I Like Windows 10 But I'm Going Back To Windows 8.1

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That headline would have made so much more sense if the author was abandoning Windows 10 to go back to Windows 7. Who goes back to Windows 8.1? ;)

Windows 10 is a very good operating system. It crams in security improvements, especially for businesses, it improves performance, it takes up less disk space, and Microsoft has proved that it can cope with a fast pace of development by going from 'still really quite buggy' to 'pretty solid' in the last two months. But for me personally, and the way I use Windows, there are still issues.
 
Windows 7 is so slow compared to 8 and 10, who the fuck would do that?
 
I don't understand how placeholders was confusing. It said available offline or not available offline at the bottom of the window.
 
Or they bitch about Classic Shell taking less than two minutes two download, install, "set it and forget it".
 
It's amazing, so many of the "problems" people have with a new OS boil down to it simply not working exactly like their old one did.

It's a new OS, it's not supposed to be exactly like your old one.

People need to give themselves at least a little bit of time to get used to a new OS before they go on some obnoxious rant about it mostly due to their own frustration and ignorance.
 
windows 10 is kind of scarry. going to stay on 8.1 until I can play all my games on linux (not this decade)
 
She has a point, it's still a bit buggy. I can work around it, but I'm really surprised that Microsoft thinks it's ready for general consumption.
 
so far it fixed lag issues in diablo 3 on my old i5 laptop with intel 4000 drivers. havnt tested it with heroes of the storm yet but nice to be able to play on low settings without stuttering.
 
When 8 came out, people complained that it was 7. When 7 came out they complained that it didn't have the windows 95 start menu!

8.1 isn't perfect and I haven't used 10, but the return of the start menu (as opposed to the screen) probably fixes the primary UI complaint I have (though it's a minor one, because the screen works the same as the Windows 7 Start menu if you type what you want, and I do 99% of the time).

That said, I won't go to 10 until I build a new system. I want to start fresh and after I've gotten everything working the way I want it on there, I'll consider rebuilding the old machine....after that, it's time to migrate the parental units.
 
PimpUigi said:
This. Windows 8.1 >>>>> Windows 7, I don't get why anyone would run 7 if they can run 8.1,
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but hell, most people just don't know www.classicshell.net
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You literally answered your own question here. I'm not big on the whole app pressing of buttons look, and when my laptop came with Win8 I was literally fucking lost on how to do anything on, granted I knew there was a way to make it feel like windows SHOULD FUCKING FEEL LIKE, and after a little work I was happy again, however it was hardly intuitive on what to do, and remember that most people who use computers are not going to be the most tech savvy of person.
 
Hypergreatthing said:
Slow how?
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Once you get used to windows 8.1 and how to search for files you'll realize how slow 7 really is. Accessing hard drives/folders is much quicker and the search function removes the need for the start button. The start button is much better than the garbage metro UI in 8.1 though, I'm glad that is gone, even though I never saw it unless I accidentally hit the windows key.
 
A few things impressed me about Windows 10 when I used my wife's laptop as a guinea pig to upgrade (hers was on 8.1):

- The dialog box essentially saying "plug your damn laptop in, I don't trust your battery during the upgrade to keep the electrons flowing" was a nice little detail.

- Being able to go to the direct link to download the upgrade and burn it to a DVD ONCE instead of requiring all 8 of the PCs/Laptops in my house having to each get their own bits over my craptacular 3Mbps DSL connection was nice. You urban cable/fiber types won't know what the hell I'm talking about. Get off my lawn and pull your pants up.

- I was one of the people with the misfortune of having Cisco's VPN client on the laptop I was upgrading which resulted in "no wi-fi, hell, no hardwired network either" after the upgrade. The fact it took all of 5 minutes to "revert to previous version of OS" was VERY cool so I could uninstall that and re-upgrade.

- And, you know, free. With support.

That's all cool stuff. What I haven't liked so far:

- The new taskbar...I usually put my taskbar vertically oriented on the right side of my screen because vertical pixels are scarcer real estate than horizontal ones, but the new taskbar doesn't look/work right compared to the old one (probably need to do some settings adjustment or something).

- The total amount of data mining MSFT is enabling by default throughout the OS, have to go chase all those settings down and disable them (turned it all off during the install, but there's a lot of other stuff to go through as well). Yeah, I know, I'm using Chrome and GMail and all that other stuff so I might as well be posting my genome online, but it's the damn principle of the thing...
 
Lol... same stuff happens with practically all new Windows OS releases... Does anybody still remember how much people hated Windows XP when that came out and how people were moving back to Win 2000 because it was so much better? Before you know it people will be complaining about whatever is the next version of 10 because the previous version is just that much better (however that works in the future).
 
