Anyone else played with WIndows 10?

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I just slapped an old SSD in a work computer and installed windows 10 on it to get a feel for it my self. I am a member of windows insider so I was able to download the technical preview.

All I have to say is it is not windows 7 but it is a god send compared to windows 8 and 8.1
I got the computer loaded up with the windows 8.1 drivers and 10 only had to update a few to make it happy
The computer is a spare computer that we keep around in case one of the others fails and we need to get the employee back up quickly. it is new because it is a 4th gen series Core i5 Intel and that generation of chipset.

It seen a little faster than windows 7 and is way faster than 8.1. This is one OS that I am looking forward to seeing the finished product on.
Tommorrow I am going to load Office 365 on it and a few other apps to see how they work so far on windows 10.

Anyone got some suggestions on Software they would like to see tested with windows 10 pro 64-bit

otherwise I will try the standard suspects.

So far I am impressed. now if only they would start releasing the Linux drivers to this level of stability I could have a better opinion of it as well on newer hardware.

Comments

Wonderful !

I was so glad of the announcement that Win10 would be a Free update for not only Win8/8.5 users, but also Win 7 systems!

Have you heard WHEN the general release will be? I HATE the Win8.5 that came with my laptop!

Not free

As far as I know Win 10 will be a subscription model.

You can download it free to try it out but you'll have to pay yearly to continue using it. For ever.

This is what Microsoft has been working towards for a long time. Office 365 is already going that way, with everything being held in (their) cloud.

I wouldn't go near it with a bargepole, personally.

Penny

You have to wonder.

I have to wonder, if the people behind the business model live on a cloud.

First, the economy is in the tank for almost everyone. Most people are worried about food and shelter. A several hundred dollar a here subscription fee for an OS is out of the question.

On top of that, the data on the OS is not allowed to be secured on a person's harddrive, but on a server cloud, where anyone with the right access, or information, can read it, alter, or delete the data.

Just from a legal standpoint, of protecting secure information, that cuts out most personal and commercial business.

Especially, after the whole Playstation server hacks.

Along with that, those that came up with this plan must think that all computer users use fiber optic level internet speeds. Which they done. And this is going cut out most customers, just because they don't have the speed to use a cloud based server.

Gamers alone will not be able to use it, because they have to use the game files have to be installed on harddrives, not cloud servers.

You have to wonder if they actually want to set themselves up for a fall.

possibly yes maybe not

MadTech01's picture

Windows may do a subscrition model as an option but there will always be people who would rather pay all up front.

That is why you can still get Office 2013 as a pay all up front model, and also get it through Office 365.
There are good and bad things to both options
For example if they do a Windows 365, you would basically always get the latest version of windows like they do with office we would hope.
but there are always people who want the version they are buying and not have to upgrade every time they release a new version.

When you look at Mac OS X and WIndows they usually make a good version of the OS and then the next release is a lot of experimentation with new ideas of how to do things and then the version after that is the one where they get the idea right.

Every time they get a new idea in their heads at the corporate level they start promising new ways to do things and then fail to deliver the smooth operation of that idea until the next OS that they refine it in. That why Vista was not liked by business but Windows 7 was the go to switch from Windows XP. and that is why Windows 8/8.1 are not looked kindly on by business and big corporations for their own us because it was a radical shift in how the OS works and was not ready in there minds for main stream. But Windows 10 is the fulfillment of what the idea was ment to accomplish and are looking forward to it.

"Cortana is watching you!"

There's a difference here

Office 2013 and Office 365 are different products entirely - Office 2013 is the traditional offline, locally executed package of applications, while Office 365 is a cloud-based application that leverages Microsoft's servers not only for actual execution of the application but also to provide different features like online backup and restore. Superficially they might appear to be the same product, but they are not.

Is there a Start button?

Do you still get the Desktop?

Do you still need to log in?

Can you get good old Windows Mail?

Yes there is a start button

You get the Desktop.

You do need to login. Link to your Microsoft Account to get the best experience. If you have Windows 8.1, you should link that to your Microsoft Account also.

