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Microsoft Windows Operating Systems

Data From Windows 10 Feedback Tool Exposes Problem Areas 147

jones_supa writes: Two weeks in, and already a million people have tried out Windows 10 Technical Preview, reports Microsoft, along with a nice stack of other stats and feedback. Only 36% of installations are occurring inside a virtual machine. 68% of Windows 10 Technical Preview users are launching more than seven apps per day, with somewhere around 25% of testers using Windows 10 as their daily driver (26 app launches or more per day). With the help of Windows 10's built-in feedback tool, thousands of testers have made it very clear that Microsoft's new OS still has lots of irksome bugs and misses many much-needed features. ExtremeTech has posted an interesting list of the most popular gripes received, them mostly being various GUI endurances. What has your experience been with the Technical Preview?
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Data From Windows 10 Feedback Tool Exposes Problem Areas

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  • by jamesl ( 106902 ) on Wednesday October 15, 2014 @12:54PM (#48151391)

    Data From Windows 10 Feedback Tool Exposes Problem Areas.

    It is now headline news when a software release works as designed.

    • by pushing-robot ( 1037830 ) on Wednesday October 15, 2014 @01:03PM (#48151487)

      Sheesh, can't you even read the summary? This isn't just a software release working as designed. This is a Microsoft software release working as designed!

      • by mfh ( 56 )

        MSFT is really under the gun to show they can produce quality. This is why competition is great for us and why we should pat ourselves on the back for pushing MSFT towards anti-monopoly standards. Google's Android releases keep looking better and better. Apple has their own embarrassments. MSFT has to do the software process to get it right and they know they can't afford another Win8 / Vista / WinME. We can always use Linux which is getting better and better every day. They are giving away Win8 now for $65 [infoworld.com]

      • To be fair it is a tool to discover how bad their software is. You would think Microsoft set a pretty low bar for qualified success here.

      • Excellent point.

      • Yes, with assistance from the NSA, Microsoft successfully integrated their 'feedback tool', which sends your mouse movements, mouse clicks and all key presses to Microsoft. And perhaps elsewhere.

    • by qubezz ( 520511 ) on Wednesday October 15, 2014 @01:39PM (#48151929)

      It works as designed, however it works against the interest of the user. A perfect example is the unmovable and unremovable search button next to the start button that opens Bing search. Just like on Windows phones with a physical search button made useless because it cannot be configured to do anything but open Bing, this is just another operating system iteration that does what Microsoft wants, users be damned.

      The best reply and what every user actually wants: "be Windows 7 after I disable all the bloat and UI garbage, libraries, and homegroup cruft you put on that OS".

      • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        I actually like the way windows phone works. Back button always goes back, windows button always goes to the start screen and search button always opens bing/Cortana. Best of all windows and search buttons always work the same from any app. I never had a situation where I had to wait for more than a second after pressing one of these buttons. On a phone they are awesome.

        • Back button always goes back

          windows button always goes to the start screen

          search button always opens bing/Cortana

          windows and search buttons always work the same from any app

          You like the way windows phones work... like a phone should work?

          • by Anonymous Coward

            Please do tell what other OS works like a phone should work?

            P.S.: I have an android, so you can mark those as not working.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • by epyT-R ( 613989 ) on Wednesday October 15, 2014 @05:43PM (#48154413)

          Sure it has, well it used to be. They've been dumbing it down since, removing features from explorer, and win 8 was an experiment to see if they could get pc users to abandon the open desktop market and stick to closed-store fullscreen apps on their pcs. It failed. There are plenty of power users who still use windows, and they are the ones who produce the content that is consumed by mobile devices. It's bad news to fuck with that workflow flexibility.

          Just because the tech mediocre out populate the tech knowledgeable doesn't mean everything should be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator. Those knowledgeable people are the ones producing the software (and designing the hardware) your idiot customers will consume on the devices you sell them.

          No, the backlash started with vista, where a lot of the options were slowly removed from the code, or made inaccessible without system-breaking hacks. With each new release they removed a ton of efficiency and replaced it with huge, gaudy colored widgets/fonts, and tons of wasted space between them. The control panel introduced with vista is a great example of the beginning push, replacing simple easy to remember names with long convoluted phrases and lots of extra clicking. There was no reason to break the interface like this other than to force people into using the new search-for-everything paradigm. This is the source of the backlash, which hit a new high with the idiocy that is windows 8.

          IIRC msbob was a market failure too.

        • Oh horseshit, you are just a power user and Windows has NEVER EVER been set up for power users OOTB. Remember the damned search dog in XP? Clippy? MSFT has been trying to make things simpler and friendly since the days of MSBob and ya know what? regular Joes LOVE that shit! ...

          Beginners love that stuff...

          But after using it for a couple of weeks at work, every day, they are no longer beginners. And it does not take long for that stuff to grate on the nerves. That's why they all failed.

          But if we could just turn it off when we are not longer liking it, that would be fine... 8-)

      • The "best" part is that Microsoft STILL can't get the Control Panel consistent !

        OSX does a far better consistent job .. OSX 10.0 .. OSX 10.9.

        Microsoft doesn't have a clue about good UI.

  • I installed it (Score:4, Interesting)

    by heezer7 ( 708308 ) on Wednesday October 15, 2014 @12:55PM (#48151397)
    In a VM. Said hey, it has a new huge start menu. Saw nothing else exciting and haven't booted it since.
    • Hey, putting the start menu back was a big deal. It's one of the top requirements in my decision on whether or not to switch to Apple.

    • by sconeu ( 64226 )

      I installed it in a VM. Or should I say, I *TRIED* to install it in a VM....

      Granted, this was on an old Core2 Duo machine, or something like that.

    • I installed it in a VM as well. The Start Menu was small, I mean really small, and although the mouse pointer showed I could resize it, it wouldn't resize at all. I restarted it and the Start Menu was bigger this time, but I still couldn't resize it. After several restarts I came to realize that if I tried to drag it to a new size, I had to restart for that change to apply, but then I couldn't resize it again unless I restarted the OS after that.

      That was as far as I went. I still have it installed in a VM b

    • by rastos1 ( 601318 )
      I tried to install that too. And then I tried to install a piece of software that takes over 2GB of disk space when installed. It took at about 11 minutes to install. And then I found out that it takes 7 minutes with Windows defender is turned off.
  • Only 36% of installations are occurring inside a virtual machine. 68% of Windows 10 Technical Preview users are launching more than seven apps per day, with somewhere around 25% of testers using Windows 10 as their daily driver

    Those are indeed problems.

  • Windows 7 (Score:1, Insightful)

    by bumba2014 ( 3564161 )
    Guess no compelling reason the ever upgrade to windows 10. I'm staying at 7...
    • Re:Windows 7 (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Billly Gates ( 198444 ) on Wednesday October 15, 2014 @01:14PM (#48151627) Journal

      You mean no virtual desktops, a rumored tabs in explorer, kernel level sandboxing that all browsers can use, much improved power consumption, directx 12 with low cpu overhead, and USB 3 support are not reasons to upgrade?

      There seems to be a consensus that all change is for the sake of change and eye candy and XP is GOD.

      This is a must for a gamer or laptop users.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

        2002 called, and Linux wants to wish Microsoft their best.

        Well, except for USB3 support. That seems to work fine in Win7.

        • Re:Windows 7 (Score:4, Interesting)

          by cbhacking ( 979169 ) <been_out_cruisin ... m ['hoo' in gap]> on Wednesday October 15, 2014 @02:23PM (#48152421) Homepage Journal

          USB3 support is not present in Win7. Third-party drivers are required to get it working at all, and you can't use it for low-level stuff (mind you, it's not like kernel debugging and such require a fast connection).

          The reduced memory consumption of Win8 and later (partially due to ongoing optimization, but mostly due to page combining) is definitely a worthwhile upgrade, unless your machine is so ludicrously over-specced for its workloads that you never experience enough RAM pressure to matter (and remember, it starts mattering as soon as you begin having cache misses because there isn't enough "free" RAM).

