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Windows 10

SciFiFan

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I am currently running Vista on my gaming laptop. I have been considering this to see if performance improves any. Will keep an eye out on how things progress for sure.
 

CABAL

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Thanks fr the review Cabal. Been keeping my eye on this, I think your reviews will determine if I'll update to 10 or not.
No pressure, right? I'd like to point out that ZDNet and CNET sometimes go into some of the more technical features that I don't. This ZDNet article goes into a feature that is similar to system restore, but specifically lets you revert the computer to factory defaults, with options to keep certain things. Probably a handy alternative for people that like to periodically re-install Windows. I mostly focus on the things that I think the average user will notice and don't comment on minor bugs that I expect to be patched out in the next build.

I am currently running Vista on my gaming laptop. I have been considering this to see if performance improves any. Will keep an eye out on how things progress for sure.
I don't think performance will get any worse, but I'm not sure if it will be noticeably better either, outside of boot times. It really depends on if DX12 will work with games that use older versions of DirectX. If it's like the older versions, it will need to fall back to DX11 to run DX11 games, but if it is backwards compatible, then there may be performance improvements in older games. Either way, the Xbox One is getting a system update that will have it run some version of Win10, replacing the cut-down Win8 it has now, and that will include DX12, so DX12 adoption will probably be faster than DX10 and 11 adoption (the 360 uses 9.0c, so devs tended to just ignore 10 and 11 when making cross-platform games). DX12, and by extension, Windows 10, could be a common system requirement in a couple years.
 

Hellkite

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Microsoft officially says Windows 10 available on July 29

 

CABAL

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Microsoft officially says Windows 10 available on July 29
Also, Newegg leaked some of the prices of fresh 10 disks. $110 USD for the Home OEM version and $150 USD for the Professional OEM version. This is significantly cheaper than previous versions. They also leaked the minimum system requirements:

Processor: 1GHz or faster
RAM: 1GB (32-bit) or 2GB (64-bit)
Free hard disk space: 16GB
Graphics card: Microsoft DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM driver

There's also a new preview build so I'll try and get that set up once I have internet.
 

kjc733

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Anyone else got a small flag in the notification area of the start bar (Windows 7) saying "Get Windows 10"?
 

CABAL

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Anyone else got a small flag in the notification area of the start bar (Windows 7) saying "Get Windows 10"?
This was included in a system update a while ago. I think it was set to activate when the system clock hit a certain date. It should only show up if you're running 7 with SP1 or 8.1 with Update 1 (the versions that 10 is being offered to for free).
 

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Just did the pre-order reservation from my and my mom's computers.

Also, saw a little satire review of Windows 10, thought I'd share for everyone's reading pleasure: http://www.cracked.com/blog/a-sneak-preview-horror-that-windows-10/

A favorite quote from said article:
Excitingly, Windows 10 will also allow users to select their own wallpapers again, a marked change from the Windows 9 experience, with its unending slideshow of depictions of human suffering.
 

CABAL

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Windows 10 preview installations that are at their latest version will be upgraded to full, legitimate, and licensed Windows 10 Home installations for free when Windows 10 is released on July 30th. MS is apparently really interested in getting people to use 10.
 

CABAL

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Apparently I was wrong about Win10 preview installs being upgraded to full Win10 installs when 10 is officially released. Technical Previews will remain Technical Previews but will remain active so long as they're updated, functioning as a beta for future builds of 10. Service packs, for example, or 10.X (same thing, really).

---

Back to build reviews. I missed one back there, but was prepared to report on the 10158 build. Then, the day after 10158 was released, 10159 came out and I had to start my evaluation all over again. Anyway, here's 10159.

