Windows 10 vs. Windows 7

Crashnburn

Crashnburn

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Crashnburn
I’m not an early technology adopter because if any piece of technology has an issue, it will for me me. I delayed moving to Windows 10 from Windows 7 as long as I could, but Micro$oft stopped supporting Win 7 in January and more C drive file system and as FUBAR.

I believe in backups and data redundancy so I used a 2 TB 7200 RPM HDD with an internal 8 GB SSD cache I had left over from an experiment instead of the Windows 7 SSD.

Some Observations.
Windows 10 boots slower from the HDD than Windows 7 from the SSD, as expected.
Windows 10 doesn’t let you use Gadgets; they can be a security hole, so no surprise.
I’m glad I didn’t use the Win 7 SSD for Windows 10 as I could only find the HP Office Jet MFP driver installer on that drive, as HP now gives you the driver, but no installer. What’s up with that?
If you’re using Windows 7, that printer allows you to scan documents to a network folder, but as far as I can tell, Windows 10 doesn’t.
I hate OneDrive! I finally went to Programs And Features and deleted it.
At some addressing depth, Windows 10 displays an aliased path to files and folders but you need the real path to navigate.

I have an old HP Pavilion that started out as a Vista computer that I eventually upgraded to Windows 7. Later I added a Western Digital 32GB SSD cache to it and really sped it up. I’m going to try to pull that SSD out to add it to my current computer and install the caching software. I expect the most recent 8 GB of data in that cache will also be in the HDD’s cache.

One other thing. Updates are a lot less painful than Windows 7 were.
 
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I jumped from 7 to 10 recently, just selected the update option and ran into a bunch of issues after the update, performance sucked, programs terminated all the time, so just did a full refresh/reinstall and it has been rock solid since.
 
flhrci said:
So, you're saying Windows 10 is bad?
Click to expand...
I've had a couple of bad installs (lots of machines, I make my living from them), but once it's on and configured, it's stable, and certainly no slower than 7/8.
 
I’m fighting a W10 problem right now. I had 7, then upgraded to 10 last week. My IT guy did it when I was out of town.

Now this: go to a desktop icon and right click to look at properties. Nearly all, but not all, of the icons will crash file explorer. The screen goes blank then refreshes.

I can also get the same behavior to repeat every time from the quick access window. Win-x to pull up the menu, then select any option. In my case, there are only a few that work normally, the rest reset file explorer.

edit: we ran a couple of utilities and scans and everything seems OK now.
 
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I had heard doing an upgrade to an existing system was fraught with peril so that’s why I did a clean install after deleting the partition on the HDD.
 
I haven't had any issues with my PC since upgrading to Win10 about a month ago. At first I wasn't going to upgrade because 7 was working so well, but not long after support was cut off my computer started lagging and having regular freezes. I suspect that may have been an intentional nudge towards 10, planned obsolescence on Microsoft's part. Fortunately it is still possible to upgrade for free. I actually found my computer runs a little better on 10.
 
I upgraded a from 8 just about when 10 came out. Since then I've also done a fresh 10 install on another computer. Win10 is very stable. Have not had any issues with it. Though I actually like 7 better in most cases as there are many annoying Win10 features that I dislike(ex. Cortana) and cannot remove. Some features(ex. auto update) are annoying, but can be circumvented. Still have 7 on one VM and not planning to upgrade it(don't care about support). Some older applications will not run on Win10 as is, but they can be executed in "compatibility mode". Usually that fixes the issue.
 
I can also recommend "Shut Up, 10!" to minimize the level of BS that MS has spackled into that OS.

https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10

That reminds me, I need to add Satya Nadella into my "tech douche hate shrine" for CEOs who treat their customers like property.
 
I was a Windows 7 holdout for a long time, then finally transitioned to 10 last summer to give myself time to get used to it before the cutoff in January. All in all it hasn’t been nearly as bad as I had feared. Specifically the responsiveness - it doesn’t feel any worse than 7.

One thing that impressed me was that 10 handled a recent hardware upgrade without any fuss. In the old days I would have been forced to do a full reinstall (and I was prepared to do the same here), but even with a not-insignificant change from an Intel i5 to an AMD 3900x, it kept going with essentially no fuss - only requiring me to log into my Microsoft account to verify my license.
 
