Windows 10 and me (part 1)

As expected and heavily rumoured, the new Windows 10 was announced on Sep 30 and the Technical Preview made available for anyone interested. Since then IT news sites have filled with hands-on tales, previews and opinions.

Here’s my story. I downloaded the 3.8Gb iso file with the preview overnight, and back from work, I started up VirtualBox and created a virtual machine for the install.  The first attempt failed and I soon learned that one must pick the right type of Windows VM  for this (‘other x64’ doesn’t work, ‘win 8.1 x64 does’ – thanks to betanews for posting the solution : ).

20 minutes and a couple of restarts later  and I could login. There is an option to copy settings from a Windows 8 installation or set up as new. I choose to set up as new. I think the only time I have done such a settings export was from win 3.1 to Win 95 and I wasn’t happy with the result. Now many years later it probably works fine (I should grab a VM and try : ), but with this first install I wanted to see the stock setup.

I enable OneDrive integration (that will make the install actually usable on a small VM disk) and then the installer takes care of a few things and my apps. Windows 10 starts up and my desktop opens, and well, it looks just like the Windows 8.1 desktop on the host.on my Windows 8.1. Then I open the Start menu – the big change that is expected/hoped to redeem Windows – and…

First of all: When I had hit the start button 2 or 3 times, a notification message was shown with the question how hard was it to use start?” (quite unobtrusive and no need close it manually). Well, thanks for asking, I appreciate it. Really. Regardless how this ends, you can’t say MS didn’t ask for feedback. And it is hard to come back later and complain that Win 10 sucks and MS never listens to the users (then again, time will tell if it is an empty gesture to appease critics…).

…and I can see what MS is trying to do here and this hybrid between the newer Start screen and older Start menus may work. I need to play around some more (and let MS know what I think). Probably try first configuring the new menu into something similar to the 8.1 screen which I actually like, then into something like the Win 7 version and finally find whatever middle ground is just the right thing for me.

Apart from the Start menu, it all looks very familiar, in just the same way that every other Windows version has looked a lot like the previous one, while there is probably lots of new stuff under the surface (again, like always).

Update: Just saw a demo of how windows can be snapped into place and easily arranged on the screen. That looks cool. And useful.

I will keep playing and testing, and look forward to the upcoming versions. And in the end it will probably all be fine and I will install the final version on my PC, install the usual applications and keep going, get back to business as usual. Because that is something left out in much of the OS hype and hate: Every OS is useless, it is the apps and how you use them that matters.


PS: Installation of Virtual Box Guest Extensions failed – not surprisingly, considering that Oracle’s developers are also just having their first look at Win 10. So are the charms of pre-release software : )