Hypergreatthing said:
Slow how?
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This is how I know you have never used 8 or 10 for any length of time. The speed difference on the same machine is quite noticeable. Our OptiPlex 7010's at work lag on 7, but race on 8.1. Once people saw how much faster 8.1 runs, they started requesting it. The end users honestly don't care if you take 5 minutes to explain the small difference top them. 90% of them have that ah-ha moment and carry one.
 
I think it depends on the device. I'm liking the changes on my Surface 3 (tablet mode toggle is genius) and my Samsung Chronos 7 (Core i7, 8gb ram, GT640m and Samsung 840pro), where I have had few issues (synaptics is behind the ball on drivers, so my laptop's touchpad doesn't have multitouch gestures, but I generally use a mouse...).

My Dell Venue 8 Pro(Bay Trail, 2gbram, 32gb flash) also works well, albeit no stylus support yet.

My wife's low end Asus laptop took the update with no issues at all, as did my main rig (2500k@4.4, 8gb, 840 pro/GTX970).

Those are five systems from different manufacturers with wildly differing hardware, and to have only two minor issues related to third party driver support is pretty damn good. The only one on which I considered a rollback is the DV8P, since the stylus is kind of the point, but it was largely supplanted by the Surface 3, so I'm in no hurry.
 
I completely agree with the guy. I use Skydrive (now onedrive) all the time, and I love that Win8.1 has it incorporated into its OS. I hate that there isno longer an app, and to see my onedrive files, I have to do a full sync, which on my tablet and such, I don't want to do! It destroys the purpose. Its stupid.

I also found that there is no SAFEMODE. You used to be able to hit F8 to get into safemode before Windows loaded if it was crashing.

I had an issue booting Win10 , and I started hitting F8, and it didn't work. I went and looked it up, and it was totally removed, and safemode is only accessible through Windows recovery shell, which only launches when you request it through a windows reboot.....also really stupid.
 
fuzzylogik said:
Lol... same stuff happens with practically all new Windows OS releases... Does anybody still remember how much people hated Windows XP when that came out and how people were moving back to Win 2000 because it was so much better? Before you know it people will be complaining about whatever is the next version of 10 because the previous version is just that much better (however that works in the future).
Click to expand...

The general public doesn't like a new windows, they want a 5 year old windows with new free features and no visual or process changes to their workflow. Which is understandable because it costs time and effort when menus or settings get moved around. I personally like 10, I have always been in the beta and technical preview program because I enjoy playing with what is new. Also it is handy to learn it as it is easier to help fix things when it officially comes out if I am already familiar with it.

Windows 10 will be adopted quickly and as tou said, the next content update/feature creep update will cause a stir and this will continue.

OS selling has to be a terrible field. Your customers dont like change, but you cant just sit on an old version forever. People wont buy an OS that looks and feels the same as the previous so you have to change things to differentiate it from the previous. This change causes lots of negativity so then you have to bandaid it later.
 
I really like Win 10.
I reverted to Win 8.1 on my Surface 3 for a couple reasons:
1. Battery life is significantly worse. I went from 9-ish hours to 7-ish hours, too much of a decrease for me.
2. Brightness settings are annoying. I like the slider because it lets me turn down the brightness low until I really need it.
3. Sleep/connected standby issues. Every morning the Surface would be super sluggish/unresponsive and I would have to restart it before I could use anything again.

I tried an OS reset after the upgrade but the problems persisted. Factory restore to Win 8.1 resolved all my issues with the same settings. Maybe this works for people who are compulsively shutting down/restarting their Surface, but I like to leave mine on/sleeping 24/7 and just charge it at night when I sleep. The combination of bad battery life, poor brightness control, and connected standby issues means I'm on Win 8.1 again.
 
PimpUigi said:
This. Windows 8.1 >>>>> Windows 7, I don't get why anyone would run 7 if they can run 8.1, but hell, most people just don't know www.classicshell.net
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That's what I did 1.5 years ago and had a head slapping moment. It was really the best of both worlds. Windows 8.1 has some cool additions (taskmgr, etc) and performance.

I like Windows 10 though.
 
gps_guru said:
I really like Win 10.
I reverted to Win 8.1 on my Surface 3 for a couple reasons:
1. Battery life is significantly worse. I went from 9-ish hours to 7-ish hours, too much of a decrease for me.
2. Brightness settings are annoying. I like the slider because it lets me turn down the brightness low until I really need it.
3. Sleep/connected standby issues. Every morning the Surface would be super sluggish/unresponsive and I would have to restart it before I could use anything again.
Click to expand...

I did a clean install of my SP3. I haven't utilized it enough to check battery life, but I did notice that it either comes out of deep-sleep/standby incredibly fast now or it never goes into that mode.

I used to put my SP3 down for a day. When I came back I'd get SP3 logo and 5 seconds until the UI appears. That doesn't happen now.

