Windows 10 - My Thoughts

I got my new laptop, affectionately named Bloo, for obvious reasons, a couple of months ago because my old one was slowly dying. I didn't get it a moment too soon either because when I booted up my old laptop a few weeks back it had entirely died on me; it's either the motherboard or the harddrive, neither of which I've got the time nor the inclination to investigate further.

One of my concerns with getting the new laptop when I did was the fact it would mean having Windows 8.1; and I'd heard things about Windows 8. Part of me wanted to hold off just a little while and wait until Windows 10 came out (because I know the rule of Windows Operating Systems). The other part of me, and my family, knew that a new laptop was needed immediately, so I sucked it up and kept hold of my copy of Windows 7 just in case a downgrade was needed.

And Windows 8.1 didn't actually bother me that much. There were a few things that frustrated me about it; the tiles screen could have been a little more flexible, the lack of a Start button was a pain (but I had an add-on that took it's place pretty well), I could never find the calculator when I wanted it. But I got used to it and I loved my nice smooth running, fast laptop especially when compared to my old one.

But then I got a message telling me I could get Windows 10. I nearly ignored it because I thought it was going to be a free trial or something, or you'd end up having to pay some sort of subscription. But nope, if you had Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 you were eligible for a free upgrade to the (so-called) last Windows OS.

When I got the message to download it, I did, and then I waited and waited and waited, and waited a little bit more.

I know how these things work when it comes to technology. There are always a whole host of bugs that need to be ironed out before you can actually use the stuff properly. I kept an eye on what people were saying about it; I googled what actually happened when you hit the button to go through with the upgrade; I googled what I needed to do before I went ahead.

I was prepared to download all the Windows 10 drivers for my laptop, I backed everything up, I googled a little more. Then I decided to go ahead with it last Sunday. I planned to devote the whole day to the task. I didn't need to. It was done within an hour and a half.

And so far?

Well, it's kind of like Windows 8.1 but different.

I like the fact that everything was exactly where I'd left it when I started my laptop up for the first time afterwards. I like that I've got my Start button back. I do kind of miss my page of tiles, but I'm sure I'll come to terms with it. Everything seems to be much as it was before and, as I don't have internet access at home, I've not had much of a reason to play with features such as Cortana.

The one thing I had a slight issue with was when I started up trusty Blue for the first time after doing a full shut down. It seemed to take F.O.R.E.V.E.R.

This is maybe a slight exaggeration. It's definitely an exaggeration. Especially when you consider the fact that my old laptop used to take upwards of half an hour to start up fully and let me do anything (rushing it resulted in the poor thing locking up or having a hot flush and needing to have a shut down to get over it).

In reality F.O.R.E.V.E.R. is probably a lot closer to about two minutes. But it's a long time to sit starting at a black screen when you're not used to your laptop doing things like that.

It was back to Google again for the fix. Ironically the issue seemed to be in part caused by something called 'Fast Start-Up' which is actually anything but. That shaved some time off it. The other cause is to do with graphics drivers, which I'll investigate when I get around to it.

Other than this, I'm coming to really like it. I keep finding little things that just makes sense; like when you select the Start button and 'All Apps' and they're in alphabetical order, it makes things easy to find; or when you're opening or saving a file in a programme it gives you your recently used folders, I know past versions of Windows have done this, but it just seems to work so much better in Windows 10.

Sure there's hiccoughs and teething problems, but the kinks are ironing out nicely. I've not found a single programme that I used before that doesn't work on the new operating system (even my ancient version of Photoshop Elements which I thought was going to cause problems since it jumped up complaining that I didn't have Internet Explorer 5 on my computer). I'm tempted to dig out some of my really old games to give Windows 10 a run for its money with them at some point.


Have you upgraded? How are you finding it?