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Comment by sixseven | Hacker News Reader

I owned my first MacBook 3 years ago. To me, the MacBook "just work" as much as any new Windows laptops I came across. So I'm clueless as to where did the phrase "just work" came from. Maybe Windows has improved over the years, or maybe a lot of things are done of the web now, the OS doesn't really matter as long as there is a browser.

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'Just works' comes from the days of XP and before, where every doodad you plugged into your computer required its own driver disk on Windows. Even if something came with it's own drivers in that era, you'd get an installer wizard that you'd have to navigate through.

Back to DOS, You have to load your MXCDEX001 driver in order to use your CD-ROM.

You should try Windows 10, I've been Apple free for a while now. I'll never go back to OS X.

I don't know if I'm alone, but I find Windows 10 horrible. It consistently freezes on me for several seconds at a time (and usually when I'm doing something important), it takes longer to fully boot (background services seem to take way longer to start), it uses an incredible amount of CPU and disk in the background for no reason, the new Control Panel is impossible to sort through, and the overall UI/UX is a step backwards (IMO)--and all that without mentioning the privacy concerns. I'm really kicking myself for upgrading, because I thought Windows 7 was a really great OS. I ended up switching to Linux Mint, and have been very happy with it overall.

I run win10 at home since beta and also admin multiple windows machines at work. None have that issue. I would say with utmost certainty that something else is amiss. All of my machines run faster and smoother on win10.

Oh, I'm not saying the freezing is a general Windows 10 issue; I'll fully admit that there might be something wrong with my install. But it's just frustrating that it started happening on a fresh install of Windows 10 (not an upgrade) before I even installed anything abnormal. And there are others reporting the exact same issue as me, so I know I'm not the only one. We're talking about operating systems that "just work", and for me, Windows 10 didn't.

I can't comment on Win10 per se, because I haven't seen a compelling set of features that would cause me to upgrade my Win7 machine.

Win7 is essentially what WinXP was a few years ago; it's not perfect, but it's familiar and it gets the job done and it stays out of the way (most of the time). As a user, Microsoft has to offer me something significant if they want me to spend time learning something new, and I've not yet seen it.

Win 10 is to Win 8 what Win 7 was to Vista.

For me:

Windows 10 is to Win 7 what Win ME was to XP.

ME precedes XP, both architecturally and by release date. Can you clarify?

Weird, Windows 10/8/8.1 have incredibly fast boot times compared to 7, especially if you're on a SSD. The Control Panel is the same as 7 was, the "Settings Panel" is what is new...but it has a search feature. Sounds like to me, maybe you barely tried it; also the "privacy concerns" have been disproven countless times.

Except that the Win8/10 fast boot time is a cheat; it's basically just hibernate mode. If you do a "restart" instead of a "shutdown" it will go through the full boot process, and that (on the Win10 boxes I've seen) is little or no faster than it was on 7.

It boots quickly, but the background services take longer to start. There are a couple programs (AutoHotkey scripts and the like) that I run on startup, and those take significantly longer to start after boot than on Windows 7. And you're right about the control panel, but the new settings I've found to be extremely difficult to navigate; I even have a hard time searching for some of them. (Of course this is something that you get used to over time, but we're talking about things that "just work", and that's not one of them IMO.)

Re: Privacy: Maybe not directly a privacy concern, but one of my biggest issues with Windows 10 (and 8) is how many things are now out of your control. For instance, you can't disable automatic updates or the built-in antivirus for more than a short while. Given that, it's easy to imagine Microsoft pushing out a privacy-invading setting that you have to manually opt out of, which you won't do until you know about it.

I wouldn't say I barely tried it; I've had it installed since December and used it full-time for about a month before dual-booting Linux (and I still use it for gaming). Maybe I wouldn't be so frustrated with it if it didn't regularly freeze for several seconds at a time, because that's really the biggest issue I have with it (and I know I'm not the only one), but I'd say I gave it a pretty fair shot. Aside from losing access to a couple programs (which is why I dual-boot), I'm happy with Linux Mint.

"amount of CPU and disk in the background for no reason"

That's probably from the built-in spyware and forced upgrade processes that run in the background.

Try turning off Windows search service and the default Windows anti-virus

Windows works fine for me, if I have any issues with it. It's due some anti-virus slowing things down and windows search service

I'm running 10 on a 3.5 year old i7 at home, and a brand new i7 at work.

I haven't had any significant problems with freezing and boot times.

I am a little biased as I'm doing C# MVC so I'm using Visual Studio, I think it's all pretty great.

You do have to get used to the new control panel, but all of the old panels are still there for you to use (I am nearly 100% sure), but it's not really _that_ bad. You get used to it.

I run Android on my phone so I'm pretty sure that overall I have no real privacy from any agency that really want to get in to my business... oh well.

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