tainkc Loc: Kansas City

Yep. A fubar big time! Back in October while the Kansas City Royals were in the playoffs, I decided to download the Windows 10 technical preview after getting a lot of emails from the Microsoft technet team. Almost a big mistake!

You see, for several months now I have been working 14 hour days and I am always very tired. When I went to download Windows 10, I did my usual thing and created a virtual drive on my main (C) drive as I have done hundreds of times with this sort of thing. The problem is, when it asked where would I like to install the program, I must have been watching some big play or something. It evidently waited for a command, and when I did not respond in a timely fashion, it overlaid my Windows 7. Crap! I thought I was in big trouble.

Nope. It loaded just fine! Yes, it did blow away all of my drivers and it found and replaced them all with no problems; except for one. The usual one. It could not find my Nvidia video drivers. When upgrading an operating system, I have to go through a lot of time and nonsense to replace these drivers, and the new system can never find them when I choose to look up the drivers on the internet through the device manager. Not this time! Not only did it find the drivers super fast, I also did not have to re-boot the computer. Pretty cool, I thought.

It also got rid of a lot of the problems found and complained about in Windows 8.1. Great! Usually, there are all sorts of problems with a pre release of any Windows O.S.. Once again, not this time! It boots faster, runs all programs much faster, including lightroom and photoshop. It does all sorts of neat things that I will not even go into here.

But all is not well in the land of Bill Gates (typical). Just the other day it did another complete re-load (this is to be expected). Evidently it made some improvements which I have not noticed yet

It stung me right in the butt this time. I could no longer print anything. Anything that had to do with the printer was jacked up. My printer was even greyed out. I went on the internet to see if I could find out anything. Nothing. I even went to the Microsoft website and some Microsoft forums and found nothing.

However, something clued me in to look at the print spooler. I don't know why, but through deduction, I knew I had to look there. It is found in a slightly different place than where I would find it in Windows 7 or 8. But I finally found the spooler and tried a couple of the options, one of which seems to have fixed the problem.

Overall, when the final version of Windows 10 comes out, I think it will be a good and powerful operating system. Much more fun and aggravating than upgrading a Mac. But then again, I enjoy changing flat tires in an ice storm with howling winds.

This is my critique.

By the way, I compare Windows 8 to the likes of Windows ME. Total crap!

Oh, and one last thing; the reason I posted here instead of in "chit, chat" is because of the way that Windows 10 handles photography programs such as lightroom and photoshop. This would be a concern for me if I were contemplating buying Windows 10 final version since most of us a pretty involved in our post processing. I see no problems, only advantages.

Rongnongno Loc: FL

Funny I was thinking about asking if someone was beta testing Windows 10.

You know better than using this type og generic title by the way.

BHC Loc: Strawberry Valley, JF, USA

That is what I've been trying to tell friends for some time. Can I quote you on that? BTW, can you go from 7 to 10 directly?

tainkc Loc: Kansas City

You are right, I will change it right now!

tainkc Loc: Kansas City

Yes, you can quote me. Lol. And yes, this is exactly what I did. I went from Windows 7 Ultimate to Windows 10. Of course it did this as an upgrade. All of my network settings also remained intact.

BHC Loc: Strawberry Valley, JF, USA

Thank you. The thought of having to upgrade from 7 to 8 in order to upgrade to 10 is terrifying!

Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

I was hoping that I'd be able to get a copy of Windows 9 and 3/4, but perhaps I'll just have to wait for the Muggle version...

BHC Loc: Strawberry Valley, JF, USA

And, if you miss 10, you can always say you had a bad lie and take a mulligan.

Singing Swan

I know someone who just bought a laptop with 10 pre-installed and they are singing the praises for 10 as well...maybe they got a few things right this time??

tainkc Loc: Kansas City

They brought back the start flag thingy for examp, but the GUI isbasically the same is in 8.

brucewells Loc: Central Kentucky

Thanks for the insight. Been contemplating a new desktop and my experience with Win 8/8.1 is less than stellar. I really appreciate Win 7, and have been concerned I won't be able to get it on the new desktop. If Win 10 is as you indicate, maybe the worry is for naught.

Jesterman

I have it installed on a laptop and it is great. Most of the grips from windows 8 will go away. Oh and by the way it is an older laptop and not very powerful but the OS runs great.

anotherview Loc: California

A user having too much trouble from the install of a piece of software can use System Restore to set the computer system to an earlier date in time, before the install.

I have found this a good practice: Set a System Restore point just before doing a new software install. This way, nothing else will become affected by the System Restore, only the latest software install.

Papa Joe Loc: Midwest U.S.

I have been testing Windows 10 for the past two or three months and must say I think it's going to be great. Not all that different from 8.1 but I've had no problems at all. You are warned in the beginning, if you read their notices, that it may reboot very often and totally re-load over a period of time because of the changes being made to it. Of course, one reason I've had no 'conflict' with 10 bothering other OS's, I downloaded '10' on a second computer and it functions great. I've submitted several minor suggestions and noticed the corrections in subsequent versions,so they are listening to the 'testers'. As for Windows 8.1... I think it's the best MS has turned out to date. I use it on three computers and have no serious problems at all. Just don't expect to put it on 'old Aunt Jane's' computer and get top functionality.

senormule Loc: Houston, Texas

Seeing that MS omitted windows "9" because they figured that people would wait for "10" as it is a "larger number", I figured I would wait until the driver caught up (about 6 months into release). I did the same with windows 8, and purchased "Start 8" for 5 bucks for the windows start button and UI, and never looked back, nor ever learned to use the windows 8 UI. I didn't see any significant changes in 10 except a few UI functions that could be accessed already, and it looks like a rebranding of an existing product in my opinion.
Much like the little boy mentality of painting flames on the side of the car to make it go faster.