Microsoft has in my view “crossed the line” over several Windows issues. I’m not referring to any of the fancier utilities, just to the basic Windows service. Sadly, I have no remedial recourses of which I am aware, but I present a few matters here for whatever consideration they might bring about.
OneDrive:
To my astonishment and to my extreme dismay, without warning, without my consent, without my approval and without my intention, OneDrive recently hijacked my PC’s personal folders and files into its “cloud” while at the same time, it erased all of those items from my hard drive leaving behind just a “Shortcut” to their new location as shown below. As a result, my access to those materials is now restricted to only those times when my unreliable ISP is actually on line and functioning which, from time to time and for various durations of up to as long as several hours, has not been the case.
Then, adding further insult, my hijacked photographs are being raided by OneDrive for use in intrusive e-mails being sent to me each day as follows:
Also, I cannot get the “Give feedback” link shown above to work. Somehow, I’m supposed to be content with all of that.
I am most definitely NOT okay with these OneDrive abuses. I am deeply offended and angered by such unethical misconduct. Regrettably, my anger is only an impotent rage. I do not see any path to remedy.
Search:
The “Type here to search” tool has been revised from doing a search for a file just on my hard drive alone to also searching simultaneously on the internet. The result is that a set of useless search results arises with names similar to the name of my intended search target with all of that extra stuff being piled up on top as shown here, included on screen, where it clutters up the search results list.
Please see this small example:
The consequential screen clutter can actually flood the top of the search results list and force my own “Documents" down to below view which makes finding the item I actually want much more difficult than it used to be. If I think that something I need to find is somewhere on the internet, I know how to go looking there. I don’t need, I don’t want and I deeply resent the automatic activation of an on-line search.
Usefulness of the search tool has been very much degraded.
Usability:
Window 95 came out in the year 1995 with much publicized fanfare for the improvements of its access methods over those of Windows 3.1/3.1.1. Although Windows 95 did have some issues which resulted in revisions being made that ended up as Windows 95 Revision B, that operating system was designed with usability firmly in mind.
That was more than a quarter-century ago.
I suspect that the people who did the Windows 95 work have now reached or passed retirement age and that a good many of them have actually left the work force. Their replacements appear to me as being a cadre of self-admiring young (fill in the blank) who are fully enamored of their up-to-date coding skills but who have no sense of screen utility, who are actually proud of their “bloatware”, who have no appreciation of the evils of useless clutter and who have no comprehension of the need for unfettered access to personal computing resources at any and all times.
The experience of the Windows 8/8.1 debacle may have heralded these present day Windows deficiencies, but it is my fervent hope that some measure of sanity might one day re-emerge among Windows staff.
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