Microsoft announces Windows 10

[haven]

Notes from Microsoft's meeting today.

Yes, Microsoft skipped Windows 9 and went to double digits
“built from the ground up for a mobile-first, cloud first world.”

This Windows OS will run on phones, tablets, laptops, desktops and servers
One goal is to make training staff easier for corporations

No more Windows Phone as a separate product.
ARM-based Surface tablets will have support.
Current apps will be supported (in some way, yet unspecified)

The way Windows will work on phones, laptops and desktops will have differences due to screen size and touch screens. The big challenge is for “convertibles” like the MS Surface. It has to work as a tablet and a laptop.

Windows 10 is designed to look familiar to Windows 7 users, and include touch features that Windows 8 users have learned.

There's a Start Menu with re-sizable tiles. The Command Prompt is still available.

MS wants feedback and participation from the geeky community. Preview versions of Windows will be available starting Oct 1

The goal is to ship the finished product in about a year. (That's a long time to wait.)

 

[haven]

I expect enterprise customers will read this announcement, and scrap any plans they have to upgrade to Windows 8. They may even blackball Windows devices with touchscreens because they ship with Windows 8. Not good news for the hardware manufacturers.

 

[kojackJKU]

From my understanding is that windows 10 upgrade will be free for people running 8.1 of all versions. This is great news. I have a crap load of devices, and all will get updated....Even my 3 computer/laptops. All running 8.1 now, and will get free upgrading to Win10.

 

[craig333]

Best I can tell thats still a maybe.

 

[kojackJKU]

80-90% chance from the places I have read.

 

[nwoods]

I expect enterprise customers will read this announcement, and scrap any plans they have to upgrade to Windows 8. They may even blackball Windows devices with touchscreens because they ship with Windows 8. Not good news for the hardware manufacturers.

I don't think that is true. The only two platforms most enterprises will consider is a conventional PC (desktop or laptop) or a Surface 3. I just don't see any touchscreen pc's in an enterprise environment, except maybe where public interaction is desired, like in lobby's, kiosk's, etc...

Most enterprises wipe Win8 off their new PC hardware and ghost on a flavor of Win7, with the exception of Surface devices. There should be no appreciable change in Enterprise behavior between now and Win10.

On the plus side, Win10 sounds pretty good. I like what's I've seen so far.

 

[kojackJKU]

There is a big shift to the surface pro here at the local heatlh care board. My wife works there, and they are all getting surface pro's because they are so versatile. We are running asus vivotabs at home and they are great, but the new surface pro 3 is ideal. better screen size and shape, WAY more power under the hood, and windows (not rt). I love RT, don't get me wrong, but I would love to have a few programs I have on my main computer on my tablet I can't do right now.

 

[paddlenbike]

I have always used Microsoft computers and I'm the guy that thinks those hipsters that stand in line for the latest Apple products have a little something loose in their heads. My wife and I were both in need of new computers and brought home a new Windows 8 machine. Let's just say it gave me flashbacks back to 2005 when I bought a new laptop with Windows Vista, and for months on end I had a new computer that was slower and less stable than my old Pentium-based machine running XP. I stuck with it for about 9 months, somehow enduring those incredibly long boot times and an OS that was so unstable that it would crash if you simply looked at it funny--finally threw in the towel and went back to XP on that machine. Windows 8 was a similar experience for us...we hated it in every way. Microsoft took away the one thing people expect from a Windows OS, the start button, so we tried upgrading to Windows 8.1 which didn't go well, tried Classic Shell to get the start button back and in the end the OS was so dreadful we returned the entire computer to Costco. They asked if anything was wrong with it and we mentioned how bad Win8 was, the returns person told us than that close to 3/4 of their Win8 machines were being returned by customers for the same reason.

That was in December of 2013. We waited 8 months for a better Windows OS, and we know that never happened. Finally, out of desperation, we bought a Mac. I will just cut to the chase and say I wish I would have done it years ago. Things that took me hours and hours to setup on a Windows system "just worked" on the Mac. Our wireless network settings, wireless printing, media streaming to our home stereo, backing up data to our NAS. It was truly amazing. Two months ago I bought a Google Chromebook "just to surf the web," and of course in the meantime found out that this little $300 laptop does virtually everything a full blown computer can do, and was just as user friendly and stable as the Mac but at a much lower price. It's hard to explain, but our workflow for common tasks requires half to a third of the steps to perform the same task as on a PC. They're just better thought-out.

