Windows 10

[pendell]

Seen in preview article (http://venturebeat.com/2014/09/30/windows-10-is-microsofts-big-fat-apology-for-windows-8/). Evidently they've decided to skip 9 altogether and go directly to Windows 10, presumably to put as much psychological distance as possible between the new product and Windows 8, which appears to be destined for the same rubbish bin as Windows Me and Windows Vista.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Douglas]

There's an unconfirmed but extremely plausible rumor going around that the real reason is that internal testing revealed that a huge number of third party programs implemented version checks in such a way that Windows 9 would be detected as Windows 95/98 - get the version as text, and check if it starts with (or, for the more sophisticated ones, includes at any position) "Windows 9".

[supermonkeyjoe]

I really like the idea they're going for, with a unified app-store on all devices and doing desktop/touch interface correctly.

But they've got an odd-numbered OS and given it an even number so I'm not sure if the every-other-Microsoft-OS-is-decent rule will apply or not.

[Chen]

There's an unconfirmed but extremely plausible rumor going around that the real reason is that internal testing revealed that a huge number of third party programs implemented version checks in such a way that Windows 9 would be detected as Windows 95/98 - get the version as text, and check if it starts with (or, for the more sophisticated ones, includes at any position) "Windows 9".

Even if it isn't in the code, you'd probably want to make sure there is zero reason to confuse the new Windows 9 with the old Windows 95/98. Skipping the version 9 altogether is a good way to get around that.

[The Extinguisher]

I hope it looks even less like "old" Windows than 8 did. I love it when people complain about change.

[Alent]

I've signed up for the preview channel and downloaded the ISO, I'll be putting it on a few VMs and putting it through the paces in the next few weeks just to see what I think.

Honestly, Windows 8 got a bad and wholly undeserved reputation because of superstition and ignorance, and I think Microsoft is poking fun at their Superstitious client base by going straight from 8 to 10.

It's not like their numbering scheme has ever been accurate in the least, anyway, considering both Win95, Win98, and ME were all under the heading of "version 4", and one version of windows was even an NT server mainline release, and both Windows 8 and Windows 7 are both labeled "version 6" under the hood.

Time will tell if "Windows 10" is really 6.3 or 7.0.

[GloatingSwine]

There's an unconfirmed but extremely plausible rumor going around that the real reason is that internal testing revealed that a huge number of third party programs implemented version checks in such a way that Windows 9 would be detected as Windows 95/98 - get the version as text, and check if it starts with (or, for the more sophisticated ones, includes at any position) "Windows 9".


This is also why the kernel version number hasn't gone above 6.

Because several programs that weren't compatible with Windows XP checked whether the kernel version number was 6, and would fall over if the version number was higher than 6. Hence Windows 10 is kernel version 6.4

[valadil]

As long as they aren't sunsetting 7 I don't really care.

[noparlpf]

I'm probably sticking with 7 for another few generations of the OS anyway. Worst case scenario, when they do start to shut us down by ending support and new programs start being incompatible, I give up and go for third-party operating systems.

[Zrak]

Honestly, Windows 8 got a bad and wholly undeserved reputation because of superstition

I think you're confusing Windows 8 with walking under ladders. Or maybe black cats?

[Alent]

I think you're confusing Windows 8 with walking under ladders. Or maybe black cats?

I'd like to say you're right, but the superstition was even referenced as a serious barometer in this thread by the third post. :smallsigh:

[Zrak]

I don't really think that post, or that rule, is super-duper serious or generally held up as such. I think mostly people didn't like Windows 8 because its UI is immediately annoying. Maybe if one were to take the time to get used to it, it wouldn't be completely insufferable and could even have things likes merits and redeeming qualities, but honestly every time I use it I just want to punch the screen in its stupid fat tiles while saying something that's half witty pun, half non-sequiter about "touch-screen technology." It's a fine interface for a phone, but I've never found it anything but grating when forced to interact with it on a laptop.

[Eldan]

The UI of 8 is really annoying, yes. But my brother, who does computer stuff things (precise, I know) put it on my old laptop with a few mods that booted it immediately to desktop and took out the annoying touch interface and now I'm of the opinion that it's actually quite good. Runs faster than 7, I'd say.

