Windows 10 is getting some good reviews

[spinedoc77]

I don't know about that.

I just starting using it yesterday, but already I feel several limitations & poor design aspects in Windows 8.1 have been significantly improved

- Choice of start menu or start screen. User decides.
- Windowed dont-call-me-metro apps
- Improvement of core apps (especially Mail & Calendar)
- Removal of Charms
- Settings panel much better than Settings in 8.1

And the following adds new features that I think will be useful on laptop/desktop

- Cortana digital assistant
- Task view
- Virtual desktops
- Snap Assist
- Notification centre
- Quick access tab in Windows Explorer with frequently accessed files & folders
- Can now ctrl+v into command prompt window (yes, this took until 2015 to happen!)
- Per-monitor display scaling
- Native Print to PDF support
- Improvements to File History restore process

I also think the inclusion of a dedicated Windows feedback app is a really positive advance. Giving feedback about Windows (and Microsoft products in general) is something that has been generally difficult to do until recently. Microsoft never had a web page like the Apple feedback web page for example.

Many of your positives are negatives for me:
Start menu: I'll still install classic start menu
Loss of full screen apps huge loss (even if you fullscreen it, the app doesn't remember this on next reopen)
core apps: I haven't played with them yet, looking forward to it
Removal of charms: Bleh, HUGE mistake for tablet use and a huge negative for me
Settings panel: it is nice

Cortana: seems likeyou lose too much privacy, but I haven't played with it much. Seems more useful on a phone where it's a pain to type and look things up
Task view: Bleh, give me back my swipe through apps
Virtual desktops: Nice
Snap assist: Nice
Notification centre: Meh, kind of neutral on this, it's not much different than win7/8 just set up aesthetically nice
Quick access: VERY VERY nice, it's not new as win8 had favorites, but quick access is more intuitive and seems baked into more stuff and menus, definitely like.
Cmd window, very nice, can you ctr+v with admin rights?
per monitor display: WOW this is extremely nice, plus you can independently adjust text size, UI elements and taskbar options.
Print to PDF: oohh I didn't see that one, I just struggled with this recently in win8, nice

 

[spinedoc77]

I upgraded my Surface Pro 3 on release day and have been very happy with it. Yes, there are a few things from 8.1 that are missing from 10, but overall the experience is just much more polished. I haven't had enough time to say for sure how the under-the-hood stuff will perform long-term, but we have found very few incompatibilities from our tools and programs that were 8.1 compatible, so I'm not expecting any issues there. The UI and visual look is the best Windows has ever had, IMO.

I'm using Edge, and while I miss some of the extensions, overall it's a very good start. I actually had some significant issues with IE11 on my Surface - with my normal dozen or so tabs open, every 24-48 hours, tabs would stop loading content and reload to a white page until I restarted the browser. So far that isn't happening in Edge.

Like Spinedoc says above - the scaling is MUCH improved. I have a 4k monitor I dock the Surface to - bought specifically because of how poorly 8.1 handled scaling - but in 10 I'm now able to move the 4k monitor down to 125% gaining me a bunch of real estate and finally making it feel like a bigger workspace instead of just a sharper one. When things do get blurry, MS has improved the algorithm so it's at least livable until I get around to logging out for some other purpose.

Battery life seems to be marginally improved, but hard to say for sure there. It's still nothing like I'd want it to be, and I think that Microsoft could go further in giving the user more real-time tools to isolate which apps are energy hogs the way the OS X does. There are plenty of apps I'd only open on an as-needed basis if I could confirm exactly how much their contribution to the poor battery life was.

How do you function with the 4k at 125%?!?!? My monitor is only 28" so maybe yours is larger but at 125% I can't see anything. I have to crank it to 200% and then many elements don't scale up. IE11 desktop the ribbon/menus don't scale up at all and are crazy small.

The blurriness is annoying, I know you can change it per app but then the app doesn't scale up. But that's not windows fault, it's the programs dev fault so hopefully stuff gets updated. I'm surprised at what's behind, for example Adobe PDF is blurry and I'm surprised a company that large hasn't allotted for win10 yet.

Edge is TERRIBLE on a tablet, at least compared to metro ie11, I don;'t know how you function. To have to hunt and peck for back/forward commands again, to hunt and peck through a menu system for favorites, bleh.

 

[zhenya]

How do you function with the 4k at 125%?!?!? My monitor is only 28" so maybe yours is larger but at 125% I can't see anything. I have to crank it to 200% and then many elements don't scale up. IE11 desktop the ribbon/menus don't scale up at all and are crazy small.

The blurriness is annoying, I know you can change it per app but then the app doesn't scale up. But that's not windows fault, it's the programs dev fault so hopefully stuff gets updated. I'm surprised at what's behind, for example Adobe PDF is blurry and I'm surprised a company that large hasn't allotted for win10 yet.

Edge is TERRIBLE on a tablet, at least compared to metro ie11, I don;'t know how you function. To have to hunt and peck for back/forward commands again, to hunt and peck through a menu system for favorites, bleh.

