Microsoft previews bevy of new features coming to Windows 10

[DanceswithUnix]

That sort of inconvenience is what will keep people on Windows.

That is the sort of thinking that kept people using WordStar long after good word processors existed. You assume that the dross you are using is typical of everything else, and given the dross you are using was really hard to get to a decent level of proficiency the thought of changing is abhorrent.

In reality, the Linux I learnt 25 years ago is still useful now, the Windows 3.1/DOS stuff I learnt back then has been re-learnt over and over and over again with frankly no gain in productivity or usefulness.

Laptop is now installed with Fedora 25, and is happily updating itself. Everything I tried works so far, even the camera which I never use. I still don't like the Gnome desktop, when the update has finished I will install KDE because I have a choice. I should have done this months ago

[go4brendon]

The killer feature for me would be to choose what bloody updates I want.

and to turn off telemetry

Telemetry above all others. And seriously why have they made the user profile a small icon on the left hand side, such necessary.

[peterb]

I had no intention of moving to Windows 10 before this announcement.





I haven't changed my mind.

[Rubarb]

I had no intention of moving to Windows 10 before this announcement.

I haven't changed my mind.

That's the problem , if you plan to upgrade in the future with say a kabylake or a ryzen you might have to use windows 10.

I think thats unlikely. I only really keep win 7 for a couple of critical legacy applications that run on windows only platforms.

[this_is_gav]

That's the problem , if you plan to upgrade in the future with say a kabylake or a ryzen you might have to use windows 10.

I expect the new CPUs will work with older versions of Windows for a while yet, but you won't be able to make use of all of their features. For this I'm thinking support for new CPU instructions or access to specialist functions such as full virtualisation support. I expect future CPUs will largely work for a few years yet though.

[Saracen]

That's the problem , if you plan to upgrade in the future with say a kabylake or a ryzen you might have to use windows 10.

I think thats unlikely. I only really keep win 7 for a couple of critical legacy applications that run on windows only platforms.

I can't speak for Peterb .... though I suspect his stance will be similar to mine, at least for the first half of this post.

I'd be very surprised indeed if Win7 wouldn't run on those, though clearly, where support for new hardwaee features is required in the OS, MS are unlikely (in the extreme) to provide legacy OSs with it.

However, both Peterb and I are now largely Linux-based (or Mac) with Win7 largely for legacy apps. Are you suggesting that ONLY Win10 will support Kabylake and/or Ryzen? If so, that really would surprise me.

But, even if that were the case, for me, it's still not a problem.

See, quite a bit of "developments" in computing seem to be going in a direction I not only am not interested in, but am adamant to avoid. Examples would be ever-greater integration to the net, be it an IoT fridge, or cloud data storage. The last time I saw technology improvements enabling some facility I really wanted was about 10 years ago, when processors, memory etc finally bexame fast enough for a viable voice recognition/dictation system, likke Dragon. Now that, I used.

I can't really see either Kabylake or Ryzen providing anything I actually need, and while ever-faster machines are nice, I suppose, there comes a point where the marginal increase in actual functionality from performance decreases, and then reaches zero. I've probably already passed that point.

Many, even most, recent "improvements" are more likely to make me use PCs less, not more.

So if using Kabylake or Ryzen made Win10 absolutely mandatory, and Linux wasn't available, no problem, I just won't won't upgrade to Kabylake or Ryzen. I might well not use them anyway.

I would be interested in knowing what people think Kaby/Ryzen would allow me to do that existing hardware, and Win7/Linux won't. but let me put a couple of limits on that :-

- I don't do much gaming these days, will not use Steam, and am perfectly happy to limit my gaming to DeDRM'd stuff via GOG, etc.

- anything to do with VR, 3D, 4K-TV, etc is of zero interest

- I'm not interested in movies on my PC, etc, and for music, I buy CDs or LPs. I have no interest at all in streaming music service, and even less for video. The only video I want on PC is the occasional instructional or review video on Youtube, and as that averages maybe 1 per month, it's not a priority.

- Personal privacy is a very high priority, and for that reason, almost all IoT things are off the menu.

[peterb]

That's the problem , if you plan to upgrade in the future with say a kabylake or a ryzen you might have to use windows 10.

I think thats unlikely. I only really keep win 7 for a couple of critical legacy applications that run on windows only platforms.

I thought id replied to this

but I only use windows 7 for a couple of legacy applications that only run on a windows OS.

While I don't go as far as Saracen in protection my privacy, I am fairly cautious about what Im prepared to share, and who Im prepared to share it with. But generally I don't like the way Microsoft are going with their home editions of software, and the win7-win10 upgrade nag was pretty much the last straw.

My computing base is now largely *nix based, either Linux or Berkly BSD which forms the base of Apples operations systems, and they fulfil 99% of my computing needs, with the legacy Windows 7 providing the remaining 1%

[DanceswithUnix]

While I don't go as far as Saracen in protection my privacy, I am fairly cautious about what Im prepared to share, and who Im prepared to share it with.

I am nothing like Saracen in protection of my privacy, in that I will sell my purchasing and viewing habits to the highest bidder.

But for me Microsoft is failing to provide a working system. I give them personal info, they give me stress. Not a deal I want to make.

This morning my daughter wanted to know when her music lesson was. This was delivered electronically, so she turned on her PC, which would only say "installing updates" until it was time to leave. A computer where you have to turn it on the day before and write the result down on a bit of paper where you know you can get at it without delay is not a useful tool.

AMD are pretty good at providing open source Linux support, so I think I'm good.

[SHSPVR]

Installed and running 15002 at the moment , I can't say I'm inpressed with it.
Seems very slow and buggy as hell.

That only the half of it, It seem be even worse then the last ver

[Ttaskmaster]

That is the sort of thinking that kept people using WordStar long after good word processors existed. You assume that the dross you are using is typical of everything else, and given the dross you are using was really hard to get to a decent level of proficiency the thought of changing is abhorrent.

I've had several friends, all techie people far more intelligent and knowledgable about everything, try to show me how much better Mac OS and Linux, Ubuntu et al are, all while lecturing me on how I'm a retarded caveman living in the dark ages with my stupid Windows OSes...
It gets to the questions stage and most of their responses are along the lines of, "Ah... yes, well, you can only do that in Windows, but you can get emulators which work... sort of... sometimes", or the classic, "Ah, yes, you need to understand Unix programming and a whole bunch of other stuff for THAT one... yes, I know Windows lets you do it by just pressing a button, but Windows is naff, because I say so...".

I've had maybe 15 years of people trying to sell me on various OSes and Windows always comes up as the most suitable, mainly because I don't do or need half the techie-dross stuff that it seems people have the biggest problems with...

[TheAnimus]

Oh and how Ttaskmaster. I have no issues using most POSIX systems (I hate some of the design choices mind) but it reached peak omnishambles with a decision I made a fortnight ago.

I spent Christmas and New Years with my GF visiting my Vietnamese friends. They had an old laptop that I'd helped them buy 5 years ago. I'd put a licensed version of windows 7 on it.

It was having problems. Turns out they had taken it to a local computer shop because it had been running slow. They put a pirate version of windows 7 on. Lots of updates hadn't installed, had some nasty rootkit, netstat -a showed nothing, even after I opened a connection.... Dodgy. It was running incredibly slowly too.

I decided to put Ubuntu on it. This was a mistake. I should have just bought a windows 10 license for it.

The first issue was that Ubuntu just gosh darn it didn't work well. The virus riddled 7 install took about 60 seconds to boot. Ubuntu? Minutes. As in you've time to cut up a coconut and enjoy it whilst it boots to desktop.

The performance was awful, just awful. Switch between thunderbird and firefox, the whole thing locked up even the mouse animation.

Then after one day it just stopped working. No useful errors, just constant reboot loop, complaining about something cryptic and as it turns out completely unrelated.

The virus riddled 7 had been chugging along for months. Linux hates basic hardware, even SATA HDDs was able to corrupt itself so badly it couldn't boot/auto repair.

After about 2 hours of my life I realised that the HDD was unreliable and just outright lying in the SMART information. My friend set off to get a new SSD, I should have put windows on it, but I didn't.

Now the UI hangs have disappeared completely, result! Why a machine with 2gb of physical RAM and a core i3 was blocking everything whilst swapping I don't know, sounds like a really bad OS design decision to me.

I set everything up as you would for a computer unsavvy friend. Ubuntu set to log on straight to the desktop, got the email set up, skype (oh why is this still hard). I fly back to London then I get a phone call at 6am. They had new internet installed, the technician couldn't get the WiFi to work, in doing so it appeared he had set up a new keychain with a password no one knew. This results in you being unable to simply make a new WiFi connection as you would normally because for some completely pants on head retarded reason you must enter the password for the existing keychain, no option to make a new one. As to why you would want to store WiFi stuff on the same keychain you would put something remotely secret on I've no idea. But bad ethos or not I plowed forward.

No WiFi, no remote help... OK, Open the Terminal. That took about 10 min. Type:

rm ~/.local/share/keyrings -fr

Oh **** no, that's not right, this is ubuntu 14, that was only for 13, obviously different again in 10. This is why I REALLY HATE linux.

So it's:

rm ~/.gnome2/keyrings/ -fr

Oh dear, what's that, typing a space, ok this is too dangerous to do. What's the UI for this, there must be a way there. Ah there is. Ok they can't find it, doing this on whatsapp is frustrating. Maybe it's not installed by default? I mean it might not be, apparently some SO post says you need "seahorse" to be able to manage the keychain from the UI.

This is why I absolutely hate linux. Worse yet I have to know it, and solaris.

[nobodyspecial]

The killer feature would be to extend win7 This is the most annoying article I've every tried to read...LOL. I don't want my desktop doing anything like what is shown. The OS just needs to get the heck out of my way so I can get more stuff done I'll try 10 again maybe after they get the 2nd update out this year, but so far it seems they're just going the complete opposite still of where I want to see them go. I don't want my desktop to act mobile. EVER. I thought 8 was bad, but 10 is just 8 on steroids.

[DanceswithUnix]

It gets to the questions stage and most of their responses are along the lines of, "Ah... yes, well, you can only do that in Windows, but you can get emulators which work... sort of... sometimes"

Windows games is the usual killer, they need Windows to run and there really isn't any way out of it. Sometimes a newish game comes out on Linux like Civ6 is about to, and I don't have to reboot for weeks, but that isn't the norm.

I am just venting frustration at Microsoft, sorry if it came across as aimed at you. I was OK to pay a £60 OEM Windows license every 5 years, for low end machines it is a lot but for a games playing desktop it isn't that bad. But it feels like the transition from 7 to 10 has been nothing but grief, to the point the "free" cost has been a bad deal. Nice that this latest feature list includes the refresh system to automate the relentless re-installs, but I never felt the need for an automated reinstaller for Windows 7. It would generally outlive the hard drive you installed it on. I can't think of a single Windows 7 reinstall I did that wasn't down to a trojan accident or hardware failure.

If Windows 10 was rock solid, I expect people wouldn't baulk so much at the compulsory updates either.

[Ttaskmaster]

Windows games is the usual killer, they need Windows to run and there really isn't any way out of it.

And snap, I'm caught firmly in it.

I am just venting frustration at Microsoft, sorry if it came across as aimed at you.

No offense. I've had worse!

Nice that this latest feature list includes the refresh system to automate the relentless re-installs, but I never felt the need for an automated reinstaller for Windows 7. It would generally outlive the hard drive you installed it on. I can't think of a single Windows 7 reinstall I did that wasn't down to a trojan accident or hardware failure.

I haven't had to do squat to Win10 ever since swapping.
I've had to reinstall Win7 several times, at least once because the OS "simply corrupted"...

You go with what works, I guess.

[Rubarb]

you know if someone would only port DX12 to windows 7 or if dx12 dies a death and vulkan takes over ................. who would honestly even comprehend using windows 10?

It's pants

[Saracen]

....

If Windows 10 was rock solid, I expect people wouldn't baulk so much at the compulsory updates either.

You may be right about "people", and obviously, I don't speak for anyone but me.

I would baulk. I am not, now or ever, putting Win10 on my machines (isolated test system excluded) while MS exert their right to make any chanfes they like to the OS on my system, whenevr they want, and whether I object or not.

Some users here complain about updates installing at inconvenient times, getting in the way of real use. This is true, and I agree, but is not my main objection to principle. Others complain about introduced instability. Again, I agree but it's not my main issue. Others are concerned about caregully selected drivers being overwritten. As before, I agree but it isn't what frosts my conkers.

There are several other such points but my main issue with automatic, mandatory updates is that MS can chanfe the functionality if my machines, machines on which I rely to make a living, in wgatever way they wish, at whatever time they wish, to suit their objectives, with absolute indifference to any problems or inconvenience it may cause me.

As an example of the type of thing, go back to Win8 and the removal of the Start Menu. Regulars here may remember I was scathing about that. I have used Windows since VERY early versions, and developed a menu structure which is in place on all my machines, and I have been using it for, oh, 20 years?

Rhen along comes MS, decides it wants to do things differently, deletes that and giives us that stupid Tonka Toy Metro UI and tells us it's an improvement. Well, nuts to that.

Yes, I know Win8 was an option, and a paid-for upgrade and, yes, I know that despite wgat MS wanted, various 3rd party utilities coukd restore and even enhance the old Start Menu. That, as I moaned extensively at the time, was not the point. The point is what it betrayed about MSs mindset. They could, very easily, have left a control panel option (or whatever) to re-enable Start Menu and disable Metro/MUI for those users (like me) that really didn't want their new app-oriented UI but chose, as a deliberate policy and in spite of vociferous and ferocious adverse reaction, to stick to their priorities no matter what we, the users, thought.

So, my reaction was to reject Win8 and revert to Win7. I still have unused, sealed Win8 upgrades sitting on my shelf. Worst waste if my money ever.

Now fast-forward to Win10 and mandatory auto-install updates.

If I go to Win10, next time MS make some OS change because it suits their marketing objectives, my machinss will just change, like it or not, and I have naff-all say in the matter.

Well, it ain't happening. I am NOT, on principle, handing control over the setup, configuration and control of my computers to the mercurial whim of MS marketing folk, to do whatever-the-heck they want wuth. Not now, not ever, not under any circumstances whatever.

It's an utter non-starter. So, for me, rock-solid or not, and absolutely regardless of new features, Win10 is off my agenda and won't go back on it unless MS reverse that decision. AndxI don't see that happening.

And that is why I went to the trouble of researching alternatives, and slowly migrating almost everything over to Linux.

Contrary to TheAnimus' experiences, I found the switch to Ubuntu to be very smooth. Remarkably so, in fact.