[dqv]

I've been feeling that way, but I can't tell if it's rational. Windows XP and 7 were the versions of the OS I used the most growing up. Nostalgia? Ever since Windows 8, the OS has felt a lot slower and the UI isn't consistent. I was running something the other day that needed privilege escalation and I had this realization that I would have no idea if a particular UI was cobbled-together-Microsoft-UI or if it was cobbled-together-malware-UI.

[AussieWog93]

I held out on "upgrading" to 10 until support was dropped last year.

7 was a huge step forward, with better performance than Vista and all kinds of QOL improvements (Windows Search, DX11 being some big ones).

10 also has some amazing improvements (automatic driver installs via Windows Update being the first thing that springs to mind[1]), but they've unfortunately let ads and anti-features (Bing, Cortana, App "Suggestions", News & Weather Bar) infiltrate and drag everything down. I cringe every time there's a major feature update, because I know I'll have to either change settings or download a tool to remove all of the bullshit they've just added.

[1]Yes, I know about FTDIgate. That was the exception, not the rule.

[jonathanlydall]

I’ve been using Windows 10 Pro since release and honestly none of this stuff has ever been a real issue for me. It’s stolen like 30 mins from my life overall in the last 5 years disabling the stuff that I don’t care for.

On initial install there were some Windows Store apps I didn’t care for (like Candy Crush) I just normally uninstalled and they never came back and no new apps ever installed themselves.

I disabled Cortana and other widgets I didn’t care for using the standard UI once ever and they never tried coming back on their own.

On feature updates it sometimes has a two minute wizard asking questions.

Maybe it’s because I live in South Africa, but I’ve never seen these Windows 10 adverts people keep complaining about. Maybe that little bit of clickable text on the login screen is what people are referring to? But before clicking I wouldn’t say for sure they’re adverts, they seem like very mild click bait. If they are adverts then inexcusable yes, but doesn’t bother me enough to get upset about.

I don’t mind telemetry in principle but it does bother me that like once every 2-4 weeks when it scans or something it’s a huge resource hog when doing so.

Otherwise, I feel Windows 10 is more performant (although does need SSD, which I would have had regardless) than Windows 7 and definitely has a more useful task manager.

Windows 10 really “just works” for me and I find myself spending minuscule to no time configuring it which means that I’m always doing what I want to actually be doing, working or playing games.

[verve_rat]

I think that clickable text on the login screen is what people are talking about. I'm in NZ and for a brief time they were ads in the fullest sense.

I don't know if MS changed its mind, or if there is no market in NZ for those adds, but now they link through to MS web sites. So sort of ads for MS properties.

But it does fuck me right off. Get FUCKING ADS out of my OS.

[AussieWog93]

I don't think either myself or GP was complaining about time lost due to getting rid of bullshit. It's just rude and ugly, like cookie banners or autoplaying videos.

[mortenlarsen]

I had a funny issue with Windows 10 a few years ago.

I tried to start cmd.exe and nothing happened. Tried a bunch of times more. Still nothing...

I was connected to a WiFi network that allowed ping to the entire Internet but not TCP connections. Then I switched to a WiFi network that allowed TCP connections to the Internet and 20+ cmd.exe instances started all at once.

I thought: "Wait, that can't be true", but it was reproducible.

This makes me wonder if launching programs takes longer on a slow internet connection.

I do not know if this still happens as I have only used Windows 10 on a handful of occasions since then.

[Kwpolska]

I’ve had the same happen in macOS, which would slow down to a crawl when my network didn’t work correctly (quietly dropping packets).

[causality0]

(automatic driver installs via Windows Update being the first thing that springs to mind[1])

That's the worst part of W10 for me. I have a tablet that was unusable until I learned about WuMgr because every day it would reinstall a broken touchscreen driver.

[eeegnu]

Windows 7 had a very professional feel to me that subsequent versions lack. Probably has to do with attempting to create a unified tablet / phone / desktop experience.

[matttproud]

I had been using Windows since 3.0:

Windows 2000 was that stable, professional sweet spot for me, even at times NT 4. Zero fluff, relatively consistent experience, and little visible intergenerational technology accretion. The 2000 scheduler felt reasonably predictable and crisp, like how BSD on a workstation did compared to Linux, for the longest time. Unpredictable interface latency is a dealbreaker for me.

I never noticed too much of a stability difference between 2000 and XP, but I really disliked the fluffy chrome overlaid on the XP user shell.

As long as we are talking nostalgia, yes, I do miss some extremely consistent UI paradigms from Windows 3.X days (being able to productively drive the shell with a keyboard only though the ALT key accessors). Interface elements were extremely differentiated visually. (Seeing my father trip up on a high-investment hallmark of a touchscreen phone app, because the native widgets were flat and lacking visual differentiation this week was beyond painful. I do not like the direction of modern interface design is heading.)

[kyleee]

It's a sad state of things; current design trends frequently punish users and make people fearful to explore and learn on their own how programs and user interfaces work.

It hits me hardest too when I see older people frustrated by the ever changing design and functionality churn. It prevents them building confidence and feeling empowered. For me much of the current computing experience is the opposite of rewarding curiousity and it's deeply sad, IMHO

[hnlmorg]

I don't want a unified tablet / phone / desktop experience. I want interfaces that are optimised for the device rather than optimised for encouraging vendor lock ins.

Also it wasn't Windows 7 that first attempted that. PDAs back in ~2000 ran Windows CE with a Windows 95 / NT4 era UI. That also wasn't well optimised for smaller screens touch screens, hence the requirement to use a stylus. Then what followed was Windows Mobile 6, which looked more like XP, and 6.5 that had a vista / 7 type home screen but with classical Windows widgets. It wasn't until Metro (Win 8 / Mobile 7) when Microsoft really united the look and feel of Windows across all their platforms again, Xbox included.

Personally for me, XP was the decline of Microsoft's professional shell design. Windows 2000 was when Microsoft peaked. It was free from fluff but still had some minor tweaks of visual flair. XP was ugly, Vista and 7's widgets were poorly optimised for screen estate. And there after everything has taken a massive step backwards in usability.

[Const-me]

> That also wasn't well optimised for smaller screens touch screens, hence the requirement to use a stylus

The reason for the stylus wasn’t software. Capacitive touch screens didn’t really existed, at least not in consumer devices.

Apple did that. They haven’t invented that of course, acquired other company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FingerWorks but it was them who brought the tech to mainstream in 2007.

[hnlmorg]

What you've posted is a very common misunderstanding of what happened in the mid 00s but unfortunately not at all accurate on any point you've raised.

Pre-capacitive touch screen technology worked perfectly fine with fingers. People had been using their fingers on kiosks and PDAs with infra red and resistive touch screens (respectively) for years before capacitive touch screen technology hit the market. In fact I personally had several PDAs from ~2000 onwards and would often use my fingers for simple operations (ie when precision wasn't required).

Ironically capacitive screens actually have greater limitations over capacitive screens in terms of general usability, as quoted on Wikipedia:

> Unlike a resistive touchscreen, some capacitive touchscreens cannot be used to detect a finger through electrically insulating material, such as gloves. This disadvantage especially affects usability in consumer electronics, such as touch tablet PCs and capacitive smartphones in cold weather when people may be wearing gloves. It can be overcome with a special capacitive stylus, or a special-application glove with an embroidered patch of conductive thread allowing electrical contact with the user's fingertip.

Also capacitive throws a fit if the surface gets wet, which resistive screens didn't, and resistive screens offer greater precision when used with a stylus.

Capacitive screens look nicer though (greater contrast etc). Which is why they eventually won out.

As for the whole finger-orientated UI thing, well that happened around the same time as capacitive screens hit the market (resistive screens can also be made to support multi-touch by the way) and thus would have happened with or without the invention of capacitive screens.

So no, the reason for the stylus wasn't a limitation of resistive touch screens. It was the UI and that would have changed regardless of the introduction of capacitive screens.

Also can we drop the bullshit that Apple were the inventors of multi-touch UIs. There were 3 companies working on the same technology in parallel: Apple, LG and Google. LG even beat Apple to market and then accused Apple of stealing their idea, much like Apple like to claim others did with the iPhone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada

Suffice to say, the industry was changing and would have changed with or without Apple's involvement. They certainly were a big catalyst but where absolutely were not the only players in the game.

[Const-me]

> would often use my fingers for simple operations

Fingernails worked on my Palm m500, fingers did not.

> resistive screens offer greater precision when used with a stylus

I know but people weren't too happy with them. They need both hands, and easy to loose.

> It was the UI and that would have changed regardless of the introduction of capacitive screens

I have doubts. Resistive touch screens is very old tech, yet before the first iPhone came out they were mostly used by geeks and corporations.

> companies working on the same technology in parallel: Apple, LG and Google

When Apple launched the first iPhone, engineers at google working on Android decided to throw away half of what they already done and start over. They were building stuff like this https://www.androidcentral.com/look-back-google-sooner-first... and being smart people they have realized the product they were building became deprecated, overnight.

> LG even beat Apple to market

HTC did as well, look up "HTC Touch".

Apple is much better at selling their stuff. And I think they had better product too, despite not even a smartphone (app store launched much later). They did have good features like a unique data plan not available on any other phones, web browser which worked with normal web, and iTunes with all the music.

[hnlmorg]

> Fingernails worked on my Palm m500, fingers did not.

Palm m500 is a very early device. Resistive screens did get better. I remember the pain of using fingernails on early devices but the kinds of PDAs I fell in love with had were full colour screens running Windows CE / Mobile rather than monochrome displays and could run Tomb Raider in landscape mode with virtual buttons on the screen that were clearly only possible to use with your fingers. A version of it you can see here: https://youtu.be/ZJ1GR9mQamI?t=1070 -- but it looked and played soooooo much better on my device.

Bare in mind the first iPhone was released ~2007 vs ~2000 for the Palm m500. That's a lot of years for screens to improve.

> I know but people weren't too happy with them. They need both hands, and easy to loose.

That's true for the largest generalisation but you'd be surprised just how many people do prefer a stylus. I've even seen people use styluses with modern capacitive screens -- which I really don't get because those things are just as fat as fingers so always struck me as the worst of both worlds.

> I have doubts. Resistive touch screens is very old tech, yet before the first iPhone came out they were mostly used by geeks and corporations.

I know you're trying to disagree with me but you're actually making the same point: they were mainly used by geeks and corporations because the UIs were unattractive. The innovation of the iPhone wasn't the capacitive screen, it was the touch-centric interface. And as I said before, Apple weren't the only ones working on it. In fact they weren't even the first to market.

Go back and read some publications of the era, or design magazines. They all criticise Windows CE / Mobile for it's poor touch UI. It was a common known problem at the time. So much so that Microsoft had several attempts at fixing it. But nobody really knew how to do it right because it was a very young problem. Think of it like 80s home computer systems, how everyone was trying to get personal compact computers right and people largely fell on different implementations of the same idea before the computing landscape ended up with a duopoly of Macs and IBM-clones. That's largely how early smart phone and PDA UIs were too.

> Apple is much better at selling their stuff. And I think they had better product too, despite not even a smartphone (app store launched much later). They did have good features like a unique data plan not available on any other phones, web browser which worked with normal web, and iTunes with all the music.

Apple certainly are. But for what it's worth, smart phones and PDA's prior to the iPhone also supported a browser which worked with normal web (I'd used my one of my Windows CE PDA devices as a mobile internet terminal when on a road trip around Europe in the early to mid 00s). And Winamp ran on the thing so my main usage of my PDAs were music. I even had a compact flash microdrive (which still works actually) in an early model around the same time iPods also had microdrives.

[martin_ky]

That might be the original motivation, but post-7 Windows UI is anything but unified or consistent. New and legacy UI toolkits are mixed in the system shell itself. There are still parts of the good old Control Panel that haven’t been ported to the new “immersive settings” app. Already in a clean Win 10 installation, you can spot at least 3 different styles of context menu, depending on which part of the desktop you right-click.

[DoingIsLearning]

Best example for me is in windows 10 professional, the blue screen shows you a sad smiley face.

Someone designed this and thought it was a good idea to have this in a 'professional' distribution of an OS.

[Kwpolska]

I wouldn’t consider a smiley face unprofessional. What makes a smiley face worse, or less “professional”, than a big red X?

[hulitu]

Compared with windows 95/NT BSODs the 10 one looks very unprofessional.

[physicles]

I think it’s rational. I started using Windows with… DOS 6. Of all my lifetime Windows installs, probably 70% are 98, 2k and XP. Yet I also agree that Windows 7 was peak Windows UX, probably because it was the final version designed to be used with a keyboard and mouse.

[vagrantJin]

I doubt it's nostalgia. Ive used windows 10 more than I used XP. I'm 28.

XP just felt robust - almost like it was hardware itself.

[oefrha]

I would say your problem is you haven’t used XP enough to hate it.

[antisthenes]

There wasn't much to hate about SP3 Windows XP.

It was a solid OS, limited mostly by lack of mainstream 64-bit version and hard capped at DirectX 9.0, meaning modern games no longer worked. Later on, lack of TRIM support for SSDs.

Basically between SP3 release in 2008 and XP's end of support in 2014, you could have used a very stable OS if you didn't need to play the latest games or run the absolute latest hardware.

[hnlmorg]

SP3 was pretty late in XP's life. Many of us remember the struggle with earlier versions of XP and longing for the good old days of Windows 2000.

[forgotmypw17]

By the time Windows XP was available, I'd already learned my lesson. Stayed with 2000 until SP3 was available. :)

[hnlmorg]

That was only an issue with the DOS-bootstrapped versions. The NT line was a lot more reliable for early adopters. Or at least it was until XP came along. Which is another good reason why Microsoft peaked with Windows 2000.