My Musings About Windows 10 or "Windows as a Service"

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My Musings About Windows 10 or “Windows as a Service”

First off, W 10.0, in my humble opinion is not out of Beta and never will be as long as Microsoft maintains the “Windows as a Service” attitude!!!! If you want stability one needs to look on Ebay for an NON-Counterfeit Windows 8.1 Pro Product Key, download the ISO from Microsoft and install it. Your device shold be registered now on MicroSoft’s Servers for W 10, so if you decide to Roll it Back, you will be able to, with an Image Backup.

I DO NOT run any Windows 10.0 as a Production PC!!!

I got a W 8.1 Pro Product Key on Ebay for my Entertainment Center NUC 5i7RYB(it is registered for W 10.0 too) and My PC Tower’s Main Partition is still W 8.1 Pro, CPU i2600K which I run “Train Simulator” on. If there is anything I need to Upgrade, it’s the Radeon 6880 Graphics Card. Yes, I have to hold my nose when it comes to the “Start Screen” but I so rarely use it(even on W 7) that it is not an issue. I use a Tool Bar, with a menu of all of the Links to those Directories and more, since W 7.

Why not W 7, you ask? Two main reasons, excruciating problems with WU, ON W7 and No DISM or improved SFC as well as other ‘Under the Hood’ improvements.
When I went to W 8.0(holding my nose and sometimes my breath) it was for the improvements ‘Under the HOOD’, NOT the ‘Hood Ornament’ or GUI. Those on W 7 have been having even worse WU problems then what I had when I left W 7(which at one time, like many of you, I vowed I never would).

Now to the issues at hand:

Microsoft Update Management and Maintenance of Windows Update for Updating and Upgrading

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1. Tower Totals: 2xSSD ~512GB, 2xHHD 20 TB, Memory 32GB

SSDs: 6xOS Partitions, 2xW8.1 Main & Test, 2x10.0 Test, Pro, x64

CPU i7 2600 K, SandyBridge/CougarPoint, 4 cores, 8 Threads, 3.4 GHz
Graphics Radeon RX 580, RX 580 ONLY Over Clocked
More perishable

2xMonitors Asus DVI, Sony 55" UHD TV HDMI

1. NUC 5i7 2cores, 4 Thread, Memory 8GB, 3.1 GHz, M2SSD 140GB
1xOS W8.1 Pro, NAS Dependent, Same Sony above.

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Noel Carboni

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For the vast majority of users I could not disagree more strongly about Win10 not being ready for production. I run a Surface Pro 3 in the Insider Fast ring as my production PC and have since the Insider program was announced. I am responsible for quite a few other Win10 PCs (both formally and informally). They are a mixture of new and older hardware. All of them run well and are very stable. Most problems I’ve observed are self-inflicted wounds. People running very old hardware. Systems whose owners listen/read the latest “wonderful fix” for Windows and that have been “tweaked” repeatedly.

--Joe

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b

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people sometimes forget to double check what kind of PC hardware they’re using before considering the upgrade to Windows 10.

Here’s the link to the Windows 10 System Requirements & Specifications page:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-10-specifications

I link to this so that people can check off what kind of hardware they have before even thinking of making the switch to Windows 10.

Important minimum hardware requirements for Win10:

Processor: 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster processor or SoC
RAM: 1 gigabyte (GB) for 32-bit or 2 GB for 64-bit
Hard disk space: 16 GB for 32-bit OS 20 GB for 64-bit OS
Graphics card: DirectX 9 or later with WDDM 1.0 driver
Display: 800×600

Ask yourself, does my computer have a fast enough CPU to run Win10 comfortably (whether a 32bit or 64bit edition)? Do I have more than enough RAM to run Win10? And does my existing graphics card (onboard or PCIe based) have a WDDM driver? The last question should be taken very seriously – if an old graphics card is not WDDM compliant (or doesn’t have a WDDM driver available), then Win10 should not be used on that old machine at all.

IMO, Microsoft’s “Windows as a Service” model for Windows 10 is almost similar to Mozilla’s “Rapid Release” schedule for Firefox browsers since they release new versions of Firefox about every 8 weeks.

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Crysta’s making a point the subtlety of which I think many do not understand. Such understanding comes only from experience in developing and working with complex software literally for decades.

The Windows ecosystem will not bloom as it has in the past unless Microsoft strives to keep things stable for longer – literally for years. Sorry, that’s what it takes. The world needs time to get to know an operating system and the OS needs to promise to be able to support things for a long time before they will even try to develop important applications – things that advance the state of the art – for it. No business is going to make a big development expense commitment if they don’t know if the software’s even going to be sellable for more than a few months.

Important applications are never going to be coded like web pages. Development of serious, valuable software necessarily takes years, and requires educated and disciplined work to do it. Otherwise all you get is… Web pages. Ignoring the difference doesn’t make you a hipster, it sets you up for embarrassment.

There are good reasons enterprises prefer to change out their computing platforms at long timescales (e.g., XP -> 7). They’re the same reasons it took so long for Microsoft to get things right (e.g., XP -> 7).

It’s not because experienced software engineers are slow or set in their ways or have suddenly become stupid, it’s because software complexity near the limits of abilities of human beings takes time and discipline to get right.

