Useful electronics programs that work on Win7 but not on Win10

[Mr. Scram]

No, the stupidity is completely at the manufacturer / owner of the airplane: after all why build an airplane nobody wants to sit in? I really shouldn't have to point this out 

It really were mostly laymen and casual press who experienced the most issues. I'm not saying it was a perfect release because it most definitely wasn't, but it's obvious people with different levels of experience focused on different things. Your assessment that "nobody would sit in it" isn't accurate, although I would agree that nobodies wouldn't.

I see. The stupid and incompetent people cannot see this, but you can. This is actually very typical situation which has been described long before Windows ever existed:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Clothes

You misspelled Dunning-Kruger. But seriously, pointing out the good with the bad isn't being blinded by some unexplainable devotion. It's probably close to the opposite. Painting people who try to express a nuanced view as fanboys has been attempted a few times in this thread, but isn't going to fly.

[Mr. Scram]

The problem is it's not consistent. Some things are bigger, others smaller. It's a total mess! Microsoft used to pride themselves on having a consistent UI across the Windows platform. They used to have a design guide to encourage developers to stick to it, but they've abandoned it. Look at how big the display setting is in control panel and how small character map is!

I'm fairly certainly that what you see is the result of Windows 10 being an ongoing development. The character map is an old component, while the rest is new and updated to be scalable. Note that the user can scale the modern GUI at will. Windows 10 being a rolling release is obviously a bit of a shit excuse for the GUI inconsistencies and having different parts stuck in two eras, but I do believe that's the actual reason.

[Mr. Scram]

I have a similar issue: whenever I fire up Windows10 (in a VM) it needs an hour or so to run a process which seems to do nothing other than using 100% of the CPU and it can't be killed. Very nice if I want to test something quickly or use it for Skype.  I've tried to let it run, get all updates but the next time it is the same story allover again. Maddening and utterly useless.

How much time is there between VM boots? Most users reporting similar stories use their machine incidentally.

[Mr. Scram]

Yes, that's true. MS Office was the exception. Lots of the other software followed the Windows standard quite well though. I always found it very odd and wondered why they made their office suite look different. Generally though, even MS Office looking different wasn't as bad as the current situation with the Metro crapps looking much bigger than everything else. They really should keep the Metro stuff for their tablet version. Yes they could allow it to run on desktop versions, in the interests of computability, but focus more on the traditional desktop GUI, which has worked quite well for years.

I thought Windows XP was best at having custom skins, even though the built-in lunar one was crap, it was easy to install another one so it looked completely different.

The Microsoft Store should die in a fire. It's not only a shit show on the outside, but isn't very manageable in the back either. It's essentially throwing most of what makes Windows a worthwhile platform out and replacing it with inflexible garbage.

[soldar]

I agree about the default XP theme being terrible, but the good thing about Windows XP, was the skin could be completely changed. Here's the skin I used to use a lot on my old XP machine.

I want my computer to be stable, simple, easy to use and to not keep changing things around where I can't find them. Once MS decided they would change things around to where I couldn't find them I decided I'd rather learn Linux.

On all my Win XP machines the first thing I did was change to "Classic" skin and I have even changed the file type icons to what they were in the very beginning. And the sounds too.

My desktop is plain flat blue. I do not need or want photos of mount Sushi cluttering my desktop.

MS lost me as a customer long time ago when they decided to change things around all the time just so they had something new to sell.

[snarkysparky]

The problem is it's not consistent. Some things are bigger, others smaller. It's a total mess! Microsoft used to pride themselves on having a consistent UI across the Windows platform. They used to have a design guide to encourage developers to stick to it, but they've abandoned it. Look at how big the display setting is in control panel and how small character map is!

I'm fairly certainly that what you see is the result of Windows 10 being an ongoing development. The character map is an old component, while the rest is new and updated to be scalable. Note that the user can scale the modern GUI at will. Windows 10 being a rolling release is obviously a bit of a shit excuse for the GUI inconsistencies and having different parts stuck in two eras, but I do believe that's the actual reason.

Main reason I hate win10.  Every few weeks crap is moved around on the UI just to justify some schmucks job in redmond

[Zero999]

I'm fairly certainly that what you see is the result of Windows 10 being an ongoing development. The character map is an old component, while the rest is new and updated to be scalable. Note that the user can scale the modern GUI at will. Windows 10 being a rolling release is obviously a bit of a shit excuse for the GUI inconsistencies and having different parts stuck in two eras, but I do believe that's the actual reason.

I'm pretty sure the character map did alter its scale, depending on the system settings, in older Windows versions, but will have to check on my old XP box. Setting the scale is of no use, if one program is too small and the other too big. They should keep everything the same size and have two Windows versions or configurations for the desktop and tablet platforms.

The fact that Windows 10 is still in beta phase is partly why it receives so much hate. I'm sure many people would rather pay for an OS with a decent, intuitive, consistent user interface, rather than the crap that is Windows 10. People used to criticise the Linux platform for this kind of thing, but now it's much better.

[nctnico]

I have a similar issue: whenever I fire up Windows10 (in a VM) it needs an hour or so to run a process which seems to do nothing other than using 100% of the CPU and it can't be killed. Very nice if I want to test something quickly or use it for Skype.  I've tried to let it run, get all updates but the next time it is the same story allover again. Maddening and utterly useless.

How much time is there between VM boots? Most users reporting similar stories use their machine incidentally.

Weeks or months. WinXP and Windows7 don't have this problem.

[Mr. Scram]

I'm pretty sure the character map did alter its scale, depending on the system settings, in older Windows versions, but will have to check on my old XP box. Setting the scale is of no use, if one program is too small and the other too big. They should keep everything the same size and have two Windows versions or configurations for the desktop and tablet platforms.

The fact that Windows 10 is still in beta phase is partly why it receives so much hate. I'm sure many people would rather pay for an OS with a decent, intuitive, consistent user interface, rather than the crap that is Windows 10. People used to criticise the Linux platform for this kind of thing, but now it's much better.

Scaling used to be horrid on Windows. That's one of the things Windows 10 really did improve on.

The idea behind Windows 10 is more user input and quicker development cycles, so you don't work years on an OS only to then find out how people use it and which issues they experience. The promise sounds good but it unfortunately led to telemetry, the UI regularly changing and occasionally experimental software. Also needing to line up Windows as a tool to sell their cloud services negatively impacted what could have been a fairly nice thing.

[Mr. Scram]

Weeks or months. WinXP and Windows7 don't have this problem.

Windows 10 has been written for the way people use their computers nowadays. It does continuous maintenance in the background, whereas XP and 7 only did this sporadically and at once which cost a lot of time or not at all if the user didn't initiate the maintenance. Almost all users will use their computer more than once every few weeks, which means Windows 10 may run suboptimally when used in such a fashion. Times have changed and OS's do too. XP never even had a proper mainstream 64 bit release. A lot of maintenance traditionally left to the user has now been automated as typical users suck at doing it consistently or at all.

Your situation may be helped by some modest scripting to have the Windows 10 VM boot in the background once a week and shut down after a while again. If you know how to set up a VM that shouldn't be too hard.

[james_s]

The scaling or lack thereof is one of the things I like about older versions of Windows. Higher resolution means everything on the screen is smaller and I can fit more things on the screen at once. I use a high resolution monitor because I want high information density, and I hate the way an arms race has started where resolutions get higher so UI designers make everything bigger. I have several times more pixels than I had 20 years ago yet can fit less on the screen due to software that insists on having acres of useless whitespace.

Infrequent booting is a perfectly valid use case for a PC, quite a few of us have a secondary machine or VM that goes days/weeks/months without being used and the scenario of getting forcibly locked out for a half hour or more is an unacceptable behavior that was not a problem with prior or competing operating systems. MS needs to listen to those customers and find an acceptable way of handling that use case rather than the current "too bad, fuck you, pathetic consumer" or "you're using it wrong."

[Zero999]

I'm pretty sure the character map did alter its scale, depending on the system settings, in older Windows versions, but will have to check on my old XP box. Setting the scale is of no use, if one program is too small and the other too big. They should keep everything the same size and have two Windows versions or configurations for the desktop and tablet platforms.

The fact that Windows 10 is still in beta phase is partly why it receives so much hate. I'm sure many people would rather pay for an OS with a decent, intuitive, consistent user interface, rather than the crap that is Windows 10. People used to criticise the Linux platform for this kind of thing, but now it's much better.

Scaling used to be horrid on Windows. That's one of the things Windows 10 really did improve on.

The idea behind Windows 10 is more user input and quicker development cycles, so you don't work years on an OS only to then find out how people use it and which issues they experience. The promise sounds good but it unfortunately led to telemetry, the UI regularly changing and occasionally experimental software. Also needing to line up Windows as a tool to sell their cloud services negatively impacted what could have been a fairly nice thing.

Yes, I remember some really older Windows versions having problems with scaling, with some software displaying incorrectly, if the setting was non-standard.

I haven't really noticed any improvements with Windows 10, just the inconsistencies between different applications. They should have re-written everything for the new graphical tool-kit, with better scaling and stick to it. Also they should get rid of all this flat nonsense, which looks very 1980s and makes it more difficult to use because it's not always clear which elements the user can click on. The old chiselled look was better.

I agree about the default XP theme being terrible, but the good thing about Windows XP, was the skin could be completely changed. Here's the skin I used to use a lot on my old XP machine.

I want my computer to be stable, simple, easy to use and to not keep changing things around where I can't find them. Once MS decided they would change things around to where I couldn't find them I decided I'd rather learn Linux.

On all my Win XP machines the first thing I did was change to "Classic" skin and I have even changed the file type icons to what they were in the very beginning. And the sounds too.

My desktop is plain flat blue. I do not need or want photos of mount Sushi cluttering my desktop.

MS lost me as a customer long time ago when they decided to change things around all the time just so they had something new to sell.

That's one of the worst things about the more recent Windows versions: you don't have a choice, MS have fixed everything so it suits themselves. XP was probably the peak of user customisation, regarding things such as the user interface. Initially I used classic too, but I got tired of it and discovered I could install third party skins, which I preferred. Fine they may not be your cup of tea, but at least you could change it. Now MS just mandate a crappy looking GUI for everyone.

Yes, Linux is much better, especially at being customisable. There used to be an issue with programs having significantly different UIs, because they were built with different graphical tool kits, normally Qt or GTK, but now it's possible to set it up, so they look similar.

Weeks or months. WinXP and Windows7 don't have this problem.

Windows 10 has been written for the way people use their computers nowadays. It does continuous maintenance in the background, whereas XP and 7 only did this sporadically and at once which cost a lot of time or not at all if the user didn't initiate the maintenance. Almost all users will use their computer more than once every few weeks, which means Windows 10 may run suboptimally when used in such a fashion. Times have changed and OS's do too. XP never even had a proper mainstream 64 bit release. A lot of maintenance traditionally left to the user has now been automated as typical users suck at doing it consistently or at all.

Your situation may be helped by some modest scripting to have the Windows 10 VM boot in the background once a week and shut down after a while again. If you know how to set up a VM that shouldn't be too hard.

But users had a choice. Doing everything in the background is a PITA when one is watching streamed video and it gets jerky, because Windows is downloading something. People could also choose not to install updates, which have been known to cause problems. It also didn't randomly set everything back to the crappy default settings.

And Windows 10 is clearly not designed for how people use desktop computers nowadays. Lots of the UI is optimised for a touchscreen. If it really was well designed for how people used their computers, then it wouldn't receive so much criticism.

[Mr. Scram]

Yes, I remember some really older Windows versions having problems with scaling, with some software displaying incorrectly, if the setting was non-standard.

I haven't really noticed any improvements with Windows 10, just the inconsistencies between different applications. They should have re-written everything for the new graphical tool-kit, with better scaling and stick to it. Also they should get rid of all this flat nonsense, which looks very 1980s and makes it more difficult to use because it's not always clear which elements the user can click on. The old chiselled look was better.

That's one of the worst things about the more recent Windows versions: you don't have a choice, MS have fixed everything so it suits themselves. XP was probably the peak of user customisation, regarding things such as the user interface. Initially I used classic too, but I got tired of it and discovered I could install third party skins, which I preferred. Fine they may not be your cup of tea, but at least you could change it. Now MS just mandate a crappy looking GUI for everyone.

Yes, Linux is much better, especially at being customisable. There used to be an issue with programs having significantly different UIs, because they were built with different graphical tool kits, normally Qt or GTK, but now it's possible to set it up, so they look similar.


But users had a choice. Doing everything in the background is a PITA when one is watching streamed video and it gets jerky, because Windows is downloading something. People could also choose not to install updates, which have been known to cause problems. It also didn't randomly set everything back to the crappy default settings.

And Windows 10 is clearly not designed for how people use desktop computers nowadays. Lots of the UI is optimised for a touchscreen. If it really was well designed for how people used their computers, then it wouldn't receive so much criticism.

Windows 10 makes significant changes to how it handles the UI and subsequent rendering. I guess it's an example of how people don't see changes, even though there's a significant rewrite. Windows 10 doing things in the background can be controlled and tweaked by the user, but seems to be a bridge too far for users who then claim Windows 10 is broken. There's a sound argument to be made for Microsoft actually protecting these people against themselves. Windows 10 has had the nasty habit of resetting certain settings after major updates. This is either a very unfortunate bug but more likely a rather naive attempt to coax users to Microsoft products, annoying them quite a bit in the process.
 

