All I want for Xmas is for Microsoft to fix Windows

Microsoft is definitely on the naughty list this year for breaking Windows everywhere. All I want for Xmas is for Microsoft to fix Windows.

O Silent Night

I was trying to get into the Xmas spirit. Put my favorite Johnny Mathis Christmas CD into the computer for accompaniment to Xmas card writing. After six songs, Windows stopped power to the CD player.

This is just one example of Microsoft playing scrooge with Windows apps and hardware. Microsoft now decides for you that you’re not listening to that CD anymore, that your iTunes streaming is going on too long, that you don’t really need remote access to your office computer and turns of the network card to save power, turns off your bluetooth to save power and kills your speaker, turns off power to your keyboard, etc. And no, I’m not running on battery. Microsoft applies this power scrooging to plugged in computers.

Previously Windows came with a high performance power plan but Microsoft took that away. And Microsoft took away options from the balanced power plan, the only power plan left.

The power scrooge that really annoys me is Microsoft throttling internet browsers. The below picture of Task Manager shows zero network activity while the browser Edge is trying to open three different pages.

It’s not the Internet connection, it’s browser accessing the network that is the problem. I have been able to reproduce this problem on multiple browsers on multiple devices on multiple networks. All networks have above 500Mps but Windows throttles this to start at less than 30Mps and slowly decides to speed up. Whoever came up with this “power efficiency” should have their chestnuts roasted over an open fire.

Ho! Ho! Ho! Just try to print!

The biggest gift Microsoft could give so the weary world rejoices would be to resurrect reliable printing. Going back to writing Xmas cards, Microsoft Word insists that my Epson printer uses the CD tray for labels. No, really. End result is that Word prints only in the middle of a page of labels. Microsoft refuses to fix this well known problem in Word. FYI the workaround is to create the mailing label page in Word but then convert to PDF to print.

One of the Microsoft printing gifts that is nearly impossible to return is Microsoft installing their IPP printer driver instead of the manufacturer driver. Recently I had to completely reinstall a Brother printer after Windows updates for a client. The IPP driver Microsoft gifted her did not contain any of the collate and page management features she needed. You could just fall on your knees for insanity of it.

The latest public Windows printing scandal left Windows users with HP Smart App on their computers (when they didn’t have an HP printer) and renamed their existing printers after a Windows update. In this bleak printing midwinter, end users find all their printers have been dubbed HP laserjet. Microsoft seems to have taken an early long Christmas vacation on fixing this problem.

Is it too much to ask for peaceful printing?

Microsoft stop demanding data

I really want Krampus to take the birch rods to the Microsoft executives who demand our data to use an operating system we’ve already paid for. Demand over and over again. After every major Windows update, Microsoft asks the same data privacy questions before you can log on to work. How about sending a bill to Microsoft every time your staff (or IT consultant) has to waste time saying NO to Microsoft hogging your data? It takes on average 5 to 10 minutes to get through those data questions now times that by your number of staff and the cost of their labour. Add on another 10 minutes to keep Edge from stealing data and ramming ChatGPT down your throat. Add another couple of minutes to turn off the CoPilot preview on your taskbar that no one wants. It probably adds up to more time than your staff waste by dealing with robocalls per year.