Folders return to Windows 10's Start Thing • The Register Forums

Friday 30th December 2016 16:11 GMT bazza

Unbelievable

All those wasted, fruitless and ruinous years of shoving the PC industry down the tubes with comical, immature user interfaces that no one on the entire planet wanted. They'd already got what had to be one of the best desktop UIs (Win7) ever. If it's coming back, it feels like it's doing so through shear osmotic pressure rather than any kind of coherent plan. Whatever next - Aero? Carousel?

Sigh....

If they did something now that had Window 7's UI, none of that advertising / snooping nonsense that is the final ruin of Windows 10, and a tabbed Windows Explorer, I'd happily pay £100 for it.

83 1 Reply
1. Friday 30th December 2016 16:14 GMT Will Godfrey
  
  Re: Unbelievable
  
  Risky.
  
  As soon as they got your money. They'd do a hidden forced update that removed everything you wanted.
  
  66 2 Reply
  1. Saturday 31st December 2016 14:43 GMT Updraft102
    
    Re: Unbelievable
    
    The removal of forced updates would have to be another feature they'd add back in as well.
    
    7 0 Reply
2. Friday 30th December 2016 17:52 GMT GrapeBunch
  
  Re: Unbelievable
  
  If they did something now that had Window 7's UI, none of that advertising / snooping nonsense that is the final ruin of Windows 10, and a tabbed Windows Explorer, I'd happily pay £100 for it.
  
  You already have it. It's called Windows 7. And you might have paid 100 quid for it. Except for the tabbed Explorer. I use xplorer2, which isn't tabbed, but has two panes and is very sweet. But I believe there is a tabbed and free equivalent. Or three.
  
  PS: Windows 7 is far from perfect. Because Moore, they've had to take one step forward and two steps back with each OS iteration in order to incentivate you to buy the next OS. Can you imagine Windows 95 going at the speed of today's hardware? It could be argued that the best thing about 10 is that the new model frees them from that warped hamster wheel so they can give us "The OS We Always Wanted To Give You". Registered Trade Mark, ha ha.
  
  10 5 Reply
  1. This post has been deleted by its author
    1. Friday 30th December 2016 21:06 GMT Danny 14
      
      Re: Can you imagine Windows 95 going at the speed of today's hardware?
      
      I remember going from 98 to 2k and marvelling at the lack of crashes. I also remember server 2k being utter lightyears better than nt4. XP was even better and 2003 was brilliant. Then came vista (although server 2008 was fine)
      
      10 2 Reply
      1. This post has been deleted by its author
        
        Friday 30th December 2016 23:21 GMT druck
        
        Re: Can you imagine Windows 95 going at the speed of today's hardware?
        
        Def wrote:
        I hated the Walt Disney UI of XP,
        Disney would be less infantile, XP is Telly Tubby land, and no mistake.
        
        16 0 Reply
        
        Saturday 31st December 2016 01:07 GMT Anonymous Coward
        
        Re: Can you imagine Windows 95 going at the speed of today's hardware?
        
        Yeah, but it worked and you could get to any program on there quickly without having to remember what it was called. And it didn't try to sell you stuff or divert you to some crappy store.
        
        21 0 Reply
        
        Saturday 31st December 2016 17:57 GMT Nolveys
        
        Re: Can you imagine Windows 95 going at the speed of today's hardware?
        
        XP is Telly Tubby land
        
        I guess that would make Windows 10 equivalent to Wonder Shozen.
        
        4 0 Reply
        
        Saturday 31st December 2016 22:36 GMT Anonymous Coward
        
        Re: Can you imagine Windows 95 going at the speed of today's hardware?
        
        It occurred to me that I may have seemed to disapprove of Explorer++ earlier on in the thread, but that is not the case...it does crash periodically -for me, anyway hence the warning- but it's way better than the native W7 explorer because you are definitely in the tree window or the file window (in the default view). Deleting your My Documents folder with the W7 one because you thought you had a file highlighted in the other pane is the sort of thing you only do once and then look for another solution.
        
