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I wonder how much time he spends configuring his system as opposed to using it?



She.


Well, I don't know about her, but I'm spending a considerable amount of time of making my system usable as a two-in-one device (Lenovo Yoga).

Still beats the hell out of using Windows, because I can actually fix things that I don't like instead of accepting them.


Windows is quite configurable if you put the time and effort into it. Not as configurable as Linux, but it can get to about 80% of the way there (to get to 100% you need serious COM/Win32 chops).


> Windows is quite configurable if you put the time and effort into it.

The negative side is that Windows configs can't be easily replicated, meaning that you have to put time and effort into it every time you install a new OS to a new computer. Perhaps some kind of snapshot images could work, but when you add OS upgrades to the mix, it becomes a chore.


That bit can be automated, for example with PowerShell. You can export registry entries, you can copy configuration folders, it's harder but it can be done.


Windows having forced updates you can't schedule and can discard all your unsaved work (long live Sublime Text) is enough for me to want to drop it completely...

Too bad there are still so many apps I need that can only run on Windows.


"Windows having forced updates you can't schedule"

Are people that inept at using Windows? I'm not trolling you, I'm serious. In Windows 10 I configured my active hours and set a scheduled reboot time if necessary, why is this so hard?? Seriously...


IIRC you can set at most 12 contiguous hours for active hours, and that just doesn't fit for me, I was still getting automated reboots.

There are other workarounds indeed, and I found my own way to deal with it, but it's only doable with a Pro version.

I don't want to fight my OS for trivial things, and that's how I'm beginning to feel with Windows.


You should have pro for development purposes, and there you can also set 16 active hours.


When you get the little popup, your options appear to be: "ok, update now" and "ok, update at 3am". That stops a mid-day reboot, but it's useless if you want to leave your computer overnight so that it's where you left it the next day. Just because I'm not active, that doesn't mean I want my computer to restart, losing me my place! But MS doesn't seem to have realised this, doesn't let you set 24 active hours in a day, and doesn't let you defer the reboot past the next set of inactive hours.

You can try putting it into sleep mode when you leave, but... surprise! Windows seems to be able to reboot your PC in sleep mode too (don't ask me how - every Windows 10 owner I've spoken to has had this happen to them at least once though).

The only solution I've found is to hibernate at the end of each day, and then restart. Windows can't do its 3am reboot if the PC is off. (You don't need to physically unplug it.)

This has worked for me on most projects, because all I want is to get back in the next day with all my windows where I left them - but I've worked on some projects where you want to leave the computer running overnight, because you need to run a long job, or you want to soak test something, or whatever.

What then? There appears to be no way to disable this stuff without some good degree of Windows IT Person skill. There appear to be multiple recommended methods, all of which seem not to work for at least some people, and all of which get undone for at least some people by at least some future updates. So this is all fine if you work a company that has a Windows IT person to look after this stuff for you, while you do your actual job - but not so much fun if you're trying to do it yourself. (And it's a total shit to test, because upgrades that need reboots don't happen every week.)

My "most hated Windows 10 features" isn't a very long list, but the enforced reboots is definitely #1.


Windows recently added the possibility to suspend updates for up to 45 (or something like that) days.


Thanks for the note. I'll (try to remember to!) take a closer look at the popup next time it pops up.

I know I'll be up to date with the revelant updates, because I've had no damn option ;)


> ...but I've worked on some projects where you want to leave the computer running overnight, because you need to run a long job, or you want to soak test something, or whatever.

Manually run the update check and install all the patches before starting the long job. Problem solved.


Dude.


If you've got good enough discipline to do it routinely, you can always just disable the updates service until you're "free" enough to let it go do it's thing for a bit, at which point you re-enable it until it's done.


It rebooted on my the other night while I was actively using it :(

Granted I was up later than normal (~2:30 AM) but that's pretty bad.


It hasn't happend to me once. You can set 16 active hours (and you really should spend the other 8 sleeping). There is also an option now to suspend updates for up to 45 days (or something like that).


You should google before you naysay.

https://github.com/jessfraz




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