So how are you liking Win10 so far?

[Mem]

If Steam OS ever gains any traction and ends up being a great OS for gaming, then I wouldn't hesitate to make the switch. Or I'd dual boot and use Linux OS for non-gaming related tasks like surfing the web. I'd love more than anything to abandon MS right now. But unfortunately I'm not willing to make sacrifices to do it. I just need a viable alternative for my PC needs. I know I'm far from the only one who feels that way.

A lot of powers users have been dual booting or using Linux for years or decades, I know I have.
End of the day Win10 was designed for the average user like previous Windows, for "average Joe" out there Win10 does what they need it to without complications.


Microsoft don't need to think about power users because they should be able to handle Win10 etc with no problems, I know I can.
Fact is gamers and power users are in the minority.

 

[destrekor]

I think that I'm going to stick with the official release of 10 and leave the experimentation to others.

Yep. Systems that you depend upon, production systems, or anything of the sort, should be left to official stable builds and updates (as is seen in all OSs, this is no guarantee obviously, but it's the best chance). Leave "beta" releases to those who have secondary systems in case of stability concerns and enjoy the concept of testing - especially if they are kind enough to provide feedback if they discover any flaws.

 

[destrekor]

A lot of powers users have been dual booting or using Linux for years or decades, I know I have.
End of the day Win10 was designed for the average user like previous Windows, for "average Joe" out there Win10 does what they need it to without complications.


Microsoft don't need to think about power users because they should be able to handle Win10 etc with no problems, I know I can.
Fact is gamers and power users are in the minority.

Windows 10 is indeed the most consumer-friendly OS Microsoft has ever developed. That is why the auto-update system is in place, because you can't trust the average consumer to properly update a PC. I hope they include some sort of way for those who know what they are doing to handle it themselves, even if it's a registry tweak or PowerShell command.

BTW, not ever power user feels so inclined to use other OSs. I have dabbled from time to time, but I usually grow frustrated with Linux. Sometimes as a power user I like to not require everything I do require advanced knowledge. Sometimes I like to just do and go. I feel Linux is a pain in the ass and I've always been exceedingly comfortable within Windows, especially over the years as it has improved tremendously.

I've had times where I spent most of my time within OS X and find it to be a great OS that has the heart of a Unix-like system but with a larger or stronger development community. As I've been trying to get some things done that are Windows specific, I haven't been booting into OS X that much. I find I do most of the same things in each OS, but it depends on which thing I needed first. If I wanted to game or do something else Windows-specific, I'd boot into that and probably use it until I wanted to go back to something Mac-specific, and there I'd stay until the cycle repeats.

Sure, with OS X I'm not shunning the corporate overlords and proudly beating the Libre drum, but I honestly couldn't give a damn about that. There are sacrifices abound if you wish to dedicate your time to that bandwagon. It's fine and dandy and I support the cause, but it's just not something I focus upon.

 

[ArisVer]

I don't need MS holding my hand. Why should measures like that be taken with the pro version of windows which is a tier above the consumer grade home premium that's shipped with OEM rigs? MS has no excuse for the lack of features in the pro version.

Home and Professional are almost the same, just some more features added to the Pro version.

 

[TeknoBug]

If Steam OS ever gains any traction and ends up being a great OS for gaming, then I wouldn't hesitate to make the switch. Or I'd dual boot and use Linux OS for non-gaming related tasks like surfing the web. I'd love more than anything to abandon MS right now. But unfortunately I'm not willing to make sacrifices to do it. I just need a viable alternative for my PC needs. I know I'm far from the only one who feels that way.

Gaming in Linux is of a very small percentage, but at least Valve is acknowledging those Linux users that would like to game on that platform, I'd give it 10 years before gaming on Linux actually becomes widespread or sooner if Windows 10 becomes a stability/security problem down the road since it's MS's last Windows version and they're going to have to really stay on their toes to keep the OS polished.

I occasionally game under Linux, not enough AAA titles port Linux clients but Arkham Knight supposedly has a Linux client in the works which is good.

Home and Professional are almost the same, just some more features added to the Pro version.

If you want BitLocker, you'll need Pro. Same for Hyper-V (which isn't used by everybody anyways).

 

[Ramses]

I was doing the dual boot thing for gaming with Linux a couple years ago, it really worked out well all in all. I can see myself heading that way again. I miss my big-boy OS.

 

[destrekor]

I was doing the dual boot thing for gaming with Linux a couple years ago, it really worked out well all in all. I can see myself heading that way again. I miss my big-boy OS.

