Wednesday, August 5, 2015

The Windows 10 Experience | Part 2

After a few days of having Windows 10 on the new laptop, I thought I would go ahead and post part 2 of this experience. I'm not going to pretend to share any great insight, but rather to just share some thoughts and opinions.

Travels to the Edge.
I said before that I found Microsoft's new browser, Edge, to be just as useful as Internet Explorer in that I used it to download Firefox. I decided that in all fairness I should actually go ahead and give it a try.

From what I can tell, it's a fairly straight forward web browser. The interface is clean and simple, yet seems a little blockier than what I am used to. There are no "curves" to it, as there are with many other programs. This almost seems to be the way with Windows 10 in general. Nothing inherently wrong with squared edges and such, but it definitely doesn't look pretty.

I started this post in Edge, but I just had to switch to Firefox instead. I'm used to the Blogger interface giving me a WYSIWYG interface, but instead in Edge it was HTML only. I'm not brushed up on my HTML enough to be comfortable working with it. In Firefox I have the option to switch between WYSIWYG and HTML. Perhaps there is a plug-in that Edge needs for it to work, but it did not request to add anything, and it Firefox it just works.

Speed. I really don't know how to measure a browser's speed to be able to compare Edge to Firefox. There are times that it seemed a little slow, but that could just be the computer. At other times it did seem to be moving at adequate speed.

Conclusion: It won't be my every day browser. I'll still stick with Firefox. Maybe it's the familiarity, but why fix what's not broken.

Start Menu.
I decided that it was only fair that I revisit the start menu. After my friend Marty left a comment on my earlier post about how the "tiles" could work, I decided that I would take a look at it. I understand it somewhat now, but I'm not convinced that it's a better interface than what was in previous versions of Windows. For now I plan to continue using the Classic Shell interface, but I still have the option to use the W10 start menu at any time.

If you spend the time getting your commonly used programs setup as tiles, then it could be beneficial. Aside from doing that, it seems that a lot of extra time and effort is expended in actually locating the program that you want. Sadly there are some things that do not show up in the Classic Shell menu, but can be found with the W10 menu. All newly installed programs will show up in both locations. I do not know why there is a disparity, but it seems to be mainly with Microsoft applications.


That's it's for this installment. Futures posts on the Windows 10 experience will be dependent on my deciding that there is actually something worth me saying about it.

Thanks for reading, I'd love to  know your thoughts.

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