The same way you get Microsoft exclusives now on Windows 7: you don't. ;)
Serially though, I held off with 10 until the anniversary update came out last May and since then I've never used the Store. It's something you can safely ignore.
Once they started backporting all the privacy issues back to 7 and 8(.1), I figured I might as well use the version with the cool emojis. I've gotten a few apps from the store since then.
I did have to install the repackaged-for-windows-10 version of the Windows 7 calculator, though; I've been using it for far too long to give it up now.
How about the fact that 1511 was awesome and 1607 is a buggy slow piece of crap?
I'm waiting until the next major release, but if it continues this way I'm going back to 7 on all of my machines. Waiting to type for around a minute because of nothing is a new Windows 10 "feature". I was very happy with 1511. 1607 does this on three different machines, completely different builds, two of them won't even run updates correctly anymore.
I wasn't a "crazy Win 7 lifer" until 1607. 1511 was Windows 7 with a different interface. 1607 is Vista.
Unnavigable how? You can't click buttons and type? Also, while there's nothing inherently wrong with UWP, they allow devs to convert (wrap) Win32 software into a self-contained package for the Store using the desktop bridge. Packaged as an app it gains simplied install and clean uninstall benefits too.
Even if you completely ignore the store, it's still better than 7 and there's a lot of tweaking you can do if you're a stickler for disabling features.
There's no "bloat", really. Just because it's a thing doesn't mean there's a performance impact. It's like the Steam overlay... in both cases I just forget it exists until I need it. Or you can disable it if you want. Open it up, turn on game mode, make sure DVR is off, and disable the game bar etc.
No, you can say it's annoying, but that's not the same as bloat. Bloat would be like hey, this is slowing down my system. You know eating my rams and goats and cee pee yew circles! Disable it, ignore it, use it, whatever - don't have a cow, man.
Also it tends to only pop up when summoned. Steam has an overlay for ages, nobody cares. MS adds one, everyone loses their minds!
This performance tweaks are complicated.. Well you will decrease some resources for application in background to improve game.. but in OS ecosystem, it could mean, that background app, which otherwise ran fine, would be to have much more big long freezes and performace demanding peaks, which could cause more problems, that run app without gaming mode..
This is where having large multi-core CPUs helps a lot (finally!)
If your game is using 10 threads (optimistically speaking - I'd imagine most games even today use less) but you have a hyperthreading octacore CPU (with 16 virtual cores available), then you still have 6 virtual cores to spend on background/OS tasks...
I hope that's part of the point. Games are one of the few apps that require super high resources and (in most cases) the only thing a user is doing at the time of using. By the user specifically telling Windows that you want to use Game Mode for a particular game, you are telling Windows "pause or significantly lower the footprint of everything else until I'm done". Hopefully it's not just the threat priority switch. Hopefully it'll be granular where you could, for example, disable or reduce the time between windows notifications checks, pause telemetry gathering/uploading, pause update downloading, delay auto defrag, etc. That would make a huge change in performance, even if it is just windows services.
We've been suggesting something similar for a while. So, how about a true "Console Mode" akin to Tablet Mode, where a the shell is optimized to look, and identically behave, like an XBox. That, in addition to the entire system resources being dedicated to the game (and all the needed underlying libraries) in the foreground?
That being said, in addition to working close with GPU vendors, I believe Microsoft should also be working with game engine developers to further leverage this mode and rid modern games of all the unnecessary overhead.
It would be absolutely fantastic, especially for HTPCs. Where one can build their own custom "XBox experience". They should also create a an abstraction layer and unified API for TV, cable, satellite and capture cards in which the entire system can be dedicated as a sole home theater experience, with Cortana and all.
This might create a new category of home computing and entertainment, and revive a dying market. It should also help them win the game against Sony. The possibilities would be endless.
Maybe one day they may go the route of a Steam Box and do something like this, adding a Console Mode which would be the default for such a TV-friendly device. Not anytime soon, mind you. But either way it won't actually affect desktop users. They're not forcing such a console mode onto desktop users.
the xbox experience gives them margins and it has to be uniform anyway, that's why it won't get mixed with the PC experience, which can also be frustrating for non-tech savvy people with weak computers.
It would probably take a hit allowing it to only run on remaining resources I would imagine. I download torrents on my file server. My desktop rig which I use for gaming/modeling, video editing, I don't open multiple programs, minimize the amount of background crap running.