First off, minor accumulated errors (a lot of them my fault) broke some apps when I updated to 10158 and going to 10159 didn't fix them. On the bright side, this gave me a great excuse to try out the 'Reset this PC' feature in Settings -> Update & Security -> Recovery. The program gave me the option to save my files (anything in the C:\Users directory, it seems) and erased everything else and reinstalled Windows fresh without a disk. It worked just fine and even created an HTML file on my desktop listing every program lost, the version number, and including a link to the program's website if it could find one. Not sure how it found the links, and it did miss a few, but it was certainly handy.
00.png

The Start Menu got a few more minor tweaks. The File Explorer button updated the icon to match the one on the taskbar and includes a jump list for quick access to pinned (favorited) folders. This jump list was accessible before, but required either right-clicking on the icon on the taskbar or opening the app and using the navigation pane. Tile groups are also now six units across, one unit being the smallest tile size available, rather than eight units. Mostly this means you can't fit two 'wide' (4x2) tiles side by side in a single group anymore.
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Both the Music and Videos apps got new icons and Videos was renamed to Movies & TV but is otherwise the same as before. The new music icon looks kind of like a Forerunner glyph for some reason. Music also got a new Dark theme available from the settings, but Movies & TV didn't.
02.png 03.png 04.png

Microsoft Edge (formerly Project Spartan) is coming along nicely. It's quick and fits the system theme better than Chrome or Firefox, but it's still not amazing or anything. Feel free to try it out when 10 is released, but it's not going to convince me to switch browsers any time soon.

It's generally more responsive and boot times have slightly improved, making them much better than 7's boot times. One thing I do have concerns about because it hasn't been fixed yet, is that while boot times are fantastic, logging in is rather time consuming compared to 7, 8, and Ubuntu (don't know about OSX, hate Macs). After I log in I have to wait a minute or two before the system becomes responsive. It's possible that this is because I'm using a Microsoft account (you need one to use the Windows Insider features) but I'm kind of worried since it doesn't seem to have improved at all from the first builds and they're supposed to release it at the end of the month.
 

Hellkite

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Thanks for the Update and keeping us informed Cabal :thumbsup:
 

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The build that will be the first public release on the 29th has apparently been pushed to Insiders, so I'm going to update to that and tell you how it is. I'll probably do a more in-depth review than I have before.
 

Hellkite

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I'll be look forward to that report Cabal
 

Rifraf

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Yes, thanks for the updates. Can you tell me one thing though? Is Remote Desktop functional? I updated to win7 pro a few months ago as I have to be able to log into our work server remotely.
 

CABAL

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Can you tell me one thing though? Is Remote Desktop functional?
I've never used it in any version of Windows so I have no idea if it's functioning properly or not. It is present, though.

rdc.png
 

Zelph

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Thanks for the continuing reports. They've made me more excited for the release, despite some of those imperfections that you mentioned.
 

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Well, this is problematic. After extensive searching to figure out why the newest build wouldn't show up in Windows Update, I found this article explaining that Microsoft halted release of all Insider Builds four days ago. Another site archived the ISO so I should still be able to upgrade via clean install, but the Insider keys no longer activate new installs, so...

That article also linked to Gabe Aul's blog post on the matter. Gabe Aul runs the Windows Insider program at Microsoft. He says they're suspending releases "briefly" and we'll be getting them back, but doesn't give any kind of time frame.

On the bright side, if all else fails, then I will backup my 7 install and immediately upgrade it to 10 on the 29th, or whenever they roll it out to my specific machine. I'll be able to report on how the upgrade process goes and what backwards compatibility with my various games and other programs is like.

EDIT: Looks like they actually resumed and released 10240, but I missed 10162 earlier and can't get it.:mad:

EDIT2: I may have found a way to force the issue. Download and installation will take all day, though.
 
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Majestic

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Thanks for the constant updates mate. Keep them coming when you can. A lot of us here do read them and get something out of them.

Still not convince that 10 will be better than 7. 8 and 8.1 were a total disappointment and a step backwards.

I guess at one point all of us will be forced to upgrade thanks to Microsoft and their new policies and the fact that a lot of the newer hardware doesn't have drivers for Win7.
 

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Thanks for the constant updates mate. Keep them coming when you can. A lot of us here do read them and get something out of them.
Good, because I've got another one.

