Updating to Windows 10
It was not without some trepidation that I decided to update my computer to Windows 10. Having been released just a week ago my normal consideration would be to let others be guinea pigs and benefit from their suffering. This time, since the Windows 10 OS is a free upgrade I thought that it might be important to get some hands on experience before any of my customers take the plunge.
I have an old Microsoft Surface that I inherited and have come to love, its battery life surpasses any laptop I’ve ever used and it’s very quick to get into and out of, this was going to be my test. I inserted the USB stick with the Win10 upgrade on it (available at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10), ran the setup, answered a few questions and went to lunch. When I came back it was done, after a reboot the logon screen had changed and I logged in.
In the interest of brevity I don’t want to get too deep into operational specifics but I want to convey my overall impression. The interface is very cleaned up, hitting the Windows key brings up a smaller version of the metro interface which is functionally more like Windows 7, read Forbes.com article Windows 10 Vs Windows 8 Vs Windows 7: What's The Difference? What impressed me though was the speed, it seemed snappier than before and all my applications seemed to be fine. I run a varied mix of apps, Samurize, Evernote, Autohotkey, quite a few older applications that make my workflow faster. I was pleasantly surprised and nearly enthusiastic at this point, something I haven’t felt for an operating system in some time.
With my new starry-eyed enthusiasm I thought I’d bite the bullet and put it on my main system, a half year old HP Z230 with solid state drives and lots of ram. This time I went to the Microsoft site and did the install directly from the site, it went fairly quickly and led to the same result. The system seems faster, looks much better, and my mix of applications all seem to have no problem. The only anomaly I can find so far is that when I minimize borders my Cywin terminal session has a slightly larger upper border than it did before. Other than that I don’t yet have anything that is a problem.
In the past I have been very skeptical of Microsoft’s ability to deliver on promises but this time they not only surprised me, they made me surprise myself.
Ransomware Warning for Windows 10
The inevitable Windows 10 spam and phishing emails are trolling the internet. Microsoft will NOT email you Windows 10 (you have to go to Microsoft to download) it’s a hacker called Ransomware, the email will appear to be from Microsoft - To learn more on Ransomware threat click here.
