Dying for Windows 10 Creators Update? But wait, there's more! Microsoft has confirmed it is planning a second major update for Windows 10, which is to be piloted this year, and is seriously considering releasing it before 2018. This is according to word out of Microsoft's Ignite partner conference in Australia, where the Redmond software giant revealed its map for upcoming operating …
So there's plans to overhaul the Cortana assistant, Which is not available in my region (still).
Add more support for virtual reality hardware, which almost no-one uses
Improve mobile integration, which almost no-one uses if they mean Windows phones. Which might be interesting if they mean Android phones, but they will probably make a total hash of.
@P. Lee - Bottom of the barrel case - you business grinds to a halt because the "update" is incompatible with some 3rd party program. Even the Slurp shill Ed Bott on Zdnet had a post that the frequent "upgrades" are likely to cause problems with businesses because they will always be behind the curve on testing.
@P. Lee - Bottom of the barrel case - you business grinds to a halt because the "update" is incompatible with some 3rd party program. Even the Slurp shill Ed Bott on Zdnet had a post that the frequent "upgrades" are likely to cause problems with businesses because they will always be behind the curve on testing.
Usually "consumer" multi-function printer devices from the likes of HP. Bloody things borked many upgrdes to Windows 10, borked Office 365 installs and many other joys.
It's impressive when even AV software makes itself less of a ball-ache when it comes to interfering with an Operating System.
Here's a challenge for you then
What you say about not routing via google might be correct. However there is a POV rightly or wrongly that as Google controls Chrome is gets to see everything you do or something like that.
That might be 'Fake News" so why don't you put together an article showing how you are correct and submit it here.
Take a Chromebook Out of the box as new and verify this fact one way or the other. If there are tweaks then say so.
IF you can answer all the questions frequently raised about installing stuff and where your docs etc get stored.
You never know, it might increase the sales of Chromebooks?
IF you did do it, I'd give you a well deserved upvote.
Sherlock because he loved a good problem
"What you say about not routing via google might be correct. However there is a POV rightly or wrongly that as Google controls Chrome is gets to see everything you do or something like that. That might be 'Fake News" so why don't you put together an article showing how you are correct and submit it here."
Because it's the job of the conspiracy theorist to prove their own claim, not the other way around?
You're asking him to disprove Russell's teapot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot
"I did a search for a user manual for a model of barcode scanner through Google.
For weeks afterwards I was getting adverts for the same scanner on other web pages - coincidence?"
No, it's not, but so what? Google uses your search data to attempt to serve more relevant ads. Would it be better if they had been serving you ads for womens' shoes or something? There is nothing malicious going on. Zero risk of anything other than seeing something you might want to buy.
@Planty
You're right. I don't own a Chrome device.
Last year I did a preliminary investigation of ChromeOS for a seniors community centre where I volunteer. We were looking for a cheap/simple system to complement (or replace) the 6 PCs that we had upgraded to Windows 10 (not a happy experience). I loaded up ChromeOS in a Parallels VM on my Mac, and Little Snitch showed a hell of a lot more network traffic than I had expected compared to a VM running Debian - I appreciate that it was not a vanilla ChromeOS on a standard device; but it was, I thought, interesting.
I did eventually track down a Chromebit Stick which also seemed to be busy on the network. Their network has an ADSL2+ connection to the Internet which had a variable connection speed - After resetting the connection we could get ~14Mbps but it could drop to ~1Mbps in a day or so (ISP contention/IPv4 shared pool problems?). So as a result of this, and after considering the cost of us having to purchase HDMI monitors to replace our old ones, we thought that it was not viable.
The Chromebit was passed on to a non-technical fellow retiree friend who has a VDSL connection. He was doing most of his computing using Google stuff on a clapped-out Windows machine. He now seems happy enough and, as I don't have to fix the mess that he could get into with Windows, that is OK.
As I have wrestled with Microsoft since their PC/MS-DOS systems in 1981, including writing scientific, business and commercial software for every OS from them up to Windows 7, I am certainly not a fan of theirs either...
"It would be nice if it did not route everything you used it for through Google."
because you prefer to type in "google.com" yourself or what?
You don't ever need to use any Google services on Chromebook. You are welcome to change the default search to Yahoo or Bing or whatever you would like. I'm not sure why you would want to do that, but it is certainly possible.
