Microsoft sends Windows Control Panel to tech graveyard Microsoft has confirmed that the venerable Windows Control panel will finally be put out to pasture in favor of a shiny new Settings app. The confirmation came in a support document regarding System Configuration tools in Windows. The document covers the myriad ways users can customize their experience through the graphical …
How about "Settings" Sucks.
Control Panel puts everything in one place for easy reference with forward and back navigation. Settings was designed by some geniuses at MS marketing and engineers who didn't have the balls to say no.
Removing Control Panel is an absolute fail.
Control panel also lets you do amazingly complicated and advanced things like... opening more than one control panel item at a time!!!
The number of times I've forgotten that Settings is a kids toy, been looking at one part of the settings menu, realised I needed info from elsewhere so separately go to that other area... and then realise that no, you can't do that. It's binned off what you were looking at before and used the existing Settings session/window to open the new thing instead.
No, about how you can't set multiple IPs on a network adapter using the settings app.
Or change advanced hardware settings like jumbo frames or VLAN tagging.
Or update the drivers of the thing you're looking at.
Three things I do quite often, given my line of work.
I can hear Microsoft now: "oh that's done via powershell" - nope, in the sea you get.
I just wanna keep my ncpa.cpl shortcute please, thanks
"Using undocumented commands - which will eventually be documented, but by then they'll be deprecated."
This is the way (are we still saying that?)
Middle management at Microsoft can point to money saved because they won't need to spend dev time creating a new GUI and it continues to mystify and obfuscate IT.
Ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch. Ouch.
Discovered last week that the only way to push out a setting for which we previously had a group policy is to use something called “Intune Remediations”.
Sounds a lot grander than it is. It just lets you deploy a PowerShell startup script. Using a web based gui. It’s the worst of both worlds.
In all the old days every new version of Windows was great ... an environment that completely ended after Windows 7 Professional had appeared and all the newer versions sucked slightly.
I'm guessing that if you are saying that XP was the worst, then you are a young sniveling coward who never used Windows 95 or any earlier versions? (LOL).
I'm still using Windows 7 Professional but so many original Microsoft features have become Microsuck features these days.
Indeed so - those were sold as "Vista Capable" versus "Vista Premium Ready" which was a higher spec required for the higher end versions of Vista (Premium, Ultimate etc). Unfortunately selling PCs with XP specs for Vista didn't work out very well as most of these didn't have SSDs at that point so they paged like hell and were infuriatingly slow for many.
Windows 95A.
The OS that shipped to bring the world of USB to PCs, and wholly forgot to include the USB capabilities. Then they re-shipped it, scrapping all of them in the process and provided Windows 95B...which *barely* worked for USB, but only if the moon was in the 7th house and you sacrificed a goat before you tried to configure it.
Not so much higher spec but drivers and hardware had native Vista drivers and the other shoehorned XP drivers that would work as long as you didn't look at it funny.
I bought a "Vista capable" laptop that ran like a sloth with the flu on Vista but was quite snappy downgraded back to XP.
My stepson on the other hand built his desktop using hardware that was specifically stamped "vista ready", and had zero issues with it for years.
> I'll remind you of Windows Vista
That’s not the old days…
The old days are before XP, it even then MS did misstep, hence why the saying that alternate releases of Windows were good and bad.
Basically, XP was good, because it was a really stable for a long time, which meant people stopped talking about it and thus MS and focused on doing stuff. MS didn’t like this so has resorted to the attention seeking release mess we have been witnessing ever since W8. It could be said that MS’s obsession with changing stuff for the sake of it is negatively impacting the economy ie. People are too busy jumping to MS to actually do productive stuff.
Vista was a marketing fail rather than an actual OS fail.
Telling everyone it was 'vista ready' when you needed a minimum of 2GB ram just for the OS alone. and then vendors selling devices with only 2GB or less... which meant the OS ran like dogshit unless you delved deep into the settings and turned of all of the fluff. Then there were vendors who simply refused to update drivers for products so that there were a fuckton of devices like printers, scanners, cameras and so forth that couldn't be connected... My old video camera was one of them.
As an OS, it was stable and very usable... and it introduced windows media player, and led to me joining a team of developers making plugins for it. One of those plugins... eventually became the stand alone media software platform 'emby'
It wasn't perfect... but it doesn't deserve all of the crap it gets... on a system with a decent amount of ram it was just fine and I ran it for about 2yrs before upgrading to W7Pro
Yea, I thought Vista sucked when so many users updated and started complaining. I didn't like it originally but it was so nice to use after Windows 8 and other new versions appeared. Vista was a minor upgrade compared to the current Microsoft environments which have made Vista seem to be wonderful.
I language like that really warranted? ME didn't count, because nobody in there right minds used it. I knew someone who swore by it "I does everything I do really quick as long as I put this disk in my drive every two weeks" He had the docs on a separate drive and rebuilt windows every two weeks!
