Windows 10 weak spots...
I largely see Windows 10 as a huge success. The adoption rate among existing users is incredible. The OS itself has endeared itself to many. And it is, in my opinion, generally quite good.
But, that doesn't mean it has been flawless. And some of the mistakes are a tad confusing.
Firstly, privacy. No, I don't think you have anything to worry about. But, they did make one astronomical blunder here. It really would be damn near impossible for the average Windows 10 user to intentionally disable all of the privacy features available and then there would still be some that they couldn't via any 1st party UI in the OS. I think all of the data sent is well justified and serves a good purpose and I'm fine with it being on by default. But they really needed to make it easier to discover and turn it off if you have a particular need or are just particularly paranoid.
Note: I didn't include the wording of their privacy statement, because there is really nothing wrong with it. Most people pointing to that policy take one line completely out of context and typically ignore all of the clauses that govern and limit those lines that say scary things. The only problem with their legalese is that it is being read by those without brains and those who seek to intentionally mislead others.
Another item they failed on rather massively was all of this floating around about existing versions downloading Windows 10, even if the user chooses not to install it or even reserve a copy. Downloading 4-6GB of data could mean a lot of people pushed over their bandwidth caps. I have 4 Windows PC's within arms reach and my wife has two more. Now, we may be a bit odd in that I'm a developer and own a lot of tech and my wife runs her shop off one and uses the other for personal use... but that is 14-24GB of data. On more budget friendly internet plans that can be nearing on 50% of your monthly allotment. I'm sorry, but that is unacceptable.
The upgrade notification itself is annoying even without the unwanted download. Many have mistaken it for malware and seeing it on my wife's work PC, I'm not surprised. It is VERY un-Microsoft. It pops up rather persistently and doesn't seem to have a "shut up indefinitely" option. It also doesn't use the same sort of dialogs as other Windows screens/prompts. There are ways to get rid of it... I'm aware of that. But to the average user, there really isn't. Like making privacy settings easier to find and disable, if this prompt could be readily disabled indefinitely, even by the average user, there wouldn't be anyone thinking it was malware.
Reliability appears to have taken a hit as well. This seems like a case of having bit off more than they could chew. And as a member of the Insider program, I have little fault blaming on this one. App stability has actually generally improved since the Insider program. But the apps crashed all of the time on me with those builds. And while it took leaps between 10240 and the build prior it didn't close the gap. That leap is another problem. The final build was aesthetically similar to the prior build in most ways, but a lot of functionality was changing under the hoods, and that code didn't spend near enough time on Insider devices.
Related to reliability and my last point would have to be driver updates. Defaulting to automatic driver updates is a pain for the simple reason that Microsoft is forcing on users updates to critical components that they aren't testing. My laptop recently started locking up on anything using Flash Player, including apps or sites which simply used it in ads. All because of an audio driver update of all things. I don't want to wholesale disable driver updates either. I just wanted to rollback to the last working version of the audio driver and leave the rest alone. Not possible it seems.
Most components don't need regular updates. And hardware vendors aren't built for this. Most of their hardware users never updated drivers anyway unless something was broken. Honestly... probably the only drivers on any machines I ever updated regularly were my video card drivers and if I had an Intel chipset (which incidentally, was often bundled with video card drivers).
I don't care about my sound card. If it plays sound without issues, why should it ever be updated? Same with things like WiFi, BT, Keyboard, Trackpad, touch screen, optical drives, disk drives, USB bus, etc.... The dirty secret of the computer hardware world is just how easy it is to screw up a driver. And with so many variables like differing IRQ's a bus speeds and hardware sleep states and software sleep states and hardware power states you find seemingly benign things... like a sound card... can utterly destroy your computer with a botched driver.
Not to say never update these things. But knowing what a seemingly trivial device upgrade can do, I generally hold off until I notice something I think could be improved about my computer experience, check for upgrades and wait until I have time to deal with potential headaches and rollback if I have to. Finding at 2am that I can't access critical resources online because Microsoft decided my sound card drivers should be updated is not the sort of thing I want to be dealing with.
This was long and ranty. With all of the Apple hate I'd been dishing out lately, I felt the need to come clean on the nuisances of Windows 10.
