OK, so Windows 10 has been launched, what’s it all about? Is it any good?
I have been following the development of Windows 10 and have been using an ‘Insider Preview’ version for several months. The early versions were, not surprisingly, somewhat shaky and unstable, but the official launch version seems to be OK. My initial impressions are good, with a number of features that many people have commented on that were removed from Windows 8 now restored.
One of the ‘Add-ons’ of Windows 10 is a new Internet Browser, called ‘Edge’, and I’m not sure at the moment whether this keeps crashing or whether it is my website design software that’s causing it! I will put some more notes about the changes here under the category ‘Windows Tips and Tricks, so keep a lookout for it. I know there are probably hundreds of ‘reviews of Windows 10’ out there now, and it is up to the reader which ones they actually look at, but I will try and give some useful information about the good, the bad and the ugly!
First – Installation. This is the first time that Microsoft have delivered a major new release via the Update process instead of making people purchase a new disk/download to upgrade. The first indication you will get that Windows 10 may be available is a small icon in the bottom right of your screen (desktops and Laptop PCs) which if you click, gives you a pop-up window display showing the new features and giving instructions on how to reserve your upgrade. They did it this way because they want to schedule the downloads of the files in phases across all the countries/PCs involved in the launch, to manage the load on their servers. You will find that once reserved and scheduled, your download for the Windows 10 upgrade will appear among the other Windows updates.
BEWARE – this is a huge file, much bigger than other updates, and depending on the speed of your internet connection, will take a significant time to download and install. On my desktop PC, with a 25MB Internet connection and a 3.5GHz processor with 4GB of RAM, the upgrade still took several hours to complete, so I just left it to it! Be patient, and don’t expect to be able to do anything else with your PC while this is running!