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Good riddance to Windows 8

Windows 10: Familiarity breeds contempt

Windows 10 is a completely unabashed and deeply apologetic love letter to Windows 7 — and to everyone who used and loved Windows 7, too. Windows 10 — at least what we’ve seen so far — is what the people have been asking for since it became clear that Microsoft really was doubling down on the Frankenstinan trainwreck of Windows 8.
 
Windows 10 Technical Preview now available to download

Microsoft only unveiled Windows 10 to the world yesterday, but you can already download a preview version of the new operating system today. The Windows 10 Technical Preview is designed for enthusiasts, developers, and enterprise customers to evaluate the latest changes to Windows. Microsoft has created a special insiders program to deliver regular updates throughout the Windows 10 development cycle, and those who sign up will get the very latest software to test.
 
W10 Preview won't install on my ten year old PC; says a device driver is missing but won't say which one. No problem with drivers on W7 or various Linux distos, so I guess it's them. Oh well, didn't really expect it to work anyway.
 
I don't think many people will be installing Win 10 on ten year old PCs? What's that "Designed for Windows XP"...but runs Win7 OK? Could be something essential like a video or sound driver that's not supported. Like always I think most, especially non-techy regular users will be upgrading to Win 10 when they buy new PCs.
 
Windows 10sion: what's old is new again, and that's a problem

...Apps have gotten much more powerful and there's a handy way to search everything, but when you pick up a Windows PC it may not be immediately clear which decade it comes from. It's the best Windows 7 ever, but it's still Windows 7.

If that's all Microsoft has up its sleeve, that's a problem. If it allows its most resistive customers to slow its pace of innovation, Microsoft will essentially back itself into a corner from which it will have no choice but to watch its competitors race past it toward the next device type or the next interaction method.
 
UNRECOMMENDED ! ! !

It ain't Microsoftian, tries to add other 'helpful' crap, drove Unchecky nuts:

Windows 10 UX Pack 1.0

Windows 10 UX Pack will give you Windows 10 UI improvements such as theme and some Windows 10 features without touching system files at all so it won’t have such risk to harm your system at all. In this package, you’ll have Windows 10 inspired themes and applications to make your system resembles Windows 10 as much as possible without modifying system files.
 
What about those of us who actually like the start screen on our laptops ? Will we be forced to adapt to a legacy desktop and start menu again?
 
nickdalzell said:
What about those of us who actually like the start screen on our laptops ? Will we be forced to adapt to a legacy desktop and start menu again?
Click to expand...
When 10 does come out it will be the Start Screen(tile world) that becomes legacy. To be remembered in decades to come along with Bob, Clippy and Rover.... LOL

No doubt there was a few that said... "What about those of us who actually like Microsoft Bob on our laptops?" :p


I'll just leave this here as a reminder of what legacies we do have...
Windows-8-vs.-Aol.jpg

...and I actually posted that in the Win 8 thread over two years ago.

One thing I do remember about trying to use the Start Screen, was that it couldn't even show the local weather forecast, it only had weather for a city over 500km away.
 
I don't want the start screen to go. the start menu is very inefficient. I never liked it when Windows 95 came out and dont like it today. Seriously how farther backward are we going? Lets count the ways. Flat design? Check. Start menu from windows 95? Check. Next up? DOS Shell?

Seriously why on earth would anyone go from tapping a simple icon to start, programs, all programs, games, portal, portal 2?

What's more so is why no one ever complains about touch- centric UI when it comes to Android or iOS or even Windows Phone?
 
nickdalzell said:
I don't want the start screen to go. the start menu is very inefficient. I never liked it when Windows 95 came out and dont like it today. Seriously how farther backward are we going? Lets count the ways. Flat design? Check. Start menu from windows 95? Check. Next up? DOS Shell?

Seriously why on earth would anyone go from tapping a simple icon to start, programs, all programs, games, portal, portal 2?

What's more so is why no one ever complains about touch- centric UI when it comes to Android or iOS or even Windows Phone?
Click to expand...

Because Android doesn't try and force a touch-centric UI on non-touch devices, like for example smart-TVs which have their own UIs that are more suitable for large screen remote control operation, and all iOS and Win Phone devices are mobile touch-screen devices of course. The Win 8 Start Screen is fine on a tablet or a touch-screen laptop, but very clumsy and clunky when it's forced onto a mouse controlled desktop system which doesn't have a touch-screen, which is what MS were doing. And if one does have a touch-screen controlled desktop system....look up "Gorilla arm".
Touchscreen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
...also I don't want to be putting fingerprints all over my desktop monitor screen.

