Current Win 10 to Windows 7 UI setup?

[DogsofJune]

Omg, computin' is hard!

Some of you guys just need to relax and roll with the times.
There are options out there, lots of options. Quit being afraid of learning something new.

This is a whiney thread....

 

[mvmiller12]

They didn't in 1998.

People always complain about new things. You kids and your rap music.

I wasn't a huge fan of the full-screen start menu in Win8 myself, but I used Win8 from release through to Win8.1 and Win10. Through all of them, I don't remember being completely overwhelmed and unable to function. Double-clicking things ran them, clicking in the lower left (the extreme lower left in Win8) brought up more things I could run, Win-R brought up the Run box, the time was in the lower right. That was the way in 1998, and 1995, and it's still the way now.

There's a moment when it's bad and a moment when "I'm told to believe it's bad." The latter is amazingly easy to reach, unfortunately. Say it enough times loudly enough, and people believe it's true.

You know, there were Windows UI die hards even in 1995/1998. This is why Windows 95 and 98 both included an option to use the Windows 3.1 UI (Program Manager) instead of the newer 95/98 UI. I'm not kidding, this really was a thing.

 

[odditory]

Omg, computin' is hard!

Some of you guys just need to relax and roll with the times.
There are options out there, lots of options. Quit being afraid of learning something new.

This is a whiney thread....

Or just relax and stop sweating how other people use their PCs. If ugly tiles, redundant settings screens scattered all over the place, and a schizofrenic start menu with the remnants of a failed mobile OS push are your thing, enjoy.

"Roll with the times" is fine when things actually saw an improvement. The problem is that somewhere along the way, Microsoft lost the concept of improvement as opposed to change. Now they think that simply making a change counts as making it better, and that's been working out spectacularly bad for them in the years since Windows 7.

 

[DeaconFrost]

"Roll with the times" is fine when things actually saw an improvement. The problem is that somewhere along the way (iPhone/appstore envy, and delusions of pounding a desktop OS square peg into the mobile OS round hole) they lost the concept of improvement as opposed to change. Now they think that simply making a change counts as making it better, and that's been working out spectacularly bad for them, going on 7 years now.

Who is to say what is an improvement and what isn't? Anything to do with a UI is subjective.

 

[odditory]

Who is to say what is an improvement and what isn't? Anything to do with a UI is subjective.

A critical mass of hundreds of millions of Windows 7 customers that MS has failed to convert, and who are actively avoiding Windows 10? When an "improvement" slows down or outright creates barriers to desktop workflows? When every week MS is pushing out some untested 'update' that messes up your PC?

A few weeks ago they pushed out an update that caused Cortana to peg a CPU core at 100% - even in cases where you thought you "uninstalled" Cortana. This week's update to "fix" that CPU bug breaks the Start Menu and desktop search. By all means, keep drinking the kool-aid that all that is new or different is good, while the rest of us run Start Menu replacements and block updates to avoid all this bullshit. Maybe one day MS will pull their heads out and return to sanity with a proper successor to Windows 7.

 

[SuperSubZero]

You know, there were Windows UI die hards even in 1995/1998. This is why Windows 95 and 98 both included an option to use the Windows 3.1 UI (Program Manager) instead of the newer 95/98 UI. I'm not kidding, this really was a thing.

Progrman was also just plain legacy support. It makes me giggle to remember that Microsoft gave IBM a hard time with OS/2 over IBM's fixation on backwards compatibility. Windows quickly showed MS why IBM was stuck in that thinking.

 

[mvmiller12]

Progrman was also just plain legacy support. It makes me giggle to remember that Microsoft gave IBM a hard time with OS/2 over IBM's fixation on backwards compatibility. Windows quickly showed MS why IBM was stuck in that thinking.

Ya know? I really liked OS/2. I bought OS/2 2.1 on CD for something like $12 clearance from a Radio Shack, and this was a huge box with a CD and a huge honking manual. I liked playing around with different OS at the time, and figured "Why not?" I actually ended up using it to run a multi-line BBS system back in the 90's and it was super good for that purpose. I later upgraded it to OS/2 Warp 3 for Windows, which was ~$50 at fucking WAL-MART NEW.

