Monday, August 10, 2015

Windows 10 Is Really Nice! Here is why I like it.

I am really liking Microsoft's new Windows 10. I updated a laptop at work yesterday to make sure that the drivers for our printers would continue to work. We didn't want to have flaky installations should our customers decide to upgrade. At least, that was my excuse.

The upgrade was painless. I quickly went through the settings and new features. I'm really going to like having Cortana on my desktop. Having dabbled with Cortana on a Windows phone last year, I thought Cortana was one of the best features.

Part of the reason why I am liking Widows 10 is because they brought back a more familiar Start menu, which still has elements of the Windows 8 Start menu. When Windows 8 came out, I didn't really like the modern UI; but, I grew accustomed to it and accepted that it was mainly meant to work with touch screen devices, which I lacked for the most part. Windows 8 was a little lame with no touch screen.

I think what really sells me on the whole experience is that I was able to upgrade Windows 8, Windows 7, and a 32 bit version of Windows 8 on my tablet. Finally, I have a common experience across all my desktops. The common desktop was my whole reason for going Google. I write this on a Chromebox, mind you. Having cloud interfaces made for a common workspace whether I was at a laptop, desktop, tablet, or phone.

Google has lost some of my enthusiasm as of late because Chrome is a memory hog. Furthermore, some of Google's products only work with Chrome, like Inbox. They are taking the fun out of Chrome by making it bloated and by making their apps picky about the browser.

This, of course, makes it so that having local apps is better than cloud apps. The added benefit is that it is not necessary to have Internet access. I can use Evernote very well without WiFi on my Windows devices. I just need to sync at least once a day.

Suffice it to say, I'm excited about Microsoft Windows for the first time since...Windows 95?

The tablet experience with Windows 10 is so much better than it was with Windows 8, at least in my limited experience thus far. It behaves like a tablet rather than as a PC shoehorned into a tablet.

I also appreciate that the operating system is smaller and faster than its predecessors. This gives new life to old devices, or extends it a little more.

No comments: