Well, it certainly wasn't an easy decision to make, but...

Wenda said:

In my case, the driver itself works fine.

It's just that the driver is too 'new' to work with the 5.1 sound.

Stereo sound works, but what use is 5.1 if one can't use it?


Wenda.

Nobody has 5.1 ears so, don't worry about it!

Hi Wenda,
I thoroughly enjoyed reading every word you typed about windows 10 technical preview..as we all know, this is a work in process. I myself learned a very valuable lesson on my 'initial' installation of the tech. preview. The first time I installed, for lack of better terms..I guess I was too excited or something, and just installed it right on top of windows 8.1..of course that caused me all kind's of issue's, so I removed the tech. preview..but for me it wasn't easy. I tried the 'rollback' option, but that didn't work..so the only way I was able to get 8.1 back was to perform a system restore..back to a point in time before I installed the tech. preview. The next time I installed the tech. preview, I used my brain properly..I created a new partition on my hard drive and installed it there..MUCH BETTER. And yes..I agree, the tech. preview is still kind of buggy, but that's to be expected..I really feel as though it WILL get better over time.
David

I can see, by the previous posts, that I am in a serious minority. But that's OK, I've been that way most of my 71 years.

My only interest in any new OS, since Vista, is to be able to set up a new OS/PC for my customers who go out and buy a new PC, with some new and strange OS on it. If it don't look anything like their old PC with XP on it, they are like little lost sheep.
Then they call me, for HELP!

So I look at any new OS from the standpoint, "how can I fix this thing, to appeal to my older customers".
Running a new OS as my main OS is not even a question or a possibility. I still run XP-Pro-SP3/32 bit.

When I install any new OS, (just testing) I use a spare HD, usually connected external to my tower. In fact I still have HD's with Vista, Win-7 and Win-8.1 on them, sitting around here (somewhere).
I always wind up using the "Classic Shell" to create a 'familiar' looking desktop and I re-activate Windows Mail, because it closely resembles Outlook Express 6, in its appearance and operation.

I've not tried to install any 16 bit software on Win-10/32 but on Win-8.1/32 it works just fine.
I guess I'll have to try that.

Now that I have Windows 10TP, 10041, on a bootable DVD, I can try it out on all sorts of PC's. Now, that's TESTING!
Running a new OS in a 'Box' is not really testing at all. (Just my opinion, of course)

Cheers Mates! It's SPRING!

TechnoMage

While I cannot dispute your opinions of things, since they are of course your opinions... I do want to point out some... well, flaws in your logic. Particularly in light of 10041, which has addressed so many of your issues.

First, nobody expects you to run a TP as your primary OS. I don't. There are just too many things that can go wrong. So I agree you probably shouldn't be running it as your primary OS.

Wenda said:

**IE has never worked properly since Day One. All the bugs in Win 8's IE are still present, and MS has even managed to add a few more. Google search breaks at least 50% of the time, and lock-ups are common. Understandable there are no bug-fixes since they're apparently killing it off anyway, but why break it further? And there's nothing about its replacement that appeals to me personally, from what I've seen. I happen to like IE and am perfectly satisfied with it. I don't buy the anti-IE hype that seemingly floods the internet.

I really have not found IE to be a real problem. However, it *is* still in development. I think most of the press has misunderstood Microsoft about IE, and I doubt they will actually be "killing it". However, Spartan and IE 12 will likely share the same rendering engine. Spartan will just be... well.. more Spartan.

I'm a little curious about these bugs you talk about though.. I find most people talk about "bugs" in IE don't actually understand the real situation. Either it's a flawed plug-in that's making their system unstable, or they consider websites that use functionality that IE doesn't support to be "bugs". Can you elaborate more on these?

Wenda said:

**The new 'Settings' panel is superfluous, non-intuitive, and ugly. What's wrong with Control Panel? It's worked just fine since at least Windows 3. All settings and options should be there, not scattered about all over the system.

Control panel is based on a very old programming API. The new Settings items work in a totally different API, the old API is going away. It will take some time for all the control panel items to be migrated to the new Settings. It really is not productive to complain that Windows keeps changing stuff, because that's the whole point. Windows is going to WinRT for everything, and nothing will stop that. Microsoft is not going to go backwards on this and bring back stuff they've already converted.

Consider it like this. Let's say the company you work for has decided to build a new building next to the old one. The idea is, everyone will eventually move to the new building and the old one will be torn down. As the new building is completed, story by story, people move to the new building, and parts of the old building are dismantled.

Soon, some people start complaining because they have to go from one building to the next, and they can't work this way for the rest of their lives... Which is of course silly because they won't be working that way for the rest of their lives, only until enough of the new building is done that they won't have to do that anymore. However, those people keep insisting on acting like the two-building approach that is happening now will be that way forever, despite being reassured that it won't be.

Next, another group of people start complaining because the Cafeteria moved to the new building. Not only do they have to go to the new building to get their lunch, but they don't like the new paint and layout of tables, at all. This is a disaster they say. Why couldn't we just keep the Cafeteria where it was? Ignoring of course the point of the whole exercise is to move everything to the new building, keeping two cafeteria's going would be expensive, confusing, and require twice the staff. Plus, you don't know how many people will go to one vs the other, so you have to have enough food for everyone at both cafeterias. It just doesn't make sense to keep two of them, plus the old cafeteria will eventually have to go away anyways.

Now, another group of people say they refuse to use the new building. The old building did everything they needed. They won't go to meetings there, and they won't move their themselves. They don't like the design, and they will just stay put. They can't understand why They're being required to do things over there. They'll just stay there forever, they can't make them move. Plus, the new building is farther away from the parking lot (never mind the fact that a new parking ramp will be built on the spot of the old building that will actually make it closer when completed).

