Windows 10 icon on toolbar
 

Hi All

I have Windows 7 on the laptop. I just turned on my computer and i have suddenly noticed a new icon on my desktop tool bar for Windows 10.

If I click it it says the following options:

Get Windows 10
Reserve your free upgrade
Go to Windows Update
Get to know Windows 10

what is this about???? any ideas?

cheers

Me too. The update KB3035583 bought the notification with it. You can always uninstall that update if you aren't interested.

Ahhh cheers for that Dunk. Is it really free?

It appears so....well I have reserved my free copy.....will see what happens.....

Yes, it's free to Windows 7/8 owners when it comes out :)

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windo...y_win10upgrade

Roll on the 29/7 :)

Yep free. Signed my 8.1 work laptop up for it today.

Free for those who download in the first year from release on windows 8.1 and 7 currently.

yeah saw that.

not sure i want 10 straight away, happy with 7 and 10 will be buggy as fook for first few months. plus i wanna see how tabletised it is before i upgrade

Hmmmmmm, not seen it yet, but I HAVE had emails form MS offering it to me, as I have a laptop running 8.1 and this one here on 7.

However........if the installation is anything like as difficult as going from Windows 8 to 8.1 was, (where I had to involve MS themselves and have a one and a half hour phone call with them while THEY struggled to sort it), I'll probably not bother.

However, my laptop will be in France then, from where ALL my phone calls to anywhere in the world, any time, any day, are free, plus no line rental.

Are you listening, you thieving toothy barsteward?:mad:

I've thought about installing it on my laptop, as it's free and all that but I'm not sure I like their new system. They have the coloured tile icon system now don't they, like they have with the Windows phones. Also, will all my existing programs still run? If I upgraded to Windows 10 and my copy of AutoCAD didn't work then I'd be kicking myself as I need it for my job.

I doubt it will be as buggy as previous incarnations seeing as the technical preview (or whatever its called) is very stable, i've tried it in a VM and its been rock solid.

There of course will be some issues for some people, no software is bug free.

Also really, you should be doing a fresh install of any major OS update. Doing an in place upgrade is sometimes asking for trouble and issues. Having said that I've upgraded XP to Win7 in the past and also 7 to 8 and 8.1 with no issues at all.

Well this has nothing to do with MS, for things like that you need to do some research with the autocad software supplier and ask if it will be supported, or if not will they be releasing a patch/service pack for it to work. In a lot of cases the apps will just work anyway.

Have a look at draftsight, free version of autrocad by desault. :thumb:

Also autocad now has to be subscribed to get updates anyway

This. I've been running each latest incarnation of the pre-release as it becomes available in a vm and it has been superb.

I'll upgrade a win7/win8.1 vm when Win 10 is available on July 29th before running it on my physical machines just to make sure there are no cock ups.

Also there are no details of an iso release for fresh installs, this will be done as an update over the existing OS. If there are issues after then you will be able to go into settings and choose the refresh pc which is akin to doing a fresh install or as close to it without going through the motions of needing the physical media and manually installing.

Ah yea true, i suspect the pirates will be making iso's at some point for people who are currently running hooky copies of Win7/8x. There was a rumour that even installs using loaders etc would be able to upgrade anyway, as they are seen as activated by the upgrade process, so pass validation lol.

That rumour seems to have been quashed in the last I saw in that they will upgrade but won't be activated as loaders will be detected. It remains to be seen.

I have a Windows 8.1 vm I activated using a loophole where Microsoft were giving out media centre licenses plus a KMS activated one which I then called Microsoft to register and worked fine so I expect both of those to update fine as they didn't involve loaders and are officially registered with Microsoft through these loopholes.

I'm really not a windows 8 or 8.1 fan, anyone used 10 and how like 8 is it? 7 has been excellent for me both at home and work, best OS I've ever used by far.

I have a loader on my pc even though my windows is genuine. They would not activate my original disk and code so I just used a loader. I will wait and see what Windows 10 is like from peoples responses as I gave windows 8 a miss after trying in and realising it was more of a phone/tablet OS.

Its a bit weird to use to begin with, if you're coming from Win7, then you start to realise how awesome it is. It's pretty evident its much better than Win7/8/8.1 as well.

This is just a quick summary of things i've noticed.

Fully featured start menu is back in Win10 by default.
Search tools are much better, Cortana also included.
It does include a raft of performance upgrades, bootup/shutdown time is a lot quicker.
Better hardware acceleration.
DirectX 12, so should get much better performance with new games when the drivers are updated to suit.
Power management improved, so mobile battery life tends to be a bit better.
File Management is improved. Explorer has the ribbon, you can pause file copying now. File events are grouped together.
Multi monitor support is much better!
XBox Live integration.
Virtual desktop support. Win7 had support for virtual desktops via 3rd party software, now it's built in.

Win10 still has the flat windows and bold colours, which i'm not a big fan of, but it seems to be the fashion these days.

I'm still finding out about new stuff and the changes in the preview version and MS tend to make more changes before the final release, but i really like it so far.

Well WIN7 mainstream support finished in January 2015. Admittedly extended support is up until 2020, which still includes security patches.... which is the main thing.

Anyhow.... as soon as WIN10 is out I'm all over it.

I'm still on WIN7 at the moment.

Upgrading Windows 10 on my laptop will not make it run slow will it?

if not then BOOM! straight to 10 for me

Nope, should be slicker if anything compared to your current Win7.

I've actually completed a fresh install of WIN7 recently. I'd forgotten how ballistic it was. lol

Admittedly doing a fresh install from a 6yr original install (and all the crud that had been installed over that time), perhaps it wasn't surprising.

That would be due to the SSD you installed recently and/or poor maintenance.

Every month i run CCleaner to flush out crap from the registry and a Malwarebytes scan. And deinstall any unused apps. That's it. My rig is just as slick as it was when it was a fresh install ~5 years ago and no need to run a defrag anymore as you know with an SSD.

I'm not sure what caused the slow boot and operation. I regularly maintained the registry and ran Malwarebytes. Also removed unused apps. It's a weird one..... obviously something had gooned it.

In respect to boot times and the SSD, yes it's quick, but I built another WIN7 gaming rig last year. That houses a normal HHD and it's boot times are very quick, if not quite as quick as the SSD device. Certainly not a millions miles apart.

I'm just glad to get a quicker overall main PC back again.

I'm scared, I like 7 .. I hate 8 .. looks very tablet based from the clips I've seen ..

It's really not. I just boot to the desktop and it's like Windows 7, but miles better. Using Windows 7 on some of our machines just feels archaic now.

We use Win8 on our tablets and convertibles where it makes everything simpler to operate, but I find it even better on desktop devices. Very flexible OS and a common misconception that's it's just for touch devices.

It's far superior to Win 7 in every way, best desktop OS so far but having been using 10 for ages now that is going to be even better.

You just need to configure 8.1 once installed to make the most of it, such as boot straight to desktop.

I am a big fan of Windows 7 but after reading this thread I am looking forward to upgrading to 10!

Ok, you've convinced me :)

User error.