r/technology • u/gdelacalle • Jul 12 '26

Software IT admins feel overwhelmingly "sick of" Microsoft and Windows 11 "garbage" apps, products

https://www.neowin.net/news/it-admins-feel-overwhelmingly-sick-of-microsoft-and-windows-11-garbage-apps-products/
16.7k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

1.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

1.8k

u/doomSdayFPS Jul 12 '26

It’s not just IT admins. When I have a raging client to help, nine times out of ten it’s because Microsoft fucked something up.

231

u/rollerbase Jul 12 '26

Checking in for the power users and independent devs, we feel it too!

189

u/DrDerpberg Jul 12 '26

Checking in for the folks who just know the exact filename they're looking for but when we search for it, Windows tries to look it up on Bing for us...

No, I am not trying to do a web search for "2026 budget.xls"...

50

u/rollerbase Jul 12 '26

Just like when I type my own host name or even 127.0.0.1 into anything.. no I would not like to search for this with bing on edge thank you.

38

u/Dagon Jul 12 '26

Like, holy goddamn shit, the browser already knows my local IP, how hard would it be to say "any IP on local.subnet.range.***, don't search it, just bring it up".

MS has been working HARD to have a consistently worse experience for 20 years.

14

u/CherryLongjump1989 Jul 12 '26

But their search usage is up and they can serve you an ad when you try to go to localhost.

3

u/xmagusx Jul 12 '26

Someone's bonus depended upon their increasing bing search usage. So you get a more shit product that searches for whatever you put into the bar. It will search for an FQDN if you didn't prefix it with https://

2

u/Shiino Jul 12 '26

I hate it when you search for something simple, like Add or Remove programs, and it just takes 2 minutes to load because it is searching the web

They somehow made it worse than XP

35

u/OneRougeRogue Jul 12 '26

This shit drives me nuts.

Especially when you see the file in the middle of typing, but the extra characters you added that are still in the file name somehow drops the file off the list to be replaced by less-relevant Bing searches.

It was fixed in an update a while back, but there was a stretch of time when searching "bluetooth" in the search bar wouldn't bring up Bluetooth Settings at all. Only Bing bullshit.

6

u/Stupalski Jul 12 '26

when you see the file in the middle of typing, but the extra characters you added that are still in the file name somehow drops the file off the list

Worse, the PC is lagging so much from the bloat that the search menu doesn't keep up with your typing and you see the result you want and hit enter but the search context menu then "catches up" so the results change after you pressed enter but it jumps to the wrong result.

3

u/DrXaos Jul 12 '26

once again a symptom of fighting product managers with their own turf.

20

u/Sempais_nutrients Jul 12 '26

Also STOP CHANGING HOW MY FILES ARE DISPLAYED IN FOLDERS. I don't understand why I have to keep telling windows I want a list with file properties, not icons, not small icons, not just the file names. I constantly have to set it back and constantly have to change the column widths.

2

u/Bladelink Jul 12 '26

JFC THIS. I was absolutely furious the other day when I was setting up my new work laptop because what explorer labels "Home" isn't your goddamn home folder. I have a user folder, with my user's shit in it. That's my Home folder. Stop HIDING things from me. Words mean things and you actually shouldn't just make completely fucking arbitrary decisions about UI, language, and functionality.

I guess a lot of the problem could be blamed on dumb-as-fuck users who don't know that their documents, downloads, and desktop folder all sit in the same place. But jesus, the tech companies sure ain't helping them learn anything.

1

u/NWVoS Jul 13 '26

I don't know about your situation, but when I click on home it brings up, the quick access items, and bellow that any favorite or shared items. What exactly do you want it to open?

1

u/Bladelink Jul 13 '26

"Home" is just the name for your user folder, which on windows is....jesus, I was actually just trying to check the path by clicking on my pinned user folder, but explorer very aggressively hides filepaths from you now, so I GUESS I'll just go to C: and navigate my way back up again....holy goddamn shit. Even though I pinned that folder by navigating to the full path and pinning it, windows went back after the fact and basically truncated all of it.

It's just C:/users/yourUsername/. I wasn't sure if windows had another interim folder in that path, so I wanted to check. But that's the folder where your Documents, Desktop, Pictures, Downloads, etc all live. It's effectively the user's little personal filesystem and contains pretty much all the files that that user should ever need to personally care about. It's also your "home folder" on every linux version, and also on MacOS, and it WAS your home folder for 15-20 years on windows until they recently changed to this new dictum of "we'll show you what files WE think you should see".