Might be a reason for decreased battery life? Malfunctioning sleep mode?
 
gps_guru said:
I really like Win 10.
I reverted to Win 8.1 on my Surface 3 for a couple reasons:
1. Battery life is significantly worse. I went from 9-ish hours to 7-ish hours, too much of a decrease for me.
Click to expand...

In my observations this seems to be related to the Edge browser. If you used that and keep it open on certain site it will start to consume a lot of CPU. It never get's sluggish really but just started to use CPU.

gps_guru said:
2. Brightness settings are annoying. I like the slider because it lets me turn down the brightness low until I really need it.
3. Sleep/connected standby issues. Every morning the Surface would be super sluggish/unresponsive and I would have to restart it before I could use anything again.
Click to expand...

I have noticed these issues but do miss the slider in the Charms.

I think 8.1 is more solid on the Surface 3 and Pro 3 at this time and I can understand staying on it for now. But one thing I do like is having windowed modern apps while in desktop mode. I actually use desktop while using touch only most of the time for that reason. Kind of hard to go back now for me.
 
heatlesssun said:
But one thing I do like is having windowed modern apps while in desktop mode. I actually use desktop while using touch only most of the time for that reason. Kind of hard to go back now for me.
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True, I do love the windowed Metro apps and desktop mode is more finger friendly because I find myself using the stylus less and less for desktop.
 
gps_guru said:
I really like Win 10.
I reverted to Win 8.1 on my Surface 3 for a couple reasons:
1. Battery life is significantly worse. I went from 9-ish hours to 7-ish hours, too much of a decrease for me.
2. Brightness settings are annoying. I like the slider because it lets me turn down the brightness low until I really need it.
3. Sleep/connected standby issues. Every morning the Surface would be super sluggish/unresponsive and I would have to restart it before I could use anything again.

I tried an OS reset after the upgrade but the problems persisted. Factory restore to Win 8.1 resolved all my issues with the same settings. Maybe this works for people who are compulsively shutting down/restarting their Surface, but I like to leave mine on/sleeping 24/7 and just charge it at night when I sleep. The combination of bad battery life, poor brightness control, and connected standby issues means I'm on Win 8.1 again.
Click to expand...
If I have anything negative to say about Windows 10 it's related to your third point. What's up with that? My SP3 regularly loses the ability to access certain shares in my house for the first minute or so. So, I figure I take a couple of minutes to do something and it turns into a few because I have to wait for the network after waking the unit. I'm also using the dock when this happens.


I haven't had the dead SP3 issue in a few builds so at least I don't take my SP3 out my bag to find it overheated and dead with that nice symbol on the screen that lets you know. But, I still have issues once in a while with waking it (it seems like it silently reboots at some point and powers off), and that network issue I described.


With no status lights on the SP3, I have no idea what state that thing is in. I just know that when I leave the computer at night, I should not see the Surface logo when I wake it in the morning. It's not hibernation or else I'd see my open apps. As I'm typing this, I'm beginning to get the feeling that a clean install might be the cure for all of this.


At least the days of spending hours setting up a clean build are over for me. I'm usually done in an hour with apps and patches since Windows 8.1. I love the quick install time.


I'm pretty sure I got about 9 hours while on vacation and that was just web browsing, Citrix, and music/video streaming.
 
On the same boat. I like windows 10 but I not like not having control over my system and what and when something is installed. Maybe I'll try it again in a few months when ms backtracks all the bs as they usually do
 
I just use different SSD's to boot. My main rig has win7 installed on a 120 ssd, win8.1 on a 250, and win10 on another 250. SSDs are just getting cheaper and cheaper. Documents, downloads etc all point to the same 2TB spinner. Takes longer to shut down than it does to restart if I need to.
 
I went back to 8.1 on my laptop. Windows 10 was hanging and sluggish and the sysstem search was absolutely terrible. In 8.1 I could hit the shortcut win+Q and what I wanted immediately came up. Windows 10 seems to take forever the links to populate and when I do what I want is never there.

I want to say I'm unimpressed but the game streaming and things was pretty cool. I'll give it some time before I put it on my Stream 8 and other computers. I've migrated it to my work machine to test our software so we'll see how the OS progresses over the next few months. As it stands I'm really happy with 8.1, it's a great OS and Xbox streaming is the only thing I really want 10 for.
 
I did the Windows 10 upgrade, followed by wiping my drive and doing a clean install.

I found the interface clean, very usable and snappy.

I was annoyed at all the included (and non-removable in many cases) apps for a variety of reasons. Some of them (like the camera app) have no place on a desktop, and just annoyed the hell out of me because of that. This is reminiscent of one of those bad console ports that instructs you to use a controller button to do something, and annoying on a similar level, but not serious.

