Windows 10: Trial By Fire

Please like me. I'm better, I swear.

Windows 10 is here, and it's free, at least for now. It supposedly the best Windows yet and it essentially aims to bring what we enjoyed about Windows 7 and that massive hack job known as Windows 8 together into one package. So I decided to give Microsoft's new baby a chance and downloaded it onto my PC. Here's what I think so far of Windows 10.

I've been very hard on Microsoft lately, notably for the whole Xbox One mess and for Windows 8. They seem to be trying to win back some credibility after alienating both gamers and actual productivity users in both areas. Ultimately the Xbox One has turned it's act around a significant amount and improving Windows was the next step. Essentially this is somewhat of a review paired with documentation of my experience so I'm not going to go completely in depth with all of 10's features, only the ones I actually care about and know I'll use. In case you're wondering a bit more of what kind of computer I've did this to, say hello to the beast, a heavily upgraded Acer Predator G3620.

Rawr.

The upgrade process is virtually painless provided you actually decided to wait for Microsoft to issue it to your computer. I'm a kind of impatient bastard and I hate waiting for anything so thanks to the wonderful people of reddit, I performed a Command Prompt loophole and got my upgrade successfully downloading after a couple attempts. Now if the upgrade didn't require my rig to restart several times and the fact that every time I restart I get presented with a nagging CPU fan error for absolutely no reason that requires me to press F1 to continue, I would have sat down and watched a couple episodes of episodes of Top Gear and let my PC do it's thing. But no, I had to watch my screen like a hawk, and every time it restarted, I had to hit F1 to ignore the CPU fan error and get things rolling again. This was only a minor inconvenience and after 10 was loaded in, it was fairly smooth sailing.

Yet my attachment to Windows 7 took hold of me and I rolled back the very next day. While I liked some aspects of 10 at the time, much of it still felt too different for whatever reason.While it was as easy as a click of button through 10(Plus you only have a month to do so if you chose) booting back into 7 was a living hellhole. My mouse and keyboard ceased to work and I was locked out of my computer for hours until they started working again by some miracle. Eventually I didn't quite feel like I gave 10 a very good chance plus after some research, the upgrade did have it's benefits. So once again, I returned to the Command Prompt and loopholed my way back into the upgrade again. That was the end of my failed attempt, and thus begins my real attempt at giving Windows 10 a shot.

First off, once the upgrade was complete you have to go through the process of setting the OS up. It's similar to how you would set up a brand new computer. Me being me I completely ignored the express setup option and beelined straight for advanced setup. Here I had the pleasure of unchecking anything that rang me the wrong way, especially WiFi Sense, that shit that shares your password with people in your contacts. Screw that. You see here's the thing about Windows 10, it likes to keep track of everything you do, and much of it revolves around Microsoft's Siri like AI Cortana which I'll touch on later. Then it asked me if I wanted to use any of Microsoft's new programs are now apparently known as "Apps" to keep in trend with this thing we call modern society which revolves around social networks, selfies, and bad entertainment. I promptly said no and went with good ol' Chrome and the old tried and true Windows 7 era programs like Media Player(Which began malfunctioning shortly afterwards) and Photo Viewer. Great so basic setup is done, lets go to the desktop.

The OCD is beginning to take hold.

The first thing I could not stand was the massive search bar that was dumped onto my otherwise clean taskbar, and promptly eliminated it. Second thing was that the Start menu, while back(Thank god), was paired with the Metro UI we know all too well from 8. This isn't a bad thing as it's actually more usable than you may think but it's loaded with all sorts of pre-placed crap like Candy Crush Saga. No really, like are you fucking serious? I went on an uninstalling spree afterwards and cleared my drive of anything that 10 might have installed that I didn't want. While I waited for the that to happen I rearranged my Start menu as close to the way I had it previously, set File Explorer to default to "This PC" as opposed to my recent files and folders and in the end, I was quite pleased with how it all turned out. It felt more like 7 with a hint of what good 8 had, and it felt good. So with my little adjustments in place, I went off exploring 10.

Action Center for doing... erm... actions.

I forgot to note that everything you had from your previous OS will get carried over unless you decided to do a clean install. One thing I noticed was that my Action Center was blowing up with the typical Java updates that I've been ignoring since the beginning of time. The new Action Center, when opened now takes up the right half of your screen and shows anything from emails to update notices and it include handful of settings I haven't bothered to mess with. It's helpful because it groups all your important notices into one easy to access place so lets say you been off your computer for a long time and you missed a couple emails, they will be right there in the Action Center.

Got a desktop? You got no use for this then.