With all that out there... I do like the OS. 4 of the 5 PCs running Windows 10 have never had any real problems since "GA", and I have resolved the one issue I had on my own it seems.
But, that doesn't mean it has been flawless. And some of the mistakes are a tad confusing.
Firstly, privacy. No, I don't think you have anything to worry about. But, they did make one astronomical blunder here. It really would be damn near impossible for the average Windows 10 user to intentionally disable all of the privacy features available and then there would still be some that they couldn't via any 1st party UI in the OS. I think all of the data sent is well justified and serves a good purpose and I'm fine with it being on by default. But they really needed to make it easier to discover and turn it off if you have a particular need or are just particularly paranoid.
Note: I didn't include the wording of their privacy statement, because there is really nothing wrong with it. Most people pointing to that policy take one line completely out of context and typically ignore all of the clauses that govern and limit those lines that say scary things. The only problem with their legalese is that it is being read by those without brains and those who seek to intentionally mislead others.
Another item they failed on rather massively was all of this floating around about existing versions downloading Windows 10, even if the user chooses not to install it or even reserve a copy. Downloading 4-6GB of data could mean a lot of people pushed over their bandwidth caps. I have 4 Windows PC's within arms reach and my wife has two more. Now, we may be a bit odd in that I'm a developer and own a lot of tech and my wife runs her shop off one and uses the other for personal use... but that is 14-24GB of data. On more budget friendly internet plans that can be nearing on 50% of your monthly allotment. I'm sorry, but that is unacceptable.
The upgrade notification itself is annoying even without the unwanted download. Many have mistaken it for malware and seeing it on my wife's work PC, I'm not surprised. It is VERY un-Microsoft. It pops up rather persistently and doesn't seem to have a "shut up indefinitely" option. It also doesn't use the same sort of dialogs as other Windows screens/prompts. There are ways to get rid of it... I'm aware of that. But to the average user, there really isn't. Like making privacy settings easier to find and disable, if this prompt could be readily disabled indefinitely, even by the average user, there wouldn't be anyone thinking it was malware.
Reliability appears to have taken a hit as well. This seems like a case of having bit off more than they could chew. And as a member of the Insider program, I have little fault blaming on this one. App stability has actually generally improved since the Insider program. But the apps crashed all of the time on me with those builds. And while it took leaps between 10240 and the build prior it didn't close the gap. That leap is another problem. The final build was aesthetically similar to the prior build in most ways, but a lot of functionality was changing under the hoods, and that code didn't spend near enough time on Insider devices.
Related to reliability and my last point would have to be driver updates. Defaulting to automatic driver updates is a pain for the simple reason that Microsoft is forcing on users updates to critical components that they aren't testing. My laptop recently started locking up on anything using Flash Player, including apps or sites which simply used it in ads. All because of an audio driver update of all things. I don't want to wholesale disable driver updates either. I just wanted to rollback to the last working version of the audio driver and leave the rest alone. Not possible it seems.
Most components don't need regular updates. And hardware vendors aren't built for this. Most of their hardware users never updated drivers anyway unless something was broken. Honestly... probably the only drivers on any machines I ever updated regularly were my video card drivers and if I had an Intel chipset (which incidentally, was often bundled with video card drivers).
I don't care about my sound card. If it plays sound without issues, why should it ever be updated? Same with things like WiFi, BT, Keyboard, Trackpad, touch screen, optical drives, disk drives, USB bus, etc.... The dirty secret of the computer hardware world is just how easy it is to screw up a driver. And with so many variables like differing IRQ's a bus speeds and hardware sleep states and software sleep states and hardware power states you find seemingly benign things... like a sound card... can utterly destroy your computer with a botched driver.
Not to say never update these things. But knowing what a seemingly trivial device upgrade can do, I generally hold off until I notice something I think could be improved about my computer experience, check for upgrades and wait until I have time to deal with potential headaches and rollback if I have to. Finding at 2am that I can't access critical resources online because Microsoft decided my sound card drivers should be updated is not the sort of thing I want to be dealing with.
This was long and ranty. With all of the Apple hate I'd been dishing out lately, I felt the need to come clean on the nuisances of Windows 10.
With all that out there... I do like the OS. 4 of the 5 PCs running Windows 10 have never had any real problems since "GA", and I have resolved the one issue I had on my own it seems.
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