Best Windows 10 Gaming System would be Portable and run on any Computer
A copy of Windows 10 Long Term Service Branch would be nice so you could remove Cortana and all the other Crap Microsoft forbids you to touch....
You could Install it to a fast thumbdrive like the Corsair Voyager GTX as Windows to Go using Aomei Partition Manager
Aomei Partition Manager would also let you install Windows to Go to an MBR partition as well so you could use Truecrypt Full Disk Encryption instead of Bitlocker Backdoored Encryption
At a bar minimum, you should Stop and Disable Superfetch and Windows Search services If you do not disable them, they will return
Gaming and VM tutorials list many other services to disable but I have found them to be of minimum value You could also run "Destroy Windows 10 Spying" or wait for Microsoft to get it's head out of its A$$ but it will be a long wait Microsoft could EASILY prevent pirate copies of Windows 10 by disabling ALL copies with the same unique code A single valid copy should be allowed to run on ANY X86 computer because even pirates can only play games on one computer at a time PORTABLE Windows is the future, unfortunately, Microsofts idea of portable may be "Windows as a service" and streaming games to a Qualcom device DOH
You clearly don't understand that the most stable/space-efficient/performant Windows builds will always be the ones with baked-in drivers. It's an architecture thing. Portable Windows is a set of well-tested hacks if we're being honest here.
What are you talking about? Baked in Drivers? Portable Windows is a set of well tested HACKS? ------------------------------------------------------------------ Windows2Go is a portable version of Windows created by MICROSOFT! It is NOT a set of Hacks, although non-Microsoft utilities have made it much easier to deploy!
I can use the baked in drivers Update online from Microsoft Use proprietary Manufacturers drivers Update offline with WUSUS
You clearly don't understand this architecture thing!
If this actually does something worthwhile then cool, but if it's just another way to force other gaming platforms over to the Xbox App that'll not be pretty. I'm happy with Windows 10 because it works.
I've purchased games despite the Windows Store's obvious deficiencies. I personally found the Xbox App a bit too invasive, it wanted to show me a game bar and it automatically wanted to cache my gameplay in case I wanted a recording. The Xbox App also wanted me to run games on other platforms such as Steam from inside the app, I promptly cleared them out of there.
This sounds like Microsoft trying to fix a problem of their own creation. To this day I'm still tracking down the various Win10 background processes that play loose with the CPU at times I can't control.
On my old laptop, I often feel it is I/O contention more than CPU that is the culprit. Especially since I don't use it that often, soon after a boot a bunch of programs will all attempt to download updates and then write them out to disk. Microsoft is a chief offender. Even on my powerful desktop with fast SSD storage, today I saw the blue circle spin while browsing and sure enough resmon showed a huge amount of data being written to Microsoft's datastore.edb.
I wish there was a way to have all those throttled generally or maybe specifically back-burnered by the disk read/write system.
I've been wondering... will this work with FX CPUs? I'm just imagining a scenario where the OS patches have resulted in similar workloads being pushed onto the same module, only for Game Mode to mess it up again.
It would be interesting and useful if game mode could be applied to any application. I use Windows 10 for my music production system and having an easy way of saying "when I'm using this application (or group of applications) pause all unnecessary background actions and focus resources on this task" would be extremely helpful.
Getting audio glitches because your computer just decided to check for updates or run a scan can be quite annoying. I know there are tweaks to get around some issues, but specifically prioritising applications like this would be an improvement.
I don't need this functionality personally, but I do understand your requirement, and I hope you can trigger it for %arbitrary_app%. It's been possible to play with CPU affinity and foreground or process prioritization on every member of the NT family back to at least Win2K, but putting all that at the click of a button and having it pause other background tasks too stands to offer real benefits to a significant number of people
The way they descibe it now, you have to call their gaming overlay from the application and turn the option on. So, if you manage to fool 10 into thinking you`re running a game, why not?
So this is basically a bug fix to address Windows' poor management of system resources when user land applications contend with trivial (often unnecessary) system tasks like telemetry collection and reporting. Why not just build a leaner, less resource-intensive OS to begin with? It'd be easier to do that than to glue on another layer of resource management to bloat things up further and introduce potential bugs. I know people are infatuated with the idea of a "turbo" or "sport" mode but using that poorly thought out lust as a way to cover up the fact that a game mode should never have been necessary to begin with is silly.
Xbox crap and GameBar are one the things I get rid of quickly when installing Windows 10. I don't care for the "the divide between the gaming PC, and the Xbox" if getting rid of it means making Windows gaming like Xbox gaming. I don't want to see that green logo anywhere on my PC.
Windows gaming abilities are fine, thank you. Just leave it alone, Microsoft. All you will manage to do is to f*** it up.
And the same goes for Nvidia and their GeForce Experience: bloated crap that only manages to break games. Just let the games run without adding extra bloatware to "improve the experience".
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Sttm - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link
Looking forward to it. But will it be enough for those crazy Win 7 lifers?Michael Bay - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link
If XP experience is anything to go by, only the passing of time and eventual lack of drivers will.dstarr3 - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link
Not for me, as long as the Windows Store is still a completely unnavigable platform and they still demand on using UWP.I mean, I'll switch to Windows 10 eventually. But gaming will have nothing to do with why.
veronkilla - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link
Usage of Windows 10 store is optional. Please find another credible reason for sticking to Win 7 instead of this BS.dstarr3 - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link
And how exactly do you go about buying any of the Microsoft exclusives without going through the store?rtho782 - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link
To be honest, none of them are of interest to me, it's what, gears of war 4 and that's about it? I have tomb raider on Steam.How do you get them on 7?
HomeworldFound - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link
Gears of War 4. Recore. Forza Horizon 3. Halo Wars 1 + 2. Dead Rising 4. Forza Motorsport Apex 6. Quantum Break (Now on Steam).Mr Perfect - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link
The same way you get Microsoft exclusives now on Windows 7: you don't. ;)Serially though, I held off with 10 until the anniversary update came out last May and since then I've never used the Store. It's something you can safely ignore.
Old_Fogie_Late_Bloomer - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link
Once they started backporting all the privacy issues back to 7 and 8(.1), I figured I might as well use the version with the cool emojis. I've gotten a few apps from the store since then.I did have to install the repackaged-for-windows-10 version of the Windows 7 calculator, though; I've been using it for far too long to give it up now.
kmi187 - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link
Not buying them?Morawka - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link
that's 2-3 games. your using a silly insignificant nuance to explain why you dont want windows 10.dstarr3 - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link
I said earlier, "I'll switch to Windows 10 eventually. But gaming will have nothing to do with why."0ldman79 - Friday, January 27, 2017 - link
How about the fact that 1511 was awesome and 1607 is a buggy slow piece of crap?I'm waiting until the next major release, but if it continues this way I'm going back to 7 on all of my machines. Waiting to type for around a minute because of nothing is a new Windows 10 "feature". I was very happy with 1511. 1607 does this on three different machines, completely different builds, two of them won't even run updates correctly anymore.
I wasn't a "crazy Win 7 lifer" until 1607. 1511 was Windows 7 with a different interface. 1607 is Vista.
Michael Bay - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link
It has been pretty navigable for a while now, at least on par with android....which is not a high bar to jump, admittedly.
Alexvrb - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link
Unnavigable how? You can't click buttons and type? Also, while there's nothing inherently wrong with UWP, they allow devs to convert (wrap) Win32 software into a self-contained package for the Store using the desktop bridge. Packaged as an app it gains simplied install and clean uninstall benefits too.Even if you completely ignore the store, it's still better than 7 and there's a lot of tweaking you can do if you're a stickler for disabling features.
willis936 - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link
I hope this is just a seamless setting I can tick to set affinity in windows and not have to deal with xbox bloat or annoying overlays.Alexvrb - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link
There's no "bloat", really. Just because it's a thing doesn't mean there's a performance impact. It's like the Steam overlay... in both cases I just forget it exists until I need it. Or you can disable it if you want. Open it up, turn on game mode, make sure DVR is off, and disable the game bar etc.Zak - Thursday, January 26, 2017 - link
When a game bar shows up in a Steam game, that's bloat and annoying.smorebuds - Friday, January 27, 2017 - link
Is it really though? Just wait a bit or press shift-tab and it'll go away. ezpzAlexvrb - Monday, January 30, 2017 - link
No, you can say it's annoying, but that's not the same as bloat. Bloat would be like hey, this is slowing down my system. You know eating my rams and goats and cee pee yew circles! Disable it, ignore it, use it, whatever - don't have a cow, man.Also it tends to only pop up when summoned. Steam has an overlay for ages, nobody cares. MS adds one, everyone loses their minds!
