Windows 10 Desktops Created 9 years ago2015-08-07 04:34:17 UTC by satchmo

Just upgraded.

Here's my new desktop.

What do you think so far? Those icons in the coloured squares look ugly as hell - can you configure it to just display the icons without an opaque square?

Edit:
Or even better, can you just get rid of the launchpad?

You can. I'll definitely be giving it the boot when I make the upgrade.

I'm also hoping there's a way to make the taskbar more compact like in 7.

Downloaded the update last night. Not installing yet as I have little faith in Microsoft early releases.

I don't trust Win 10 yet.

If I will upgrade, I will with Win 8.1.

Installed it 2 days ago. Only difference i noticed so far is a slightly faster boot up time (~10 seconds) and lower cpu usage, especially in idle (2-3%).
No magical fps boost in games or anything like that, as i've read many times all over other forums. Also, it's the 1st Windows edition i haven't tinkered around with the UI; everything looks how i wanted: black, grey and soft white. The chromium look is finally gone.

Windows 10 has major privacy issues that you must be attentive with. It's really all over the internet, not going to detail here.
Until things calm down and every minor aspect about how Microsoft put their tentacles in your system, I'm not going to upgrade it. I already read guides and things seem straight forward actually.
Leaving those things aside, afaik, Windows 10 is the best-performing Windows yet.

Or even better, can you just get rid of the launchpad?

It's possible to remove all the tiles, but there's still an empty space allotted for it.

I experimented with various options, and I managed to get rid of all the useless tiles and insert some useful ones there, including links to some of the most commonly accessed folders and a one-click shutdown button.

I did notice that the boot-up time is dramatically faster compared to Windows 7. My SSD boots up in three seconds, counting from the "Loading Windows . . ." message.

Interesting! I think I'll still leave it for a few months, but I'll definitely upgrade soon. I have 32GB of RAM and only recently realised that my Win7 Home Premium actually has a 16GB cap so it's only using half of it, whereas reports are that Windows 10 will support 512GB - although there is no officially released figure as far as I can see.

I don't trust Win 10 yet.

If I will upgrade, I will with Win 8.1.

This is the equivalent of 'upgrading' from XP to Vista after Windows 7 came out.

Regarding privacy, I've heard that it's been over-exaggerated a bit (as is standard for the Internet, I guess). Apparently all of the areas where it touches the 'net are very easily identifiable and you can turn them off via the regular settings. The "privacy issues" are simply features that search the web and connect to certain accounts if you choose to log in. If you're worried about something more underhanded than that, you shouldn't use Windows (or any other closed-source OS) in the first place.

@Archie: The official word on maximum RAM in Windows 8 standard is 128GB. It's probably safe to assume that they won't go backwards.

Like most others, I'll be waiting a while before I shift across.

There are two ways to login Windows 10--locally and through the Microsoft account.

In order to use some of the new features of Windows 10, like the Cortana digital assistant, Microsoft forces the users to sign on with their Outlook account.

The digital assistant is only useful if you buy into the entire Microsoft universe--Outlook, Microsoft calendar, etc.

Since I belong in the Google universe--Gmail. Google Calendar, Google Map, Google Drive, etc, the digital assistant integration feature isn't all that useful to me.

So I changed the login option to local for both myself and my son. By signing in locally, Microsoft no longer has access to my computer usage.

Or so you think.

This is the equivalent of 'upgrading' from XP to Vista after Windows 7 came out.

Seriously? I thought that Win8 was more performant than Win7.
Or maybe I misunderstood something? What do you mean exactly?

Win8 has performance advantages over Win7, but it has so many flaws it's not really worth the pain. This is a similar situation that we saw with XP to Vista.

Windows 7 came out after Vista and was great almost immediately. It would be ridiculous to go from XP to Vista after Win7 came out.

In the same way, it would be ridiculous to go from Win7 to Win8 now that 10 is out.

Ah.

Point taken, Archie. Thanks.

http://www.techworm.net/2015/08/windows-10-can-disable-pirated-games-and-unauthorised-hardware.html
Eww

I'm not upgrading then. No way in hell I can afford the Adobe suite.

