Windows 10 [2014 - 2017]

[Silent_Buddha]

In that regard, having now used Windows 10, I think MS are a long way from getting there and I'm completely rethinking my MS future. In tablet mode, the keyboard doesn't appear when needed and you can't manually bring it up - the icon is just missing. So trying to enter a scaling value >100% in ArtRage, I had to swap out of tablet mode to have the option to manually bring up the keyboard. The whole device feels like it needs a keyboard. It's a laptop really, maybe with a simplified interface for general browsing but unable to be a tablet PC in applications at the moment. It's lacking all the niceties of Android like pull down/up brightness setting.

Yeah, Windows 10 took a HUGE step backwards, IMO with regards to useability. Those things you mentioned just weren't problems with Win8/8.1. It's one of the reasons I hugely regret upgrading my Surface 3 to Win10. But I keep it there to help me get more used to it before I eventually upgrade my desktop to Win10.

I, of course, have a different perspective on things. I've been using Windows tablets since around 2004/5. So I never found the tablet experience on Android/iOS to be that good. The UI was easier for touch, but was so incredibly limited that I could never get into Android/iOS tablets despite how much better they were with regards to weight and battery life for many years.

Regards,
SB

 

[orangpelupa]

tablet mode in W10 is shit, shit shit shit shit.

much better staying in W8.1 or keep using Desktop Mode all the time even when using it as a tablet. Because you can enable lots of tablet-ey stuff in desktop mode and the virtual keyboard works super nice in desktop mode (the icon stays in taskbar, it can auto pop up the virtual keyboard, auto changing between button or writing box depending if you touch a text box using a pen or a finger).

 

[orangpelupa]

It's lacking all the niceties of Android like pull down/up brightness setting.

in W8.1, it was "slide from side, then slide up/down on the sun icon to change brightness" so intuitive! so easy!

but now in W10 i need to

1. press start
2. type power options
3. use the tiny slider to gradually change brigtnes

or use the ugly brightness steps metro button.

 

[Gubbi]

The problem with some Windows apps seems to be when they deviated from the Windows Look (a good thing, because it suits the app better), now their graphics are a mess. ArtRage has beautiful, fixed sized icons

If you use fully customized GUI elements over system default, you better be damn sure to keep these updated. What looks like a smart design on your current OS/GUI version is likely to look complete ass, - or at least extremenly dated, on the next version.

If you go with defaults, your app gets a facelift whenever the platform does (ie. Android 2.3 -> 4.0.3 was huge).

Cheers

 

[Kyyla]

the keyboard doesn't appear when needed and you can't manually bring it up

You can pin the keyboard button to the taskbar, just long tap on the task bar when in tablet mode. Also there is a setting for bringing up the keyboard when in tablet mode and trying to do text input. I have no problems with it.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Thanks, I'll give it a go. But usability features like that should be enabled as standard for new owners like me.

 

[orangpelupa]

btw, does MS have any plan to bring the colorful windows 8.1 looks into W10?

currently W10 feels really bland and can be confusing if using multi windows (white title bar on foreground and background).

 

[Grall]

@orangpelupa
These days you can turn on colored window title bar and border (really thin border) for the active window somewhere in settings. MS added this in a patch sometime last year.

But yeah, the much maligned aqua from win vista and forwards is now one of MS' most requested features for 10, but of course they refuse to implement it again... Lol. All we got are transparent start menu and some other bull.

 

[orangpelupa]

That's weird. I have set the accent color for everything including title bar.

But everything have color except title bar. Despite the preview image shows the title bar should be colored.

It's like that both on my desktop and tablet.

 

[Arwin]

UWP solves or at least intends to solve most of the issues mentioned. I am still exploring that part - I already see some interesting potential issues like that you can customize the titlebar, including the color and while you are recommended to properly respond to not having focus, it seems to be up to the discretion of the developer. Hopefully applications bother to catch up, but it hasn't been out yet for business that long. By the way, is the drawing experience itself good on the Surface 4? And is Sketch really the same version? Because the iOS version has also been updated and a lot of features are behind in-app purchases.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Good god, this is an awful experience! Switch on the Surface 4 and get a load of Skype messages from conversations I had last night that I've already read! Why?! Then I tried changing the screen resolution to see how apps respond, and the video editor has a missing dll and won't run. "Please try reinstalling". Looking at changing the resolution again, and the interface has changed. Last time I had a long vertical list with a triangular graphic. This time I have a wrap-around combo box with display options. Setting the display to 1900x1200, ArtRage responds but other apps use the native res and remain tiny.

And getting the auto-hide task bar to come up is next to impossible!

Drawing is excellent as you'd expect. Sketchbook probably isn't the same version as the Android 'pro'. I think it's the desktop version, which has a separate $30 subscription. Frustratingly they list a full purchase price for £55 at the Autodesk website but have pulled this. I'm plain against auto-renewing subscriptions. You could end up with dozens sucking money away when you least expect it. I think it's a crap way to do business, and the rest of world is renting instead of selling, so why software? You buy a PC, a Surface, a sofa, a game. Renting an application is scummy. Sell a version and sell upgrades, and support/maintenance for bigger apps. I guess the reason for the change is the current versions are so good, there's often little reason to upgrade yaer to year. So the companies change to a fleecing model so they can keep charging for the same thing.

Mischief was fun, but not realy a usable drawing app save for sketches. Very limited pens as it's vector based. Also the infinite canvas means it's easy to lose things if you're silly!

MS really needs a better way to handle legacy apps on high DPI displays. As they can present whatever resolution to the application, they could offer virtual resolutions. So run one app in 1080p, another in 720p, another at native. Is that a feature hidden away somewhere? Can I set these apps to upscale from a higher resolution than the real low one?

