Thursday, October 29, 2015

The Windows 10 Experience | Part 3

So, I've been running Windows 10 for a few months now. A wise old lady asked me for another post, and I've put it off until she bugged me about it again. Sorry mom.

Back when my mom asked me to write another post, I really didn't think I had all that much more to say. There were a couple of things that I thought deserved to be mentioned, so here it all comes.

I'm pretty sure that it was the same day that I was asked to do another post, that I turned on the computer and found this.
That little "Sign out now" button was completely useless. It let me log back in, but came up with the same error. I had to power the computer off, by holding the power button for a few seconds, and restart it to get it to start up properly. It has not happened again, but I don't have any idea what prompted it that one time.



Probably one of the more irritating things about Windows 10 are the automatic updates. With previous version of Windows, you can actually set it so that you get a choice of whether or not to download update. This is NOT the case on Windows 10. You do have a limited choice of being notified to restart, rather than having the computer just restart automatically.

I noticed a few times that I was unable to load any web pages. It was as if I had lost internet completely, although every indication was that I was still connected. I finally noticed, when I went to restart the computer, that said something to the effect of "Apply Updates and Restart". Of course, after restarting, everything seemed to be fine. I just found it extremely annoying that the update process had such a drastic effect on internet access. If you are able to restart at your convenience for the updates, they shouldn't make it so inconvenient to use the computer until you restart it.

Recently my big complaint with W10 has to do with my computer that is running W7. I used that computer to download, but not install W10, since you can create installation media for use on another computer. For quite a while not it reminds me, nearly every day, that I can install W10, although I really don't want to - I still prefer W7. What is disconcerting though is installing updates on that computer. I can still select which update I want to install, and when I want to install the, etc. Once I've selected the updates, and have told it to download and install, it displays "Downloading Windows 10". When I first saw this I couldn't hit "Cancel" quick enough. I since discovered that it does actually download and install the updates that I expect it to, it just doesn't know how to express itself.

If I had my choice, I'd run W7 on my laptop, rather than W10, but it's still a better alternative than W8.1. I don't find it to be better than previous versions of Windows, but thankfully it's not really any worse, other than a few interface issues that are mostly person preference.

I realize that there is one feature of W10 that I haven't mentioned in my posts. W10 comes with Cortana, a personal digital assistant, or so I believe it's called. Microsoft had a few commercials about how great it was on the Windows Phones, so they put it in W10 too. I do not have it enable, simply because it requires you to opt in to having your data collected. I realize that for it to work, it does need to learn more about the user, but I don't want Microsoft having access to that. I've already provided access to most of the information it would want to Google anyway, and I can use that on my phone. Using such features on a computer really isn't beneficial to me Perhaps if I was running W10 on a tablet my opinion would vary. Then again, why would I want to start using Cortana when I have something that works as well as I need it to, Google?

And with that, I'll end my rambling, and this 3rd post on my Windows 10 experience.


1 comment:

  1. Hello son, my Windows 10 experience didn't last very long and I undid it. I lost wifi once 10 was on my computer. A grandson said all I needed to do was uninstall the wifi drivers, then restart my computer and it would work. How was I supposed to know that? Obviously I didn't. I plan to try again tomorrow. Hopefully I will still have wifi and not lose the sound as some say they did. Figure if I need to learn to work with a new windows program, it might as well be 10 instead of 8.1. Thanks for posting again. Now about the school blog....seems it could use a new post, or two or three, as well.

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