*anecdote of the day: I once actually called Adobe and tried to haggle. I even suggested they give me an older version for a lower price with no rights to tech support, but they refused. So I consider myself justified.

Next OS: Debian.
Note to self: Do not buy games on Steam that don't run on Linux.

I am not concerned about Microsoft. There are a lot of rumors and paranoia on the web about everything.

Sure, Microsoft may do something to raid your computer, but it has bigger fish to fry than coming after individual users.

By the way, I figured out a way to get rid of all those "ugly" Metro tiles that Archie detests. That's my son's desktop below.

I use Classic Shell, so my start menu looks like Win7 and before.

Anyway, it's been almost a couple of weeks with Win10 for me now and i'm already looking to get around the forced updates; all i've found so far are minor tricks/hacks.
I've been getting almost daily updates, as a gamer that means any online fps is a no go for me, unless i wanna deal with rubber banding.
Been looking into Linux but i can't find anything that runs GTA 5, which is mostly what keeps me pinned into Windows. As DiscoStu said, a major deal breaker when purchasing games/software from now on will be Linux support.

Can't believe how quickly Scott has grown up!

I'm not entirely sure why, but I pulled the trigger on this today. Immediately it's infinitely better than 8.1 was - I don't feel like I'm constantly having to fight with it to set it up how I like it. Personalisation options are once again front and centre and basic things aren't hidden behind abstract, irritating menus.
It starts up wonderfully quickly, and while I think I prefer the explorer interface of 7 just in aesthetic terms, it does seem very effortless to use. Only complaint is that I can't seem to rename my quick access links, which has resulted in two "common" folders from separate Steam libraries.

So far things are looking positive! I shall report back if things change.

After counting a dozen drives from Archie's screenshot, this is how I imagine hisroom.

I work with video

Can't believe how quickly Scott has grown up! grin -

That desktop picture was actually taken several years ago. This was more recent, when he's eating fish and chips with fork and knife like a civilized human being.

As for your request to rename Quick Access links, this thread offers a complicated workaround.

Scott is 8 years old?!

Oh goodness how time flies. He's so lucky to have a paparazzi dad after his butt. He's gonna thank you later (or file privacy complaints :walter:).

He already complains, but he lets me take pictures occasionally.

But I can't wait until he's twelve so I can watch him play the Half-Life series. That's the age we've agreed upon for him to play the games.

Cool! I reckon he might be playing The Core by the time he's in college...

...maybe

My Windows 10 installation is ready to go. Just haven't pushed the button yet.

From DiscoStu's journal, Penguinboy says:
TL;DR at the end

MS are just aggressively pushing their new product so they can try to monetise using their app store and Microsoft account integration, plus they want to avoid people getting "stuck" on an ancient version, like what happened with XP. Take off the tinfoil hat, or just switch to Linux already and stop with the paranoid conspiracy theories.

Have you seen a recent movie, Kingsman Secret Service? (spoilers alert!!) Of course, that is a comedy, but there Valentine offers a free service to all users, which is actually a disguise for a weapon of mass murder with the intent of saving the Earth...
Similarly, a story with the Genisys in the new Terminator movie. An operating system that everyone is hyped about but it's actually malicious.

That is clearly fiction, but how fast can parts of this satire become a fact? Since things that are programmed evolve much quicker than laws can be passed to put in place some reasonable privacy limits, one has to be more prudent with these things. Consider the fact that most of the privacy violating processes happen behind the scene, thus are technicalities which outwit most users.
People tend to reside in on of two opposite opinion camps: the paranoid, and the accepting. I believe we need to analyze the situation on a more profound level, and try to understand the consequences.
What is the consequence of having a corporation creep inside your digital home, little by little? No harms are apparent in the present, but what can it lead to?
I deeply understand that the future only represents an even more connected world, that the dawn of IoT means that devices we couldn't think of having a digital utility will in the near future connect to the internet. Windows might evolve into being a truly universal operating system by then, a digital hub for all of your house( this is quite plausible, they have a stripped down Windows 10 OS for prototyping platforms such as Intel Galileo).

In such a world, you'd be crazy to live by the standards of your grandparents. Companies offering modern services know this, and although humans build corporations, I always had the impression that in a capitalist world they don't give a shit about being human. They will chase profit by any means.

Having at the tip of your finger as much informations and statistics as possible of people will grant future companies the power of fine-tuning their products to a plethora of target audiences. This possible future is an attractor, and people managing big companies will surely gravitate towards ideas, concepts and actions which will increase the profits.

As far as I'm concerned, Windows 10 is a good operating system as long as I disable all the privacy violating crap. You really don't need an OS that creeps so much into your digital home. There are specialized services which can do that for you, such as Facebook. But that is a CHOICE! Operating systems are a necessity, but we see it become a service before our eyes. And if that's how the future is supposed to be, then at least we should know EXACTLY what data is transmitted between our digital home and a corporation.

TL;DR :

Windows 10 is probably a great OS. What is bad is its philosophy of hiding from the unwitting the information it collects and transmits. The user should have complete control and know EXACTLY of what leaves and enters his digital home.

I agree with your final conclusion, but the risks have always been present in every piece of closed-source software and every service that you use. This doesn't change with Windows 10, it has just been made more obvious due to recent leaks from American government agencies.

It's good that more people are becoming aware of just how pervasive social data-mining has become, but pretending that there's no other option is misleading and ignorant. Linux has been around for a long time, and because it's open source, you do have the opportunity to control exactly what's going on. However, the trade-off is that Linux is not user-friendly, and it has some massive gaps when it comes to interactive software.

Everybody needs to analyise the circumstances and work out what's best for them. I don't particularly care what operating system you use, but spreading misleading paranoia is not something anybody should do. Do your research, and apply logic instead of jumping to a conclusion without considering all the facts.

[Thread closed]

Hey guys what did I miss?

...

Awww

Well I'm just about a week into my Windows 10 experience and so far it's performed great! I've had no compatability issues whatsoever, and my niggles are so minor that they're barely worth mentioning - and will almost certainly be addressed in the first Service Pack, if not in smaller patches.

Firstly, the aforementioned inability to rename items in my Quick Access list.
Second, after finally adding an easily-accessed New Folder button in W7, it's been hidden away again behind another menu. Mildly irritating.
Thirdly, programs don't automatically come to the front when they start up. This is good in some ways - dialogue boxes no longer reduce games to the taskbar, for example. However, I use a lot of keyboard G-key binds as shortcuts to my browser, my email and media players and it's a little annoying that they don't start in the foreground. I've caught myself waiting for a program to start for quite a while before noticing it's just sitting behind whatever else is running.

These are all barely even problems. Overall, I think W10 is a winner. It's exactly what we wanted - Windows 7 with all the performance advantages of Windows 8 and none of the horrendous design choices.

We have already been enslaved by our mobile devices. An OS is just the next step.

I was excited about this, aaaaaand its gone.
I don't think classic shell can remedy the horrible new design, i seriously thought it might look better, some parts like the horrific icons can be changed, but the rest still looks dull. Its dark too, im a big fan of dark designs, but this does not work. I keep changing it, but it still just doesn't suit my eye.
I know im complaining about the wrong thing, but 100% of the time its there and im not going to force myself to use it.
Probably going to stick around 8.1 until i get my Linux right and never look back.

Yeah rufee that's why I'm planning on buying laptop purely as a linux machine, so I don't have to deal with the hassle of dual-booting and what not.
I'm looking for some sturdy 12 inchers or around that, 5-6 year olds or more. The prices are still high for how old they are and I'm very reluctant to buy(at least in my country).
Examples include Lenovo X200, Lenovo X61, dell D620/630, Hp workstations or probooks. I've looked into netbooks as well, as that's what attracts me more but I've figured out that people simply sell those things for much more than they're worth( 80$-100$ for models from 2008-2010? yeah right). For the same money you can get stuff from older generations that, while less power efficient, at least have some computing power.

Still worried about Windows 10 privacy?

This should help ease the pain!

Oh hey that looks nice!