As the title says ....
My little rant on why I'm not very impressed with Windows 10.
In my experience of Windows 10 on three of my PCs ......
ASUS Q200E Ultra Book 11.6 inch ... 2.4ghz i3 dual core / 4gb Ram
ASUS Flip ..... 2.4ghz i7 quad core / 8gb Ram
HP Envy Desktop .... 3.4ghz i7 quad core/ 32gb Ram
Win10 is buggy on all of my machines listed above which was a clean install. And also the annoyances and likes I have with Windows 10 in general.
Updates ..... takes longer than any previous Windows version, to the point that it's a blessing that I don't rely on just one computer. And the updates are also more frequent than ever to deal with on a regular basis. I had to go into Windows Components just to kill auto updates and still I get these huge orange pop-ups that updates are available and it will not go away unless I click and let it take me to the update window, which I cancel out until I'm ready, freaking annoying!!! The update descriptions itself are now terribly vague.
Overall speed .... After initial install Windows 10 felt just a bit snappier on my ASUS Ultra Book, but after several weeks, there would be moments when it would just be so laggy for no reason, even with less than 40% of cpu and ram resources being used. I didn't have that problem with Windows 8, although when Windows 10 is not lagging, it's faster than 8. But of course Windows 10 lags at almost always the wrong damn times.
On both my ASUS Flip and my HP Envy Desktop, I experience less momentary and less harsh lag, but it still happens and very noticeable. Windows 8 was actually faster on the ASUS Flip, I never had Windows 8 on the HP Envy desktop, have Windows 7 still installed on another partition. 10 is much faster than 7 on my HP desktop, but Windows 7 runs flawless under it's specs.
On the plus side, Hibernate on Windows 10 is amazingly fast compared to previous Windows versions.
Metro side of Windows .... For the most part I hate it. Installing and updating apps from the app store is hit or miss. Too often they fail at updates or installing and I would have to click it again or several times to finally start the process. "Update All" almost never works, I would need to update individually. After awhile some Metro apps just stop working, the default Mail app being the most problematic. This was also a problem on Windows 8 but has got worst on Windows 10. I ended up downloading Windows Essentials and installed Windows Live Mail 2012, so much better than the default mail app.
Two things I do like about the metro apps is that the app store actually has decent content and I love the Xbox Live app since it allows you to stream your Xbox and games to Windows 10. I can be in my living room, and play games while my Xbox One is in my bedroom. I hate that it's only available for Windows 10 though.
I also love how they integrated the metro side/metro apps into the start menu, and that you can easily resize it to your likely. Huge welcomed UI upgrade.
Another problem I have is the UI design of non metro apps, which is an issue in Windows 8 as well. Desktop app icons look ugly as hell inside the metro tiles even when the tile is scaled to the smallest size. Especially noticeable when in Tablet Mode, which I use often on the ASUS Flip. Why can't MS get Windows to resize the icon to fit the tile? I wouldn't mind if the icon was a bit fuzzy. Or maybe have desktop app icons display without a tile.
Action Center/Notifications/Task Bar .... Buggy on all three of my machines listed above. Action center refuses to respond every now and then, and always requires a reboot to fix. But I think it has more to do with the task bar itself being buggy. Task bar occasionally just locks up to the point that the start button doesn't respond and clicking apps on the task bar doesn't do anything.
It also seems that restarting the explorer service doesn't work anymore, it just completely times out, so you have to reboot to fix the problem anyway. Doing this on Windows 8 and earlier Windows versions would fix any task bar problem 9 out of 10 times without the need to reboot.
Then you have stupid notifications. For example: Stop notifying me of start-up apps to disable, when it's labeled as low impact. Of course I turn those notifications off, but of course Windows magically turns them on again in x amount of time. God forbid you don't setup your OneDrive in a timely manner, Windows 10 will nag you from all angles. And NO .. I don't want to try Office for 1 month. And how many times are you going to tell me to verify my MS account? Geeessh!!!
Metro Style Settings .... Is this a joke? I help people and small businesses setup there computers, networks, servers, phone networks, alarm/surveillance and etc: as a side job. Trust me when I say this ...The metro style settings confuse that average user more than it helps them. It pretty much leaves plenty of people helpless cause of the lack of options and how the control panel and many network options are basically hidden. The average user doesn't figure or know what to search for. Something as simple as forgetting a wireless network shouldn't be a chore.