No, mine is a 27". I do have good eyesight and I have a standing desk, and have the monitor positioned relatively close to me. If I had it at the distance I used to work at seated, yeah, it'd likely be too small.

I don't find that I have that many issues with blurry windows - there are few programs I use that have it all the time - the only time I really see it is when I dock after I've already been logged in and some windows need to be rescaled. And again, it's way less blurry than it was under that same situation in Window 8.1.

I never thought much of Metro IE. The gestures were ok, but the response to reload the page was so slow most of the time that it killed the fluidity that gestures like that are supposed to have. In Edge, I find that since I generally hold the tablet in portrait with my left hand, one of the two back buttons is generally within reach anyhow. I suspect that we will see gestures come to Edge in the not too distant future.

 

[UAV]

Define power user ?

I work with OSX no problem as a graphic designer whether it be a very large painting / illustration with literally hundreds of layers or a 4k video with lots of compositing / effects. Likewise editing photos from our hasselblad 50mp studio camera in raw format.

Likewise the macs in our Recording studio working all day long on Protools etc...

If these are not power user jobs what are?

A poor artist blames his tools.

power user would be someone like an aerospace engineer running software like creo or catia, just to name a few and that won't run on OSX not powerfull enough lol...

 

[Septembersrain]

I find Windows 10 a bit interesting. It's visually more on par with Win 8 yet has some of the oldies but goodies functionality from Win 7. Just wish there was darker themes for all of the OS UI. So far, even with registry tweaks, I can only get some of it black.

 

[spinedoc77]

No, mine is a 27". I do have good eyesight and I have a standing desk, and have the monitor positioned relatively close to me. If I had it at the distance I used to work at seated, yeah, it'd likely be too small.

I don't find that I have that many issues with blurry windows - there are few programs I use that have it all the time - the only time I really see it is when I dock after I've already been logged in and some windows need to be rescaled. And again, it's way less blurry than it was under that same situation in Window 8.1.

I never thought much of Metro IE. The gestures were ok, but the response to reload the page was so slow most of the time that it killed the fluidity that gestures like that are supposed to have. In Edge, I find that since I generally hold the tablet in portrait with my left hand, one of the two back buttons is generally within reach anyhow. I suspect that we will see gestures come to Edge in the not too distant future.

Metro IE11 was a mixed bag at times. Loading pages was very fast for me, and I never had one load slowly. Now going backwards, VERY often it just sticks there doing nothing and 30 seconds later it loads, or sometimes I have to go forwards then quickly backwards to get it to load, so yeah it was buggy.

Still, Edge seems like such a huge compromise. It has that huge top bar so you never get full screen mode like metro ie11. The gestures were absolutely indispensable for tablet use, I'm baffled how anyone couldn't love them. No offense meant for you of course, we use our tablets differently. I suspect you're right, we will see gestures soon, then I can upgrade to win10 and sleep at night. I hope now that they released win10 and really pulled all the desktop users that their team is hard at work on reintegrating the tablet stuff.

 

[zhenya]

To be clear, I liked the gestures, but the fact that the back gesture was generally so slow to load the page kind of killed any enjoyment or functionality I got out of it. It's like when third parties have tried to add OS X like gestures to Windows in the past - the functionality is usually there, technically, but they work so slowly or unreliably that I could never stick with them. The built-in track-pad gestures to Windows 10 are another thing that I am really enjoying. It's definitely something that should be defined and managed on the OS level, not by third parties. Now if only Logitech would get on board and let my T650 trackpad play along...

 

[LIVEFRMNYC]

Did a clean install hours ago. So far I'm liking Windows 10 a lot.

 

[ozaz]

Many of your positives are negatives for me:
Start menu: I'll still install classic start menu
Loss of full screen apps huge loss (even if you fullscreen it, the app doesn't remember this on next reopen)
core apps: I haven't played with them yet, looking forward to it
Removal of charms: Bleh, HUGE mistake for tablet use and a huge negative for me
Settings panel: it is nice

Cortana: seems likeyou lose too much privacy, but I haven't played with it much. Seems more useful on a phone where it's a pain to type and look things up
Task view: Bleh, give me back my swipe through apps
Virtual desktops: Nice
Snap assist: Nice
Notification centre: Meh, kind of neutral on this, it's not much different than win7/8 just set up aesthetically nice
Quick access: VERY VERY nice, it's not new as win8 had favorites, but quick access is more intuitive and seems baked into more stuff and menus, definitely like.
Cmd window, very nice, can you ctr+v with admin rights?
per monitor display: WOW this is extremely nice, plus you can independently adjust text size, UI elements and taskbar options.
Print to PDF: oohh I didn't see that one, I just struggled with this recently in win8, nice

Yeah I can see how there are probably downsides for tablet users (haven't tried Win 10 on a tablet yet myself) but I was responding to a comment that was referring to lack of advancements for desktop users.

On Cortana: I've been finding Google Now really useful on my Android phone, and for several months I've been wanting to have it on my desktop - especially for adding & accessing reminders. Apparently this can be done through Chrome but that's never worked for me. For this reason I'm pretty interested in Cortana. If Microsoft executes it well (on both Windows and Android) there's a good chance I'll switch from Google Now to Cortana.

On Action Centre: It seems a bit underwhelming and incomplete at the moment but as a desktop user I never liked the notification system in Windows 8 where notifications were decentralised and linked to start screen live tiles. I like having a subtle visual indicator in the taskbar notification area which lights up when I have any unread notifications. For me, this strikes a good balance between not being distracting (I find toast notifications distracting) and ensuring I don't go long periods without noticing notifications. Previously I would have to remember to check start screen live tiles for unread mail notifications.

On Quick Access: Maybe wrong but I don't think Windows 8 had option to auto-populate of favourites based on regular/recent access. I think this is what's new about Quick Access.

On cmd Window. Seems like you can.

 

[MRU]

Has anyone tried updating Windows 7 on a MacPro 2008 to Windows 10 ? I am worried Bootcamp drivers won't install afterwards (they wouldn't allow me to install on a clean version of windows 8).

 

[mclld]

I really like it but the only thing that is sort of off is how some things are totally different in design. For example, I go into settings and it looks like this

while a submenu setting will looks totally different

 

[Mr. Buzzcut]

Yes, among other things. In fact I'd say the Mac/OS X/Windows VM setup is one of the best ways of experiencing Windows. The whole Windows HD becomes one file that can be easily backed up, there is no speed penalty, and, for the few instances in which a Windows program has not been ported to OS X, the virtual machine suffices. I run a fairly heavy duty data acquisition and analysis system using a Windows Virtual machine on my Mac in OS X. Being able to use UNIX tools is also useful in OS X, but I have yet to see a good solution for doing that in Windows (perhaps there is one).

Keep in mind that any modern PC is a Turing machine and therefore infinitely flexible, no matter the OS on which it runs. Thus, judging the utility of the OS depends on the given user's priorities. I prefer the flexibility of being able to use 3 separate OS's on one computer, if need be simultaneously. In any case, calling OS X a 'toy' operating system is a bit silly.

Windows isn't Unix and it depends which tools you mean but look at Cygwin.

 

[spinedoc77]

Yeah I can see how there are probably downsides for tablet users (haven't tried Win 10 on a tablet yet myself) but I was responding to a comment that was referring to lack of advancements for desktop users.

On Cortana: I've been finding Google Now really useful on my Android phone, and for several months I've been wanting to have it on my desktop - especially for adding & accessing reminders. Apparently this can be done through Chrome but that's never worked for me. For this reason I'm pretty interested in Cortana. If Microsoft executes it well (on both Windows and Android) there's a good chance I'll switch from Google Now to Cortana.

On Action Centre: It seems a bit underwhelming and incomplete at the moment but as a desktop user I never liked the notification system in Windows 8 where notifications were decentralised and linked to start screen live tiles. I like having a subtle visual indicator in the taskbar notification area which lights up when I have any unread notifications. For me, this strikes a good balance between not being distracting (I find toast notifications distracting) and ensuring I don't go long periods without noticing notifications. Previously I would have to remember to check start screen live tiles for unread mail notifications.

On Quick Access: Maybe wrong but I don't think Windows 8 had option to auto-populate of favourites based on regular/recent access. I think this is what's new about Quick Access.

On cmd Window. Seems like you can.

I do like it on desktop, more and more every day. The separate DPI setting for multiple monitors really sealed the deal for me.

Weird question, anyone know if there is some kind of setting which auto saves folders to quick access? On one of my work PC's whenever I save a file to a folder it automatically adds that folder to quick access, by the end of the day I have 20 or 30 folders on there. I'm assuming it's a bug since I cannot find a setting for it, but maybe I'm wrong.

 

[ozaz]

Weird question, anyone know if there is some kind of setting which auto saves folders to quick access? On one of my work PC's whenever I save a file to a folder it automatically adds that folder to quick access, by the end of the day I have 20 or 30 folders on there. I'm assuming it's a bug since I cannot find a setting for it, but maybe I'm wrong.

File Explorer options (in control panel) - general tab - privacy section

 

[AustinIllini]

I really like it but the only thing that is sort of off is how some things are totally different in design. For example, I go into settings and it looks like this

while a submenu setting will looks totally different

The submenus are clearly left similar to previous versions for the more power users who are familiar with previous versions. This is quite advantageous for the enterprise market and does not really have an effect on the consumer.

 

[RobAus]

That's the first time in 5 years I've read a headline (and article) and actually looked forward to upgrading. How has it been so hard and taken so long to just have ease of use back on the main menu, pardon the pun

 

[Razeus]

Just got my Dell XPS 13 a couple of weeks ago and upgraded to Windows 10 the first day. I love it. Best Windows OS yet. Looks modern and far from the outdated look of OS X.

 

[Gaugerer]

Applications are more plentiful and easier to run on iOS/Android than Windows making Windows the choice when apps are not available on iOS/Android.

 

[mrex]

wow, needed alot of tweaking for a privacy... unbelievable difficult to uninstall win apps via powershell... apps that should be easily removed by a right clicking or from the control panel settings.