Honestly, IF you met the hardware requirements, stability and performance with OS/2 2.x was pretty amazing for the time, and unrivaled by Microsoft until Windows NT (which was supposed to be OS/2 3.0 until the IBM/MS OS/2 divorce, but hey...). Multitasking was ridiculously stable. It had a built-in DOS VM, and if that was not good enough, it would let you run actual honest-to-God MS-DOS in a VM. It would let you run most Windows 3.1 software either on the OS/2 desktop, or in a complete Windows 3.1 VM, and it would seamlessly multitask all of this together with the handful of native OS/2 apps out there. It had it's own high performance self-defragging filesystem (HPFS) while still maintaining compatibility with FAT. Oh, and it came with it's own bootloader if you needed native MS-DOS/Windows 3.1 or Windows 95.

Really, the biggest things that ultimately killed OS/2 (in my opinion) were in no particular order:

1) No Windows 95 app support
2) No native networking included out-of-the-box
3) Shitty IBM marketing
4) Steep hardware requirements (the hardware requirements never really changed, but it took a while for the average PC user to get close to them)
5) No FAT32 support

 

[DeaconFrost]

By all means, keep drinking the kool-aid that all that is new or different is good, while the rest of us run .

You sure like making some wild assumptions, don't you? I stated a fact, that UI design is subjective. Nothing more, nothing less. The rest of us? Please, that tactic only works in kiddie arguments. The majority of Windows 10 users don't alter the visual look. You have the freedom to do so, or the ability to use it as is.

Perhaps, if you dislike the OS so much, you can request a refund?

 

[Deleted member 134608]

A critical mass of hundreds of millions of Windows 7 customers that MS has failed to convert, and who are actively avoiding Windows 10?

Exactly.

Apparently technical people, some at Microsoft and some on this forum (including myself), do not understand the average user very well. That ignorance is literally how Apple went from almost another footnote in history like Commodore and Amiga, to one of the biggest companies on the planet. In a very short period of time no less.

If you didn't "get" iPod, you won't get why Windows 10 sucks either.

 

[SuperSubZero]

A critical mass of hundreds of millions of Windows 7 customers that MS has failed to convert

I like Steam Survey, because it says what "consumers" are doing and willing to report on a voluntary basis.

Windows 10 64 bit 73.03%

Windows 7 64 bit 18.93%

Statcounter is also fun for a more overall picture: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-version-market-share/windows/desktop/worldwide

Windows 7 usage has been slowly declining and will likely continue to do so. I would expect a larger dropoff in January after Win7 goes end-of-life. It's not a surprise, they went through this with XP. People ran that OS into the ground and eventually retired it when either the computer it was on died or was time to replace or the OS couldn't run [new version of critical thing] and welp, was good while it lasted. The millions of tech-ignorant folks out there who have kids supporting them tech-wise won't be under any pressure to replace their OS or hardware until they can't do even basic things on it anymore. That may annoy MS, but it's also a fact of life and is hardly unique to computers.

 

[B00nie]

I like Steam Survey, because it says what "consumers" are doing and willing to report on a voluntary basis.

Windows 10 64 bit 73.03%

Windows 7 64 bit 18.93%

Statcounter is also fun for a more overall picture: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-version-market-share/windows/desktop/worldwide

Windows 7 usage has been slowly declining and will likely continue to do so. I would expect a larger dropoff in January after Win7 goes end-of-life. It's not a surprise, they went through this with XP. People ran that OS into the ground and eventually retired it when either the computer it was on died or was time to replace or the OS couldn't run [new version of critical thing] and welp, was good while it lasted. The millions of tech-ignorant folks out there who have kids supporting them tech-wise won't be under any pressure to replace their OS or hardware until they can't do even basic things on it anymore. That may annoy MS, but it's also a fact of life and is hardly unique to computers.

If Windows7 would be still an option while buying a new computer, it would not be declining.

 

[SuperSubZero]

If Windows7 would be still an option while buying a new computer, it would not be declining.

If you have current, relevant documented proof of that, I'm all ears. Otherwise.. yeah people would definitely do things my way if they could because I am right! I just know it! Sure!

 

[B00nie]

If you have current, relevant documented proof of that, I'm all ears. Otherwise.. yeah people would definitely do things my way if they could because I am right! I just know it! Sure!