I have now upgraded several computers to 10 since the beginning of the year. Some of the upgrades were simple, while others had problems. On my most-used laptop, I found that I had to make an installation CD in order to get Windows 10 to update to the latest version. On another one, I got better results from doing the Windows 10 installation directly online. Another machine crashed every time I tried to update Windows 10 to the latest version, which was eventually solved by updating the BIOS. That had the added benefit of fixing a bug I had been running into on a game that I play.

I too have found it to be better than I expected. I don't like the appearance as well, but the functionality seems very good. Firefox seems to be working better than it did under 7. I may try out Classic Shell on one of my machines.
 
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Windows 10 is a raging disaster, the computer just force updated itself this week and since then I have to do a hard restart every 3 or 4 hours. Total piece of garbage

Microsoft has, and will always, suck

I would love to watch a Microsoft employee actually do a full day's work using their software.. mind you, the laptop I have is quite capable

Tableau and some much more complex number crunching software works fine. It's just the windows stuff that sucks

Mac and Linux baby
 
kayoh190 said:
it doesn’t feel any worse than 7.
Click to expand...
it's kind of sad though that this is the low bar we set for Microsoft, that a newer version of something doesn't "feel worse" than a prior version
 
Luckily, my Windows 10 seems pretty stable.

I had a success last night. I removed my ReadyCache SSD from my old HP Pavilion and installed it in my current computer. I was worried that the available driver wouldn’t support Windows 10, especially since it was last updated 6 years ago. There was an installation error the first attempt but things went swimmingly after a reboot.

Data copies seemed to go faster, and the second reboot after installation went a lot faster than pre/installation reboots. 32GB of cache is significantly better than 8 GB of cache; I’d say even better than the 4X that might be expected.

Still not as fast as booting from an SSD, but a lot less painful than before.
 
There are only two flavors of Windows, disregard the numbers.

There is Pre- and Post Steve Ballmer.

As an insider, I was hoping Micro$oft would give up their selling crapware to suckers business model, but it never happened while Ballmer was in charge.

I am a 25 year Linux user and have watched the whole "Embrace and Devour" way Windows has become the big money maker for the Redmond mafia. In 1999 and 2000, there was a huge influx of good ideas and Windoze was about to become a legitimate operating system by application of industry standards (previously disregarded in favor of do-it-our-way-or-else) and a peer review method of quality control that would fix all the things we hate about Windows.

Yeah, none of it was implemented and Ballmer insisted the Crapware to Suckers model would continue as long as he was in charge and it made mountains of cash flow into the corporate bottom line. Nothing wrong with that if your goal is to make money and to hell with the customer.

When Windows 8 appeared on the scene, some of those great ideas sneaked into the OS and most users didn't realize that what they saw was basically the same Win NT from 1999 with a ridiculous new "desktop." It was universally hated and sales dropped. Since dropping sales meant less money, Win8 was patched to make it suck less and sell more. That went on until the era of Post-Ballmer, when Steve decided he had ripped off the suckers for long enough and decided to buy a sports franchise and spend all that ill-earned cash!

With him out of the way, the "new" Micro$oft brought some of those OS improvements out of the closet and decided that since they couldn't own the internet (MSN, Office 365, Outlook, Active Directory) they would focus on decrapifying Windows. the stability and usefulness of the OS improved as the interface changed to make it look like a different version of the same old $417.

Unfortunately, the really awesome stuff that would have made WINNT/Win2000/Vista/XP a decent, standardized OS never got implemented and today we have Win10 and the Insider Preview community. Yep, they used online input from random users and developers to submit unpaid and unofficial modifications to the operating system while severely cutting the in-house developer staff to nearly nothing. All to save cost.

The new management at Micro$oft is more open to accepting the role of their product in the big picture, but they still have the advantage of having sold all that Crapware to Suckers over the last 30 years. After losing nearly 100% of their web server business to Apache and Linux, they are once again preying on the end-user PC demographic. Apple has wooed away many of the disenchanted and there are a few of us full-time Linux weirdos out there, but Win10 has begrudgingly become the dominant desktop for home gamers.

