I just updated to Windows 10 and you can too if you want

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

My experiences so far:

It has a useless “settings” window where you can change fuckall settings, it’s very pretty, but to change my ip-settings I still had to find the win2000 style “control panel”. I’m sure the rest of the OS is cutting edge but this looks suspiciously as if it’s still same old windows, tarted up a bit differently than its predecessor.

Since I use Dropbox (LAN sync!) I have no use for skydrive/ onedrive it is an absolute pain to remove, stopping the client was checking one checkbox but removing the “onedrive” link from explorer (where I tend to spend quite some time so I don’t need useless clutter) was a very poorly documented aund tedious trek though the register.

Removing all the weather/news/stock ticker/Xbox crap from start menu was relatively painless.

The photos app is quite useful to browse photos and works relatively fast, in fact the whole UI feels fast.

Finally! Mounting ISO 's natively in windows (something Linux has done for as long as can remember) bye bye daemon tools.

Native AV.

The gui really is a thin veneer of new over an NT structure.

Bing is still useless. I’m staying away from corthingy/clippy 1.09.@ 1, switched that off.

All the stuff I’ve installed works flawlessly, office 2007, windirstat, iTunes, vlc, chrome, calibre, various VPN clients, ccleaner, handbrake

Multiple desktops! Finally.

For some reason the installer thought I wanted a Dutch interface (granted I’m Dutch and live in holland) however the installation of a different language was completely painless.

So: nothing earth shattering but a useful incremental upgrade from win 7 and a return to sanity from win 8.

42

Bummer. I’m old-school, handling all my backup needs locally. I want nothing in a cloud, so I’ll end up jumping through the same hoops you did.

Sweet! Bye bye daemon tools indeed.

Is it any good? Can I jettison AVG Free?

43

The jumping through hoops is entirely voluntary, you could also just not use it.

As I understand it the AV is comparable with MSE, adequate for my needs but more importantly it stays out of my way and doesn’t require regular updates where it wants to install all kinds of crap.

44

If you will look carefully through the customization options, you can still make the start menu full screen. I’m not at my computer right now, but I’ll look for it when I am. Poke around, you may find it.

45

Wow, it seems to be a marketing tool for Microsoft. Look at all you can have, for 99 cents to a few hundred bucks that is. It’s half spam. Now I’m tied by an internet umbilical cord to the wicked witch of the Northwest. But, it is faster.

46

I couldn’t bear to go back through the labyrinth of options and choices that I navigated last night to set up things the way I want them.

But here’s a link on how to do this.

There seem to be many options for customization if you have the patience and tenacity to dig-dig-dig for them. I shut down or turned off all of the intrusive notifications and offers to sync/arrange/connect stuff for me. I sent Cortana to the gulag to break rocks. I keep my volume turned off-- I don’t even want the computer beeping at me, let alone talking to me.

Right now I have my computer looking pretty much the way it did yesterday morning before I upgraded. And it’s slicker than greased owl shit, just the way it functions best for me. YMMV. (For example, a full screen start menu would make me run headfirst into a concrete pillar. i don’t want full screen anything except my desktop background. I keep multiple windows open-- not tabs-- and stack them on top of each other. Makes me happy.)

I even found my two beloved desktop gadgets, an analog clock face and a calendar. But Microsoft does make it hard for you. I have a nightmare where Microsoft runs a nursing home where you are force-fed everything, must poop on schedule, and you aren’t allowed to make any decisions for yourself. Oh, wait… we’re there.

All said, Win10 is comprehensive, smart, slick and can be customized to your preferences if you can manage to keep your wits about you. (I did, but just barely.)

48

Why would you not upgrade both? I would.

49

My wife upgraded to 10 and hates it. Switched back to 7.

50

It take a little time (couple of hours) and effort (some screaming and cursing) to customize it to look and act just like Windows 7, which is what I have done. But I can understand if it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.

51

Windows 10 ‘Service Release 1’ bug-fix update expected early next week

This is funny, one week after release, SR1 comes.

52

No, that’s not what I’m talking about. That only makes “pinned” apps full screen. I’m talking about the “All Apps” section of the start menu. There’s no apparent way to make that a full screen list anymore the way it was in Win 8. It’s just a left hand side single-column view now.

53

Oh. Sorry. :frowning:

Is thisit? Probably not. But I just stumbled across it. *<Slinking away now.> *

54

Damn, it looks like I need to do stuff to upgrade. I keep getting a SAFE_OS failure during BOOT. The error code makes it look like I need to wipe my disk and change from MBR to GPT or something, but I was really counting on not needing to do a clean install.

55

The article you link describes it as:

Why is it funny? What would you have Microsoft do?

56

You can stay away from Windows 10 if you want, but eventually down the road, you’re going to have to bite the bullet and do it, and when you do somewhere in the future, you’ll have to pay for it.

57

If you’re looking for the preview pane in the explorer, it’s still there (like most stuff you can’t find), but you have to turn it on.

Hit control-F1 to open a “ribbon” (like the dreaded ribbon in Word) where you’ll see a boatload of options. Click “preview pane.”

The preview pane is a boon for those of us who make most of our living by cutting and pasting from lots of documents (the quilting approach to composition). Being able to access the contents of a document without opening it is sweet. I guess that’s why they kept this feature. But being Microsoft, they had to make you hunt for it.

58

Windows Defender basically IS MSE, as far as I can tell; I’ve been using MSE for a few years now, and giggled when I opened Windows Defender for the first time after upgrading yesterday and saw the same familiar MSE interface.

I stopped giggling when I saw the last virus definition update was 59 days ago. For whatever reason the upgrade to Win10 dumped the last two months’ worth of MSE updates. You can bet I updated Defender AT ONCE.

That’s been the most serious problem since the upgrade, and it was easily fixed. I neglected to export my IE bookmarks and they’re apparently gone with the wind now, but I didn’t use them much and can easily replace them–in Firefox, since I have to start over with a different browser anyway. Other than that, I wouldn’t say I love Windows 10, but it hasn’t broken anything, so tentative yay.

59

After reading this I went to Windows Defender and saw that is was off and could not be turned back on. I have Kaspersky Internet Security installed. I did not think to disable/turn it off while I did the download and install of Win10. After some searching, I learned that even though Kaspersky and Windows Defender were both running under Windows 7 on my computer, now that I have Windows 10, I have to choose one or the other. Apparently Windows Defender is incompatible with all external AV programs under Windows 10. But is it really? I’m confused. My gut feeling is that Kaspersky is more robust and comprehensive, but maybe that’s only because of its reputation and cost, whereas Windows Defender is free and I never asked for it. Anyone have any info on this?

60

Apparently MS doesn’t want me to make any purchases from the STORE because it’s not working at all. I attempt to start the app and all it does is sit there with the little activity circle going around.

I thought maybe I could go to programs and reinstall or repair it, but it’s not even listed there.

Any ideas?

61

Please clarify something for me: I’m currently running Windows 7. If I upgrade, will this be like re-installing Windows, with me having to back-up my data & reinstall programs after installing Windows 10? (I have a second hard drive I used for this when I upgraded from XP to 7.) Or will this be more like an upgrade, where my programs and bookmarks and whatnot will still be there after?