Windows 10: "[Don't upgrade] if you value control over your OS & your data."

[0004838]

I just wanted to share this view of Windows 10 from a guy whose opinion on matters Windows I trust. This is just a portion of what he has to say:

Of all the versions of Windows I've used over the past 25+ years, Windows 10 has required the greatest amount of tweaking and use of third party programs to get it close to my desired state.

(TweakGuides.com, post dated 4th August)

I've used and purchased the Deluxe versions of Koroush Ghazi's Windows XP and Windows 7 Tweak Guides, and consider him to be knowledgeable, thorough and practical. His chief aim is to educate the user to take control of his chosen Windows OS, and make informed choices that will allow the user to optimise their system for their needs, whether that be gaming, security, productivity etc.

Before reading his assessment I was tempted to upgrade to Win 10, simply because it's new and I was hearing a lot of good things about performance improvements. I've changed my mind now, and will definitely be waiting as long as necessary before making the change - if at all.

Do people here agree with his view of Windows 10?

 

[macenied]

It's about the same, IMO. Windows 8/8.1 and Windows 7 is under the hood. If you can configure W7/W8 you can configure W10 according to your needs. Windows XP is a different animal ( less functionality, less complexity ).

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

No more than setting up my prefs for any OS I use.

 

[macenied]

I just wanted to share this view of Windows 10 from a guy whose opinion on matters Windows I trust. This is just a portion of what he has to say:

(TweakGuides.com, post dated 4th August)

I've used and purchased the Deluxe versions of Koroush Ghazi's Windows XP and Windows 7 Tweak Guides, and consider him to be knowledgeable, thorough and practical. His chief aim is to educate the user to take control of his chosen Windows OS, and make informed choices that will allow the user to optimise their system for their needs, whether that be gaming, security, productivity etc.

Before reading his assessment I was tempted to upgrade to Win 10, simply because it's new and I was hearing a lot of good things about performance improvements. I've changed my mind now, and will definitely be waiting as long as necessary before making the change - if at all.

Do people here agree with his view of Windows 10?

The subject is not very clear also. If you set up a single user PC with a browser, a few games, photos and some music your requirements will be very different compared to multiuser setups with automated software distribution in networks using network zones, exchange servers, databases and confidential data. Mil Spec security make no sense for home users. A PC for cloud computing ? And so on ...

 

[Shirasaki]

Whether for security or for ability to customise, users always have minimum freedom.

No need to say from El Capitan, dozens of system tweak utilities will go offline due to that new "rootless".

 

[dusk007]

I generally hold the notion that people break more then they do themselves good with tweaking their systems. Changing themes/icons and UI is the only thing that usually should need customizations. Tweak utilities are a pest to keep some magazin editors busy.

 

[0004838]

If you set up a single user PC with a browser, a few games, photos and some music

I generally hold the notion that people break more then they do themselves good with tweaking their systems. Changing themes/icons and UI is the only thing that usually should need customisations.

Photos is actually one example that Koroush Ghazi uses:

Case in point: I wanted to set Windows Photo Viewer as my default image viewer, instead of the Photos app. In Windows 10, Microsoft has deliberately made this impossible to do without resorting to editing the Registry.

That seems a pretty harsh change. Imagine Apple removing the "Open With:" option from the Get Info… window of all images, as well as the "Change All" button. Also seems to me that's a pretty fundamental change that's going to affect even the most basic of users.

Tweak utilities are a pest to keep some magazin editors busy.

No-one mentioned tweak utilities. Any changes suggested by Koroush Ghazi are done manually by the user using the balanced information provided in the free guides (or paid-for Deluxe versions, which are by no means mandatory).

 

[macenied]

Photos is actually one example that Koroush Ghazi uses:

That seems a pretty harsh change. Imagine Apple removing the "Open With:" option from the Get Info… window of all images, as well as the "Change All" button. Also seems to me that's a pretty fundamental change that's going to affect even the most basic of users.


No-one mentioned tweak utilities. Any changes suggested by Koroush Ghazi are done manually by the user using the balanced information provided in the free guides (or paid-for Deluxe versions, which are by no means mandatory).

You can assign file types to programs as well as define standard programs using W10, as with previous Windows versions. Here is the dialogue ( sorry for German ). No RegEdit needed.

 

[0004838]

You can assign file types to programs as well as define standard programs using W10, as with previous Windows versions. Here is the dialogue ( sorry for German ). No RegEdit needed.