So there's plans to overhaul the Cortana assistant, Which is not available in my region (still).
My favourite overhaul would be to permanently disable Cortana. It's not necessary for 99.999% of uses and far better would be an improved local search tool with the option to subsequently search configurable external sources (i.e. corporate search systems, choice of search engine, not just the next to useless American-Bing). If a user wants to use Cortana, then that's fine but it shouldn't be rammed into the OS/Shell at a deeper and deeper level.
Add more support for virtual reality hardware, which almost no-one uses
Since Microsoft have taken over the deplotment of many device drivers, which does save problems and should improve quality given the state of many device drivers, they should support more hardware. Whether the OS shell (UI/desltop) itself needs to particularly support VR is a very different matter.
Improve mobile integration, which almost no-one uses if they mean Windows phones. Which might be interesting if they mean Android phones, but they will probably make a total hash of.
MS have made a pigs ear out of bluetooth support (e.g. SYNC) and their awful tools for phones which is foisted on all Windows 10 devices is pretty much a total waste of time. It's still considerably better than Samsung Kies but that shouldn't really be taken as any kind of measure.
Here is hoping that this somehow also means the port of OpenSSH for Windows Server comes out meaning finally simple easy remote powershell.
Why someone thought RDP to a terminal console was a great idea or worse the HTTPS/kerberos/wmi setup that only works when the server is functioning and thus does not need managing.
Considering how much Microsoft has pushed to move away from the start menu I can't help wonder if they'll eventually release a Win10 update which once again replaces the start menu for something a lot more horrible. I mean, they have done so in the past and this time it'd be pretty hard for existing Win10 users to refuse the update.
Not saying that this is going to happen of course, but it does puzzle me.
What to do when an update applies a change which you really, really don't want? When it's a big release update then I think you have no other choice but to accept, if you don't then you can kiss any future (security) updates goodbye as well.
Such a wonderful business model...
"What to do when an update applies a change which you really, really don't want? When it's a big release update then I think you have no other choice but to accept, if you don't then you can kiss any future (security) updates goodbye as well."
Welcome to my world. I'm a developer and my *test* machines have run vanilla Windows since forever. If I get a bug report and it turns out that it only happens when someone tweaks something but vanilla Windows is OK, that's sad but forgivable and I can just get on with fixing the bug now that I've got a repro case. If I get a bug that happens in vanilla Windows and I missed it because "I never use that", that's sad and makes me look arrogant and lame. So my rule is "No tweaking to make it bearable is allowed" because there are an infinite number of tweaked configurations and only one vanilla one and I'd like a finite test matrix please.
That means I've had to put up with the out-of-the-box defaults for every version of Windows ever.
Except Win8, of course. That was simply unbearable so I installed Classic Shell, like everyone else.
That means I've had to put up with the out-of-the-box defaults for every version of Windows ever.
So which set of "out-of-the-box" defaults for Win10 do you use:
- The fresh install
- The OTA update install
Just that problems are surfacing where the OTA update allows for some 'grandfather' rights, which the fresh install doesn't. Hence cases are being reported where (eg. security software) continues to work where an install has been OTA updated, but do a fresh install and Win10 won't permit the software to be installed, claiming it to be incompatible....
Great Point, hadn't thought about that problem.
Windows 10 is actually multiple versions too. Windows 10 1507, Windows 10 1511, Windows 10, 1511_2 (March16 Rel), Windows 10 1607AU.
It's actually quite difficult sometimes to work out which version they installed initially if they used an ISO Download, especially when the date installed overlaps a new release, but they used an older install.
"Creators Edition" obfuscates the problem even more, at least with 1607 you knew it was July 16 (actually, August 16), now you'll have to look up when that came out, when looking back in 2-3 years.
I don't think Microsoft is stupid enough to remove the start menu again..... or are they?
Windows 8 and its start menu removal was what made me buy my first ever Mac after using Windows for 20 years. I think MS would have some extreamly annoyed customers if their Windows 10 was updated and once rebooted it has no start menu.
I don't get how a company as big and experienced in OS's as MS is making such a dogs breakfast of GUI's in their products. They do not seem to understand the difference between desktop and mobile class devices and their users needs. It's still a mess in Windows 10 and only looks good because anything looks good when you compare it to its predecessor Windows 8, guessing the GUI is a big reason almost half of all Windows installs are still Windows 7.
