Atomic Bob's Stock Forum - The Golden Thread

Here are my early impressions.
1) I've downgraded from a 17.5" screen to a 15.6" screen. That's significantly smaller, but not enough to eliminate the *wow* factor as I notice how thin and light this new laptop is. Even its power supply is extremely small. I hope that means that this laptop doesn't get as hot. Heat played a role in the screen flickering that is leading to the semi-retirement of my last laptop.
2) Booting for the first time, there are about a dozen configurations set that I do NOT want. Come on, Microsoft. By default, you've got your customers sharing just about everything with you. Yes, I can change the settings to "NO" - but since many of your users don't know any better they'll probably leave them alone. I think what you're doing is really scummy.
2.5) The most asinine of the configuration settings I had to change was one to automatically connect to ANY detected internet router in the area. How dumb is that? I'm fine with having the option, but any security person could tell you that the default for this should be *NO*
2.6) Another dumb one was to automatically connect to others' laptops and exchange update files as needed. In other words, without my even knowing it, I would send and receive OS update files as folks at the airport, for instance, walked past. This is a very, very bad idea. Not only would it slow my system performance in a completely sporadic fashion, but it also has the potential to distribute viruses when I'm not even aware that I'm connected to anyone else. MSFT could probably eliminate this risk through good encryption and hashing techniques, but how do I know whether they're diligent about this?
3) There was one setting (I've forgotten which) where I told the system not to share information and received the response "Okay then we will only share your configuration data with Microsoft." Bastards.
4) With no software yet on the system, I am already hitting extraordinary delays. You know, the blue spinning circle, sometimes running for over a minute. This had better not be an ongoing problem.
5) I looked at my system configuration and it said I had a "CD/ROM." Uh, not a DVD? So I popped a DVD into the drive and it played. That's a relief. But the sound didn't play! The problem isn't with the laptop speakers since I am getting bells every now and then, but nothing from the movie.
6) Then I couldn't get the movie to stop playing. I tried stopping it the obvious way... then closing the window... but nothing worked. I eventually decided to close all my other windows and reboot, but in the process found that the media player had opened a dialog box UNDERNEATH one of my other windows. Once I responded to that dialog box, I was finally able to stop the movie and close the player. Annoying.
7) I didn't want IE as my default browser (oh, it's called "Edge" now. Makes perfect sense since it bugs me about the way that an "Edge" I can't "Scradge" does), so I hopped over to google to find a Mozilla download. Instead, I was immediately told that Google works better with Chrome and would I like to install it now. So I did that. As part of the installation, Chrome did its best to have me share my information with Google. #%@#$! Is there no end to this?
8 ) Then I installed Mozilla and was grateful that it didn't try to get me to share my information with it. All it did was to try to get me to donate some $$. Okay, that's not so bad.
9) I still don't know my way around the OS, but it's already obvious how many "partners" Microsoft is in bed with. I'm finding things related to Facebook, to Twitter, to Google, to some cloud service that I don't want to use, to McAfee... and so on. I don't think that this is new to Windows 10, though. It still bugs me since I may not want to be wasting hard drive space on some of these companies or, in fact, on any of them, but I don't know if there are consequences to deleting files that came with the computer so I'll leave them.
That's it for now. I may continue with other observations - as I discover other Windows 10 features that I like (ha, fat chance of that) or hate.
My summation is that I am *SO* sick of learning new operating systems. At work I have one version of Windows (but I'm told that another is forthcoming.) My work laptop is a locked down version of Windows 7. My old laptop is Windows 8. This new laptop is Windows 10. My desktop is Windows 7 (not locked down). On most, there are different browsers, and different VERSIONS of browsers. And different versions of Microsoft Office. It just goes on and on, and I find it a real burden... especially as farsightedness has begun to be a real burden... just trying to find the buttons I need to make things happen. Sometimes a button is on the left. Sometimes the right. Soemtimes the middle. Soemtimes it's not there at all because the toolbar I have one computer isn't present on another. Honestly, it makes me long for DOS and UNIX, both of which work approximately the same way they did 35 years ago and really could do anything Windows can do today.

Maybe Microsoft has figured this out. They claim that Windows 10 is the last major release of Windows... that from now on, they'll just keep updating it. Do any of you believe them? I don't.

Just got my New Windows 10 Box. Here are my gripes.

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