Interesting. I do note that Photos is the default program for JPEGs and PNGs in your screenshot, as KG indicates. Have you actually tried to change that to something else? Seems unlikely, but perhaps it'll fail. Otherwise, I may have to contact KG to request more info.

 

[Renzatic]

The only thing I've seen that's slightly different is that sometimes when you use the "Open With" option, Win10 has a new category labeled "featured in Windows 10" to draw attention to what MS considers to be the default app. Other than that, it's about exactly the same as its always been.

Looks like this

I haven't changed my default photo app from Photos to Irfanview like I usually do, but that's because I think the one that comes with the OS is finally decent enough to keep around.

From what I've seen, and I've seen a bunch by this point, it's almost exactly the same as any other version of Windows.

 

[maxsix]

Based on my experience as one who works in and relies on _both_ OS X and Windows, so far this thread and it's questionable title are full of erroneous information.

 

[H2SO4]

……….Imagine Apple removing the "Open With:" option from the Get Info… window of all images, as well as the "Change All" button. Also seems to me that's a pretty fundamental change that's going to affect even the most basic of users.

Do you mean like when they removed the ‘Save As’ option from their menus?

 

[Renzatic]

Do you mean like when they removed the ‘Save As’ option from their menus?

I somehow missed that part of his quote.

Open With is still in there. Same as always.

 

[H2SO4]

Whether for security or for ability to customise, users always have minimum freedom.

No need to say from El Capitan, dozens of system tweak utilities will go offline due to that new "rootless".

That’s going to delay my upgrade. I need to see how livid people become before I install it.

 

[macenied]

this thread make no sense. red alert and nothing related to the subject ( W7/8/8.1/10 ) really changed. just use windows as always. like it or not and it works without tweaking and editing the registry.

Ghazi should do some homework and correct his homepage.

 

[0004838]

Because there seemed to be some conflict WRT his original statement, I contacted KG and asked him if he would like to clarify what he meant. He was kind enough to respond the next day, and says he's happy for me to post his email in its entirety:

By default, on a clean install of the RTM version of Windows 10 – in my case Windows 10 Pro 64-bit to be exact – you can’t use the Default Programs method to set Windows Photo Viewer to anything other than the default viewer for TIFF and TIF files. W10 simply won’t allow you to force a JPG file for example to be associated with Windows Photo Viewer using any of the normal methods. For independent confirmation of this, as well as the place where I found the Registry editing method to fix this, see the link I provided in that post (http://winaero.com/blog/how-get-windows-photo-viewer-working-in-windows-10-rtm/). The person who wrote that blog entry makes Windows tweaking tools, so he also knows what he’s talking about. See also the comments at the bottom of that link where other people confirm the same issue.

If you don’t want to edit the Registry, another workaround is to install a separate photo editing/viewing program such as Irfanview or even Microsoft’s own Windows Photo Gallery from the old Live Essentials suite (it’s still available for the moment). But the fact remains that MS appears to have deliberately made it difficult for the average user to use a perfectly good built-in photo viewing program, and instead not only have they set Metro apps as the defaults for all actions on the OS (like they did in Windows 8), but even if you manage to change a default back to your desired program, it now also requires further confirmation and prompts you to use their “featured app” one more time. Mozilla recently complained about the same issue regarding how much more effort it takes to associate HTML files with Firefox. The whole thing smacks of an absurdly childish effort by MS to herd users into using their apps (and thus get us used to buying apps from the MS Store).

For people who claim they don’t have the same problem, ask them if they’ve done a full clean install (reformat/reinstall from ISO) as opposed to an upgrade install of any kind. Also, apparently this change to Windows Photo Viewer’s default behavior was only made in a recent build of Windows 10, either RTM or just prior to RTM, which is why it wasn’t caught earlier.

Hope that clarifies things.

I should add that it wasn't my intention to be controversial when I started this thread, I was simply genuinely interested to know how Mac users were finding the upgrade to Windows 10.

Personally, I only use Windows for certain pieces of software that are either non-existent on OS X or whose OS X-counterparts fall short of their Windows-based sibling's quality. To make the (very) infrequent Windows boots less painful, I try to configure the interface and UX to be less jarring a change from my everyday OS X one. For that I refer to KG's Tweak Guides. I also use his guides when configuring for security and performance, and in those regards have found them very helpful. When he made the statement I quote in my OP, I was justifiably concerned, and wanted to gather more info on the subject.

Hope that helps.