Windows 10 Review (2018)
Fuck. That is a good word to describe this operating system and I hope that this article takes your mind off some of the crap we are all putting up with at home and at work. Windows 10 has been great for Apple, that’s for sure.
Where to begin a review like this — I know, with the thing my eyes are upon.. the screen. Windows 10 Home and Windows 10 Professional have poorer 4K support than the current XBOX. Microsoft cannot fix multiple display or 4K support to save their monopoly. Did you know Device Manager has hidden devices including a random Generic Monitor that causes your window layout to reset on screen-off on HDMI? No? It’s like an easter egg except it’s full of hornets you have to fight with a banana. In fairness, the issue has existed since Windows 7 so I guess it’s part of the Windows tradition now?
The lack of 4K support is particularly unforgivable — in an age when a junior web developer is expected to support “everything” in responsive layouts… Microsoft not being able to sort out text and UI element sizing on their flagship product— that has existed and evolved for most of my 30 year life — is frankly pathetic. Like, I’m glad there’s a 3D Paint now.. but how about my OS support the “new” monitor standard that is slowly replacing 1080p?
Speaking of standards hell — is it too much to ask for a standardisation between whatever the fuck a “Microsoft Store” application is and a normal Windows one? (the difference is DRM). That sounds livable, until you hit that ol’ 4K problem again. Buuut nooo, Microsoft Store apps are supposed to be full of unicorn spunk so they just support everything. Lies, they support baloney. You can’t even make your own shortcut to the applications and set Compatibility\High DPI settings there, because UnIvERSAl WInDoWS pLAtF0RM apps in the Store don’t need a Compatibility tab because they’re made from the hopes and dreams of puppies and are supposed to work like magic.
Windows used to be better at drivers than desktop Linux. These days, a child could setup Ubuntu on a hand me down laptop — whether it’s Mac or whatever. My personal laptop is an ASUS Zenbook UX303LN, the original Windows 7 drivers let it reboot. It cannot reboot nowadays, I can replace the drivers manually to fix it but Windows 10 generously upgrades them whenever it fucking wants so I’ve given up fighting it. Also, I now have to disable Bluetooth when I boot up, and re-enable it. It’s a fun game Windows 10 and I like to play, much like the relationship between Clarice Starling and Dr Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs.
Does anyone know where users are added to and from anymore? How about font size? Why is my OS in 2018, which I expect to run on multiple cores and talk to the planet, shittier than Windows 95? It boggles my mind that Apple has gotten this right — do not fuck with the legacy of people learning where your settings are and how things work. Just don’t. Car manufacturers are expected to deliver the same controls and pedal design in every iteration, Windows 10 settings and configuration options have the consistency and logic of fucking Doctor Who — off into the vortex your settings go this week, who knows what adventures you’ll go on to find them!
At the end of the day though, Windows 10 is still performant and reliable for the most part. It’d just be nice if Microsoft could just let go of their own stranglehold on the OS and give a bit more customisation and configurability back to the users. How is the next generation of professionals meant to learn Microsoft tooling if the OS is an ugly walled garden? Linux and MacOS offer a lot more options there and Microsoft is off with the fairies making pointless add-ons no one wants.
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