I have been running the technical previews since the very start and I have to say I am quite surprised at the July 29th release date. Even today's builds are riddled with problems. They have a lot of work to do if they really think it will be consumer ready by the end of July.
Looks like you and I hit a nerve here on HN. You are right though. Microsoft will be shipping Windows 10 with an incomplete version of their new Edge browser with the promise of adding critical features such as extensions in the future. Basically Windows 10 won't really be feature complete RTM for another 6 months. Even if Microsoft want to pretend it is ready now.
Edit: To clarify the "hit a nerve" bit, when I wrote this my post and agildehaus's were both down voted.
In some ways yes it is the same. However Photos isn't exactly the most important piece of software that comes with your OS.
Microsoft are trying to change how people think of their web browser. Edge is very important yet they are launching it without one of the biggest features needed in a modern browser, extension support.
But do you believe that more than 1% of web browser users install and use one or more browser extensions?
In 2013, this article[1] gave numbers of anywhere from 9% to 22% of users blocking ads, which requires an extension AFAIK. So, "yes". Even if those numbers are exaggerated due to skewed measurements, I'm pretty sure it's going to be more than 1%.
Edge supports Flash already, so if that's all that 90% of people use, it won't be a problem. And it's typically categorized as a "plug-in" rather than an extension, so I wouldn't lump it in with the extension functionality.
Not sure if it has Silverlight, but since we aren't streaming the 2008 Olympics and Netflix doesn't need it anymore I'm not terribly worried.
Just to clarify. MS said users of win 7 & 8 will be able to upgrade for free to win 10 within a year.
I believe I read somewhere that this will be MS's last release #. It will be a rolling release from here on out. I have not seen details on how they monetize that unless they switch to Apple's HW model.
Microsoft has stated that most of the money they make from Windows is from selling licenses to hardware partners. Of course, they are also starting to move into an Apple-like hardware model (though of course they still allow third parties to make hardware).
I think they are just wanting as many people as possible to switch to Windows 10 as fast as possible. They are doing this by giving it away for free.
After the year Windows will be monotonized the same way. As someone that always builds his own comoputers I jumped on the $29.99 Windows 7 deal which they offered the first 6 months and $39.99 for Windows 8 which was good for the first three months (Off the top of my head not needed to be accurate for arguement sake)
It's free for a year to upgrade and than back to business as usual.
They sell computers and mobile phones of their own design tailored for their own OS. The only difference is that they allow third party hardware and Apple doesn't.
> I think they are just wanting as many people as possible to switch to Windows 10 as fast as possible. They are doing this by giving it away for free.
I agree.
> After the year Windows will be monotonized the same way.
This doesn't seem to be consistent with their stated goals and the direction they've been moving in. The idea is that Windows 10 is the last numbered version of Windows, after that it will be evergreen. What upgrades are there to sell?
This is their chosen strategy though, that as of Windows 10 there will no longer be full major Windows versions. Instead it will be an ongoing rolling release of incremental changes.
From a developer perspective, this sounds like a support nightmare given the number of potential configurations that could end up out there with no clear way of identifying them.
Instead it will be an ongoing rolling release of incremental changes.
I genuinely don't understand this move by Microsoft. Of all the things you want to be stable and reliable over time, your basic OS and platform software has to be at the top of the list.
While dumping any responsibility to support software older than the latest release has obvious appeal for developers, evergreen software has mostly proven to be mediocre-to-disastrous from the user's point of view so far. For business users, it's also painful from an internal support point of view, for much the same reasons. And as you mentioned, for an OS or other platform software, anyone developing other software that runs on top of it also faces problems.
About the only thing this kind of constantly updating deployment model has been good for is getting security and stability patches out faster. This is beneficial, but that benefit is tempered by the "just ship junk and patch it later" philosophy that has become widespread at the same time. Many of those patches simply shouldn't ever have been necessary in the first place, but new releases are now routinely of such poor quality that many people just don't bother, and advice to wait until SP1 or the equivalent is common.
If I were Microsoft, I think I'd want my new flagship OS to be the stable, reliable, trustworthy antidote to Apple's broken-within-a-week operating systems[1], not something with the same reputation for constantly tweaking things as Chrome/Firefox, on-line SaaS apps, and the like.
[1] For legal reasons, I would like to point out that not all Apple operating systems break within a week. In fact, the fastest I have seen a mainstream Apple device break in practice was approximately an hour after purchase, when iOS updated on a mobile device almost immediately, leaving the device so much worse than what the purchaser had previously tried out and thought they were buying that they took it straight back to the shop and demanded a full refund.
Businesses have had the ability to manage update deployments for a while now. Big Win10 feature changes will likely come in a service pack form or similar, with security fixes and minor updates using the same model they always have.
A business will typically test and verify updates before pushing then out to their employees.
Businesses which allow its users to perform updates directly from Microsoft already face the issues you describe. (Many updates can and have caused issues. Especially the occasional broken patch that gets rolled back shortly after release).
I can certainly see this being an issue for support companies. On the other hand, they will likely still have some form of versioning to base their support on. "Sir, please do XXX. You should see something saying Windows 10 Service Pack and then a number. Can you please tell me what that number is?"
Businesses have had the ability to manage update deployments for a while now.
Sure, but someone still has to test each update as it applies to each critical system or widely used standard PC configuration before giving the OK to roll it out across the organisation. If MS moved to releasing non-essential updates in an ad-hoc fashion, it seems inevitable that the result would be either a scheduling and resource management headache for corporate IT departments or (perhaps more likely) a general policy of not deploying non-essential updates at all by default in large organisations because the hassle of keeping up isn't justified. Corporate IT have enough to worry about already without someone potentially moving the goalposts on a daily basis.
