92 Percent "Love" Windows 10: Study Suggests
A newly published study suggests the vast majority of Windows 10 users "love" the system and most of its features. However, the methodology of the study is shaky to say the least.
The figures come from Brandwatch, a company that tracks public sentiment about particular products and companies online. It claims its methods help find out what ordinary users are thinking, rather than rely on media reports.
For this study, Brandwatch gathered together data from 7,000 people who had posted about Windows 10 on Twitter, Facebook, Internet forums and other online outlets. It then analyzed the language people used about Windows 10 and then calculated those who expressed a "love" or "hate" for the system. It appears this included both people who literally used those words, along with those who expressed similarly strong sentiments.
Nine Out Of Ten Users "Love" Windows 10
On launch day, 92 percent of tracked comments came from people who loved Windows 10 and eight percent from people who hated it. The level of disapproval grew over the next couple of days before leveling out. Overall, in the first two weeks, the split was 86-14 in favor of the system. (Source: brandwatch.com)
The study also looked at mentions of individual features. It found the most positive response was to the Cortana digital assistant feature, with just over 80 percent approving it. Other features where at least two-thirds of people expressed "love" (or something resembling it) included the Edge browser and the integration with the Xbox browser.
Less popular features included the Windows 10 taskbar, where only a slim majority were in favor, and the Office Suite, for which 60 percent expressed a disapproval. One possible explanation is that many desktop users dislike Office Suite's focus towards small touchscreen devices. (Source: ibnlive.com)
Mild-Mannered Users Unmeasured
While the message is definitely positive for Microsoft, the report does have a few limitations.
Firstly, it only covers people who feel strongly enough about Windows 10 to post online. It's likely the vast majority of users haven't done so and whether they lean towards "generally satisfied but not ecstatic" or "unimpressed but not enraged" could be much more important to the overall reception.
Secondly, automated interpretation can often struggle with irony and sarcasm. A post such as "I just love Windows 10. Rebooting my machine a dozen times a day is such fun!" could easily be misinterpreted.
What's Your Opinion?
Does your response to Windows 10 fall into the category of "love" or "hate" or is it somewhere in between? Is it too early to get a good picture of the general public's response? Do you share the views of the study subjects about specific features?
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Comments
Study is likely flawed
A study that only examines specific words for how it quantifies a 'vote' is flawed. I would rather see a study that has very specific questions with a scale of 1 to 10 to rate those questions, carried out over a random population of at least 5,000 participants with varying age, race, gender and education. Facebook and Twitter users are hardly a good choice representing a "population".
With that said Windows 10 is an improvement over Windows 8, but it's nowhere near as solid as Windows 7 when it comes to compatibility and stability. I don't hate it or love it but it definitely needs more refining.
So Far Not Good
While I liked the overall look of Windows 10, I could not get it to work properly. I could not open the Settings menu, Cortana crashed while trying to log into my Microsoft account, and nearly all the Windows 10 apps were grayed out. That is after spending 3.5 hours downloading and installing. The "fixes" I found on the MS Community website were of no help at all. I even burned a dvd copy and tried an install from there in case my download was corrupt. That did not help at all. Thank you Dennis for recommending a system image before the upgrade. I was able to return to my previous Window 7 installation with no losses. I'll wait a couple of months and maybe try again.
Windows 10 Is A Winner
I never got the Windows 10 icon in the taskbar. So I was gonna wait a few months for MS to iron out some of the bugs before installing it manually on my computer. But curiosity got the best of me, and I downloaded the installer two days ago and had it perform an upgrade to Windows 10 on one partition of my dual boot Windows 7 box. The whole thing went well. A couple of my old programs and games don't work. But other than that, everything, including the operating system and my settings are working flawlessly. My dual boot system is still intact. I can choose to boot either into Windows 10 partition or Windows 7 partition. Email is fine. Chrome, Firefox and Edge browsers all work perfectly. All my startup items are working. Cortana works. Bitdefender works. Everything is just very nice. At least that has been my experience. I think that Microsoft did a great job.
win 10 upgrade
I upgraded my wife's computer which is about 11 years old. It took about 3 hours because of how slow the computer was. No problems except the mouse driver did not work. I found an old PC mouse and updated the driver for my optical mouse. Everything worked fine. The computer is more than twice as fast then before, a significant improvement for all programs. Edge is much better than IE. My wife is quite happy with her new computer speed for mail, internet access and word processing. All-in-all I would give 10 a big recommendation.
wa3vez
Disabled Cortana
I have no use for Cortana. Do I really need some disembodied assistant to help me search the web? It's a toy and nothing more. I find most of Windows 10 to be OK, but requiring workarounds for access to features like Control Panel, which used to be readily available in Windows 7. I had to search for the program and then pin it to Start AND make a shortcut on the desktop. Some programs pinned to Start get unpinned for no reason. "All apps" doesn't always show basic programs like Notepad, so I pinned that one to the Taskbar.
Why MS decided to rename Windows Explorer to File Explorer is beyond my comprehension. It sounds like a throwback to Windows 3.1. it's a non-issue as the program operates more or less in the same way.
Windows 10 is not the dreadful catastrophe that some have made it out to be yet I wouldn't answer even a legitimate survey saying I "love" it.
Critical Question Not Asked
Not only does this survey have many, quite apparent flaws, i.e., counting a sarcastic remark such as "I just love rebooting my system 10 times a day," as a PRO; but it appears a critical question was not asked -- "What version(s) of Windows did you use prior to Windows 10?"
And how about, "Which prior version of Windows did you like best?" (XP for me, then Win 7)
Definitely agree that a numeric-scale survey would likely yield MUCH better comparisons. I wouldn't trust a survey such as the one quoted for AT LEAST the reasons John mentioned.
BTW, where is a good forum to read about Windows 10 pros and cons by folks actually using it? I'd like to share my pros/cons and ask questions.
At this point I will probably wait as long as possible to update to Windows 10 for free (and will install Classic Shell) or consider switching to Linux. I continue to be wary of the trend toward the micro-market and cross-architecturally-equal operating systems.
Remember Microsoft's old marketing ploy...."Once you learn one Windows program, you've learned 90% of every new one you will use" and "Windows will remain completely backward compatible."? (a sarcastic Ha! to that and a ROTFCMAO where "C" = crying).
Take care all! Thanks for letting me vent a bit. (grin)
Mandatory updates are dangerous!
Mandatory updates are my largest beef with Windows 10. I'd like to have more information about an update before I allow Windows to install it. Word does get out about the bugs associated with updates. Unfortunately it also seems that the information you get from MS in the support link is murky at best and totally non-specific at worst. A list of files that may or may not be effected by an update is presented there and not much more in the way of details. It also used to be that if you wanted more details about an updates function or purpose one could click on the info link for "IT professionals". That is no longer even an option. MS must assume I'm some newbie peon user and don't have the ability to understand such terms as "remote server vulnerability".
MS has a long history of failed and error prone updates to their various OS versions. Remember Win95A, B and C? Was there a "D" version? Mandatory updates are not good. MS is putting out updates whenever it pleases, sometimes with a total lack of testing against other potential conflicting updates. Very dangerous!!