If you read the article though you would see this person's complaints are not with the upgrade process but with the memory usage, touch interface, and other behavior of Windows 10.
I had trouble with it months ago in technical previews, but I've been running it successfully for a while now.
That said, I haven't moved to the RTM version yet. Could be another new issue.
YMMV basically.
Had to reboot it.
x DOS - passable
o Windows 1 - bad
o Windows 2 - bad
x Windows 3.1x - good
x Windows NT 3.5 - good
x Windows 95 - good
x Windows NT 4 - good
x Windows 98 - better
x Windows 2000 - great
o Windows ME - bad
x Windows XP - better than 9x/ME, on par with 2000, eventually long in the tooth and outdated
o Windows Vista - bad
x Windows 7 - good
o Windows 8 - bad
o Windows 10 - ???
XP was a significant improvement over the DOS lineage, however, Microsoft had a reasonably good run in the 90s and early 00s.
If you include Windows 3.1x, then why not 3.0? Also if there's NT 3.5, then why not NT 3.1 and NT 3.51?
Coming from a company that only sells on a narrow range of hardware, these is even more unacceptable.
I'm surprised Microsoft still hasn't fixed the dual interfaces problem, though.
I agree, there was a lot of duality in Windows 8 with Metro and classical Windows menus/programs, and they still seem to exist with 10. I even have "Backup and Restore (Windows 7)" option in control panel and yet I upgraded from a clean install of Windows 8.1.
Since Windows 7, Microsoft has provided imagex.exe; it's typically used in high-volume disk imaging applications, but you can easily use it to snapshot or restore an entire installation.
I think Microsoft and Apple are on a good path: keeping the same major version number for their OS, and just continually bring out little changes.
We've all released minimum viable products before. Hell, "early access" is dominating video games in particular. As long as they continue to improve and have a stable, steady release schedule with tangible results, then I think it was a good move on Microsoft's part. Especially since the longer they waited the more entrenched users of Windows 7 & 8 would become, just like they did with XP.
And rolling release is a good model and it seems to be working fantastically for browsers but it's predicated on not releasing features until they are ready. But Windows 10 is a marketed product with features that all had to exist on day 1. So instead of a stable core to work from we get a big ball of muddled together.
I'm hoping now that the date is passed and the features are all in there that there is nothing left to do but fix everything. The (slow) rolling releases of XP worked well so I too have high hopes for Windows 10. But I'll be waiting for a while before I upgrade.
If we were talking about issues in a brand new kernel, maybe. But not basic UI issues.
It's great to be able to use the commander without mouse. Just plain keyboard. Really boosts productivity (especially for a developer like me).
In that entire article, increased RAM usage was the only thing that piqued my interest. The rest of the issues were styling inconsistencies and changes to how some settings are accessed, both of which are problems Windows has had since Vista.
At the same time, though, it's impressive that a modern operating system can operate on just 2GB of RAM. The last time I had that little RAM, I was running Windows 98.
I think it's a baseline like this that leaves people wondering why Windows by default needs to consume large amounts of RAM.
Microsoft traditionally releases a revised edition within a year or so, and so I intend to wait for this revision before upgrading.
Will it be named Windows 10.1? Will it be named Windows 11, or even Windows 12? I am unsure about the name, but I will hold out for this OS.
As for the next version, Microsoft made a big claim that this is the "last" windows version because they have made everything in the system upgradable. Thus all future upgrades will come as package changes through Windows Update and the "version" will forever be Windows 10 (so why not just call it Windows? I don't know)
Now that 10 is out, it looks like it fixes a lot of the issues I had/read about with 8. Granted, I'm definitely not going to install until 10.1 (aka "SP1") but assuming they don't try to turn the OS into a cloud-connected clusterfuck, I'm going to give it a shot.
I did have Windows 8 in a VM and absolutely hated it. The whole "shove tablet interfaces down your throat even on desktop" thing soured the whole OS for me, and the start screen itself is a joke. I'm glad they brought back the start menu.
From what I've noticed, MS releases a shitty version of Windows every other release since 98. 98 was fine, ME was crap, XP was good, Vista was crap, 7 is great, 8 is crap, so hopefully 10 will follow suit and actually be better than 7.
They could use more polish, but I they got rid of one thing that bugged the hell out of me from windows 8. Apps. Every time I slid my mouse to the right I inevitably was on the edge and opened the last app. Infuriating. I had to disable that feature every time.
Windowed apps are an improvement, and I really hope they listen to their customers and improve the OS.
Then you could just go and force the upgrade if you are impatient (like me).
http://techreport.com/news/28579/microsoft-plans-phased-roll...
Time for Windows 11.
What a disaster.
And for what I'm really interested in, security, and compatibility, if they can't get some simple GUI dialogs correct, there's no hope for the rest. Looks like Windows 7 is the most recent usable Microsoft OS.
What connection do you think that GUI dialog styling and security/compatibility have?
Just in what people do: If they can't do the simple work on the easy to see label on the bottle right, then can't have confidence in the more difficult work less easy to see for the contents of the bottle.
My initial impressions remain the same. Compared to 7; lots of invasive privacy policies, much slower (especially bootup), takes WAY more space on my sad little SSD, adds little to no value (I had multiple desktops already using a reliable plugin). Wish I didn't upgrade...
Spartan does not respond properly to ShellExecute(). My app launches a PDF and... Spartan just sits there, without displaying the PDF. Yes, you can open it manually with the PDF Reader, but my users expect it to launch automatically.
* anybody that used their softwares for 2 decades can see how much they improved
Unless you're on a really stable version of linux/BSD, it really makes sense to wait to install any OS until the kinks are worked out.
I think the same applies to most software.
The Control Panel is a legacy piece they decided to keep around for the "enterprise"; just like Windows 10 also still includes the old Internet Explorer.
(Two years later, Steven analyzed the visual identity of Mozilla: http://www.actsofvolition.com/files/mozillabranding/ That article, as far as I can remember, resulted in a fruitful collaboration between Steven (Silverorange) and Mozilla.)
The only time I've needed control panel so far was for mouse acceleration. That should be in settings, but they've done so much work I expect they'll sort it soon.
I was in the insider preview, and they changed the UI style they were going for a few times. I suspect its just a matter of scale: they eventually settled on a given style, but didn't have a chance to upgrade the six million dialogs in the system in time.
Importantly, its not just look but the app technology that needs to shift. The new stuff is in the Universal App framework, some other stuff in WPF, and the ancient stuff in forms. I imagine as the updates come in, one after another dialog will be updated.
A former coworker of mine worked with one of the areas in Microsoft that dealt with error reporting. They actually analyze the data and provide feedback to the vendors of crash-happy programs. It's an important thing that helps generally improve quality of life.
that is the reason twitter exists people.