I used to be a tinkerer like mad, but the longer I work in IT, the more I loathe configuring things at home. I just want things to work how I want and for everything to get out of the way until I want to mess with something.

I like projects and have a few in mind, but I need to get things set up and done in a timely fashion, and I want it to require minimal effort once things are in working order. The projects themselves fulfill all my tinkering needs.

That's why I hardly bother with my phone anymore, even when I can ROM a phone I don't care to these days. I want it make it how I like it as much as I can, and then I want it to just work. The days of constantly dealing with ROM updates and bugs galore are over for me, no more patience for it.

I want to use my devices how they were intended, to do stuff on. I don't want to put up a great effort to simply get them to that point on a regular basis. :\

 

[Ramses]

I'm kinda getting that way too, old age I guess. I remember not thinking I'd like a Chromebook since it was so locked down, but I found that it just get's out of the way of the content I'm interacting with or the work I'm trying to do and just.. works. I learned with Linux, something mature like Mint at least, that if I left it alone and it was reasonably content with my hardware, it would pretty well get out of my way and let me work. Most of the time. Until I start screwing around in the console late at night trying to "improve" something.

 

[SparkyJJO]

Count me in that group also. I used to screw around with everything. Now that I work in IT every day for the last several years I don't tinker near as much as I used to. The first sign of this happening was when I reinstalled Windows one time and never changed system default sounds, and it has been pretty much downhill from there. Part of it is I have so many other responsibilities and things to do anymore that I don't have or want to take the time to sit down and fiddle for a few hours.

 

[piasabird]

Windows 10 does this thing where when the computer goes into sleep mode, it will lose the wireless connection. I have wireless on my desktop. I have been playing with the Power settings thinking it has something to do with the power saving features and there are some WIFI settings in that area. I have not had time to test that out yet. Win 10 has a lot of different settings than previous versions. Have not figured out that yet.

I am using edge and it seems to have somewhat inconsistent control and user interaction. At times wireless keyboard use seems to be intermittent. Also it also seems somewhat disconnected from IE. The user interface seems somewhat unfinished in its appearance like it was slapped together from some kind of kit or something like that. Chrome still seems to work better for some websites. There are issues when using access to YouTube sites, and the browser not wanting to go full screen. This is not the default except when using www.youtube.com. It considers going to fullscreen as an exception. When using Abode Flash there is also a setting in Win 10 not to use ABODE Flash Player that needs to be turned on. Some of these things can be annoying. I noticed there is a help section in HULU that tells you how to turn on the flash reader.

 

[Ichinisan]

Count me in that group also. I used to screw around with everything. Now that I work in IT every day for the last several years I don't tinker near as much as I used to. The first sign of this happening was when I reinstalled Windows one time and never changed system default sounds, and it has been pretty much downhill from there. Part of it is I have so many other responsibilities and things to do anymore that I don't have or want to take the time to sit down and fiddle for a few hours.

From the start (Win95 A for me), I've always wanted my Windows installations to be as "vanilla" as possible. I hated my experience with Acer's "ACE" (Acer Computer Explorer) user interface, which mimicked the Win3.1 Program Manager and hid the normal Win95 UI from me. I want to feel at-home when I'm working on any computer.

I do still change my systems to show filename extensions...

Nothing turned me off more than a system where someone had tinkered with themes and sound effects.

 

[SparkyJJO]

Windows 10 does this thing where when the computer goes into sleep mode, it will lose the wireless connection. I have wireless on my desktop. I have been playing with the Power settings thinking it has something to do with the power saving features and there are some WIFI settings in that area. I have not had time to test that out yet. Win 10 has a lot of different settings than previous versions. Have not figured out that yet.

Go into device manager and check the actual hardware driver power settings. I've had to tinker with that sort of thing in the past with laptops and such for years. Hate it when they default the power level of the wireless adapter to "max power savings" when on battery... Makes only maybe a few min difference in runtime but it ruins wifi strength/speed. My old laptop years ago would drop signal strength by half just by unplugging the AC adapter. That was really annoying!

 

[Chaosblade02]

Microsoft don't need to think about power users because they should be able to handle Win10 etc with no problems, I know I can.

I can handle it as well, but there are more unnecessary hoops to jump through to personalize this OS, and that's the beef I got with windows 10. I've got my PC sorted out and running the way I want now. Some people got used to jumping through the extra hoops with windows 8, but that's precisely the reason I didn't upgrade to 8 over 7, or upgrade to vista over XP. I'm going to need Windows 10 at some point in the future, so I thought I may as well get used to it now.