So I guess my point of all this is.. You're just not going get any traction on complaining about moving parts of the OS to WinRT, it's happening, and will continue to happen.

Wenda said:

**It's bland, with nowhere near enough eye-candy. I can't recall ever seeing an OS that's been hit so hard with the ugly-stick, or so unnecessarily. Put the full Aero experience back as an option for those who want it, or at least make it easy for 3rd-party programs to do so. At the very least, replace the overall 'look' of 10 with that of 8.1

I like the minimalist approach myself. However, it's quite easy to change the eye candy. There are already a number of examples of how to do so, and there are tools to even bring back Aero glass. I really don't understand your complaint because what you're asking for is already possible.

Wenda said:

Wenda said:

**The new Start menu is not as good as Win 7's, and I prefer to use Win 8.1's All Apps screen as my start menu anyway. MS should look at users being able to select whether to have Start Screen tiles or All Apps tiles in the RH pane (and the choice of how they are sorted, as we can in Win 8.1.1's All Apps screen). That one thing would make the new Start menu not only acceptable to me, but quite welcome. As it stands, though - no, thanks.

The start menu in 9926 was an interim start menu. The Menu in 10041 is a lot better in many ways. Sure, some people still don't seem to like it. However, Microsoft gets a lot of flack no matter what they do. I can't count the number of people in these very forums that complained incessantly about the horizontal scrolling of the start menu. Well, the new one is vertical... And I guess that's not good enough either, now they all want to go back to Windows 8's start menu.

All it goes to show is that you get used to whatever you use. You may hate something at first, but eventually people get used to it and they grow to like it. So when you change it, they want it back.

Wenda said:

**When I search, unless it is in a browser, it means I want to search my computer, NOT the entire known universe.

I can agree with this one.

Wenda said:

**Just how much unnecessary junk does MS think we need in the LH pane in File Explorer? ALL I want to see there by default are my drives, my libraries, and Control Panel. Another backward step from 8/8.1 with no obvious option to get rid of it all. Icons and arrows in the ribbon are almost invisible to the naked eye against the background. And the Details pane STILL isn't back at the bottom of the window where it belongs.

A lot of that stuff was also temporary. And you can disable a lot of it. However, most of it was there in Windows 8, so I don't really understand your complaints. The only thing new is QuickAccess which just replaces the previous Favorites, so it's not an additional item.

The only thing that's truly new is the removable media being listed in both the outer and inner trees, and I believe that can be disabled. I still think they will fix this before final release (I hope so, it's confusing).

If you don't like the QuickAccess by default, In 10041, there is a setting to open Explorer with This PC as the root instead.

Wenda said:

But all these niggles (and more) I could have (or already had) either lived with or worked around.

No, the killer for me is this idiotic idea of forced updates. I put up with it for a while, eating into my limited monthly allowance, because I could see a reason for it, up to a point. But recently Realtek released a new audio driver for my sound chip, and Windows 10 treats it as an essential update (it's not). The problem? My laptop has 5.1 surround-sound built in, with Dolby Home Theater installed by the manufacturer's (Acer) sound driver. This is a Windows 7 driver, which Acer has not updated because it was unnecessary, as it works perfectly in Win 8/8.1. I know from experience that it also works perfectly well in Win 10, as does the Dolby Home Theater software. But Win 10 insists upon installing this new driver every time I restart the machine, and it totally zaps my 5.1 sound. EVERY restart. I'm sick of having to roll-back or re-install the 7 driver on an almost daily basis. There is no way to update DHT on its own, it is 'tied' to the audio driver.

As has been said many times. The forced updates are only the situation while it is in Technical Preview.

In 10041 they have added the ability to stop downloading of device drivers when you are on a metered connection. Turning this feature on will disable device driver updates.

Wenda said:

Another is that three weeks ago I used Win 10's 'Rollback' feature (after taking a system image) to roll back to Win 8.1 in order to take any updates and keep my 8.1 system up-to-date. I do have an older 8.1 image I could have used instead of the rollback feature, but again, it came down to a limited monthly data allowance. It also gave me the opportunity to test the rollback feature. And it worked just fine, I took all the updates for 8.1, imaged it (this is the setup I've just re-installed and it feels like a comfortable old pair of shoes, after 10), and then restored 10. Now, it appears that the rollback option, which used to appear on start-up giving you the choice to boot through to 10 or roll back to 8.1, is gone or broken.

That option was never supposed to be there in the first place. It was a bug. However, in 10041 there are options in the Restore panel to go back to the previous version.

Wenda said:

Of course, these are only my views and opinions, your mileage may vary. But I'm definitely getting a sense of just how many Windows 7 users must have felt and still feel when confronted with Windows 8.

Wenda said:

Most of your "issues" are caused either by it being a beta version and buggy or incomplete, or by your limited internet connectivity... It's really not Windows 10's or Microsofts fault that you chose to participate in a program that has heavy internet usage when you have a metered connection. Microsoft has even gone out of their way to address those situations, which you apparently haven't even tried...

Like I said, I can't fault you for your opinions, but you should at least have tried 10041, because it addresses a lot of your complaints, and some of your complaints seem unfounded since they are also present in Windows 8.

Thanks Wenda for sharing your experience. I like your comments regarding the ugliness of W10 - it is REALLY ugly.

I am still a bystander waiting for a full implementation of the High definition themes which I need to properly operate. The parts that I see in my virtual partition do not really rock my chair yet. But there is still time to make that a beautiful system - maybe they surprise us.