It’s no big secret that Windows 8 (or 8.1) hasn’t been the most popular operating system that Microsoft has ever released. (That would be Windows 7, in case you were wondering).
Windows XP was around for a long time, and even after Windows Vista was released, Windows XP held onto the title of most popular version of Windows ever; Vista never took the top spot. Well, it’s looking like the same thing is happening with Windows 8. People held onto Windows XP all the way until it was officially retired by Microsoft in April of this year. Even then some folks stayed with XP, though they knew that there would be no more security updates for it.
A lot of people who felt like they were being forced off of XP chose to upgrade to Windows 7, instead of Windows 8, because Windows 7 will still be supported until the year 2020. For most people, the upgrade to Windows 7 just seems to be an easier step forward. (Did you know that you can still get Windows 7 computers and upgrades? Just ask us!)
Now the beta versions of Windows 10 are being released for brave computer folks (like us!) to try out on their own and provide feedback to Microsoft, hopefully to improve the final release. We will be doing exactly that, but for now, this is what we’ve seen with the new version of Windows:
- The Start Menu is back (mostly), but it is a hybrid mixture of the traditional Windows 7 Start Menu and the Tiles in Windows 8 (see the picture above). Not perfect, but a move in the right direction.
- Windows 10 allows you to create “virtual desktops” with shortcuts to your favorite programs on separate “screens”. You can have one “screen” for business applications and another one for personal use, making it easier to switch between work mode and play mode.
- You can have multiple virtual desktops running at the same time and switch back and forth between them, so that you can keep more programs open at the same time.
- You can “snap” running programs onto your desktop and resize them as you like, making it easier to multitask. On a big enough monitor, it’s almost like having multiple screens.
- More functionality has been added to the Command Prompt, allowing power users to more easily cut and paste commands and scripts to a command line to run them.
The official release of Windows 10 for consumers is still a long way off, so there is still plenty of time for improvement, and there will certainly be more features to come. We don’t feel that Windows 8 users will see enough of a difference to want to make the leap to Windows 10 unless they are really frustrated with Windows 8. There are rumors that Windows 10 will be a free upgrade for Windows 8.1 users, but that has not been officially confirmed, yet. If that is true, then a lot of Windows 8 users might go ahead and push through the upgrade process, just to get the Start Menu back if nothing else.
Windows 7 users seem to generally be happy campers, and since there is nothing remarkable for the average user in Windows 10 there may not be a lot of people making the upgrade from Windows 7. However, for Power Users and people trying to squeeze more productivity from their computers, the virtual desktop and snap app features might be enough to lure them over.
If you would like to read more about Windows 10, we found these articles useful:
http://www.trustedreviews.com/windows-10-review and http://www.techradar.com/us/reviews/pc-mac/software/operating-systems/windows-10-1267364/review#null
Thank you for signing up for our blog posts. If you found this one useful, please share it with others who might enjoy reading it, as well.
Let’s be careful out there!
-The PJ Networks Family
