Windows 10 has killed this job for me.

[gshaw]

We removed a lot of the cruft UWP apps because they affect initial login speeds (the more apps that have to be provisioned per-user at login, the slower that login becomes)

 

Struck a balance between keeping the more useful ones (extending to the likes of Mixed Reality Viewer as we do run 3D modelling in our courses) but removed the garbage that has no place on any business network (Candy Crush, Xbox Games etc.)

 

1709 seems to be the most stable \ feature rich supported release from what I've seen. We benefit from the additional security features and OneDrive integration but avoided the 1803 \ 1809 show-stopper bugs. Glad MS brought out the longer support window for 1709 recently as that means we can keep it for another year or so before picking the next jump, which I guess will be the patched & fixed version of 1809.

[MartinT]

I dont want them to use the Mail App, just to use your example, it is rubbish and they should be using their dedicated mail systems supplied

I use the Mail app for my personal outlook.com account. What's wrong with it? Works perfectly fine for me.

[rosslaing]

I use the Mail app for my personal outlook.com account. What's wrong with it? Works perfectly fine for me.

 

It works for what it was meant to be used for, personal mail which I use it for on my own laptop at home, but from a corporate perspective(The staff use a Corporate email system separate to the pupils) it is very basic. I myself use Outlook, just a personal preference, but the staff should be using the tools provided.

[MartinT]

Oh agreed, I wasn't advocating Mail for corporate use. We use Outlook too.

[Duke5A]

Is that because it's better, or easier for them? If you're unwilling to try new things, maybe don't get a job in technology?

 

Soooo, the fact that some admins won't buy into an ecosystem that was designed from the ground up to force traditional desktop users into a rent seeking model makes us lazy and adverse to new things? You find it acceptable that a factory load of an Enterprise marketed operating system looks like a Las Vegas slot machine? Most users had a hard enough time navigating the interface before and now it jumps up and down like a jack russell terrier trying to sell you stuff. This is aside from the fact that these bi-yearly updates are essentially compulsory major service pack releases that reinstall all of the garbage you poured days into researching and tweaking the base image that is deployed to hundreds of machines - only to find out that the in place upgrade failed on dozens of machines turning them into bricks. I kind of liked not having to reinvent the wheel with this major testing process, but every once in a while. The fact is that MS went from a snails pace in terms of product development to scene from Spaceballs where they jump to ludicrous speed. I wasn't given any additional staff to help compensate for the extra workload either. I'd be willing to bet that most here are running on a wing and a prayer it terms of support.

 

Sorry for the rant, I know it comes off as bitter. Plenty of legit reasons have been given for a large number of us moving to LTSC. It's a bit offensive to keep reading thinly veiled assertions of our laziness for not drinking the Kool-Aide in light of all we do to further our organization's goals.

[caffrey]

LTSB/LTSC/EDU/PRO seems to be very very decisive - gives another reason why that 10 is so problematic

[flyinghaggis]

@Duke5A I'd just ignore mavhc. He/she only ever seems to come on this forum to wind people up, insult them and make negative comments.

 

I guess every forum needs a resident troll!

Edited November 6, 2018 by flyinghaggis

[elsiegee40]

 

Stepping in here to remind people that we play nicely on EduGeek and to report posts that clearly aren't.

 

[localzuk]

Windows 10 is a mess, there's no question about it. It isn't about unwillingness to try new things @mavhc, as I'm sure you'd find that the majority of us love our new toys! But Windows 10 is just a badly made OS to be honest. Issues that were resolved back in Windows XP days are rearing their heads again. Every release suffers with regression bugs. Their QA is just non-existent.

 

We've rolled out Windows 10 to about 70% of our machines now, and it just isn't stable. We're seeing blue screen crashes every week - we rarely saw them with Windows 7. We're seeing software we've installed randomly uninstall itself - I've sat and watched it happen. These are not issues with my willingness to learn, they are just bugs. Poor quality control issues.

 

And Microsoft doesn't care, as they are focused on making money via their subscription stuff. Windows 10 is a means to an end, and they know most people won't jump ship, so they don't care about the quality issues.

[gshaw]

Windows 10 is a mess, there's no question about it. It isn't about unwillingness to try new things @mavhc, as I'm sure you'd find that the majority of us love our new toys! But Windows 10 is just a badly made OS to be honest. Issues that were resolved back in Windows XP days are rearing their heads again. Every release suffers with regression bugs. Their QA is just non-existent.

 

We've rolled out Windows 10 to about 70% of our machines now, and it just isn't stable. We're seeing blue screen crashes every week - we rarely saw them with Windows 7. We're seeing software we've installed randomly uninstall itself - I've sat and watched it happen. These are not issues with my willingness to learn, they are just bugs. Poor quality control issues.