It's without question that once you take a product completely off the market for yeears, it's market share will decline by people replacing their heardware. With the bad rep, spying and ads embedded in Win10, selling a computer with 7 would be a very good sales pitch to any privacy loving consumer.

 

[mvmiller12]

If Windows7 would be still an option while buying a new computer, it would not be declining.

I'm not saying this couldn't be truth, but you are letting your personal bias cloud your judgment here. This is pure speculation. You can't know that.

Anyway, my personal experience with PC consumers is that few of them can really tell Windows versions apart (excepting Win 8.x) and don't really care so long as their software works. They WILL, however, be happy to spout whatever crap they hear. Microsoft themselves proved this with the Mojave experiment.

 

[mvmiller12]

It's without question that once you take a product completely off the market for yeears, it's market share will decline by people replacing their heardware. With the bad rep, spying and ads embedded in Win10, selling a computer with 7 would be a very good sales pitch to any privacy loving consumer.

Windows 10 Spying

Windows Telemetry is not the Great Satan some people keep making it out to be. Read about it here.

Summary: It's end-to-end encrypted and portions that may be shared with third parties are anonymized. You can easily opt out of third-party sharing. It only sends memory contents in the instance of an application or system crash. That memory contents * may * have some of your personal info in it. If you don't like that idea, set the Telemetry to only collect basic info and it won't send memory contents at all. The telemetry configuration is presented at first boot for every pre-installed OEM machine, and during install for everyone else AND is available to change at any time via settings.

Oh, and I guess I should mention that this EXACT SAME telemetry collection is in Windows 7 and has been for a couple of years now, unless you are suggesting that these "privacy minded" individuals either don't get connect to the internet (which would work for blocking Windows 10 telemetry as well) or don't install security updates (super dangerous in this day and age). With Windows 7, you also do not get the Windows enhancements made to better support newer CPU architectures from both Intel and AMD, if you can even get it working with newer CPUs at all. On top of THAT shit cake, those Windows 7 security updates are going to be drying up shortly anyway as it is nearly EOL. All of that just makes Windows 7 a bad proposition in 2019.

That leaves jumping on the Alternate OS bus if you are still super anti-Windows 10, which I know that you have (you are an infamous Linux proponent on these forums). Sadly, no matter how privacy-focused Linux may be, regardless of how user friendly the new GUIs are, disregarding how powerful and stable the underlying foundation may be, it is far too fragmented to ever be a serious consumer product in the mass market. Until Linux gets a single universal GUI and packaging update method along with zero-config Windows app compatibility, it's just not ever going to happen.

tldr: Advising people that are going to stick to Windows no matter what to stay on an unsupported version (read: not getting regular security patches) in this day and age is just insanity. And they get none of the benefits you are touting for staying.

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Advertising in Windows 10

You have a point with this. I'm not keen on it either, but the only category that really bothers me are the app suggestions for third-party apps that can pop up on the start menu. Windows pitching Windows features on the notification bar that I might not know about when I am trying to perform functions those features apply to... that is more "suggested help" than advertisement in my opinion, and are sometimes genuinely helpful. The Fun Facts that pop up on the lock screen describing the images that Bing displays are sometimes interesting and are otherwise easily ignored by... logging in to Windows.

All of these behaviors can easily be toggled on and off though they should arguably be defaulted to off. Read about it here.

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Forced Apps in Windows 10

Every OS going at least as far back as MS-DOS (I used to manually remove the codepage bits amongst other things back when I had a 10M HDD) on the PC installs apps, games and/or utilities I will never use. Picking on Windows for this seems disingenuous at best.

Windows has ALWAYS installed several games by default, and there have ALWAYS been people bitching about it. The default games have changed from Solitaire and it's ilk to Candy Crush. It is a non-issue and the games are easily removed if you really care to remove them. If you don't, they don't run by default and thus use no RAM or CPU power, and they eat up a minuscule amount of drive space.



I am by no means a Windows 10 fanboy, I acyually liked the touch interface in Windows 8 better than similar support in Windows 10. And the mouse/keyboard Desktop UI in Windows 7 was undeniably better than the same in Windows 10, IMHO, but this hit is really minor. Provide Microsoft your feedback. Let THEM respond accordingly, and in response, moderate YOUR purchases accordingly. They do sometimes listen - the Windows 10 UI is a direct response to blowback from the direction they were headed in Windows 8.

