So what does everyone think of windows 10, not sure if i should upgrade or not.

 

+1.

 

But seriously, I haven't experienced any issues. I loved 8.1, 10 doesn't seem a massive leap to me, but it works fine. Not a fan of the icons though.

 

Could you please highlight the tried and tested Windows 10's drawbacks known to you, so that it informs why it may not be beneficial to upgrade? I look forward to the upgrade, as it has an 'up' to it, but if it's going to be worse than Windows 8, then there's no point.

Many thanks.

 

Upgraded an old Win 8.1 laptop 5 days ago for evaluation so I’ve not used any of the supposedly improved touchscreen features.

+ Seems to load to Windows a little faster
+ Prettier picture on startup
+ Start menu is back!
+ Handy Search facility always on hand (e.g.want connect your BlueTooth headphone? Just type in Bluetooth and the Bluetooth device manager pops up)


- Turned off my antivirus software but didn’t tell me
- Stopped sending outbound emails (the upgrade corrupted Outlook 2007 system files, eventually fixed with sfc /scannow)
- if Win 10 thinks one of your existing programs is incompatible it just removes it from the Start Menu without notice
- you can’t any longer control when/whether updates are applied via Control Panel
- wants you to set up an iTunes style account to buy apps, music and stuff…

Overall, probably a bit easier to use for standard stuff but aims to get you to buy more stuff from Microsoft and a little harder to get ‘under the hood’.


Still exploring...

 

I don't like the title format, its rubbish. Only useful if you have touch screen. So can you go back to standard Windows screen? Or is 10 titles or nothing?

 

all worked seamlessly for me on 3 Computers....even Apple bootcamp now works

 

Ok, thank you, Sam. I'll go through this again later, and wait for more to come up from your further exploration.

I'm sure your pointers will be helpful to all other Windows 10 hopefuls from here. Much better than the one liners that go above some IT illiterate peeps' heads; like me.

 

I have upgraded 2 laptops and a Surface pro 3.... I really do prefer Windows 10. The worries are around the auto-updating (which can be stopped) and also some data security concerns.

 

I was just starting to get used to win8.1 After using it with a decent touchpad/touch screen.

Win 10 to me is better, in some ways, not in others. The GUI seems a bit clunky; win8.0 was too touch screen orientated, 8.1 helped out on the major isues, however win10 just doesn't seem to flow; The the way the start menu is arranged or the icons just doesn't work for me, - I struggle to find programs that I know are there. I usually end up having to enter the name of the program into the search bar, so basically I'm using it like a glorified comand line interface. Now that's fine on a desktop computer with a keyboard, but with my laptop in tablet mode (no keyboard) I have to go via the start menu or icons - and if I haven't put it on the desktop I struggle seeing and finding the shortcuts I need in the start menu, unless I've pinned them on the desktop. I have the same issue with the nettop that is plugged into teh TV and controlled via wireless touch pad. Maybe its a PEBKAC issue, but seeing I've been using computers for 30years, I shouldn't be finding it an issue, but I am.

Other issues:

Dolby Home Theatre audio not working This is major issue as I have a nettop used for streaming movies from a NAS to my TV and surround system.

No TV; Media centre is no longer supported and is actually uninstalled if you uopgrade from win 7 (Ibelive it was dropped in win8.0 anyaway). Again, I sometimes use the Nettop as a PVR.

Dpi scaling on high res screens, this is more of a compatiblilty issue with older applications when being used with high resolution monitors...probably not an issue if you have a 768 or 1080 line monitor/screen. My laptop is 2,560 x 1,440 and my PC is 1920x1200. Its an issue on both as it make the text on some programs very blurred. If I disabled scaling, it makes everything tiny; Wasn't an issue on win7 or Vista. Its a niggle, but again something thats changed that can be an annoyance.

Oh and I think they created a new BSOD. I got a blue screen saying there was a problem and the computer needed to reboot (I was messing with the audio drivers trying to get the Dolby audio working), Its pretty, but still useless for telling you what fecked up (probably a report log somewhere).

Also the touch gestures I learnt for win8.1 don't appear to work on win10, maybe its a settings issue - not looked into it.

Other than that, its ok.

 

Does anybody know for how long we can keep using 8.1 ?

 

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows/lifecycle

 

do it now rather than later there is only a windows of OPP i think to get it free... just do it, Its much easier to use and more forgiving...

 

Well, after reading some tried and tested explicit reviews here, I'm not sure if I want 'to be, or not to be' a Windows 10 downloader on my lappy. I freak out as it is when little things go wrong with my computer. Perhaps I shouldn't touch Windows 10 even with a barge pole, man.

Please keep the reviews coming. I will, and I'm sure some others will analyse them again and again before clicking on that 'download' button.