Ultimately – and unfortunately – I believe Microsoft will fail to win business over to its “WaaS” model precisely because it wants to change things far too often. Once their failure with this model becomes undeniable, the pace of releases will return to what’s right for an operating system. Whether Microsoft will survive the ordeal is anyone’s guess.

-Noel

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RamRod, Elly

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I don’t think Windows as a service is the same at all as Mozilla.

I was very doubtful about Mozilla’s move at first and I thought they did that for bad reasons. However, when Mozilla changes, it is seamless and it is mostly under the hood changes that I don’t notice unless I click to see the release notes. My experience with Firefox is not changed much from one version to another. Yes, it might not be perfect all the time and I would have rather kept the previous way of doing things, but it has not been a deal breaker at all in practice for me and all the PCs I manage.

With Windows, that is completely different. I have to loose time checking what changed and fix everything I don’t like, especially if they activate things that reduce security or privacy. I adapt each installation to the destination user and a lot of the default settings of Windows are not great if you are security and privacy conscious. Windows pretends it is stupid and ignores some previous settings I made that are not convenient for Microsoft as if I was a different person when I upgrade and as if I didn’t care about those anymore.

Mozilla Firefox needs almost no tweak from initial installation and then it keeps your settings after each update. Windows change a lot from a version to another and it doesn’t keep all your previous settings, for bad reasons. This is very different. I loose a lot of time because of the new Windows. With Firefox, not really, and since I trust them much more, I don’t feel like I have to check what changed right away for hidden things I might not approve if I don’t notice a problem right after an upgrade.

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Elly

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I hear you.

I had spent 2-3 months with Windows 10 on my (then) new SkyLake box before finally having absolutely enough of it. After losing work on 4 open spreadsheets because “You need updates” is much more important, and not for the first time, enough was enough.

After 5 happy years of Windows 7 on the previous box I wanted something newer, but still mature, stable, and one I felt in control of. Windows 8.1 was the obvious choice, with one or two little tweaks. Put mathematically…

Windows 8.1 + Start8 (or equivalent) + WindowBlinds (optional) = best Windows 7 upgrade

Folks shouldn’t dismiss Windows 8.1 just because Windows 8 was horrible. The two are chalk and cheese.

Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

4 users thanked author for this post.

AlexEiffel, Noel Carboni, Elly, PhotM

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I still have two W 10.0 Pro Partitions, one Fast Ring and One Preview Ring. Obviously both Beta and they are treated as such. W 8.1 Pro is my Main and Test Partitions and it is treated as Production. I test everything before it goes on the Main.

--------------------------------------

1. Tower Totals: 2xSSD ~512GB, 2xHHD 20 TB, Memory 32GB

SSDs: 6xOS Partitions, 2xW8.1 Main & Test, 2x10.0 Test, Pro, x64

CPU i7 2600 K, SandyBridge/CougarPoint, 4 cores, 8 Threads, 3.4 GHz
Graphics Radeon RX 580, RX 580 ONLY Over Clocked
More perishable

2xMonitors Asus DVI, Sony 55" UHD TV HDMI

1. NUC 5i7 2cores, 4 Thread, Memory 8GB, 3.1 GHz, M2SSD 140GB
1xOS W8.1 Pro, NAS Dependent, Same Sony above.

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1 user thanked author for this post.

AlexEiffel

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I wonder if we should create a thread something like, “Cool and useful things my tweaked and augmented Win 8.1 does” to illustrate its goodness…

-Noel

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Noel Carboni wrote:

I wonder if we should create a thread something like, “Cool and useful things my tweaked and augmented Win 8.1 does” to illustrate its goodness… -Noel

More like: “What are your expectations of an operating system?” How about transparency, ease of control, replication of setup, etc.

Mine have fallen over the years mostly to point where it is now down to get out of my way, don’t get in my face. To that end, my system runs with Notifications, Conana, OneDrive, and all the extra modern apps stripped out. All that is left now that I use of what came with Windows 10 Pro is Edge, Paint, Notepad, Windows Media Player and the mirad of system management and settings tools. I deleted all of the default tiles in the start menu and now use an extra toolbar instead for quick access. Too bad Microsoft got rid of the easy way to choose which Windows Components are actually installed like in the older system versions. As far as I’m concerned, the 20+ GB of Windows 10 code (bloatware) now does less than the 400 MB of Windows NT 4.0 code did two decades ago.

HP Compaq 6000 Pro SFF PC / Windows 10 Pro / 22H2
Intel®Core™2 “Wolfdale” E8400 3.0 GHz / 8.00 GB
HP ProDesk 400 G5 SFF PC / Windows 11 Pro / 23H2
Intel®Core™ “Coffee Lake” i3-8100 3.6 GHz / 16.00 GB

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Noel Carboni

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Yup, we seem to be birds of a feather, though once I got it to its most trim and polished form I found Win 10 no better than 8.1, but with downsides (like having to repeatedly defend it from Microsoft’s will, and loss of function from ATI’s drivers), so I stuck with Win 8.1 on my main workstation.

My list of Windows 10 processes running to support an idle desktop (in a VMware VM):

I’m always interested in hearing ways to trim it further, so if you’ve managed to have it use even fewer resources, I’d love to hear how. 🙂

And a desktop overview:

Of course, we have to figure it all out again with the Creator’s update in a few days… Sigh.

-Noel

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