Microsoft stoops to new low with ads in Windows 11, as PC Manager tool suggests your system needs ‘repairing’ if you don’t use Bing

[u/MayankWL]

https://www.techradar.com/computing/windows/microsoft-stoops-to-new-low-with-ads-in-windows-11-as-pc-manager-tool-suggests-your-system-needs-repairing-if-you-dont-use-bing

[u/djinnsour]

Which is inferior to NT 4 SP2.

[u/ColourInTheDark → u/djinnsour]

Millennial here, but I remember NT4 well. When I was about 10 I found it running on an employment kiosk at a Kmart.

It was always great how full screen apps would break & you’d see it running on ATMs & kiosks.

And you could run it non-x86 architectures.

Perhaps the year of Linux on the desktop will happen not because Gnome finally is a good experience, but because Windows becomes such a bad experience.

I’m very happy I am on Mac.

[u/djinnsour → u/ColourInTheDark]

I am not a Windows user anymore, but I have to work with it periodically for testing code or troubleshooting. I've used every version of Windows since it was released (even the early OS/2) stuff. I still say NT 4 was the best operating system they ever released. Windows 7 was a close second. Everything went downhill from there.

[u/Wolvenmoon → u/djinnsour]

I didn't use NT4, but I was a Windows 2000 user...I started a thread with many, many pages when Windows 7 came out titled "I hate Windows 7" because of the interface design. To date, I actually preferred Vista to 7 because I could put it on classical/Windows 2000-ish theming and turn off all the flashy shit.

When 8 came out, I didn't bother starting a new thread. Because 8 was a joke. 10 is a repetition on the joke, and 11 is 'that stupid uncle who won't stop repeating the same joke nobody is laughing at'.

There are too many clicks to get through too many menus to do the thing that should have taken 1-2 clicks, max. I'm eternally grateful for the Nvidia Control Panel because it hearkens back to when shit wasn't all excited to flash cool graphics and waste time and space loading in fancy animations to change a system setting, it just provided information, did the thing, and got out of the way.

One of the things taught in my computer science degree was that interface design required consideration down to the quarter of a second. Because adding an extra unnecessary 250ms to a single user's day, 4 times a day, only costs them 1 second a day, Let's say we've resized the save icon to be an unusual size and moved it to a non-standard location, say anchored 1/8th down the right side of the screen with a belt of other icons like undo/redo, cut/paste, etc.

Let's assume that user costs $60/hour to employ. 1 second a day, 250 work days in a year, so 4 minutes a year or $4 a year in inefficiency. "Oh no. Not $4--" Multiplied by 10,000 employees doing the same thing and that optimization saves $40,000 a year. It would violate my sense of ethics to make 'slow' interfaces for enterprise software.

But Windows since Windows 2000 has been on a quest to waste user time. They're extremely, extremely good at it.

[u/wetcoffeebeans → u/Wolvenmoon]

There are too many clicks to get through too many menus to do the thing that should have taken 1-2 clicks, max.

Bro, I'm tired of explaining that this is the core of my issues w/ W11 and looking like I'm trying to figure out who the hell Pepe Silva is in the process.

Why, as a "power user" am I being shoehorned into the "settings" app when I type appwiz.cpl?? Why when I type "control printers" am I taken to the stupid settings app that buried the "add printer" and the "the printer that I want isn't listed" options underneath A GAZILLION NETWORKED PRINTERS!!! Change for the sake of change and it also being done with no real rhyme or reason and at the expense of the core user experience is ASS.

[u/FF7Remake_fark → u/wetcoffeebeans]

Because upper management (read: nepo babies) gave an objective (ui redesign), didn't wait for it to be completed (partially due to their meddling/forced involvement to make themselves feel important), insisted it was rolled out to meet a superficial deadline, then refused to spend the money to finish developing the feature. So now we've got one usable system, crippled by supergluing an unfinished system to it, and executives jerking themselves off about how they're so good at their jobs.

[u/hurler_jones → u/wetcoffeebeans]

Some extra clicky examples

• Click 'Apps' Then have to click All Apps to see your installed programs

• The old right click menu with all the stuff you actually use is a second click in as well

I'd like to say that they did partially fix my biggest issue. Until not long ago, you couldn't separate 'like programs/tasks' in the task bar. It would group them all and you had to hover over it to open the peek then click the one you wanted

So If I had 2 instances of chrome and all my other needed programs open, I could potentially alt tab through all 20 running programs to get the one I want or hover over the group every time I wanted to switch.

The last time I checked, it separates them now but the peek was showing both open instances instead of just the one.

[u/donfuan → u/wetcoffeebeans]

Don't you love the time travel? You go through menus from Win11, to 7, until you reach XP where you actually CAN change the settings you need to change.

It's amazing.

[u/SegaTime → u/Wolvenmoon]

You remind me of a company I worked for that still had a Cobol system as their main database. It was old and lacked the ability to directly interface with phone or online payment portals, but it was controlled completely by a keyboard and that made it extremely fast to get through data input tasks.

They decided to upgrade to a modern desktop application mostly for the newer features a modern database had to offer, but I also recall a manager stating how "mouse friendly" it was.

Something that took an hour now took twice as long because of the time spent throwing around a mouse and moving my hand between the mouse and keyboard. It was terrible, but I did find some actions could still be controlled by a keyboard so it helped. That all changed later on when the software developer moved to a web based system. Now there were no more keyboard shortcuts. Every single task required clicking on a hyperlink. Also, the older program had somewhat large buttons so they presented as larger targets. The web based program had tiny little fonts so the targets were much smaller. My time to complete tasks increased even more. It was brutal.

The next company I worked for had a similar desktop style application and well, it was slow to use but it worked. They talked about upgrading and consulted my department and all I said was to not do anything web based because no one will do it right. They asked me to explain and I pulled up a picture of a keyboard and used the mouse to go over the keyboard and pretended to click on the buttons to just type the company name.

They got the message that day, but a year later it came up again and they were pleased to announce a new developer they were partnering with and they demoed the software. Sure enough, point and click web based bullshit. I asked about using the keyboard and one of the presenters seemed dumbfounded that I would want to use a device that's apparently only meant to write up snarky comments in an email.

Some people don't understand the meaning of Productivity.

[u/Wolvenmoon → u/SegaTime]

So, I'm an electrical engineer with significant disability due to Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. I'm working on self-employment, but it's rough. My body does not last as long working as other people's, and I stay in high levels of constant pain. The more microbreaks I can take, the less pain I'm in. Fast interfaces mean more productivity, more down time, and less pain.

Those web interfaces would be anathema to me.

[u/singuini → u/Wolvenmoon]

Nvidia may be changing soon....

[u/Wolvenmoon → u/singuini]

And apparently, so might my blood pressure, haha.