From a philosophical level I am rather annoyed at their blatant "Using Windows 10 as a platform to funnel people into our freemium cloud services" aspect of it. I feel people are best served if their operating system is separate and neutral with respect to the programs, services and applications they use.

That being said, while none of these apps (like the music streaming service, movies and TV streaming service, One Drive, XBOX integration, etc.) were removable, I can at least remove the icons and hide them. They also eventually stopped nagging me about setting them up. (I hate nagware)

I am somewhat bothered on a philosophical level by the fact that Microsoft is trying to push people into having a "microsoft account" for their local machine. During the clean install, I had to hit ignore, and advanced to skip creating a microsoft account on two separate screens. It is my local computer, I don't want it tied to anything outside my local network. That and the level of personal data that you opt to submit to microsoft in order to "improve services" is obnoxious. All of that got disabled, as did WiFi sharing and location services. I know where my computer is. It is under my desk. That is where it always is. I uninstalled all of the included apps it would let me, and disabled all the rest from doing anything in the background, as well as disabled anything syncing to or from microsofts cloud, any thing downloading maps, or weather.

The new non-removable "photos" app is awful. If I double click to view a picture I just want to see it, I don't want to add it to an album and link it to a database. I noticed that after doing the upgrade to Windows 10, the old Windows Picture viewer was still there, but once I did a clean install it no longer was. Going to have to figure out how to copy it back in from a prior version.

Cortana was obnoxious. Disabled it (but unfortunately the round "hamburger" icon is still displayed. Wish I could get rid of that. I also disabled web integration in the search bar. When I type in that bar, I want local stuff only.

Anyway, after a few hours of hunting and pecking through the new configuration menu's, I think I have gotten it to a more barebones configuration I prefer, and it is actually quite usable. Huge improvement on 8.1.

I'm sure over time, tweaks and hacks will help remove all the verizon-phone-like unremovable apps, and microsoft spyware in the operating system, and let me get the barebones experience I want.

I want no part of microsofts ecosystem at all. I don't even want to use their browsers. I just want an OS I can install the programs of my choosing on and run them. I'd stick with Windows 7, but I want to stay up to date with DX12 and the core improvements under the hood.


All that being said, Windows 10 pro is a pretty nice experience from a UI, but only - I guess - after the horror show that was 8/8.1.

Biggest downside right now is that the only game I really play is a little bit unstable in Windows 10. At first "Red Orchestra 2" would somehow disable my monitors (resulting in no signal) whenever quitting the game or alt-tabbing away. Then this behavior went away, and was replaced with frequent "rogame.exe has stopped working" crashes.

I'm not sure where the problems are, if they are Windows 10, Driver or Game related, but compatibility issues like this are to be expected with new releases. I'm sure they will be fixed soon.

Until then, I may temporarily roll back. I did a clean install, but I imaged my drive first :)
 
xIronCrossx said:
Once you get used to windows 8.1 and how to search for files you'll realize how slow 7 really is. Accessing hard drives/folders is much quicker and the search function removes the need for the start button. The start button is much better than the garbage metro UI in 8.1 though, I'm glad that is gone, even though I never saw it unless I accidentally hit the windows key.
Click to expand...

If you search for apps/files differently in Windows 8 than you did in Windows 7, you were using 7 wrong.

I actually think since Vista the proper way to find files and apps is to type what you want in the search bar (in explorer or in the start menu/page)
 
fuzzylogik said:
Lol... same stuff happens with practically all new Windows OS releases... Does anybody still remember how much people hated Windows XP when that came out and how people were moving back to Win 2000 because it was so much better? Before you know it people will be complaining about whatever is the next version of 10 because the previous version is just that much better (however that works in the future).
Click to expand...

I Do. I have to admit that I wasn't a huge fan of the new start menu and I know I always used the win 2k color scheme. XP's Blue/green was some fugly shit.
 
I searched for them differently in 8. You could hit win+f to search only for files; the fact that you can't in 10 keeps screwing me up.
 
I'm sticking to Windows 8.1 on my laptop and Windows 7 on my "media PC" because I'm too lazy to reconfigure Windows 10 to make it look and feel like Windows 2000.
 
Armisael said:
I searched for them differently in 8. You could hit win+f to search only for files; the fact that you can't in 10 keeps screwing me up.
Click to expand...

Probably can accomplish the same thing by hitting the win button alone (that seems to work in Windows 8.x).

Give it a try. I personally prefer to search for files in explorer, but I rarely search for files unless I'm in explorer to begin with. I guess I could try changing that behavior.
 
Armisael said:
I searched for them differently in 8. You could hit win+f to search only for files; the fact that you can't in 10 keeps screwing me up.
Click to expand...

You can disable web searches from the search bar, by clicking the settings gear found innit, turning the search bar into a local search only. This might help.
 
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