I still don't see how what you are describing is any more or less of a headache than supporting Windows XP a decade after the first release.. it's still rolling updates, just with less intensive UI changes over that period.
The same goes for companies supporting Windows 7 today... they're using their own base, with cherry picked updates. It seems to me, that this would be easier to manage, than keeping up with rolling from xp/7/8/8.x etc.
I would be surprised if they would make such a gamble. The last thing they can afford is another PR disaster with Windows 10.
Right now, there is very little incentive for a user to move on from Windows 7 on an existing machine, particularly if it is not touch enabled. Now imagine if they hear that Windows 10 is riddled with bugs and doesn't work.
I prefer Win 8.1 to 7 any day. I spend 99.9% of my time in desktop mode and it's fine. I prefer it!
EDIT: I don't have many/any ongoing issues with bugs, and I even use Visual Studio CTP/RC on a day to day basis, without any major issues.
Microsoft do software _really_ well. The crap they have to get right on an ongoing basis is nothing compared to Google and Facebook, we should give them some credit.
It may not be perfect at this very moment, but it will get more polished as time goes on. It has to.
The carrot they're dangling is a free upgrade, so think I might take this gamble. I'm not a penny pincher, but even so I cringe at the thought of paying for operating system upgrades.
This opportunity won't last forever, so I'll start with laptops and work my way up.
But I strongly suspect after a year Microsoft will extend the upgrade indefinitely. The whole year limit only exists to accelerate Windows 10 upgrades (to add urgency to it).
It doesn't make sense for Microsoft to end the free upgrade program after that point. They've already sacrificed most of the private licence revenue by the majority of the people buying them already upgrading, so the remaining trickle after the year won't be significant.
But I might be wrong. They did end the Windows 8 $25 upgrade after a year for real. So we'll have to wait and see.
But why is a free upgrade a good thing? What do I get by upgrading?
To a power user you get lots of nice things. Hyper-V is fantastic from Windows 8. Explorer is also faster and locks a lot less files and folders (the "you can't delete a folder that contained pictures" bug in windows 7).
But to a common user, there is nothing better in windows 10, other than the fact that they need to relearn how to use windows. From a UI point of view, the only additions are multiple desktops, which is at best a featurette, and moving the search bar from within the start menu to the task bar, which isn't exactly a revolution. If you don't have touch enabled on your machine, which would be the common case for windows 7, upgrading to windows 10 is only going to be a hassle.
The original iPhone was feature complete, in that the features it shipped with were complete.
Whether it had all the features it could have done is another question. However that misses the point - the goal was to set the bar for a fully touch-screen interface, not compete on feature lists.
And it was earth shattering. That one product launch was the catalyst for a huge amount of change – our entire computing landscape has been shaken up, previous incumbents are dead or dying, new industries have been created and billions of dollars of value has been created and destroyed.
The current Win10 builds are not even close to having the polish iPhone 1 had. There's all sorts of inconsistencies and screwed up stuff. Hell, just clicking on search settings doesn't even work (in true JS style even; it just does nothing, no error, no response).
OTOH, coming from Win8, where it's so much worse, Win10 is an improvement. After running I for months, a friend asked what was new. "Well they undid the Metro app fiasco, more or less. And console windows are now resizable. Font rendering is blurry in half the OS. And most settings are messed up and unusable until you manage to get into the "legacy" settings dialog. And uh... That's it?" Yeah they added a weak attempt at some new window management, but nothing super usable.
Anything is better than Win8, but Win7 users are not going to enjoy it. They'll probably prefer the old shell, with the new kernel extensions.
Anybody who thinks Windows 7 is better than Windows 8.1 needs to get a new monitor or their eyes checked. Also if you update to the latest Windows 10 build, released this weekend, it fixes the search/start menu launch stuff. I am running 8.1 and Windows 10 in a virtual plus several users are already running 10. Blurry fonts are the app makers problem, just like Apple.
Uh blurry apps include all the Metro stuff, IE/Sparta, etc. It's because MS is abandoning pixel snapping in lieu of "more accurate" subpixel positioning. This approach only works well on high DPI or large fonts. It sucks compared to normal ClearType at smaller (<13 pt) sizes.
Users are gonna be hard pressed to list the advantages of 20 over 7. Console windows suck less. Start menu is back. Task manager is better. Lots of under-the-hood stuff, sure. But day to day? I've been using Win10 for months and can't think of anything. (Virtual desktops, maybe... Their implementation seems clunky compared to others I've used.)
Unless you're into metro apps and like the junk ridden store, what's the killer app? What's the huge win in upgrading?
I stopped buying games by EA and Ubisoft about 5 years ago for this very reason - shipping incomplete & buggy software with the mentality "we'll patch it later". In EA's case, those patches didn't even materialize a lot of the time.
I take it from your comment that they're still up to their old tricks... I'll continue my boycott of EA and Ubi
I used to love gaming on my PC, and today I have far more disposable income I'd be willing to spend for top quality games. Sadly, I haven't actually bought (or pirated) a AAA title on PC for probably a decade now. The last few I had were great fun until they crashed or otherwise fundamentally failed at just the wrong moment, at which point all that enjoyment would instantly evaporate and just leave me in a bad mood instead. And every AAA game I'd bought in the last year or two before I gave up was like that. Throw in almost ubiquitous DRM/anti-cheating software doing unknown and potentially very bad things to my PC behind my back these days, and I'm very sad to say that PC gaming just isn't attractive to me any more.
