Windows 10: Hmm... Overall I think Win8(.1 update 1) is better than Win10.

Unfortunately, going with what the masses want is not always what's best, after all the masses are a$$es!

Personally, I find Win 10 is different, but not necessarily better than previous versions of Windows. One thing that people complained about with Win 8 is that it was too big of a departure from Win 7. I think Win 10 is an even greater departure from Win 7, despite the addition of the new, clunky Start menu.

I've never understood why people say Win 8 is too touch centric and not desktop friendly, I have no problem using Win 8.x with mouse/keyboard on machines (desktop/laptop) without touch yet can still use it with touch on my tablet.

I'm one that didn't miss the Start menu when it was removed in Win 8 because I pretty much haven't used the Start menu since Win 2000! I don't use the Start screen in Win 8.x and have no use for 3rd party menu apps. I have shortcuts on my Desktop to the majority of my installed software (organized in folders) and if I need to use a rarely used program that I don't have a shortcut for, it's much faster to use the Search function in Win 8.x to find it than to find it in a long, scrolling menu.

 

Overall I don't really care about Start Screen vs Start Menu.

Ever since Vista I've only accessed the Start Menu for it's search box, if I needed to go find something that wasn't pinned in my Quick Launch area of the Taskbar. With Windows 7 this changed to only accessing the Start Menu when I wanted the searchbox for something that wasn't pinned to the taskbar, or pinned to that item's jumplist.

I learned to like the Win8.x Start Screen, especially once Win8.1 rolled around and search results were no longer separated into settings/apps/files, and were all displayed together. It acted just the same as Win7's searchbox for me then, except that I moved many of my lesser-used pinned taskbar items off to the Start Screen, and had a less-cluttered taskbar.

I liked Win10's earlier Start Menu attempts, as it largely was the same as the Start Screen in terms of having pinned apps and active live tiles on it. I did being to find the most used files and recently installed files lists which were on the start menu useful though.

But then they started making the Win10 Start Menu look stupid (huge space in-between the two columns of titles as of build 10130), and more awkward to use - such as the useless hamburger menu, adding an extra click to see most used/recently installed lists. the tiles didn't even re-use the hamburger menu space when it was closed-out, it was just dead space.

But overall I could still use the Win10 Start Menu just fine, even if I did think it was butt ugly and somewhat ham-fisted in it's latest incarnation. I was just making the point that I perferred the original vanilla 8.0 behaviour of automatically pinning tiles for newly installed items, and actually uninstalling modern apps when you told it to the first time, from the start screen.

I'm surprised that of all the Win 8.x improvements over Win10 I listed in the opening post, the Start Screen vs Start Menu debate is what has taken the most discussion in this thread so far.

 

Huh?? Wow.. the masses buy the products and make up the majority and usually they get what they want.

 

Those who shout the loudest aren't always those that are right.

Win8 made more sense on touch-screen devices. To use Win8 on touch-screen was to really 'get it'. But touch-screen on regular laptops will add to the price significantly. And as netbooks, undercooked smartphones and tablets have shown us, people will tolerate poor performance if they didn't pay a lot for the device. Only if you have high brand name such as Apple, will people pay more for better.

Win 8 wasn't hard to use on keyboard and mouse. If one wanted, you could pretty much ignore all those live tile modern apps and continue using Windows 8 in desktop mode, which itself had a number of improvements over Windows 7 (copy dialouge window, mount iso's and native pdf reading without needing adobe reader). But they complained how it was too different, so Win8.1, and then 8.1 update 1 after it, took multiple back-steps to accomodate more familliar menu interfaces for keyboard and mouse users.

Now, with Windows 10, we see a desktop mode more geared towards keyboard and mouse, and a ''tablet mode'' which doesn't run anywhere near as smooth as windows 8 did with touch-screen gestures. For me, tablet mode keeps having glitchy problems with it, to the point where I just never use it at all.

 

Ongoing Positive Win8.x Impressions as I use it again:
- screen brightness on Charms > Settings menu has a slider, and screen lock icon on it. No need to have seperate screen brightness and rotation lock squares on Win10, and having a slider is easier than going up in 25%, 50%, 75% and 100%.

- Volume slider on charms menu. This is quicker and easier for touch than using taskbar's volume tray icon in Win10.


Win10 Positives which I actually miss so far:
- The more expanded modern settings menus. Currently I'm on Win8.1 and I realize how quickly I had grown accustomed to the Win10 placement of different settings.

- "Snap Assist" - i believe it's called this officially. This is the thing when it autmoatically shows your other open apps, when you snap an app to half the screen. Similarly I preferred the Win10 visual style of alt tab / task switcher, which is activated with the swipe-in from left touch-screen gesture.

- "Media Connect" or "Connect" on/off toggle square on the Action Center fly-out which enables quicker access to turn on Bluetooth headsets etc, than having to dig into Volume > Playback Devices from the taskbar tray icon.

 

Let see, you like the Control Panel, I like the Settings. . .*Smile

 

Win8.1 has the highest user satisfaction rate of any Windows version ....... among touch users. I forget what the percentage falls to for desktop users.
There should be a poll.

I fall into the Win8 is Great ... Win10 Redstone is When pigeon hole for most of the reasons already stated by people who, at this time, prefer Win8.1

Edwin and a few other members have installed the 10.0.135 leaked version and have initially raved about it - so the jury is still out.

 

I'm guessing 'redstone' is Build 10130, or another recent build which seemed to take a few step-backs from earlier Win10 Tech Preview Builds? Do we have an estimated time of arrival for 10.0.135 on the fast ring? I'm not writing-off Win10 entirely, but it's surprising how much smoother overall Win8.1 feels for me right now, now that I've gone back to it.

 

Sorry, I should explain things better when I use MS code names

There are two release planned for 2016 - both code named Redstone Spring (q1) and Fall (Q3). All Windows releases are really hardened after the first major update (Win 7 SP1, Win8.1 Update 1).

I'll keep playing with the TP, but will wait until the Spring to upgrade my machine. We have a full year to take advantage of the Free update offer - I spent too much of my life on the bleeding edge - I'll wait until Win10 matures.

The next drop will probably be 136, not 135 - no idea when though. There were just 3 WU today, so who knows ... if the telemetry is good, Friday might be the day.

 

Are you serious? I didn't say it wasn't profitable to go with the masses but overall the masses don't have a good reputation for choosing wisely.

 

I guess all of those of us that are considered part of the masses just have no idea how to use our computers. . .darn and here I thought I was doing fairly well. . .again. . .learned something new. . .*Smile

 

Thanks for the review, its a good read, i've just installed win 10 ,so going to be interesting to see how it compares to win 8.1, i'm liking it so far i think its a big improvement on win8.1

 

No doubt someone will fetch out an app to do that, Stardock already has a beta of Start10 to get the Win7 style Start Menu back and once 10 goes G.A. there will be a few more pop up.

 

I can't understand why anyone can not want the start menu. That's how we have started programs since windows 95 or so. Maybe the charms menu is nice if you have a touch screen, but otherwise I think 90% prefer the start menu.

 

Time to move on to a more advanced Start Menu then.