Anyway Windows on tablets and phones has been a bit of a flop so far and not very popular, certainly in this country, I just don't see them at all now. Tablet only Win RT is now discontinued. Want mobile? It's either Android or iOS for phones and tablets now.
 
jefboyardee said:
W10 Preview won't install on my ten year old PC; says a device driver is missing but won't say which one. No problem with drivers on W7 or various Linux distos, so I guess it's them. Oh well, didn't really expect it to work anyway.
Click to expand...

Miracle update... the new Windows 10 actually works on my ten year-old PC!

I installed it from an ISO and put it on its own partition. I haven't poked into it yet, just enough to discover that (a) Grub no longer appears so I can't boot to my Linux Mint, and (b) reinstalling my beloved Rollback RX on my c: (Win7) drive makes the Win10 loader boot loop, trying to fix the problem, until I uninstall it. Neither of those surprise me and I plan to delve into them later.

Regardless, it's kind of a thrill to see that Windows is progressing.
 
nickdalzell said:
Am i the only one who hated the start menu from the first day of Windows 95? it was so inefficient, too many steps to click Start, then programs, Accessories, Games, Solitaire

i mean, why not just put an icon on your desktop or a group into a folder there and make it simple? i was never married to the start menu so i cannot fathom everyone's obsession with it.
Click to expand...
Most used apps put on desktop. Rest are in start menu.

Windows 95 start menu was a revelation back then, cause Explorer and Start were replacing Program manager which was way worse.

So yea, you're probably one of the very few people who didn't like it.

Windows 1-3 didn't even have a proper desktop, for that matter, so unlike 95 you were literally forced to deal with the inefficiencies of its folder system.

Windows 98 added the Quick launch bar for frequently used apps, IIRC, and also allowed you to pin custom ones to the task bar.

Windows Vista put search which made the start menu a bit deprecated since most people rarely really navigated it.

The Start menu is more efficient to use than the start screen without a tablet for factor, but it's been pretty much deprecated since Vista IMO, due to the search.

It makes sense in 10 only because they found a better way to push metro onto users. It's still basically the start screen, just smaller. It's hilarious how no one complains simply because it looks like what they are used to and didn't want to change.
 
Oh well, Windows 10 looks hopeful but I couldn't accept abandoning those two items in favor of it. It didn't seem to have a cut-and-dried way of uninstalling itself and this didn't work either, so I Paragonned back to a previous incarnation of W7 only... will no doubt try the next build.
 
I wonder if, by installing W10 on a USB flash, it will install itself separately from all the gremlins on my hard drive, and I'd have to access BIOS' boot options to even launch it?
 
Windows 10 Tech Preview gets its first big update: One-click upgrade is awesome

Overall, Windows 10 Technical Preview build 9860 is rather impressive. It’s obviously still very much a work in progress, but I’m excited by Microsoft’s accelerated release cadence. If Microsoft can keep it up and release a new build every couple of weeks, and it continues to listen to tester feedback, then the final release of Windows 10 might actually be a useful, decent operating system.
 
I wonder if, by installing W10 on a USB flash, it will install itself separately from all the gremlins on my hard drive
Click to expand...

No, idiot. A drive is a drive, and once you install Win10 it assumes control of boot load and MBRs of all drives.
 
Not yet. Now that I think about it, partitioning off a section of my HD and installing will probably overwrite the EFI/Microsoft/ entry* with win10 stuff, but even that's nothing a simple EFI backup/restore from Linux won't solve.

That being said, installing to a flash drive with a gpt partition table and an EFI partition should make it install to the drive in EFI mode, letting you plug in and boot, whilst leaving your existing bootloaders on your HD intact.

*Posting from mobile, so I don't have the exact path/filenames on hand.
 
I've insatlled the Win 10 Tech preview on a a very early socket 775 PC with a 3.2GHz prescott-cored P4 and 2GB DDR2 using on-board graphics. It boots quickly and is surprisingly responsive on the old frankenstein box. If it's free (as in beer) I may just keep windows around as a second OS.
 
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