That reminds me of the win8 release. I got it after preorder on release day, installed it immediately, hit update and got something about 350MB of updates. WTF, on release day???
After 2 weeks I switched back to Win7 (which was a lot of work, because I didn't think of making a backup before, because I didn't believe what a pice of sh*t it could be).
The RTM pressing is usually sent out a couple months before the "release date" ... Even then, XP was probably one of the worst at release, and wasn't really okay until SP1, and good until SP2, but people forget that. Vista was pretty bad too.
The only version of Windows in my mind that worked really good out of the box was Windows 2000 (not ME), and even that had a conflict with some piece of software (cd burning program iirc)... Also, they removed the in-memory database between the final RC and release, which irked me to no end.
I didn't really start using Windows 8 until 8.1, I touched a few machines (that didn't have touchscreens) with windows 8 early on and it sucked, server 2008 over RDP was worse... 8.1 with classicshell isn't bad.
I'm a Mac user so I don't care too much. However, a lot of how Windows 10 will be perceived is from the online perception created. Most people in the world don't care about the little bugs, features, etc. They simply want to know if it's worth getting. If Windows 10 is reasonably good and tons of people upgrade from XP, for example, this will be a huge win for Microsoft and the entire community. If "reviewers" complain that Cortana can't read your mind and people start comparing her to Clippy, it will generate bad buzz that's not really justified.
9 out of 10 computers run Windows. Let's try to make it a version that's from 2015.
Unless MS changes their free upgrade policy to be every version of Windows since XP instead of 7 nobody using Vista / XP will upgrade because its expensive.
Though the market share of XP has been dropping. The only real users left are those who don't know what an OS is and only uses it to check AOL in ie6 and businesses who are too stupid to upgrade their horribly dated software.
I have to say, in general, that Microsoft's "messaging" about how the free upgrade will work has been riddled with bad communications. It is like the XBone incident all over again.
Instead of simply just spelling out with a very straight forward table what will be eligible they kept releasing vague and confusing press releases.
I've read articles which have claimed (amongst other things):
- Windows XP+ will be eligible (untrue).
- Pirated copies of Windows will be eligible (untrue?).
- Everyone can upgrade but there is a subscription fee (untrue).
- Windows 8 and 8.1 gets the free upgrade only (untrue).
And many others. Microsoft could trivially have let people know exactly what to expect a year ago when they announced this program. It is a good program, I mean free stuff, but the messaging on it was just awful.
PS - I still, to this day, don't feel like I have a complete overview of what is and is not included.
Pirated copies of windows will get to upgrade, but they will still be illegitimate. I think it's a security and support issue. It's just cheaper and safer to have the pirates running the latest version of the software.
As someone who is still on XP after having tried all the newer Windows versions (and forced to use some), I don't think it's worth relearning everything and finding out that a lot of the functionality that you used to rely on is now either completely missing or terribly dumbed-down. All the little irritations add up.
We've probably long passed the point of "sufficient for the average user" in terms of OS features, as things like Chromebooks have shown, but even for not-so-average users like me who do mostly embedded work with some desktop application stuff, it does what I need without getting in the way.
I'd sooner switch completely to Linux, which I've been working with on my servers, than "upgrade"...
I do local IT. Word of mouth side job stuff. Its nice to remind myself why Windows is shit down in the trenches sometimes, and its a lot easier to manually uninstall a half dozen viruses and edit out registry rootkits for an hour after a week of coding.
I normally bill pretty standard in home support freelancer rates, $60 an hour with a minimum $80 to come. If I ever find a computer running Windows XP, I always offer and implore the owner (assuming they are not dependent on some software that has no Linux surrogate) to let me throw Lubuntu 14.04 on the thing. I do it for free, and offer up to three hours of tutoring also for free, because Windows XP is literally cancer. Its a tumor you don't know is there until it goes malignant and kills you by having some unpublished never to be patched exploit used to wreck your PC and steal all your personal information or lock you out. Its more unsafe than unprotected sex in a sleazy strip club.
Feature wise, Lubuntu matches pretty much perfectly, and even people still using XP often have Android phones, so the Lubuntu software center makes a lot more sense to people than have Play Store experience. Its not like anyone using these computers needs performance out of them - if they were trying to run a business or do anything intensive enough to require proprietary Windows only software they would have certainly updated the machine once in the last decade. They almost always are exclusively doing word processing and email, often not even web browsing because these are systems stuck with IE8 at best. And Lubutu does both of those things much better than XP ever did with auto-updating Firefox / Libreoffice and one click system upgrades every two years for LTS releases.
So yeah, switch to Linux, please. Your OS is hugely insecure and nobody is ever going to fix it.
Stupid users manage to infect themselves no matter what OS they're running. If you do IT you will see the worst of it.
XP is only "insecure" if you're the kind of person who would download and run random executables without any real thought, or use IE on default settings.
The "treat the user like an idiot" "security" of newer Windows is precisely why I'm still using XP. I don't need a nanny of an OS. I rarely need to install new software anyway.
In fact I'd say that malware is increasingly going to target features found only in newer OSs... when the WMF exploit (remember that?) was going around, I was still using 98SE, which was completely unaffected by the exploit code since it used NT-specific features and attackers were targeting those OSs at the time. A lot of the rootkit-y stuff won't even run on 9x because of that.
