Windows 10 is Win 7 With a New Coat of Paint

Windows 10 is Win 7 With a New Coat of Paint

Here's What I Do Like:

• The upgrade was pretty straightforward, and worked fine on both my desktop and laptop.
• The new flat design is very nice. I like it a lot.
• The interface is no longer the bi-polar, mobile-centric garbage of Windows 8.
• The volume and screen brightness indicators are built-in and have that consistent, flat design. It meant I could remove the Dell-provided app that was doing an Apple-like overlays.
• The new desktops features and the Windows+Tab view for switching between apps.
• I can snap some apps like Edge browser to 1/3 of the screen (instead of 1/2). Lame that other apps won't do it.
• The interface is much more consistent than Windows 8/8.1 and nearly universally redesigned in the new flat design.
• The various sys-tray item notifications have a consistent interface, that takes a set side-bar-width of the screen (wifi/network, notifications, etc) 
• I can use my Gmail/Google Apps for the Calendar and notifications, etc. Kinda handy, though Chrome was already doing that for me.

What I Don't Like:

• Doesn't seem any faster than Win7. Chrome actually seems slower since the upgrade.
• It's still somewhat bi-polar: there's duplicates of a number of things. Such as the new "System" area which is a much better approach to the old Control Panel. But guess what? Control Panel is still there, and just the same (almost) as it was in Win7. Wha....?
• Some things are still using the same icons, or very similar looking ones as Win7, they don't fit with the new flat design.
• Cortana is cool on a phone, not so useful on a laptop/desktop. I'll stick with Google Now on my phone for all that contextual info.
• Can't remove a lot of apps such as mail, calendar, Cortana, etc.
• Had to force reboot once, had another crash coming out of sleep, and the display wigged out and required a hard shutdown. So it's not as stable as Win 7. And patches are already being released.

Wrap-Up and Thoughts on the Future

Overall I think it's a solid upgrade. However, it's most helpful if you're heavily invested in the Microsoft ecosystem (Windows Phone, Skype, Live/Hotmail, Outlook or Exchange), etc. I'm not, so it's not that helpful to me.

It also drove home another point: the cloud is the future. Right now Google's way ahead on the cloud stuff. Thus, Chromebooks are the future. My next laptop will likely be a Chromebook Pixel. Those who aren't as techie will follow soon enough, unless they happen to be the new incarnation of the Luddite: the Enterprise-ite. Defined as: people who still think Windows, Office, enterprise software, and local storage are where it's at.

Written by

Tevya Washburn