It is hard to believe but today, I learned that the Control Panel is dead man walking. You can read the story here. I am not sure this new world is a good thing but I do agree that it does not feel like it fits in Windows 10.
What’s the Control Panel Replacement?
In Windows 8 they brought us the Settings. If you are anything like me, any time you have to deal with settings, it is annoying. It just does not feel like there is the same power that existed in the Control Panel. I suspect this is part of transforming Windows into an Android or iOS clone that they tried in Windows 8.
Unfortunately it is coming and I am fearing that we are barreling towards a future that requires knowing PowerShell in order to achieve anything configuration wise in Windows. This is probably just the grouchy old man in me coming out. But I will miss the Control Panel. It does not blend in well with Windows 10 so I understand why they are wanting to remove it but it was useful. Something most of the new feature seem to struggle. Hopefully settings starts doing better.
Lets dig into what we are losing vs gaining by looking at the main screens.
I mean they kind of look similar. I mean the old Control Panel has color and complexity in its icons while the Settings have an iDrone sort of feel. Unfortunately, it is also not a one to one or one to half sort of conversion. We will have to learn where everything is anew.
Sadly, I think this is caused by the remnants of Windows 8. They wanted to make Windows for phones and somehow forgot the desktops. I am not sure why Microsoft is walking away from itself but I can’t believe that that would have happened in the 90’s or early 2000’s. I remember them having to add back desktop features into the OS for desktops. It was a bizarre myopia.
I get it. The consumer desktop market is dying away and Windows is not a major profit center anymore. What I don’t understand is why they continue to insist on this new design which nobody particularly likes. Their fanboys thought Windows 7 the best Windows OS ever. Why they did not Windows 10 off of the GUI and organization of Windows 7 rather than Windows 8.1 is weird. But that is just the ranting of a really tired MS stack dev. It has been a long week. I hate they are following and not leading, losing their soul in the process.
Anyway, it probably has all the same functions. Maybe I should do some posts on where do I find Control Panel feature X in the new world order. Lets make lemonade out of our lemons. That might actually be useful as we push toward the new world order. Let me know down in the comments below if that is something that would be interesting to you.