[Alent]

I had always seen that "rule" as a good nerd joke, but in my repair job I actually encounter a non-trivial number of people- some who should actually know better- who hold it as an actual truth because they don't know enough to recognize it as a joke. By this point it's just ceased to be funny.

You implied W8 might have redeeming traits, believe me it does. It has vastly improved ram management under the hood, which for me was well worth the switch. There's always Classic Shell or Start 8 if you'd rather just not bother with tiles. (Disclosure: I use classic shell for speed and comfort, but also feel comfortable switching back and forth between the two.)

If Windows 10 manages to improve on 8, I'll be quite happy with it. I'll see if I can't get some space cleared on the Hyperviser rig and load it up with apps when I get up tomorrow and install the preview on it, see if I can get some actual on topic feedback.

[Zrak]

Sure, what I was trying to say is that because the UI is so immediately off-putting, most people have no real incentive to spend the time to discover the advantages or figure out how to change the UI. They try it in a store or on their friend's laptop and decide not to buy it because the UI is terrible. People who have to figure it out for a living or people have brothers /friends/&c. to customize it for them may see the advantages, but everyone else is just going to see the annoying hassle in front of those advantages. Put simply, Windows 8 makes a terrible first impression.

[valadil]

Sure, what I was trying to say is that because the UI is so immediately off-putting, most people have no real incentive to spend the time to discover the advantages or figure out how to change the UI. They try it in a store or on their friend's laptop and decide not to buy it because the UI is terrible. People who have to figure it out for a living or people have brothers /friends/&c. to customize it for them may see the advantages, but everyone else is just going to see the annoying hassle in front of those advantages. Put simply, Windows 8 makes a terrible first impression.

My only experience with it was the first impression one you describe. I started my current job in february and my laptop came with 8. I went through some basic welcome to work stuff on it before I had a chance to install linux. The UI kept surprising me in bad ways. It was like it didn't know I had a decent monitor and kept trying to hide things to clear space. Except that the space it cleared was stuff I was looking at and the options it left behind weren't useful to me. It looked like the kind of interface you'd get when a web programmer finally discovers jQuery and wants to try out all the functions.

I'm aware it can be configured to act more like 7. But if you have to go to any amount of effort to make an OS behave like an older OS, that's not really an upgrade.

[LokeyITP]

I've heard the out of the box window manager will actually get some features others have had since 2002 (multiplexing, etc), so that's kinda nice. Haven't heard of any under the hood improvements though, curious about that (i.e. hooray, an MS OS will finally have a stock file explorer that'll display a directory tree of 1000+ files in less than a minute).

Yes, I get a lot of schadenfraude from these kinds of discussions :)

[Knaight]

I'd like to say you're right, but the superstition was even referenced as a serious barometer in this thread by the third post. :smallsigh:

The superstition isn't why Windows 8 is seen as bad - nor is it generally taken all that seriously. It emerged precisely because Windows 8 was seen as bad. The atrocious UI drove people away and inspired the proliferation of that joke.

[Gnoman]

The "joke" is far older than Windows 8, and is generally very accurate. Every other Windows release has been pretty bad, because that's when they make their radical changes that invite serious unanticipated problems. It isn't purely a Windows problem -look at DOS 4.Oh No! and you see the same problem.

95 was a radical departure from the 3.xx series by turning Windows into a bona-fide operating system than a glorified shell that happened to have a number of programs that required it. 98 was an incremental upgrade that fixed nearly all of 95's stability problems (Win98's legendary stability problems were generally not Microsoft's fault as they were usually the fault of badly-coded drivers, ignorant users not shutting things down right, or dirty power corrupting files (prior to Windows 9x, most home computers didn't have multitasking capability, so hard drive access was fairly rare unless whatever program you were using was in the act of loading data, which happened only intermittently, so dirty power wasn't nearly as much of a problem) while making significantly better integration of "multimedia" and the internet. Windows Mistake Edition was an attempt to introduce a lot of features from the corporate branch of Windows to the home user while continuing the internet integration that 98 pioneered, but doing so on the aging Windows 9x core proved to be a serious mistake. XP took all the good features from the home branch, merged them with the much more stable NT core, creating an extremely flexible system that many people prefer even today. Vista, the first MS OS conceived after the broadband explosion, attempted to introduce some badly needed security features and create a more idiot proof box, but did so ham-handedly (to the point they made systems less secure by conditioning people to approve every single program that tried to run while conflicting security features had a habit of crashing the system) while bloating the product with useless "pretties" that made most systems of the time choke. 7 kept the security changes and the pretties, but did so in a much less intrusive and destabilizing way, while the computers of the 7 era could actually handle the pretties. Now we have 8, which was the product of some marketer's insane obsession with copying Apple's "Computers for the barely sapient" campaign.

