Want to Feel Better About Windows 10? Go Back in Time (Premium)

A few weeks of new experiences with Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 has provided a healthy reminder that Windows 10, for all its issues, is still the far better experience.

I know. That sounds rather obvious. The newest version of anything should always be better than older versions. But that's not always the case, and with products as complex as Windows, there is a creeping expansion of functionality---of just "stuff," really---that can work against our fundamental usage, efficiency, and performance expectations.

Put another way, Windows 10 is really starting to piss me off.

I weigh in on what I perceive to be Windows 10's biggest problems so much, I'm sure I've long surpassed "broken record" and have edged neatly into "Chinese water torture." Sorry. My aim is never to irritate. And there is no need here to repeat the laundry list of crapware, advertising, and nonsense features that have bloated and compromised this once-great system almost beyond recognition. I think we all recognize the problem.

But Windows is so core to my professional life over the past 20+ years---and, thus, to my life generally---that I just feel this stuff so deeply. It hurts to watch, helplessly, as something you respect and even love is bungled so badly. There have been lesser defeats that I felt quite personally, Windows phone being the most obvious and recent scar tissue. But Windows. "Big" Windows. That's the toughest one of all.

You can feel the foundations creaking. Stressing. Can almost see the cracks that are forming, that threaten to bring the whole thing toppling down. And I lash out, as a human, because I'm helpless to stop it.

But in this age in which the best advice or tips that one can provide for Windows is always about what you should turn off, disable, or remove and why, it is of some small comfort to remember that it could be worse.

That it was, in fact, worse.

And still is worse, For those not using Windows 10.

As noted, for the past two weeks I've become reacquainted with Windows 7 and Windows 8.1. I can't really claim to have "used" Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 per se, and I certainly wasn't engaging in one of those cute blogger subterfuges where I pretend to do so and you are not going to believe what happened next. No, you'll believe what happened next.

Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 are each terrible in their own unique ways. An each provides a demonstrably worse user experience than Windows 10. It's not even close.

Before getting to why, let me explain what I've been doing. As you may know, I write a (not-so) little e-book called the Windows 10 Field Guide: It's available for as little as $9.99 at Leanpub, and if you care about me at all, buying a copy is the best way to show it. My goal with this book is to help people of all experience levels master Windows 10. And because Microsoft updates Windows 10 so often---in-box apps can be updated with new features at any time, literally, and the OS itself is updated with a maj...