When Windows 10 breaks, don't just blame Microsoft

Didn't notice the difference between Windows 7 and Windows 10? I'll skip the rest of this article.

Hi there
If a piece of equipment (could be hardware / could be software) fails then there could be basically 3 possible causes :

1) Equipment was faulty in the first place
2) User Misuse
3) combination of both.

Having been a LONG time user of Windows - I can probably say that for over 90% of windows users the OS works just fine.
There will always be some defects in things as complicated as an OS but in day to day use it won;t normally matter,
Often people try and do things that the original OS was never expected to do - and in this case I can't see what the beef is if it doesn't work -- but again Windows has been remarkably resilient considering what everything has been thrown at it.

Usually Ms is remarkably co-operative with both hardware and software manufactureres if the OS fails -- OK defects take time to fix but usually it all gets sorted in the end,

Misuse -- and allowing either deliberately or by accident - viruses and malware to ruin your system can't usually be seen as a fault by Ms who actually takes security and the integrity of the OS quite seriously.

My only beef with Windows on the whole is that Networking is still a matter of pure LUCK if it works 100% - but apart from that I can't really complain.

If I get malware from some dubious torrent site that's hardly the fault of Ms.

If I drive say a nice BMW hard against a brick wall can I complain that BMW is making unsafe cars !!!,

Cheers
jimbo

So basically, the poster updated to Win10 and then later, discovered that an out-of-date third-party app did not work right in Win10, and goes on to say that is not entirely MS's fault.

Is this really MS's fault? Well (and you KNOW I'm NOT an "MS Defender") -- no.

Why?

Because even though their Compatibility Tool said the upgrade was OK, let's be realistic here. There must be tens of thousands of third-party apps, and when you throw into that the different versions of these apps, that probably goes into the millions of combinations.

Can any single tool be expected to identify the individual tool/version combinations that will work in Win10, versus those that will not? Basically, NO.

And what about the fact that Win10 is constantly evolving? What might not have worked months ago in build 10240, might work well today in build 10586.218.

Can MS really be expected to test millions of app versions every time they make an upgrade or improvement to Win10? NO

The other wrinkle in this whole picture is that, with the basic human inability to resist something FREE, LOT of folks have upgraded really old PCs that were never designed to work with Win8x, let alone, Win10. The fact that those old PCs work reasonably well under Win10 is nothing short of a miracle (IMHO). So, for those folks to complain about old apps not working right in Win10, is simply unfair to MS.

I had the excruciating experience of "upgrading" and old HP Win7 laptop to Win10, and while it took a lot of work, I learned a lot in the process, and ever since I got it right, that old laptop has been working flawlessly under Win10. Certainly has surprised me!

So basically, if your old, ready-for-the-recycle-bin PC works even reasonably well under Win10, you should be grateful for the free upgrade -- and be glad you didn't have to shell out HUNDREDS of dollars to get a new machine to use Win10.

probably windows should put (or they already did?) little remark in their terms
*User accept that if something break in windows10, either from updates, upgrade from previous windows installation or clean install, microsoft not resposible in anyway nor giving any support in fixing the issue.

well realistic speaking... indeed its not always microsoft fault
but if everything fine in their previous OS (XP/7/8), then all of sudden become borked after upgrade to win10 then its not user fault either blaming the microsoft

Yes, but when 80% of users don't know the difference in an OS and a taco, MS may want to consider leaving out the flaky features and code.

bobad said:

Yes, but when 80% of users don't know the difference in an OS and a taco, MS may want to consider leaving out the flaky features and code.

Hi there

This is where it gets REALLY tricky -- What would be a legal definition of "Flakey Features". What might be flakey for some would be essential for others.

Poor code might be easier to quantify but even here this is not a "given" . For example getting 110% performance out of a system by using undocumented features or directly acessing hardware rather than published API's might be an acceptable risk if it only blows up say 1% of the time.

Cheers
jimbo