        I would recommend it and the tabs are very useful. It is a bit delicate, and doesn't adapt well to clicking impatiently between folders containing 100K+ files and being told to "come on you fucking pansy, display the bastard"; but I have not been able to ascertain whether it's the abuse or the sheer volume of data that's causing the revolt.
        
        2 0 Reply
        
        Sunday 1st January 2017 23:16 GMT Anonymous Coward
        
        Re: Can you imagine Windows 95 going at the speed of today's hardware?
        
        At least with XP you could customize the UI. I used the "Zune" theme that despite its name was good enough (black, smaller title bars, maybe the orange color used was not ideal, but didn't look too bad either).
        
        Now Nadella decided you shall never tailor the interface to your tastes and needs. He knows better. All Windows user must share the same dull flat pastel UI design, because the web dictated it, and you need to be part of the collective. Originality is not welcome.
        
        5 0 Reply
        
        Saturday 31st December 2016 13:00 GMT RandomFactor
        
        Re: Can you imagine Windows 95 going at the speed of today's hardware?
        
        "I seem to recall 98SE could run for about a week at a time before needing a reboot. (At least, that's roughly how often I rebooted my machines at work.)"
        
        Interesting tidbit - the actual limit in 95 and 98 was 49.7 days at which point it would lock up regardless. They fixed it in 98SE I think. Not that anyone realistically approached that limit due to the system becoming angsty and crash prone within a week or so anyway.
        
        Nowadays my Windows machines run until patch forced reboots.
        
        5 0 Reply
        
        Saturday 25th March 2017 07:55 GMT herman
        
        Re: Can you imagine Windows 95 going at the speed of today's hardware?
        
        "Nowadays my Windows machines run until patch forced reboots." which is still much less than 49 days. I had multiple *nix servers run for more than 4 years, without ever rebooting - they eventually had HW failures, so they literally never rebooted.
        
        0 0 Reply
        
        Saturday 31st December 2016 14:06 GMT Sorry that handle is already taken.
        
        Re: "I hated the Walt Disney UI of XP"
        
        net stop themes
        
        2 0 Reply
        
        Saturday 31st December 2016 14:57 GMT Updraft102
        
        Re: Can you imagine Windows 95 going at the speed of today's hardware?
        
        "I stuck with Win2K all the way through to 7. I hated the Walt Disney UI of XP,"
        
        And the ten seconds it takes to deselect Luna after an XP installation and go back to the same UI of 2k was too much?
        
        10 1 Reply
        
        Tuesday 3rd January 2017 20:45 GMT Anonymous Coward
        
        Re: Can you imagine Windows 95 going at the speed of today's hardware?
        
        We've a machine in a concrete lab that runs 98 and has been running the best art of a year. Every time we power cycle it's a lottery that it will start.. (we have backed it up to a CF based IDE interface hard drive...)
        
        As it has no USB, no internet its message at the start saying that we've not updated the virus definitions for 4500+ days is quite endearing...
        
        2 0 Reply
      2. Saturday 31st December 2016 09:58 GMT Christian Berger
        
        Re: Can you imagine Windows 95 going at the speed of today's hardware?
        
        Well a Win2k or XP with all the security bugs removed would be great. Unfortunately for some reason Microsoft refuses to fix the bugs.
        
        It's an unfortunate trend, that software now seems to remove more and more useful functionality, but still gets bigger and bigger.
        
        10 0 Reply
        
        Monday 2nd January 2017 18:13 GMT kain preacher
        
        Re: Can you imagine Windows 95 going at the speed of today's hardware?
        