You could have just installed Classic Shell no?
I'm staying firmly on Win8.1 - won't touch Win10 with a bargepole. When a company tries so hard to ram something down your throat, even for free, I have to question their motives. Yeah the Win8 UI made me throw up in my mouth, but after installing Classic Shell it was just like having Win7 on my desktop, except a slightly more up to date and better performing one.
Fully agree with your sentiments regarding MS though. They seem to have lost the plot like never before.
Windows 8.1 with Classic Shell on every machine here.
Not a single complaint.
By no means expert users.
Previous failed "Windows 8 deployment" with the last guy, so was waiting for everyone to scream. Nobody even noticed it was 8. But I did enforce "No Metro" and "Shift+Win to open Metro window" via the domain GPO.
If I'm reading that graph right, they want me to only have each version of Windows in production for a year before I have to move onto the next. Good luck with that. Hell, it can take a year to test, let alone get out into production, and then once it's there I have damn good reasons for not doing major upgrades infested with tons-of-unnecessary-feature-itis just because it has the same version number. Updates, yes. UpGRADES no.
But then, soon, I probably won't even have a choice over that and I'll just be deploying Windows which will reboot when it feels like it and install the new version for that day without any way to stop it or test against it.
It's interesting that a 'release' is followed by a 'pilot' and not vice-versa. I'm sorry Nadella, I don't like to be a forced, unpaid beta tester, thereby 7 will stay on my systems until 2020. By then, or you will have been fired and Windows returned to be a simple OS which doesn't slurp my data and force me to test it, or I'll move to something else.
While I agree with your POV, I think it is time to accept that MS will never do what you want despite power users all over the world hoping they would do just that.
If you can't get on with the MS Message of the future (according to Redmond) then it is time to jump ship to one of
Linux/BSD/Chrome/MacOS
And frankly get on with your life with far less stress.
Different stress maybe, not necessarily less. I'm shifting everything to BSD, but it would be a stretch to say there are no issues.
I'm very surprised at how polarised the OS are becoming. At one point it seemed there would be a lot of convergence, instead the differences between Windows, Linux, and the BSDs seem to be becoming more stark.
The big difference is that once you are done with the migration for BSD you won't find an update that comes along and removes all your nice tweaks, changes the GUI layout yet again, adds a whole bunch of stuff that YOU did not ask for and may not want that can't be removed because if you did, the next update would put it all back again.
Over the course of a year, your stress levels will (In my Experince) be a lot lower.
Naturally, YMMV.
"While I agree with your POV, I think it is time to accept that MS will never do what you want despite power users all over the world hoping they would do just that."
Do you remember the TV advert for Surface with people dancing and jumping over picnic tables while swiping photos across the Surface screen and lots of click sounds as they drop the screen an keyboard together? THAT is a typical MS focus group and target market.
Don't forget Windows 8.1 in 2020. Aftermarket tools can handily dispatch most or all of the "weird" from 8... Classic Shell, 7+ Taskbar Tweaker, Old New Explorer, and whatever custom theme you may prefer (along with the patcher to enable it) make Windows 8.1 usable. I'm testing it right now, and I'm actually pleasantly surprised! I have it boot straight to the desktop, charms are disabled, ribbon is disabled, stock start menu/screen is replaced with Classic Start, with all of the references in the menus to "App" stuff removed (Classic Start, which is part of Classic Shell, allows complete editing of the menus). I've ported my favorite Win 7 theme to 8.1, and while it's not quite finished yet, I can happily say that nearly all of the time, my Windows 8.1 installation looks and behaves exactly like my 7 installation (though 8.1 is a little quicker in some spots). The start-up password prompt is different, and so is the "waiting for these programs" shutdown dialog, but the stuff in between is exactly like I remember it from 7.
After you de-weird Win 8.1, it's a lot better than 10 with the same modifications (which are just as necessary to make 10 semi-tolerable), as 10 still has all of the nasty stuff that people complain about, like the forced updates, the permanent beta quality, the spying that can't be turned fully off and that resets itself to full promiscuity mode whenever MS feels like it, the unwanted app installations, the unwanted program uninstallations, the unwanted replacement of whatever drivers you selected with whatever it happens to find in the update catalog, and the bizarre mixing of native WIn32 and UWP styles within the OS.
I've never used an "app" on 8, and since my PC is not a phone, I have no plans to do so. Still, it is my understanding that in 8, the idea was to have a dual-mode OS, where the desktop mode ran the Win32 stuff and the Metro mode ran the apps, and the user had to switch between the modes to access whatever he had running on the other side. Win 10's big "improvement" seems to be that it does away with the dual modes, instead allowing UWP (the replacement for Metro) apps to run alongside Win32 programs in the same logical workspace. That's great, I guess, if you plan to do that (Microsoft surely plans for you to), but I have no intention of using anything Metro or UWP, so the dual-mode setup is more appealing, as I can wall off the Metro mode and call it a day.
I can't do that with 10. Many bits of the OS itself are UWP, and they have no Win32 equivalents. If you wish to do what these UWP bits do, you're going to have to deal with all of the many negatives of UWP on the desktop, unless you find some kind of third-party solution. My favorite example is the Personalize dialog. Right click the Win32 desktop and select Personalize, and up pops a UWP personalize "app." Click on Themes, and you get the familiar WIn32 themes dialog. It's just bizarre, with no rhyme or reason as to which kind of thing you're going to get... it's like they drew straws and decided to UWP-enize certain random bits of the UI for no apparent reason.
Other than that, I really don't see the "much improved" UI of Windows 10 when compared to Windows 8.1. The start menu is still a mess, which means using a third-party start menu in either case. The File Explorer still has the ribbon, so a third-party ribbon-cutter is called for either way too. Even the beloved WIndows 7 required quite a bit of tweaking to get it to where I wanted it; the last OS that could be made acceptable to me without any third-party addons was XP. WIn 7 was more usable than 8 or 10 unmodified, but since I own the PCs I use, I can make any modifications I want (quite unlike worker bees using the company's hardware, which is usually locked in its bizarre default MS configuration), and with that being the case, I don't have to settle for any out of the box UI.
In retrospect, I wish MS had not perceived 8 to be such a failure. The changes made in 8.1 showed that they were at least listening; 8 was evolving in the right direction, and had they not given up and gone to 10, who knows what it would have become? With 10, they dropped the idea of listening to customers and instead decided to pursue a strategy of releasing an OS that served Microsoft's agenda and ran roughshod over the customer, and then forcing everyone out there to take the inferior product they'd come up with by virtue of their monopoly.
So now I have an upgrade path that works through 2023, which gives three more years for MS to stop being stupid, or three more years for Linux to render Windows irrelevant. I'm already set with Mint 18.1 (currently in a triple boot setup) as well. All I know for sure is that if 10 is anything like it is now in 2020, I won't be making the jump.
It's all part of the UX, the November 2015 update was a brilliant move; it ensured that practically ALL systems in the retail supply chain were running an old version of Windows, so everyone who got a system for Christmas very quickly had the 'joy' of experiencing their first update which in some cases bricked their newly setup shiny...
Many large business'es impose an IT change lockdown for the Christmas - January Sales trading period (Oct-Jan). Obviously these will typically be using volume licence variants of W10 and hence have a little more control over when updates are installed. However, smaller businesses that don't (have volume licences etc.) will have the joy of a major update (changed UI, changed support for applications, UI changes etc.) during their busy trading period...
It is this attitude of MS to its customers that should give cause for concern about the fitness of Win10 etc. for business - regardless of how good or bad you think (the current edition of) W10 is.
I think you missed reading this article in you happy-happy 'evergreen' land.
Besides the fact that if there are "so many" people ranting, the color of their beard may not be the significant factor.
When it goes to production in 2018??? What you lot smoking or have they changed the image?
It has feedback phase first late 2017 (insiders track)
Then Pilot (limited release) Nov/Dec 2017
And to production what looks like Feb 2018 (general availability)
Two updates is interesting but it's a push to say they are both out to everyone this year..
This post has been deleted by its author
I don't get it. As already noted, the new "creater" version doesn't seem to provide anything that anyone seems to have much interest in. (And as much as I love my WinPhone I know that's at the end of the line).
So if Microsoft aren't providing any new, useful functionality that anyone needs, and still aren't as far as I've been able to tell making it play nice with users*, why bother?