[Knaight]

The "joke" is far older than Windows 8, and is generally very accurate. Every other Windows release has been pretty bad, because that's when they make their radical changes that invite serious unanticipated problems. It isn't purely a Windows problem -look at DOS 4.Oh No! and you see the same problem.

Sure, but it was comparatively niche until recently. Its emergence from niche spaces to the general culture was pretty much a Windows 8 thing, as far as I know.

[Alent]

The "joke" is far older than Windows 8, and is generally very accurate. Every other Windows release has been pretty bad, because that's when they make their radical changes that invite serious unanticipated problems. It isn't purely a Windows problem -look at DOS 4.Oh No! and you see the same problem.

Except they don't always make radical changes on every other release. They make changes consistently every release and even within releases through service packs. Have you forgotten the complaint storm from the XP SP2 UI changes and the people who swore they'd never install SP2? I haven't. Every Windows Release is like that.

In the way of REAL windows 10 feedback...

Installed Win10 Tech Preview on an Oracle Virtualbox VM since the hyperviser's giving me some trouble and I don't want to take the whole thing offline for updates right now. Virtualbox Guest Tools and drivers don't support Windows 10 yet, so to get around the interface awkwardness I'm using RDP from my Surface, which is actually working exceptionally smoothly over wifi even at surface native res. (2160x1440)

Initial observations:

The Start Menu is Back. As is visible in the marketing material, the tiles features can be docked into the right hand side of the start menu. Awkwardly, they automatically rise to the top, so I can't stick the Control Panel shortcut down on the bottom of the start menu until I actually fill up an entire column of tiles. Any shortcut you choose "pin to start" on is placed in the tiles side of the start menu, and can be scaled up or down depending on what kind of tile it is. Live tiles seem to be able to go larger, but regular icon shortcuts can be small (regular shortcut sized) or medium (doubled in size).
If for whatever reason you find yourself missing windows 8's tiles menu, you can turn on the "Windows 8 style start menu" with a config option. :smalltongue:
They removed the Charms bar. Having used Windows 8 pre-release since just after they added the charms bar, and having gotten used to it on 3 different Windows 8 computers + client systems, I actually find this a little jarring.
Windows 8 users may have discovered the handy Administrative tools menu available by rightclicking on the 1 pixel "start menu" in the bottom left corner in Windows 8. In Windows 8, this hotspot stayed in the bottom left corner no matter where you placed the taskbar. This menu is now the default right click action for the start menu button regardless of where the taskbar's placement has the start menu located. For those of you who haven't seen this menu yet:http://www.hclaw.org/foxa/Win10BestMenu.png
They said touch support was going to be iffy, but Touch RDP seems to be working beautifully. Supports the Surface Pro 3's stylus even. I don't have any apps that use pressure sensitivity on the Win10 VM yet, so I can't report on that until I install more.
After disconnecting touch RDP and opening up the interface in the emulator itself, I found that I needed to reboot to fix font scaling, because it was stuck at the surface's higher font DPI setting. Will try to reproduce tomorrow when I feel like fiddling with it again and try to find the "file a ticket" option if it reproduces.
OneDrive sync crashed once trying to sync my files into the VM. Will have to keep an eye on that to see if it happens again.
Windows 8 style "apps" can be resized and dragged around the screen as advertized.