Settings .... Certain settings don't stick. Mainly the Power Settings. Windows 10 is the only version of Windows since Win95 that I constantly had to keep an eye of my power settings. Yes, I go through that long detailed list of power settings setup for both plugged in and on battery usage. For some reason, no matter what I do, it reverts back to one of the default settings again in about a week or so. Not cool when you're on battery power and still want your connections to remain on for x amount of time. Or when you close the lid and it goes to sleep, when you set it up not to. I'm thinking it could have something to do with the constant updates, but haven't looked into that yet.
Cortana ... Don't have any issues with it, but my experience is, it's much better on a WP. On WP, Cortana gives much more direct answers. On Windows 10, much more taking you to the search engine via Edge browser. I even asked the same questions on both a WP and Win10 and still ended up with Cortana going to the search engine more often on Win10.
Gaming ... Probably the ONLY thing that's flawless on every version of Windows I had, and still as good on 10. But the hype surrounding DX12 is a bit premature, which is typical.
Battery life .... Worst on Windows 10 compared to 8. I've compared my ASUS Flip on both 10 and 8 and on both low performance and high settings. I'm losing about 40mins to 1hr on Windows 10. Didn't compare my ASUS ultrabook, cause the battery is no longer in the best of health. I wouldn't be surprised if manufacturers base their new product's battery life on Windows 8 for the next 6 months.
Legacy apps .... Most of the legacy apps I use don't work proper or at all, under XP compatibility mode anymore, which worked just fine in XP compatible mode using Windows 8 and 7.
Drivers .... I thought Windows automatically finding drivers was suppose to be better, unfortunately it's not. Windows 10 failed to find drivers for some of my peripherals and Windows 8 found and installed them with no problems.
On my mid 2015 MBP 15 inch ..... I don't do the bootcamp dual booting thing, so I can't judge that experience. But Windows 10 does seem to run smooth in Parallels, it's probably because my I keep my VMs pretty clean and minimal, and only use it for the several apps I need vs using it as a main OS on my MBP.
I was going to bootcamp Windows 10 and also use Parallels to run it if I needed it while on OSX. But my neighbor tried doing the same, and ran into activation issues on the Parallel side even though it was already activated on the boot camp partition. Don't know the details of why, but anyhow .... MS should just rid of activation on Windows.
So IMHO ....
UI design and a few added features ...... A step forward
Overall experience ....... A step backwards(at the moment)
My little rant on why I'm not very impressed with Windows 10.
In my experience of Windows 10 on three of my PCs ......
ASUS Q200E Ultra Book 11.6 inch ... 2.4ghz i3 dual core / 4gb Ram
ASUS Flip ..... 2.4ghz i7 quad core / 8gb Ram
HP Envy Desktop .... 3.4ghz i7 quad core/ 32gb Ram
Win10 is buggy on all of my machines listed above which was a clean install. And also the annoyances and likes I have with Windows 10 in general.
Updates ..... takes longer than any previous Windows version, to the point that it's a blessing that I don't rely on just one computer. And the updates are also more frequent than ever to deal with on a regular basis. I had to go into Windows Components just to kill auto updates and still I get these huge orange pop-ups that updates are available and it will not go away unless I click and let it take me to the update window, which I cancel out until I'm ready, freaking annoying!!! The update descriptions itself are now terribly vague.
Overall speed .... After initial install Windows 10 felt just a bit snappier on my ASUS Ultra Book, but after several weeks, there would be moments when it would just be so laggy for no reason, even with less than 40% of cpu and ram resources being used. I didn't have that problem with Windows 8, although when Windows 10 is not lagging, it's faster than 8. But of course Windows 10 lags at almost always the wrong damn times.
On both my ASUS Flip and my HP Envy Desktop, I experience less momentary and less harsh lag, but it still happens and very noticeable. Windows 8 was actually faster on the ASUS Flip, I never had Windows 8 on the HP Envy desktop, have Windows 7 still installed on another partition. 10 is much faster than 7 on my HP desktop, but Windows 7 runs flawless under it's specs.
On the plus side, Hibernate on Windows 10 is amazingly fast compared to previous Windows versions.
Metro side of Windows .... For the most part I hate it. Installing and updating apps from the app store is hit or miss. Too often they fail at updates or installing and I would have to click it again or several times to finally start the process. "Update All" almost never works, I would need to update individually. After awhile some Metro apps just stop working, the default Mail app being the most problematic. This was also a problem on Windows 8 but has got worst on Windows 10. I ended up downloading Windows Essentials and installed Windows Live Mail 2012, so much better than the default mail app.