Task View is a nifty but fairly useless feature, at least for a desktop user, though it actually serves a really good purpose if you have a tablet. It basically allows you to switch between different tasks similar to the Recent Apps button on Android. Reason why I find this useless is because you still have the Task Bar. Why do you need a full screen task switcher when everything is already easily accessible from the Task Bar? Yet Task View is paired with an interesting feature which allows you to run more than one desktop. While I haven't found a good use for this as of yet, it may be helpful for people running an excessive amount of tasks.

Close enough.

Microsoft's upgraded search feature is paired with a Siri like AI system called Cortana(Yes she will respond to Halo questions). The problem here is that I'm a desktop user, and my PC has no mic so I can only use my keyboard to communicate with Cortana, in return I can't hear her, and I can only see what she says in type. This eventually boiled down to me finding zero practical uses for the AI as the only reason I would use the search function is to browse my computer's files and programs like I always have. I went ahead and disabled Cortana, I bet there are people out there that can find a use for this sort of thing like some of the iPhone users can with Siri but me personally, nah. I did end up testing Cortana in full on a Surface Pro 3 and I do have to say it's quite intelligent and pretty helpful depending on your needs. Again I would rarely use it even on a tablet just because I have no practical use for it, but you might.

Pairing stuff that worked with stuff that didn't. Result? It's actually pretty good!

The returning Start menu, like I said, took a little tweaking to get it to the way I liked, it works much the same way as it always had, apart from the addition of the Metro tiles. Here you can shortcut programs and Windows Store apps, yet the only apps from the said Windows Store I use are the factory installed Xbox, Mail, and Weather apps. You can also bring a rendition of the old Start screen back but I have no idea why you would when you have the Start menu again and a new user friendly tablet mode for tablet users. Did I mention you have to have a Microsoft account to use the Windows Store? Cortana? The Xbox App?

Ok, this was a huge problem in Windows 8, and while it has been greatly rectified, the ability to just use your computer with a local account and a local account only is still limited in comparison to having a Microsoft account. I tried it once, with the same account I use for Xbox Live, and the most annoying thing to me was that it changed my local logon password to that of my Microsoft account, and I couldn't find a way to change it back to my simple four digit local password. I don't want my computer to be constantly paired with this account, especially when the Xbox app is the only one I actively use that requires it, and even then I don't need it when I have access to the Xbox website. Streaming is cool if you have a tablet, but having a desktop and the fact that my consoles are in the room adjacent to my bedroom makes this pretty much pointless. I would totally not mind using a Microsoft account if it only gave me more power in what I want it to do and not do to my computer but it does not. Luckily the Xbox app lets you run it without having to full blown pair your Microsoft account with your PC, so I went with that.

As for program compatibility, I had numerous issues, many were in part to DirectX 12. DX12 does notably boost your performance in games but it apparently lacks older files that made older games compatible. This struck me really negatively because some of my favorite games I like to play on the PC are some of my oldest, and any modern big name releases like Battlefield, I save for consoles unless there's a definite, bar none reason for me to get it on PC. One of these said games is Command & Conquer Red Alert 2, a game I've played for years on Windows 7 with zero issues. However in Windows 10, the game fails to work at all, crashing when I attempt to start it. I then decided to reinstall, this brought me even more pain. First of all, my actual discs would not launch their setup.exe files at all so I resorted to a downloaded ISO. The setup launched but greeted me with a DirectX error and closed the program. I tried downloading the Redistributables Package which contained the older files, and it still didn't work. Bottom line is, if you enjoy playing older games, don't even bother.

At this rate Windows 10 is solid, much better than 8, but compared to 7 it's mostly a useless upgrade, yet I can understand it's not for everyone. I do like how the new UI is implemented which honestly surprises me because I loathed it in 8 but it's in a way where it doesn't dominate every single aspect of your PC. DX12 offers some solid performance boosts in gaming and... that's about it really. Much of the new stuff about 10 isn't really all that useful in my case. Task View is pointless without a tablet and you still have the taskbar anyways plus Cortana isn't much use when when you don't have a mic or any good reason to use her in general. I don't like how a Microsoft account makes potentially unwanted changes to the computer that can't be reversed without unpairing the account and with much of the new network features now in place, it just doesn't feel very private either, like Microsoft must to know what your doing. The thing that really drove the final nail in the coffin for me was the compatibility issues, many things that worked perfectly fine in 7, notably older games, ceased to work in 10.

In the end, if you're a Windows 8 user and hate the changes made, 10 is a breath of fresh air and it takes you back to what made Windows good with what additions were actually useful in 8. However if your a 7 user, 10 feels really nothing more than a slightly more stripped down OS with some features gone and some useless ones added. The only main selling points here is the new UI and DirectX 12 which again, if you like old games, it's not going to help. It's free for now, so it won't hurt to try it, and for all I know, 7 or 8 you might like it and never look back. It is good overall, don't get me wrong and I'll be sticking with it this time, but as of right now it is a definite work in progress.