Windows 10: Am I the only one who wants a merger between Win8 and Win10?

Soo, I got the ''black screen with mouse cursor'' log-in error yesterday. Should have checked here first, but I ended-up ''reset this pc, keeping files''. This got me back into Win10, but activation was all jakked-up; since my pre-release tech preview product key was no longer valid.

Ended-up blowing Win10 away all together and going back to vanilla Win8.0 with my recovery usb stick. Got myself back up-to Win8.1... and find myself wishing Win10 was more of a half-step between Win8.1 and Win10 instead of being what 10 is.

Win8.1:

• I like the colorfulness of 8. The Start Screen tiles take the major color of the icon and apply it as the tile background color.
• I miss the big time/date clock that would appear when you bring out the Charms Menu.
• I like how there isn't a forced space between live tiles like there is down the middle of the Start Screen in Win10.
• I like how Win8 doesn't have a 'Tablet Mode' where all windows are resized to be maximimized, redcing productivity, and it always kicking me back to the Start Screen when I close a folder or software program. In Win10's Tablet Mode I had to literally add a File Explorer title because there was no way to view Desktop Items etc.
• I like the Charms menu location of the Power button, since I'm right handed it's easier to swipe-in from right and access Power there.
• I perfer Win8's logos for WiFi (bar chart) and Battery (Stand-up battery). Both are easier to see at-a-glance how much battery you have left, or how strong your signal is.
• I perfer the slider-options for Screen Brightness/Rotation Lock toggle and Volume Level/Mute toggle, over Win10's separate Rotation Lock, and Screen Brightness only working in multiples of 25%.
• I perfer how more informtation is presented in Win8 when I click the battery icon in Notification Tray. From here I can change my power plan.
• I perfer how more informtation is presented in Win8 when I click the volume icon in Notification Tray. From here I can quickly edit the properties of the currently selected playback device, adust volume level, and get into volume mixer without having to right-click the volume icon, which is a pain when using touch because then I have to hold-press it.
• I vastly perfer the layout of Win8's on-screen keyboard's second viewing style (the Letters either side of a Number Pad layout). This makes typing a password with both letters and numbers much easier, instead of every time you want to change letter for a number, having to press the '&123' button to toggle from letters view onto symbols and numbers view. This is because on Win10's second viewing style, it has changed to just 'Letters on either side of the screen, and the Number Pad area from Win8 is a blank space you can look through to see the page' instead.
• I vastly perfer Win8 apps for Mail and Calendar, and OneDrive and OneNote.
  - Win8 Mail app allows me to set a message as Junk, which I don't believe is possible in the Win10 version.
  - Win8 Calendar App is cleaner-looking and focuses only on my email's Calendar. It doesn't bring-in other account's calendars etc. Outside of some of the more advanced 'set this event every X' options in Win10's calendar (such as set every 2 weeks), I really perfer Win8's version.
  - Win8's OneDrive's placeholder files is pretty much self explanitory. On Win10 I find myself constantly syncing and un-syncing selected folders depending on how much space I have left on my device. I find that I need a particular file, and I have to sync an entire folder to get to it. Very, very annoying.
  - Win8's OneNote recently got ported-up to Win10, 'radical menu' intact. But before that I couldn't even change the pen-thickness in Win10's OneNote app, which was a pain because the default pen thickness was too thin for me to see properly. I always used the medium pen thickness on Win8's Outlook. Haven't tried the recent update for Win10's OneNote app yet though. W10 OneNote Metro App now has a pen thickness button.
• Win10 has an issue with Windows Photo Viewer's SlideShow Mode. It shows a zoomed-in top-left of the image. Have messed around with display resolutions, but nothing seems to fix it. So naturally I prefer the Win8.1 version
• Win8.1 File Explorer opens in the exact spot I put it in when I close and open a new instance. Win10 will reposition the window as if Cascading two opened instances of File Explorer, even when I am reopening it after closing it. This was highly annoying, so obviously I prefer the Win8 behaviour.

Win10:

• I perfer the layout of the Settings menus in Win10. They make certain things easier to get to, such as Bluetooth.
• I perfer the 'Connect' menu of Win10. It makes it easier and quicker to pair and attatch media such as bluetooth mouse and headphones. Back on Win8 I would have to go digging in Settings sub menus, or right click the Notification Tray volume icon and then select Playback Devices.
• I perfer the larger notification tray icons of Win10. I perfer them even more in Tablet Mode, despite not liking Tablet Mode itself.
• I perfer swiping in the right side of the screen and getting the Action Center fly-out, rather than getting Charms menu and then having to click Settings. Although I wish we could add our own toggle boxes to the Action Center. For one thing I would add a Power box to for Shut Down/Restart.
• If I ever got over my privacy issues and used it more, I imagine I would like Cortana's ability to control my laptop from accross the room.
• I like the Battery Saver feature.

I might make a mock-up of my perfect merger one day. But what are you guy's thoughts on Win8.1 vs Win10?

:)

 

Am i the only one who thinks this?

It's not designed to play video and it is mad to try. It doesn't make sense to use the RDP virtual display driver (lowest common denominator) instead of pointing a local app at the video source. Using a local video app will give you the best quality video
at a much lower bandwidth usage.

 

Am I the only one who is disappointed ?

Hello,

I use Skype from its earliest versions. I must say I am disappointed each version is less useful than old ones. For example 2 important things you "went backwards" on

• The ability to save conversations/history to file
• The setting that I can set Skype to automatically load when Win10 starts
• When new chat came I got no notification except immediate ones, so if I am not in front or I am busy with other things I might ignore messages I got from others. At early versions the Skype symbol at program bar at windows bottom was flushing or being
  bold with number of unread messages etc

Although I was big fan of Skype, having lost those advantages I am considering "moving" to other applications
like WhatsApp etc.

 

That's an easy answer for this old man, I hated Win 8, 8.1 never liked it, and would never run it on any machine in my home ever!!
Now with that in mind I did upgrade one of my computers to Win 10 Pro about 4 weeks ago, had all kinds of issues during the 1st 2 weeks, and had to do a little work getting things the way I wanted. Windows 10 is still buggy, will be for a while I think. But, I like it more and more as I learn about all the settings and how to fix all the issues as they pop up. Anyone who installs Windows 10 is actually a BETA tester for MickeySoft weather u like it or not, so I can understand why some folks are mad and upset Me....I kinda like playing on Windows 10 Pro and stomping on the bugs as I find them. All the updates we all will be getting every week will also help us too. But I am sticking with Windows Pro. I think some folks maybe should go back to their old OS until MickySoft releases a more stable version. That could be a few more months. Good luck. *Smile

 

For me, 10 is more stable than 8/8.1 and definitively more than 7.

 

I am pretty satisfied with w10 so far.

 

Sup fellas?

I never did bother to put Windows 10 back on my machine, after that latest mess-up in August. However I know that a few things have been fixed. Such as the OneNote Metro App in Win10 now has a pen thickness button, so I don't have to hack the Win8.1 Metro App to work on Win10 anymore. Elsewhere little things have been tweaked to my liking as well. If I recall correctly the titlebars are now colored again, with white text on them, without the need for any third party software or hacked themes, right?

Would anybody be so kind to look at my Win8.1 pros bullet points and let me know if any of them have been addressed/fixed in Win10?

 

All I can tell you is that most of the changes were done to Insider Preview for now and it's getting better. 10240 aka RTM is not affected as much so you may want to wait another month or so for full new upgrade to 10240 to see all those changes (probably even more) implemented.

 

How does 'fast ring' windows updates differ from Insiders?

After the blackscreen/mouse glitch I blew away 10 and went back to 8, but my pre-release Win Insider Tech Preview product key would no longer work.

I was under the impression that re-updating to Win10 now that it's publically released, and then going on the 'fast ring' windows updates would re-register me as an 'Insider' again?

 

Insiders with Fast Ring get upgrades/updates before the Slow Ring, that's only difference.
If you update again from 8.1 to 10 you'll get 10240 version that's a "Normal" aka RTM version. In my W10 that was upgraded from 8.1 I have invitation to join Insider program.

