Windows 10: Why I Upgraded to My Lovely Windows 10

Why I Upgraded to My Lovely Windows 10
1. I’ve seen many complaints about Windows 10, such as, “You cannot create an OS that is useful and optimized for touch screens and also is useful and optimized for mice and keyboards. You just simply can't. You focus on mice and keyboards, or you focus on touch screens and tablets.” Actually, you can, and Microsoft has pulled it off quite nicely. I have one Desktop, three Laptops and two Android tablets.

Let’s take the ‘droid first. Everyone knows tablets are touch, right? They were never built for mice or keyboards, right? Of course they are; guess what! My first act was to purchase a Bluetooth mouse and a Bluetooth keyboard for my tablets. Works just as well with the mouse and keyboard as with touch. Screen stays nicer too; no smudges or smears.

I was leery about Windows 10 (and Windows 8 for that matter) being built for either touch or keyboard and mouse. No worries at all. This desktop is a non-touch device, yet I have no problems using my mouse and keyboard with it. Whatever I want to do, it can be done with this computer. The same holds true for my three non-touch laptops.

It’s even been said that, “every single mouse user wanted the classic start menu back, optimized for mice and keyboards.” Ummm, well, I admit I wouldn’t mind seeing the Windows 7 interface back, but well, I really don’t have a problem using my mouse on Windows 10 (or Windows 8 for that matter). Using my mouse in Windows 10 is just as intuitive as it was in Windows 7. And no, I don’t use Start 8 or Classic Shell. Don’t need ‘em.

2. Icons: It’s been said, “Oversimplify comes with distortion, misunder-standing, errors, less information per menu, confusion, loss of features, more clicks of course, slower workflow and headache”. O . . . K, what about those of us who actually like simplicity? Is this what we have to look forward to? I think not.

It’s also been said, “We need icons that are “full of details, shadows, brightness, contrast, and colors, don't create for an advanced 2015 machine a bunch of 20-years-old icons. Create crispier, more beautiful and graphically better icons and interfaces”. Waitjustaminnittharpodnah! Sure, some icons lack a certain pizazz, but let’s not get so carried away that Windows 10 is full of bloat. BTW, you can change icons.

3. WiFi It’s been said, “And now, you can only, and I mean it, you can ONLY left-click a WiFi in the list and connect to it. That's it. No properties from that menu, no nothing. Just a connect button and that's it. I beg to differ, in that you can go to Settings>Network and Internet and there are all the settings one needs to set up whatever is necessary. Methinks an hour just isn’t enough time to get to know all the really cool features in Windows 10.

4. Control Panel It’s been said, “The new Control Panel is ugly, a waste of space, is sad, very sad, no colors, atomic blinding white everywhere (more Lollipop stuff, surprise), you feel like you're actually using a Windows Store app instead of Window's Control Panel.” I guess you can’t please all of the people all of the time. Oh, well.

“And the very best of all, if you try to change an "advanced option", the Metro Control Panel closes itself and BOOM!, the classic Control Panel appears. Yeah, pathetic, so pathetic.” Actually, I think this is by design, since those of us who have been testing the Windows 10 Technical Preview all know and understand, the Control Panel will eventually be deprecated and Settings will take its place. There has been and will continue to be a small learning curve (maybe that’s why MS left the Control Panel for a while longer), but the more I use Settings, the more I learn about it.

5. Windows Update It’s been said, “You, user, have no control over Updates. Even drivers, yeah, Windows Update will download them and install them, it doesn't matter if you want them or not. It will happen.” Well, yes, we do. Microsoft has capitulated and will offer an app to allow us to choose what will be installed. Methinks some folks are so against Windows 10 that they have no incentive to check whether they’re right or not.

6. File Explorer It’s been called Windows Explorer, but it’s File Explorer. Yet more complaints, mostly about File Explorer being “white”. As we’ve discussed early on, there are other ways to view Windows 10; some just haven’t figured it out yet. J

7. Bigger Contextual Menus It’s been said, “Again, tablets. Now you right-click an icon, and the items in the menu are noticeably more separated, which means bigger contextual menus that doesn't fit at all a PC with a mouse. The separation of the items in all the previous Windows is the same, and it is perfect for mice, it's clearly a separation that has been studied to be comfortable. Now we have illogically bigger menus that are objectively worse than all the previous Windows because of the space, and if you mix that with a PC that has a lot of programs with its own entries in the context menu, you will end up with a total waste of space and less efficiency.” Again it’s obvious that those who are complaining about the menus in Windows 10 haven’t taken the time to learn what’s what. The “tiles” can be pinned to or unpinned from Start. The “tiles” can be resized to small, medium or large. When I resized mine to small, they can be butted up so close as to be almost touching. So, there doesn’t seem to be a real problem with the tiles unless one just wants to complain for the sake of complaining.