        The reason why the gave for NT 4.0 is that it would require a rewrite of the kernel. W2k said it would break the TCP/IP stack
        
        0 0 Reply
    2. Saturday 31st December 2016 08:15 GMT bombastic bob
      
      Re: Can you imagine Windows 95 going at the speed of today's hardware?
      
      you know, 7 works just fine on a 10 year old laptop. thing is, the software that RUNS on 7 is just as piggy as evar... (like devstudio, for one)
      
      I had FreeBSD running on that same machine, at one time. It ran fine as well. The gnome 2 desktop does well enough on the older hardware, *WITH* nice 3D skeuomorphic appearance (the way 7 is). That laptop came with XP on it [also worked well].
      
      So _WHY_ do we need Win-10-nic ???
      
      6 2 Reply
  2. Saturday 31st December 2016 09:37 GMT Doctor Syntax
    
    Re: Unbelievable
    
    "Can you imagine Windows 95 going at the speed of today's hardware?"
    
    KDE
    
    10 1 Reply
    1. Saturday 31st December 2016 14:31 GMT Anonymous Coward
      
      Re: Unbelievable
      
      Didn't like KDE 4 but then found Trinity TDE fork of KDE 3
      
      3 0 Reply
      1. Tuesday 3rd January 2017 12:30 GMT Eddy42
        
        Re: Unbelievable
        
        Is it me or would the forced update that brings the removal of forced updates be THE ONLY forced update we would all embrace?
        
        I bet someone would sue when they got malware from freemovies.com claiming the OS should have patched itself. I don't think we're going to win this one now.
        
        0 0 Reply
    2. Sunday 1st January 2017 00:40 GMT Anonymous Coward
      
      Re: Unbelievable
      
      @Doctor Syntax - Xfce
      
      2 0 Reply
      1. Sunday 1st January 2017 01:08 GMT Doctor Syntax
        
        Re: Unbelievable
        
        "@Doctor Syntax - Xfce"
        
        Sort of OK but somehow I always find myself replacing it with KDE. Unless they've changed it Xfce seems to have its own opinion about where icons sit on the desktop and it doesn't always agree with mine.
        
        0 0 Reply
      2. Sunday 1st January 2017 12:51 GMT Anonymous Coward
        
        Re: Unbelievable
        
        @Esme & @Doctor Syntax
        
        Ok ill referee here. XFCE wins vs KDE.
        
        To me at least, KDE just looks and feels a bit naff out of the box.
        
        That said, I use Gnome3 so what do I know?
        
        I also find Gnome3 scales up to 4K better.
        
        0 2 Reply
        
        Tuesday 3rd January 2017 17:23 GMT Anonymous Coward
        
        Re: Unbelievable
        
        Ok ill referee here. XFCE wins vs KDE.
        
        Just try XKCD Linux.
        
        1 0 Reply
    3. Monday 2nd January 2017 10:27 GMT Not That Andrew
      
      Re: Unbelievable
      
      ""Can you imagine Windows 95 going at the speed of today's hardware?"
      
      KDE"
      
      Trinity, you mean. Modern KDE is slightly bloated compared to KDE 3, although slightly more usable IMO.
      
      1 0 Reply
    4. Tuesday 3rd January 2017 12:28 GMT The Real Tony Smith
      
      Re: Unbelievable
      
      >>Re: Unbelievable
      
      >>
      
      >>"Can you imagine Windows 95 going at the speed of today's hardware?"
      
      >KDE
      
      Try KDE-3, now known as Trinity Desktop Environment
      
      https://www.trinitydesktop.org/
      
      0 0 Reply
  3. Monday 2nd January 2017 21:15 GMT drouel
    
    Re: Unbelievable
    
    wow so stuck in the past you guys are incredible. I think I know what your issue is with the UI, windows 7 was made for you! it is true in many cases its hard for an old dog to learn new tricks, but hey, power shell isn't exactly new now is it. its a point and click interface no matter how you make it look. you can even teach corona a few things. to make your computing life easier. voice commands while reading the news for example
    
    1 12 Reply
  4. Monday 2nd January 2017 22:47 GMT david 12
    
    Re: Unbelievable
    
    Just dropped by to remember that "Windows" had tabbed browsing. The put the tabs along the bottom of the screen. It was an active desktop / iOS / Android kind of idea, where the web browser was the desktop, and is the window.
    