I've been talking to friends, family and colleagues about my positive experience with these computers and as it turns out, most of them have either already dumped their Windows machines in favor of something else, or are highly considering it. That tells me that it's not just me, and Microsoft had better come up with something good soon, or it's going to be "too little too late" for them.

 

[nwoods]

Paddlebike, I am curious on how you divide up tasks between the Chromebook and the Mac. Though I have not used one, I consider a Chromebook to be akin to an iPad with a keyboard, as in light duty tasks, more consumption oriented than content generation oriented. Does this match with your actual usage?

 

[toylandcruiser]

I have always used Microsoft computers and I'm the guy that thinks those hipsters that stand in line for the latest Apple products have a little something loose in their heads. My wife and I were both in need of new computers and brought home a new Windows 8 machine. Let's just say it gave me flashbacks back to 2005 when I bought a new laptop with Windows Vista, and for months on end I had a new computer that was slower and less stable than my old Pentium-based machine running XP. I stuck with it for about 9 months, somehow enduring those incredibly long boot times and an OS that was so unstable that it would crash if you simply looked at it funny--finally threw in the towel and went back to XP on that machine. Windows 8 was a similar experience for us...we hated it in every way. Microsoft took away the one thing people expect from a Windows OS, the start button, so we tried upgrading to Windows 8.1 which didn't go well, tried Classic Shell to get the start button back and in the end the OS was so dreadful we returned the entire computer to Costco. They asked if anything was wrong with it and we mentioned how bad Win8 was, the returns person told us than that close to 3/4 of their Win8 machines were being returned by customers for the same reason.

That was in December of 2013. We waited 8 months for a better Windows OS, and we know that never happened. Finally, out of desperation, we bought a Mac. I will just cut to the chase and say I wish I would have done it years ago. Things that took me hours and hours to setup on a Windows system "just worked" on the Mac. Our wireless network settings, wireless printing, media streaming to our home stereo, backing up data to our NAS. It was truly amazing. Two months ago I bought a Google Chromebook "just to surf the web," and of course in the meantime found out that this little $300 laptop does virtually everything a full blown computer can do, and was just as user friendly and stable as the Mac but at a much lower price. It's hard to explain, but our workflow for common tasks requires half to a third of the steps to perform the same task as on a PC. They're just better thought-out.

I've been talking to friends, family and colleagues about my positive experience with these computers and as it turns out, most of them have either already dumped their Windows machines in favor of something else, or are highly considering it. That tells me that it's not just me, and Microsoft had better come up with something good soon, or it's going to be "too little too late" for them.

So you're just a pc fanboy? Who cares if someone waits in line for a product. What about all of the people who wait in line for Black Friday. Or for an Xbox. Or better yet, all those fools who wait in line for a Disney ride. It's the same thing. Why is is that pc fanboys always have to mention people waiting in line for an apple product. But they always fail to mention any other product.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[paddlenbike]

So you're just a pc fanboy? Who cares if someone waits in line for a product. What about all of the people who wait in line for Black Friday. Or for an Xbox. Or better yet, all those fools who wait in line for a Disney ride. It's the same thing. Why is is that pc fanboys always have to mention people waiting in line for an apple product. But they always fail to mention any other product.

PC fanboy? You couldn't pay me to go back to a PC. No offense intended, it just made for a good headline.

Paddlebike, I am curious on how you divide up tasks between the Chromebook and the Mac. Though I have not used one, I consider a Chromebook to be akin to an iPad with a keyboard, as in light duty tasks, more consumption oriented than content generation oriented. Does this match with your actual usage?

In short, the iMac was intended to be our "do everything computer" but now we only use it for web surfing and post-processing photos. The Chromebook was originally purchased just to surf the web, but it has become our main computer, mainly because it's portable. We use it for the web, we use it and a $25 chromecast dongle to stream content to our TV (Hulu, youtube and some Google apps that have tons of nested content), we use Google Docs for spreadsheets and Word documents, and because there is not much in the way of space on the solid state drive, it has pushed us into the world of the cloud for storing what is currently 70 gigabytes of photos via Picasa. I was very reluctant to use the cloud, but having my photos accessible anywhere, anytime is really nice. Likewise for my documents and spreadsheets. And if my house ever burns down or our computers are stolen, our content is backed up on google's servers. That said, I don't have anything sensitive stored there, so I'm not all-in yet.

