[Closed] Windows 10

I'm tempted. I'd like to know what specs are needed to get the best of it. I have a Win7 laptop, about 5 years old. Reliable, but a bit slow, It meets the minimum spec and then some, might not get any benefit if it's resource hungry.

Subscription?
First year free but not after that?

Same here. C'mon then, who's going to be the avalanche poodle? 😉

The upgrade to Windows 10 is free, however it's not out until the end of July.

I've had a little play with the Preview. Upgrading from 8 to 10 is a no-brainer IMHO. Coming from W7, I'm less convinced.

It's just to kind of register so it downloads when released isn't it?

edit: what he ^ said

Subscription?
First year free but not after that?

No. It's a free upgrade, you just have a year to claim it before the offer expires.

Upgrading from 8 to 10 is a no-brainer IMHO.

Any particular reason? I've got 8.1 at home and it seems fine.

Any particular reason? I've got 8.1 at home and it seems fine.

10 is finer.

It fixes a lot of the embuggerances with W8, such as the leaping in and out of Metro which drove a lot of people to install third party hacks like Classic Shell. 10 is to 8 as 7 is to Vista, I suppose.

Playing with Win 7 and 8.1 alongside it and I'm pleased that 8.1 still feels like 7 but a bit dumbed down. Wonder if I could try 10 with a backup before and after so I have both.

Saw the initial rumors of the sub stuff which seemed to link with the push for a free upgrade.

is there any more overhead to 10 over 7 or 8 Cougar?

[i]Any particular reason? I've got 8.1 at home and it seems fine.[/i]

According to out IT expert it's because no one likes W8 manufacturers included as they find it very difficult to sell units with it installed.

No idea if my crumbling old home PC* is up to it, but I do want to upgrade because I want to have a play with the [url= https://www.raspberrypi.org/windows-10-for-iot/ ]Windows 10 IoT edition on Raspberry Pi[/url] and apparently you need a Win10 install to do that from.

*(I'm actually still on Vista, but I have Win7 still in a box somewhere).

Worth buying Windows 8 now is its about £40 and then ghet the free upgrade to 10 as I bet 10 wont be as cheap as that.

[quote=coolhandluke ]Worth buying Windows 8 now is its about £40 and then ghet the free upgrade to 10 as I bet 10 wont be as cheap as that.

I thought the upgrade was free regardless of the provenance of your existing copy of windows?

is there any more overhead to 10 over 7 or 8 Cougar?

I've not really been in a position to tell I'm afraid, I installed it in a VM so I've nothing to compare it to.

I thought the upgrade was free regardless of the provenance of your existing copy of windows?

Windows 7 and above.

Still on 7 here (well actually Fedora at the moment mainly) - have actually spent more time with 10 than 8 or 8.1, as I've got 10 Preview installed on a VM, so interested to hear about the differences! It certainly works with a low spec - VM has 1GB and I've had it running on a single core of a Core 2 "server" (though we run W7 VMs with 512MB and it does seem to need a bit more than W7).

Not day one, no, not even slightly - in fact I'm just about to draft an e-mail to our clients / 500 or so end users begging them not to upgrade to 10 just yet.

I suspect it will be good, it will take the bits of 8 that adopters like and merge it with the bits of 7 the Win8 haters like - the ****ing start button no doubt.

But it will almost certainly not work well day one, if it arrives in Sept as planned we're asking clients to hold off until Jan.

I wish you could upgrade to Windows 7. I've got 8.1 and I hate it.

[quote=P-Jay ]But it will almost certainly not work well day one, if it arrives in Sept as planned we're asking clients to hold off until Jan.

Preview works surprisingly well now. If you're in the business of advising users on this sort of thing then I'd have thought it well worth your while installing that on something to try (if only a VM like me and Cougar). I certainly plan on having more of a play with it to see whether it would work for us - though currently in the process of rolling out W7 as an upgrade from XP (for users who still use software from last century so need compatibility).

System requirements

Basically, if your PC can run Windows 8.1, you’re good to go. If you're not sure, don't worry—Windows will check your system to make sure it can install the preview.

Processor: 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster

RAM: 1 gigabyte (GB) (32-bit) or 2 GB (64-bit)

Free hard disk space: 16 GB

Graphics card: Microsoft DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM driver

A Microsoft account and Internet access

Actually I'm going to try it with 512MB, see what happens 😉

aracer - Member

P-Jay » But it will almost certainly not work well day one, if it arrives in Sept as planned we're asking clients to hold off until Jan.

Preview works surprisingly well now. If you're in the business of advising users on this sort of thing then I'd have thought it well worth your while installing that on something to try (if only a VM like me and Cougar). I certainly plan on having more of a play with it to see whether it would work for us - though currently in the process of rolling out W7 as an upgrade from XP (for users who still use software from last century so need compatibility).

Absolutely, a couple of the Tech Guys have got it runs on something in 'The Lab' - I have to admit I haven't looked at it yet, but they're the guys who asked me to try to minimise the number of people making the switch straight away.

Running win 8.1 with Classic shell 4, (Win 7 GUI), anyone know if Classic shell 4 will work with Win 10??

Can't wait myself to get rid of Window 8.1.....grrr hate it!

According to out IT expert it's because no one likes W8 manufacturers included as they find it very difficult to sell units with it installed.

I get the feeling that W8, like Vista before it, has been so tarnished by the initial release that people have an unthinking hatred of them. I had Vista on a machine at home for a couple of years (until I got bored of it and installed Ubuntu) and it was fine. W7 was better, but as a home PC it was perfectly adequate.