I managed to get the latest build, 10240, installed. Due to the nature of how I did it, I had to do a clean install. This seems like a good opportunity to show you the default desktop and Taskbar. Plus GIMP, of course. I need to take screenshots somehow and I've never liked the Windows screenshot button. A right click on the Taskbar brings up a menu to enable and disable a variety of things, as in previous versions. This also includes the Task View button and Cortana/Search, which can be set to a search box, an icon, or disabled entirely.
01.png

The Task View button (the three rectangular shapes right of the search box) is functioning better than the last time I reported on it, several months ago. Clicking it shows a spread of all your open windows on that virtual desktop and previews of all of your virtual desktops along the bottom. With Task View open, you can click and drag windows from the spread to a different virtual desktop. To change desktops, simply click on the one you want. The Taskbar will only display windows open on your current virtual desktop. This is helpful for grouping windows by type, task, or work-safe-ness.
03.png

Cortana's setup was pretty easy. A screen showing what it can do and a privacy statement that you need to agree to. It (she?) probably got some info from my Microsoft account, such as the nickname I set before. Cortana gives you a lot of stuff right off the bat. The weather, local news, national news, trending news, movies playing at the local theater, and places to go for dinner all showed up. There are some other interactions, too, but Cortana won't talk unless you use a microphone for input; typing what you want gets you silence.
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The Start Menu has a wide array of default tiles. You'll probably want to trim that down. The Weather tile was showing DC because I hadn't gone into the Weather app and chosen a location yet. You can scale the Start Menu vertically by clicking and dragging on the upper edge, just like scaling a window. Horizontal scaling snaps to columns of six units wide, the width of a tile group. I could only get it two groups wide, but I'm using a 1280x1024 monitor. You may be able to get three or four groups out of it at 1080p, but I don't know. If you have more tiles than will fit, you can scroll vertically, either by clicking and dragging the scroll bar or using the mouse wheel.
07.png 08.png

You can change what appears on the Start Menu by going to Settings -> Personalization -> Start. Additional options can be accessed from there by clicking 'Choose which folders appear on Start'. Using the Start Menu full screen changes it to a more touch-friendly interface without a full switch to Tablet Mode.
09.png 10.png 11.png

From the Start Menu, clicking 'All apps' gets you an alphabetized list of everything you have installed, similar to the equivalent function in prior versions of Windows. The main difference is that everything is in a single column. Opening a folder simply indents the items in that folder from the main list, rather than creating a pop-out menu. You can click the folder again to close it or click Back to go to the main page. You can also click and drag items to the tile area to easily create a tile to use as a shortcut. I personally intend to remove the icons from my desktop and replace them with tiles.
12.png

Rounding off the Start Menu stuff, clicking Power brings up a menu with the options Sleep, Shut down, and Restart. Clicking your username invokes a menu with Change account settings, Lock, and Sign out.

System settings are pretty easy to fiddle with. You can get to the most commonly used settings by, well, opening Settings. The Control Panel (and an array of other tools such as device manager and command prompt) is still available by right clicking on the Start button. Settings itself is pretty easy to use, with nine categories that are exactly what they say they are. For instance, you can change your default apps by clicking System, then picking 'Default apps' from the menu on the left. Personalization lets you fiddle with the theme, Devices is where you manage mice, keyboards, and printers, and Privacy is where you go to turn off lots of things. I'm probably going to disable just about everything there.
13.png 14.png 15.png

The Windows Feedback app is still in, though the Insider Hub is gone. This is encouraging since it means the Feedback app will likely remain in the final release. Windows Feedback is where you go to submit bugs and suggestions and up-vote other people's bugs and suggestions. Don't like something? Complain. And yes, suggestions submitted here have gotten implemented so Microsoft is listening, unlike with 8.
16.png

On the right hand side of the Taskbar, next to the clock, is the Action Center (or Centre for you funny spellers). The Action Center includes a log of all those system notifications that appear in the bottom right corner and have an annoying tendency to go away before you finish reading them. It's also an easy way to access Settings or toggle Tablet Mode.
17.png