You get Mail. It sets up the mail from your Microsoft Account automatically and you can add other accounts.

Microsoft account on 8.1 drove me crazy

All I want to do is to use a word processor, access the web and email. I already use Dropbox when I need a cloud, and I can't use my DocsToGo iPhone app on the Microsoft Cloud.

So I don't need or want to log in to MS. As soon as I found out how to avoid it, I did so and now I run my computer in the way I want to, rather than the way MS think is best for me. The Mail App is useless compared with Windows Mail, so I now use my browser to access mail.

My techie friend switched to a Mac after years of using Windows and DOS before that, rather than switch to 8.1. Maybe he was going in the right direction.

Can you really fault them for providing options?

It's pretty simple to use a local account if you don't want to use a Microsoft account. Seems an odd complaint to make considering Apple is even more gung-ho about online accounts and marketplaces than Microsoft is.

yes and no

MadTech01's picture

The Desktop is the default for when the computer detects a mouse and keyboard are detected and you have a real start button and menu similar to windows 7 but with the features of windows 8 thrown in.from what I have just tried, you can setup windows 10 pro the express way witch you have to use your microsoft account for both user name and password, or you can do the custom way witch lets you create a user name and password without linking to a microsoft account. either way it seems to require you to use a password, but I have been able to get it so that once you log in it stays logged in till the machine is turned off or logged out. So you can bring it out of screen saver without a password. But for logging in they require a password.

It has the same mail client as 8 does from what I can tell, but I will be using outlook so its not an issue for me, i can play with it before I install office and see how it behaves.

any other questions you have pm me or respond back to this thread.

"Cortana is watching you!"

The Linux drivers _would_ be

The Linux drivers _would_ be stable on bleeding edge hardware - if the #@$#$%^& manufacturers would actually release the specifications on the hardware interfaces. Instead, almost every linux driver has to be reverse engineered. It's not even a matter of signing an NDA - there are plenty of developers that are willing to do that (because it won't affect their day jobs). It's the greed. Some want money, others don't want to risk ticking off Microsoft.

Even weirder? Most of those manufacturers will happily give the information to Apple, and that's FreeBSD.


I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.

preaching to the choir there

MadTech01's picture

I get mad every time I try to set up a linux box on new gen hardware, first off if you have a uefi bios it requires extra steps. then there is the fact that the intel drivers are not there when needed. I personally think they are trying to pressure people into the paid for OS system like mac and windows. Its simple numbers to them windows (most popular OS on the planet) and OS X mac (The second most poplar OS series) for COmputers anyway. They probably get paided to develop the Drivers and do or they try to make sure people will buy the hardware. The only Linux drivers I can usually find without fail are Server part drivers because most servers on the planet run a version of Linux.

"Cortana is watching you!"

The sad part? The drivers

The sad part? The drivers are written by people who aren't paid for them. The manufacturers don't even have that excuse for not 'writing' drivers for linux. (For that matter, the Apple drivers, if the source was handed over, could be modified for Linux without much problem)


I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.

nope, I haven't

Dawnfyre's picture

and I won't

I use Linux or openBSD.
no need for that malware from microsoft. [ tiny limp dick ]

and if you want GOOD hardware support with Linux, avoid Ubuntu and the respins, go with PCLinuxOS for a simple install where hardware just works.
[ and it is a livecd so you can TEST it before installing it. installs with drakliveinstall, has the drakxtools for a control panel type access to everything except for the synaptics package manager, that is in the quickstart ] KDE by default, but GNOME is also available as the default [ sic ]
fwiw, a current ubuntu livecd failed on hardware drivers for a new toshiba laptop, PCLinuxOS powered everything right away .


Stupidity is a capital offense. A summary not indictable.

the alternate OS's I have tried

MadTech01's picture

Red Hat
Fedora
OpenSUSE
SUSE
Ubuntu
Debian
Solaris
OpenSolaris
Mac OS X
every known Windows And MSDOS
FreeDOS

So Many it is hard to remember them all without checking off a list

Ubuntu is both a love hate for me its very main stream so lots of apps and such, it's so backwards at times saying oh you don't need the terminal, and everything to get it working requires the terminal. maybe that's why the server variant is pure terminal. If you can't slap a gui on it that works for what you want to do just give me the terminal and a book of commands on what the do and ill go from there.