Two things I do like about the metro apps is that the app store actually has decent content and I love the Xbox Live app since it allows you to stream your Xbox and games to Windows 10. I can be in my living room, and play games while my Xbox One is in my bedroom. I hate that it's only available for Windows 10 though.
I also love how they integrated the metro side/metro apps into the start menu, and that you can easily resize it to your likely. Huge welcomed UI upgrade.
Another problem I have is the UI design of non metro apps, which is an issue in Windows 8 as well. Desktop app icons look ugly as hell inside the metro tiles even when the tile is scaled to the smallest size. Especially noticeable when in Tablet Mode, which I use often on the ASUS Flip. Why can't MS get Windows to resize the icon to fit the tile? I wouldn't mind if the icon was a bit fuzzy. Or maybe have desktop app icons display without a tile.
Action Center/Notifications/Task Bar .... Buggy on all three of my machines listed above. Action center refuses to respond every now and then, and always requires a reboot to fix. But I think it has more to do with the task bar itself being buggy. Task bar occasionally just locks up to the point that the start button doesn't respond and clicking apps on the task bar doesn't do anything.
It also seems that restarting the explorer service doesn't work anymore, it just completely times out, so you have to reboot to fix the problem anyway. Doing this on Windows 8 and earlier Windows versions would fix any task bar problem 9 out of 10 times without the need to reboot.
Then you have stupid notifications. For example: Stop notifying me of start-up apps to disable, when it's labeled as low impact. Of course I turn those notifications off, but of course Windows magically turns them on again in x amount of time. God forbid you don't setup your OneDrive in a timely manner, Windows 10 will nag you from all angles. And NO .. I don't want to try Office for 1 month. And how many times are you going to tell me to verify my MS account? Geeessh!!!
Metro Style Settings .... Is this a joke? I help people and small businesses setup there computers, networks, servers, phone networks, alarm/surveillance and etc: as a side job. Trust me when I say this ...The metro style settings confuse that average user more than it helps them. It pretty much leaves plenty of people helpless cause of the lack of options and how the control panel and many network options are basically hidden. The average user doesn't figure or know what to search for. Something as simple as forgetting a wireless network shouldn't be a chore.
Settings .... Certain settings don't stick. Mainly the Power Settings. Windows 10 is the only version of Windows since Win95 that I constantly had to keep an eye of my power settings. Yes, I go through that long detailed list of power settings setup for both plugged in and on battery usage. For some reason, no matter what I do, it reverts back to one of the default settings again in about a week or so. Not cool when you're on battery power and still want your connections to remain on for x amount of time. Or when you close the lid and it goes to sleep, when you set it up not to. I'm thinking it could have something to do with the constant updates, but haven't looked into that yet.
Cortana ... Don't have any issues with it, but my experience is, it's much better on a WP. On WP, Cortana gives much more direct answers. On Windows 10, much more taking you to the search engine via Edge browser. I even asked the same questions on both a WP and Win10 and still ended up with Cortana going to the search engine more often on Win10.
Gaming ... Probably the ONLY thing that's flawless on every version of Windows I had, and still as good on 10. But the hype surrounding DX12 is a bit premature, which is typical.
Battery life .... Worst on Windows 10 compared to 8. I've compared my ASUS Flip on both 10 and 8 and on both low performance and high settings. I'm losing about 40mins to 1hr on Windows 10. Didn't compare my ASUS ultrabook, cause the battery is no longer in the best of health. I wouldn't be surprised if manufacturers base their new product's battery life on Windows 8 for the next 6 months.
Legacy apps .... Most of the legacy apps I use don't work proper or at all, under XP compatibility mode anymore, which worked just fine in XP compatible mode using Windows 8 and 7.
Drivers .... I thought Windows automatically finding drivers was suppose to be better, unfortunately it's not. Windows 10 failed to find drivers for some of my peripherals and Windows 8 found and installed them with no problems.
On my mid 2015 MBP 15 inch ..... I don't do the bootcamp dual booting thing, so I can't judge that experience. But Windows 10 does seem to run smooth in Parallels, it's probably because my I keep my VMs pretty clean and minimal, and only use it for the several apps I need vs using it as a main OS on my MBP.
I was going to bootcamp Windows 10 and also use Parallels to run it if I needed it while on OSX. But my neighbor tried doing the same, and ran into activation issues on the Parallel side even though it was already activated on the boot camp partition. Don't know the details of why, but anyhow .... MS should just rid of activation on Windows.
So IMHO ....
UI design and a few added features ...... A step forward
Overall experience ....... A step backwards(at the moment)
