Microsoft apparently is offering a free upgrade from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10.

My Windows 8.1 system is running just fine. Is there any compelling reason for me to upgrade? What does Windows 10 do for me that I might find necessary or even useful?

tanstaafl.

I'd recommend claiming the upgrade even if you don't intend to install it right away. The free upgrade offer is only valid for the first year it is out. After that it will be a paid upgrade.

It's currently in public beta testing mode now. Overall think of it as kinda combining Windows 7 and 8 together UI wise (though more with the "flat" style 8 has). The start menu makes a return, with the start screen from 8 banished on desktop computers.

Under the hood, a lot of good work is going on to finally let Microsoft distance it's self from some of it's legacy boat anchors, but not in quite the salt the earth way that the Windows 8 UI took. Windows 10 going forward is going to continue to see updates that add new features and evolve the platform. It's possibly the last "release" of Windows in the traditional sense if their strategy works out, moving Windows to more of a software as a service model.

With Windows 10 being a free upgrade for the first year, software developers may be tempted to move to a Windows 10 only support model sooner then has happened in the past. Hard to say if this will happen for sure, especially since Microsoft is opening their application store to legacy Win32 apps, contained in little VM like isolated containers.

Overall as a non Microsoft person, I'm liking the direction it's going.

I've been playing around with the beta. I like the new look and general direction of things. The tablet mode leaves a little to be desired at this time and is a regression from how it's working in 8.1. That said there are still some changes being made. Overall I wish I could already switch but the beta still has too many issues.

Continuing to remove support for older applications is, to me, a reason *not* to upgrade. I think Doug would be in the same boat. I chose Windows 8.x before I realized that it wouldn't run some of my old games nor run any of my old 16-bit apps.

Since I have a limited internet data plan this concerns me greatly. Also working with a SAAS provider for the last two years this again concerns me. I have a feeling Windows will be locked down more and you will be upgraded and configured as big brother sees fit - "For your own good."

Or maybe I'm just being paranoid.

This is how the Apps on iOS are upgraded, and how the OS on Chromebooks are managed.

Yea, I've not been a big Apple fan since I learned Basic on an Apple IIC. Boy I'm old.

I had to use a iPhone 4 at my prior job. It is like new in the box . I need to get it on ebay before it's totally worthless.

I've heard rumors of the updates now rolling out in bits and pieces, thus spreading out the data for those on limited plans. Not sure if this will be something on the user level that can be set however. There's certainly nothing like this in the Insider Preview version (build 10130).

I don't think MS is really worried about bandwidth.

Since Windows 8, Microsoft did add an option to mark a connection as metered. One thing added to this for updates in Windows 10 is allowing computers to share updates to each other, kinda bittorrent style. I imagine someone with multiple computers on a metered connection would end up seeing one system pulling them down, and then distributing them to others on the network.

So far, Windows 10 hasn't exposed a way to schedule an unmetered time though, which would benefit those on connections that are only limited during the day. Some satellite providers do this.

I started on the //c also, and with Basic. Yup, I'm old also.

I don't get the Apple love. The iTunes/iPad behavior is annoying to say the least (I don't want to 'sync', I just want to throw a couple PDFs on the iPad to read on the plane, damnnit).

Hopefully they will still allow you to hold off on updates and then download them all at once. I currently go to a friends house, drink his beer, and update my Android on his unlimited web juice. I could do the same with a laptop.

However the cloud based SAAS company I support (Workday) updates every weekend and then a major update every so often. Some things are option and others are not.

The centralized and distributive computing models have been fighting it out since day one and especially when the mainframe was king. This is nothing new. I just prefer the distributive model.

It's still a Microsoft OS with different editions, and being able to control the updates is now a checkbox differentiator between the editions:

The only real problem with app updates on iOS is, new versions can be disappointing. With no easy way to revert, I'm conservative about updating.

My Mom was thouroughly pissed about the new easy on the eyes theme in the kindle app. With her old eyes, the sharp contrast of white on black was a good thing.

Yes, reserve to upgrade for the same reasons Tom said.

I'd also go as far as actually updating it. You are familiar with windows 7 and Windows 10 UI paradigm is closer to that than 8 is.

The benefit is that you have the latest features and updates, and I'd say, generally, the sooner the better.

I've been using the various previous since the beginning, and overall I really like it. I did like 8 too, so if you did not, take my opinion carefully.

Also, now that you have a VM ready, you'll be able to simply migrate that to the new OS install and that won't change a bit.

My Windows 10 upgrade is now ready to install. It's been two and a half months since I first asked the question, and by now there must be a pretty good knowledge base among you about Windows 10.

