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hackrmntoday at 9:13 AM2 repliesview on HN

I feel like your sentiment mirrors my thoughts exactly on this.

Since this isn't the Reddit comment section (I hear people here prefer a bit more elaboration and argumentative nuance with their $BEVERAGE), I feel compelled to add some of my own personal experience.

I don't think Windows can be fixed anymore. I think the choices Microsoft have been doing for _decades_ now, with only the _mechanisms_ coming and going, have become endemic to Windows, a part of its identity. Copilot, for example, is just another gadget Microsoft simply cannot not put in. In '95 is was Clippy, but the deliveries never stop, and frankly I feel like an old man that finally decided to kick a bad habit because I truly see now all the empty talk from Microsoft I've heard countless amount of times before, wrapped in different packaging, and that Windows is like it is _by design_ and that it's bad for my health (in a different way than Linux can ever be, I feel).

Ever since Windows '95 the addition of slop has been accelerating, admittedly Microsoft _were_ much different then, but it's the _curve_ I am referring to, not that they were always _as bad_. Frankly, the "churn" is insane now, I think it's one or the other adage I can't recall where "available operating system" fills "available resources" and Microsoft are there to prove it.

The problem is also they are experimenting on their users to no end. I don't mind being part of the "user experiment" for "user experience" but how many decades do they need to arrive at the same fundamental conclusions -- that people prefer less bloat, and fewer interruptions in their face? Occam's Razor tells me it's rather that Microsoft is pretending to care but their agenda is their own alone (surprise).

Just the other day I had to spend 2 hours trying to "fix" some very-background OneDrive update because I suppose I am sucker enough to use OneDrive -- one of the least liked of Microsoft products I've had the misfortune to use -- with Windows using my laptop as a BitCoin farm, wasting cycles in some infinite loop produced by what evokes comparisons to those monkeys with typewriters. Half a dozen Powershell commands and 3-4 reboots later the `wsappx.exe` process finally was healthy enough to idle. These things happen constantly to people everywhere and there's little Microsoft can or wants to do anything about. It's a cost they're willing their users to pay.

To stop rambling, one of these days -- summer vacation perhaps -- I will remove the blasted thing finally (after decades of using both Windows and Linux) and grit my teeth through Linux, which I have tried avoiding only because I am on a Thinkpad and there's always another tweak that's needed for the whole thing to work as well as Windows does on a _good_ day. To be clear, I prefer Linux by and large, it's just that I want to avoid spending weekends configuring sleep, power states, Trackpoint, full-disk encryption, the docking station, etc.

The fact I am going to do it anyway, just to rid myself of the Windows experience that's just been getting worse and worse, says it all really.


Replies

TheOtherHobbestoday at 11:14 AM

Windows isn't fixable because Microsoft isn't fixable.

Microsoft's biggest and most consistent product is contempt for its users - consumers especially, but also business users.

When you understand that all of Microsoft's offerings are vectors for that contempt, the rest falls into place.

A user-centric Microsoft is an oxymoron. The company is literally incapable of it.

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Telaneotoday at 10:21 AM

> I don't think Windows can be fixed anymore. I think the choices Microsoft have been doing for _decades_ now, with only the _mechanisms_ coming and going, have become endemic to Windows, a part of its identity.

I'm not so sure that Windows is unfixable. It could probably be fixed, but doing that would require rebuilding every burned bridge back to its old standard, and probably then some, and that's something the relevant people aren't going to agree to do (since they were the ones who burned them).

Mandatory updates? Now they aren't any more.

Onedrive stole your files and deleted them? Now Onedrive is enabled/disabled on first setup.

Shitty start menu? Now you can pick which one you want, all the way back to the Windows 7 one.

Shitty right click menu? Now the old one is back.

All AI? Now there's a toggle on install to enable/disable it all.

Now settings menu sucks? Here's the old control panel back as standard.

Telemetry? How about no?

If MS did all of these things (and probably more), their trust level would rise skyhigh, since they'd be doing tangible things to fix the pain points we've all talked about. Now they've hit one point out of probably 50+, and many of the remaining ones are much harder to fix than updates being forced.

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