Windows 10 was it worth the wait? Clive G4NAQ

Windows 10 was it worth the wait? Clive G4NAQ

Windows 10 Preview Windows 10 was released over 6 months ago as a technical preview The general look and feel did not change significantly during the preview and features were gradually released such as the Edge browser (aka Spartan) and Windows Store About a month ago Windows 7 / 8.x users should have seen an option to reserve their upgrade as a system tray icon. Windows 2010 went on general release on 29 th July

Upgrade Path

Should you upgrade to Win 10 Pro? Upgrade costs approximately 65 Differences Bitlocker hard drive encryption Enterprise Internet Explorer - makes IE11 behave like IE8 Hyper-V allows you to create/run virtual machines Other features really only suitable in a corporate environment No good reason for home users to upgrade

Before you upgrade! Make 1 or more copies of all your own documents, photos etc! or you may regret it later. Software such as Macrium Reflect is free for personal use and can be used to create an image of your current hard drive or partition (and very useful if you want to replace your current SATA drive with an SSD).

Upgrade or Install? If you reserved your copy of Windows 10 it will be downloaded onto your machine and the installation will be started from within your current OS. Or There is a Microsoft media creation utility to download it and create an ISO image (CD/DVD) or bootable USB stick. This process will enable you to do a clean installation if you boot from the CD or USB stick. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

Installation You need at least 8Gb of free space on your hard drive Takes about an hour after you have completed the download completes If you upgrade using the image from the migration tool you have the option for a clean install you can change the default using the link at the bottom of this page (this is not present using the download/upgrade process)

Upgrade or Clean install Keep Personal Files, Apps & Settings Default Keep Personal Files only Apps & Settings are deleted Nothing Clean install

Express or Custom Setup? Enables you to control defaults Enables you opt out sending info to Microsoft Browser protection settings Automatic connectivity to WiFi networks All the above can be changed later in settings Take the custom option and spend a few minutes reading the screens

Registration You must have a Microsoft account / login which you can create during the final part of the installation using @outlook.com You can also login using face or iris recognition if you have a 3D infrared camera and also a pin number After you register you can login to check the status of your Windows licences

What is the Windows.old folder? Your previous OS prior to the upgrade Enables recovery Windows will delete this folder 1 month after you upgrade to free up disk space You could recover old files from here if there are problems post upgrade e.g. personal files will be under c:\windows.old\users\name If you want to delete this sooner use the Windows Disk Cleanup tool and there will be an entry to remove previous Windows installations

Differences from Windows 8 users Returns your desktop to something more familiar if you didn t install classic shell Improvements to the CMD prompt DirectX 12 (for gamers) New touch interface the charms bar & app switcher are gone Skype is now part of Windows

Differences from Windows 7 users Microsoft Account integration which means if you have multiple machines many desktop settings including wallpaper will be sync d You can still use local accounts & migrate to a Microsoft account later if you want New Start Menu live tiles on the right (which can be removed) and installed apps under all apps collapsed menu Settings App replaces the Control Panel, its still there just right-click the start button & there is an option! Cortana you must have seen the adverts! Edge new browser which replaces IE as the default browser, IE will automatically open if Edge cannot render a page Task Manager & Notification Centre greatly improved

Settings replaces Control Panel

Task Manager Startup Performance

Offline Maps You can keep an offline set of maps on your PC with no need for an internet connection Not as good detail as Google Maps but you can download an entire countries map (Google only has 50km area) Size of maps\region are also shown before you download them A setting allows automatic update of maps whenever your connected to the internet

Edge Simpler interface & fast Default is a news/weather interface Favourites bar

Backout (Recovery) Settings Menu Windows Update & Security Recovery Go Back to Windows 7 Reset this PC allows you to choose which files to retain & then windows will reinstall itself

Performance Upgraded a Dual Core laptop with 3Gb RAM and a Netbook with an Atom processor & 1Gb RAM.. performance ok The best thing you can do to improve the performance of any machine is replace the hard drive with an SSD, works fine for WinXP and newer You should not need to upgrade your PC hardware if your current Win 7 or 8 OS is performing ok!

Lastly There are ways of stopping automatic updates by changing network connections to metered which is meant for 3g type connections but stops download process Parental controls are lost during the upgrade and a whole new process required to set them up A really useful site which covers Windows, Linux and other technology stuff http://www.howtogeek.com/

Any Questions