I can't really get the full Tablet Mode experience with my archaic, non-touch, 5:4 monitor, but I can show you what it looks like. I couldn't seem to do any gestures with the mouse, so you probably shouldn't try it at all if you don't have a touch screen. The button on the top left opens the main Start page, with most used apps, Settings, Power, etc. The button on the bottom left is a shortcut to 'All apps'. The Start button takes you back to Start if you are using an app. Buttons in general are bigger so they're easier to hit with your finger.
18.png

Backwards compatibility seems to be just fine with everything that ran on 7 running on 10. 7 and 8 drivers are compatible, though Nvidia recently released a driver optimized for 10. Drivers for external floppy drives are no longer included on the disk, but I don't think too many people will be upset by that. Windows Media Center is gone with Groove Music and Movies & TV replacing it. I have seen some people complaining about this but I never used it so I don't know how big a problem it is.

You can't not download updates now without keeping your system offline permanently. Updates are downloaded automatically whether you like it or not. The system does require you to personally restart it, though, unlike some versions of Windows that would reset themselves in the middle of whatever you were doing.

This is easily the fastest build of 10 yet. I think it runs smoother than 7 on the same machine and even the login lag mentioned in my last report has finally been cut down.

That's pretty much it, really. This build, 10240, is believed to be the one that is being sent to manufacturers and the one that everybody will get at the end of the month. I'm going to upgrade from 7 when it comes out and that will probably be my last report.
 

Zelph

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You are, sir, a gentleman and a scholar. :thumbsup:
 

CABAL

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I am currently in the process of imaging my Windows 7 partition in preparation for the official release of Windows 10 tomorrow. Windows 10 has an option to roll back to 7 if you don't like it, but I figure 'better safe than sorry.'
 

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Smart move Cabal. I am going to wait until later in the year before going from 8.1 to 10. Gives them time to do some bug fixes and bring more compatibility to older programs.
 

SciFiFan

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I plan on doing the same as Maj. I am, however, going to upgrade my kid's desktop from Vista to Win7 this weekend. It needs a thorough cleanup anyways. Once this is done, every computer in my house will be on 7.
 

Majestic

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Yeah I am planning my next desktop to be on 7, this laptop will probably be on 10 however.
 

Hellkite

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Well in a couple of hours now we all get to see if Skynet is all it cracked up to be I mean Windows 10 :sweat: at any rate its Judgement day for Microsoft

If you need me I be down in the bunker ;)

 

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I am currently in the process of imaging my Windows 7 partition in preparation for the official release of Windows 10 tomorrow. Windows 10 has an option to roll back to 7 if you don't like it, but I figure 'better safe than sorry.'

I will most likely do the same. My laptop is basically close to dying anyway, so there's not much at risk. If I like it, and if I can get my favorite old games running under it, I might consider buying a cheap desktop workstation or something like that later on for all my Windows needs.

In the meantime, I'm refitting my old XP desktop pc to get it into a somewhat useable state again. Disconnected it from the internet, just in case. It might be a badly outdated machine, but it's better than nothing.
 

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I was wondering why my internet's speed had plummetted this morning...guess it's been downloading in the background. Eighty-five percent there!
 

CABAL

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Still sitting in the download queue...
 

CABAL

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If you're still waiting in the queue and don't feel like waiting any more (like me), you can manually download the updater from Microsoft's official site here. The program is only 18.7MB for the 64bit version and downloads and preps the ISO for you with options to burn it to a disk, write to a thumb drive, or do a straight upgrade.

44% now!
 

CABAL

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And for the triple post, my upgrade has completed and I've checked things out.

The upgrade process was actually really smooth once I ran it manually instead of waiting in the queue. All of my programs and files were saved, along with all of their settings. My Realtek sound card's drivers were transferred with settings, but I had to reinstall the drivers for my GeForce card. In related news, Nvidia has released new drivers specifically tailored to Windows 10. If you use the 7/8 drivers, then you may get horrible frame-rate issues on some games. I believe I read about somebody having issues with Arkham City before they updated their drivers.

During installation, it recognized my existing user accounts and simply requested that I confirm my password. It did not prompt me to associate any account with a Microsoft Account. Along with disabling some privacy settings (most of which you can do during installation), there is no more data harvesting going on with my system than there was under 7. No Cortana, though.

