My Windows 10 Experience.

[PcTek9]

I installed win 10 on a computer I don't often use. I've been using it for a while, and this is the sum total of my experience with this operating system. My first impression is that it is a flat, plain looking operating system as microsoft installs it's default windows 10 look. The glossy/glassy nice buttons of windows 7 are gone. To me windows 10 looks like a minimialist version of windows 8. To me it felt like the user interface was cheap and lackluster, and had been reverted to some sort of precambrian ultralight linux window manager.
So I started using it anyway. I noticed news stories I am not interested in, popping up in my programs start menu by default. I decided that personally, I don't like that. I read horror stories about windows 10 on the web, but decided not to let that influence my opinion, or my experience. Such as a person who reported all their files had been moved to the cloud without their knowledge (lol). That did not happen to me, but during the installation I did uncheck anything remotely related to cloud and live.
I did notice that the user interface has these balls in a circle that speed up and slow down randomly not seeming to give any hint about how long events might take, and I found that annoying on some level, because I decided I didnt like that. I also noticed the same little balls moving in a straight line on my start menu at random speeds, and I said to myself, "O no! The balls!".
Microsoft assured the world windows 10 is faster, I found it to be slower. The system I am using has plenty of cpu and lots of power. There is plenty of ram and lots left over for windows 10, but windows 10 is simply slower. It takes longer to boot, and then it has to sit there and find things in menu's that used to just pop up instantly such as the start menu, and explorer windows panes. I decided I didnt like that. I don't like waiting on a start menu to find the things that should just be there. I don't like waiting for an extended period of time for the file explorer to find all the files in a folder.
I decided to use windows 10 a while doing normal things I do. During this 4 hour session the taskbar and start menu just went away. There was no error, no message, no nothing. It just went away and did not come back. I thought that was a bit odd. It wasn't temporarily hidden at the bottom of the screen waiting to jump up if I moved my cursor down there. It was gone.
No problem, i'll just winkey + r and run a new one, but it never came back. Ok. I'll restart the computer. I restarted it, and 8 minutes later the circling balls are still circulating. Finally windows 10 comes back online, I hit the thing to move the veil screen so the log in shows, then I log in, then I wait.
So in my experience, I do not like windows 10. I really believed it would be faster, better, and maybe nicer, but I was wrong. I saw that microsoft hololens and windows 10 movie on the web. I saw myself talking to my pc, and things working flawlessly, but it didn't work out that way.
I guess I was expecting windows 7 with accurate speech recognition, but what I got was windows 2 with a you don't mind if we expose your entire life to the world tiny elf built inside.

 

[coffee]

What has also bothered me is the fact that there seems to be this move to have grey text on white backgrounds. I hate this because its hard to read. I also do not like the window styles. They seem pretty flat as you called it and missing all that windows7 luster. Reminds me of a cheap cell phone.

BTW - why is it that software companies come out with new versions and all they seem to do is change the look and feel and never address long term problems? They are real keen on adding more options but never address actual problems.

 

[SelbyComputerRepair]

Lack of control (without registry hacks) of updates really ticks me off.

 

[PcTek9]

Maybe that's it. Maybe I wanted the windows 7 exact look, but with things fixed under the hood. Focus on fixing security issues and so on. I think (to me) it would be better if they kept the win 7 look and feel 'exactly' but just added extra programs for new features, no reason to redesign the fantastic windows 7 interface. I will hope someone offers something to get rid of the grey on white, you are right, that is hard to see. I also hope for something better than the flat drab olive brown tan whatever color that is, they are using on the menus.

 

[glricht]

OP, did you install 10 by upgrading an existing Windows or did you do a clean install?

Have seen similar issues as you observed when upgrading an existing Windows to 10. A clean install fixed them all up.

 

[glennd]

Reminds me of a cheap cell phone.

And there it is in a nutcase. When MS released Win8 they wanted the world's computers to look like cheap cell phones and they are yet to recover from that.

 

[ChrisTech]

Extremely disappointed in Win 10.

M$ seem to have really detached themselves from what is called 'customer service' and are going hell bent on pushing as many customers to do what they want as possible.

Don't get me wrong, Win 10 could be a good thing, but how they are doing it is too aggressive.