 

[orangpelupa]

By the way, is the drawing experience itself good on the Surface 4? And is Sketch really the same version? Because the iOS version has also been updated and a lot of features are behind in-app purchases.

dont have SP4, but it is faster than my tablet. so... should be more comfortable?
the metro version also put lots of stuff as DLC

mainly i use mischief though... its unlimited zoom/resolution and unlimited canvas is too nice.

 

[Arwin]

Good god, this is an awful experience! Switch on the Surface 4 and get a load of Skype messages from conversations I had last night that I've already read! Why?! Then I tried changing the screen resolution to see how apps respond, and the video editor has a missing dll and won't run. "Please try reinstalling". Looking at changing the resolution again, and the interface has changed. Last time I had a long vertical list with a triangular graphic. This time I have a wrap-around combo box with display options. Setting the display to 1900x1200, ArtRage responds but other apps use the native res and remain tiny.

And getting the auto-hide task bar to come up is next to impossible!

Drawing is excellent as you'd expect. Sketchbook probably isn't the same version as the Android 'pro'. I think it's the desktop version, which has a separate $30 subscription. Frustratingly they list a full purchase price for £55 at the Autodesk website but have pulled this. I'm plain against auto-renewing subscriptions. You could end up with dozens sucking money away when you least expect it. I think it's a crap way to do business, and the rest of world is renting instead of selling, so why software? You buy a PC, a Surface, a sofa, a game. Renting an application is scummy. Sell a version and sell upgrades, and support/maintenance for bigger apps. I guess the reason for the change is the current versions are so good, there's often little reason to upgrade yaer to year. So the companies change to a fleecing model so they can keep charging for the same thing.

Mischief was fun, but not realy a usable drawing app save for sketches. Very limited pens as it's vector based. Also the infinite canvas means it's easy to lose things if you're silly!

MS really needs a better way to handle legacy apps on high DPI displays. As they can present whatever resolution to the application, they could offer virtual resolutions. So run one app in 1080p, another in 720p, another at native. Is that a feature hidden away somewhere? Can I set these apps to upscale from a higher resolution than the real low one?

Welcome to the price of freedom ... Eventually you can tweak a lot of things to your liking and things will be fixed. But yeah. It will take a while ... The iPad is the extreme opposite, and has all the corresponding pros and cons. For me, with a wife and kid also on iPad, it's mostly pros for sure. But as a programmer, sometimes not so much.

I sometimes use Sketch Ink, which I think is similar to Mischief? (vector based) It's not on the iTunes store it seems.

By the way, right now for all my icons (buttons etc.) in my apps I'm using combinations of FontAwesome (for WPF version) and Emoji and Seqoe MDL 2 Assets fonts, so at least those scale perfectly. Trying to stay away from using a bitmap ever again if I have the choice!

 

[zed]

MS have finally fixed the high DPI problem, for a few days I had the following

where icons would be the right size, but everything was just in the wrong place, so I could see they realized an issue and they were making progress and now finally since a couple of days I can start windows and don't have to first log out and then log in again [huzzah]

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

How do you get W10 to turn off external usb harddrives? I got emby and kodi running on my nuc with a usb disk as storage. The nuc is fairly silent but at night I can hear the hdd spinning. I want W10 to turn it off. The usual power options don't seem to work (usb is set to something like turn off after 20 minutes or whatever the default setting is).

 

[orangpelupa]

How do you get W10 to turn off external usb harddrives? I got emby and kodi running on my nuc with a usb disk as storage. The nuc is fairly silent but at night I can hear the hdd spinning. I want W10 to turn it off. The usual power options don't seem to work (usb is set to something like turn off after 20 minutes or whatever the default setting is).

Hmm combine the USB sleep with hdd turn off time?

I'm shooting in the dark here

 

[BRiT]

How do you get W10 to turn off external usb harddrives? I got emby and kodi running on my nuc with a usb disk as storage. The nuc is fairly silent but at night I can hear the hdd spinning. I want W10 to turn it off. The usual power options don't seem to work (usb is set to something like turn off after 20 minutes or whatever the default setting is).

If it was Linux you'd use hdparm tool to set the standby and sleep timers. However not all external enclosures and controllers are as feature rich as internal drives, so that might play a difference as well. There are WinOS versions of hdparm and smart utils.

 

[orangpelupa]

If it was Linux you'd use hdparm tool to set the standby and sleep timers. However not all external enclosures and controllers are as feature rich as internal drives, so that might play a difference as well. There are WinOS versions of hdparm and smart utils.

My huge wdc external hdd that's now dead can sleep and can be forced to be alive using the windows power option.

On the other hand, I have never heard my slim external hdd spins up and down.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

How do you get W10 to turn off external usb harddrives? I got emby and kodi running on my nuc with a usb disk as storage. The nuc is fairly silent but at night I can hear the hdd spinning. I want W10 to turn it off. The usual power options don't seem to work (usb is set to something like turn off after 20 minutes or whatever the default setting is).

It's not entirely within the control of Windows. I have a USB drive hooked up to my system 24/7. The external HDD will go to sleep relatively quickly and stay asleep until I wake it. I used to have another one that would randomly wake up (can't remember the make). My current external is one of the Hitachi Touro external drives.

Unless you have something accessing the HDD regularly Windows shouldn't be waking it up once it goes to sleep. Although if Windows is set to backup the contents of the drive or set to backup contents on your computer to the drive it'll wake it up at the scheduled time.

It might also be possible for Windows to wake it up occasionally, if for some reason you have Windows set to index your external USB drive (it shouldn't do that by default).

Regards,
SB

 

[Davros]

Does win 10 staill have that "cant deal with more than 512 shortcuts on the start menu" bug ?