          Win8 also has far better multi-monitor support than Win7. That doesn't matter on my home system, right now - I'm currently using a single massive display - but it's something I wish I had at work. I'm not sure how good it is in Win10, but I very much doubt it's worse than Win8, which means it's better than Win7.

          Also, your implication that Linux (even today, much less twelve years ago) has low-CPU-overhead support for cutting-edge graphics (I'll even substitute OpenGL for DirectX for you) is a joke. Even using the proprietary drivers, Linux still has some distance to go. In fairness, they're working on it - moving away from X11 and its designed-for-networked-thin-terminals architecture will save some CPU overhead, for example - but it'll be a while before the alternative display systems are standard.

          • by Anonymous Coward

            Oh no! Not 3rd party drivers! OH THE HORROR! 3RD PARTY DRIVERS!

            From your motherboard mfg... yeah. that's so unacceptable...

            usb3.0 works flawless for me on win7 with a biostar board.

            • by armanox ( 826486 )

              Remember, the GNU people don't like third party drivers at all. Doesn't matter what OS.

            • I see your anecdote and raise you uh, I guess if I want USB3 functionality, I'll check out Biostar boards first.

          • Win8 also has far better multi-monitor support than Win7.

            In what way?

            I currently have my Windows 7 laptop in a multimonitor configuration running quite happily, and an identical Windows 8 laptop in an identical configuration, and both work equally well. Sure, there's some software that doesn't play nice with multimonitor, but that's the software, not the OS.

            • Off the top of my head:

              Per-monitor DPI settings, so things (automatically!) stay the same physical size as they move between monitors.
              Options to have the Taskbar span monitors, and (optionally) show only the icons for programs that are actually on that monitor on that monitor's taskbar.
              Per-monitor desktop background, or backgrounds that span multiple desktops.

              There's a bunch of other ones in 8.1 concerning (Metro) app snapping and multiple Metro apps or both Desktop and Metro apps at once and all that, but

          • This is kind of sad, I've had two USB3 ports for the last 4 years on my eight core Win 7 machine, in addition to all the USB2 ones.

          • USB3 support is not present in Win7.

            USB support is present, and USB3 only requires new drivers.

            Third-party drivers are required to get it working at all,

            So?

            and you can't use it for low-level stuff

            What does that mean?

            The reduced memory consumption of Win8 and later (partially due to ongoing optimization, but mostly due to page combining) is definitely a worthwhile upgrade, unless your machine is so ludicrously over-specced for its workloads that you never experience enough RAM pressure to matter

            ...which is inexpensive to do today, except for tablets.

            Also, your implication that Linux (even today, much less twelve years ago) has low-CPU-overhead support for cutting-edge graphics (I'll even substitute OpenGL for DirectX for you) is a joke.

            No, no it isn't. We had OpenGL back then, and it worked pretty well. This is just the graphics API of the week, and we had the graphics API of the week back then.

        • by Anonymous Coward

          Well and except for a modern graphics library with low cpu overhead. Oh and that kernel level sandboxing userspace can properly use. Just that and...well the much low power consumption. It didn't have that either. But apart from that you are totally right. Linux had it all in 2002. So impressive.

      • by 0123456 ( 636235 )

        And which of those is enough to justify living with that appallingly awful Start Menu and transparent window bars?

        Windows 11 is sure to suck worse, so my gaming PC upgrade can wait for Windows 12, thanks. Unless SteamOS is running all my Windows games by then.

        • If you are a gamer that sticks to the same games you won't care to upgrade but if you like getting the latest games you will eventually want to upgrade as there is definite benefits to be gained and games will eventually start offering less and less support to Windows 7.

          Anyhow, why not a console if the OS makes you that angry?

          Linux and Windows PCs will eventually be solely used as workstations.

      • Let's analyze these "reasons" ...

        * virtual desktops -- Virtual Desktops are hidden in Win7 [howtogeek.com] ... gee, let's copy OSX which has had it for *years*
        * a rumored tabs in explorer -- xplorer2 [zabkat.com] has supported this for years
        * kernel level sandboxing that all browsers can use -- Sandboxie [sandboxie.com] does it for ALL applications
        * much improved power consumption -- we are talking pennies a month on a desktop .. big whoop
        * directx 12 with low cpu overhead -- not a fan of forced obsolescence. Games _still_ support DX9 for crying out

    • by ADRA ( 37398 )

      Quite literally, I'd be happy with Windows 2000 (plus a few common add-on programs) as long as their kernel/driver model were updated and games actually worked with it anymore. I held out with 2000 until like 2008 and by then I had to hack many game DLL's to ignore the XP only extensions and it was just too much hassle to stick with it. Today, Windows 7 works well enough, and with Classic Shell, everything but some annoying explorer aspects work about the same as 2000 did. No gloss, no FX, just productive b

      • I don't know how you guys like spending your time but having to hack crap together to have it possibly working right isn't my cup of tea. I'd rather use that same time and make more money to buy the next OS and possibly hardware. Windows 2000 has not had security updates for a very long time and you needed to apply a non-official patch for the time to take into effect the new day light savings rules. In addition file transfer and file handling in general is MUCH faster in the newer versions of MS OS. As far

        • by epyT-R ( 613989 )

          Well it's worth the time if the new stuff creates problems. Blindly buying the new thing isn't always a good idea. As far as security goes, the best defense is a knowledgeable user, something today's patch/AV mania boondoggle has yet to compensate for.

          File transfer took a hit in vista, and it was partially patched in 7. Honestly, on today's 100Mbit+ ethernet lans, there hasn't been much of a performance change at all. The limiting factor is the network and/or storage media.

          Does SSE help the windows kern

          • 100MBit. I cap that very quickly. I get 300 - 700Mbit transfer between my workstations if I'm running on Gig so I'm not sure was restrictions are preventing you from reaching those speeds but I don't get those restrictions. Without a new OS you can't take advantage of the new instruction set in Windows including the I7's hyper-threading. This is especially true for newer rendering applications. As for Windows XP64 or 2003 64 I have yet to see one of those machines boot in less than 40 seconds. My Windows 7

      • Windows 2000, which had no firewall at all, no support for exploit mitigations (DEP, ASLR, etc.), no support for mandatory integrity control (so sandboxing an application was so hard that basically nobody did it), and so on? Do you even care enough about your computer's security to not run everything as Admin, in which case I am mildly in awe of your masochism for sticking with a pre-UAC Windows version for so long? Or does that all fall under "kernel/driver model" to you, in which case I suppose what you'r

    • Windows 7 would be fine for me if I only had one system. I don't though. I have a bunch of systems and it's sooo nice to have settings and things just auto sync between them without a bunch of hackery. The onedrive integration is much better in Win10 than Win7 too.

    • Have to agree. Still haven't heard of a single reason to "upgrade" from Windows 7 yet.

      Just because it fixes the disaster that was Windows 8 doesn't mean it's better.

    • by Chas ( 5144 )

      Guess no compelling reason the ever upgrade to windows 10. I'm staying at 7...

      Honestly, 8 had some nice little technical improvements under the hood (such as being able to directly mount ISO images as filesystems, etc.
      The big problem with 8 was the forced UI changes.

      Win10 retains all of those little technical improvements and is looking to (at least partially) undo the UI mess that was created in Win8.

      They still have a way to go though. There's a lot of Metro/Modern UI crap that REALLY needs to be cleaned out.

      • Mounting ISO files, I can do for years, no need for a new operating system. UI was crap. Control Center has been crap for years, and every new version, they think about something new, and leave the old stuff in it... 10 looks just like 8, but with the key logging and some addon for the start menu. I had 5 windows open in windows 8, I could tell a difference, because the wasn't any difference between the border of one and the border of an other... When moving from XP to 7, I got more stable Windows Explor
        • by Chas ( 5144 )

          All the excessive logging in Win10 is due to the fact that it is a TECH PREVIEW.