Why am I writing all this and wasting your time? Perhaps Tantalum said it best:
Tantalum said:
it's kind of sad though that this is the low bar we set for Microsoft, that a newer version of something doesn't "feel worse" than a prior version
Click to expand...

We are all suckers and are tolerating a poor product because we must.
 
IK04 said:
There are only two flavors of Windows, disregard the numbers.

There is Pre- and Post Steve Ballmer.

As an insider, I was hoping Micro$oft would give up their selling crapware to suckers business model, but it never happened while Ballmer was in charge.

I am a 25 year Linux user and have watched the whole "Embrace and Devour" way Windows has become the big money maker for the Redmond mafia. In 1999 and 2000, there was a huge influx of good ideas and Windoze was about to become a legitimate operating system by application of industry standards (previously disregarded in favor of do-it-our-way-or-else) and a peer review method of quality control that would fix all the things we hate about Windows.

Yeah, none of it was implemented and Ballmer insisted the Crapware to Suckers model would continue as long as he was in charge and it made mountains of cash flow into the corporate bottom line. Nothing wrong with that if your goal is to make money and to hell with the customer.

When Windows 8 appeared on the scene, some of those great ideas sneaked into the OS and most users didn't realize that what they saw was basically the same Win NT from 1999 with a ridiculous new "desktop." It was universally hated and sales dropped. Since dropping sales meant less money, Win8 was patched to make it suck less and sell more. That went on until the era of Post-Ballmer, when Steve decided he had ripped off the suckers for long enough and decided to buy a sports franchise and spend all that ill-earned cash!

With him out of the way, the "new" Micro$oft brought some of those OS improvements out of the closet and decided that since they couldn't own the internet (MSN, Office 365, Outlook, Active Directory) they would focus on decrapifying Windows. the stability and usefulness of the OS improved as the interface changed to make it look like a different version of the same old $417.

Unfortunately, the really awesome stuff that would have made WINNT/Win2000/Vista/XP a decent, standardized OS never got implemented and today we have Win10 and the Insider Preview community. Yep, they used online input from random users and developers to submit unpaid and unofficial modifications to the operating system while severely cutting the in-house developer staff to nearly nothing. All to save cost.

The new management at Micro$oft is more open to accepting the role of their product in the big picture, but they still have the advantage of having sold all that Crapware to Suckers over the last 30 years. After losing nearly 100% of their web server business to Apache and Linux, they are once again preying on the end-user PC demographic. Apple has wooed away many of the disenchanted and there are a few of us full-time Linux weirdos out there, but Win10 has begrudgingly become the dominant desktop for home gamers.

Why am I writing all this and wasting your time? Perhaps Tantalum said it best:


We are all suckers and are tolerating a poor product because we must.
Click to expand...
Don’t forget that except for an airplane, we’d be using something descended from Digital Research instead of DOS. It might have been better than what we have now.

I used to think Windows XP was the best version ever; compared to Vista. It was, however, after using Windows 7 for a while, XP didn’t seem all that great.

I try never to be an early adopter so the bugs will be addressed and discounting has begun.
 
Tantalum said:
it's kind of sad though that this is the low bar we set for Microsoft, that a newer version of something doesn't "feel worse" than a prior version
Click to expand...

Very sad, but I find it to be the case across all software - not just Microsoft. IMO OS X has gotten progressively worse since 10.6, and don't get me started on Linux. As @IK04 said it sucks that we tolerate it, but my computers are tools and I use them to get things done. I'd love to scream from the rooftops that they can take Snow Leopard and Slackware from my cold dead hands, but being restricted to old versions of tools and exposing myself to additional security issues is a hill this luddite isn't willing to die on. :)
 
kayoh190 said:
Very sad, but I find it to be the case across all software - not just Microsoft. IMO OS X has gotten progressively worse since 10.6, and don't get me started on Linux. As @IK04 said it sucks that we tolerate it, but my computers are tools and I use them to get things done. I'd love to scream from the rooftops that they can take Snow Leopard and Slackware from my cold dead hands, but being restricted to old versions of tools and exposing myself to additional security issues is a hill this luddite isn't willing to die on. :)
Click to expand...
Years ago, some wag said Windows itself is malware, but Bill Gates was more business friendly than CPM's developer, so Intel priced MS-DOS a lot more aggressively than CPM.