Manch - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link
I want SLI/Crossfire supt for Forza Apex, GoW4, Quantum Break, etcruthan - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link
This performance tweaks are complicated.. Well you will decrease some resources for application in background to improve game.. but in OS ecosystem, it could mean, that background app, which otherwise ran fine, would be to have much more big long freezes and performace demanding peaks, which could cause more problems, that run app without gaming mode..boeush - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link
This is where having large multi-core CPUs helps a lot (finally!)If your game is using 10 threads (optimistically speaking - I'd imagine most games even today use less) but you have a hyperthreading octacore CPU (with 16 virtual cores available), then you still have 6 virtual cores to spend on background/OS tasks...
NXTwoThou - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link
I hope that's part of the point. Games are one of the few apps that require super high resources and (in most cases) the only thing a user is doing at the time of using. By the user specifically telling Windows that you want to use Game Mode for a particular game, you are telling Windows "pause or significantly lower the footprint of everything else until I'm done". Hopefully it's not just the threat priority switch. Hopefully it'll be granular where you could, for example, disable or reduce the time between windows notifications checks, pause telemetry gathering/uploading, pause update downloading, delay auto defrag, etc. That would make a huge change in performance, even if it is just windows services.Murloc - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link
I think it would help weaker laptop users if it stops other software from hogging up the hard disk.BedfordTim - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link
I had the same hopes. Windows 10 seems to be hyperactive with no way of getting it to calm down even in the Enterprise builds.lilmoe - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link
We've been suggesting something similar for a while. So, how about a true "Console Mode" akin to Tablet Mode, where a the shell is optimized to look, and identically behave, like an XBox. That, in addition to the entire system resources being dedicated to the game (and all the needed underlying libraries) in the foreground?That being said, in addition to working close with GPU vendors, I believe Microsoft should also be working with game engine developers to further leverage this mode and rid modern games of all the unnecessary overhead.
It would be absolutely fantastic, especially for HTPCs. Where one can build their own custom "XBox experience". They should also create a an abstraction layer and unified API for TV, cable, satellite and capture cards in which the entire system can be dedicated as a sole home theater experience, with Cortana and all.
This might create a new category of home computing and entertainment, and revive a dying market. It should also help them win the game against Sony. The possibilities would be endless.
sadsteve - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link
Eh, I don't want the XBox experience, or the 'Console Mode'. I like the desktop experience better than any of the game consoles I've tried.Michael Bay - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link
But who would buy an Xbox then? MS doesn`t cannibalize internally anywhere near as much as Apple.Meteor2 - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link
You can't buy a PC with the gaming capability of an Xbox for the same price.Old_Fogie_Late_Bloomer - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link
Sure, but I have a way better computer than the XB1 (nothing to brag about, just more powerful than an Xbone).Alexvrb - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link
Maybe one day they may go the route of a Steam Box and do something like this, adding a Console Mode which would be the default for such a TV-friendly device. Not anytime soon, mind you. But either way it won't actually affect desktop users. They're not forcing such a console mode onto desktop users.Murloc - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link
the xbox experience gives them margins and it has to be uniform anyway, that's why it won't get mixed with the PC experience, which can also be frustrating for non-tech savvy people with weak computers.Old_Fogie_Late_Bloomer - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link
I might actually get to play a Halo game finally.Michael Bay - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link
I wonder how this will impact torrenting in the background.Manch - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link
It would probably take a hit allowing it to only run on remaining resources I would imagine. I download torrents on my file server. My desktop rig which I use for gaming/modeling, video editing, I don't open multiple programs, minimize the amount of background crap running.Murloc - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link
it should almost kill it. This would help so many noobs.Bullwinkle J Moose - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link
Best Windows 10 Gaming System would be Portable and run on any Computer
A copy of Windows 10 Long Term Service Branch would be nice so you could remove Cortana and all the other Crap Microsoft forbids you to touch....
You could Install it to a fast thumbdrive like the Corsair Voyager GTX as Windows to Go using Aomei Partition Manager
Aomei Partition Manager would also let you install Windows to Go to an MBR partition as well so you could use Truecrypt Full Disk Encryption instead of Bitlocker Backdoored Encryption
At a bar minimum, you should Stop and Disable Superfetch and Windows Search services
If you do not disable them, they will return
Gaming and VM tutorials list many other services to disable but I have found them to be of minimum value
You could also run "Destroy Windows 10 Spying" or wait for Microsoft to get it's head out of its A$$ but it will be a long wait
Microsoft could EASILY prevent pirate copies of Windows 10 by disabling ALL copies with the same unique code
A single valid copy should be allowed to run on ANY X86 computer because even pirates can only play games on one computer at a time
PORTABLE Windows is the future, unfortunately, Microsofts idea of portable may be "Windows as a service" and streaming games to a Qualcom device
DOH
lmcd - Thursday, January 26, 2017 - link
You clearly don't understand that the most stable/space-efficient/performant Windows builds will always be the ones with baked-in drivers. It's an architecture thing. Portable Windows is a set of well-tested hacks if we're being honest here.Bullwinkle J Moose - Thursday, January 26, 2017 - link
IMCDWhat are you talking about?