UAC can be set to always automatically elevate without any prompt even in Win10 (disabling UAC completely would kill Metro apps). I prefer the "Always Prompt" configuration myself and it is unfortunate it was ignored when Win8's task manager was designed for example. Win9x was not affected by the WMF SetAbortProc escape problem at all unless you are printing (I think the escapes were simply ignored). Linux is better on older machines because it gets security updates and has ASLR and other exploit mitigations etc (though not all are useful without NX) and it happened to be free.
Windows updater did a good job automatically updating SP2 to 3. I've found a few SP2 (and a few SP1) machines that had Windows Updater disabled... but the other thing is that hardware hit a sort of plateau point around the Athlon 64 x2 era where the hardware got "fast enough" to make you not want to throw the monitor out the window at how slow it is. Not application load time slow, mouse lag, app freezing and churning and graphical glitches from paging on too little memory.
That and mechanical hard drives saw a lot of longevity revolutions in the early 2000s. Last generation IDE and any SATA disk in my experience seem to handle many, many more power on cycles than older models. This was even before SMART, so I can't even test some of these disks for how error prone they are.
I'd say 95% of XP machines I've touched are SP3, and I've dealt with over a hundred of em. Even a few small businesses I've pressured to switch off XP were at least running SP3. IE6 is a much more prevalent issue on those older machines, where end users would ignore the popups and prompts from home pages and websites about how their browser is literally satan.
That's funny, I think the rise of SNI for https everywhere will be the final nail for most XP/IE-old users... At this point even IE9 is going away relatively quickly.
I agree about performance.. a fast machine around when the Core-2's came out is still pretty decent today with sufficient ram, which a lot of them even had.
Well, you should. I am a Mac user too, but Mac OS is getting worse and worse... I am NOT going to switch to Windows 10 for now, but I am thinking about it more and more.
I just want to know when the next version of the Surface Pro is coming out!!
Other than that, I hope that one day Microsoft will do something to allow Unix folks to be more comfortable on Windows because I honestly don't like anything about OS X and I'm looking forward to a time when Unix lovers will flock to some other brand of hardware and OS. Anything but Apple.
Load up a current 8.1 with classic shell (old menu), clover (explorer replacement), conemu (terminal replacement) and git extensions (which include gnu32 tools, bash, ssh etc) ... you can set bash to your default terminal in conemu even.
Works pretty well, if you need more, have a virtual or real linux machine running in the background and ssh to it for shell related bits. Or go farther into the rabbit hole with cygwin, but I don't find that I need that much myself, I have in the past though.
I don't care much about the next Microsoft OS which is coming out. I am irritable that the new Pro is not out yet.
If someone had told me 2 years ago that I wouldn't give a damn about MSFT software and would care about MSFT H/W i would have wondered what they were smoking.
The "AeroGlass" theme was beautiful and my hardware is fast enough - sure some low end mobile hardware can't handle it.
Will Win10 RTM still requires a Microsoft Outlook/Live/Passport/Hotmail-Account? The non-obvious small almost hidden "offline" profile option during Windows install wizard is not okay. It should be an equal option.
And for OneDrive and Cortana there should be an option to disable them and remove them from the interface in all Win10 editions, not just an option in the Enterprise edition.
It seems to me that Microsoft still doesn't care about a larger sizeable margin of the user base at all. Well I don't care that much about Win10, my beloved Win7 is supported til 2022.
I feel the marginalization of traditional (local) accounts is a mistake.
Microsoft is, in my opinion, squandering an opportunity to be the major industry player to disintermediate today's "cloud" and give control back to individuals, families, and friends. Because they think of managing local accounts from a 15-year old point of view clouded by overly-complicated Windows Domains, they are unwilling to conceive an interface for managing your family's accounts yourself in a secure manner. But it would be possible, and Microsoft should be the one major player saying: "We're going to provide you the tools to manage your information securely for yourself. Unlike Google and Apple, we don't want your information. It's yours and we value your privacy!"
I agree. I'd love to see Microsoft continue to push for users to be in control of their own data. I try not to use any cloud sync services, but I use some Windows Store apps, so I end up having to use a Microsoft account for that reason.
I have no clue on OneDrive, but Cortana can be disabled. The UI can be shrink a lot, but the button remains to provide "basic" local search and similar. In fact Cortana is disabled by default, or it was on the build that added it.
As to the Live Account thing, as another poster said there is a hidden button to bypass it, but they intentionally make it hard to find to try and force people into using a Live Account (and things like OneDrive and the Store integrate with a Live Account also, so without one functionality will break).
> Will Win10 RTM still requires a Microsoft Outlook/Live/Passport/Hotmail-Account? The non-obvious small almost hidden "offline" profile option during Windows install wizard is not okay. It should be an equal option.
It almost certainly will not. Even in Windows 8.1, I have had to disconnect from the Internet before creating the first user so Microsoft wouldn't fuss about it.
In 10 and 8.1 I chose "create an account" and then at the bottom there was a local user option.
It still is obviously a dark pattern, but you shouldnt have to disconnect from the internet.
Maybe they try to emulate Apple again. Like how they have released Yosemite with so many deficiencies, one of which, the wifi problem still haunts my Mac after seven months.
Undoubtedly, but the issue is that they only have 2 months to take care of any bugs in their recent code. If the tech preview builds are anything to go by, the stuff that hasn't been released yet is going to need a lot of testing and fixing.
I don't think it's insurmountable, but they definitely have their work cut out for them.
