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Windows 10 Review: By a Non-American

If you’ve read my last article, you’ll know that I am not happy with Windows 10. In fact, I still strongly stand behind my original statement of Windows 10 being the worst operating system I have ever used, if not the worst of all time. Yes, that means it’s even worse than Vista, which is quite an amazing feat.

That said, Windows 10 does have some nice things going for it.

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Pros

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• Clean UI that’s leagues above 8.

• Xbox integration is cool, though not all applications are streamable.

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Cons

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• Slow, unresponsive at times.
• Currently full of bugs, like unkillable processes.
• Cortana isn’t available yet, though is coming soon.
• Limited selection of Windows Store applications.
• Store applications sometimes gimped versions of main apps. (VLC is an example)
• Groove Music is full of bugs. Sometimes when you minimize the app, your music stops playing, requiring Groove to always be maximized. This clutters the desktop.
• Windows Update is forced on, which causes problems with performance, especially when playing a graphically intensive video game. It may also cause your game to freeze, and the process to become unkillable, even with Task Manager.
• Explorer.exe is no longer visible in Task Manager, but is still a running process. If Explorer.exe crashes, locks up, or becomes otherwise unresponsive, you have no way of restarting it.
• Explorer.exe is prone to locking up and crashing, and fails to restart on its own.
• Sound issues with USB devices.
• Hard Disk Usage spiking to 100% with very little disk activity. This is especially noticeable when downloading raw files, with me being unable to download them at the full rate due to unusual disk usage. Problem did not occur with Windows 7.
• Controversial privacy settings enabled by default.
• Microsoft Edge browser has poor performance with HTML5. There’s also some website incompatibilities. [Chrome vs Edge, HTML5]
• Using the search function spikes hard disk usage to 100%, slowing down everything.
• Minor CPU spikes have also occured while idling on desktop, possibly related to Windows Update.

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Score: 4/10

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Windows 10 is far, far, far from perfect, but it has some real potential. If Microsoft fixes the massive performance issues, and focuses on making the OS more reliable, Windows 10 is likely going to become one of the best operating systems of all time.

But until then, avoid Windows 10. It is more of a downgrade than an upgrade.

And yes, I am fully aware that this wasn’t an in depth review. I really just needed to write this all down, as the other reviews from supposed professionals seem to be generally positive. To be honest, I question any review that paints Windows 10 in a positive light, as it entirely goes against my own personal experiences with the operating system. Perhaps they just got lucky, or maybe I’m just very unlucky. Either way, their experiences are so vastly different to my own, I can’t help but to wonder whether or not they had some kind of cash incentive to be as positive as possible. Sure, nearly everyone is criticizing the privacy options, but that’s pretty much a given. Virtually no major review has mentioned the bugs, glitches, and the generally unusable state of Windows 10, or they try their hardest to play it off as a minor inconvenience of a new operating system. The unfortunate fact is, there is a problem. Windows 10 is a buggy, horrible mess. Just look at forums, reddit, YouTube, or wherever else you can go to find real user comments, and you’ll find that the general user is experiencing at least one major problem. Some of the problems that other users are reporting on, I’ve yet to actually experience myself. This just shows that the OS is unstable on a large group of hardware, not just exclusive to my own.

With all of my heart, I cannot recommend Windows 10 to anyone, at least not yet. While there will always be issues with a newly released operating system — I was an early adopter to Vista, so I’m speaking from experience — Windows 10 simply has too many issues to be within acceptable lines. Performance, major software bugs, unstable programs. Alone, it’s an inconvenience that can be overlooked, but Windows 10 has it all. Performance issues, software bugs, unstable programs and functions. When you combine that all together, you’re left with something that just feels incomplete, and more of a downgrade, than a proper upgrade.


What are your experiences with Windows 10? Have you encountered any annoying bugs or glitches? Do you regret upgrading? Let me know in the comments.