Windows 10: A sysadmin speaks his brains – and says MEH

Ramming updates up my box's jacksie

That leads us into the whole "forced patches" thing. I'm not a fan. I understand that some people feel this is the only way to make Aunt Tilly patch. They're wrong. Aunt Tilly's computer was shipped to her with Windows Updates enabled by default.

Its people like me not patching, because I don't want to close everything down so that Windows can reboot, and I'm perfectly okay with the "risk" of browsing the internet through Firefox. I would feel a lot more secure running my very well shielded Firefox on an unpatched Windows machine than I would running IE on anything, ever. No matter its patch level.

I prefer to not have to fight Microsoft to keep my computer from rebooting and annihilating all my open applications, thanks.

But this is beyond personal preference. Microsoft has completely borked patches so many times during my career that I absolutely refuse to install any Windows patch on any computer I rely on without testing it first. Nope.gif, thanks and bye.

Further adding to my nopeing over forced updates is that I simply do not trust Microsoft, even the littlest bit. Windows 10 is supposed to be on a brand new release lifecycle where major-ish updates will be pushed out with some regularity. I don't trust Microsoft with this power.

Perhaps more to the point: I don't trust Microsoft not to push out some horrific UI change or break applications like Classic Shell. Microsoft have broken my trust too many times and done absolutely nothing to earn it back.

Now I realise everything in this "dealbreaker" category won't matter to everyone. In fact, there is a significant population to whom none of these issues will matter. I said above that this isn't a particularly objective review of Windows 10. These are simply the issues that tweak my particular constellation of requirements and beliefs and prevent me from deploying it for my use cases.

Kinda not bad

For all my griping, Windows 10 is kinda not bad. My wife compares it to Canadian politicians. Everyone on offer is at least a little bit crap, but there's usually one that meets "good enough" standards and probably will do as much good as they do harm. I think it's an accurate comparison for Windows 10.

Most people don't want their computers to radically change. They prefer slow, incremental evolution. They like stability. Business especially prefers this. For the most part, that's Windows 10. It's really not that much different than its predecessors, and that will make it usable by most.

But usable isn't enjoyable. When Windows 7 came out there were a few complaints (give me back my up arrow, damn it!) but for the most part there was relief. At long last, here was salvation from Vista and a path forward from XP.

There's none of that with Windows 10. It's good enough to use if you have to. It's definitely a step up from Windows 8. But if you have Windows 7 there's no sane reason to move to Windows 10 as, ultimately, Windows 7 is still better.

If you don't use VPNs except to very new servers, you trust Microsoft enough to let them force updates on you, and you're okay with the digital creepy doll shouting everything you do back to the mothership, then Windows 10 is good enough.

Windows 10: it's only a little bit crap. And really, that's better than we could have hoped for.