8. Drivers It’s been said, “I don't know how Microsoft have the guts to release a new Windows OS that is not fully compatible with drivers that are from 2014 and are released specifically for its latest Windows 8.1 OS, which is almost the same, but better than 10.” It’s not up to Microsoft to build drivers for third party hardware and peripherals. It’s up to the manufacturer to build said drivers and hand them off to Microsoft for inclusion in its OS. When new hardware is built by a manufacturer, it’s their responsibility to create drivers that will make said hardware run on Windows.

9. Slower Boot It’s been said, “I don't know if it's because my cache SSD software now is not compatible with Windows 10, but my lenovo took in Windows 8.1 18 second from shut down state to Chrome opened and showing Google fully loaded. I installed Windows 10, and after rebooting and updating everything, and rebooting several times, I achieved 33 seconds in the same boot up sequence. And I'm not the only one, I've read plenty, plenty of users complaining about their PC's being slower when using Windows 10, some SSD's not working well, issues with Samsung Magician...” Again, it’s not up to Microsoft to build drivers for SSD drives any more than it is for regular hard drives or any other hardware included in Windows machines. It’s up to the SSD manufacturer to supply Microsoft with drivers for said drives. Not all SSD drives are up to the job any more, simply because the manufacturers haven’t seen fit to build new drivers for older technology.

Well, that’s all I have for now, and I’m probably going to be told I don’t know anything about what I’ve written, and that may be so. Still, I’m getting along quite nicely with My Lovely Windows 10.

:)

 

Why is the Lumina the only phone that gets windows 10? Nobody else gets to upgrade?

Why is the Lumina the only phone that gets windows 10? Nobody else gets to upgrade? I love my HTC one but no windows 10?

 

nokia lumia 1520 windows 10 upgrade

I recently read one article and I get that windows phone 10 upgrade is not available for Nokia lumia 1520. Why is microsoft doing so for lumia 1520? I have already upgrade my phone to windows 10 technical preview. I am thinking of upgrading my phone to
windows phone 10 but why is microsoft not allowing Lumia 1520. I love windows 10 and windows phone 10.

 

Well, the people who upgraded computers which were okayed by both the manufacturer's website and/or Get Windows 10 for the upgrade but then ran into driver problems kind of have a point, but the rest is just exaggerated. can't complain about the icons. If think that Aero icons would look better with Windows 10's overall flat theme, then no, just no. And I'm sure that someone will release an Aero IconPackager theme eventually, anyway, so if do want out-of-place icons, then shovel up $10 for it. Windows 10 in desktop mode feels nothing like Windows 8. don't have to move r mouse to the top corner then down in order to get to the Search, don't have to scroll across 20 pages of icons just to reach r desired program, r apps don't take up the entire screen, etc., but there is a tablet mode which restores a Windows 8-like interface if do have a touchscreen. I mean, give me one way that Windows 10 is optimized for touchscreen only in desktop mode. A useful tip is can open the Network and Sharing center by right clicking the WiFi or Ethernet icon. The Control Panel is, meh, but its a big improvement over the PC Settings of Windows 8. They just didn't try hard enough to integrate all of the Control Panel items into it.

A big gripe that I have about Windows 10 and Windows 8 is it no longer has "Window color and metrics" so can't easily customize things like the title bar. It's still possible by modifying the registry, but that's tedious.

 

I think that the post is a great coverage of things that have happened, been said and stated in various areas. There is always going to be conflict on who's responsibility it is for drivers, human nature.

For myself, I have upgraded all but one of my computers to Win 10 and will not be going back. Within an hour of installing on my laptop and other computers I was already cleaning up the upgrade files. Now that I am on Win 10 for all of these computers I will go one step farther and clean install every one of them.

My personal opinion on this process is that it was done very well. For all the different upgrades that I did I didn't lose anything, files or programs. That is, programs that were staying, WMC did go away and the DVD player was installed on the Win7 computers.

 

I'm so glad I read your post. I have been running W-10 on my laptop since 7/29 and have come to grips with the differences/changes when compared to 8.1 and was about ready to go ahead with the upgrade to W-10 on my desktop until I read your post and confirmed with other sources that Expresscache does not work with W-10. That's a deal killer for me. My desktop is my primary computer and if my cache drive is inoperable with W-10 that is not an upgrade but a downgrade.

 

Gator, have you gone to the manufacturer's site to find drivers?

I don't know if this will help, but here's what I found: ExpressCache - 3x Your PC Speed | Diskeeper

 

"A big gripe that I have about Windows 10 and Windows 8 is it no longer has "Window color and metrics" so you can't easily customize things like the title bar. It's still possible by modifying the registry, but that's tedious."

You do have some color changes that can be made for the taskbar, start menu and I thought it does the title bar. What this does is change all at the same time, not individual.
Right Click Start Menu --> Run--> type "control color" when this screen comes up drop down "show color mixer" and this allows various changes to color and so forth.

Don't know if this is exactly what you were looking for or not. For myself it allowed me to "darken" all of the areas that I use such as the start menu, taskbar and the titles.