[Mr. Scram]

The scaling or lack thereof is one of the things I like about older versions of Windows. Higher resolution means everything on the screen is smaller and I can fit more things on the screen at once. I use a high resolution monitor because I want high information density, and I hate the way an arms race has started where resolutions get higher so UI designers make everything bigger. I have several times more pixels than I had 20 years ago yet can fit less on the screen due to software that insists on having acres of useless whitespace.

Infrequent booting is a perfectly valid use case for a PC, quite a few of us have a secondary machine or VM that goes days/weeks/months without being used and the scenario of getting forcibly locked out for a half hour or more is an unacceptable behavior that was not a problem with prior or competing operating systems. MS needs to listen to those customers and find an acceptable way of handling that use case rather than the current "too bad, fuck you, pathetic consumer" or "you're using it wrong."

The size of screen elements has been made Independent of the resolution of your screen. Some GUIs were getting small to the point of being unusable. You can set the screen scaling however you like it, although older applications don't always respond equally well.

Hampering optimisation for all users to serve a few edge cases doesn't seem reasonable. While this behaviour seems to be reported more often and seems triggered by not using a system for prolonged periods of time, it definitely doesn't occur every time. I just booted a Windows 10 deployment last used two months ago and there's no process eating up CPU cycles or hampering usage. A deployment last used about 7 months ago doesn't have the issue either. I'm not entirely sure which processes are responsible for the behaviour people who boot their system infrequently, but it's very likely some tweaking will mitigate or solve the issue and that's probably not too much to expect from edge case users.

[nctnico]

Weeks or months. WinXP and Windows7 don't have this problem.

Windows 10 has been written for the way people use their computers nowadays. It does continuous maintenance in the background, whereas XP and 7 only did this sporadically and at once which cost a lot of time or not at all if the user didn't initiate the maintenance. Almost all users will use their computer more than once every few weeks, which means Windows 10 may run suboptimally when used in such a fashion. Times have changed and OS's do too. XP never even had a proper mainstream 64 bit release. A lot of maintenance traditionally left to the user has now been automated as typical users suck at doing it consistently or at all.

Your situation may be helped by some modest scripting to have the Windows 10 VM boot in the background once a week and shut down after a while again. If you know how to set up a VM that shouldn't be too hard.

Thanks for pointing this out but it just makes me like to give Microsoft another  The sheer insanity of devising such a feature  Can't the software see it has been powered off for 364 days out of 365 so it is likely nothing has changed since then? I don't want to turn this into yet another Linux versus Windows debate but I'm happy I switched away from Windows. Suffice to say I've completely had it with Microsoft's circus of idiosyncratic madness.

[Mr. Scram]

Thanks for pointing this out but it just makes me like to give Microsoft another  The sheer insanity of devising such a feature  Can't the software see it has been powered off for 364 days out of 365 so it is likely nothing has changed since then?

But things have changed, haven't they? It's not as if a fresh Windows 10 deployment will be the same as one turned off for a year. Work has to be done. Like it or not, this is the networked era. Though again, I'm not seeing the offending behaviour in tests but I've seen it reported more than once, so I'm curious what triggers it exactly. Just not turning a machine on for a longer period of time doesn't seem to be the sole issue. Restrain your outrage a little longer.

[soldar]

Back in the day I used to be able to shrink MSN Messenger down into the corner of a 1280x1024 monitor, I can fit less on a screen with more than double the pixels than I could 20 years ago.

Very much agree. If I spend money on a monitor with more pixels it is so I can display more information. Displaying the same information using more pixels defeats the purpose.

[soldar]

Without referring to anyone in this thread but I find it crazy when people put me down for not being worthy of the new things. Things change! Get with the program!

I had a camera that I liked. Plugged it into the USB port and downloaded pictures to the computer. When the next model came out I couldn't do that anymore. Now I had to install some newfangled software and everything was a lot more complicated. I went to their forums to ask if I could do things the simple way I had always done them before and their attitude was that it is my fault for not being up to the most excellent new product which is much better than the old one. Well, it may be "better" in other ways but not for I want to do with it. The new product takes away possibilities I had before, makes things more complicated, but it is "better".

I think the MS attitude of superiority, of saying "this is the future, this is where the world is going, and if you can't keep up then you will be left behind", I think that has come to bite them in the rear. 

If Linux is not gaining greater share it is because they are not even trying, which is not surprising as they aren't getting paid to try.

[nctnico]

Thanks for pointing this out but it just makes me like to give Microsoft another  The sheer insanity of devising such a feature  Can't the software see it has been powered off for 364 days out of 365 so it is likely nothing has changed since then?

But things have changed, haven't they? It's not as if a fresh Windows 10 deployment will be the same as one turned off for a year. 

