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Comment by orev | Hacker News Reader

I honestly think that the new tab/news/spam page in IE/Edge is (and has been, forever) the single biggest factor driving people to Chrome and Firefox. Every time you open it you’re greeted with all this complete junk, making the whole experience stuttering and slowing down your flow. I dread having to open IE on systems with no alternative just because it’s always so bad. Edge might actually be pretty good, but I will never know it because the initial experience is just so bad.

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That, and the in-app "make Chrome/FF the default browser" popup redirecting to a Windows settings page where when you choose anything else than Edge, you get yet another popup asking you to confirm that you really don't want to use the awesome browser that Edge is.

All this junk they've been doing to Windows lately is making me feel like a restricted guest in my own computer. I'll definitely be exploring alternatives next go around

Why wait?

If you've used Edge for more than a few minutes, it won't prompt you to "try Edge" or whatever it says.

They changed how default programs are set in Windows 10 so that malware can't change default file associations by itself anymore. That required moving away from using the Win32 API for that, and that is kind of the whole purpose of UWP-style apps and The New Settings pages within Windows 10.

MOST of Windows 10 has been thought out.

You're goddamn right it's well thought out. But it's not thought out in the user's favor at all.

Because how many fucking times is it going to ask me "ARE YOU SURE YOU DONT WANT TO TRY EDGE?" "EDGE IS SAFEST" "EDGE IS MADE FOR WINDOWS 10, ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO SWITCH?" You literally have to click no 3 times just to get your default to something else.

None of the other "default apps" do the same thing. And still nothing stopping the file extensions from getting remapped. So that's kinda not thought out.

Nothing worse than being condescending to users.

To you but I don't think that's true for the laymen. I've seen a few old neighbors that expects a news as homepage. Some people are extremely confused about internet, a webpage, a tab, a link .. a bookmark. A news page sounds logical and/or familiar enough it seems. If you remove it they may even despise you.

This statement is accurate based on my interactions with general users.

It's not just "junk news" though. People can and have been caught out by things like Microsoft tech support scams, fake virus alarms and prominently displayed on the Microsoft news feed. I've reported to Microsoft before direct links to ransomware advertised on their news feed.

Oh wow, I'd be shocked if I see this. There's already to many malware vectors to have it from your OS and browser supplier ..

Crazy.

Edge lets you turn that off - on the New Tab page, click on the cog symbol (Customize) and you can choose from New Tab page display settings: Top Sites & My Feed, Top Sites, or Blank Page.

ChrEdge Beta can hide the news feed if you choose Focused view, but currently all they do is put it after the page fold, so you see it if you merely scroll down. I've sent a Feedback request saying that's something that might keep me using Firefox as my default, and supposedly that's a feature they're working on.

Sane defaults is what makes the difference.

Firefox also has a huge pile of spam on the new tab page by default.

I wish they would just kill it already...

The Firefox page doesn’t cause the browser to freeze up for 30 seconds while it loads all the crap. That’s my point with IE/Edge, not that the page exists to begin with.

You have a horribly under-specced PC or something. Edge tabs load for me in around 1 second when I launch the browser cold, and I don't have a particularly powerful PC or anything.

1 second is still too much time, and 30 seconds is indicative of either an exaggeration or a somewhat severe problem.

I have it turned off as you describe (and also changed the home page), but ever so often the page still comes up. It's super annoying.

For some reason I decided to try Edge for a bit, and spent far too long trying to switch off this mess (googling for a solution) and never managed it. I gave up on the "use Edge" idea.

> Edge lets you turn that off - on the New Tab page, click on the cog symbol (Customize) and you can choose from New Tab page display settings: Top Sites & My Feed, Top Sites, or Blank Page.

I shouldn't have to turn off whatever spam they build into a paid for product. It should also be in the browser settings, not a confusingly placed and easy to miss hieroglyph. For me I don't even get those options, it's just a toggle to turn the news feed on or off, off leaves you with just a search bar, and bing is the only option builtin.

On my windows 10 computer, the browser settings have an option called "Open new tabs with", defaulting to "Top sites and suggested content". This can be changed to "A blank page", right there in the browser settings.

On the same computer, on the default start page ("Top Sites and suggested content"), the hieroglyph cog referenced above is conveniently place at the top right, and even has a label, too. It's called "Hide Feed".

Unfortunately Microsoft are the ones who decided to make Windows 10 a free upgrade for Windows 7/8 users, so we all bear the awfulness of them needing to sell sponsored spots in the OS to compensate for that loss of revenue. At least if the OS basically makes money on its own on an ongoing basis, we won’t need to ever pay for Windows updates again? Still, ugh.

edit: I’m agreeing with you guys here. I’d spend more on an “ad-free” Windows license if I had a choice, but that doesn’t exist unless you’re a volume license customer (LTSC) I wish they’d find some way to let people avoid the ads, like having them in Home and disabling them in Pro, as most laptops (even my Dell XPS) ship with Home. (They did try “Windows 8.1 with Bing” once. I guess it didn’t work out?)

For every previous version of windows you typically bought a new licence only when you purchased a new PC. The fact that MS allowed upgrades to Widows 10 on old machines should not have affected their revenue to any great extent, those machines were never going to have a paid upgrade anyway.