> Undoubtedly, but the issue is that they only have 2 months to take care of any bugs in their recent code
Parent is suggesting that what you think is "recent code" isn't recent at all (if you mean the tech previews). The leaked internal builds are more recent, but only relatively so.Therefore you can't extrapolate the number of current bugs remaining from tech previews.
Right, I got that. The tech previews are "old" code, that is, they've gone through testing internally and have been deemed ready for release to the public for further testing. It's reasonable to assume that anything newer hasn't been tested to that point yet, so they still have a lot of work to do on the things we haven't seen yet.
It's also possible that this whole thing is a psyops campaign and Microsoft has been sending out purposely buggy releases while sitting on a build that works amazingly so that they can appear to have released an excellent product under a major time crunch. Unlikely, but fun to think about.
> It's reasonable to assume that anything newer hasn't been tested to that point yet, so they still have a lot of work to do on the things we haven't seen yet.
I disagree on that part - I do not think that is reasonable. If I read correctly, your assumption is that pipeline for everything is: Develop > Test internally > polish > public testing > fix.
It's also reasonable to assume that not everything needs to be tested by the public, and only those deemed to require public testing were included in public previews.
There a lot of reasons to release 'old' code, especially on a large codebase. It's not that they intentionally send out "buggy releases while sitting on a build that works", but gating is complicated business.
Leaked internal builds are our best clues. Those leaked builds are not nightly builds either (there is some QA before it gets there) and then there is some informed speculation because we didn't get any updates for weeks on end.
Several BSODs, glitches with the virtual desktops, inconsistent fonts and layouts, multiple application (explorer) crashes, wifi connectivity problems, failures returning from sleep and standby, dozens of UI inconsistencies.
That doesn't sound at all like what I've been experiencing on Windows 10 TP. I've found it remarkably stable - it's now my main OS on my gaming rig and I use it daily. Outside of the occasional game incompatibility (usually fixed by patches for recent games), it's been the most stable version of Windows I've used in a long time.
TP is the more polished version. Weekly builds are worse, but I think that's to be expected and I wouldn't be worried.
Only weird thing is the browser - I haven't seen a version that could be considered even beta-ready. No way they are going to release something better than IE in just two months.
Windows 8 had tons of UI inconsistencies. You would move from a metro style control panel to an old, non-resizable grey winform with tabs. Windows 10 didn't really improve or worsen that.
Yeah, for a couple months, they broke video for both VMware and VirtualBox. That is, 3D and 2D had severe issues. Couldn't auto resize, couldn't get the right resolution (just the standard presets), couldn't use 3D accel. It was only fixed in 10074. That's a long time to break a huge feature and it really worries me. VMware is probably the largest single piece of hardware used.
I've not had any BSODs, but the UI in general is poor and glitchy.
I was not expecting that quick of a release. In the last month, I have encountered enough bugs that I was expecting at least fall. To pick two that sort of highlight the problems:
Unable to set static IP. Appeared to Work in GUI but not actually set.
Touchpad being available every other reboot. Device simply not detected.
It's the "lean startup" mantra often accepted in the startup world of "Ship early, ship often", but not the software world. Kind of ironic in my opinion.
"Ship early, ship often" Is fine for some neat, but ultimately not that important, software or service I'm trying out. It's slightly more problematic for the core software they want me to base everything else I do on.
This makes me especially reticent to redeem the 'free upgrade' offer. I don't expect my machines to be bricked on update, but I'd rather play it safe until an acceptable level of stability is reached (per online response).
Will there be a way to buy a digital download of it?
I recently wanted to bootcamp my Macbook Pro to play some games Windows-only games. I went to Microsoft's website and looked at the options for buying Windows 8. The only options were a retail DVD which would be shipped (and I don't have a DVD drive) or to upgrade from Windows Vista/Windows 7 which I had neither of.
I ended up pirating it because I couldn't figure out how to get a legitimate copy that I could actually install. :(
I haven't used Windows since XP, and 8 is really nice. I'm legitimately excited for Windows 10 especially due to all the open sourcing of .NET-related code recently.
I would not recommend installing windows 10 on a Mac to play games at this moment, I did it using boot camp and it was horrible, poor driver support for my video card (rMBP) so I end up installing a windows 7 which gives me about 3 times more fps per game compared to w10, and about twice as fast as windows 8.1, also my mouse seems lagging when gaming in both 8.1 and 10, works perfect on 7 thought.
Thanks for the tip. I've been playing games on Windows 8.1 without any noticeable issues, but I will keep this in mind. I'll likely not upgrade this pirated copy of Windows 8.1 to 10 (since it literally only has Steam installed), but I will buy 10 to run it in a VM for development.
You can get a digital download of the Technical Preview now - I'd do that. They've announced that Windows 10 will be free to all Technical Preview participants. That way you can upgrade to the latest version and away you go.
I'm running the Windows 10 Technical Preview on a 2013 MacBook Air, solely for gaming. So far I've only played Halflife 2, and it's much better than under OSX. I had to force it to run windowed, rather than true full screen, because full screen had some issues. I don't notice the tiny window bar once I've started playing.
The Technical Preview is free and easy to setup with Bootcamp, so you may as well give it a shot.
While I get the consensus opinion of the other people who have replied to your comment, I think you and I feel another missed opportunity here. A notable audience for Microsoft is the PC enthusiast—people who use multiple 4K monitors connected to powerful workstations.
One of the disasters of Windows 8 was viewing full-screen Metro applications on a 39" 4K monitor. It would have been funny—heck, it was funny—but it was also tragic. It was a touchstone of how utterly out of touch Windows 8 was with desktop computing.
When Microsoft shows silhouettes of all of the Windows 10 platforms, one should be a 3-monitor monster desktop workstation, the kind of PC that some of us own and love. In not showing something truly high-end, they make us feel like high-productivity computing is no longer a focus of Microsoft.
Hmm it seems difficult to find statistics that separate desktop boxes from laptops (I see separation of desktop and laptop va ultraportable) but I think the trend is less desktops and more laptops. So I'm not entirely surprised.
Honestly I constantly built my own towers for years but these past 3 or 4 years I haven't even booted a desktop tower; laptops are just so good nowadays and I can pick it up and go or dock it with multiple monitors it almost seems silly to do a tower anymore. Obviously there are still plenty of power user use cases or high end gaming to consider but many laptops can do a lot of that well enough.
Not to detract, but are you booting on a hard disk or SSD.. the HTPC in my livingroom does a full reboot in about 12 seconds (ubuntu 15.04) and my desktop isn't much slower. Both of which are way faster than my 1+1 android phone.
I also prefer a mechanical keyboard, have my own at work as well... I hate when I'm on my rmbp, which is about as good as a laptop keyboard/touchpad interface gets...
I agree about the mechanical keyboard and large screen. But I do use a laptop. It sits on my desk docked in (usb and thunderbolt docks are awesome - 1 cable). Then, I can take it with me.
Fewer and fewer people. Given that laptops today can have 32 GB or RAM, Quadro cards and fast quad core CPUs, there's less and less work that requires a 'real' workstation. Even the CAD people where I work have mostly switched to laptops.
(Full disclosure: I use a workstation as my main computer both at home and at work. My laptop is mainly for traveling and computing in the sofa)
I guess I'm in the minority then, but even as someone between "light user" and "professional developer/designer", I still prefer the powerful desktop/relatively affordable laptop combo.
To get laptop specs approaching my desktop I'd need to spend close to double the cost and I'd still be giving up quite a bit since there just aren't equivalent laptop-grade CPUs, GPUs, and storage options that compare.
Instead, I keep a desktop that's a bit lower spec than a serious workstation but higher than most basic office/home systems (i7, 16GB RAM, SSD, a couple of HDDs that were in previous machines, GTX 980, optical drive, etc) and a more basic laptop for use in less demanding tasks when away from home.
I guess my usage is a bit of a throwback in this sense but my desktop is the center of my home computing. Until recently it was the network storage for my media library (since offloaded to a NAS but still acts as the Plex server for transcoding and streaming media throughout the house). It's my main gaming platform. I use it for editing photos and video and well as my hobbyist-level dabbling in 3D graphics and animation. And it's obviously capable of all the less-demanding stuff like web browsing and Netflix on a decent-sized monitor.
A docked laptop would have lower CPU, GPU, and storage options and even if I bought some exorbitant "desktop replacement" model, it would cost a fortune and not be very portable. Much easier to buy a more reasonable notebook to take with me and even remote into my desktop if I really need to do some heavy lifting outside the house.
I think its an image or brand thing. MS doesn't want Window to end up too attached to a stodgy office-only world of depressing desktops. Heck, I can't even think of a good looking desktop they could use. Perhaps Lenovo's All-in-Ones? Even those just look like iMac copies.
Probably because touch is a central feature to the user interface and Microsoft wants to emphasize the touchiness. Most desktop display panels don't support touch, but a lot of recent laptops and tablets do.
I sort of feel your sentiment, but the reasons given here in the comments are all valid as far as I can tell (for the majority of people, that is, not for everyone). I'm still using workstations but am too considering laptop + dock for the next purchase. Simply because it would mean I can have one device do it all instead of two. Only if your requirements for cpu/ram/expansion are really outside the 'standard' ranges these days a workstation is required because there simply is no alternative.
However one problems with latops, or anything with a small screen which is by default not at eye level when your head is in it's standard position, is that it is probably quite bad ergonomically. I really wonder what is going to happen to all those young people spending hours with their neck bent in what seems a rather unnatural position. I am not entirely sure it really is bad nor do I have the background to argue much about it, but it just seems not right. Maybe someone with a medical background or so can chime in?
I use a laptop because I can travel with it. But I plug in a real monitor because the laptop's screen is way too small. Using a laptop doesn't mean you have to use its screen.
Is this always an in-place upgrade, or would there be a way to do a clean install (possibly on another pc - IIRC windows licenses are per OS instance not per machine?) for free as well?
I always wonder why they never mention how the supposedly free upgrade works. From this article and the linked FAQ I get the impression that I do not qualify for free Windows 10 forever, but that I can upgrade my Windows 8.1 installations via Windows Upgrade for a year after launch, but that my Windows license is not generally upgraded to a Windows 10 license. I take this to mean that after a year and a day, when I want to reinstall, I cannot use my current key to install some Windows 10 install image, but have to use my Win8.1 image, and since the year for free upgrades has passed, I cannot upgrade that install to Windows 10 anymore.
Or are there other infos out about this very typical scenario among IT people?
Basically it seems to be that MS saves the info in the Windows store and lets you reinstall a fresh Windows 10 if you upgraded. If this information is correct.
Yes, but say I upgrade my Win8.1 during the free year. In two years time I want to reinstall. Will there be an option to a. download some Windows 10 installation media so I can do a fresh install, or do I b. always have to first install Win8.1?
If it's a, is my Win8.1 license key valid? Did the MS activation server get the memo that I upgraded during the free year? If it is b, will the upgrade from Win8.1 to 10 still be free after the first year, or not? I already upgraded my license once,but do they keep track of this? Can I still activate? Or does it count as a new try to upgrade after the free year?
Fro memory: press the Meta/Windows key; write "privacy" on the dash; a window with privacy options appears; hit the Search tab, disable the checkbox.
It annoys me that it's there by default and non-technical users will not know how to do anything. There should be an option or warning on the dash itself.
Which build is that? I don't see it in build 10074. It existed in the pre-Cortana build from last fall, but as far as I can tell, it was completely removed when Cortana was added.
Perhaps it was re-added? Or I'm looking in the wrong spot?
It is easily disabled and is only a feature in Ubuntu's Unity desktop. If you use a different version of Ubuntu (GNOME, Mate, KDE, whatever else they offer now) it won't be an issue.
Considering how many people liked google's desktop search widget, and similar, I'm not sure I agree... not to mention that seeing repository matches that aren't installed (yet) can be useful too. Not that most of those features require integrated online searches... but I can see how someone, even most casual users would prefer it that way.
Hell, look at how many people type in website addresses into their search box.
Yes, both can be disabled. However, I'm not sure if it's dependent upon which 'edition' though. For example, you can turn it off in Enterprise, but not Professional.
I've added a firewall rule that blocks outbound requests to Bing. That's pretty well flummoxed it. It's a far cry from an actual setting, though - which would be the obvious solution and unquestionably ought to be present.
Also on whether WinXP users are going to qualify for the free upgrade?
My lodger's old laptop is in desperate need of something before I let it have more open access to my local network... (I've been thinking Ubuntu but that might take a little more retraining so Win10 might be preferable if free and it'll run OK on that elderly machine without driver and/or CPU/RAM/space resource issues)
I imagine, despite what they say publicly, that at least some cracked copies of 7 and 8 will pass whatever upgrade qualification checks they have in place.
In 2012, when they offered cheap (£/$15) 7 -> 8 upgrades it was effectively open to anyone who was willing to lie about having bought a machine running Windows 7 in the last X months. Windows 8 could then be installed on any machine using the product key provided.
Does anyone know if I have to be with that update notification icon until then? I already gave them my address and said yes I'm interested in upgrading. Why haven't MS learned and why does it have to be standard that every program from Microsoft or anyone else needs to shit the system tray?
Is Windows a good citizen on the harddisk nowadays? I stopped trying Windows releases because they used to change my bootsector or something, so my machine suddenly only booted Windows. Instead of showing me a menu (grub?) of partitions to choose from.
That's mainly due to the old BIOS mbr only supporting one bootloader at a time. I know on my old BIOS PC that when I installed a linux distro it would displace the windows bootloader with grub, and vice versa. On UEFI based systems, this is less of an issue, as I believe you can have multiple bootloaders.
I like it just to press the win key to do a (cortana) web search.
If they stay with bing as the only web search integrated into cortana google will lose some users.
Nevertheless they should implement google as an option.
Microsoft had to change Vista's startmenu search function to allow also third party desktop search vendors like the free "Google Desktop Search".
"Two areas have seen changes in SP1 that have come as the result of concerns from software vendors. One of these is desktop search; users will be able to change the default desktop search program to one provided by a third party instead of the Microsoft desktop search program that comes with Windows Vista, and desktop search programs will be able to seamlessly tie in their services into the operating system. These changes come in part due to complaints from Google, whose Google Desktop Search application was hindered by the presence of Vista's built-in desktop search. In June 2007, Google claimed that the changes being introduced for SP1 "are a step in the right direction, but they should be improved further to give consumers greater access to alternate desktop search providers"." -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Desktop
Win10 should support third party personal agents like Google Now and others!
Microsoft had to offer a browser selection dialog with several third party browsers in Windows 7 - in Europe (EU). Though the removed it again last year.
It does have some small improvements (http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/09/window...) but nothing spectacular. I'd recommend you to look into MobaXterm or ConEmu running cygwin as well, I like any of those two way more then Putty actually.
Now we only need non-trivial tab completion, command history that survives restart, and ssh in a prompt, and we can feel like the nineties have arrived.
I love the look of Cmder, and I use it now and again, but it has a number of bugs. They fixed a few with the release two weeks ago, but there's still a few showstoppers for me.
Did you try out the technical preview? You can do full screen now properly. You also get copy&paste working like it should and some other stuff as well.
If you are happy with Putty, your probably not that an advanced user. But anyway: Using ConEmu I've been happy for years. Using cygwin or msysgit below makes all very smooth.
- Improved multi-monitor support (taskbar options).
- Up button and ribbon in Windows Explorer.
- Native support for ISO, IMG, and VHD mounting.
- Better on-screen keyboard.
- Peek passwords.
- File History (UI mostly).
- Refresh, Reset, etc restore options.
- "Basic" biometrics.
- Improved encryption.
- Client Hyper-V (on Pro and above).
So for 8.1 users, the improvements to 10 are mostly graphical with a handful of very nice to have functionality improvements. For Windows 7 users, the improvements are substantial and across the board. 8 and 8.1 actually improved 7 a lot, people just ignore it because "omg the Start Screen."
So to the people saying "Windows 7 is until 2020, why upgrade!" I say: you're missing out on a lot of improvements that you could be taking advantage of, in particular improvements 8 and 8.1 brought that you ignored.
Seriously though, with classic shell, I like 8.1 a lot, and notice the improved performance over 7... I don't use touch screens, and mostly dual monitor desktop use... that said, it's pretty decent. You may want to hold out until 3-6 months after win10 comes out though...
