

Windows 10: Designed for All Your Devices - mk44
https://blogs.windows.com/bloggingwindows/2015/05/26/your-windows-10-pc-will-love-all-the-devices-you-own/

======
daeken
I just installed the latest Windows 10 build in a VM, and I'm remarkably
impressed. Cortana is working much better than expected, and I'm loving the
new start menu. I'm planning on switching to Win10 full time for at least 6
months or so after release; been on OS X for many years, but I much prefer the
direction MS is going, these days. It looks like they're going to be the first
folks to really get a universal ecosystem across desktops, tablets, and
phones; frankly, I'm surprised it wasn't Google.

~~~
gr3yh47
>I just installed the latest Windows 10 build in a VM, and I'm remarkably
impressed

wat.

> Cortana is working much better than expected,

wat.

>and I'm loving the new start menu.

waaaaaaat.

> been on OS X for many years

oh. now it makes sense.

~~~
Frondo
Actually, I'd like to second how impressed I am with Cortana. I got a windows
phone a little while ago (really cheap, no contract, no love for the Android
interface, etc) and was a bit skeptical of how useful it'd be at first.

After trying to ask it more and more natural-language questions, and having it
speak useful answers back to me, it feels more and more like I'm in Star Trek.

I'm not usually that impressed by technology anymore (i.e. I still think lots
of things are cool, but seldom do they surprise me), after being in the field
for 30 years, but Cortana impresses the heck out of me.

------
Numberwang
I'm really looking forward to Windows 10, but how come every single marketing
page they put out instantly lands on the front page around the top results?

~~~
RyanZAG
Internal MS voting circle.

Edit: Not to say they're necessarily doing it on purpose or for marketing:
Microsofties would receive these urls internally, and if only 20 or so of them
immediately submitted them to HN, it would go to the top of the frontage.

Although personally and knowing the extremes Microsoft goes to with marketing,
I'd also not doubt if said Microsofties were 'informally encouraged' to share
such links on social media as much as possible.

~~~
ebbv
Yep, and the admins should be able to see that. They should get one warning to
stop or all accounts involved should be banned.

~~~
sz4kerto
It's slightly tricky because people usually upvote what they are interested
in. Therefore if a big bunch of people are interested in Win10, then it is
just completely normal if they upvote these topics. Similarly, basically every
new Apple hardware ends up on the top of HN. Same applies to many other things
-- secure messaging, depression/burnout related articles, all Tesla news, etc.

It's very hard to run a news site and keep stuff out that actually interest
people.

I very much doubt that these articles are upvoted by employees, etc.

~~~
ebbv
The web developer community is well known to have a massive Apple bias. I'm
not surprised by Apple stuff going to the top quickly, usually.

But this post in particular is suspect because it is totally devoid of
content. Look at the comments so far, the most discussion has been prompted by
the lack of content resulting in wondering how on earth this got to the top so
quickly.

I'd bet dollars to donuts there was coordinated voting by Microsoft employees.
Lots of companies do it on reddit, it's much less common here at HN (I think),
but it still does happen.

~~~
oldmanjay
Accusations of shilling without evidence are typically boring. This post is
not an exception.

~~~
ebbv
You know what's even more boring? Someone replying with "This is boring."
without contributing anything.

------
lewisl9029
I've been using the preview full-time for quite a while now, and my favorites
are by far the multi-monitor window management features.

Essentially, you can now snap windows to any one of the 4 corners or 2 sides
of any monitor and it just works (corners and sides are "sticky" when you're
dragging windows). It also offers you the option to snap another window to the
adjacent space with a single additional click.

It's by far the most user-friendly and elegant way of managing windows on
multiple monitors I've seen on any OS so far.

------
chdir
My primary devices are an Ubuntu laptop + an Android phone. Both are very
flexible for my needs. I'm scratching my head to figure out why should I be
excited about all that integration, perhaps I'm not their customer. Don't get
me wrong, I love & own Windows laptop too, but my Android phone does almost
everything that Cortana is supposed to do, Dropbox gets me the files I need,
I've moved away from MS Office...

It's just that the stuff mentioned in the blog isn't as magical as they are
trying to project.

~~~
c0nfused
So, I have a couple of machines running the preview. I basically feel like I
am not their targeted market most of the time. I don't use cortana, windows
phone, or own an xbox. The use case it play a game or browse the web. So, the
integration feature set doesn't really do anything for me. Overall, the
preview generally feels pretty good, with the occasional massive issues that
tend to happen in software previews, nightly builds, and beta software the
world over. Generally, think windows 8.1 but with slightly more desktop feel.

The gripes I have are mostly things that will likely get better by release, or
are simply things that I disagree with design choices. To pick one example,
let's talk about wifi.

The wifi selection recently moved from the windows 8 style UI to a newer UI.
In the process it lost several features, the only things I can change on the
properties screen for a wifi network are if it metered and if device discovery
is on.

It might just been that I have spent too much time in linuxland recently, but
that seems a bit like going too far the way of being idiot proof.

------
avolcano
Outside of some stability/compatibility issues that I hope are ironed out
before release, I've been pretty impressed with Windows 10 preview so far. I
only use Windows for games these days, so I can't really speak to it from a
productivity standpoint, but the interface is much more intuitive than Windows
8's while still keeping the handful of things I liked.

Ironically, there were a couple of Windows 8 behaviors I had to unlearn (for
example, there's no longer the super strange "hot corners" that were the only
way to access the shutdown menu). Definitely didn't take as long as initially
learning how to navigate Windows 8, though :)

~~~
JTon
> there's no longer the super strange "hot corners" that were the only way to
> access the shutdown menu

I'm not a fan of the hot corners. If you use a keyboard, you can use the
following shortcut to shutdown your PC

WIN KEY + X, U, U

~~~
georgemcbay
> WIN KEY + X, U, U

Windows Key + X is pretty much the one thing that makes Windows 8 tolerable on
the desktop and the one thing I would recommend everyone having trouble with
Windows 8 learn even if they aren't generally keyboard shortcut users and
navigate the resulting menu (the WinKey+X menu) via mouse. I've been using
Windows 8 since release and never use the hot corners stuff at all thanks to
this menu.

~~~
JTon
Agreed 100%

------
markbnj
I like a lot of what I'm seeing and hearing, but unless I can find a good
replacement for Media Center on the desktop I might still be using Windows 7
for a few more years.

~~~
daeken
I really recommend Kodi (previously XBMC). It's open source, the ecosystem is
vibrant, and pretty much everything plugs into it.
[http://kodi.tv/](http://kodi.tv/)

~~~
untog
But Media Centre has the ability to record DRM-ed cable. XBMC will never have
that.

~~~
kefka
There's your first problem: you bought more cable than you needed for your
internet connection.

Second problem: you tried to use DRM. See XKCD 488 as to why it's a problem.

~~~
untog
_you bought more cable than you needed for your internet connection._

What?

 _Second problem: you tried to use DRM._

I didn't. The cable company did. And plenty of the TV I am able to record is
not available to stream on the same day, if at all.

~~~
kefka
you bought more cable than you needed for your internet connection.

> What?

Cable Internet in the US requires some sort of service to be bought alongside
internet. That's usually Basic Cable. My comment was saying that if you bought
more than basic cable, you bought more cable than you needed.

Second problem: you tried to use DRM.

> I didn't. The cable company did. And plenty of the TV I am able to record is
> not available to stream on the same day, if at all.

You can easily get your new via other avenues online. The only exception would
be local.

~~~
untog
_Cable Internet in the US requires some sort of service to be bought alongside
internet. That 's usually Basic Cable._

No it doesn't. In NYC at least you can buy internet through Time Warner
without buying a TV service.

 _My comment was saying that if you bought more than basic cable, you bought
more cable than you needed._

Incorrect. I bought the amount of cable service I required in order to watch
the things I want to watch when I want to watch them.

 _You can easily get your new via other avenues online._

Not legally. Live sports in particular.

------
jsingleton
I recently installed Win 10 on bare metal to have a go with the Win 10 IoT
version for the Raspberry Pi 2. Works well on an old MacBook Pro with a bit of
disk swapping even if bootcamp says it won't.

Seems OK but it definitely wasn't intuitive (and I'm already running Win 8).
The only thing I can think of is they are making it an easier learning curve
from Win 7 than from Win 8. It's a step backwards in some respects but I guess
that's the idea.

I'll probably upgrade once the first round of patches are out for the stable
version. More than I can say for the Raspberry Pi version which I won't be
touching again unless it gets a lot better. Sticking with Linux on that for
now. At least the mouse is usable.

------
maxerickson
Nailed it:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4074053](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4074053)

(especially the parenthetical)

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TazeTSchnitzel
So, rather than a way to sync with your phone or setup stuff like calendar,
contacts, photos or music sharing, they have just made a thing telling you to
install Microsoft's cloud apps?

Disappointing.

Apple has a great iOS/OS X experience because the integration is deeper than
just "install Apple's apps on your iPhone".

~~~
titanix2
I don't use it because I don't like Metro UI apps but a large part of the list
you give is already supported in Windows 8: calendar, contacts, photos (thru
OneDrive). Some are available in a cross-platform fashion (calendar, contacts
via MS account) others require a Windows Phone (IE opened tabs sharing, some
systems settings). So I don't see them being removed from Windows 10 and don't
really understand what you are exactly disappointed about.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
> I don't use it because I don't like Metro UI apps but a large part of the
> list you give is already supported in Windows 8: calendar, contacts, photos
> (thru OneDrive)

So the only way to sync them is via the cloud?

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choonies
is this legit? its hilarious
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt5iLwNChyo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt5iLwNChyo)

------
_RPM
I don't trust Windows even though my laptop has windows 8.1 installed. I'm
planning on building a custom desktop so I can install a Linux OS and not have
to worry about MSFT tracking my every click/keystroke.

~~~
romanovcode
It doesn't matter since your ISP/Browser/Mobile is tracking you anyway.

~~~
minot
This makes me doubly sad to think that IPv6 backed away from requiring IPsec
at all times. Very Sad.

~~~
kefka
Why? If who you're talking to is blabbing over a side channel, encryption
doesn't matter. Encryption only stops Eve from seeing the content. And this
says nothing regarding authentication. And there is no internet-wide RADIUS
server.