*Controls in one place. Ability to manage start menu. Making shared folders on domestic networks actually be easy to share, and not with stupid "homegroups". Partitioning control that lets users redistribute space. Easy image creation and restore on a par with Macrium etc. Stuff like that.
I think they are now desperately looking for new features to add as an excuse to release a new version. I quite like Windows 10 as it loads quicker and is more responsive for me than Windows 7 was, ignoring privacy concerns for a moment.
I'd probably pay Microsoft £50 for an update that provided clear guidance on what data they collect, an easy option to disable said data collection, and a promise not to dick about with it for 5 years (bar security patches) and then I'd be really happy.
I quite like Windows 10 as it loads quicker and is more responsive for me than Windows 7 was, ignoring privacy concerns for a moment.
Are you sure about that? You do realise that "Shutdown" in 10 by default just hibernates it and doesn't actually shutdown properly.
Here is just one of many references to that.
To be fair, it probably is faster. Windows 8 was faster than 7, and I'm pretty certain there's some benchmarks showing 10 is faster than 8.
No-one denies there are some useful technical improvements under the hood, the issue is the levels of management and information leakage.
Just to remove some FUD. As far as I know, yes win10, win8.1 and win8 do load faster. But mainly due to the UEFI boot vs legacy bios boot. Since win7 doesn't have UEFI, that's a trade off.
The other speed up is the shutdown time. win8+ does a default fast boot (hybrid) shutdown instead of the normal cold boot shutdown like win7, which is like a hybrid hibernation. Therefore, it can result in bug (feature?) during shutdown (refer to the link in the previous post).
However, is loading quicker a good trade off to force update with newer bugs? I'll let the users pick.
Originally nicknamed v1703, it was later changed to v1704. So expect it to be available to the public in April although many won't get it until May.
The fall release is already nicknamed v1711. So likely a November release with upgrades mostly happening in December.
Don't want to be forced? Upgrade to the pro edition. Gives you options to delay.
Don't want to be forced? Upgrade to the pro edition. Gives you options to delay.
But... that involved handing money over to the Borg....
As the Android App Store evidence shows most people don't like putting their hand in their pocket for anything especially for something that should be in every version by default.
Delaying the application of OS updates is not a USP in my opinion and certainly one that should be charged for.
Most people got Windows 10 for *free*. I do have a small amount of sympathy, but there's always a price for free, from a commercial company..
The issue is that with Pro, control is not absolute. It's only with Enterprise there's access to the long term support branch, and Enterprise isn't available off the shelf for individual users.
"Don't want to be forced? Upgrade to the pro edition. Gives you options to delay."
And then only to find out that after the delay, you're still getting forced.
Don't worry, it would happen so random and quick your only notification will be "updating" or "shutting down". Just remember to disregard your whole day of work when using win10.
No seriously. I use Windowblinds and Start10 from Stardock. My system looks like Win 7 with the theme I use, I run Firefox with Classic theme restorer so cosmetically it doesn't *feel* like I'm running Win10.
I had problems updating my laptop to the anniversary update and rolled back, never been bothered by it again.
My Chuwu Hi10 tablet is on the AU with no problems but also with Start10.
My phone is Android and I actually find Cortana useful, it gives me notifications of missed calls and texts and lets me type a reply back without fishing the phone from my jacket pocket or wherever I recently forgot to put it down, rather like Google Now does but sometimes better, sometimes worse.
It's the internet, Microsoft & Google have my data already, I lock down my privacy settings on social media to only certain people and use adblock so I don't really care about ads or 'targetted' info.
For the record I also dual boot into Linux, I don't particularly care what O/S I'm using as long as it let's me do what I want to do
Lets see my own 'update' to windows 10 includes :
1) windows 7 calculator back which unlike windows 10 can add up properly and doesn't look crap
2) windows aero dll reinstalled with transparent window bars back
3) classic shell menu to replace the ridiculous windows 10 fisher price spam menu,
4) Boot up linux and kill cortana by renaming its folder. :-)
5) Kill the edge browser the same way along with all the stupid apps I don't want
6) Destroy windows menu for good.
7) Spybot beacon to block telemetry,
8) Wintweak to block automatic updates and disable fast boot
9) Move all admin and work stuff to linux
Not a bad update. Hasn't even crashed much recently which makes a change.
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