Windows Me being my bete noire to support...what a useless pile of steaming merde that was....spent more time trying to get the thing not to crash long enough to update a driver than I spent actually installing the driver and this on the work laptop of a solicitor about 20 years back.....(Yes a solicitor aka attorney)
Windows 7 pro or ultimate was about microsofts zenith and since then it's been more and more downhill
Win 7 is mentally tied with win2k - 7 had more functionality but win 2k was utterly rock solid (particularly by SP2 and granite solid by SP4 -thing ran for months on end without any griping or oddities)
10 is a distant second to 7, 11 kinda behind that, xp behind that further still (and if we are talking pre SP3 then it's REALLY far back....I regretted moving from 2k to XP on my personal machine)
I'm only still using windows as I game
Otherwise I'd sail off to Linux mint, which has been quietly running on an ancient laptop for months on end without drama (handles octoprint to talk to my 3d printer - octoprint gives me a headache though sometimes....trying to get webcam monitoring working....is something I am yet to get time and patience to argue with)
Every windows new version annoys me more and more - no I don't want OneDrive, no I don't want targeted advertising, no I don't want to share my location etc etc so stop asking me with every major update....
On El Reg there are a few ( I don't think many tbh) younger(or just want to be down with da kidz) commentards, who think that we old hands who point out that some kind of change is stupid, retrograde and probably cynical are just dinosaurs who object to change. Better ones know, as well as we do ourselves, that we've all seen and worked through some of the biggest changes in technology since the invention of the wheel. That we know what works and how to get stuff done. We may not agree on everything- but we know that the "getting stuff done" bit is the important bit- and can look at changes with experience.
Ermm you mean that simple, easy to understand, fast to use dialogues that allowed admins to actually admin systems instead of wasting an hour a day clicking through 17 screens just to update a fecking IP address?
Yeah, damn right we want the easy to use dialogues to stay and be updated 'cos they bloody well work. As you get older you realise that people and companies just change stuff for the bloody sake of it instead of actually checking if they work and people get use from them.
Ah screw this decade, screw people and screw anyone born after 2005, I'm a grumpy old fart of 52 and damn proud of it too!
Just wait until you have to manage several USB debuggers without it.
These apps tend to be just graphical wrappers around generic configuration functions that provide a reduced set of functionality sufficient for the average user. It is just too complex to provide all the capabilities in an easy to use form so having a sophisticated user interface option to complement the everyday user interface is actually very useful. The situation's not unlike the one you come across with programming tools -- the visual workbenches typically give you a selection of preset capabilities which is fine for most purposes but doesn't cover all eventualities (or error situations) so there's usually some way to see exactly what the graphical front end is telling the tools what to do that can also be used to tweak the settings if necessary.
I never cease to marvel at the sheer amount of effort that goes into making stuff that used to work not work any more. I'd like to think its the work of some Evil Mastermind but I think its really just a noxious blend of ignorance and arrogance.
I am firmly convinced that changes like this are the product of middle managers desperate to justify their jobs, which should in truth never be anything more than maintenance. Maintaining something that works fine doesn't get you a bonus or a promotion in a dysfunctional company (something that absolutely should get you paid and respected in a company that isn't poorly managed). Breaking something that works fine, in a flashy way, will net you that bonus and recognition.
A very long thread illustrating, largely, the harm a monopoly does. Microsoft doesn't care. It doesn't have to It has the lot of you by the short and curlies.
The best thing that could happen for Windows users would be for Microsoft to see Linux uptake increasing at a rate that would imply doubling market share every year. It's about the only thing that would scare the shit out of them and start making them listen to you.
But Settings is less pretty and less shiny.
I don't doubt that MS will, eventually, migrate all the actual functionality. I mean, it's only been a decade or two and they only have a bazillion programmers who /apparently/ have nothing better to do than re-invent the wheel. But Settings is less pretty by design, since it has swallowed the "colourless, flat and no more than 6 actual controls in a single window" mantra.
My experience is slightly different. There are some things that can't be done at all in Settings and can be accomplished with Control Panel. There are some things, perhaps not as many but I've hit it several times, which can't be done in Control Panel but can be accomplished in Settings. Either way, you'll only find out by searching thoroughly through both of them. Someone has to put all the stuff in one place, and I'm not that bothered which one they pick as long as all the settings go somewhere rather than some ones being hidden because some UI designer doesn't think anyone changes them.
I've yet to see a site that didn't need to upgrade the "standard corporate model" used by office and manufacturing staff, especially the staff who do programming, analytics, or live on Mahogany Row so of course they have to have the 4K monitor with 7 channel speakers, and the ultimate leather chair.
It's been with us for a long time, but I wouldn't exactly say it "always worked". It only ever very barely did.