We never expected to use the Chromebook for any of those tasks other than web browsing, but it works great. We gave away all of our PCs, with the exception of one Windows XP laptop that has a copy of Microsoft Office 2013 on it. We haven't used it once because Google Docs works so well. From the time you hit the power button, the Chromebook is ready to go within 4 seconds. The OS is very stable, it is very thin and light, 9 hours of battery life with the HD display (the non-HD version has 11 hours), tons of available apps for free much like a smartphone, and they do have USB support so thumbdrives and external harddrives can be used just fine for extra storage. You can't beat these things, IMHO. We got the Toshiba Chromebook 2 (the CB35-3340) because it was the only one with a 1080p IPS HD display.

 

[kojackJKU]

I have always used Microsoft computers and I'm the guy that thinks those hipsters that stand in line for the latest Apple products have a little something loose in their heads. My wife and I were both in need of new computers and brought home a new Windows 8 machine. Let's just say it gave me flashbacks back to 2005 when I bought a new laptop with Windows Vista, and for months on end I had a new computer that was slower and less stable than my old Pentium-based machine running XP. I stuck with it for about 9 months, somehow enduring those incredibly long boot times and an OS that was so unstable that it would crash if you simply looked at it funny--finally threw in the towel and went back to XP on that machine. Windows 8 was a similar experience for us...we hated it in every way. Microsoft took away the one thing people expect from a Windows OS, the start button, so we tried upgrading to Windows 8.1 which didn't go well, tried Classic Shell to get the start button back and in the end the OS was so dreadful we returned the entire computer to Costco. They asked if anything was wrong with it and we mentioned how bad Win8 was, the returns person told us than that close to 3/4 of their Win8 machines were being returned by customers for the same reason.

That was in December of 2013. We waited 8 months for a better Windows OS, and we know that never happened. Finally, out of desperation, we bought a Mac. I will just cut to the chase and say I wish I would have done it years ago. Things that took me hours and hours to setup on a Windows system "just worked" on the Mac. Our wireless network settings, wireless printing, media streaming to our home stereo, backing up data to our NAS. It was truly amazing. Two months ago I bought a Google Chromebook "just to surf the web," and of course in the meantime found out that this little $300 laptop does virtually everything a full blown computer can do, and was just as user friendly and stable as the Mac but at a much lower price. It's hard to explain, but our workflow for common tasks requires half to a third of the steps to perform the same task as on a PC. They're just better thought-out.

I've been talking to friends, family and colleagues about my positive experience with these computers and as it turns out, most of them have either already dumped their Windows machines in favor of something else, or are highly considering it. That tells me that it's not just me, and Microsoft had better come up with something good soon, or it's going to be "too little too late" for them.

If all things you mention that takes hrs and hrs on windows based machine, takes you hours and hours, you sir have no clue how to use a computer. It takes 2 maybe 3 mins to set up on a home network so you can share everything. I agree with you on the hipster/apple lemming waiting in line camping out and what not for the "latest greatest toy". That's all apple products are, toys.

 

[paddlenbike]

If all things you mention that takes hrs and hrs on windows based machine, takes you hours and hours, you sir have no clue how to use a computer.

If all you have ever used in-depth are Windows machines, there is nothing further I can explain to you that will make sense.

 

[kojackJKU]

That is where you are wrong. I have owned a mac with a cinema monitor (waste of money btw), iPhone 4, iPhone 4s, and ipad 2. so no, All I have used are not windows machines. There is essentially no difference in setup, and speed of connecting between the two if you know what you are doing. My windows machines auto connect to all my wireless devices and go right to the password entry point just like a mac machine does. I have even had Linux machines as well. So, from experience, not just heresay, or following the "heard" Windows machines are still the easiest, most productive machines right now.

Mac's os is actually dumb in application. Simply hiiting the red button you would think you close out your programs but that's not the case, you have to goto the progams dock and right click and find close program, or hit a command key plus whatever to close programs. DUMB, windows you hit X which has been close program since 3.11 and before mac was even thought of as being a real computer, oh wait, they still aren't. I guess that was Jobs' and Woz's way of sticking it to the man, make their computers difficult to use.

The Windows OS is the smoothest and most polished OS now.

 

[Chazz Layne]

As a member of the small minority that absolutely loves Windows 8, especially the new "start" menu, I just wanted to say...

BOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!1