I am testing Windows 10 as my primary OS and have been providing a lot of feedback about it via the built in Feedback app. I do find it to have a lighter footprint than Windows 8.1, which itself has a lighter footprint than Windows 7, games I've tried and have worked so far are Trove, ArcheAge, Defiance, RIFT, TERA Online.
I hope in future builds such the Consumer Preview, Microsoft brings back Aero Glass or anything that is better than the fugly minimalist "lets turn your pretty desktop PC into a fugly minimalist UI just in case you move it to a tablet" BS. I'd honestly rather go back to the Windows 9x look [GDI] than this garbage that was introduced with Windows 8: Forced desktop compositioning without the pretty Aero Glass effect. However, Microsoft wins 1 brownie point for making 1px window borders default so I have one less thing to edit the registry for.
little pedantic I feel.
But for starters this:
http://www.extremetech.com/computing...from-windows-7
Well, let's see what the points they bring up are. These are Win8 vs Win7, obviously.
Startup/Shutdown
A complete non-issue for people who keep their PC on almost 24/7.
Security
I've personally never had any problems with the security of my WinXP. I've disabled the Windows firewall, use COMODO, use Chrome with the appropriate ad/script disabling mods, use gmail, don't install anything I'm not 100% sure is absolutely safe, and don't browse just any websites. I don't mind extra security, but seems like this wouldn't be a huge deal for me, at least.
Power management
The article talks about desktop users, so we're not talking about laptops. Also, personally I've got a huge and efficient PSU (as any gamer would), and electricity is rather cheap, so I'm not sure this is an issue, either.
Explorer
They say that killing of Aero was a step in the right direction. Not sure if this simply means the appearance of the window borders, but as far as that's concerned, I'd personally like the windows to be more like Chrome is, than the flat white of Metro. I'm used to WinXP modern borders though, so not really a huge deal either way. That's assuming we're only talking about the window borders here.
Task Manager
Been using Process Explorer since before Microsoft bought Sysinternals. Would most likely continue using that, over Win8 Task manager.
Anti-malware protection
See security.
Reset & Refresh
Not sure what the point of this would be. The only times I've had to reinstall have been after changing HDDs. Perhaps this is good to people who are very good at screwing up their PCs. I know there's plenty of those out there, else a lot of PC shops would be out of business. For me, though, another useless feature.
Storage Spaces & Hyper-V
Hyper-V would be useless for me, personally, as I have no need to install other OS'. Storage Spaces; not even sure what the use of this would be, but HDD space is pretty cheap and plentiful, so who knows.
Windows Store
Yeah, no thanks.
File History
A version control system isn't a bad idea, except I'd personally need it for work stuff, and I've already got that covered through software. Besides that, not much use. Most likely would keep it completely disabled, the same way I do restore points.
Yeah... All in all this article brings up very little in the line of Win8 being more useful to a user such as myself than Win7. Obviously no mention of games and gaming. It's all good information, though, especially if Win10 will continue improving on Win8; we'd just have to find out what other (hopefully not as useless) features Win10 brings.
Good thread so far.
This many times.
I really hope for a turn back in design.
They installed win 8 at uni, I felt like I rather kill myself than use that crap. So I use their linux computers instead, so much better.
I really hope they cut that fail in design, else I will grind my win 7 for as long as I can.
You see what that is? That's a will be in the future blog post, or news post. This is about W8.0. The details are from the beta and most current benchmarks show a >little< improvement in all fields except gaming.On Friday, October 26, Microsoft will unleash Windows 8
And then there's the amount of benchmarks that offer absolutely no insight, or real benefit beyond maybe 7 seconds per day, which sounds like it's wooow amazing, but in reality, it amounts to nothing, like start-up times. We're way beyond the times where it took Windows to start in over 30 seconds and anyone with a Boot SSD won't have any problems with booting at all. Mine (W7) does under 15 seconds, counting the Bios screens, to fully operational and this is already being influenced by additional programs like Battle.Net, Spotify, etc. It's a non-issue.
As an additional note; the PC's that booted W7 above 50 seconds (I'm serious, it says 50 seconds, even my P4 didn't take that long to load with arguably more classic versions of windows and after 4 years of use), are either legacy, or just plain propaganda. It is very hard and trust me, I know, very hard, to get a relatively middle-aged (4yo) PC to boot longer than 30 seconds. It would require some really filthy login scripts to make this happen every boot, or some really filthy applications installed on the machine.
Power Management sounds all fine and dandy, especially when you deliberately drive green, piss green, poop green, eat green and sort your waste to be green (besides being forced by regulation), but in the grand scheme of things, any self-respecting gamer will have a reasonably sized and quality PSU that will easily be able to carry any load. Of course, hand me a Tesla and I'll drive it, but in terms of PC's, this is not the second coming. This is a minor improvement that makes it onto the list of improvements because it sounds greener and they really don't have anything else to put on it.
Security is like a barbed wire. It works as long as there's no counter measure. Once there's a counter measure, suddenly there's a large problem. This happens with every Java update. Java updates to fix a security issue and updates it with a new security issue, yet every new update reads 'more secure', 'disables abuse', etc. Yea, W8 is more secure and I sure as hell do not disagree with any of the hacker community, because the deeper you fight the symptoms, the harder it becomes to work around it. I guess security is a fair point, although they could have just as easily updated W7 with similar security. Out of the name of progression, I concur that it's normal that the next version is more secure and offers more performance.
The Task Manager is one of the things that even offered me as an IT guy more to work with in environments that had a more restrictive nature. More information is always good. Is this a major improvement, not in my opinion, but I like it nonetheless.
All the other things, they're basically like new buttons on your iPhone, nice to haves, but not required by a mile.
New benchmarks simply testify that all improvements in terms of performance, were minor at best. And all improvements on other areas or more gimmicky than actually valuable, setting aside more security and the Task Manager.
Whats amusing is the windows 8 software upgrader is broken and they direct you to a service that demands you pay for assistance.
Suddenly all of the anger I ever had towards microsoft has returned.
And I have noticed since reformatting, windows 7 boots faster and seems to open most things including firefox faster than Windows 8.
So screw W8.
Watched the part of one of the videos with the UI. I like it. Hated everything about 8, so I'll be looking to upgrade as soon as 10 is released and stable.
Of course Win 7 will boot faster after a reformat and fresh install, after a few weeks / months it can start to slow down..
I went to Win 8 because my version of Win 7 was limited to 16 gig of ram, I would have gone for Win 7 Ultimate but one is unable to buy from a computer store now since official distribution stopped October 2013..
10 looks good I just worry it will be impossible to play old games on it, I have a hard enough time getting old games to work on 7.
Windows 10 is much more like windows 7. For people on windows 7, there will be little reason to not upgrade. It does have a tileset desktop option, but it's not forced down your throat. You can enable it if you're on a tablet or are some sort of masochist that liked windows 8.
While you live, shine / Have no grief at all / Life exists only for a short while / And time demands its toll.
Same! I love 8 and 8.1. Switching from 7 to 8 for $15 was awesome when MS was giving it away to get more people to adopt. Technically, you were supposed to have just bought Win7 or a comp with Win7 in the last 6 months, but MS did not verify the date. Win7 and 8 are vastly superior to XP for most of my computing needs. Unfortunately, there is some old hardware and software tools that I use for work that require a PC to have XP or virtual XP mode.
7 *did* have its bugs. I remember getting stuck in Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth at one point due to a graphical bug where you couldn't see these priests on the beach that you needed to shoot from a boat.