Back to the future, part 8.1

I’ve spent the last two days setting up my main workstation with Windows 8.1 Pro. I’m on holidays, which shows how much I detested Windows 10. I used it for five months. Some things were an improvement, but even more things were worse.

Let me count the ways:

  • The start menu is completely unreliable.
  • AMD video card drivers crash frequently. (More than they did on Windows 8.1, anyway.)
  • The transparent window borders are just plain annoying to me; applications don’t line up properly.
  • File Explorer Quick Access is terrible and nowhere near as good as Windows 7 and 8 Favourites.
  • They made a mess of VPN connections; they can’t be searched or sorted.
  • The only way to stop Automatic Updates is to edit a local Group Policy, and this only works if you have the Enterprise edition.
  • The new calculator is too slow to start.
  • OneDrive integration is worse than in 8.1.
  • Winamp doesn’t work!

Microsoft has boasted about how many people have upgraded to Windows 10. I wonder if anyone at Microsoft is compiling statistics for PCs that  had Windows 10 and now don’t.

And thanks to the brilliant GWX Control Panel, I won’t be nagged to upgrade to Windows 10 anymore.