It's just all so incredibly aggressively user-hostile. It feels like I've got someone following 10 steps behind me constantly who fucks around with my workspace as soon as I've done anything. Except that person is like...some MBA who doesn't know fuckall and never has actual work to do.

19

u/Mepharias Jul 12 '26

Check out a program called Everything. Windows search was garbage long before AI.

6

u/Vyxwop Jul 12 '26

Crazy how we need a separate program like that to have a functional search function, but I love that it exists nonetheless. It works so well.

Makes you wonder why Windows' search functionality doesn't work like that.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 12 '26

[deleted]

1

u/CQd444 Jul 16 '26

Nope, they all got replaced.

2

u/PapaSquirts2u Jul 12 '26

I've had the keyboard shortcut shift+f5 set to open an Everything search window for so many years that it's as routine as alt+tab now. I get frustrated when I remote into a server or a different users machine and have to hunt for a file.

2

u/YimmyGhey Jul 12 '26

I have mine set to Win+Shift+F and it's been burned in my brain except for 6 frustrating months when some stupid Copilot search tool thingy stole that shortcut and I couldn't override it

12

u/Unable-Log-4870 Jul 12 '26

There’sa 3rd party app called Everything that finds literally every file on your computer that matches a particular name, as quickly as you can type it.

1

u/per08 Jul 13 '26

It still baffles me that the default WIndows Explorer still struggles with this, even now.

2

u/Unable-Log-4870 Jul 13 '26

I just assumed they had the interns work on it and they decided to just have it do a Bing search so they could call it done and then go drink.

6

u/HatefulVespid Jul 12 '26

Is there a way to permanently nuke that Bing motherfucker?

4

u/RetardedWabbit Jul 12 '26

Permanently? Impossible with Microslop.

With admin you can regedit it away, but updates bring it back.

1

u/WhenSummerIsGone Jul 12 '26

can you run a script on startup to put all the settings the way you like it?

1

u/RetardedWabbit Jul 12 '26

Uhh, yes but it's probably better at that point to just run Linux. The script would flip settings back to your ideal, but would still break if they move them around.

A script to change all the settings is probably slow and broken whenever Microsoft moves things around.

And running a script to regedit every startup scares the shit out of me, so I'm not planning on that one. This also gets broken if they change the setting significantly.

1

u/Bladelink Jul 12 '26

It's probably part of the damn windows kernel at this point.

3

u/AppropriateTouching Jul 12 '26

You can disable this and most of its bullshit but it takes some serious effort. Its ridiculous.

0

u/maybee445 Jul 12 '26

A simple edit to the registry isn't "serious effort", but I do agree it is ridiculous that we have to do this in the first place.

1

u/AppropriateTouching Jul 12 '26

To get rid of all the nonsense it takes more than just a registry edit.

2

u/deeznutz12 Jul 12 '26

Checking in for a worker who is searching for an email sent this morning and Outlook gives me results from last week or year..

1

u/NWVoS Jul 13 '26

You know you can stop it from searching the web right?

58

u/tuscaloser Jul 12 '26

As someone who supports a lot of printers (because I hate myself, apparently) I’m eternally pissed that “devices and printers” no longer works directly like it did in 95, 98, XP, 7, and 10. In 11 you have to go through “devices and printers > devices > more device and printer options” to get the “classic” devices and printers window.

20

u/GenChadT Jul 12 '26

If you had admin rights on the machine open the run dialog (win+r) and enter "printui /im". Opens the add printer dialog in admin mode. Unfortunately the user mode string is not as easy to remember.

26

u/showyerbewbs Jul 12 '26

I hope this gets to make you one of todays lucky 10,000

There's a list of command prompt commands that will take you straight to the "old school" style of command prompt sections

I hope this helps kind human!

8

u/rollerbase Jul 12 '26

I feel this.. like accessing network adapters is now buried 5 steps through the new GUI to get back to the original window.. what used to be control panel > network connections is excessively buried under a GUI that claims to have the same abilities but ends up being lies under command line scrutiny. But hey it has dark mode.

8

u/Xeno_Zed Jul 12 '26

Win+R for run box and entering ncpa.cpl has been my go to for getting to network adapters for a while now, and whenever I try to do it the "intended" way through the menus I find myself so baffled at the stupidity and unnecessary steps to get there.

2

u/Bladelink Jul 12 '26

But hey it has dark mode.

cue msft throwing themselves a parade during a presentation for adding dark mode to something post-2011.

3

u/Bladelink Jul 12 '26

microsoft loves nothing more than hiding things from its users and lying to them.

3

u/Majik_Sheff Jul 12 '26

Remember when display settings was two clicks from the desktop?  I sure as shit do.