    The idea wasn't successsful, because people wanted multiple windows on the desktop, and using a single menu frame for all windows isn't effective. People liked having the tabs and everything else on the application window, not on the desktop window.
    
    MS had a really good desktop gui design in Win95, but for whatever reason they've always been torn between providing what their clients wanted, and providing what their internal programmers and designers wanted. The idea of putting all the browser tabs at the bottom of the screen window cleans up the desktop, makes the browser frames cleaner. It's an inportant aspect of touch-pad design, and it's the same thinking that lead to the edge browser ui, and the unloved visual studio 2012 skin.
    
    0 0 Reply
  5. Tuesday 3rd January 2017 15:09 GMT Luiz Abdala
    
    Re: Unbelievable
    
    2x Explorer Z1 still works perfectly on Windows 7. Totally free on the CNET repository.
    
    0 0 Reply
3. Friday 30th December 2016 19:52 GMT A Non e-mouse
  
  Re: Unbelievable
  
  If it's coming back, it feels like it's doing so through shear osmotic pressure rather than any kind of coherent plan. Whatever next - Aero? Carousel?
  
  Clippy
  
  28 0 Reply
  1. Friday 30th December 2016 20:19 GMT Anonymous Coward
    
    Re: Unbelievable
    
    Explorer++ - Crashes periodically (for me...YMMV), but is free and has tabs.
    
    2 0 Reply
  2. Friday 30th December 2016 21:15 GMT bazza
    
    Re: Unbelievable
    
    "Clippy"
    
    AAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHHH!
    
    </livinginfear>
    
    No. Not even MS could be that mad. Ooops, perhaps that'd have been better unsaid, lest they get an idea...
    
    10 0 Reply
    1. Friday 30th December 2016 22:24 GMT Andy Non
      
      Re: Unbelievable
      
      "Clippy"
      
      AAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHHH!
      
      </livinginfear>
      
      It looks like you are having a heart attack. Would you like me to help you with that?
      
      44 0 Reply
    2. This post has been deleted by its author
  3. Saturday 31st December 2016 08:19 GMT Old Handle
    
    Re: Unbelievable
    
    You realized they did bring clippy back, in a sense, right? I mean, I have no first-hand experience whether Cortana is as annoying, but on some level it's the same concept.
    
    13 0 Reply
  4. Saturday 31st December 2016 08:34 GMT John H Woods
    
    Re: Clippy
    
    Bob
    
    3 0 Reply
    1. Saturday 25th March 2017 07:51 GMT herman
      
      Re: Clippy
      
      Just for shitz and giggles I installed MS Bob in a VM some time ago. It was hilariously useless.
      
      0 0 Reply
  5. Saturday 31st December 2016 12:55 GMT Anonymous Coward
    
    Re: Unbelievable
    
    Except now Clippy is a hipster - 'are you sure you meant to use fonts and not artisanal squid ink?' etc
    
    7 0 Reply
  6. Saturday 31st December 2016 14:48 GMT Updraft102
    
    Re: Unbelievable
    
    "Clippy"
    
    I've read several reports of people being "reminded" that Edge is more thrifty with power and more secure when people have installed or used (I don't know the details; I gave up on 10 a long time ago) other browsers in Windows 10.
    
    "It looks like you're trying to install Chrome. Would you like some information about why you should use Edge instead?"
    
    (user looks for the NO button, but finds it's as much missing as the Cancel button was on GWX.)
    
    "Okay! I'll take that as a YES. Here's that information you wanted."
    
    5 1 Reply
  7. Sunday 1st January 2017 13:26 GMT N2
    
    Re: Unbelievable
    
    If it's coming back, it feels like it's doing so through shear osmotic pressure rather than any kind of coherent plan. Whatever next - Aero? Carousel?
    