Based on your experiences, should I do the update?

tanstaafl.

In a word: Yes.

With some trepidation I clicked on the "Update Now" button and let Microsoft have its way with my precious computer. The results were anti-climactic.

Because I had painstakingly parameterized my 8.1 install to mimic Vista as much as possible, the Windows 10 installation maintained those settings, and frankly the only obvious difference I can find between my 8.1 and my 10 interface is that the icons in the System Tray are smaller.

Oh, it's nice not having my windows go full-screen whenever I inadvertently allow the mouse cursor to touch the top of the screen, and the nonsense that happened in 8.1 whenever I let the cursor wander over to the far right is now gone.

I guess there were enough complaints about 8.1 that even Microsoft came to the conclusion that not everybody wanted a tablet interface, and that some of us Luddites were still computing on a desktop system.

tanstaafl.

That's been an adjustable configuration setting in all versions of windows since the "feature" was introduced to begin with. In fact, I'm surprised that Windows 10 even changed it at all for you.

The setting, by the way, is located in: Control Panel, Ease of Access, Make The Mouse Easier To Use, "Prevent windows from being automatically arranged when moved to the edge of the screen."

I have been impressed with how smoothly the upgrades have gone for most people. Still room for improvement, though Windows 10 did a lot of important work in that regard.

Going forward, they plan on future updates rolling out in a similar way. Microsoft's internal goal was to try and match Apple's yearly cycle, but from what I've heard they had to back that down to about a 2 year cycle.

Doug, did you install a replacement Start menu in 8.1? That's one thing you may want to uninstall now that Windows 10 brought it back natively. At least personally, I try to minimize the number of apps that change the stock OS via unsupported means.

No, I was able to get by with right-clicking the icon that would have been the start menu icon in Vista, and selecting what I wanted. Almost everything I do comes from the task bar at the bottom of the screen.

tanstaafl.

After what I saw of the Windows 10 revamped start menu, I would want to use a replacement start menu anyway. My personal fave is Classic Shell, I haven't noticed it causing any problems on Win8 and don't expect it to on Win10.

Well, I looked at it and I don't see where it would do anything for me. Probably because I'm not smart enough to see the advantages.

As I said above, just about everything I do is through the icons in the taskbar, which contains icons/links to Windows Explorer, Firefox, Excel, MS-Word, Paint.Net, Rosetta Stone, Adobe Acrobat, TurboFloorPlan, Nero, Google Earth, Control Panel, the "Run" command, a shortcut to "Documents" directory, Command C:> prompt, Oracle Virtual Box [which I still can't make work properly!], uTorrent, Calibre, and Internet Explorer aka Microsoft Edge. The above list is pretty much in order of frequency of use.

There are some links on the desktop: Accountings, Pictures, Scanner, Games, Music, Utilities, etc., that are shortcuts to directories on other hard drives. I am seldom more than two mouse clicks away from whatever I want to do. So I was never able to understand what all the fuss was about when Microsoft took away the Start button in Windows 8. I never used it anyway.

tanstaafl.

Yeah the only thing Classic Shell gets me is a Win7/WinXP style menu. If you never used that menu on those operating systems either, then classic shell won't help you.

Nor does it get you the holy grail of the taskbar, "always combine, show labels"...

Perhaps for you. I never want the labels.

Most people probably don't, but I run about a dozen things at a time and I've found it's the fastest way to switch apps and get notifications.

Odd Windows 10 bug to be aware of. Fonts won't install unless the Windows Firewall is turned on.

http://superuser.com/questions/957907/unable-to-install-fonts-on-windows-10

All your data are belong to us:

The Reg on Win 10

My Wintendo 10 install threw a weird error trying to save a picture from the snipping tool:

C:\Users\drakino\Pictures\Capture.PNG
You don't have permission to save in this location. Contact the administrator to obtain permission.

Would you like to save in the Pictures folder instead?

Clicking yes just pops the same error back. Guess it's another odd bug.

Yeah, that sort of thing bothers me too. Ever since Windows 7, I've had problems with permissions on the User folder that I'm supposedly signed in as. Lots of the items in that folder give me a permissions error like that when I try to surf to them. It's part of the reason why I still save my documents and other work files in a hand-created "c:\My Documents" folder old-school like Windows 95. I never have permissions problems when I do that.

Of course it means that most backup programs need to be told about the folder instead of automatically finding my files. Which is fine with me. It also has the added benefit of making it so that programs which try to auto-scan for media files never find anything. (Good.)