About things not staying like Windows XP

Fecking useful for things like setting up Exchange accounts that are not on W365 ever since MS defunctioned Outlook.

No, about how Settings is not as clear or as useful as Control Panel.

No, about how you can't set multiple IPs on a network adapter using the settings app.

Or change advanced hardware settings like jumbo frames or VLAN tagging.

Or update the drivers of the thing you're looking at.

Three things I do quite often, given my line of work.

I can hear Microsoft now: "oh that's done via powershell" - nope, in the sea you get.

I just wanna keep my ncpa.cpl shortcute please, thanks

It is done using PowerShell 7 only

Using undocumented commands - which will eventually be documented, but by then they'll be deprecated.

Not gonna hear it from me. Windoze eXtra Pitiful sucked.

I mean, all versions of Windoze sucked and continue to suck. But XP was one of the worst. And the only Control Panel that was worth having went away with System 7 when they switched to a folder of CDEVs.

In all the old days every new version of Windows was great ... an environment that completely ended after Windows 7 Professional had appeared and all the newer versions sucked slightly.

I'm guessing that if you are saying that XP was the worst, then you are a young sniveling coward who never used Windows 95 or any earlier versions? (LOL).

I'm still using Windows 7 Professional but so many original Microsoft features have become Microsuck features these days.

> In all the old days every new version of Windows was great...

I'll remind you of Windows Vista with 2GB of RAM... or trying to get anything to work in the phone interface of Win 8...

> In all the old days every new version of Windows was great

Really? Including Windows ME?

not XP

12 years so far... the question now is will I outlive Control Panel?

Surely we can find a 12 year old lettuce put there, somewhere!

Every so often I start trying to tweak something in Settings. Almost every. single. time. I give up, swearing, and invoke Control Panel. Settings is shite.

But it looks so pretty and shiny, who cares if it's useless?

But Settings is less pretty and less shiny.

I don't doubt that MS will, eventually, migrate all the actual functionality. I mean, it's only been a decade or two and they only have a bazillion programmers who /apparently/ have nothing better to do than re-invent the wheel. But Settings is less pretty by design, since it has swallowed the "colourless, flat and no more than 6 actual controls in a single window" mantra.

My experience is slightly different. There are some things that can't be done at all in Settings and can be accomplished with Control Panel. There are some things, perhaps not as many but I've hit it several times, which can't be done in Control Panel but can be accomplished in Settings. Either way, you'll only find out by searching thoroughly through both of them. Someone has to put all the stuff in one place, and I'm not that bothered which one they pick as long as all the settings go somewhere rather than some ones being hidden because some UI designer doesn't think anyone changes them.

As is tradition, MS continually needs to break and ruin things that worked for decades, replaced with something incomplete, non-functional, and in may ways deliberately hides settings and access to controls that should be available.

...undeniably less attractive than the modern Settings app...

Few things in life are less undeniable than the above statement :-P

Control Panel is clean, easy, compact, logical, and just undeniably excellent.

The "modern" Settings app is to Control Panel what touchscreen, menus and capacitive buttons replacing physical buttons and knobs are to modern cars' dashboard ergonomics - a huge step back, hidden behind someone's misplaced perception that if it's old - it means that it doesn't work, and that change for the sake of change is good.

I don't expect Microsoft not to kill something that just works, but praising them for it ? Thanks but no thanks.

PS: I can no longer simply drag a location path from File Explorer to my CMD window. I can no longer enable "View Hidden Files" and "Show file extensions" in one menu expand (I have to do it one by one). Is the new File Explorer undeniably better ? Why ? Because I now have tabs ? Puh-lease.

"View Hidden Files" and "Show file extensions" in one

You can do that with W11 from the File Explorer

View->Show->[Check both options]

It's as quick as the old method.

It's not as quick as the old method.

New method:

View->Show->[Check Option 1] > Dialog closes

View->Show->[Check Option 2] > Dia]og closes

Old Method:

View->Show->[Check the options you need] > Close dialog

With the new method, you need to go through the View > Show > Check option for every single option you want to change.

If you assist someone on a laptop set by default with the idiotic checkboxes, that's three separate openings of the View options to disable the checkboxes, show hidden files, show filename extensions.

Those options are on the View tab of an Explorer window. If you have the ribbon hidden then yes it requires clicking View each time.

I thought Microsoft had done this once before but couldn't because of networking issues.

This does rather beg a couple of questions:

1) How hard can it be?

and

2) If it's that hard, why do it?

This, i take issue with. The settings app is a pile of shite compared to control panel tbh

Gotta keep re-inventing that wheel.

What will I miss? Well, the speed, the intutiveness, the logic to the interface...

'Settings' is JAFFE (Just Another Fekn Front End) with random gash hung off it - the submenus are all over the place like a mad wummin's sh*** and it's as slow as a week in the jail.

Oh well, it's a brave new world etc etc. You can, as ever, keep it.

That should read either "Sponsered" or "Satire"

I mean, and argument could be made the Settings App is more attractive than the Control Panel, until you try to use it anyway.

Take the printers section, for example. It does make a nice looking list of printers, but once hit the add printers button, the damn thing wants to survey your whole network for anything plugged in. Only after you see a hundred random things pop up does it even allow you to see the link (that should say "No, seriously Microsoft, I want to add a printer") at the very bottom among all the clutter that will pop up the printer install wizard. This wizard that looks exactly like the one you get in control panel or print management.

The networking section looks great, unfortnatel, that is about it. You may find some of the information it displays useful, even. But the only reason I am usually there is to access the "Network and Sharing" app where I can do some actual work and find the actually useful info. Ofc, I can always just windows key > type 'Control' > bring up control panel to have direct access to what is needed.

Should we talk about the apps section. now? Seriously, that one can take a flying leap. I am having trouble coming up with any redeeming qualities for that one. I don't think I have ever gotten it to do anything purposeful. I mean, maybe the default program stuff is useful, but we never even needed the control panel for that as it was always easier to do through explorer. Once I stumbled across the left shift + click to bring up the old context menu (I shouldn't have mentioned that...thing. I mean seriously, what is wrong with the words "Copy" and "Paste"? (Ok, one rant at a time, Jadith...))

How about we go on to display settings? Or the fact that you need to crawl through I don't even know how many menus to find different things hiding in the corners of different areas that may or may not actually do anything at all?

The settings app is just another coat of paint on an OS that Microsoft has no intereset in actually improving.

will be powered by Copilot...

Another tool that I've used for decades, now removed. Is there a roadmap on how to totally annoy the living hell out of users?

If not, first step, remove start menu...

Even if that were true[1] - so bleepin' what?

Why would any sane[2] person use a computer program because it was attractive over one that was functional?

[1] what is attractive about wasting pixels on huge amounts of blank space - and hiding the scrollbar to remove the clue there *may* be something useful further down!

[2] Microsoft product managers need not attempt to answer, it will only upset hem

It's seems they were so good and giving in the 80's and 90's and now all they seem to do is take away.

They don't want kids to learn how to program their OS's because it takes away their to access to our privacy and ability to tinker.

Created by hobbyists, killed by Corp.

Windows has been a joke since ....I mean it's now been longer than the time it wasn't a joke.

'Microsoft stated: "While the Control Panel still exists for compatibility reasons and to provide access to some settings that have not yet migrated, you're encouraged to use the Settings app, whenever possible."'

I see. So the replacement is, by your own admission, inferior, and yet you still think we should use it.

-A.