 

[johnrobert]

I hate it with a passion especially Edge

 

[ohio_grad_06]

Windows 10 isn't so bad. What I do on a windows 10 box is this. Get logged in, click start menu, go through and unpin literally everything. I also right click the Taskbar, and set Cortana to hidden.

After that, click on start and start typing to search like you did in the windows 8 start screen. Personally I pin things like "this pc", "control panel", anything useful to me, so like ms word, excel, browser shortcut etc.

As far as edge, I fix that issue by installing google chrome, and setting that as my default, I then remove the edge shortcuts from the Taskbar and start menu, and replace them with chrome shortcuts.

If you want to turn off windows 10 tracking, many guides and utilities to do that. Also, another thing to do is to go to control panel, system, advanced system settings, under the hardware tab, turn off it's ability to automatically download and install new drivers from windows update. Also, if you Google, there are .bat files you can download to totally turn off windows defender and to hide the onedrive icon in explorer. With some work you can make it what you want. In other words I basically take all the extras off the system and try to make it so I'm not using all the Microsoft services etc except for the OS itself. Once you start realizing these types of things it actually is a decent OS imo. It's not windows 7, but is way better that 8/8.1. As far as windows 7, good os for it's time but time to move on now I think.

 

[ChrisTech]

Windows 10 isn't so bad. What I do on a windows 10 box is this. Get logged in, click start menu, go through and unpin literally everything. I also right click the Taskbar, and set Cortana to hidden.

After that, click on start and start typing to search like you did in the windows 8 start screen. Personally I pin things like "this pc", "control panel", anything useful to me, so like ms word, excel, browser shortcut etc.

As far as edge, I fix that issue by installing google chrome, and setting that as my default, I then remove the edge shortcuts from the Taskbar and start menu, and replace them with chrome shortcuts.

If you want to turn off windows 10 tracking, many guides and utilities to do that. Also, another thing to do is to go to control panel, system, advanced system settings, under the hardware tab, turn off it's ability to automatically download and install new drivers from windows update. Also, if you Google, there are .bat files you can download to totally turn off windows defender and to hide the onedrive icon in explorer. With some work you can make it what you want. In other words I basically take all the extras off the system and try to make it so I'm not using all the Microsoft services etc except for the OS itself. Once you start realizing these types of things it actually is a decent OS imo. It's not windows 7, but is way better that 8/8.1. As far as windows 7, good os for it's time but time to move on now I think.

The fact that you have to do all this stuff is part of the problem. They are making it so that it is necessary to do all this, just to get a similar degree of control and privacy that came out of the box in Windows 7.

There was never the level of issues with Win 7 that there are with Win 10, such as Start Menu critical errors, Edge, Update control, etc etc.

I just think that they have thrown the baby out with the bathwater, and the feedback I get from my customers is that M$ have not repaired their post-Win 8 reputation as much as they think/hope.

 

[labtech]

Most annoying for me is the OS updating feature. Second most annoying is bugs when performing upgrades from older OS versions. Lastly, Microsoft's systematic push to control things and making it difficult for the user to minimize it. Overall, for the more experienced user I guess dealing with these things are fine, but for the customer who has a billion questions and complaints about them, it can become frustrating.

 

[coffee]

How about this scenario?

Customer has something like Norton installed on Windows 10. Now, NAV has famously decided to kill your internet connect. So, You reboot. Still no internet. But you only did what MS wanted and made an online account. Now you cannot get to your important document for work/school/whatever.

 

[Megaarch]

I like Windows 10. Seems faster than 7 with less drivers needed to be installed. Only thing I changed is removing onedrive and on my personal using Rocketdock with desktop icons hidden. Again Edge is just the default, just like iexplorer is in 7, install firefox and set as default. Tracking? All current OS'es do this, it's not as if 10 is doing anything different from all the others, except some linux distro's. Auto updates I could see being a pain, but so far I think are helping the consumer more than hindering. Anyways 10 is a step in the right direction, and unless you're prepared to install Linux or switch to a Mac, you don't have to many options. Windows is your business so you might as well embrace it.

 

[HFultzjr]

All the Win operating systems I've used or installed needed "tweaked".
Some more, some less.
Win 10 is no different.......just different (LOL).
I'll only do a clean install, no upgrades...too many potential issues.
Yeah, it can be a PITA, but I don't think it's going away.
Hopefully it will "mature".