Windows 10 Technical Preview: Hands On

[exfileme]

We take a look at the new Windows 10 Technical Preview.

Windows 10 Technical Preview: Hands On : Read more

 

[shankar yskr]

Hey I installed radeon drivers on win 10

 

[shankar yskr]

Hey I installed radeon drive on win 10

 

[cklaubur]

I installed the Technical Preview on my Latitude D830, and I had issues using a USB keyboard attached to the dock. Rebooting seemed to fix it.

 

[Gary Mount]

You can still show the Charms bar by using the track pad, swipe in from the right.

 

[The3monitors]

Ok to all you that are worried about the osx or linux like multiple desktops. I was rendering a 1000 frame animation in maya in one, had adobe illustrator/photoshop/bridge on another, had a fur mark test on another with another chugging away at a zbrush 4.6 render. It was a little sluggish for revolving around the object (only 9.5mil polys but no crashes/errors & its still going.

 

[spectrewind]

Perhaps THG has the technical expertise to record some virtual machine usage of this OS? ///HINT
... And post the video.

Kevin Parrish... You are challenged. Make it happen?!

 

[Monarch1]

Anybody get an error about a corrupt file? I received error code: 0x80070570. I redownloaded the ISO file and then burned another copy and still got the same error. The laptop I'm trying to install it on is crap and has Vista which might be part of the problem.

 

[AlphaCompton]

I installed the Technical Preview last night. It looks nice. It runs ok but I noticed some odd things. There was no good default driver so my 1080p monitor resolution was left to 1024x768 , 1280x800, etc, I'll install the correct Nvidia driver when I get home. Also the loading icons during installation had a weird fast I think overlapping animation. The metro apps run well. I can see them getting more use and becoming the norm when Windows 10 is released. I think the new start menu is a great compromise of having live tiles and still keeping the start menu. I found that the charms bar is still there and functions just as it did in Windows 8. I did like the tiles start menu from Windows 8 but I felt the charms bar was weird and I didn't like it, I'm glad they plan to move the feature and put the shutdown button back in the start menu.

 

[MidnightDistort]

I played with the OS a little and there isn't much to say other than it looks like Windows 8 with a start menu. It's not bad, at least now you can perform security updates without having to resort to a 3rd party start menu which could cause problems. 2020 for W7 is still a bit of time away but at least MS is listening to feedback a bit more. Just wish they wouldn't push the modern app stuff which is a big reason why W8 wasn't doing so well.

 

[The3monitors]

Alpha I just upgraded from 8 and it actually went smooth for once(this is against every moral fiber in my technical being because I always format and install a new ms os). The upgrade took about 45, no hikkups on my video drivers, the software I had installed transferred beautifully. The only glitch I am having is the Microsoft natural keyboard drivers glitch/dont funcion on the login screen.

 

[06yfz450ridr]

the start menu is still horrible, classic start has already replaced it,besides that seems fine to me. But even on my work laptop, i didnt need to browse to lenovos site to at least get a network driver to start getting missing drivers, everything actually worked from the start somehow. windows 7 and 8 never found my drivers

 

[The3monitors]

Secondary note I just installed it on an acer aspire laptop with 8gb of mem. Formatted and Installed in about 15 minutes and didn't have any issues. Only thing that was missing were some intel drivers. It seems to be a stable build.

 

[belardo]

Here is an IDEA Microsoft (Since I/we cannot comment on another Win10 article about MS wants feedback)...

Include the USER option of the metro skin and Win-8 Preview Skin.
Win8 Preview version LOOKED like a slicker version of Win7... I really liked it.

Then check the user data and see WHAT people wanted to use:
flat-metro or slightly MODERN looking Aero.

Windows 8 and this version of 10 still look like multi-colored crap that I simply don't want to look at for 5 minutes... much less every day.

 

[stubbies2003]

Ok I got my older computer and installed the beta today. Even though the start menu has live tiles in it, each one of them can be disabled and removed. I did that as I don't go to my start menu looking for the weather, mail, etc. With them all removed it looks fairly close to a Win 7 start menu. I did see the same odd issue that AlphaCompton saw above of an odd choice of resolutions for the NVidia card. Allowing Windows to do it's update fixed the driver which immediately brought the resolution to 1920x1080 after reboot. Prior to reboot it had selected 1024x768 as the default resolution and would only let me select up to 1600x1200. This was for a NVidia 580 GTX displaying on a 23" monitor that had a native resolution of 1920x1080.

My main beef with this so far has been how they try to lead you to a Microsoft account login versus a local login. During the install process they never mention there being a choice and it took a little digging around to find out how to do it. Even after you go to a local login say you want to provide a feedback using the MS app it then again tries to push you back to a MS account login unless you see and push a small optional link on the first page.

Thankfully even with the MS account login the install gives you the option of turning on or off the copy everything to the cloud function. Which after all of the hacking related to that I think we can all agree is a bad idea to leave that kind of info floating around out there.

So after running Win 7 for a long time and refusing to go to Win 8 after that debacle I can see this becoming a worthy successor to Win 7 with some more work put into it.

 

[MidnightDistort]

^ i bypassed the W10 login screen by putting in a fake email/password. It will then ask if you want to do a local account, but they should have given that option on the screen to begin with.

 

[falchard]

It seems 7 8 9... Why skip 9? there are a lot of cool marketing things you can do with the number 9. Sure X sounds good, but you missed all the good from 9.