The control panel always was a jumble.[0] Not merely that, but the most useful[1] panels had a habit of being hidden under an "advanced" button with something more time-wasting, less-useless, but "made easier"[2] come next version. Three or four levels of "advanced" button clickery was about the standard, last time I seriously dug into it, probably three major versions ago. I'm old enough that I remeber having to reboot for an IP address change. That restriction got done away with eventually, but its ilk are still rife.
So replace the whole thing with "settings"? I would not be surprised at all to find that this is seen as long overdue and yet improves nothing whatsoever.
microsoft windows is the vehicle whereby the industry convinces themselves that computing has to be hard, by dint of pretending it's easy.
[0] Then again, the mac settings panel is very slick and quite well-designed, even organised into vaguely topical rows, and yet having to go there implies wasting time "where was this again? do I need section X or Y or maybe even Z?" and the trial-and-error commences. Even the very best and finest of windows does not do better than that. They're quite a long distance away from that, in fact.
[1] A very relative term.
[2] In that uniquely microsoft clippy way.
With every word you've read my mind.
Control Panel was shit. Settings is even worse.
And this is pure golden fact:
"microsoft windows is the vehicle whereby the industry convinces themselves that computing has to be hard, by dint of pretending it's easy."
"While the Control Panel still exists for compatibility reasons and to provide access to some settings that have not yet migrated, you're encouraged to use the Settings app, whenever possible."
And access to those settings will never be provided in the Settings app, because somebody with coloured pencils thinks they are "just too technical".
...undeniably less attractive than the modern Settings app...
Few things in life are less undeniable than the above statement :-P
Control Panel is clean, easy, compact, logical, and just undeniably excellent.
The "modern" Settings app is to Control Panel what touchscreen, menus and capacitive buttons replacing physical buttons and knobs are to modern cars' dashboard ergonomics - a huge step back, hidden behind someone's misplaced perception that if it's old - it means that it doesn't work, and that change for the sake of change is good.
I don't expect Microsoft not to kill something that just works, but praising them for it ? Thanks but no thanks.
PS: I can no longer simply drag a location path from File Explorer to my CMD window. I can no longer enable "View Hidden Files" and "Show file extensions" in one menu expand (I have to do it one by one). Is the new File Explorer undeniably better ? Why ? Because I now have tabs ? Puh-lease.
It's not as quick as the old method.
New method:
View->Show->[Check Option 1] > Dialog closes
View->Show->[Check Option 2] > Dia]og closes
Old Method:
View->Show->[Check the options you need] > Close dialog
With the new method, you need to go through the View > Show > Check option for every single option you want to change.
If you assist someone on a laptop set by default with the idiotic checkboxes, that's three separate openings of the View options to disable the checkboxes, show hidden files, show filename extensions.
"...Those options are on the View tab of an Explorer window. If you have the ribbon hidden then yes it requires clicking View each time..."
Not too sure about that.
My "View" always shows. It's on a ribbon that has New / Cut (scissors) / Copy / Paste / Rename / Share / Delete icons, then Sort / View and three dots.
To enable or disable showing item checkboxes, filename extensions or hidden files, I have to click on View > Show > then the option I want.
Once I click on the option I want, the menu collapses, and I have to click on View > Show again.
On any new laptop that I troubleshoot, I need to click on
View > Show > Item Check boxes,
then
View > Show > Hidden items
then
View > Show > File name extensions
On the classic file explorer it was View > Options (or Show, or whatever it was) > and just check or uncheck the checkboxes for the options I wanted. Then hit Ok.
So with the new one I have several extra clicks. On a menu that is not the most stable when I'm remoting into a laptop with some lag.
I'm not even getting started on the Detail Pane and Preview Pane, which force you to chose one or the other, but not take them off. All this to show you a pane that Powerdesk did offer back in 1999, except it looked good and could be set on or off and wasn't mandatory.
"Clearly you are only considering yourself @Khaptain and not perhaps a good chunk of Reg readers who are in support?"
Why are you not using GPOs for these kinds of menial things ?
If your doing this a couple of times a week you must be in a large company, a couple of times a week is not a PME sized company, which means there are L2 and L3 admins somewhere, why are they not doing their job ?
Why the thumbs down and no replies , outside of the little orthographic error ?
I am quite happy to learn how you are all doing things if it's not through GPOs, scripting or similar. I really don't believe that anyone is clicking "users options" as part of their daily support when far easier methods have been available since AD/GPOs existed.
Either that or you are in some very tight companies or start-ups that don't want to pay for training/experience.
The tricky bit about training/experience is that its not one dimensional. Fundamentally all controls do the same thing so once you understand how something works then the actual mechanism for making it work is just 'stuff you have to get through to do what you want to do'. Because of this changing the UI creates redundant learning or, as we're prone to call it, "time wasting". There are actually people out there that get off on knowing the minutiae of what, say, Microsoft is up to this week. They've always existed and I tend to think of them as "enthusiasts". But for most of us this layer of helpfulness is just something we have to cope with to get the job done.