To Do List:

Install Office 2003 to test legacy support.
Install Office 365 to test out Onenote.
Install Adobe CS5 and Clip Studio Ex to test Touch RDP Stylus support and also Wacom Intuos Support
Install Firefox and Chrome and open up a bunch of tabs for long term stability testing
Install Minecraft, Java, etc.
Possibly install Steam. (see next option)
Install on spare shop laptop to test actual hardware support and install the above again to test actual system performance.


I'm open to suggestions for other apps. If I don't own them and they have a free trial, I'll give the trial a shot as long as it's not too crazy.

[Slipperychicken]

Does anyone else get annoyed when a series isn't properly numbered? There are countless examples of this, mainly in games and books.

[Hyena]

Microsoft can't count. How do you go from 8 to 10? Or from 360 to 1?

[Qwertystop]

The UI of 8 is really annoying, yes. But my brother, who does computer stuff things (precise, I know) put it on my old laptop with a few mods that booted it immediately to desktop and took out the annoying touch interface and now I'm of the opinion that it's actually quite good. Runs faster than 7, I'd say.

Why would you need mods? I changed the settings on my laptop to boot to the desktop view within about five minutes of thinking "I wonder if this is a thing I can do" and searching it. Its right there in the settings somewhere.

Unless this is from before 8.1 - I don't know if it was in the original 8.

EDIT: there's a traditional Start menu in 8.1, too - it just goes on the bar like any other program shortcut, instead of being in the very corner. Icon looks like a house, but otherwise the only difference is a quarter-inch (estimate, depends on your screen).

[Alent]

Why would you need mods? I changed the settings on my laptop to boot to the desktop view within about five minutes of thinking "I wonder if this is a thing I can do" and searching it. Its right there in the settings somewhere.

Unless this is from before 8.1 - I don't know if it was in the original 8.

EDIT: there's a traditional Start menu in 8.1, too - it just goes on the bar like any other program shortcut, instead of being in the very corner. Icon looks like a house, but otherwise the only difference is a quarter-inch (estimate, depends on your screen).

Are you sure that house isn't a third party app? Lenovo and HP both like to preload an app that looks like a red house on their Windows 8 laptops.

[Qwertystop]

Are you sure that house isn't a third party app? Lenovo and HP both like to preload an app that looks like a red house on their Windows 8 laptops.

Huh. Just double-checked - you're mostly right. It is a Lenovo preload, but the icon is white, not red.

Apparently it's actually a free program by Pokki. The articles mentioning it say it's paid by adverts, but I haven't actually seen any adverts. It does have an app store, but I've never looked at it. Didn't realize it wasn't a Windows 8.1 standard til now.

[Feytalist]

Does anyone else get annoyed when a series isn't properly numbered? There are countless examples of this, mainly in games and books.

Even worse when they ignore all the previous versions and start over. We should be glad this version isn't simply called "Windows".

(Or "Windows Next". Heh.)

[noparlpf]

Even worse when they ignore all the previous versions and start over. We should be glad this version isn't simply called "Windows".

(Or "Windows Next". Heh.)

Or "New 3DS", which is just confusing. Now how do you search for a new 3DS? Or a new New 3DS?

[Slipperychicken]

Even worse when they ignore all the previous versions and start over. We should be glad this version isn't simply called "Windows".

(Or "Windows Next". Heh.)

At least it isn't called "Windows: Reloaded", or "Windows: A Dance With Dragons".

[Qwertystop]

Even worse when they ignore all the previous versions and start over. We should be glad this version isn't simply called "Windows".

(Or "Windows Next". Heh.)

Windows Next could abbreviate as NE. I think this is a bad idea somehow.

[Septimus Faber]

So Windows ME would be Malicious Evil?

... Cause that sounds about right.

[Eldan]

I suggest "Windows One", personally.

[Qwertystop]

So Windows ME would be Malicious Evil?

... Cause that sounds about right.

Not sure where you got that from my post - I wasn't suggesting any particular meaning for ME or NT, just pointing out that NE sounds like both of them.

[Septimus Faber]

Not sure where you got that from my post - I wasn't suggesting any particular meaning for ME or NT, just pointing out that NE sounds like both of them.

Sorry, I tend to read puns into everything. Simply cause I make so many. Maybe I'm subconsciously looking for someone who can make better ones. :smalltongue: