I don't mind change.
I do mind mindless change.
Those who read this blog know that I am not hesitant in knocking things that are truly worthless or bad. I don't twit or facebook because social media is a complete waste of time to me. I don't find Apple operating systems intuitive. I don't like smartphones because I don't see the real need for them. I relented and purchased one last July so I can deposit checks from home. Aside from that I find nothing about the phone to be remarkable or necessary. I've made maybe five phone calls and received about as many on it. I chose wisely and am not getting soaked on the cost of the service and the phone itself was only about $100. It has a recent version of the Android operating system and it works as it should.
I just don't see the need for it. Really. And I don't like phones at all anyway.
So when I first heard about Windows 8, I was perfectly okay with the world with Windows XP. But since I had a compute that I could use as a beta machine, I installed the dreaded and hated Windows 8 when it was first in development.
Funny thing happened. I immediately liked Windows 8. And it started and closed faster than the Windows 7 machines that I've worked with. And Windows 8 was faster in overall operation as well given the same ram and even on older hardware. And with one free app, Classic Shell, Windows 8 became the fastest version of Windows 7 ever.
As I began to add broken computers that I fixed up for my business, I went with Windows 8 and then later 8.1 with glee. There was absolutely nothing wrong with Windows 8.1. All things considered I would gladly stay with this forever. Just as Windows XP was perfected during its life, Windows 8.1 became the most stable operating system I've ever used.
And along came Windows 10. For some reason everyone was praising it in beta mode. I became suspicious. With nothing wrong with Windows 8/8.1 that could not be solved with Classic Shell, I suspected there was a cottage industry of idiots who were too stupid and too lazy to install something that was free like their phone apps and which solved every complaint they had with the operating system.
So I found an older laptop that needing fixing and proceeded to install Windows 10 beta.
It was awful. It was one of the worst operating systems I've ever used. It was illogical like Apple's stuff and it was not fast. It was not organized. Even as the betas improved with cosmetics, it became clear that Windows 10 was being oversold and it was a dog with as many fleas as Vista.
We were being lied to. Windows 10 was not good.
Even as my insider preview versions of Windows 10 were now mirroring Consumer Release versions, I hated Windows 10. It was the least used machine - even used less than my restored Mac and my test Linux Mint machine.
Then a funny thing happened. One of my Dell laptops that I used for four years that I paid about $50 to acquire and another $50 for a hard drive started acting up. I used this for my business and I wasn't going to have something that was going to give me problems so I searched and acquired a new Asus that I expanded to 12 gigs of ram and had an i5 processor and all told my budget shopping had me getting it for less than $500 at Best Buy.
Egads. It had Windows 10. I was doomed.
The first thing I did was to install Classic Shell. Gone was the worst ever User Interface ever conceived by man and back was the logical Windows 7 start menu when I clicked the start button. I then starting installing each and every piece of software that first worked on XP and then worked flawlessly on Windows 8.1.
To my surprise, everything worked in 10.
Fast forward 1 month and I can say that there is nothing repugnant about Windows 10 that wasn't solved by the latest update - once called a service pack - now given a four digit number. This upgrade resolved just about all the performance issues I have had in beta testing with Windows 10.
Honestly, Windows 10 has NO ADVANTAGES over Windows 10. The live tiles suck in comparison to Windows 8. I can get to them with a click on the Windows 7 style menu and thankfully there is no need for them. I find the live tiles in Windows 8.1 to work great on my tablets that I acquire through ebay. I love working on broken things and fixing them. Windows 10 would make a horrific tablet operating system. But thankfully even 10 can have classic shell and you can boot a tablet to desktop and "pin to taskbar" the tiles you like and never have to go into the horrific Windows 10 standard interface.
I have now upgraded every laptop that had 8.1 to Windows 10 and have disabled the horrible Cortana and sent her packing. Privacy issues have been stated about Windows 10 and I have disabled everything I can find that sends anything back to Microsoft.
Windows 10 upgrades have worked flawlessly. I was so surprised.
I now can fully endorse Windows 10 - but only since the last major update of 1511 and with Classic Shell installed. I cannot support any install with Cortana or the huge search bar on the taskbar (you can make it only an icon). Windows 10 is not better than Windows 8.1. It just is a smoke and mirror show for idiots to make them think it is better.
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