 

I'm still on 8.1 and hate it, bring bk windows 98

 

Just install http://startisback.com/

 

So far ive been happy with Windows 10, ive not seen any blue screens or any hardware or software that's failed to work. It seems to be slicker than Windows 7, the only minor issue i've had is my Logitech keyboard occasionally freezes which it didn't on windows 7.

 

On thing that I've noticed, and this applies to win 8.1, 8.0 and win7. Is that behind the fancy new GUI and settings menus, crawl a big deeper and you still have the old Vista backend; Device manager, control panel, computer management etc.

Now nothing wrong with that but its a bit like having new paint on a old wooden door. Its not really an issue to me as the old stuff is what I know from the windows NT/2K days (I'm pretty sure some bits date back before then), the thing that makes this so strikingly obvious is teh style of menus in new and updated stuff and whats just been carried over from the old OSs of yesteryear still has teh old fashioned layouts.

An example is the printers menus/queue/settings etc; thats new and updated. As is the basic WiFi/internet icon/menu in the bottom left (well as new as win 8.0), but right click for the network and sharing centre and you're back to the old Vista style menus

Same with the System menus, like "power & sleep" thats win 8.1 and fresh looking....but click for additional power settings and your back to the old vista style menus.

My point once you get past teh Gui its the same old same old. The main issue is glitches with driver updates which TBF isn't needed....the updated drivers for our Epson laser printer force it to print colour even on black and white documents (meaning it takes four times longer to print as its a single drum laser printer, so has to pass the page over th drum four times for each colour...even when no colour is printed). I've deleted the driver and installed the old win7 driver and its works fine now.

I suspect using older audio drivers may sort my Dolby issues (problem is I don't know what driver version was installed before updating), and since found that media centre can be reinstalled.

So really, once your got past the new front-end GUI and hashed up drivers its business as usual.

edit; using my laptop at the mo, and I suspect battery life might be a litte reduced from win8.1. :

 

Can't get Win 10 to reliably resume from a hibernated state. Suspend to disk works fine, but hibernate sometimes works most times doesn't. My laptop automatically hibernates after 30 minutes of non use as I work between 3 machines most days.
Regularly get a "blue screen" claiming inaccessible boot device. Changed the SSD drive for 2 others and get the same thing. That emoticon on the blue screen really boils my ****!
Keep getting something called "Request Broker" hogging all the CPU I/O on an I5 laptop with 8 GB RAM.
Have tweaked all the things that concern me on the security front.


Apart from this it is not a bad OS. Should point out I am running a clean install, of Win 10 Pro x64.

 

Tons of it is really old.

It's basically Windows 3 software from the late 1980s that's been tarted up with newer and newer GUIs over the years.

The COMMAND menu (CMD.exe) is a version of MS DOS 6 that can trace it's roots back around 1981.

But it's served me well over the years so I can't really complain.

 

Top man

 

I upgraded my Win7 system to Win10 and all seemed to work but was really unstable and unusable as if I tried to start more than one programme or if it decided it had been up for more than 5 minutes it would do the Win 10 version of BSOD where it tells you it has found a problem then reboot. This was not ideal when editing photos in PS or LR and it seemed to do it every 5-10 minutes with no warning, it also never told you what the problem was, it briefly flashed up something on the screen saying check here but was already rebooting before I had a chance to find out where to look.

So I reverted back to Win 7 and everything works fine again.

 

had to go back to win 7 due to stability issues with 10. i might reupgrade at some point but im gonna wait till they fix alot of the bugs first

 

Are any of you overclocking? that can cause instability under Win10, it happened in Win8.1 as well when i was reading up on it.

I had a couple of BSOD's, so reduced my overclock by a massive 0.1ghz a few weeks ago, so from 4.6ghz to 4.5ghz and it hasn't crashed since.

Also do a sfc /scannow in dos under admin, when you upgrade it may corrupt some files. Even heard reports of corruption on clean installs of 10.

 

You might want to check to see if there's an update for your BIOS that will support Win 10.

+1 on sfc /scannow
I had to run it twice to fix corrupted system files.

 

Mobo is fine, its an oldish Asus, so there is no specific bios update for Win10, but anyway i don't need it now as the BSOD's have gone

 

Is it worth upgrading to 10 if you don't have touch screen?

 

yeah sure, i did my sons old core I5 yesterday took 25mins, no issues what so ever and his is rammed full of games...

 

Is there a choice of windows layout like 8.1? Eg standard windows screen or the title layout.

 

I've got a bug;

My action centre keep popping up whenever I try to do anything

Its either win 10 or my laptop has a fault. I thought I had turned it off, no luck; Annoying to say the least.