    Bob?
    
    1 0 Reply
4. Friday 30th December 2016 22:13 GMT TVU
  
  Re: Unbelievable
  
  "If they did something now that had Window 7's UI, none of that advertising / snooping nonsense that is the final ruin of Windows 10, and a tabbed Windows Explorer, I'd happily pay £100 for it."
  
  I agree - the Win 10 interface is still cluttered and my recommendation to civilise it is to install Start10 which is available at small cost.
  
  4 2 Reply
  1. Sunday 1st January 2017 01:20 GMT RegGuy1
    
    install Start10 which is available at small cost.
    
    FFS, no!
    
    Don't you see? By sucking up to M$ you are moving into the pay for everything world?
    
    Just format the hard disk and remove the virus. Then put on Linux. it's free. Works everywhere, and gives you everything you need WITHOUT having to pay a penny.
    
    Of course if you have more money than sense...
    
    Oh, and Happy New Year, even to Windows users.
    
    13 11 Reply
    1. Tuesday 3rd January 2017 12:23 GMT MrKrotos
      
      Re: install Start10 which is available at small cost.
      
      "FFS, no!
      
      Don't you see? By sucking up to M$ you are moving into the pay for everything world?
      
      Just format the hard disk and remove the virus. Then put on Linux. it's free. Works everywhere, and gives you everything you need WITHOUT having to pay a penny.
      
      Of course if you have more money than sense...
      
      Oh, and Happy New Year, even to Windows users."
      
      Oh really? Then you wont mind posting a link to your FREE software to run an enterprise email system then? Yeah thought not!
      
      Or maybe a 1 page step-by-step guide on installing "Linux" (all dists) seing as its so easy install?
      
      Because Linux installs on everything with no issues at all! Lol yeah right!
      
      2 2 Reply
      1. Tuesday 3rd January 2017 12:52 GMT Eddy42
        
        Re: install Start10 which is available at small cost.
        
        Re: Oh really? Then you wont mind posting a link to your FREE software to run an enterprise email system then? Yeah thought not!
        
        There are many free mail systems for Linux/*Nix which are suitable for Enterprise. I think you may be thinking of a PIM like Outlook (including calendaring and all that stuff). All of this stuff can be done in Linux but not necessarily in one application. I find this is better as I can pick and choose the right tool for the job. MS Outlook has been THE ONLY reason Enterprise hasn't moved to Open Source solutions - because no one dares investigate other options - soon it will all be Cloud and people won't know whether it's linix/windoze or whatever - why do you think Microsoft has rushed to support Linux on Azure?
        
        Re: Or maybe a 1 page step-by-step guide on installing "Linux" (all dists) seing as its so easy install?
        
        Because Linux installs on everything with no issues at all! Lol yeah right!
        
        The rule of thumb is this - if you can't install Linux off a Live CD and click Install, then you shouldn't be installing an OS at all. Go and buy an Android tablet. Don't come complaining that all that extra functionality and freedom in Linux is overly complicated because you've been weaned on an operating system that held your hand all the way and forced it's way on you. I like Windows, it's a nice operating system for some things (e.g. playing games - let's face it my Windows PC is just an Xbox One now with a file manager) - but you shouldn't discount the most reliable platform in the X86 world just because you don't understand it. Why people use Windows as a Server OS is beyond me...
        
        2 1 Reply
        
        This post has been deleted by its author
      2. Saturday 25th March 2017 08:02 GMT herman
        
        Re: install Start10 which is available at small cost.
        
        SME Server for one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SME_Server
        
        If you cannot install that one, then you should have your geek card confiscated.
        
        0 0 Reply
5. Saturday 31st December 2016 12:53 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  Re: Unbelievable
  
  I don't actually mind the 'flat' style / look of W10. But you're right, all any of us 'wanted' was a refresh of stuff that works, not surgical and pointless excision of things everyone uses to Get Stuff Done.
  
  11 1 Reply