Windows 10 Arrives
This marks something of a departure. This blog is usually filled with nonsensical posts about daily life. Today I'm going to talk about Windows 10. Unless you've been living under a rock for the past several months, you'll know that Microsoft has released the final “major” version of Windows. By “final”, they mean that all future changes will be incremental, in the same way that Apple has upgraded their operating systems over the last several years.
Friday at work was spent re-installing my work laptop, then given the experience of how well it went, I took the plunge and re-installed my old desktop machine at home last night. The concerns were mostly around memory footprint- my old desktop machine only has 3Gb of RAM – if Windows needed more, it would live out it's days with Ubuntu Linux.
It turns out my fears were completely unfounded. The old desktop machine flies. After logon, it seems to stabilise at a little under a gig of memory used. Far better than I had imagined.
The only hurdle so far has been convincing Cortana (Microsoft's voice enabled assistant) that I had installed the various English language packs to allow it to magically “switch on”. Having jumped through all the required hoops and got it working, I'm actually wondering about switching it back off again. I won't use it.
So what do I think of Windows 10 so far? It's not that much different to Windows 8.1. Sure, the start menu is back, but they've been crafty – the menu that pops up is essentially the Windows Phone launcher – so if you have a Windows phone, the two interact seamlessly with each other. Applications for one platform can be installed on the other. This was the dream Microsoft started selling years ago, and it's the dream that could very well kill Apple and Android in the long term. The “Windows” that runs on your phone is the same “Windows” that runs on your desktop.
The built in apps are actually very good this time. Mail and Calendar are the best bundled applications I have seen. The Photos app understands OneDrive, so deleting from it also removes from the cloud, and your phone (at last!). I immediately removed the money and sport apps (why do they insist on installing that kind of crap?). Third party apps such as FlipBoard and Netflix are fast, and straightforward.
While writing this I'm waiting for Office365 to install. I received it free for a year with my last mobile phone handset. Get used to software subscriptions – they are the way of the future. You pay less, and always get the most up-to-date version.
Other than the obvious graphical changes, Windows 10 is very obviously still “Windows”. The learning curve – especially if you have experience of Windows Phones – is not steep at all.