A good example to illustrate this are compiler options. You wouldn't believe the sheer number of options available to a typical code generation toolset. You actually don't use most of them most of the time so a helpful graphical front end collects and rationalizes them to a relative handful of options. Handy for day to day stuff but they're not the sum total -- but you'd be surprised at the number of programmers out there who think that this limited set is all you ever need. Once they start calling the shots then they, desperate to make their mark, will want to reinvent the wheel and get rid of all that superfluous stuff that they never really understood the need for.
Microsoft could radically improve their Windows products by an ongoing large scale program of redundancies among its programming staff. Not only "idle hands make the Devil's Work" but it would be Karma for some of these people to end up having to actually use their creations.
"Presumably because they want to reset them to the previous values once done, so as not to confuse people with sudden change?"
And what could possibly justify doing that several times a week ? What work is someone doing that requires un-hiding, then un-hiding file extensions/hidden files several times a week.
I can understand doing it once or twice a year on specific occasions, but several times per week just doesn't sound correct.
It's one of those options that you set and never change. Any why is support not teaching their users how to do it for themselves. What a waste of supports time doing those silly tasks.
You do realize that there's a special kind of hell for anyone who counters something that doesn't apply to them with "You do realize", right ? :)
I do this once for every new Windows user profile, not for every new install. I do dozens of these per day - between many other things, as I happen to do this for a living.
GPOs - yep. If the settings had to stay. What makes you think that after I have done this and reviewed what I needed to review, I still need the user I'm assisting to keep those settings ?
YOU get to do this once every five years and YOU get to tell me who IT is for ?!? Sweet Linus...
You guys must be living in hell if you're doing all that kind 9f shit time and time again.
For crying our loud we have GPOs , roaming profiles, users with at least a minimum of intelligence, user guides , you can use key users, group leaders but you still prefer to do it yourselves. That's just plain idiotic.
The golden rule in IT is never repeat a task that can be done automatically. Or, no one is lazier than an IT because they can script or perform minor magic tricks that don't involve having to do it oneself.
I can't even begin to imagine how you are rolling out certificates, radius authentication, WiFi connexions , téléphonie configs, updates , new machine installs , user rights on shared malboxes, auto install shared mailboxes etc. The list goes on and on but you guys are doing basic shit like manually.
Do you even know what PowerShell, Batch Scripts , Intunes, GPOs do ? And we are a small outfit so we do benefit from the larger suite of tools like SCCM , if that still exists.
Think again ....
Exactly - as soon as I read that line in the article I was "and THAT, in a nutshell, is what's wrong with modern UI design"... Sure, make the UI *look* nice if you can, but never, EVER, EVER [1] expend any effort on doing so UNTIL you've made damn certain that it actually *works* properly.
And by "works" I don't just mean "when I click this thing, that thing happens", I mean is the bloody thing actually useable without needing to Google for where the thing you need to click is in the first place, or any other action that, under normal circumstances, would be considered utterly insane for a user to need to do, but in this new world of modern UI design just seems to be an entirely acceptable side-effect of making everything look so godawfully bland, minimalistic, uniform etc. etc.
Function over form, every single time. Otherwise your UI simply is not fit for purpose and should never be foisted upon your users...
...and breathe.
[1] repeated because it's not merely essential, but so fundamentally core to the entire principle of an UI that no-one who dares to call themselves a UI designer should allow themselves to forget it, overlook it, ignore it or perform any sort of UI development which causes it to be overruled by ANY other design requirement. No excuses, no exemptions, you either put in the effort to make your UI work well, and have the balls to push back against any suggestion from others to pay more attention to how it looks than how it behaves, or you should find another career and give up your position to someone who can do the job properly. [2]
[2] and if that sounds harsh to some people, then good, because that's exactly what I was aiming for here. I'm beyond sick and tired of having to deal with UI after UI developed by people who only seem to give a crap about producing something that looks drop-dead gorgeous in a promo screenshot or video. The interface provided to users is KEY to how they perceive a product - it doesn't matter how great the underlying functionality is if it's hidden away behind a UI that actively works against the user rather than with them.
Nobody cares about the users. The users don't decide what to buy.
Manglement decides what to buy, and they care about shiny. They pay minions to care about useful, practical, workable, efficient, and all the rest of the boring stuff that their minions are there to do.
The minions complain; But that's nothing new or remarkable, and doesn't effect manglement bonuses, so who cares?
I hate the huge touchscreen in my new car ....up till the midlife "refresh" horror of horror ..it had buttons and a reasonable size touchscreen....seems manufacturer wants to get people forcibly accepting the shite their electric vehicles use so they bork good working layouts with the bonus for them of being cheaper to make (screens are ridiculously cheap....shame the one in my car takes over a minute to wake up so you start car and ONLY then does the screen start to boot and you can't do any of the following till it farts fully into life - change the AC temp, fan speed, activate or deactivate the dentist/heated windscreens, turn the heated seats on or off, ditto the heated steering wheel, not can you change the radio station or whatever media you are streaming.....it is infuriating frankly
I tried a Huawei last year, and I understood their philosophy (not that I agree, mind): for them, the screen touching is optional.
You want AC? You say you're too hot, the car starts it. You want music? You say what you want, it puts it on. You want karaoke? You take one of the included microphones and start singing (okay, it really wasn't clear if stopping the car was needed first).
Do your due diligence before buying major appliances.
I do. That's why my washers and dryers are Speed Queen.
Speed Queen are the folks who make bullet-proof laundromat coin-op equipment ... but they also make home machines, sans the money slot. Hand made in the US, and the price reflects it, but they last forever in a household environment. And no fucking computer to go TITSUP[0] on you after getting blasted by static from the dryer. Most of the TC5/DC5 machines here at the ranch have been abused and battered for over a decade and a half, with no sign of slowing down. And no fucking lid lock; either. Recommended.
The old Roman phrase caveat emptor has never rung truer than for today's large and small appliances.
[0] Total Inability To Select the Unmentionables Program
Agreed. Sounded like a good idea at first as Control Panel can be a bit cluttered and messy, but then they blew it.
Loads of more advanced functionality missing, plus replacement of check boxes with those silly toggle switches. Any UI element that needs a text field next to it to tell you if it is on or off clearly fails at what it is supposed to convey.
Almost all of the extra "help" options that so many interfaces supply, are totally idiotic.
Setting for option A: Yes/No (?)
Click/hover over the (?) and you would expect something that described what option A was, and what the implications of setting yes or no was. Instead you get, the so very useful, "This is where you set option A to be yes or no". Argh!!! What kind of informational help message is that?
Hmm. Microsoft Help files were ( probably still are) notorious for providing instructions for the easy-to-find, simple, or blindingly obvious actions ("To print your document...") but going silent when asked how to do something that wasn't obvious.
"The settings app is a pile of shite compared to control panel tbh"
Agreed. The article came across as written by a fan-boi, someone young with little experience of the past or who doesn't ever need to dive deep into settings, or all three! :-)
Gotta keep re-inventing that wheel.
What will I miss? Well, the speed, the intutiveness, the logic to the interface...
'Settings' is JAFFE (Just Another Fekn Front End) with random gash hung off it - the submenus are all over the place like a mad wummin's sh*** and it's as slow as a week in the jail.
Oh well, it's a brave new world etc etc. You can, as ever, keep it.
What will I miss? Well, the speed, the intutiveness, the logic to the interface...
There's a few comments like this in this thread.
It's like you've all forgotten watching someone click 'Apply' before they click 'OK'?
When has any aspect of the windows UI been speedy and intuitive or (since probably Win 2K) had more than a fleeting semblance of logic to it?
That should read either "Sponsered" or "Satire"
I mean, and argument could be made the Settings App is more attractive than the Control Panel, until you try to use it anyway.
Take the printers section, for example. It does make a nice looking list of printers, but once hit the add printers button, the damn thing wants to survey your whole network for anything plugged in. Only after you see a hundred random things pop up does it even allow you to see the link (that should say "No, seriously Microsoft, I want to add a printer") at the very bottom among all the clutter that will pop up the printer install wizard. This wizard that looks exactly like the one you get in control panel or print management.
The networking section looks great, unfortnatel, that is about it. You may find some of the information it displays useful, even. But the only reason I am usually there is to access the "Network and Sharing" app where I can do some actual work and find the actually useful info. Ofc, I can always just windows key > type 'Control' > bring up control panel to have direct access to what is needed.
Should we talk about the apps section. now? Seriously, that one can take a flying leap. I am having trouble coming up with any redeeming qualities for that one. I don't think I have ever gotten it to do anything purposeful. I mean, maybe the default program stuff is useful, but we never even needed the control panel for that as it was always easier to do through explorer. Once I stumbled across the left shift + click to bring up the old context menu (I shouldn't have mentioned that...thing. I mean seriously, what is wrong with the words "Copy" and "Paste"? (Ok, one rant at a time, Jadith...))
How about we go on to display settings? Or the fact that you need to crawl through I don't even know how many menus to find different things hiding in the corners of different areas that may or may not actually do anything at all?
The settings app is just another coat of paint on an OS that Microsoft has no intereset in actually improving.
Never fear, there's online help which will reliably get detailed instructions to do (almost) what you need but for a different version of Windows. - What idiot programmed that not to include the Windows version in the query, and more to the point, what moron signed it off?
Of all the things to scrimp on, not having proper documentation must be one of the daftest.
> Never fear, there's online help which will reliably get detailed instructions to do (almost) what you need but for a different version of Windows
With AI that will be a set of instructions that amalgamates all the instructions for the different versions plus some hallucinations…
Even if that were true[1] - so bleepin' what?
Why would any sane[2] person use a computer program because it was attractive over one that was functional?
[1] what is attractive about wasting pixels on huge amounts of blank space - and hiding the scrollbar to remove the clue there *may* be something useful further down!
[2] Microsoft product managers need not attempt to answer, it will only upset hem
It's seems they were so good and giving in the 80's and 90's and now all they seem to do is take away.
They don't want kids to learn how to program their OS's because it takes away their to access to our privacy and ability to tinker.
Created by hobbyists, killed by Corp.
Windows has been a joke since ....I mean it's now been longer than the time it wasn't a joke.
Created by hobbyists, killed by Corp.
Applies to so many things these days. Everything which was good and innovative must be changed or corrupted to be "new," again, because innovation does not reap increased profits quarter after quarter. We no longer have to be convinced to get into the wagon. We are already in the wagon and getting out is not an easy, or in most cases even a viable option.
"It's seems they were so good and giving in the 80's and 90's and now all they seem to do is take away."
In Windows Update, where it tells you your computer is "Windows 11 ready" it includes a disclaimer that some functions of Windows 10 are not present in Windows 11 :-)
'Microsoft stated: "While the Control Panel still exists for compatibility reasons and to provide access to some settings that have not yet migrated, you're encouraged to use the Settings app, whenever possible."'
I see. So the replacement is, by your own admission, inferior, and yet you still think we should use it.
-A.
And that's the point. Enterprise administrators use policy and scripting: home users use 'settings'/
'Control panel' was part of the interface design when IBM DOS and MS Win3.x were targeted at Small and Medium Business. The flat control-panel hierarchy favors people who know what they want, but not where to find it. The nested "settings" hierarchy favors home users who are protected by hiding everything.
One of the first rants I had about Microsoft's new direction introduced with Vista was having to navigate a phone tree to use my computer. Thankfully, the Control Panel was left mostly alone, as were most of the useful control panel applets: desk.cpl, appwiz.cpl, ncpa.cpl, &c.
Yup. As much as people liked to poke fun at how earlier versions of Windows let people do stuff like setting their dialog font to comic.sans 48pt, and their title bars to a fetching shade (or gradient if you so preferred in later versions) of purple with lilac text, and so on, the fact that Windows at least gave *us* the ability to tweak pretty much every aspect of the UI to how *we* wanted it to look was something that was anything but a joke.
In contrast, the limited ability it now gives us to customise the UK to our personal preferences is also anything but a joke, but for very different reasons...
Perhaps worse, some of those changes are operational, not just aesthetic.
I don't rearrange my Start menu for the sake of its look- I do it because I know I have some programmes that will do the thing I want to do but if it's something I don't need often,and the publisher has given it a stupid unhelpful name that I'd never rmember, I can find it in a folder labelled by function. (Krita is graphics, Balena Etcher in admin tools, Peazip in accessories* and so on)
*Not the most obvious but works for me
Cast your minds back to Win3.11,thick ethernet, a Novell.3.12 swerver with a MacSpace
All of these are irrelevant in this tale except for the users' ability to change colours
I had a colleague who came to me crying
"Andy, Andy I've done a silly thing"
"I'm Andrew, what have you done?"
"I have made my screen white writing on a white background and now I can't change it back"
I miss Win.ini
Windows 11 sucked so hard.
Control Panel back in the days alows you to configure MIDI like a madman.
Windows 10 did away with MIDI settings completely and now Windows 11 made things worse.
MIDI is NOT dead. Apple included a whole new utility to configure MIDI. There is no such functionality since the Sound control panel got decommissioned in favor of the simplistic settings screen. In fact there is exactly ZERO way to configure MIDI settings in Windows at this time.
Now if someone could write a control panel app for Win 10 / 11 ...
I always found the XP control panel absolutely fine to use but it seems that like everyting MS it takes more time, more clicks and more sreen space to make simple changes.
I remember being migrated to Office 2007 and finding out that basic keyboard shortcuts had almost all changed and took one more keyboard click than before.
Thankfully Linux Mint does 95% of what I need for my job and I only need Windoze occasionally.
PS: I absolutely detest SWMBO's new Dell which came with Win11. Thankfully all she does is email, surf the web and write textdocuments on it.
The way the headline was worded I was expecting the article to say both Control Panel and the existing Settings app were going to be replaced by a new app, meaning that we'd have three - the old, deprecated one; the older, more deprecated one; and the shiny new one into which everything is going to be migrated which will probably get deprecated in Windows 12 when another new app comes along.
