Sunday 25 September 2016

Windows 10 - the irritation of upgrades

I was feeling quite positive about Windows 10 until the latest major update - now I just feel irritated.

Nothing bad happened, yes it lost my lock screen picture and my desktop background but everything stayed working, but irritatingly the upgrade changed some of the defaults, most irritatingly the default browser, which was switched back to Microsoft edge.

Now, edge might be a fine browser, but besides a Windows laptop I use a couple of macs, a linux machine, an android tablet and a chromebook on a regular basis, which means that I prefer a browser that is both common and syncs across all platforms.

If it wasn't for the chromebook I could use firefox, but it has to be chrome for me.

So Microsoft, I don't care how good edge is, it doesn't work for me (incidentally the same goes for Apple and the new Safari, but at least Apple don't change my defaults.)

Now, I'm an extreme case in my use of multiple platforms, but given that Windows has singularly failed to conquer the tablet space, I'm sure that there's a lot of Windows desktop users who use an ipad or an android tablet and want a common browser, all of who are going to be irritated by a forced change of default browser.

By all means ask, but don't force changes on people, it's not good marketing ...

[update 30 Sept]

... and they've changed the default for viewing pdf's from Acrobat to edge. Adobe interactive forms people. Ok I can fix it, but I've been around computers forty plus years. What does someone to whom it's really just an appliance do ?