Thoughts about Windows 10

That's because of open file handles. If you ever get into the situation that you can't remove the disk and also can't/don't wanna kill explorer, grab Process Exporer, "find handle", search for ones on the disk you want removed, right click, "close handle", done. No process termination necessary. Some programs will crash if you rape its file handles, of course, but I haven't seen explorer.exe do that.

 

Yea, but then you will have to download 3rd party software. I would like to avoid that if possible, in order to keep things as simple as possible.
It makes it seem like Windows is helpless to function on its own (yea, it really is becoming like that, I know). The worst part is that I (and other users too) already paid money to Microsoft to write and to support this thing.

I never had this problem with Windows until the introduction of Windows XP. It's sad that they can't fix it, even after all these years. Now I am also waiting for them to fix the "discovering files" issue and the search function (where's my advanced search?).

Thankfully, I have not encountered this issue of Explorer in Windows 10 hogging files yet.

@HEX1GON, I use that Run window a lot and it works fine for me.

***

My laptop's keyboard broke (Can't type a capital C, D E or a # with the left SHIFT key, F3 is dead and the right SHIFT can't be used to enter a capital C), so I got a new cheap laptop to use. It came with Windows 8, and I decided that it would be the death of me after using it for about 30 minutes. Shortly afterwards, I upgraded to Windows 10.

It's great that the start menu is back, but it's not the same. They removed the shortcuts to various places (i.e documents, pictures, music, videos), replacing it with the Metro interface icons. I didn't realize that there's a way to create a local account (without needing to log into my Microsoft account) at the Windows 8.1 setup, but apparently it can be done from the user accounts control panel.
The OS still has some slight issues. During the first two weeks of use, I saw it hang at the "restarting..." screen and crash (start menu became unresponsive and all icons got corrupted) when I clicked "no" on the screen that prompts you on whether to terminate all running (outstanding) programs in order to shut down. Thankfully, these issues have only happened twice so far.

It also has a lot of clutter. Sure it's great that they're trying to make the lives of new users easier by giving them programs to start using Windows with, but it's just going to be unused bloatware for the rest of us. I don't have a lot of programs installed, but now I take a long time to find Steam because there are too many programs pre-installed into this OS. Somehow, I didn't notice the bloatware on Windows 8.1, probably because its Start Menu was the Metro Interface that was a horrible mess to begin with...

 

sp193, if that's the case then it could be a mixture of driver issues for me, conflicting software etc etc.

 

I sure hope you are joking.

They dont make them like that for good reason.

 

Well, it was the first OS that I connected to the internet on, watched a DVD on and synced music to an mp3 player on. Maybe it just reminds me of a time when using technology was a futuristic experience rather than just everyday life.

Also it only ever bluescreened on me once to my recollection, and that was because it overheated when I tried to play Midtown Madness on a 700Mhz Celeron.

 

ME is known for being the buggiest version of windows to ever exist.

 

I consider Windows XP to be the last OS that was really serious. But even when it was first released, I found it too heavy on my hardware (and so naturally, I stuck with Windows 98 until 2010). But XP was wonderful, with at least a Pentium III and with sufficient RAM.

My first personal PC came with Windows Millennium. It had a nicer startup sound than Windows 98 and had built-in support for USB Mass Storage devices... but then it would start dying on its own, without any reason.
I once watched it BSOD randomly after 3 months of use (after a clean format), getting earlier and earlier in runtime as time progressed. Until it wouldn't even boot into safe mode and I had to erase the whole installation.
Plus the active desktop would crash on its own too, even if you don't set a web page as your desktop wallpaper.

The same Pentium II PC worked fine with Windows 98. It didn't die, but became disused after it became really insufficient for my daily use.

On topic, it seems like they have cut out the Windows Experience Rating thing.

But still, it should not crash or get stuck. Gone are the days, when poor error handling was considered "acceptable".
Perhaps you should contact Microsoft and let them know about the problem? After all, this OS definitely still has some issues...

 

The Windows Experience Rating was a waste of time anyway, it didn't mean anything?
I'll put it this way a porche's lowest performance is always going to be higher than a ford feista's optimal performance!!

 

I found Windows 2000 to be better than XP (at the time at least). I eventually had to upgrade to XP when I got a quad core processor, as Win2k Pro only supported 2 cores/processors.

 

I've used Windows since 3.11 when I started to need to use it instead of just running via the DOS prompt.

Used Windows 95, 98 SE, ME, XP, 7

Windows95 and 98SE as I recall gave frequent BSOD messages, even after fresh installs, ME was hyped like mad as being mega awesome Microsoft product but as soon as you installed drivers and programs it got ever less stable and was regarded as POS by many at the time. I was happy with XP until they stopped supporting it, so after a couple of years with Ubuntu and Mint, moved to Windows 7 reluctantly; happy with it although as use 64bit it doesn't like installing old games, although you can work around a number of such issues. Not moved to Windows 10 yet; plan to next year when its had a while to break in and some of the holes have been filled with sticky tape, plasters and blu-tac as usual.