And I thought, "yeah, sounds like Micros~1 to me"
I predict that Windows 12 will still have the old control panel hidden within it, and it'll be the only way to manage certain devices or settings.
joy.cpl, MIDI, even the device manager and things like network adaptor settings.
Settings does them a complete injustice and it's a nightmare to configure things without ending up - somehow - on an "old" control panel dialog of some sort.
The sky will fall and we will have to call the king's support desk
but, but I only want to do some connectivity/chattyness testing or access a device so I can change its address to work with the environment it is in.
Control panel: Fill your boots, I don't care that it might not work, I assume you know what you are doing and/or can manage to google it (note probably not on this computer unless it has more than one nic).
The brake pedal would move from left side of throttle pedal to a lever on the driver seat to a turn knob besides the climate control knobs with each facelift.
It is too bad programmers are like dogs, they need to pee against each light pole they encounter to leave their mark, the concept: This is how one operates a windows system like it is established with cars never sticks for long. It would be more pleasant when MS invested in solving this issue instead of making the rest of the world waste its time dealing with BS upgrades.
The only thing MS has in common with the car scene is producing oldtimers, it is 2024 and now I need to be off for 10min because windows is nagging for updates...bye.
This isn't the programmers' fault. If you want to blame someone, blame:
1. Marketing for insisting something perfectly functional be replaced with something pretty,
2. Weak product managers for not pushing back on a stupid idea,
3. Executives for firing all the experienced developers who would have pointed out all the bad ideas, and done a much better job because they knew the old stuff and were able to evaluate what's needed.
This result is what happens when you prioritise form over function, and expect devs with no experience and no knowledge of what they're replacing to do all the work.
As far as it goes this comment is probably spot on, and I can't downvote it because it's accurate.
But... what percentage of windows users actually use touch screens? I'm guessing it's tiny. On top of which I'm guessing (and could be wrong) those few that have a _need_ of touch screens as opposed to buying a touch because it looked fashionable, are probably creatives who will mostly buy fruity products rather than windows in the first place?
The settings app is awful. Period. Those responsible for it should be fired immediately IMO.
"But... what percentage of windows users actually use touch screens?"
Our entire laptop estate has touch screens. Oh...you said "use" them. Very few actually use them, most have forgotten they are touch screens until they pick the laptop up by the screen :-)
ISTE that was the excuse given for the complete dogs breakfast that was the W8 UI - thr emphasis on making it suitable for use *both* with touch and mouse driven input.
The problem I have with that line of reasoning is that, whilst it might seem entirely laudable on first glance to try and provide a single consistent UI theme for all your users, it really should have taken no more than a few minutes of early testing to reveal the very obvious fact that trying to make a single UI to rule them all...uhh, that can be driven equally well via touch and mouse was a non-starter with too many compromises one way or the other, and that the only sensible course of action was to chuck the idea into the fires of Mount Doom and provide each class of user with a theme tailored to their particular needs.
Steve Sinofsky was a software engineer…
Now given he left MS in 2012, others are responsible for the subsequent UI mess…
Suspect marketing just want something new to show that this years model is different to last years model…
So I suspect it will be software developers who are initiating much of the mess: why maintain ancient code written in some language that it is now fashionable to deem to be old fashioned, when it can be rewritten and improved why rewriting in the latest fad language…
i just did........... what a crock of shite.....
Which more than explains why my RS232 comms software talked to the UART without windoze getting a word in about what settings to use.
PS And NO m$ I dont want edge with crap pilot set as my default browser......... ffs
Just as a reminder. Since Windows 10, we have had what? 4 major settings pages in parallel, plus the registry and a ton of stuff only practically controllable via powershell?
Tidying these things up is a good idea, though the clean slate is probably the best way to achieve this rather than incremental moves.
I genuinely don't remember the last time I booted windows on a device of my own though. The muscle memory is already starting to fade.
Yes, I'm a grumpy. I am also heartily bored of having to learn a new interface just because some sales/marketing types needs a new shiny-shiny to sell. I never used to understand why people wanted to retire, but now I do. For me it all started with MSDOS 4.22 on a 286 and I have worked on every version of MSDOS, DRDOS, and Windows since. I have just been upgraded to Win11 on my work PC and yes it's OK, but once again I am struggling to find anything that I need and having to resort to using Search to find anything at all. Those things used to be 2-3 mouse clicks away but now I have to click Search, type in what I want, and click on what I want (assuming I didn't mistype it). More work for just about everything I want to do, and no I DON'T want to use your pathetic "AI" Crapilot, nor do I want your suggested Apps or Widgets. Yes, I have installed Open-Shell and it has given me back what MS want to take away (my Win7 menus), thank Lovelace & Babbage.
One day you Whippersnappers will be old and Grumpy like me, and you will remember this and realise that I was right,.... for me. Yes, I do understand that you are right for you at this moment, because I can still remember when I was a Whippersnapper and wanted the new shiny-shiny.
I have no problem with them removing Control Panel, so long as everything (yes absolutely everything) that you can do with it can be done in some other way, and with the same or less clicks than before.
"I am struggling to find anything that I need and having to resort to using Search to find anything at all."
Remember the "good old days" when the cry of Windows fanbois to Linux users was "It's so old fashioned, you have to use the command line to do anything useful". And now we have Windows making it so hard to find anything, you have to resort to remembering and typing in the name of anything you want to run :-)
Having two apps makes sense if you effectively provide a simple Settings for “normal” users and when you click on “advanced settings” you get the full “hidden” set of settings.
The trouble is someone in MS objected to the different UI style of Control Panel compared to Settings, plus a lack of consistency in implementation in ensuring Settings and Control Panel were consistent and actually referenced the underlying system.
A few years back there was a problem with W10. W10 saw the webcam and assumed it was operating in colour mode, however, some manufacturers defaulted their camera to monochrome, the only simple way to change the actual device setting was to load Skype and use its settings menu…
Quoting the great Londo Mollari. "Only an idiot fights a war on two fronts. And we are fighting on four."
4 control panels plus powershell plus registry is a desperately overdue overhaul requirement.
Bloatware, at it's worst. They are at least *attempting* to do small things about it. But do I have a home install? Nope!
One of the original functions of Control Panal was that is supported light-weight "applets" which had a small memory and code footprint by using the shared control-panel UI library. Important for Win3, and even more important for Win2.
Is there something similar for "settings"? How do you build a "settings" extension?
I note that device manager still looks and (thankfully) operates as per win2k
Settings app is a joke as 9/10s of the time you hit a dead end and Microsoft resort to "oh use this dism command which I will copy to you"
Cue lines and lines and lines which is them CLEARLY throwing a hail Mary or 3 into the breeze and hoping something works....
Unless the new app is designed 1000% better than the existing 'crap' in Windows 11 we are doomed !!!
The *only* reason it exists is because ... so much is missing from the existing 'Settings' and cannot be reached any other way.
Not to mention that at least in the 'Control Panel' you can find everything together and logically see/find what you are looking for.
I fully expect that this will be another badly-built mess that defies logic and will have things missing that will be 'added later ...'.
It would make more sense, somewhat rare in MS, to re-skin 'Control panel' to fit Windows 11.
:)
I found myself thinking that maybe MS will take this opportunity to clean house, rationalize, have all configuration in one spot, not change it from release to release, not bury critical configs like unwanted sleep activation under 3 layers of Registry folders with hex-code gibberish names...
Then I woke up. This is MS we're talking about here.
I’ve setup 3 Win 11 laptops over the past couple of weeks and it gets harder every time.
1/ left align task bar nonsense
2/ turn off intrusive task bar nonsense copilot search blah
3/ yes show me the name of the window or whatever setting it’s called now
4/ err I have to search the web again to remember how to turn on hibernate.. oh yeah install Firefox to get rid of the abomination that is edge now do it in 2 places
5/ about 15 update reboots later
6/ remember startallback to actually make the start useful.
7/ err how the f do I change the power settings
8/ vow to buy a Mac next time when we can get rid of that last x86 application…
9/ look up price of a useable Mac and remember why I still suffer the pain of thinkpad/windows
10/ promise I’ll work out how to script the above as I have to do it every time
11/ thinks maybe this year I’ll move to Ubuntu
12/ forgets until next time.
Etc
There are enough lazy people like me who will end up walking into a monthly sub for windows :/
I wouldn't mind Settings if it had all the functionality of Control Panel, but this change is almost a *decade* late.
It absolutely begs belief that with the enormous cash MS have been generating for years, they couldn't have put a couple of programmers on a task to build the entire Control Panel functionality in Settings with Win10 UI. Something is seriously wrong with how the product is managed. Possibly related to all of the 'product managers' they wheel out for discussing new features being hired in place of actual coders.
I have receipts showing I paid for it. A nerd has a passion for knowledge and understanding, being a slave to improving and enriching yourself is not a bad thing. We (the people, populous) have been "the product" long before Windows 10, back to the earliest civilizations and Governments the people were "the product", we have always been the cash cows, beta testers, gunnie pigs to leaders and heads of State. Microsoft's data collecting a flea fart in a hurricane! Our economies and societies are giant spying machines collecting everything you do, say, read, watch, listen to, eat, buy, everywhere you go, where and how you spend your money, how much money you have, how much debt you have...etc. Own a cell phone, Alexis or other assistant, tablet, your car newer than 2000 with GPS, WiFi and memory that stores and transmits your travels, everywhere you go is recorded on video. Even before 9/11 there was telemetry and data collecting, since 9/11 it has sky rocketed. All the breaches, hacks, leaks, thefts, your information on the Dark Web, with criminals and cartels...etc. We are already PWNED!
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