 

@Wynona...
Thanks for the great review. I have to agree with most if not all of your comments. I just did the upgrade because I was/am impressed with Win10 overall. It's a nice blend of WIn7/WIn8.1, IMO.

And for me .. it just works perfectly.

 

Hi Wyn,

I have an impression that your post is meant to be some sort of a counterweight to yesterday's rant about "Why I don't like Windows Ten so much". As both views seem to be polarised and a bit biased, I feel like saying that the truth usually lies in between.

I believe that this is just a matter of personal taste and preferences, and those are not really disputable.

I understand the direction MS took is to gradually replace the traditional WIN32 control panel with more "modern", WinRT-based UI. What I don't understand (and probably never will) is why that almost automatically implies stripping vital features. I just see no justification for that. Examples: much less control over UI. (colours, borders, title bars, fonts, etc.). No control over network profiles (changing type between private and public), renaming and merging (important for roaming users). Windows Update is, excuse me, for dummies, not professionals (and we are talking about the PRO edition).

Capitulated? Really? Sorry, what MS did is both pathetic and ridiculous. For whatever mysterious reason they removed really vital feature of WU and instead of bringing it back (or exposing to the new Settings) they merely provided a prosthetic, which does not quite work anyway (hiding a driver update does not stop it from installing). I don't mind switching to a new UI, even if I don't like at first, but it must not stop me from doing things I need.

Well, first of all the original complaint seems void, as the boot time comparison was based on incomparable environments (one with working SSD, one without). But there is some truth in it. For example, I have two nearly identical environments that I think I can compare. In the same laptop, on the same HDD, there are two identical partitions. One with the original Windows 7 and the other with a clone of the first, upgraded to Build 10240 a.k.a. RTM/GA. Bootup times are similar, with Windows 10 appearing sligtly faster (but it may just be me). Everyday tasks are equally snappy on both instances. However, resuming from hibernation is so catastrophically and unacceptably long with Windows 10 that I am considering rethinking my many-years-long habits.

Wrapping it all up - I tend to be an early-adopter, there's a lot of fun with it. But folks at MS have quite a long way to go before they can seduce me away from Windows 7. For now there are more flaws than virtues in W10, if you compare the two.

Cheers,

 

I was pleasantly surprised to find that drivers downloaded via Windows update were not an issue for me. I've had issues with AMD's Catalyst Control Center and DisplayLink drivers on my laptop. ASUS doesn't list any Windows 10 drivers for my laptop. On the first boot into Windows 10 CCC was installed and worked a charm, switchable graphics and all. The ASUS Smart Gesture Utility installed via Windows update too. That gets me my two finger scroll etc. I always had to install that manually in Windows 8.1. Plugged in my external USB 3 monitor, DisplayLink installed automatically, and one reboot latter I had dual displays. Didn't have to set the resolution either, which I had to do in Windows 8.1 for some reason.

Just did a clean install on my very old ASUS M2N68 based desktop and same deal. Didn't have to install one driver manually. NVidia display drivers installed on the first reboot into 10. Sound, network, it all worked. As always though YMMV.

 

I am also very happy with the upgrade, which I did on my Asus T300 and my main gaming/audio rig. Of course, it was not without a few hiccups:

Asus T300 -- had to re-install trackpad driver (not a big deal, obviously)
Gaming rig -- ended up doing a clean install because I was having issues with my external audio interface

But overall I'm very pleased with how Windows 10 turned out, and I can already say that I wouldn't want to go back. I like the way it looks, and it seems even faster than Windows 8.x to me.

Of course, this is all a work in progress, and I'm sure there will be more changes and improvements to come, not to mention bug fixes.

 

Thanks for your post, Poset. You've given us some valuable information.

I would really like to hear (see) more about the Windows Update issue; why do you think it's inadequate, etc.

 

Folks, I'd like to ask one favor of all of you . . .

When posting about Windows 10's strengths and inadequacies, please don't use terms like "pathetic", "ridiculous", etc. It's not necessary and adds nothing to a post. When someone who is satisfied with Windows 10 reads something like the above, it puts them on the defensive and makes them react negatively.

I would rather read a statement that says, "Expresscache does not work with W-10. That's a deal killer for me." The OP gave a problem and without rancor, stated it was a "deal killer". A statement like this makes me wish to help if I can.

 

Thanks for your reply.

Confirmed through many sources, the SanDisk ReadyCache software is not compatible with W-10 at this time. In all fairness this was not an oversight on the part of MS but in fact SanDisk did not start testing with W-10 until the official release date (7/29/15). This issue has impacted many users worldwide and SanDisk is reportedly working on the issue and initial reports state that it should be no more than a matter of weeks for a fix.

Regarding MS and this issue, I think a legitimate gripe would be that several compatibility scans by the GWX components on my PC indicated that all files, software, Apps and devices were "Good To Go". I guess I took that statement too literally. Fortunately I did not upgrade to W-10 on my desktop because I read your post. I will keep W-10 on my laptop and have the best of both worlds until the ReadyCache issue is resolved.