Windows 10 Review – Windows 7 Reimagined

BunnyJ said:

groze said:

How many time are you guys going to rehash a statement I corrected? By they way I do think differently. That why I have a learning disability but I am real good with computers but my social skills sometimes suck.

No problem bro. I understand.
Have a good day,
Jeff :)

Jeff, Thank you :)

OK, although he's been all over the map with his ideas, now that I understand things a little better, I think we should let Groze off the hook.

@groze: Let me see if I can explain to you, Groze, without starting another firestorm.

Windows 10 Forums was set up for those who are on the Windows Insider Program. You have seen (and now should understand) Microsoft's "requirements" for testing Windows 10. Once the Technical Preview is over and Windows 10 is RTM'd (released to market), the forums will continue on and those who have learned as much as they can about Windows 10 will continue to help newbies. Great place to get the help one needs.

To put it bluntly, you stumbled in here and proceeded to explain to a whole boatload of IT Pros and PC experts that Windows 10 was not for the end user. What you didn't understand was what a Technical Preview or beta is. Sometimes it's wide open as with the Technical Preview of Windows 10 and sometimes it's closed and one can only get in by invitation. Jimbo summed up pretty nicely who should be testing. All the Microsoft MVPs in these forums are most likely beta testers. Further, they have been especially recognized as experts by Microsoft because of betas they've participated in and other requirements. Helpful being the key word. And, since you are good with computers, here's where you should shine.

Everyone in these forums is especially helpful. I'm a PC Expert, experienced beta tester and an IT Pro of sorts. When I'm not having problems with a beta I've broken, I try to help others, especially senior citizens in my subdivision. The holidays have seen me slack off for awhile.

As I said before, now that I understand things better, it's time to give you some slack. If you need help, ask for it. If someone needs help and you can give it, please do.

Maybe I should say that my social skills suck at times too. Because if they didn't, I wouldn't have been so ticked off when you said what you said.

ARC1020 said:

Does it fix what went wrong in Windows 8 though?

I haven’t installed Windows 10 yet, although I’ve been following the changes as an observer and it appears they haven’t really changed much so far compared to Windows 8.1. Predominantly just windowed store apps, multiple desktops and the option of a Start Menu.

I never really minded Windows 8, but what I liked about it was more to do with the improvements made behind the scenes, rather than the changes Windows 8 is infamous for (it also helped that I prefer the Start Screen rather than a Start Menu). For me though, the area where Windows 8 is really, really bad (and one that’s still the same in Windows 10), is when it comes to the Store Apps. Using them is really a horrible disjointed experience.

OK, so in Windows 10 they’ve allowed the store apps to run in a window, but it doesn’t change the fact that they’re still a dictatorship style, limited functionality, non-customisable mess with a horrible menus. You have menus at the top, menu’s at the bottom, bit’s that slide out from the left, bits that slide out from the right. When you right-click you have these massive buttons appear with no consistency about them. It’s all over the place. With normal desktop software the menus are consistent, so no matter what software you’re using you have familiarity.

It wouldn’t be so bad if Microsoft were going to continue developing proper software applications, but given that it seems they’re abandoning development of normal windows software for these store apps, they really need to sort them out because they’re terrible. It’s a bit like a car manufacturer removing all the passenger seats/carpet/interior trim, swapping all the controls around, welding up all the doors and then selling it as a more economical and more secure version. Sure, it probably is, but it’s no good if it’s borderline unusable.

Believe me, I really want to like store apps, because the least amount of additional software I have to install on Windows, the better, but whenever I try using store apps again to see if they’ve improved, I always end up going back to the desktop software I was using before. Not to mention they update automatically, with no documentation what’s been changed, you just have to put up with the changes and if you don’t like them, tough, you can’t even keep using an older version of the app.