One thing I want are Live Tile desktop shortcuts. Move them over to my 4th screen and use it as a quick hot bar.

 

[Nishant Soni]

I found a start menu related bug too. press windows key, start menu appears but you can't type in the search box at the bottom of start menu. as soon as you hit first letter key the start menu goes away.

 

[Tanyac]

I'm sorry.. I have to interject.. I have been hammering this new version since the day it was released. I've reinstalled it now half a dozen times.

The start menu is huge and bulky. It takes up way too much real estate. This really us just Winodws 8.1 with a hybrid start menu. As you said, it is still has the flat 90's style about it (ala Windows 8), and looks more suited to kindergarten children, than to anyone who wants to do serious work.

The metro apps are resizable, until you shut them down and re-open them. For me, every time I re-opened one it was full screen. It does not remember your preferences.

The search and multiple desktop icons can't be moved or removed. I use quick launch. I can fit 3 times more little icons on the space, and still have taskbar space left over. The pinned icons for me are a waste of space. But now I have to deal with these two extra icons on the left of quick launch.

I've had explorer crash, and other applications crash the system, especially when attempting to shutdown or restart.

I'm glad they want us to have a hand in shaping this product, but at present it's windows 8.2. There's nothing yet that would make this a "new" OS. I know that stuff is yet to come.

I had no problems with installing the nvidia drivers. Actually, Windows did it automatically for me. Unfortunately I had to uninstall them because I don't have a 3D monitor, I use a surround system for audio, and I don't want auto upgrades or user experience programs. Attempting to disable this feature causes several headaches.

I did like the fact that the file copy dialogue is small by default, but it's a little too simplistic. There was nothing wrong with the Windows 7 version. Sadly, this reflects Microsoft philosophy - change it even if it ain't broke.

It seems to take a little longer to boot - perhaps the key logging and data collection starting up Not enough to be annoying.

Still even with all these, and several other "issues" I remain positive and look forward to more updates.

let's hope that Microsoft are really serious about making this OS work.

 

[stubbies2003]

^ i bypassed the W10 login screen by putting in a fake email/password. It will then ask if you want to do a local account, but they should have given that option on the screen to begin with.

Yeah I found there are a few ways to skin that cat but 100% agree this should have been a clear choice on setup just like not saving to the cloud was a clear choice. If you set up Win 10 via the MS account you can simply go into the users area and disconnect from the MS account. It will then ask you if you want to set up a local account.

 

[stubbies2003]

It seems 7 8 9... Why skip 9? there are a lot of cool marketing things you can do with the number 9. Sure X sounds good, but you missed all the good from 9.

This was covered awhile ago. Any old app code that was just looking for the 9 at the start (ala Win 95/98) would confuse Win 9 for Win 95/98. Rather than deal with the headache of changing thousands of programs just skipping Win 9 was the easiest solution.

One thing I want are Live Tile desktop shortcuts. Move them over to my 4th screen and use it as a quick hot bar.

Pfft, live tiles are one of the reasons I didn't go from Win 7 to 8. I'm not running on a tablet or a smart phone. I'm running on a PC.

 

[hst101rox]

Hope windows 10 has an updated explorer.exe to fully support file paths longer than 255 characters.. It's dumb how I have to use totalcommander to manipulate deeply nested files and folders.

 

[canadianvice]

I dislike how they've implemented the multi-desktop features, as well as the search.
Make the search work according to the method you have for your application launcher - start screen should use the swipe option, which worked well, and start menu should just let you type.

As for multidesktop, It seems really clunky to me to create a desktop after clicking that button. I would prefer if they made it a toolbar, similar to how ubuntu xfce does it, where you have an approximate preview of contents as well.

 

[06yfz450ridr]

^ i bypassed the W10 login screen by putting in a fake email/password. It will then ask if you want to do a local account, but they should have given that option on the screen to begin with.

all you have to do is hit sign up then at the bottom it says something like click here to not use a microsoft account and you now have just a local account.

 

[johnblommers]

After spending an hour with Win10 installed in a VM in VirtualBox let me report:

(1) The good: The annoying Metro tiles can be eliminated and I like the default wallpaper.

(2) The bad:
Firefox does not come installed so job one is to install it.
The windows have no resizing borders or handles which is quite odd.
All of the windows and widgets are a dull and flat in appearance. It’s very bleak.
The start menu is back, different from the useful one in Win7, and they stuck the metro tiles to it. Ugly.
The search icon in the task bar is a pure Bing tool, MSFT is so desperate to promote Bing they made it a forced default with no ability to change it, or even to remove it from the dock.
Now there is a control panel and a PC Settings panel just to confuse the user
On installation they try to trick you into using a Microsoft cloud account instead of a local one
There is this crazy notion of the Windows Store App - those full screen Metro things ??
A lot of windows open full screen for now apparent reason so you have to resize them. A Metro leftover I guess.
The menu bar at the top of most apps has disappeared, now its buttons and other weirdness.

(3) The ugly: Spyware that lets MSFT watch your every move including a keystroke logger that would make the NSA blush. It's hidden in the EULA that nobody reads.

So you can choose to believe or not that this kind of spyware will remain inside Windows 10 so that MSFT can continue to curry favor with NSA illegal domestic surveillance, or you can go open source and embrace Linux.