I've gotten used to Windows 10. I don't like having to search the Start GUI every time I want to use a utility, so I pinned the Control Menu to the task bar.

I really missed having gadgets in Windows 10, but on a lark, I searched for Windows 10 gadgets, and came up with a gadgets msi package. I'm using a few of the gadgets in the package, and found a GPU meter elsewhere.

I added Level 1 and Level 2 caching, so once the L1 cache is loaded at Windows boot, I'm rarely dependent on my HDD speed. I even found a way to get the User Experience Index, but it's not even close to user friendly.

I finally found the Mail Junk folder. All of the folders, except the inbox, in Mail are in alphabetical order. MSN Explorer has Inbox, Sent, and Junk folders all at the top. And, MSN Explorer lets you select a lot of files to move, delete, or etc., but you have to do one message at a time. At least Mail is a lot more stable than MSN Explorer. I have both on my PC.
 
Windows has been regressing since XP SP2 ;-)

Can't complain about W10 except that it's a resource hog and it will run updates at the least convenient times.

At least it's not a Mac.
 
weilke said:
Windows has been regressing since XP SP2 ;-)

Can't complain about W10 except that it's a resource hog and it will run updates at the least convenient times.

At least it's not a Mac.
Click to expand...

Macs act just like that now too, makes everyone feel right at home. LOL
 
Bob Noel said:
Only if you don't know how to turn off all that cra....er.... stuff.
Click to expand...

Turn it off, you’re vulnerable to some really stupid security flaws and you’ve become a problem for the rest of us.

It’s not about the patching being annoying, it’s about them all having zero “initial quality” as the JD Power & Associates award that Chevy touts, goes.

Isn’t a single OS that has it. And if you’re not planning on being a target, you’ll patch either one massively and continuously. 6GB “patches” for either one aren’t uncommon monthly.
 
denverpilot said:
Turn it off, you’re vulnerable to some really stupid security flaws and you’ve become a problem for the rest of us.
Click to expand...

it's not that binary (no pun)
 
Bob Noel said:
it's not that binary (no pun)
Click to expand...

It really is if you’re getting audited. You don’t patch you come nowhere near the company network, period. We even have to force update your browser.

Garmin stupidly didn’t and paid millions for the ransomware key. I’d be quite amazed if DoD isn’t internally handing them their asses and have been since that “event”.

Nobody can afford NOT to patch anymore. With a well published less than 100% catch rate on even the most expensive and layered “solutions” to the root problem of the underlying OSes being continuously insecure, and any breach causing months of cleanup and proving the garbage was eradicated, the costs to any org getting hit by anything are way higher than forced patching and at least a fighting chance against it.

Paying a fleet of humans to clean up after the OS and browsers continually crapping on everyone is now far too expensive to ignore.

I’d love to say the OS and browser makers are getting better, but objectively by all real security audit measurements they’re not.

MSFT called this one “Medium” and “Low risk” at first and it’s nowhere near either. Any machine with ANY credentials and a machine in between that machine and a Domain Controller, instant Enterprise Admin rights... and zero effort on the part of the bad guy, since the code to do it is public on GitHub.

https://www.cisa.gov/blog/2020/09/18/windows-server-vulnerability-requires-immediate-attention

Granted a server side problem but one of the worst in two decades and there were over 120 similarly bad patches included for client side problems just in the Aug/Sept Microsoft roll up alone. Apple’s list of vulnerabilities is no better.

Piles and piles of garbage insecure code. And very few coders who even understand how NOT to write these sorts of errors into their products. (Here’s looking at Adobe who had even more vulnerabilities and exploits with updates than Microsoft in Aug/Sept.)

If you’re not patching you’re eventually going to be the attack vector for someone else. It’s now just basic online hygiene. You won’t be MY attack vector because you’re banned from even accessing my network, but you’ll be someone’s.

