 in a Fusion session on my Mac Book Pro Laptop........extremely fast and reliable and will even run my most advanced windows graphics intensive games better than my dedicated windows games desktop (also Windows 7.

All of my most critical apps are on the Mac now so can't ever see myself updating to Windows 10 unless there is some critical need in the future that cannot be done by the Mac