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Has Microsoft Dropped A Clanger With WIN-10?

I've known MS operating systems since Microsoft-DOS  (Disc Operating System) days: I've used DOS, 3.1, 5, NT, XP (I think MS' best), now 7, and have had an unfortunate brush with 10.

Also used briefly, a SUN computer giving a half-way house between command-line and windows (not "Windows TM") screens;  and my first PC was an Amstrad with CP/M O.S.
 BTW the windows "graphical user interface" as it was pretentiously called, was IBM's invention, not µSoft's


Has MS lost its way with WIN-10 though?

   -- The home-page of my ISP, BTInternet, always has links to sets of instructions to deal with all sorts of obviously common WIN-10 problems that should be minimal or non-existent if the system was designed, written and tested properly before publication.

   --  A correspondent on another forum tells me his computer often freezes with the floods of WIN-10 automatic "up-dates" over which the user has no control - to be fair he also said the Internet speed is very low in his locality. What are all those "up-dates? (He didn't know, but said many are huge files.)

   --- My own experience of 10, loaded for free when I fell for µSoft's persuasion, was of a scrappy desktop and arcane menus designed merely for looks, at the cost of ease hence efficiency of use. Its only advancement was a more comprehensive thumb-nail photograph reviewer, and it destroyed my half-dozen web-site registration. They proved very difficult to restore after reversion to WIN 7, and I have a nagging feeling the "up-date" and reversion damaged the OS somewhere.

I should say I refused Microsoft's full installation scam, but used its much less prominent "Custom" instead. 


Is Microsoft Windows-10 really as bad as this evidence together suggests?

For what is WIN-10 really designed? (Apart from making Mr. Gates even richer!)
Does it depend on your use for it? Does it make any difference if you use it as merely a glorified text-phone & passive web-site viewer; or if you want to use word-processors, photo-editors and mathematical/graphical spread-sheets? Or if you wish to learn very advanced skills like database-creating, CAD or programming (C++ etc)?

Posted - December 20, 2017
Tags : None

Responses


  •    "Happily, I have no idea, but it wouldn't surprise me."  I share your experience with Microsoft: DOS; 3.1; 95; 98; and XP (which I also feel the best), but then, unlike you, I gave up on Microsoft. I kept reading the reviews: Vista; 7; etc ... but that was it.
       
       Initially, I tried Linux.  I really liked it, but my computer skills weren't up to the task.  I could have picked a more user-friendly distribution, I suppose, and they were available, but rather than doing that I moved to Apple.

       Many people say, "Ooo Apple ... too expensive!"  Well, initial cost isn't the only thing a computer can cost you.  I'm going to have to read some pretty outstanding reviews before I ever go back to Windows! :)

      December 20, 2017 9:03 PM MST
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  • It5 started with 8 but 10 sucks too.  Basically MS has copied Apple's child's toy like interface and GUI design  the best they could while still making it Windows.  

      December 20, 2017 10:23 PM MST
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  • 3719
    I don't know the Apple system, so why is it "toy like"? Is it all symbols and no words?

    When I bought the PC I'm using now it had WIN 8 loaded but the dealer swapped it to WIN 7 for me. He said the only real difference is the desk-top appearance, designed to cope with small-screen devices, but many of his customers much preferred the previous styles. 

    WIN-10 does seem to have starting menu problems. BTInternet's home page has long-running link about this. I don't know if the rest of the system is unreliable too - but I found also the applications bundled with it had been stripped and messed about with merely for style. 


    MS programmes have never been really good, with niggling faults they would never put right; and strange formatting dictatorship in Word & Excel by programmers pushing their personal styles (using 'style' loosely). I used professionally, Excel, often including polar plots which MS call "radar charts". You can't edit their grids and labels properly for legibility, and they show 0º and 360º as separate radials! I found the W10-bundled Cartesian graphs' type and editing choices, previously versatile and easy, so diminished as to be useless for more than pretty PowerPoint pictures. 

    I wonder what sort of market Microsoft now wants. Is it purely social-media and entertainments? Is it abandoning administrative and technical customers?


    Incidentally I used an independent dealer, not one of the supermarket-style chains like Currys. The chain shop may be all right if you know exactly what you want and it matches what its far-away head office deigns to offer you, but I think you are more likely to obtain proper help and service from the independent specialist. 
      December 22, 2017 4:57 AM MST
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  • The look and the way Mac is organized and used always felt like I was being treated as a little kid.  The focus on the system also always seemed more designed for casual use then real work.  Plus I could never understand or accept Apples proprietary BS.  The whole package always frustrates me in how Apple and there OS's tell YOU what to do instead of the other way around.

    "I wonder what sort of market Microsoft now wants. Is it purely social-media and entertainments? Is it abandoning administrative and technical customers?"
    This is exactly what I mean.  Mac OS always seemed to focus on the non-gaming entertainment and browsing use of home computing.  That's what Windows 10 seems to have put more focus in as well.   Checking social media,  ldownloading music and movies, and occasional emailing type users.  Mac was the first to dumb itself down and that's what Microsoft seemed to following with 8 and 10.
      December 25, 2017 12:02 AM MST
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  • 3719
    I suppose both companies are responding to bland statistics of computer use - this is one reason they are determined to track our every move on-line. (Another being to sell the information to advertising-agencies.)

    I wonder if they ever really talk to people who might want to use applications like 'Excel' and 'Word' to the full and don't want their personal formats dictated by the programmer;  to those who may have "old" but perfectly-serviceable third-party software such as picture-processors; to those who are content to continue to use an older OS such as WIN-XP Pro because it and its contemporary applications suit their computing needs.

    Or to use users who do not want costly subscriptions to Adobe and Win-Zip they need only very occasionally. MS has introduced a document and spreadsheet default lock - docx and xlsx -  that seems to turn files into pdf-like images. You to need an Adobe converter costing umpteen £££/$$$ a month, if you need to further edit the file, perhaps to subsume it into a larger work. I keep seeing pop-ups telling me my WIN-Zip is out of date but up-dating it needs another expensive subscription instead of a fair one-off purchase.

    I wonder but doubt they consult anyone except the commercial data-buyers for whom things like Facebook exist. They have each a monopoly and could not care less about us, only about our money. 
      December 27, 2017 6:09 AM MST
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  • 22891
    not that i know of
      December 24, 2017 3:51 PM MST
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  • 3719
    All right then Pearl, I accept that you've not had problems yourself with Windows 10 - but I'd be interested to know on what you base your faith in both that OS and in what you see as Microsoft's current policies. 
      December 24, 2017 5:37 PM MST
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  • 22891
    not that i know of
      December 25, 2017 11:41 AM MST
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