I loathed windows 8 (and 8.1) and run 7 of both pc's now. For anyone who has played with the beta, is 10 a better version for windows 8 haters?

Better than what, 7 or 8?

I had Vista on a machine at home for a couple of years... and it was fine. W7 was better, but as a home PC it was perfectly adequate.

You know, it had a few annoyances but I quite liked Vista. I'd use it over bloody XP any day of the week.

I also had good experiences with Vista - was far better than XP.

Re system specs - I think that Windows has been getting more efficient and better on low spec hardware since Vista, hasn't it?

Oh. This is interesting,

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/18/us-microsoft-china-idUSKBN0ME06A20150318

Terry Myerson, who runs Microsoft's operating systems unit, announced the plan at the WinHEC technology conference in Shenzhen, China.

"We are upgrading all qualified PCs, genuine and non-genuine, to Windows 10," he said in a telephone interview with Reuters.

It's not clear whether that's worldwide or just China, but free OS upgrades for pirated copies is a pretty radical step for MS. They must [i]really [/i]want everyone on W10.

I've tried the latest build on a Surface Pro 3. IMHO there is no chance that this will be "consumer ready" in two months.

The new start menu is unreliable at best and doesn't allow non-appy programs to be pinned; continuum only works about 25% of the time; Spartan (Edge?) is painfully slow; the action centre doesn't work at all; the settings page is this god-awful mashup of the Windows 8.1 settings page and control panel (and just to make it even more confusing, control panel is still there); I don't know what half the gestures do; multiple desktops are confusing me; Cortana doesn't work; voice recognition doesn't work; half the Windows 8 apps don't work because swipe-in-from-top-or-bottom has been removed; and I don't like the default desktop background.

And let's not forget that it lacked the drivers for both the built-in Intel video chip and wireless network on a clean install on the Surface Pro 3. The flagship device. (Oh yes, and you can only develop apps for Windows 10 using a release candidate of Visual Studio 2015... on Windows 10. Which is mind-numbingly slow.

I'm a big Windows fan but Windows 10 has crash-and-burn written all over it.

Yep Cougar, the Sub deal might not be on but the tech could be in there, the ability to throw a kill switch could be in the guts of it.

Cortana doesn't work; voice recognition doesn't work

That could be down to accent settings, I wouldn't be surprised if they've only got the US version in the preview. It works excellently on Windows Phone, provided you have the right accent installed.

Windows 7 and above.

I think jam bo is inferring that the Win 7 --> 10 upgrade is free regardless of whether your Win 7 copy is legitimate or not.
EDIT: that applies globally, not just to China...

So the cheapest way to get to Win 10 is to skip buying 8.1 for £40 and just get a pirated Win7 iso and upgrade it. Morally dubious ofc!

http://uk.ign.com/articles/2015/03/18/windows-10-upgrade-free-to-pirated-windows-users

EDIT: And that's what I get for not refreshing before posting! 😀

Better than what, 7 or 8?

Is it better than 7? I can't imagine if would be hard to be better than windows 8, possibly the shittiest version of windows ever.

possibly the shittiest version of windows ever.

You remember win 3.1? ME?

I did say possibly. Anyway, it up there with the worst windows has ever put out. I even preferred vista, which was also shite compared to xp

There should be two versions of Windows. A plain unadorned one for those who just want to run programs, and the nice fluffy version for those who want their lifestyle managed and integrated across devices and voice activated assistants for their social media etc etc.

I even preferred vista, which was also shite compared to xp

I never understood that hatred. As I said, I still have Vista installed despite having a sealed Win7 box on the shelf. I just haven't felt the need to upgrade. And it is way better than XP, especially XP x64 which was a constant battle.

I never understood that hatred. As I said, I still have Vista installed despite having a sealed Win7 box on the shelf. I just haven't felt the need to upgrade.

I never understood that hatred

Same here. I think it was oversold, and people installed in on older hardware, so it didn't work that well. On up to date systems, I think it was fine. I had it at work as well as home and didn't have any issues.

Yep Cougar, the Sub deal might not be on but the tech could be in there, the ability to throw a kill switch could be in the guts of it.

I really can't envisage Microsoft having a massive push to get people onto a common infrastructure, including giving out loads of free software to millions of software pirates, just to go "gotcha, that'll be a hundred quid please" in a year's time. Aside from being a PR disaster, it'd be the antithesis of what they seem to be trying to achieve.

you tried 7?

Of course. Sat at work in front of 7 right now, with a second copy running in a VM.

It's really not very different from Vista to be honest. Only immediate thing I can think of is the window docking which is sometimes handy.

people installed in on older hardware, so it didn't work that well.

That's actually a very good point. Vista was diabolically slow on RAM-starved machines.

Interesting theme here amongst the "professionals" on this thread - I also had Vista running quite happily until the laptop it was on finally died (my other laptop had 7 until that died, hence Fedora and Windows VMs at the moment). Though as I hinted up there we also still had XP running until last week, and I found nothing wrong with that either - we're still in 32 bit land though, and I wouldn't touch XP x64.

It's only an OS at the end of the day - like molgrips, and I suspect the others happily using Vista, I'd rather it got in the way as little as possible. Those machines we were running XP on were also running Centos 6, but you'd never know (just as you'd never know that bit switched to Fedora 21 with the W7 upgrade - decided not to go with 22 as I'd not had time to test the release version).