Dave's Garage
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2025–2026
16:09 · 579K views · Nov 6, 2025
Dave Plummer, a retired Microsoft engineer who wrote Task Manager, responds to the claim that Windows sucks. He describes how he would fix common annoyances, in what he calls a love letter to Windows wrapped in a rant.
HN people share it in Windows 11 backlash threads as an even-handed insider's view of what is wrong with Windows.
4 comments from Hacker News
That's an entertaining read. I binned Windows 11 recently (only kept it around for gaming) because I didn't like the direction it was clearly going (and has been for a while - including their shoehorning of AI into everything when I don't want it or need it) and don't game enough that I care much any more. For the first time since the 80's I'm not running a Windows OS on any of my machines. I doubt they'll care, I'm one user of hundreds of millions but I don't have to consider whether every update is going to turn on something I don't want/hate so I care. The linked video (via a linked post) from Dave Plummer does indeed sum up my feelings pretty well - this video
The average home user probably won't know what power shell and GitHub are. I can't run the scripts you are talking about on my work pc. I can sympathise with your point of view but it does feel a bit like "works for me because I know what I'm doing". Also how long before another Windows update that undoes what the scripts do. I used to be very pro windows simply because of backwards compatibility and hardware support was ridiculously good. I can't recommend Linux to relatives as they'd be utterly confused. Dave Plummer, ex windows kernel dev does a good job of explaining what the issues are: this video
I find this take (from the guy who wrote the Windows task manager while at Microsoft) to be evenhanded. > Windows "SUCKS": How I'd Fix it by a retired Microsoft Windows engineer. this video
Dave Plummer, retired Microsoft engineer from the early days, made a video on this 2 weeks ago: > Windows "SUCKS": How I'd Fix it by a retired Microsoft Windows engineer this video