An example of that is the Mail app. The earlier version was better without the stupid flat ‘metro’ icons on the left hand side. It just had Inbox, Sent items, Deleted items, etc. written in plain text on the left, which was much more useable and familiar. In the new version, even if you never ever use ‘Flagged’ and ‘Favourites’, you’re stuck with them. Also the colour scheme changed to the horrible blue in the new version. But there’s nothing you can do about any of that, you’re stuck using something that some person the other side of the world has decided you have to like. Like it or lump it! The outlook.com website is better than the Mail, People & Calendar store apps and not only a better interface, but has better functionality. Yes, a webpage is even better than Microsoft's North Korean store apps.

Then don’t get me started on the functionality! You're not even able to back up your emails locally. But even simple things like viewing email attachments don’t work properly. So, someone sends you a picture file and despite having all the default programs set for file associations, it still asks you what software you want to use to open the file. OK, with JPEG, PNG & GIF it remembers your choice, but with TIFF and BMP for example, every single time it just says “We can’t open this file. Do you want to save it and try opening it with another app?” even after telling it what default program to use. Really!

Now, some may say, why don’t you just use the photo app as the default picture viewer instead of Windows Photo Viewer. Well, it’s because the photo app is also rubbish. It doesn’t even allow you to view file properties/exif of the image, or allow you to view the image at 100%. It doesn't even have a print button. Pretty basic functionality is missing and I’m not even sure whether it’s colour managed or not. And let’s not forget the disjointed way the photos app launches in a split screen from the Mail app, instead of its own full window.

Still at least it’s not as bad as the video app. That goes beyond just rubbish to unusable. Yup, even if you look past the wall of ads from Microsoft trying to get you to buy TV programs from their tv/film store, when all you want to do is view a video on your computer, it’s terrible. I watch several podcasts every week, that run in the background when I’m working. If there’s something in the podcast I need to look at I just click on Windows Media Player and start watching. Then move it back to the background and carry on listening whilst working. But with the Video app you can’t do that, nope that’s right, you can’t just listen to it in the background, because as soon as you start using your desktop programs it suspends the video app and stops playing. All you can do is allow it to use quarter of the screen, but that’s no good when you need the whole screen for work. So, you have no choice but to go back to Windows Media Player or VLC (even though I’ve never really liked the Windows Media player UI either).

So, IMO Windows 10 isn’t Windows 8 done right. Nowhere near it until they either sort out those stupid store apps, or continue development of normal desktop programs such as Windows Live Mail, Windows Media Player, etc.

Happy Christmas! :)

Happy New Year Arc1020!!!

I agree with you - I like Win8 and the Start page. It's fast and for the most part familiar.
I was late getting to Win8, but when I finally installed it, I didn't understand all of the vitriol against it. To me it was Windows plus an optional tablet UI. The Modern apps were variants of Desktop apps (again for the most part and for my needs) - I tried them but found them redundant and uninstalled them in favor of the same desktop app.

I also agree with you on the Modern apps - they aren't targeted for the desktop users who expect full control and configuration ... they're target audience is the mobile user who, IMO, is load and shoot (analogous to photographers and people who just want to take nice pictures I suppose). Anyway ... it's up to MS to figure out how to have it all If camera makers could make a camera that did that - just imagine! It's a hard thing to do.

That's where the Windows Tech Preview (WTP) is helping ... I think. Lately I've been reading that people are stuffing the ballot box and that MS is even promoting a VOTE me too 'contest' to see what gets included in the next release of WTP.

I personally do NOT want a popularity contest to determine what Windows 10 becomes - the sample is too small for it to be meaningful and the players voting for their favorite feature are probably not the best qualified. Rather they are serving their self interest (off my soap box for now - sorry 'bout that

The argument might be made that MS hasn't done the best job picking the features either - but I disagree (hope that's ok with everyone :) I always have to keep in mind that MS is a business, that they have a lot of things going on, that people will complain no matter what a company offers ... yada, yada, yada.

If you decide to give Win10 a whirl, I suggest a Hyper-V machine. Kari wrote a great tutorial that makes it really, really easy.
See: Hyper-V virtualization - Setup and Use in Windows 10

Bill
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