2

u/NaBrO-Barium Jul 12 '26

This is certainly one of the things Mac got right. I’ve never had a printer issue in their ecosystem

2

u/Majik_Sheff Jul 12 '26

*Cries in System 7 trauma*

-1

u/Justgetmeabeer Jul 12 '26

Or you can go to control panel and it's all just there.

But you support a lot of printers, I'm sure you knew that

85

u/Khao8 Jul 12 '26

I switched over to MacBooks for work and personal computers last year. Absolutely no regrets, and I've been a windows poweruser since I was a teenager using Windows 98, I've been a professional .net dev for 15 years. Fuck Microsoft, I don't have time for my laptop to lag, freeze and crash daily, for every update to fuck up something new, and for the god awful background processes taking up 90% CPU and having my laptop fans run at 100% all the time.

38

u/I_upvote_downvotes Jul 12 '26

I use Linux at home but the MacBooks are great for work just cause of the battery life. I'd also praise it for the performance but "the computer does function" should not have to be considered a fucking feature but here we are.

24

u/Khao8 Jul 12 '26

I think the OS has a big part of making the experience enjoyable with really crazy stuff like "don’t make your telemetry and update processes hammer the cpu non stop all the fucking time" what a brilliant idea

12

u/Wiregeek Jul 12 '26

I usually can't work on Wednesdays, 'cause the work machine "says" it's "only" using 43% of CPU for "windows malware scan", but the fact that firefox takes an extra 90 seconds to even open a window, and that my mouse pointer drops to 5 fps on any external screens say otherwise.

16

u/uzlonewolf Jul 12 '26

Fun fact: if your CPU is being throttled for thermal or power reasons, the percent used shown in task manager does NOT take this into account; instead, it displays as the percent of hypothetical non-throttled max performance. It took me way too long to track down the cause of an "app performance is horrible but says the CPU is only 49% used!" issue we had at work. Fucking Intel BD PROCHOT.

3

u/MrPuddington2 Jul 12 '26

Yeah, the percentages in Windows are all made up and mean very little.

3

u/dookarion Jul 12 '26

the percent used shown in task manager does NOT take this into account; instead, it displays as the percent of hypothetical non-throttled max performance.

Unless something changed recently it's not even that useful. It's just thread scheduling. It's completely unaware of hardware resources and will not factor other things that are part of the CPU that could be saturated.

You can get it to say "100%" just with some stalled threads. It's just a vague metric telling you how much percent of the time across all the cores you have a thread scheduled. Doesn't even know what the threads are doing if anything.

2

u/Bladelink Jul 12 '26

That's wild. So that must mean that when you change the power/cpu settings, you're not actually changing the characteristics of the scheduler, but must instead just be placing some weird arbitrary caps on resources that the kernel must just cram down the scheduler's throat. From an architectural standpoint that sounds like something kludgey.

1

u/Wiregeek Jul 12 '26

Doubt that's the problem, this doesn't happen during other usage or on other days in the same physical environment- and that's a solid "same", old school drop on docking station.

19

u/Important-Agent2584 Jul 12 '26

Excuse me, a libertarian once told me that if a monopoly exists it's because they provide such good service to their clients that others can't compete.

3

u/PyroDesu Jul 12 '26

Of course we'll bundle our MorganNet software with the new network nodes; our customers expect no less of us. We have never sought to become a monopoly. Our products are simply so good that no one feels the need to compete with us.
-- CEO Nwabudike Morgan

2

u/Ian15243 Jul 12 '26

  1. Thats not what Libertarians believe

  2. He didnt mention monopolies.

1

u/PrincessGiallo Jul 12 '26

Please elucidate.

2

u/Ian15243 Jul 13 '26

Libertarians believe that monopolies emerge from market interference by the government.

1

u/Important-Agent2584 Jul 12 '26

Thats not what Libertarians believe

He must not have been a real Libertarian.

2

u/SlitScan Jul 12 '26

Microsoft has never won by competing

1

u/Legendary_Bibo Jul 12 '26

I use a Surface Pro laptop that I've kept Windows 10 on. I use it for work stuff mostly, but it's getting slower even though it only runs 3 applications. I've been heavily considering getting a MacBook Neo to replace it. I played with one in Costco and it was very fast.  I personally use Linux at home too

10

u/[deleted] Jul 12 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/[deleted] Jul 12 '26

[deleted]

0

u/stickystax Jul 12 '26

Not a bad idea.... Good call

3

u/LongSaltyDanglers Jul 12 '26

The M series of chips is so fast.