"Cortana is watching you!"

shall we plaay a game? ;)

Dawnfyre's picture

Red Hat, Fedora and CEntOS are all the same. [ outside of distro branding graphics ]
The default LVM group made even to pre-existing partitions is a major issue for me.

OpenSUSE and SUSE no real difference between these two, offshoots of Red hat. to bad they insist on an idiotic set of dependencies. [ install Screem and you MUST install apache, mod_php, php, mysql as well, just to bloody have a site script editor ]

Solaris and OpenSolaris, again, the two are not different, with one notable exception, Solaris is dead, opensolaris is still around. Oracle's buyout of SUN killed the commercially licensed Solaris for Red Hat Enterpise Linux, leaving only the community version of opensolaris

Ubuntu a fork of Debian, so pretty much no difference between them, since Cannonical is maintaining the compatibility between Ubuntu and Debian. DEBIAN is the source of Ubuntu's hardware issues, they refuse to include any non-open source hardware drivers. Ubuntu, first install, tell it never mount a set of partitions and it mounted them anyway, in /. not in /mnt, but in /.
su with user password to access admin, might as well be a windows box as admin for that security hole configuration.
baby shit brown colour scheme as default. no need to say more there. ;)
G.N.O.M.E. see macos for ui problems :p
actually, when Gnome 1.14 screamed at partial functionality because of NO active NETWORK connection, they failed to provide a usable ui. [ sorry, but a workstation does not require a network connection to be usable, not if the developers have any brains. ]

Macos, never liked version 1, have never been able to work with the poor ui of macos. [ have seen os TEN [ the x is roman numeral 10 not the letter ] and it is the worst, with crap bouncing and jumping around all over the place, in the DEFAULT setup.

well, I wasn't to impressed with windows compared to some dos based tools that worked far better, so when I got my first distro [ Mandrake Linux v 6.1 ] waaay back in the 2.2 kernel days I have not DOWNGRADED to any proprietary os since.

I'm not impressed with the latest KDE either, my preferred ui is E 0.16 latter versions shelf system ruins the clean purity of the e16 ui. and the error I got loading it was a funny one [ 126% enlightened ]


Stupidity is a capital offense. A summary not indictable.

Meanwhile over here...

I started off with Mandriva / GNOME 2, jumped ship to Mageia when that was released, then after getting peed off at Mageia 2 (far too many bugs for my liking, plus the user forums looked with disdain on anyone not using a standard configuration) took a deep breath and migrated to Arch. After printing out the 26-page Beginner's Guide, a few hours later (after one false start due to not setting up the USB stick correctly) I'd got a usable system up and running with Xfce...

...except that currently, that's a bit simplistic. My box is currently running Xfce + Kwin (originally Compiz, but when that started to die, I looked for alternatives) + Nemo (Cinnamon's file manager) + a handful of MATE goodies (Atril, Pluma, System Monitor) + Cairo-dock. For added fun, I have Firefox and Chrome running simultaneously (FF for BCTS + webcomics, Chrome for social media + YouTube). yes, it's an unholy mess, but somehow it all works together :)


As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!

Curiously

I followed almost the same route as you, but was put off with the complexity of things like Arch and Mate. Ubuntu seemed too toy-like for my tastes, so I went directly to Debian.

After some experimenting, and after the Gnome 3 fiasco, I have settled on Debian with LXDE which looks remarkably like Gnome2, but without having to do anything.

The same basic Debian runs on my servers, so I now have a consistent OS across all my boxes. That means I can run my own local software cache for updating, which saves a great deal of downloading.

Penny

I'm not even going to try to

I'm not even going to try to remember what I started off with. It took 15 floppies to get to the N series to install the network drivers. Nuff said.

I've used Yggdrasil, RedHat, SuSE (before Novell), Slackware (longest use, and used on my servers for years), Mandriva (didn't like it, dropped it), Lindows (Good idea, worked pretty well, was sadly abandoned), and lots of others. Debian, to me (this is from a slackware user) was just a bit more painful than a dry corncob covered with sand shoved up my butt. If I wanted to put that much effort into just an install, I'd do Linux From Scratch. I've ended up on Kubuntu and Ubuntu Server for the last few years. I personally detest Gnome, and I don't want my 2D desktop pretending to be 3D. That's a waste of processor and memory power. Anyone who tries Ubuntu Desktop and hates it needs to try Kubuntu - most of the hate is because of the interface, not because of the os/distribution. (Oh, and for lighter power servers that I have to have a GUI on, I use one of the various ICE/Blackbox/XFCE desktops. Whichever works best on that particular hardware. I'm not picky)

As for editing? I still do most of it in VIM-NOX, and my most frequently used program, other than Firefox, is Konsole.


I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.

Windows 8 slower than Windows 7?

I'm curious about why this was implied, since I've been using 8.1 since it's release and it is remarkably faster than its predecessor. That, along with the many usability improvements, mean you would have to drag me back to 7 kicking and screaming.

I'm cautiously optimistic about Windows 10 as many of the changes seem to be reactionary to the small-minded masses that can't handle change for the better.

Small minded no

MadTech01's picture

Windows 8 was a big middle finger to everyone who uses a desktop and notebook that did not have touch screen capability.
It was optimized for touch pure and simple, and most people do not have or like touch screens for there computers. Windows 8.1 was a half attempt to say sorry for the changes that were not really thought out. And they could have released another service pack for 8 that would give the functionallity of 10 but they held out till 10. Microsoft make a big screw up every other operating system. ME, Vista, 8, etc... Vista had a lot of problems becuase it was rushed to market before the engineers felt it was ready and 8 was the same way from the information I have found. Heck if you look at most business software out there it does not support Windows Vista, or Windows 8. The companies Saw a turd and would not work with it. Most companies are waiting on Windows 10 so they can support it. Business is a big customer for the Computer industry and microsoft tends to forget that every other OS release.

"Cortana is watching you!"

I don't use a touchscreen

And yet I'm much happier with Windows 8.1 than I've ever been with every previous version of Windows and their odd obsession with hierarchical menus that advances in processing power and indexing capabilities have rendered obsolete.

Want to start an application? Just tap the Windows key and start typing what you want to do. You don't even have to get the exact name of the application right, or even the name at all sometimes - use it like a search engine.

Use something often and would rather use the mouse to select it? Pin it somewhere. You can customize the location, size, and appearance of any application, and it will always be there at the same place for you.

There's plenty of improvements to be had if you're just willing to give it a shot.

Improvements implies that it

Improvements implies that it was better. It wasn't. It's just _different_. What they did was made an enormous mistake, which is to assume that all computers would be touch screens. They wanted a 'common experience' across all windows platforms. Fine - but give people choices. It's not like it would have been hard to leave the menu alone.

Hierarchical menus are very good things, especially if you want the list of everything installed. With the Windows 8 interface, you didn't even know if what you wanted was installed, unless you just happened to know the name, or had it pinned to their default start menu (which had nothing but trash software to start anyway).

The biggest flaw? Hiding the tools to actually rework the OS. Don't tell me they're just under the right hand 'settings' menu, they're not. They're hidden as hell, and some you can't reach unless you know how to spawn off separate processes to bring up control panel sections. Add Classic Start, and you have what Microsoft should have sold - an OS with the Metro interface as an option, and the normal start menu and desktop for those people (*cough* businesses *cough*) who needed to be able to see what they were running.


I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.

I've had the Technical Preview of Windows 10...

on a previous Windows 7 box. The box was the typical all in one, simple, medium range PC. The box ran Win 7 Home decently. Once it got to Win 10, things slowed down, a lot. As new builds of the tech preview came out, the machine got slower, until it barely moved, or the "We're sorry, something bad happened" screen popped up and the machine went through a 30 minute rebuild.

This iteration happened more than once, it happened several times, and by the fifth rebuild in two weeks, I'd had enough. Out came the Win 7 disk and the whole thing got "fdisked, format, reinstall..doo daa doo daa".

No doubt that Win 10, on a higher performing machine will work much better. But I'll try to keep Win 7 on my machine for as long as possible. I don't need an OS that looks pretty, I need one that works and is stable. There are days when I entertain the idea of going back to DOS 6 and using Word Perfect, Lotus 1-2-3 and Opera as my main web browser.

I don't like the idea of being forced onto cloud storage. Yes, I know Win 7 and Office 2013 apps give you the option of putting your files on the desktop, I do this for a living. But the default is to shove the docs out to a LiveDrive cloud server. Which is fine, if you don't have business secrets to keep, have to maintain HIPPA compliance, don't want everything to go POOF the way 5 million GMAIL accounts did not too long ago, or don't mind having the police, FBI, NSA, CIA or other alphabet agencies both here in the US and abroad getting mass data dumps on a regular basis of cloud based storage. (you see, when your docs are held 'in the cloud', the cops don't need a search warrant to retrieve your data. It's classified as a 'business record', like your electric bill, and the cloud company coughs it up on a law enforcement/spy agency whim.)

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned Cortana

Cortana comes to the PC and Xbox in Windows 10. Depending on how you configure the software, she's just waiting for the phrase "Hey Cortana" to jump in and assist you. She can be creepy at times. She tells me when I need to leave for work based on the expected traffic and how long it will take me to get home. The creepy part is I never told her where I work or what time I have to be there. And she usually tells me how long to get home as I'm packing up to leave even though I don't leave at the same time each day. Of course the logical explanation for all this is geofencing. I have a Windows Phone, Windows Tablet, and Windows PC all running Windows 8.1 and a PC running Windows 7 for work. They are all tied to the same Microsoft Account so files and data are shared. And yes, you really can add your Microsoft Account to Windows 7 even if you are using a domain login. Microsoft Account security is pretty good with Two Factor Authentication. Most people just don't turn it on. It's also available for Apple and Google.

Sluggishness

Don't forget you're using a Technical Preview. That means it's loaded with debug symbols and extra code for various kinds of analysis by the developers.

Once the Release candidates come out most of that cruft will disappear and the speed should increase noticeably.

Hey! I'm apologising for a Microsoft product! I think I need to go lie down somewhere...

Penny

This is also where the

This is also where the marketing people and lawyers get involved. That's what happened to Vista - I was told by one of the programmers that at this point, Vista was fast, smooth, and stable. Then they were ordered to stuff everything through DRM checks (and some other stuff I didn't follow), and it turned into a slow turd.


I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.

Hey Penny

Yes, it was a Tech Preview, and the code was not optimized for speed, or much of anything else.

Now, having said that, I have the production, public release of Windows 10 running on that same mid-range box. Yes, it's still slower than my high end production machine. Yes, I'm still finding all the ins and outs on it. My complaints from before are still there, like having all my documents shoved out to cloud storage.

But the speed is there. It works better than 8.0 both in the speed category and the mouse and keyboard category. Load time is reasonable. Network access speed still sucks squared nodes. Microsoft and the device driver writers need to start producing optimized code for the NIC cards.

The UI layout takes a lot of getting use to. Luckily I can pin my most used apps to the taskbar and not have to go rooting round and round through the menus to find them. Still want a better search from the "Web and Windows". I don't need to see 5 million Notepad replacements from the web when I'm searching for the NOTEPAD application on my workstation.

All in all, I'd give it a 7 out of 10 rating.

Yup. The only true HIPPA

Yup. The only true HIPPA compliant cloud service/backup is one like OwnCloud - where you own the hardware, control the interface, and maintain the secure link.


I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.

windows 1o pretty not.

MadTech01's picture

I personally fell that changing the icons and lay out to look more 2D is terrible looking, the look like older generation icons to me way older. I preferred the definition yo the icons they were heading towards not the flat lower color variance look they are going to. Windows 7 was very good looking to me but 10 is a step backwards in that department I think.

"Cortana is watching you!"

Windows 10 Preview

Do you still need to allow Microsoft to capture every keypress and mouse movement to "analyze your useage" when downloading/using the preview?

Martina

when I installed with the custom setup with a clean install

MadTech01's picture

it let me pick and choose what I allowed them to see. I was able to turn of the share this and share that with Microsoft. but it still looks at some usage info like if I report a bug otherwise the network activity is pretty nill. Using app and other windows store downloads they are talking non stop back while using them, but with most of them they have too.

"Cortana is watching you!"

it has to do with leftover code in long running software types.

MadTech01's picture

Basically companies that have been making software since the era of windows 95 and windows 98 and they have code that looks for windows 9x and if it see's it, it will not work. so an engineer at Microsoft said they would have to have the software partners fix their software( lost of them) or they could simply call it windows 10 and the problem did not manifest.
It was a simple but hilarious fix.
So no Windows 9 and jump straight to 10

"Cortana is watching you!"

Not exactly. When you query

Not exactly. When you query the newer OS's, they respond with 'Windows NT', not 'Windows 9x'. Windows XP was 5, Vista was 6, 7 is ... surprise! 7. I haven't done the query on 8 or 8.1. I suspect that 8.1 _is_ 'windows 9', and Windows 10 is "Windows NT 10'.


I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.

most of my server sofware reads the kernal version

MadTech01's picture

If you ever look at the kernal of the os yes xp is 5 vista was 6 but windows 7 was 6.5, haven't checked the kernel version on 8 and up yet.

But software can be strange at times had a copy of AutoCAD 2000 back in the day it would run on 98, 98 SE, NT 4.0 and windows 2000, but it would through up compatibility issues with XP. it had issues figuring out the WIndows Version and would simply say it was not compatible with windows 95. So software can behave in strange ways and you never know what the software is looking at when it looks at the version of Windows you have. when software has been on every windows version since the 95 era unknown problems can emerge. And sometimes it is the strangest things that create the fix that you never would have suspected would solve the issue. For example I had a wireless card that would run great on XP, Vista 64-bit, but for windows 7 64-bit it would not work. Finally I found a work around I had to install the windows XP 32-bit driver to get the card to somewhat function. Most other hardware it would have been the Vista 64-bit driver to fix the issue but nope it took an even older OS Driver to short term fix it, I replaced the card latter. Ah the good old Days of a Tri-Boot system. but that was also when 7 first came out. Vista 64-bit was the first stable 64-bit OS but was way to resource hungry for my tastes. 7 was a little better but not much. That is why when people tell me how slow there old computer was with its OS compared to a newer computer I always ask for specs, like CPU, RAM, etc... because ( well you would not be surprised) but most would be to find out that the Old OS's work way faster on newer hardware than they ever did when they first came out. Heck XP came out during the era of Single Core Processors and 256MB of RAM. But I felt it did not come into its own until it had at least 2 GB of RAM. Now I would call anyone crazy to run windows with less than 8 GB of RAM, the software always says it can work with less but it suffers for it. My current system is maxed to the Gills i7-4770K overclocked to run at a constant 4.2GHz, 32GB RAM, 2 480GB OS Drives, 2 1TB SSD program Drives, and 2 4TB HDD Data Drives. and a killer graphics card. And I try to push the hardware to the limits. Windows 10 is looking good to me, and surprisinly the business software that would not run on 8 will run on 10 that I have tested so far, At least the programs that have gotted recent patches and upgrades. And the Windows 8 stuff is working for the most part good as well. Cant wait to see DirectX 12 in action and with Linux the Volcan API that is supposed to be renamed to a OpenGL standard name soon. Harware will get faster and faster till it is keeping up with the USer then there is no point of going faster.

"Cortana is watching you!"

Windows 9...

never was. Personally I think they jumped from 8 to 10 to bypass the obvious play on words Windows NINE! (Nine being German for NO!)

win8

Sadarsa's picture

First time i saw windows 8 was on my mom's new PC.. She was trying to turn the pc off before work and gave up, asked me to do it as she was leaving.

It took me 25 minutes to figure out how to shut down her PC without doing a hard boot. We're so used to the Start menu being in the bottom left that it never occured to me that a hidden menu was on the right side.

Win8 seems to me to be designed for notebooks with a touch screen... not a pc

~Your only Limitation is your Imagination~

Shutdown Windows 8.1

You can also right click the start button to shutdown on Windows 8.1. On a tablet you can just press the power button and a n Arrow pops up that you slide to power down. Windows Phone 8.1 is the same as a tablet with the arrow.

more on 10

I have been using the tech preview for Windows 10 for a couple of months now. I have it loaded on a Gateway laptop , dual core, with 2 Gig of RAM that came with XP. I use it like I would normally use the PC for office work, no games, or heavy duty graphics. I run Office 2010, Firefox, Chrome, all the standard Adobe products and haven’t seen any glitches. The laptop has a tablet function using a stylus/pen, which is RFID located so it is not modern touch screen. Win 10 has allowed the pen to work without any problems.

During time I have been using 10 there have been about 4 build version updates that I have installed. The last one was the worst of the bunch – can’t remember the build number – but that has more to do with some menu graphics than on its operation or reconfigurable features. I think it boots as quick, if not a bit quicker, than XP or Windows 7, which I also run on identically configured machines. Truthfully I haven’t done side-by-side comparisons with the boot time so it could be just conjecture on my part.

So far I would have to give Win 10 thumbs up. I will have no hesitation about loading it on my computers. As a caveat since I don’t have one I haven’t used it on any true touch screen devices.

Of course there is the usually hunt for the features you want because they have been moved, it is like going into the supermarket after they have rearranged it - everything is still there just in a different place and it might have a different look.

Have fun.

Jeri Elaine

Homonyms, synonyms, heterographs, contractions, slang, colloquialisms, clichés, spoonerisms, and plain old misspellings are the bane of writers, but the art and magic of the story is in the telling not in the spelling.

Interestingly...

Going by internal version numbers...

6.0 = Windows Vista
6.1 = Windows 7
6.2 = Windows 8
6.3 = Windows 8.1
6.4 = early builds of Windows 10, until it got bumped up to 10.0 (so it probably still shares a lot of code with Vista)

Windows 2000 was NT 5.0, while XP was 5.1 (merging the former desktop and workstation lines). while on the desktop line-up, early versions of Windows had the release name and internal version matching, right up to...

4.0 = Windows 95
4.1 = Windows 98 (98SE was just a different build - Gold was 4.1.1998 [how original!] while SE was 4.1.2222)
4.9 = Windows ME (the less said about that, the better!)

However, what's more interesting is that Windows 10 will apparently move to a rolling release update system - i.e. as new features are added, they'll be released to consumers. There'll also be a Current Branch for Business (which can delay the implementation of non-critical updates) and a Long Term Support Branch (periodic snapshots of the CBB). Each LTS version will be supported for the standard 10 years (5 years mainstream, 5 years extended), while the CBB will be supported for the last three LTS releases and the consumer branch for the lifetime of the device.

They're also planning to release a free ARM port for the Raspberry Pi 2 as its Internet of Things developer program. Although given only Modern UI apps will be able to be used directly from the x86 version (as I believe they're written in "web languages" so should be platform neutral), why anyone would want to use Win 10 on a Pi rather than one of the six OSes bundled in NOOBS (Archlinux ARM, OpenELEC, Pidora, RaspBMC, Raspbian, RiscOS) is anyone's guess...


As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!

The Windows NT line of code

The Windows NT line of code was _not_ the same as Windows 95/98/ME. Ignore any and all of those build numbers.

Windows NT (when I worked with it) was 3.0, 3.1, 3.5, 3.51, 4.0 - NT 4.0 was the last "NT", and sat alongside Windows 95/98. The next "NT" was "Windows 2000" - or Windows NT 5.0.

The 95/98/ME line died out completely, and they only continued the NT line. No relationship between them, as DOS support was best in the 9x versions - the NT versions had iffy DOS, because they'd dumped 8 bit support.


I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.