Baked in Drivers?
Portable Windows is a set of well tested HACKS?
------------------------------------------------------------------
Windows2Go is a portable version of Windows created by MICROSOFT!
It is NOT a set of Hacks, although non-Microsoft utilities have made it much easier to deploy!
I can use the baked in drivers
Update online from Microsoft
Use proprietary Manufacturers drivers
Update offline with WUSUS
You clearly don't understand this architecture thing!
What exactly is your point?
Mumble clearly please
HomeworldFound - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link
If this actually does something worthwhile then cool, but if it's just another way to force other gaming platforms over to the Xbox App that'll not be pretty. I'm happy with Windows 10 because it works.I've purchased games despite the Windows Store's obvious deficiencies. I personally found the Xbox App a bit too invasive, it wanted to show me a game bar and it automatically wanted to cache my gameplay in case I wanted a recording. The Xbox App also wanted me to run games on other platforms such as Steam from inside the app, I promptly cleared them out of there.
voicequal - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link
This sounds like Microsoft trying to fix a problem of their own creation. To this day I'm still tracking down the various Win10 background processes that play loose with the CPU at times I can't control.brucek2 - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link
On my old laptop, I often feel it is I/O contention more than CPU that is the culprit. Especially since I don't use it that often, soon after a boot a bunch of programs will all attempt to download updates and then write them out to disk. Microsoft is a chief offender. Even on my powerful desktop with fast SSD storage, today I saw the blue circle spin while browsing and sure enough resmon showed a huge amount of data being written to Microsoft's datastore.edb.I wish there was a way to have all those throttled generally or maybe specifically back-burnered by the disk read/write system.
silverblue - Thursday, January 26, 2017 - link
I've been wondering... will this work with FX CPUs? I'm just imagining a scenario where the OS patches have resulted in similar workloads being pushed onto the same module, only for Game Mode to mess it up again.MattMe - Thursday, January 26, 2017 - link
It would be interesting and useful if game mode could be applied to any application.I use Windows 10 for my music production system and having an easy way of saying "when I'm using this application (or group of applications) pause all unnecessary background actions and focus resources on this task" would be extremely helpful.
Getting audio glitches because your computer just decided to check for updates or run a scan can be quite annoying. I know there are tweaks to get around some issues, but specifically prioritising applications like this would be an improvement.
NZLion - Thursday, January 26, 2017 - link
I don't need this functionality personally, but I do understand your requirement, and I hope you can trigger it for %arbitrary_app%.It's been possible to play with CPU affinity and foreground or process prioritization on every member of the NT family back to at least Win2K, but putting all that at the click of a button and having it pause other background tasks too stands to offer real benefits to a significant number of people
Michael Bay - Friday, January 27, 2017 - link
The way they descibe it now, you have to call their gaming overlay from the application and turn the option on. So, if you manage to fool 10 into thinking you`re running a game, why not?BrokenCrayons - Thursday, January 26, 2017 - link
So this is basically a bug fix to address Windows' poor management of system resources when user land applications contend with trivial (often unnecessary) system tasks like telemetry collection and reporting. Why not just build a leaner, less resource-intensive OS to begin with? It'd be easier to do that than to glue on another layer of resource management to bloat things up further and introduce potential bugs. I know people are infatuated with the idea of a "turbo" or "sport" mode but using that poorly thought out lust as a way to cover up the fact that a game mode should never have been necessary to begin with is silly.Zak - Thursday, January 26, 2017 - link
Xbox crap and GameBar are one the things I get rid of quickly when installing Windows 10. I don't care for the "the divide between the gaming PC, and the Xbox" if getting rid of it means making Windows gaming like Xbox gaming. I don't want to see that green logo anywhere on my PC.Windows gaming abilities are fine, thank you. Just leave it alone, Microsoft. All you will manage to do is to f*** it up.
Zak - Thursday, January 26, 2017 - link
And the same goes for Nvidia and their GeForce Experience: bloated crap that only manages to break games. Just let the games run without adding extra bloatware to "improve the experience".