I may be completely off-base since Microsoft surely has some numbers we don’t that justify their choice of licensing model, but from my perspective, and from a few real experiences helping family and friends, people figure their PCs were at the end of their life and needed an entire replacement. Installing the free Windows 10 upgrade changes their mind - now they think their computer is perfectly up to date, at least for a few more years. These are machines with specs that look like Core 2 Duo or 1st gen Core i3, 250 GB spinning rust drive, 4 GB RAM. Those specs are especially prolific in decommissioned office PCs sent to recyclers who give them a fresh 7 or 10 license. They’re cheap, plentiful, and come with warranty, so plenty of people go for them.

Another thing to consider is volume licenses weren’t able to take up the offer - the company had to pay for their Windows 10 upgrade. Enterprise licensing is the Microsoft money maker.

That should be plenty for the basic 'grandpa wants the internet and Word' use cases, though. If it's not, I blame Microsoft.

Not using Windows, but I have some machines with similar specs and they are quite useful even for browsing many if not most websites. But, you must have NoScript and ad blocking.

So to be fair to Microsoft, at least some, if not all of the blame must go to web developers.

Fair point, there probably was an element of trying to prolong machines' lives longer than usaul going on, all right.

I have always wondered how many big syndicates and governments actually push their malware via the msn homepage. (Given that 99% of sysadmins will at some point be forced via msn, on the malware-portal that is Internet Explorer, to install a proper browser).

I really think, even if this isn't happening at scale, that this would be a great way to pwn even some of the biggest firms.

Scareware is distributed via ads on MSN. Normal users cant even close them, as soon as you close that ad it opens again, have to quit IE in the task manager to get rid of it.

Interesting point. It would be safer to launch IE with "iexplore about:blank" from the run dialog.

Absolutely. Microsoft products are horrendous for this. Every time I have to start up my windows VM to test an IE bug I get assaulted by advertising and "news" in the start menu with bright moving blocks and then I open IE and get hit with it even worse. I don't know why people put up with it tbh.

I kept on wondering why I hadn't seen any of this, and then remembered that I'd installed Classic Shell start menu, which provides a Windows 7 style menu. It doesn't disable the Windows 10 menu, just hides it. Makes for a much more pleasant experience though. (No affiliation)

Does it still work reliably? I used it on a Windows 10 machine a few years ago, but then it stopped being maintained:

http://www.classicshell.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=8147

... which is a huge shame, as that single app alone made Windows 10 a significantly less frustrating experience.

It's been replaced by Open Shell which works well: https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu

There was one windows update around two years ago that broke it, but I just reinstalled it and haven't had any problems since.

It's rock solid for me.

I followed some 2x reboot windows components uninstall magic some while ago to remove ie and some other "features" i don't remember.. then recently edge was auto installed and made default, Autologin stopped to work, start button got redesign and has an annoying delay. It's a total shitshow by now again until I sacrifice an evening to fix most of this.

I was venting to a friend. He told me he'd deactivated autoupdates some years ago. The foresight, i'm envious. But it's too late now and I think I can never have that.

I also remember some time there was an anti trust proceeding against Microsoft for shipping IE with windows as default. WTF happened to that and how is all this not a 1000x worse.

I definitely don't >want< to put up with this.

There was a ruling against MS, but the judge decided to give an interview that showed he may have been biased. MS got a mistrial, and settled the next one.

> I don't know why people put up with it tbh.

They don't. [0] Ordinary people install Chrome, and FOSS-aware people install Firefox or one of its variants. Not many use IE/Edge.

I second the parent comment to yours: it's a pity Microsoft vandalise solid technology. Perhaps something could've become of Edge, had they done otherwise.

There's a certain irony in the way we avoid Edge to avoid its insufferable ads, given that they only make ad money if we decide to use it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Su...

I always set the default page to about:blank as part of the initial configuration in all the browsers I've ever used. Edge is MS's poor clone of Chrome --- it neither appeals to those who actually want Chrome, nor those who want Firefox, nor even those who want IE. Of those I know who don't use Chrome or Firefox (and are not good with computer) but IE, I've heard them refer to Edge as "that weird ugly thing" when they manage to accidentally open it.

Side note, the Edge (not the ChromeEdge) has a nice feature where you can set aside all the tabs so that you can view them later with pretty much the same state, much like a tmux server. I couldn’t find similar features in other browser.

There is a (Firefox and Chrome) WebExtension called OneTab which provides this.

What's fun is that it's even the default on Windows Server systems. Why I'm forced to watch CSS animations on msn.com over an RPD session instead of defaulting to about:blank, I'll never know.

Because the layman windows server user would think the internet is broken if it stayed stuck on a blank page.

By the way, it should be easy enough to change the home page with a group policy or something if anybody actually cared about that. Companies usually change the homepage of all desktops to the intranet homepage.

What drives me away from Chrome on Windows is the very short freeze you have after you let the page idle for a while and try to scroll again. It was introduced earlier this year, I think.

That sounds more like your pc has performance issues. I have no short freezes when using chrome on windows.

I am using a decent gaming rig, so I don’t think it is the performance issue. I think it might be related to the touchpad. Are you using mouse for scrolling?

You might be running into Tab Discarding under memory constraints, the pause is when the tab gets restored. https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2015/09/tab-discar...

Hah, I totally agree. Every time I see it, I think "what the hell were they thinking?!", or "does anyone actually want to read this drivel?!".

It's certainly not exactly a "premium" look.

Hush, you are disclosing the best kept competitive secret of browser wars.

chrome has far more ads, they are just more subtle.

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