One privacy setting you can't do during installation that you'll probably want to is disable internet result fetching when you use Search. To disable that, you need to click the box or button for Search, then click the gear icon on the left (app settings), and simply switch it off.
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One thing that didn't happen during the upgrade that I expected to happen was that GRUB 2, the boot loader that most Linux distros use, was not wiped out. What usually happens is that the most recent OS to be installed creates a new boot loader that overwrites the old one. The practical result of this is that if you install Linux after Windows then your system boots to GRUB, which displays a list of all operating systems available, but if you install Windows after Linux, then your system boots to the Windows boot loader which only detects Windows installations (and possibly OSX, I don't know for sure). As such, I fully expected that I would need to reinstall GRUB via a bootable DVD with Linux on it, but it turns out I don't. This was probably gibberish for those of you who don't use Linux, but I liked it. No idea how it would work with a clean install instead of an upgrade, though. May loose GRUB that way.

Windows Media Center has been removed in favor of Groove Music, Movies & TV, and Microsoft DVD Player. I've never used Media Center, but it sounds like this is a deal breaker for some people who have been using 7 for home theater PCs, judging by the amount of complaining I've seen. Groove Music and Movies & TV are free, but DVD Player is more complicated. People who upgraded from 7 or 8 and are therefor using a 7 or 8 activation key are supposed to get the new Windows DVD Player program for free via Windows Update to replace Media Center. This actually happened in the background as I was typing this post. If you did a fresh install of 10, then you will need to pay if you want the program or use an alternative, like VLC. Movies & TV does not include DVD play back.

The actual DVD Player program runs quite nicely. I had smooth playback and menus worked just fine. It doesn't support Blu-ray playback, though.
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The thing with Windows DVD Player is an example of how MS intends to run 10 and what they meant when they said, "Windows as a service." They're selling it for less than they have before and offering it to most people free because they're treating it as a loss leader. Much like consoles, the plan is to get people on the platform, then make a profit off of software for that platform. With consoles, it's games. With Windows 10, it's Office 365, other first party programs, and anything distributed through the Windows Store.

Back to programs. I haven't tested everything yet, but everything I have tested that ran on 7 has run on 10. I think Tiberium Wars may have had a slight performance increase and Civilization IV may have had a slight performance decrease, but I'm not sure. Steam recognized the system as being the same one as before, so I didn't need to jump through any hoops. It just ran.

If you didn't like the tiles in 8, then I would suggest that you use them like I did. Remove every single one of the tiles that are in the Start menu by default and replace them with your old desktop icons. My desktop is clean and the majority of my games are right there, hidden behind a single click. I'm still trying to decide what the best layout is, but you can't deny that that is a lot of buttons which are no longer cluttering my desktop.
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I'd talk about the new Edge browser, but I doubt any of us are particularly interested in switching away from Firefox, Chrome, Opera, or what-have-you.

That's pretty much it unless I run into some sort of crippling error in the next few days. I did do a day-one installation of a Microsoft product, so that's not exactly unheard of. But unless that happens, I believe this is my final review.
 

CABAL

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That's pretty much it unless I run into some sort of crippling error in the next few days. I did do a day-one installation of a Microsoft product, so that's not exactly unheard of. But unless that happens, I believe this is my final review.
I did find a problem. If you are dual-booting Linux with Win10, you may have noticed that you can't access any NTFS partition that Windows was using. This is because, starting in 8, Windows defaults to a hybrid shutdown that merges aspects of hibernate to improve boot times. To fix it, do the following:

1. Open Control Panel in the small icons view and click on Power Options.
2. Click on Choose what the power buttons do.
3. Click on Change settings that are currently unavailable.
4. Uncheck Turn on fast startup (recommended).

You can access the Control Panel by right clicking on the Start button to invoke the Power User Tasks menu.

Big thanks to adempewolff at AskUbuntu who seems to have been the one to figure this out.

The one downside of all this is that your boot times will get longer.
 
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