Slight diversion as I’ve just been upgrading my PCs to Windows 10 and a friend of mine pointed me to changes as against previous versions – i.e. what’s missing from Windows 10.
Here I’ll take a look and give my comments. Firstly I should say as a hardware-oriented guy I have lots of things stuck into my PC like FTDIs and other SUB gadgets and I have noticed absolutely no difference from Windows 8.1 – i.e. everything still works – so that’s a good start.
So – automatic updates – apparently home users will be forced to take updates – that’s not a bad idea IMHO – the amount of people I know who don’t trust Microsoft, refuse all updates then wonder why their PC has a collapsed through nasties… if it is that important, make sure you get the PRO version or better where the option will still remain.
Media Centre (or Center as they call it) is also gone. I don’t know about you but I can’t remember the last time I turned that on – if I want something like that I use Plex or similar.
No more Hearts… shocking – but there are many alternatives out there.
Desktop gadgets – surely that was abandoned in Windows 8.
No more floppy disks – seriously – do people still use floppy disks? DVDs apparently now need separate playback software. I’m assuming VLC will do that job. I don’t know about you but I install VLC by default on any new machine anyway because the Microsoft Media Player is/was pants.
And finally – Edge – the new browser. I’m guessing most people in here hated Internet Explorer anyway. I’ve not done exhaustive tests but Edge looks fine to me. However I’ll continue to use Google for browsing and search engine as always.
Did I miss any major omissions in Windows 10?
I DO like the new menu – I was using POKKI to replace the hated Windows 8 menu but that just is not necessary any more. A good job I reckon.
The answer is I’ve not tried it Hari.
Have you had trouble connecting your upgraded PC to ESP8266’s SoftAP? This may have something to do with my specific WiFi hardware or perhaps it’s driver, but after upgrading to win10, I have been unable to connect to the SoftAP (using SKD1.3). Windows simply says “Can’t connect to this network.” Various phones, ipads connect without any issues, but not my Win10 laptop, and I’ve never had trouble before when my laptop was running Win8.1.
We are generally in agreement – for now however the advantage of the familiar, easy to use environment which works with almost all software out there is too much to abandon. If they start charging annually, I may have a change of heart.
You missed out the most important bit – does it still run all the ESP8266 SDK stuff?
>So – automatic updates – apparently home users will be forced to take updates – that’s not a bad idea IMHO – the amount of people I know who don’t trust Microsoft, refuse all updates then wonder why their PC has a collapsed through nasties… if it is that important, make sure you get the PRO version or better where the option will still remain.
Well, the real or potential issues with the Win 10 auto updates are:
– for some users on limited bandwidth connections, the uncontrollable updates have run up a sizable bill for data overages
– as usual, you don’t know what’s in the updates
– it’s much much better these days, but let’s not forget that Windows itself (and included MS components like IE) contained most of the vulnerabilities that hackers exploited. The only successful web attack I ever received on a PC was after installing a SQL server from MS as part of their dev kit. So, anyway, if the product is finally better-protected, why the requirement for auto updating. It can be argued that it’s for better user protection, but it’s also a handy way to keep closer tabs on usage, and to put in or change DRM (digital rights management) or, frankly, anything.
The issues of digital rights and intellectual property are still evolving, and there’s some concern over the extent to which some mega-corporations have access and control over increasing amounts of data (eg people freaking over Google), so it’s perhaps not a good idea to be granting MS full access rights to one’s computer…
Maybe the above aren’t concerns for the vast majority of average users. I’m not pushing the limits of digital freedom on my ‘business’ laptop so I may well let it upgrade to Windows 10. But for personal use and restriction of my personal data I may very well move to Linux, which I’m already running on netbooks and servers.
If you mean can you run the Eclipse environment for programming ESP8266 – sure – no difference there. The only gripe I have is that I use MQTT-Spy a lot when developming MQTT and you can’t put shortcuts to .JAR files on the Windows Start Menu which is just plain stupid (you could on POKKI which I used with Windows 8).
Re: updates – I’ve come to the conclusion that if you can’t get half decent broadband speed you’re soon going to be in a lot of trouble anyway – EVERYTHING wants to update automatically from mobile phones to operating systems to routers etc.
I dont’ buy the conspiracy views – I’m sure Microsoft has a lot more important things to do than wonder what someone in the middle of no-where is doing with their computer. However, on installing Windows 10 I very easily said NO to most of the tracking requests.
Not so much conspiracy but staking out of turf…. MS and others are searching for new revenue streams, many companies are already trying out online subscription models for apps like Office, Photoshop etc, and corporate possession and use of consumer data remains largely unregulated (and unknown). It will be pretty hard to kick them off or rein them in once consumers have pretty much given these corporations control of their PC.
Some companies (eg John Deere tractors) are already imposing conditions on purchasers as to what they can/cannot do with the tractors’ control systems and who is allowed to repair control system problems. It’s still very much a gray area.
Finally, when big corporations have more of your data, it’s much easier for government agencies to get and use it, by legislation, pressure or financial inducement. And corporations become a richer target for hackers. The average person has little to fear, but as Snowden has shown (and you in the camera-happy UK already know)… Big Brother IS watching.
/paranoia off
> The only gripe I have is that I use MQTT-Spy a lot when developming MQTT and you can’t put shortcuts to .JAR files
Creating batchfiles (.bat) are a fairly easy way to launch any filetype on windows, including .jars.
Except – Ken – that you can’t attach BAT files to the Windows 10 start menu either! Please… prove me wrong 🙂
You could just make the executable shortcut and paste it in “C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs”. Now when you press the WIndows key you can start typing the name of your new program and it will show up. If you use it enough it should make it’s way to the “Most used” section but I agree not being able to explicitly customize that list was a strange omission.
There is also another way:
Right click on desktop and create new shortcut. For the path of the item type:
cmd.exe /C “pathToTheBatchFile”
This will create a shortcut file with probably a terminal icon. You can now right click this file and say “Pin to Start” and it will show up as a tile on the right side of the menu. Enjoy!
Thanks for this – I ended up using “Classic start menu” which works just great for all kinds of shortcuts – but hopefully this will be useful for others. Many thanks.