Windows 8+ is definitely faster than Windows 7 with regards to boot time and in many other ways. It's also got Metro. And of course you can actually use it on touch enabled hardware.
If you don't need any of that stuff, there's no reason to upgrade.
I'm surprised by how early it'll be released, but excited about it nonetheless.
The only reason I haven't installed the tech preview and used it as my sole OS (on my gaming PC) is because I don't want to have to reinstall 8.1 in order to upgrade back to 10 once it launches.
I survived Windows 95, I can deal with BSODs and wonky features. I just want the latest. And Windows Hello, because Jarvis.
Where can I buy the laptop pictured in the announcement? It would be great if a quality PC hardware manufacturer emerged that actually made Windows 10 based laptops like this.
Do we know what "free for the first year" means yet? What about the second year? I've been running Ubuntu for personal use for about a year now. I miss steam so I might jump onto Windows 10, but not if I only find out the price after I jump in
(No relation to Microsoft, just a general observation) As far as we know, Microsoft has not categorically denied that they will create another operating system in the future. It'd be terribly stupid for them to do so.
The free for the first year has caveats but there is no scenario where we are discussing Microsoft making you pay for essential updates in the second year. In fact, while I am not a Microsoft fan I will stick my neck out and say that it is extremely unlikely that you will have to pay for updates in consumer SKU's of Microsoft Windows for the next six years. Seven years is typically the regularly advertised end of life and end of mainline support for previous versions of Microsoft Windows.
The first major caveat is that this is for existing Windows users. This offer only applies for people who currently on qualifying versions of Microsoft Windows today. If your computer came with a genuine copy of Microsoft Windows 7 or above, it is in Microsoft's best interest that you get on board with the latest version of Windows.
The second major caveat is that this is specifically not for organizations. Enterprise cash cows will remain cash cows.
I'd urge you to be skeptical and not infer any promises Microsoft has not specifically made. However, if anyone has been telling you that Microsoft will make you pay for security updates or Windows in general beginning the second year are at best incorrect and at worst maliciously spreading FUD. Of course, Microsoft isn't helping because there are so many details we don't know yet such as when is the end of life for Windows 10 (assuming I accept all updates)? There is a lot of things we don't know. However, we can say with a lot of confidence that you will not have to pay a subscription the second year of moving to Windows 10.
For what it is worth, I intend to update to Windows 10 on my personal computer as soon as possible. I also intend to stay on the fast lane of updates (more updates more often but possibly some buggy updates) once I get on Windows 10.
You're right, I meant Steam games where I wrote Steam. Even though I've had a ton of fun with Legend of Grimrock, I wish for a lot of the bigger titles came over. It's much better from 4 years ago, but I still can't play Shogun 2
>Microsoft Edge, is an all-new browser designed to get things done online in new ways, with built-in commenting on the web – via typing or inking — sharing comments, and ...
Seeing as the apps they showcased were all desktop and no metro, does this mean the app store will now sell desktop apps going forward? Any word on different sandbox restrictions to go with it?
Devs will be able to turn their existing win32/desktop apps into windows app store compatible apps using "Project Centennial" from the sounds of things.
I suspect that has a lot to do with trying to get corporate users to move off Windows 7, which the basically refused to do with Windows 8, thanks to the fact Windows 8 tried relegating desktop apps to second class Windows citizens, behind metro.
Since corporate Windows users tend to run mostly desktop apps, if modern Windows is not going to support their apps they will not move.
> Well, after doing some research I found out what went wrong. In a paper published in 1998 at the Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI), the Lumiere team described the inner workings of the Assistant’s inference engine and also how much of it was included in the released version of Office 97. Below is a list of the features that were excluded from the product release (those keen enough can cross reference the list with what was demoed in the video above.)
> • No persistent user profiles.
> • No reasoning about user competence, i.e., novice versus experienced user
> • Small event queue with emphasis only on the most recent interactions of the user with the software interface (this means the engine was trying to guess the values of many variables using very little data.)
> • Separation between user interface events and word-based queries; for word-based queries the engine ignored any context and user actions.
> • Last and possibly most important and I quote from the paper, “The automated facility of providing assistance based on the likelihood that a user may need assistance or on the expected utility of such autonomous action was not employed.” Instead, “The Office team has employed a relatively simple rule-based system on top of the Bayesian query analysis system to bring the agent to the foreground with a variety of tips.” This is why Clippy kept popping up all the time. It was not using the mathematically correct engine that the researchers had designed. It was driven by some rule-based system that one or more of the developers from the product team thought was a reasonable substitute.
I don't think modern MS would make the same mistake, but who knows.
I get that this is tongue-in-cheek, but right now I like Cortana a lot better than Siri and Google's voice thing. It responds faster and more helpfully in my experience.
I saw a demo of what is probably Cortana's voice recognition real time about a year and a half ago... it was pretty neat. MS has put a lot of effort into voice control over the years.
I admit I haven't been paying close attention, but I was under the impression that 10 was going to be dispensing with that crappy Metro interface: apparently not.
What they are doing is allowing you to turn metro apps into windowed apps, so you dont have to full screen for everything, a welcome change in my opinion. Switching back and forth seemed very abrupt.
Other things I noticed they are rolling back when I ran the TP, the start menu is basically the Win 7 start menu with some extra features, no more metro start screen (that I saw.)
I agree. I will be replacing the start menu with a third party alternative as soon as possible. I don't need constant trivial updates that distract me and take resources.