 

And Microsoft doesn't care, as they are focused on making money via their subscription stuff. Windows 10 is a means to an end, and they know most people won't jump ship, so they don't care about the quality issues.

 

The regression bugs are definitely a thing, the recent case of disappearing printers confirms as much as with 1709 we had no issues early on in term but after the last Cumulative Update it started happening.

 

It's a shame the QA is so poor as the base OS itself is actually good (much faster than 7) and some of the new features in the security and cloud integration (OneDrive) areas are big improvements. However the twice-yearly updates are too much and MS can't seem to keep up with the releases in terms of supplying a quality product within a 6-month window.

 

Under Nadella MS are purely looking at Azure now, on Windows side their strategy seems to be to take over the entire ecosystem in a direct-supply model via Microsoft Managed Desktop aka "we supply the device, we supply the install and config and we supply the end-user delivery. You supply the money"

Edited November 7, 2018 by gshaw

[caffrey]

Back to thin clients again before we know it I guess, desktop will be a cloud VDI with Azure AD just like Google's chromeos model. - I'll give it a few years

[mavhc]

Windows 10 is a mess, there's no question about it. It isn't about unwillingness to try new things @mavhc, as I'm sure you'd find that the majority of us love our new toys! But Windows 10 is just a badly made OS to be honest. Issues that were resolved back in Windows XP days are rearing their heads again. Every release suffers with regression bugs. Their QA is just non-existent.

 

We've rolled out Windows 10 to about 70% of our machines now, and it just isn't stable. We're seeing blue screen crashes every week - we rarely saw them with Windows 7. We're seeing software we've installed randomly uninstall itself - I've sat and watched it happen. These are not issues with my willingness to learn, they are just bugs. Poor quality control issues.

 

And Microsoft doesn't care, as they are focused on making money via their subscription stuff. Windows 10 is a means to an end, and they know most people won't jump ship, so they don't care about the quality issues.

 

Time to join up to my Linux School project then.

 

BTW, sorry if I upset people when saying you should get a new job, wasn't referring to anyone specifically, just the general super locked down "we disabled right click" thing. Was a generic plural you.

 

What's the stop error on the bluescreens? What is Windows blaming? What software is being uninstalled? Are you testing insider builds to find the regression bugs?

[localzuk]

What's the stop error on the bluescreens? What is Windows blaming? What software is being uninstalled? Are you testing insider builds to find the regression bugs?

We see a variety of reasons for the bluescreen - but none of them have been hardware related.

 

I've seen Office uninstall, both 2016 VL edition and the Office 365 C2R install, as an example.

 

And no, we'er not testing insider builds. We are just experiencing things we've not seen for several versions!

[supportman]

Have not seen any bluescreens on the LTSB version so far.

[mavhc]

Don't think we've had any more bluescreens, or anything else really with win10 pro vs win7 pro. I just extract the wim, make a few small alterations with dism++ and put it on wds

[mikkydoos]

Windows 10 is a mess, there's no question about it. It isn't about unwillingness to try new things @mavhc, as I'm sure you'd find that the majority of us love our new toys! But Windows 10 is just a badly made OS to be honest. Issues that were resolved back in Windows XP days are rearing their heads again. Every release suffers with regression bugs. Their QA is just non-existent.

 

 

And Microsoft doesn't care, as they are focused on making money via their subscription stuff. Windows 10 is a means to an end, and they know most people won't jump ship, so they don't care about the quality issues.

 

 

Well said @localzuk

 

 

For my 2penneth.... having worked in IT for 20 odd years. I'm finding that the knowledge and experience I've built up using M$'s products; learning the workarounds and tweaks to get it right in a business/education environment are being flushed down the pan.

 

10 just doesn't work like it should. Even stupid things like having to DISM stuff into an image... like a mandatory profile. I mean come on! Even having the pain of just removing unwanted apps from a start menu is just damn stupid.

 

The FIRST thing kids are going to do when they see Minecraft in their maths lesson is to play it.

 

I hated M$ for their sh*tty products before 10, now I wish they'd burn.

 

And yes I am using LTSB... or LTSC its called now for some fecking reason. They can't even get a name right!

 

 

Big thumbs down from me!

[Sheridan]

factory load of an Enterprise marketed operating system looks like a Las Vegas slot machine

 

Best description of W10 I've seen in ages!

[mikkydoos]

Funnily, Server 2016 isn't so bad. Why dont we just run that on our desktops ??