 

Totally agree with you there not getting any crashes like I was with 8.1 my printer works better and love the new outlook mail.
Been able to dump incredimail and third party office.
For me windows 10 all the way

 

Windows 10 is like a merger between Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 already. Some of your quibbles are meant to look backwards instead of forwards. For example, tablet mode is an awesome feature. I realize not everyone is running a touch screen, but that's the direction the industry is going. It comes down to the chicken vs the egg debate. Why build and sell touch screens if the OS doesn't support them. Why design an OS to support touch screens if no one is buying them. Someone has to be first to break that loop.

As it stands, I'm using Windows 10 on two computers daily. One has a touch screen and one doesn't. Windows 10 works very well on both, and bridges the gap between the two types of interfaces very well.

 

upgraded to Win10 (build 10240). Turned on all updates, insider, fast ring. Now sat around for ages waiting for insider fast ring build to decide to start downloading. Manually 'checking for updates' doesn't seem to be working either. Grr.

 

To address your bullet points:

• The tile colours in 10 may be less varied than in 8, but that comes with one huge benefit. 8 had a problem where the tile would pick the dominant colour of an icon and use that as its background; I have no idea who at MS thought that was a good idea, in practice it meant many monochrome icons resulted in tiles where you could barely make out the icon at all. And there wasn't even an official method to specify a tile's background, you just had to try and see. It may be less colourful, but 10's method is definitely more usable.
• The charms clock is redundant now as the taskbar clock is always visible. There are third-party clock tiles if you want a large clock on your start screen/menu.
• I agree about the forced space, same for the need for titles (even empty ones) of the columns. MS seems to think this works better for tablet displays and other rotating displays, and I can see their point but there should be more flexibility.
• You can turn tablet mode off, so that's a non-issue. The only slight problem I have is that there is no option to have the start screen showing after logon if you just have full screen start on as opposed to tablet mode. I suppose I could use an app to trigger the windows key after startup, but that would be an ugly solution.
• The charms bar start and power options were handy on tablets, hopefully MS will allow us to add other settings and custom shortcuts to the Action Center in the future so we can replicate that functionality.
• I can't say I've noticed Windows 10 taskbar icons being any worse than 8, but in general the icon design in 10 is pretty ugly IMHO. "Flat" style icons are all well and good, but MS really didn't do a very good design job on these. I'm using a Windows 8 icon pack on all my Windows 10 installations now.
• You can easily make a shortcut to the full control panel brightness settings if you need finer control over brightness.
• There are tweaks (see winaero.com) to restore the previous behaviour of the power, volume, etc. popups. You're right, being able to change your power plan from the taskbar can be very handy. I prefer the Windows 10 volume slider on a tablet, but on desktops I revert to the old UI.
• I honestly can't remember how the other default on-screen keyboard layout looked on 8, but you can just enable the full layout in settings which does have the numbers and letters on the same page.
• I much prefer the Windows 10 Mail/Calendar apps. They still have a way to go though, they don't yet have the full functionality you get with the current default Android email client for example. I'm not sure what your problem is with other calendars, I seem to be able to switch between my Google and MS calendars?
• I have no idea why they changed OneDrive like that for Windows 10, being able to access 'online only' files as if they were local was great. That seems like a big step backwards, I agree. I can't say I used the modern version of OneNote all that much on either OS, I can't see the point in it really given that the desktop version is free anyway if you don't have Office.
• The photo app in Windows 10 works correctly for me, nothing zoomed in like you describe, but for quick previews the old desktop Windows Photo Viewer seems faster. Again, this can be re-enabled if you follow the instructions on winaero.
• I'm not sure why you're having that issue with the file explorer, it opens in the same position and size as last used for me. But while we're on the subject, the file explorer still hasn't been properly optimized for touch on Windows 10, which is mind-blowing! Why have they not added a simple selection toggle button? MS even made a touch-friendly file manager for Windows Phone, but for some reason neglected to make one for their principal OS.
• Cortana's a gimmick IMHO, I've got it turned off on all my machines. Google Now is the only voice-driven PA system that comes close to being useful in my opinion, and even then I rarely use it.

 

If you are impatient: Download Windows 10 Build 10565 ISO - Microsoft News