Why not? After a year the data in the VM hasn't changed (probably rolled back after previous use anyway) so there is no need for any maintenance.

Work has to be done.

Well... my work has to be done. To me a computer is a hammer. Pick it up and it works out of the box. I don't want a hammer that needs to be polished or banged against a piece of steel for one hour before use.

[Mr. Scram]

Why not? After a year the data in the VM hasn't changed (probably rolled back after previous use anyway) so there is no need for any maintenance.

Well... my work has to be done. To me a computer is a hammer. Pick it up and it works out of the box. I don't want a hammer that needs to be polished or banged against a piece of steel for one hour before use.

The VM may not have changed but the world around it certainly has. That's why updates exist. Needing to wait an hour before use doesn't seem to be very typical, so luckily everyone seems to agree with you on that one.

[nctnico]

Why not? After a year the data in the VM hasn't changed (probably rolled back after previous use anyway) so there is no need for any maintenance.

Well... my work has to be done. To me a computer is a hammer. Pick it up and it works out of the box. I don't want a hammer that needs to be polished or banged against a piece of steel for one hour before use.

The VM may not have changed but the world around it certainly has.

No, that is a false assumption. This kind of random behaviour makes me want to run Windows from VMs. When (not if) a Windows install starts acting up I roll it back to the previous state. This way fixing a Windows problem is being reduced from days to 10 seconds.

[Mr. Scram]

No, that is a false assumption.

It's not an assumption. It's the very point of releasing updates.

https://pureinfotech.com/windows-10-version-release-history/

[nctnico]

No, that is a false assumption.

It's not an assumption. It's the very point of releasing updates.

I don't need updates to test stuff every now and then (except if something broke after a specific update but I'd still need to be able to roll-back). I need the hammer to work right out of the box. And every now and then updates break more than they fix. I rather run an up-to-date malware/virus scanner to keep nasty stuff out than relying on updates to always work (I've lost many days due to updates breaking my computer and bringing my company to a grinding halt).

Either way it still doesn't solve the issue of Windows10 being useless (for me and many others who have the same problem) after not being used for a while.

[Mr. Scram]

I don't need updates to test stuff every now and then (except if something broke after a specific update but I'd still need to be able to roll-back). I need the hammer to work right out of the box. And every now and then updates break more than they fix. I rather run an up-to-date malware/virus scanner to keep nasty stuff out than relying on updates to always work (I've lost many days due to updates breaking my computer and bringing my company to a grinding halt).

Either way it still doesn't solve the issue of Windows10 being useless (for me and many others who have the same problem) after not being used for a while.

As has been mentioned a couple of times now, Windows doesn't seem to show the behaviour in every case. Maybe not even in a lot of cases. If the hammer presented to you isn't working for your needs, you may need to swing it differently. There's a saying about a workman blaming his tools. Insisting on hitting your finger because a previous hammer was shaped differently and complaining it keeps hurting is no use. If you require the machine for work, I can't imagine sorting this out not paying.

You need both updates and an up to date anti malware program. The best anti malware program in the world can't prevent vulnerabilities not being patched, though many will warn you about patches missing.

[Mr. Scram]

Without referring to anyone in this thread but I find it crazy when people put me down for not being worthy of the new things. Things change! Get with the program!

I had a camera that I liked. Plugged it into the USB port and downloaded pictures to the computer. When the next model came out I couldn't do that anymore. Now I had to install some newfangled software and everything was a lot more complicated. I went to their forums to ask if I could do things the simple way I had always done them before and their attitude was that it is my fault for not being up to the most excellent new product which is much better than the old one. Well, it may be "better" in other ways but not for I want to do with it. The new product takes away possibilities I had before, makes things more complicated, but it is "better".

I think the MS attitude of superiority, of saying "this is the future, this is where the world is going, and if you can't keep up then you will be left behind", I think that has come to bite them in the rear. 

If Linux is not gaining greater share it is because they are not even trying, which is not surprising as they aren't getting paid to try.

Though I agree that tends to happen regularly and is frustrating, it doesn't appear to be the case with Microsoft and Windows. Microsoft has realised the desktop OS market isn't growing as explosively. Mobile has taken off and has partly replaced casual desktop computing. The desktop market has reached maturity. Microsoft is being overtaken by companies like Google which sell ads, information and services instead of software. Microsoft has reinvented itself as a cloud service provider and is re-jigging Windows to be a tool to push those services. I thoroughly dislike this development as I don't think it brings improvements for the customer, but it's effectively the world who told Microsoft to get with the program. Selling OSs won't keep your company relevant as it did 20 years ago and Microsoft needed a new course.