I just noticed last night, my keyboard’s lights now go out when I shut off the pc. The settings I had changed were put back when they didn’t work. I had also not done anything for several days to fix said problem. I suspect an update took care of a bug and now my desk no longer glows bright blue all night long. Smiley Happy Face!!
The only problem I’ve had is that my taskbar sometimes forgets to auto-hide (the workaround for this is to restart the explorer.exe process, but that only fixes the immediate instance of the problem.
Upgraded a touch-screen laptop from version 8.1. The upgrade went seamlessly with no issues. The only worrisome bit was an upgrade setting screen that apparently wants you to opt in to sharing all of your browsing, privacy, and usage data to Microsoft. No thanks. As background, I hated the version 8 / 8.1 start button, metro apps, and metro workspace and have been using ClassicShell as my menu replacement. I also use another laptop at home running Linux Mint KDE for general context of my thoughts…
The good so far:
Yay multiple desktops! Not up to full Linux standards of fully separated environment yet (e.g. no custom icons, wallpaper, settings, etc), but a huge useability improvement.
Boots faster
Bye bye to the weird charms, hot corners, and random forced-full-screen of version 8 apps
Workflow seems improved, in general fewer clicks to do routine tasks in the environment.
Nothing truly bad yet (damning with faint praise and all that).
Really, the best that can be said is that it mostly undoes the terrible interface decisions of version 8.
I don’t think I’ve once been nagged by system “Are you sure you want to do…” ,admin control prompts, and useless middle-man prompt windows. 10 seems to just stay out of your way and let you get things done, I love that.
The not-so-good:
The start menu was filled with tiles of tons of garbage apps and programs that apparently ported over from the version 8 metro workspace that I’d long ago disabled. Took a long time to clean up the mess.
Lots of other distracting junk on the start menu. After deleting the live tiles and advertising, trying to arrange programs in some sort of nested order or folders, and trying to navigate to many of my programs that didn’t show up in the menu and couldn’t be navigated to for some reason, I gave up and reinstalled ClassicShell.
I don’t like the flat-tile no-shadow no-border aesthetic. I’m hoping that it’s something “themeable” in the future.
Looks like you can only get it in one column now… but… it now features one of the most beautiful features that first appeared in Windows Phone - navigation of alphabetised lists; once the single-column list contains sufficient entries to make it worthwhile, it is automatically broken into alphabetised segments - click on one of the segment headings and a letter grid pops up for fast navigation.
Good experience so far overall. Have an issue with Edge though; there is no way to add sites to a trusted zone which made me unable to login to a customer’s MS CRM site - had to go back to IE11 which luckily didn’t get removed by the upgrade - it did get removed from the Start menu though so had to add it back in. Also Visual Studio 2015 now does an odd thing where all my code disappears when I switch tabs, I have to restore/maximise the app window to see it again.
That’s basically my impression so far. In fact, I’m a little underwhelmed.
I upgraded my laptop (which I had to; there was a driver problem that meant it would randomly crash if you installed IE11) with no problems, but I doubt I’m going to bother upgrading my other computers until I have to (ie just before the free upgrade window closes).
It seems like just a bit of a tart up from Win 7 - mostly the same features but with a (debatably) pretty new UI. All the stuff like Cortana doesn’t really interest me; all the live tile stuff has just been deleted. Edge is an improvement over IE, I guess, but again irrelevant - it just means that instead of not using IE I now won’t be using Edge.
There’s some weirdness with the UI, too: as mentioned elsewhere, there’s now the ‘settings’ screen as well as the old (and now fairly hidden) control panel. I want to change a setting, where do I go? One or the other, I guess? Also, things like VPN connections: You can see your connection from the taskbar/notification panel thingy, but if you click on it it just takes you to the settings screen, where you then have to click again to connect it. It’s not the end of the world, but it does seem a little clunky.
Not too keen on the new start menu, either - but then again, I’m well used to the Win 7 menu, so I expect I’ll get used to it in time. It just seems a lot bloatier and less intuitive.
When I first tried Win 7 (with the tech preview), I was so impressed with it I immediately dumped all my XP installs in favour of 7 (even at beta stage, I still liked it more than XP), and I was hoping for a similar experience with 10. But as it stands, I’m decidedly ‘meh’ about the whole thing.
It’s better than 8, though.
A lot of people say even doing that won’t work. They say that an affected systems need a BIOS update in order to work, due to a new security update for certain Intel processors. Check and see if your computer has one.
Some also suggest uninstalling any extra devices you may have attached, and only installing them again after the Win 10 upgrade.
There’s also a convoluted process that will disable the file causing the problem, but even the person describing it does not recommend it.
Worse, it can actually cause conflicts. Especially since Defender is now basically MSE, a full antivirus and not just a minimal antispyware program. Both programs could try and block a file and cause problems.
Also, MSE/Defender are the minimal standards for antivirus use, by design.
A good time to post a nice tool/trick that works in Win 10 to help with the inevitable “where did that option move to?” questions…
Setting and config “God Mode” for Win 7, 8, and 10. To get God Mode you create a folder on the desktop and rename it as described below:
- Go to the Desktop
- Right-click and select New Folder.
- Right-click on the New Folder and select Rename.
- Change the name of the folder [just copy & paste the following string]:
GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C} - Open the folder and you will find every setting/utility under the sun organized into a sensible menu that you can browse through without knowing what name to type into a search bar.
^ OK, that’s quite cool!
GargoyleWB, I was all set to follow your Godmode Instructions, and I found my Godmode shortcut had survived the upgrade from 8.1.
Finally got around to doing this: I second RobDog’s “quite cool”! Thanks, GargoyleWB!
Regarding Godmode, it doesn’t require being on your desktop. It can go anywhere, but since it’s technically a folder if you put it in your start menu it will try to auto-open when the mouse moves over it, which is inelegant.
I’m a big start menu guy – my desktop doesn’t have a single icon on it – so to make it work in the start menu I created it on the root of C:, then created a shortcut to it (right-click, create shortcut) and put that shortcut into my start menu. Works like a charm.