Unless you've been living in a cave, or even if you have, you may
have heard about Windows 10. The "big" thing about W10 is that Microsoft
is offering a free upgrade to users of W7 or W8.1. With this in mind, I
thought that someone might be interested in my experience with W10.
This is the first, and hopefully not last, installment on this subject.
Very
recently, I picked up a new laptop computer. It's not a high end
machine, thought I wish that I could justify spending more on one. It's
in many ways a replacement for the laptop that I got 5 years ago. The
old one has a display that no longer works, but, thanks to the magic of
the HDMI port, works well to watch streaming video from Hulu and other sources on the TV.
Not
only does the new laptop solve the issue of having one to take on any
trips that we go on, but also provides a needed computer for the
children in doing their school.
So, Windows 8.1. I
really have no interest in dealing with it. I've seen enough of W8/8.1
to know that I don't like it. I decided that my first project with this
computer would be to upgrade to W10. Really, it can't be worse than
W8.1, and there is a chance that it's better, after all, it does have
the start menu again.
Time.
Yes, it takes a good deal of time to perform the upgrade. I don't know
exactly how long though. I started it, but then we left and were gone
for most of the day. I don't know if the process paused when I closed
the lid of the laptop, or if it kept working. After we got home, I
opened it up, and it still took a couple more hours to finish it off.
So, probably at least 3 hours for the upgrade process.
Microsoft Account.
Definitely not a fan of this. To be able to complete the installation,
you have to have a Microsoft account. There is no choice here, either
sign in or you can't use Windows. The idea here is that you can backup
your settings, files, etc. via a Microsoft account, making it "easy" to
move to another computer, or recover from a hardware failure, etc. It
would be nice to have a way to bypass this, as many people really don't
for the idea of Microsoft having access to personal data. They also made
it so that the Windows login uses this Microsoft account as well. The
good news is that you can change how you log into Windows, so if you
want to use a difficult, very secure password for your Microsoft
account, but also want to be able to login to Windows with a simpler,
and easier to remember, password, you can.
Edge Browser.
So, Microsoft has replaced Internet Explorer with Edge. So far I have
found Edge to just a useful as IE, I used it to download Firefox.
I have been plenty happy with Firefox for several years, so I'm not
sure why I would want to, or need to, switch to something different,
especially from a company that historically does not have a good track
record with browsers.
Start Menu. Yes, it's
back, but it's not the start menu that you remember. I don't really know
how to describe it, other than I could not really figure out how to
find programs. I clicked on something like "All Programs", or something
similar, and it gave me a long alphabetical list of programs that I had
to scroll through. It was not what I would call easy or convenient. Classic Shell
to the rescue. This is a little program that I have been using from the
time that I first got W7. It basically allows you to have a classic
interface, including the start menu. It does give you some options for
what type of start menu you want, but I always choose the "Classic
Style". It's a lot cleaner and more streamlined than the other options,
and allows me to find what I want on the start menu without much hassle.
I highly recommend it, and it's free.
That's it for
now. I'll try to make another installment after I have had more time to
use the computer. I'll see if there are any other ground breaking
features that need my opinion.
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