 

Like Bacteria, I've been with Windows since 3.1 was released. And I learned the hard way that it's best to have as many versions of Windows as possible should you ever grow reliant on a particular piece of software. Right now the free Win10 free upgrade icon tempts me. Part of me wants to use, but logic tells me not to. At the moment, I don't feel the new OS deserves the sacrificing of a Win8.1 key. And I'm certain that I would regret giving it up for what seems to be a rocky launch reminiscent of Vista. I suppose I will just have to wait for it until my next laptop purchase. By then, major issues with Win10 should be ironed out.

 

I too have been a Windows user since 3.1. Had 95, 98, 98SE, 2000, XP, Vista, and currently run 7. This will be my last time running Windows. I cannot support them not only adding the new telemetry system to 10, but also backporting it to 7 and 8. I have updates turned off on my current machine to avoid this. So good for Microsoft, they lost a 22 year loyal customer with this nonsense. My computer belongs to me, not the OS vendor. On to Linux I go.

 

I liked Mint and Ubuntu however wasn't able to install onto Intel NUC computers when got them, I know there is a workaround however not an easy one, so installed Windows 7 several months back to ditch Linux. Linux was very good, used it for a while, trouble was though it didn't offer much choice with programs it would run and Wine didn't run things as well as claimed and was a pain. So, thanks Linux, but back to the pains of using Windows again.

 

Although Windows has been having more and more undesirable (for me) features with each iteration of it, I still feel that Linux is still a worse alternative.
I've been trying since 2003, to like it. Given that it's free, uncontrolled by a monopoly etc. But it's hard to, when the stock UIs are either unintuitive or unusable (i.e. totally no search function), and it's so hard to install programs on it (what's with the need to compile everything? Or the overuse of shell scripts? Or the lack of a setup program for some software like Firefox? Or with the non-standard system libraries?). :/
The distributions that I went with, all had a lot of bloatware too. One could go with just another distribution that they liked... but that's the problem; there are too many of them, leading to lots of non-standard setups that makes understanding this alternative OS really frustrating. Would it kill them, to work together to come up with one great distribution that actually works well?
Plus some things don't even work (i.e. wireless support) without a lot of manual work, which I feel shouldn't happen for software in the 21st century. I couldn't figure out how to get Japanese input working.

I could live with the need for excessive tweaking, as I am a technical guy. But sometimes I get tired, and having to struggle with software is the last thing that I want to experience at the end of every working day. If there was one distribution that has none of the issues that I run into with every distribution that I have used so far, I am sold.
The same issues also lie with the use of Windows. But as of now, I think that Windows still irritates me quite a fair bit lesser.

For Windows 10, at worst... perhaps something like the classic shell mod for Windows 8 would solve its weird start menu problem. I replaced the shell for Windows 98 (since the Windows 95 shell was more reliable and faster), so I suppose that I would be willing to go that far.

@BLUamnEsiac, why would upgrading sacrifice a Windows 8 key?

 

@sp193 I'm the type that prefers to commit time to an OS that I install. I would like to avoid a needless hassle like upgrading only to downgrade before a set time. It is nice that MS will allow the roll back to Win8 during a set period, but I don't want to waste my time doing that.

 

I thought that the statement was that we're allowed to upgrade for free within a set time? But we can downgrade anytime, given that they can't stop us from formatting the PC and installing the old OS back on it?

 

We get a year to take advantage of the free upgrade, but there is a grace period for reverting back to Windows7/8 before the key gets revoked for it and will become permanently linked to Win10 activations only. One might get around this by imaging their HDD and copying Win7/8 back that way. But then I have to wonder if MS can pick up on this and disable the OS down the road.

 

Do you have the source for that claim? This is the first time that I've heard of such a thing.
Then how will people re-install Windows, if their installation media is for the old Windows 7 or 8 installation?

I heard it differently; after upgrading, you will be entitled (through the online store) to install Windows 10 on the machine that it was activated on. After one year, you will have to buy a new Windows 10 license, if you wish to transfer the license to another PC (for non-OEM Windows 7/8 licenses).

 

You have until July 29, 2016 (supposedly) to get the free upgrade. Once you upgrade you have up to 30 days before you can remove Windows 10 and go back to your previous OS. If you no longer want to use Windows 10 past 30 days, the automatic uninstall feature will be removed and the only way to revert is to do a clean install.

The Windows 10 Upgrade license does not invalidate the previous one. If you are using Retail or OEM System Builder OS, you legally are not allowed to reinstall that on another computer if you upgraded the original PC to Windows 10.

For an OEM pre-installed OS (Dell, HP, etc) that license is not transferrable to any other computer at all, and would also apply to the Windows 10 free upgrade license should you have upgraded.

There is no indication that any previously installed licenses will become invalidated. I suspect the reason why this has been widely reported is due to people not understanding how Windows licensing works.

 

Thank you for that info. The invalidation of the previous license has popped up quite a bit and was quoted to me by several friends, all who would ordinarily not tell a lie. And while I was looking around for a concrete citation, this site came to my attention.
http://winsupersite.com/windows-10/windows-10-upgrade-and-installation-faq-we-figured-out-who-pays-and-who-doesnt I may very well go through with the upgrade today since rolling back doesn't seem to be time sensitive.