How Microsoft fucked up my work tool

March 4, 2019

During two years, I ignored warnings and articles from users that explains how Microsoft delete their data or broke drivers configuration during update. During two years, I had a great working tool with my laptop under Windows 10. Last Friday, it went bad...

Introduction

Two years ago, I bought a new laptop for personal projects and eventually start my own business. My old HP Pavillion was too old, with a small 2nd generation I5 processor and 6gb of RAM. I had Debian on it. I found the perfect laptop for my need : a Xiaomi Air pro

Windows 10 was installed on. This laptop is awesome, the best PC I’ve ever seen under €1000. A SD card slot is missing, and expandable RAM. By the way, this laptop helps me building my product and starting my business. Reliable, lightweight, I bring it everywhere : coworking spaces, client, airplane...

Working with Windows

I upgraded to Windows 10 pro for Docker only. And guess what ? It was perfect ! All tools I needed perfectly runs on Windows :

All works perfectly. The main advantage is about drivers. All peripherals have drivers for Windows 10, so the trackpad, bluetooth, WiFi works perfectly. Some friends asked me why I did not switch on Linux. My response was : I’ll install Linux on it when Windows will not respond to my needs. It works for almost 2 years

Smart updates

Microsoft push updates every month. Now they have something smoother than on Windows XP, 7 or 8. Sometimes I read dramatic articles about big updates that makes some damages on datas… I ignored it because my system worked perfectly. Never ignore them, they are kind of warning.

What happened ?

Last friday (March, 1st) Windows installs a new update. I was working with a client.

My laptop starts heating and blowing noisily. After a few (noisily) minutes, it ask me for a reboot. During my coffee time, I rebooted it. Reboot took around 5 minutes, both fans blowing noisily. After login, all seems correct. But fans never stops completely. Every action I was doing were starting the fans. Battery life decrease dramatically (I always had more than 6 hours of battery life).

Here is the problem. The CPU stay at it max frequency, task manager and core Windows process consumes lot of CPU cycles. Nothing was openned when I took this screenshot.

When I was student, a such incident was not so important. During 2 ou 3 hours I search for a solution or, in worst case, a complete reinstall. Now, I work around 12 hours a day. My computer needs to be reliable, extremely reliable. I can not loose my time finding solutions about foolish updates.

So… back to the basis

I have 3 choices :

I am not especially a fan of Windows, Linux or Mac OSX. I just want something I can rely on ;)

Linux on a laptop is not always a great idea. Some drivers does not exists, or are not optimised. On an “old” laptop (more than an year) you can consider that all drivers are stable and available. My latop is the first edition, released on 2016. So I tried a Live Ubuntu.

Miracle ! all peripherals works perfectly : trackpad, wifi, bluetooth, multiple GPU, dual screen… and never forget to test your battery life :

That's it ! twice more battery life on Linux than on Windows (tested !).

Also check CPU load (here with Gimp, VS code, Firefox, Libre office open :

Conclusion

I lost many many many time. Just for an update I never chose to install. Now, my laptop works perfectly on Ubuntu 18.10. I hope that an update will not affect my system. But I will choose when I install it.

Consider this post as a warning if you use Windows on your computer, especially professionnal. I think Surface Pro of Surface Book are great on Windows for years, as expensive as Mac Book Pro and tested with each Windows update. Microsoft considers all PCs ? That's impossible. I think taht they can apply the same process like Google do for android : each manufacturer have in charge to validate and push update on their hardware.

What happened on my operating system can also happen on every service I use : gmail, servers on each provider etc…

I think that Windows was my personal SPOF.

Thanks Microsoft !