Of course, researchers published earlier this year that well over 450 tested home routers also have built in remote exploits and at least three major manufacturers said they have no plans to patch any of them... so... there’s that. Any botnet can easily find thousands of devices more than willing to help them attack tens of thousands more unpatched devices...

As of this moment we see at least two botnets banging on external stuff at our place. Not enough traffic to cause a DDoS but annoying in the logs. All Chinese IP addresses which may or may not have any real meaning. We’ve blocked most of them permanently, within the limits of modern GeoIP systems.

Obviously us “server side” folk have a heightened awareness and responsibility, but the constant barrage of attacks on user systems is driving a new expense into even allowing an uncontrolled user system anywhere near any business network. Even one with “automatic updates” turned on. Can’t audit those.

The saddest are the companies who call and say they are getting security errors on our websites. Yeah... you’re on an insecure browser and it’s telling you so. You’re no threat to us but MSIE on unpatched Win7... or worse, XP, and you have thousands of users and STILL haven’t started a roll out of something supported? Good luck with that! (And judging by your company name you’re supposed to be HIPAA compliant even... grrrrreeeeeeeat.)

Bad software engineering is getting rapidly very very expensive. Probably not a bad trend to get the overall industry to clean up the act, but it’s currently right in the middle of that transition and lots of places like Garmin are going to shell out a lot of money to save their butts as they learn the hard way.

Restoring the enterprise from backups is expensive and painful.
 
Bob Noel said:
it's not that binary (no pun)
Click to expand...

I should have included that the other thing making it “binary” is the new trend toward “roll up” patches with individual ones being no longer provided. 120+ in a single file and no way to get only specific ones from either major OS vendor now.

Welcome to hell. Patch the biggie, introduce 400 more bugs.
 
if you want to pain all of software engineering based on your experience the consumer OS and consumer browser, then fine.

There are application domains where the consumer OS doesn't have a chance of being used.

There is more to the software world than consumer stuff.
 
Bob Noel said:
if you want to pain all of software engineering based on your experience the consumer OS and consumer browser, then fine.

There are application domains where the consumer OS doesn't have a chance of being used.

There is more to the software world than consumer stuff.
Click to expand...

The vast vast majority of entities aren’t using those specialty products. Certainly not worldwide since they’re banned from export and definitely a useless comment here where nobody is talking about truly secure networks or systems.

Your initial response was in the consumer and standard business context and you said it “wasn’t binary”.

Yes, it actually is for us. Either people accept the patches or they’re part of a growing and absolutely massive real world problem that has been published to be so by numerous warnings that even the slightly lower level secured networks have already fallen to within those domains and markets.

The entire last three months has been vague announcements from DHS CISA, FBI and others who flat out admitted they’re cleaning up government networks already taken down by public side botnets and vulnerabilities. They’ve even hinted it was through the silly ass horrible Exchange exploits that have been published for years.

Nothing you’ve offered up indicates that not patching is intelligent in any way. Not without massive resources and special contracts to allow installation of one patch at a time. And those aren’t offered anymore to the GenPop. We get 100+ patches at a time now and that’s it.

Go ahead. Find me the download for that nasty MSFT server patch outside of a security roll up without a special contract usually reserved to companies of massive size and expenditures. I’ll wait. It’s not public in that form. You either apply the whole August Security roll up or you don’t get it. The desktops / user systems are the same.

Anyone not patching in the non-special regular world is just another attack vector now. Their NAT router may help if it’s also not already fully compromised. Not too hard to teach the router to attack everything inside it by mingling two exploits fully published on GitHub or in a nice easy to use metasploit package. Any teen with enough curiosity could do it, right up until they decide to pay for a botnet with bitcoin and join the bad side.

That’s really all that’s stopping some, a few hundred bucks and small botnets are yours. Not much of a deterrent.

Most red teams take down those special places pretty easily if given enough leeway to behave badly, too. Especially if they can gain physical access via social engineering. Man-traps with biometrics were old news back when I was building data centers nearly two decades ago.

Definitely ain’t what we were taking about here.
 
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