          Once we get to the RTM, you can be sure things like the click-tracking, key logging, etc are all going to be turned off. Because, were they NOT, Win10 would bounce off enterprise/business customers faster and harder than Windows 8 ever did. NO business is going to put up with their OS vendor keylogging them.

  • funny thing (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by woodworx ( 1780214 )
    I installed W10 on an old fliptop that had windows 8 RC1 on it. my 16yo teenager exclaimed: "you mean it won't boot on me every couple hours? sweet!" I haven't seen the fliptop nor my son for more than a few minutes since...
  • by brunes69 ( 86786 ) <[slashdot] [at] [keirstead.org]> on Wednesday October 15, 2014 @01:41PM (#48151947)

    The type of people who would have the know-how to, and be willing to, download and install beta copies of windows are not typical windows users, and this is reflected in the types of requests.

    Configurable wallpapers for virtual desktops? A better multi-boot menu? Give me a break. What percentage of Windows users do you suppose even know what a virtual desktop is? I am pretty sure if I asked my wife or mother their eyes would glaze over.

    It's kind of embarrassing almost to see these types of things in the Top 10 issues, while I am sure there are many more worse problems that the average users will run into often. Is the VPN setup and wireless configuration in Windows 10 as horribly crippled as it was in Windows 8 for example?

    • by Anonymous Coward

      > What percentage of Windows users do you suppose even know what a virtual desktop is?

      The same percentage who have seen their friends new mac, which ships with virtual desktops and integrated multi-touch gestures to use them.

  • Make it less ugly (Score:4, Insightful)

    by BLToday ( 1777712 ) on Wednesday October 15, 2014 @01:45PM (#48151987)

    * Windows 10 looks fine in pictures, but using it gives me a headache. I can't find a theme that's acceptable. UI is too colorful and the tile background colors still don't make sense.

    * Why can't I move applications between virtual desktops? You had it in PowerToys for Windows 95.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      ModernUI is all about flat, there's no more 3D, so colors help you to identify different controls and areas on the screen.

      P.S.: If you suffer from headaches when something is "colorful", you should see your doctor.

      • "ModernUI is all about flat, there's no more 3D, so colors help you to identify different controls and areas on the screen."

        That's the major problem. The colors don't make an sense so you can't use it to navigate. You what you end up with is reading white text on randomly selected color backgrounds.

      • As an artist the flat Metro look drives me crazy; the desktop looks really dull and often times all these flat colors the screen clash and there really isn't anything seperating and balancing them so I can never find a color for the window borders I feel comfortable with. The Aero theme was the pinnacle of the Windows UI in my opinion but I was even comfortable with just the classic Windows 9x/NT 4.x/2000 theme because at least there wasn't this clashing of flat colors without any seperation.

        One nitpick I'v

        • As an artist the flat Metro look drives me crazy; ...

          It's supposed to look like a comic book, so the kids will like it. No artists involved, I'm sure.

          The problem is that kids don't read paper comic books any more...

          As an Engineer, I agree with you. Industrial users hate the flat look, it causes accidents.
          The "3D look" is actually far advanced, as far as fast recognition and reliable operation.

          The only reason the older computers had "flat look" (before windows) was because that was all they could handle.
          On the other hand, it does seem to be "in" to play pixell

      • ModernUI is all about flat, there's no more 3D, so colors help you to identify different controls and areas on the screen.

        So take the PC Settings screen, then. Just by looking at it, how are you supposed to know if something is a group label, text or button? You don't; you have to go discover that by mouse-over etc. Now granted, it's not the definitive screen in Metro, but to my eye it highlight's the problem with the OS: too much flatness.

        Windows 3 had a flat look, but with enough screen hints as to what to do. The toolbars (circa Word 6 / Windows 95) were brilliant in that respect; it was really obvious what to do. But

      • Forget that anti-skeuomorphism. It looks like shit.

        It is step ass-backwords to Windows 1.0 [geeksaresexy.net] as that picture shows.

    • >>Why can't I move applications between virtual desktops?

      You can in Linux. And you can change your icons to something more eye-friendly.