 

[Nightfire]

I really liked win 10 but since the update, it now looks and acts like win 8. What the hell!? I can't even find any of the apps and the start menu blocks make me want to punch children. I am on version 1809.

The search bar is completely useless now. Typing 'run' doesn't even do anything. I need to use the keyboard to open it. What the hell happened??

 

[B00nie]

...

That leaves jumping on the Alternate OS bus if you are still super anti-Windows 10, which I know that you have (you are an infamous Linux proponent on these forums). Sadly, no matter how privacy-focused Linux may be, regardless of how user friendly the new GUIs are, disregarding how powerful and stable the underlying foundation may be, it is far too fragmented to ever be a serious consumer product in the mass market. Until Linux gets a single universal GUI and packaging update method along with zero-config Windows app compatibility, it's just not ever going to happen.

tldr: Advising people that are going to stick to Windows no matter what to stay on an unsupported version (read: not getting regular security patches) in this day and age is just insanity. And they get none of the benefits you are touting for staying.
...

I am by no means a Windows 10 fanboy, .

Nonetheless you are a Windows fanboy. It's pretty apparent by calling someone who reminds that there are alternatives to the Windows 'infamous' lol. If anything is infamous, it's people who limit themselves to Microsoft products. Makes me vomit. Diversity is a key factor in any healthy ecosystem but Microsoft is trying its best to suffocate the competition, including illegal business practises.

What you wrote about Windows telemetry is based on what Microsoft has publicised. In reality since the code is closed, Microsoft can freely collect anything from your computer. Microsoft can freely DoS your computer in the form of a forced update. Isn't it ironic that they do routinely something that's a felony crime for someone else? And I know well Windows 7 is getting outdated. Not because it was a bad OS, because Microsoft chose to stop developing it and actually mutilated it in the form of including Win10 style telemetry 'updates' to the security updates. Another example of total tyranny against consumers.

Microsoft got caught lying once again when they said it was technologivally impossible to include Dx10 and higher to Windows 7 - yet a few years later support all of the sudden became possible.

When you use Windows, you give away your freedom of choice. Microsoft dictates your daily computing life and you're even willing to pay for it. Incredible.

 

[mvmiller12]

Nonetheless you are a Windows fanboy. It's pretty apparent by calling someone who reminds that there are alternatives to the Windows 'infamous' lol. If anything is infamous, it's people who limit themselves to Microsoft products. Makes me vomit. Diversity is a key factor in any healthy ecosystem but Microsoft is trying its best to suffocate the competition, including illegal business practises.

What you wrote about Windows telemetry is based on what Microsoft has publicised. In reality since the code is closed, Microsoft can freely collect anything from your computer. Microsoft can freely DoS your computer in the form of a forced update. Isn't it ironic that they do routinely something that's a felony crime for someone else? And I know well Windows 7 is getting outdated. Not because it was a bad OS, because Microsoft chose to stop developing it and actually mutilated it in the form of including Win10 style telemetry 'updates' to the security updates. Another example of total tyranny against consumers.

Microsoft got caught lying once again when they said it was technologivally impossible to include Dx10 and higher to Windows 7 - yet a few years later support all of the sudden became possible.

When you use Windows, you give away your freedom of choice. Microsoft dictates your daily computing life and you're even willing to pay for it. Incredible.

I am certainly NOT a Windows fanboy. I actually bought OS/2 and used that as my primary OS back when most software would work with it, but it died out. I invested in BeOS on Intel hoping that would go somewhere, but it didn't.

Sadly, for what I do on my computer right now and without having to frequently reboot or run a bunch of emulators/VMs, Windows is the only game in town. When something better comes along that runs all of my software with minimal hassle, I'll go there. As much as I would like it to be my primary desktop OS, Linux is just not that place for me and after the death of SteamOS it looks unlikely to ever be.

Also remember that the US government uses Windows Pro and Enterprise. This is the same version of Pro and Enterprise that everyone else gets when they buy a license. US government networks have strict security requirements. The US government (among other large businesses) has access to the Windows source code and regularly audits Windows. If MS telemetry in Basic mode is good enough for a pass from Uncle Sam, than it is good enough for me.