Are any of you in the know about the upcoming release of Windows 10? I am overdue for a replacement computer and wondering about waiting for that next version versus upgrading. Any wisdom?
I have windows 8.0.1 or whatever it is called, that was required in my new touchscreen laptop. Its a little quirky, some things are hard to find, and now one of my printers, which was working fine, wont communicate with that laptop. Am not familiar with windows 10, but will ask DH.
Nothing could be worse than 8, honestly…
Vista was worse. Well, maybe its a tie 
Am running the Win 10 technical preview on a spare notebook. Runs fine for the most part and is a lot better IMO than 8. Microsoft is humoring its corporate/institutional customer base by bringing back the start button and taking out/hiding win 8 features which are considered useless and confusing to them.
However, considering it’s still beta software with bugs…it still has some serious issues to be worked out.
Vista was worse from a buggy/resource hog standpoint when it was first released*, Win 8/8.1 was worse from an enduser usability standpoint with a new and sometimes counterintuitive graphical user interface and features.
- Vista actually got better after the service packs. However, even then Vista is actually slower and less efficient than Windows 7 if one tests them side-by-side on machines with identical technical specs. A reason why I recommended everyone to skip directly to 7 if XP no longer suited their needs.
I think Windows 10 announcement is happening later this week, and folks like cobrat are lucky to be beta testers. I believe it will be on systems towards the fall/end of the year.
Cobrat,
will windows 8.1 bring back the start button and the other things that are now hard to find? Just trying to find my printer and devices stuff was a PITA
I would not consider it to be “lucky” to be a 10 tester after the 8 debacle. If 10 is as bad from a usability perspective as 8 was, I will be sticking with 7 for the next couple of years, then buying a Mac.
LOL. Good point. Meant that some enjoy beta testing. I wanted the touchscreen laptop so am suffering with the Windows 8.1 stuff. All this stuff is not intuitive to me so its very frustrating.
My poor 85 year old dad was just about done in by the Window 8 change. He listened to Mossberg, the Wall Street Journal tech columnist, who said to wait for 8 to upgrade his computer. The upgrade was awful, and he still struggles sometimes with it. I was there to help him, and it took us a full 4 days to get to the point where he could do the same things he used to do on XP. I used to be kind of a Microsoft fan, I think their standardization of desktop usage across the business world has been a huge productivity boost worldwide. But they really lost me with the 8 release…
I recently bought a computer at Costco, made sure to go for Windows 7, but I don’t like it, too big, seems like all the premade laptops with 16RAM are 17", weird, they must be trying to get rid of a bunch of old 17" bodies.
I am considering a Surface Pro and those seem only to have Windows 8, not sure if I can make it until Windows 10 at the end of the year.
"Nothing could be worse than 8, honestly… "
Are you guys too young to remember ME? LOL.
I have a Surface Pro, and while I’m not wild about 8.1, the tablet itself exceeded my expectations.
I like my surface pro too, tho am still learning how to use it well.
I actually like Windows 8 — but I held off until after it became 8.1 with a service pack upgrade.
Microsoft has a long history of letting its customer base do the testing, so I would generally avoid any “new” Windows version until it’s aged somewhat and had time to work out all the kinks.
So, my advice: any time you want to buy a new Windows computer, buy one with an OS that has been in circulation for awhile. I think 12-15 months is about what it takes,. This page has some info about Windows product life cycles – http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/lifecycle – Windows 8 was released October 2012; Version 8.1 came out a year later, October 2013 – and I got my computers that run the new platform in April and May of 2014.
So when I came in: the major bugs had been fixed; outside software and hardware creators had plenty of time to do whatever was necessary to make sure their products integrated properly with the new OS; and there was plenty of time for internet bloggers and geeks to create tutorials and suggested tips, as well as software product add-ons to workaround various annoyances. For example, I have some sort of free App that replaces & improves upon the start menu that Windows took away.
If Cobrat wants to beta test… that’s fine. 
If you meant Windows 10, yes they brought back the Start button and made the interface much more like Win 7 and previous versions of windows.
They placed the Win 8/8.1 tiles in a separate column within the start menu so you have that as an option without losing your desktop or the option to navigate to your programs as with Win 7 or older windows OSes.
They did it because their corporate/institutional customers…their main bread and butter cited the lack of the start button as one of the key reasons to not buy into Win 8/8.1. Enough of them voted by not upgrading from Win 7 that Microsoft had to listen.
Windows 10 brings back much of what users of Win 7 and previous versions of Windows are familiar with so it’s much more usable than Win 8/8.1 from a user interface standpoint.
Most of the corporate/institutional customers largely bypassed Win 8/8.1 because of the same issues with the changed user interface and how it actually impeded productivity along with adding huge potential retraining costs.
That and Win 8 was introduced in the fall of 2012, around a year after many corporate/institutional customers upgraded their systems to Win 7 after it received its service pack. Considering how long such upgrades take such customers for testing to ensure the software will work with the minimal amount of hitches on their networks, they’re not going to go through another such upgrade after only a year. Especially when Win 8 provided questionable at best added value for corporate/institutional customers.
In the case of unpopular OSes as determined by Microsoft’s institutional/corporate customers, the OSes tended to lose support from outside software and hardware creators if previous history is any indication.
For instance, Microsoft pulled the support/marketing plug on Windows ME due to its issues so quickly, many folks who lived through the period it was introduced never knew or easily forgot about it.
In the case of Windows Vista, many outside software and hardware vendors moved straight onto Windows 7 and stopped providing much/any support for it once the latter started being rapidly adopted by corporate/institutional customers after its first service pack in late 2011.
From the computer tech news, it seems outside vendors in the software and hardware world and yes, Microsoft are also planning to write off Win 8/8.1 by cutting off support once Win 10 goes public. This is moreso if 10 is massively adopted by corporate/institutional customers the same way Windows XP and 7 had been.
I cant find the (#Q$Q(#%^Q(#%^#(% start button on 8.1/ Where is it??
I see the silly 4 square that toggles between computer mode and touchscreen but I want to easily get to my documents, etc and its not intuitive. Gotta scroll down to that alphabetical list of apps. Dont like that. I want my start button!
Windows 7 was essentially Vista as it should have been. I think Windows 10 will be another evolution and takes Windows 8 to where it should have been. I avoid all Microsoft version 1.0 products, as they are basically beta products sent out to be tested by the customers.
Another issue which likely further turned off some people to Win 8/8.1, the drastic internal changes between Win 8 and 8.1 which meant some folks using older 64-bit processors were no longer able to upgrade/install 8.1.
A major issue for folks using older machines for tasks requiring access to more than around 3.25 GB of RAM due to fundamental hardware limitations of 32-bit processor memory addressing and Windows OS itself.
sooo… wheres my start button???