  • by Sez Zero ( 586611 ) on Wednesday October 15, 2014 @01:46PM (#48152009) Journal
    That constitutes a "daily driver" machine? (BTW, I appreciate the car analogy.) But I only launch one or two apps each day; most of the time I'm resuming already running apps. Do they have to reboot each day as part of this tool?
    • Good point. If I open a bunch of tabs in IE or Chrome, it will launch a bunch of new processes... but odds are *excellent* that I already have the browser "app" open. If I used Firefox (well, Pale Moon) instead, it doesn't even launch new processes. I can spend hours of either work or play in the browser, opening and closing perhaps ten tabs per hour (on average, it peaks a lot higher), without ever launching a new window. Similarly, does it detect if I open a PDF, and it goes to the Foxit window that's alr

  • by Anonymous Coward

    When i first tried the consumer preview of window 8 it basically unusable, most of what i need for work did not work and UI was annoying, being taking away and brought back on a whim.

    At least this is usable, i have no issue with the UI, is it different, yes, but not too different. The live tiles thing is gimmicky, but i don't have to use them, there could be more control ever the style and size of the icons (some you have a few size option and some only a couple, i would like to be able to resize them all h

  • by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday October 15, 2014 @02:02PM (#48152209)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • That's the biggest complaint right now, you can't unpin search and tasks. I suppose MS wants you to use Bing come hell or high water. And you just know they won't fix it.
  • by BringsApples ( 3418089 ) on Wednesday October 15, 2014 @03:05PM (#48152855)
    Who the hell puts a list of top 10 things in the wrong order?
  • So far, I've found it works fine.

    Halfway through the quests after I dinged 90 last night, looking forward to the Horde title.

    Oh, you mean "MSFT" ... um, nobody wants to "upgrade" from Win7 dude.

    Nobody.

    Seriously, go talk to Clippy. Maybe he can help you.

  • by darkain ( 749283 ) on Wednesday October 15, 2014 @05:03PM (#48154053) Homepage

    There are far too many issues to count.

    Half of the "menus" (are they even menus, or panels, or what?) for networking are flat out blank. Click on the ethernet connection to find out IPv4/IPv6 addresses and link speed? NOPE! Just a blank panel!

    Opened up "Games" app, which launches what looks to be something similar to the XBox dashboard. Any games in there? NOPE! None! It just lists what I played on the XBox and what my achievements were on there. Any games on Windows 10? Comes with NONE apparently! Go to the store, download some free games. Are they then listed in the "Games" app? STILL NOPE!

    And speaking of those downloaded games. None of them would remain stable for more than 60 seconds. These are basic games like Minesweeper, Mahjong, ya'know, the things that came with Windows 7? Also, their load times were in the 2-5 minute area. Yeah, that's right. It takes about 2-5 minutes to even get the games up and running once launching, then about 60 seconds of play before they crash out. Funny enough, while Minesweeper was "loading", I opened up Chrome and visited http://www.michaelv.org/ [michaelv.org] and played a game of Minesweeper through there while still waiting on the local native application to work.

    Better customization of the start menu is absolutely needed. The menu is literally backwards. Windows 7 has a left/right split panel for the start menu, just like Windows 10 does. The problem? In Windows 7, the left half is the customization area for custom applications, with the right half being for static items (like control panel, computer, documents, etc). In Windows 10, this is reversed, with the static items being on the left, and the fully customization items being on the right.

    Speaking of the customization items. You get the choice of normal desktop apps of either having a 1x1 or a 2x2 grid icon, nothing else. The 1x1 is simply an icon (no text), and the 2x2 is too large. Why not a 1x2 where it has the icon on the left and text on the right?

    And this was just the beginning. The more I use it, the more the problems just seem absolutely endless.

    • Its release date is in 2015, right? It's probably extremely safe to assume they'll change something else in the intervening 14 months. It's just a preview, after all, so I'm going to take a wild stab and guess that nothing is particularly locked down yet.
  • My experience was that the installer never got past the loading icon in VirtualBox...

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