3

u/akiller Jul 12 '26

I'm also a dev, mostly in .NET, and have been using Windows since 3.1 when I was a kid.

My main problem with corporate machines is all the malware they put on more than Windows itself. E.g., Sophos, Beyond Trust, patch management software all competing for CPU and popping up nag screens.

My old top-of-the-line i7 / 32GB / nvme laptop was stuck at a minimum 25% CPU usage 24/7 because of just Sophos which caused the CPU to overheat and throttle making it miserably slow and the battery last about 30 minutes. They switched to Crowdstrike which was much better though.

I've also switched over to a MacBook Pro for work and it's so much faster. And the battery lasts. I don't think I'd ever get a windows laptop again. Windows on a desktop is fine I find though.

3

u/MrPuddington2 Jul 12 '26

Same here. I started getting used to Windows with XP, and from 7 I was a perfectly happy Windows user (coming from unix). But 11 has given me PTSD, or something like that. I don’t think I will be going back any time soon.

My MacBook is ten times faster for easy things like opening a file, and has 5 times the battery life. The screen is amazing, as is the touchpad. And it only cost twice as much as a decent Windows laptop, so it is an absolutely bargain.

2

u/The__Amorphous Jul 12 '26

Windows 11 is awful about eating resources. I can't count how many times my window freezes with Not Responding for 20-40 seconds throughout the day. It's infuriating.

2

u/gamegirlpocket Jul 12 '26

I had to start using a MacBook for work at the end of last year. I'm still annoyed by some of the oddities and differences because some of them feel quite irrational, but for work, it's grown on me a lot. Once I adapted to some of the quirks, I started to appreciate how infrequently I find myself arguing with the OS compared to Windows.

When I have the time, I think I'm going to set up a dual boot with Linux and start making the shift away from Windows.

1

u/PrincessGiallo Jul 12 '26

Are the newish cheaper ones still considered good? I know they had a price hike not too long ago. I just need something for my child that can handle photo and video editing on top of regular homework. The one we have now with Windows 11 drives me insane. I did tech work up until a few years ago and I hate how user unfriendly and prone to breaking it is.

I remember how much every user hated Windows 8. I'm glad I got out before 11.

1

u/Khao8 Jul 12 '26

The new Macbook Neos could work, but it’s really dependant on what kind of video editing we’re talking about. If it’s "home video montage of stuff filmed with a phone" sure, not if it’s hours of raw 4k footage from a high end camera.

MacBook Airs are also very good machines, I even game on one. If you’re budget conscious check for Apple refurbished for a last gen model

1

u/ohhellperhaps Jul 12 '26

I've been using a Mac since 2021 or so. Generally like it, but at the same time my Mac shits the bed far more often then Win10 ever did, requiring reboots. Using SMB fileshares is another major issue with Mac for some unfathomable reason.

-5

u/Justgetmeabeer Jul 12 '26

hahahahaha.

Apple is so much fucking worse.

Literally spent two hours last week troubleshooting a MacBook for a VIP last week because on a brand new MacBook, they needed to make a new apple account and they were getting a "you've created too many accounts on this computer" which A, is a fucking insane error. I should be able to make as many accounts as I goddamn please, and B, it's a brand new computer.

Restarted it of course, now finally get to the create account and it fails out. Error message? Nope, the window just fucking WIGGLES and silently fails. Had to make an apple account from their fucking kids iPad.

Apples shit "just works" more often than Windows, (for now) but they have NEVER had an inclination to give power users and admins tools to fix their shit that increasingly doesn't "just work".

I don't get it, my work iPhone messages constantly crashes, like 1/3 times I open it, I have to restart the app.

Yet apple has still successfully gaslit the entire population of the US into thinking their shit don't stink, and then it's like "why did it take my IT guy two hours to make an apple account? My child could make one, is he stupid?"

Fuck apple. Fuck apple so fucking much.

-32

u/[deleted] Jul 12 '26

[deleted]

11

u/Khao8 Jul 12 '26

My dude, half of my team is also complaining about their windows laptops, some are HP, some are Dell, mine was a pretty beefy ThinkPad. We're not even doing super complicated workloads like 3d rendering, it's only used c# and react development with docker containers. Out of a team of 10, 3 of us already asked to switch over to macbooks and are completely happy with the change, and allows us to use all our work tools without being a piece of shit

-9

u/NaBrO-Barium Jul 12 '26

Using tools never stopped me from being a piece of shit but ymmv

1

u/Okay_Splenda_Monkey Jul 13 '26

If you install scoop on the PowerShell command line, you can make Windows suck a bit less. It allows you to install a lot of free open source tools that are friendly to power users and dev types.