Windows 10 cold boots for me in 22-24 seconds on a 4 year old mechanical HDD. The stock windows 10 took 40-42 secs to boot. I nearly doubled my boot time by personalizing my OS to run lean and mean. Trimmed off most all of the fat.

I'd recommend power users wait before they upgrade to 10 and see if more features are added that make it easier/quicker to personalize the OS the way they want, or more apps come available that allow you to do this.

 

[RampantAndroid]

Home and Professional are almost the same, just some more features added to the Pro version.

Why should measures like that be taken with the pro version of windows which is a tier above the consumer grade home premium that's shipped with OEM rigs?

ArisVer is dead on - the Pro version isn't something meant for power users. The pro version, if you actually look at what it gives you, is meant for small businesses. You get things like a corporate store, domain joining, azure active domains and so on. To think that having the pro version makes you more....pro...well, it's not thinking about things right.

With regards to things being forced, I'm pretty OK with that. The majority of people do stupid stuff all the time. It's the <5% that actually know what to do. The rest will benefit from things like defender and smartscreen. And frankly, Defender is so low resource that I don't get why people feel the need to kill it. It catches something like 90% of malware out there (the number varies depending on how outlandish your test set is. It catches pretty much every common piece of malware, which MS has said is their intent.) When processors started to come with the NX bit and Windows first implemented DEP, did you also disable that? I mean, if you "know what you're doing" you don't need buffer overrun protection!

The thing is, even if you follow safe computing guidlines, it isn't going to be enough. Websites get hacked. Sometimes they get hacked to serve up malware from an otherwise safe website. Sometimes the hacks are not at all what you expect them to be (go look up how heartbleed works. Talk about an odd one.)

 

[CZroe]

ArisVer is dead on - the Pro version isn't something meant for power users. The pro version, if you actually look at what it gives you, is meant for small businesses. You get things like a corporate store, domain joining, azure active domains and so on. To think that having the pro version makes you more....pro...well, it's not thinking about things right.



With regards to things being forced, I'm pretty OK with that. The majority of people do stupid stuff all the time. It's the <5% that actually know what to do. The rest will benefit from things like defender and smartscreen. And frankly, Defender is so low resource that I don't get why people feel the need to kill it. It catches something like 90% of malware out there (the number varies depending on how outlandish your test set is. It catches pretty much every common piece of malware, which MS has said is their intent.) When processors started to come with the NX bit and Windows first implemented DEP, did you also disable that? I mean, if you "know what you're doing" you don't need buffer overrun protection!



The thing is, even if you follow safe computing guidlines, it isn't going to be enough. Websites get hacked. Sometimes they get hacked to serve up malware from an otherwise safe website. Sometimes the hacks are not at all what you expect them to be (go look up how heartbleed works. Talk about an odd one.)

Did you stop to even consider that it might be an offline machine or one with an alternative malware protection suite?

 

[Chaosblade02]

The best internet security is java + flash player disabled & no script w/exceptions for websites you frequent that you know are safe. I also use a modified hosts file that provides some extra security. I update it once a week. I ran Windows 7 pro with no antivirus/antimalware for 2 straight years and didn't get an infection. I'd test it occasionally and run programs like Avast, or malwarebytes, and it always came back negative, or gave me false positives. Programs like windows defender, windows firewall, mainstream antimalware programs, to me are nothing but extra pork slowing down my PC. Doing all the above combined with using common sense internet practices (like not installing shady software) is all you really need.

 

[RampantAndroid]

I hope they include some sort of way for those who know what they are doing to handle it themselves, even if it's a registry tweak or PowerShell command.

Looks like I didn't reply to this earlier. You already have this if you're industrious. The windows update API is on MSDN, and you can use it in powershell.

Did you stop to even consider that it might be an offline machine or one with an alternative malware protection suite?

No, I didn't need to think about it having an alternative, because defender switches off fully when you install a different AV suite. Additionally, chaos was arguing for not having ANY AV, not arguing that he had better AV.

 

[Ramses]

If defender is posing performance problems one really should upgrade something. It's easily the least intrusive and annoying software of its type I've ever seen. I can't remember the last time I even opened it.

 

[destrekor]

Looks like I didn't reply to this earlier. You already have this if you're industrious. The windows update API is on MSDN, and you can use it in powershell.

So, does working with that tool set enable you to disable and/or delay updates indefinitely, without repercussion?

That's the issue - there are plenty of ways of getting around the limitations, but you lose future security updates if you do proceed along that route.

 

[destrekor]

If defender is posing performance problems one really should upgrade something. It's easily the least intrusive and annoying software of its type I've ever seen. I can't remember the last time I even opened it.

I ran with Defender for a long, long while, and was kept incredibly safe. I try to maintain safe browsing habits and defend against the common browser vulnerabilities, and of course I am well-taught regarding defense against stupid decisions like opening bad attachments, following bad links, and downloading risky things.

I was peeved when DriverFusion (the replacement for Driver Sweeper) went full-blown sell-out with adware bundled invisibly.

But... I grew anxious over the reports of how well it catches zero-day exploits and other less-common malware, in comparison to other tools.

So I now use the free version of BitDefender. It is only slightly more intrusive (read: hardly) than Defender, and is downright barebones. It does what it does very well, but it doesn't offer much at all. Defender has more extensive configuration options, and that's not saying much. lol

I switched my parents to it because it's so easy and I feel more assured, but I am quite comfortable recommending Defender to people. It's great, especially if you are rarely exposed to potential vulnerabilities.

 

[Mem]

I can handle it as well, but there are more unnecessary hoops to jump through to personalize this OS, and that's the beef I got with windows 10. I've got my PC sorted out and running the way I want now. Some people got used to jumping through the extra hoops with windows 8, but that's precisely the reason I didn't upgrade to 8 over 7, or upgrade to vista over XP. I'm going to need Windows 10 at some point in the future, so I thought I may as well get used to it now.

Windows 10 cold boots for me in 22-24 seconds on a 4 year old mechanical HDD. The stock windows 10 took 40-42 secs to boot. I nearly doubled my boot time by personalizing my OS to run lean and mean. Trimmed off most all of the fat.

I'd recommend power users wait before they upgrade to 10 and see if more features are added that make it easier/quicker to personalize the OS the way they want, or more apps come available that allow you to do this.

Funny you mentioned Win8 since I had it running more or less the same way as Win7, again the changes were not an issue and I had it all within one or two clicks max for my programs/games etc..

As to Vista again I had no real issues with that either.

Win10 I have done two upgrades with no issues and it's running fast and efficient as my previous Operating Systems, my brother did the upgrade from Win7 and you know what he said to me?.."It's quite polished for a new OS", he is happy with it and I consider him the more fussy type of user in general.


End of the day I've no real issues with Win10, fast, stable and easy to work with.

 

[CZroe]

No, I didn't need to think about it having an alternative, because defender switches off fully when you install a different AV suite. Additionally, chaos was arguing for not having ANY AV, not arguing that he had better AV.

I was responding to this statement of yours:
"And frankly, Defender is so low resource that I don't get why people feel the need to kill it."

That said, I have had situations where it doesn't recognize my tool of choice and I either have to have two running simultaneously or one running alongside a nag that doesn't acknowledge that I have coverage.

 

[SparkyJJO]

I had nothing on my Win7 install for years. Got tired of crappy AV causing trouble and I never needed it anyway.

Now that I'm running 10 that has defender built in (that actually does something unlike Defender in 7) I see no need to turn it off. I really don't care either way, as long as it doesn't give me any issues with anything.

 

[CZroe]

Did I mention that Defender nags about open source potential piracy tools that are known to be safe, like Microsoft Activation Toolkit? It has no business being in their malware database.

 

[RampantAndroid]

So, does working with that tool set enable you to disable and/or delay updates indefinitely, without repercussion?

That's the issue - there are plenty of ways of getting around the limitations, but you lose future security updates if you do proceed along that route.

GPEdit still shows the automatic updates policy. Set that and then do manual scans with powershell (or in C# do PInvokes to get to the API.)

I was responding to this statement of yours:
"And frankly, Defender is so low resource that I don't get why people feel the need to kill it."

That said, I have had situations where it doesn't recognize my tool of choice and I either have to have two running simultaneously or one running alongside a nag that doesn't acknowledge that I have coverage.

As someone else said, if defender is enough to bog your system down, I'm surprised Windows 10 is even supported, really. As for other AV suites not turning Defender off, I suspect that's a bug on whoever makes the AV - MS seems to be providing a way to tell Defender "I'm taking over" - so it's up to the author of the AV suite to implement that.