[Sheridan]

This is a typical example of W10 - brand new surface pro I'm setting up for a personal user:

a) The drivel of cortana wittering on annoys to being with

b) Get through the setup and grind your teeth while the 'Hi...' stage completes

c) Join to wifi

d) updates fail

e) Open Store - search for the app they want, find it, go to the Sign in part, only to be told I need to be connected to the internet, er....OK

f) updates still fail

g) printer installs - and remains greyed out and offline

h) start menu hangs - the old favourite is back!

i) store still insisting I'm not on the internet, despite two browsers working Ok and the store showing me all the apps!

j) updates working, no only kidding, still failing

 

At this point I've put the thing back in the box and gone home. I wouldn't touch a surface pro now, whatever the hardware is its hampered by this dog of an OS. Imagine how a complete non techy person would feel about this crap having spent over a grand on this thing!

[mavhc]

Obviously that's not what happens to everyone, were you connecting at work with a proxy?

[gshaw]

Well said @localzuk

 

For my 2penneth.... having worked in IT for 20 odd years. I'm finding that the knowledge and experience I've built up using M$'s products; learning the workarounds and tweaks to get it right in a business/education environment are being flushed down the pan.

 

10 just doesn't work like it should. Even stupid things like having to DISM stuff into an image... like a mandatory profile. I mean come on! Even having the pain of just removing unwanted apps from a start menu is just damn stupid.

 

The FIRST thing kids are going to do when they see Minecraft in their maths lesson is to play it.

Basically with 10 you do have to break away from a lot of what you've done previously and look for new solutions to problems that didn't previously exist. For example the removing apps script, disabling telemetry & consumer experiences, deploying from an unaltered base WIM rather than a modified one (granted some people are working OK with their own captures but it seems very hit and miss depending on what you do during that manual sysprep stage)

 

You also have to drop stuff like roaming profiles and either go local profiles or UE-V otherwise experience a world of pain. The rate of change is faster but the concepts updating isn't that much different from going from XP to 7 all those years ago.

 

What is proving problematic is this constant break-fix-break again attitude to Windows Updates. What worked one day might not tomorrow off the back of a Cumulative Update you can't control (and can't really avoid deploying either due to the constant churn on security exploits these days).

 

Have to say unless MS get their act together on the QA front they'll end up handing the market to Google.

[Sheridan]

Obviously that's not what happens to everyone, were you connecting at work with a proxy?

 

Direct connection, no proxy, straight into the router!

[mikkydoos]

Basically with 10 you do have to break away from a lot of what you've done previously and look for new solutions to problems that didn't previously exist. For example the removing apps script, disabling telemetry & consumer experiences, deploying from an unaltered base WIM rather than a modified one (granted some people are working OK with their own captures but it seems very hit and miss depending on what you do during that manual sysprep stage)

 

You also have to drop stuff like roaming profiles and either go local profiles or UE-V otherwise experience a world of pain. The rate of change is faster but the concepts updating isn't that much different from going from XP to 7 all those years ago.

 

What is proving problematic is this constant break-fix-break again attitude to Windows Updates. What worked one day might not tomorrow off the back of a Cumulative Update you can't control (and can't really avoid deploying either due to the constant churn on security exploits these days).

 

Have to say unless MS get their act together on the QA front they'll end up handing the market to Google.

 

I'll take that. I think what you really mean though is... its sh*t!

[Lonix]

On top of this is the day to day rubbish that a techie has to do on a live system. No money, no training, rubbish pay and high expectations way beyond the senior IT tech pay grade.

Can you speak to your line manager about it?

 

This is one thing most teachers don't understand about staff like us in education. The level of training, pay and even attitude in general towards your profession is nothing compared to theirs. What happens if teachers don't do their jobs? schools can be put in special measures and students fail. For us? look at how much the NHS shutdown just down to a simple malware/virus. Nothing will change.

 

If schools care about you at a time when they had ££££, why on earth are they going to do it when the budgets are squeezed.

[gshaw]

I'll take that. I think what you really mean though is... its sh*t!

 

Any version before 1607, definitely

Any version after 1709 (so far), pretty much

Any version without the default crud cleaned out, definitely

 

With some time and effort and optimal GPOs, scripts etc. it is a good base OS and faster \ more secure than Windows 7. Frustrating really, there's a really good product in there but some very silly decisions at MS are dragging it through the mire.

 

Simple steps to getting back trust in the market...

 

1. remove the intrusive tracking \ telemetry
   
2. go to a single release per year, which would've been beta tested for 6 months after the xx03 release first previews new features
   
3. remove all the bundled crud from anything other than Home editions
   
4. reinstate internal QA teams to ensure Cumulative Updates are of sufficient quality for release
   

I think MS have partially started the climbdown by extending the support periods for 1709 etc. which seems to be an admission that the release schedule is too fast for businesses to keep up with. Perhaps just about stage managing it now?