Journal #8555

Even W7 gets it ?

Im probably gonna go for it on my desktop, but im going to start converting to Linux at some point.

Everyone running Windows 7 will get it for free.

I got it too.
As I have Win 8.1 Pro I don't have to worry, but notice that if you have a "Home" edition, updates on Windows 10 will be forced. On the Pro or Enterprise you can turned them off, if you have low bandwidth.

So much biased opinion on Windows 8 and Windows 10 its saddening.

I'll probably make the jump.
I need to grab myself an external hard drive for backup reasons first.

Only the Internet will tell if 10 is any good, Stojke. I don't want this to happen to me.

Windows 10 is looking pretty solid; barring Windows 8 levels of failure, I'll probably move to it a few months after it comes out.

That will happen to you if you have 0 patience and do things over a dick.
Windows 8.1 has excellent performance and metro start is a huge upgrade over classical menu. It is an application to aid you in starting applications not to be an fashion detail in the corner of your screen because for some reason you absolutely need to see the active applications at all time in order to start a new one.

Have some respect to improvement of existing UI technologies. Don't turn into an old demented grandpa that needs to tape over all new buttons on a remote or else he wont be able to use it.

Stojke, i'm sure you're right, but it was definitely too much too soon.
If anything, the default view for Win8 should have been the original with the option to go metro

@Stojke: I've had to deal with Windows 8 (Server 2012) at work and I find it difficult and obscure to use. Don't pretend your opinions are fact, there's two sides to every coin. My desktop is not a tablet PC, covering my entire desktop with the application launcher doesn't improve usability for my use case. Especially when you have multiple monitors.

Nobody's suggesting that Windows 8 doesn't have performance improvements, but the usability changes it brings with it are not worth the performance upgrade. It's not an improvement for most people, it's just Microsoft trying to shove a tablet interface down the throat of desktop users. Windows 10 is looking a lot better in that regard.

Agree with Pebs. The Windows 8 start menu has a couple of things going for it, but it mostly fails as an user interface by not only trying to be all things to all people, but also by cramming in a huge amount of functionality under obscure actions and menus and not telegraphing it particularly well to users. Put someone in front of the Windows 8 start menu and ask them to shut down the computer. See how long it actually takes for them to do it, if they've never used the interface before. Let's not also forget that Microsoft stuck a more traditional desktop environment underneath that menu, with its own set of UI rules and conventions, as well as a horrific blend of metro style design elements with the glassy, Aero look of Windows 7.

Microsoft finally cottoned onto the fact that the tablet and the PC are two vastly different paradigms. You cannot possibly expect the same interface to excel in both environments: either one of those environments has an advantage over the other, or they both suffer.

I'm all for updating UI (I am a designer, after all), but Windows 8 was truly a step in the wrong direction. I'm glad that Windows 10 is properly segmenting the interfaces, and will definitely be stepping up from Windows 7 - it'll be great to finally get the advantages of Windows 8 without having to tolerate a truly terrible PC UI.

While I support Metro as an good application luncher, I still agree it should have been more configurable. It should have been obvious to Microsoft that people would complain if you replace something that's been used for decades.

With all its flaws it still is not something that is breaking functionality so much that the system is unusable (as many people have claimed).

Click Type Enter best thing M$ did in a long time.
Doesn't cover up the screen, quick to access and use.

It drives me mad when i have to use a Windows Server 2012 machine, its just not intuitive and slows down productivity.

I've been using Windows 8.1 for almost 2 years now, I think.

Never had a problem, it works flawlessly with every developer tool I used. I expect Windows 10 to be even better.

I'm excited to try it, but probably won't upgrayyedd until I have to.

I really, really try to be open to new and alternative things, but I simply can't fathom how anyone could consider 8.1 to be remotely superior. The single advantage was faster boot times; literally everything else was quantifiably worse, particularly for work.

I'll check out 10 when it's released, but I'm making damn sure I have my W7 installer on a pen drive ready to reinstall at a moment's notice. I'm cautiously optimistic, though. Windows versions seem to alternate between good and woeful, and it's the turn of good!

Windows 8 also added proper multi-monitor taskbars (don't need DisplayFusion anymore!) and native ISO mounting (don't need MagicISO anymore!), I'm sure there's more improvements as well. Of course, both those features are limited enough that you still need those programs for certain tasks, but it's a step forward anyway.

I'm gonna be that guy and say "...stuff that OS X has had for years!"

Is Windows 10 going to have a package manager? So I've heard at some point. Like apt-get or yum, that kind of stuff.

That would greatly simplify having software up-to-date.

Yeah, I believe it'll be nuget-based so you can "Install-Package" in PowerShell to get your apt-get equivalent.

Can windows 8 effectively split sound through different outputs?
AKA music through speakers, games through headset?

Shouldn't audio software be the one to do that?
Usually its once you plugin an device it re-routes the sound automatically.
It should not be able to know what is music and what is game audio on hardware level.

If your media player can select an different output than yes you can do that. But you wont be able to use the same output from your sound card (because logically with out an additional filter/splitter after the output you can not do that, and that's impossible to do with analogue signal).

While this is only tangentially related, I recently discovered the audio mixer in Windows 7. It's very convenient to be able to mute or reduce the volume only in one specific program. I'd never used it before so it was a nice discovery

It also auto-detects when you're in a Skype call and lowers everything's volume to 50%. I think it's configurable somewhere, but I haven't had the need to change it yet.

Re-routing different programs to different hardware outputs sounds really interesting!

That feature was pretty bugged up when I used 7, it would usually misalign with other devices and I didn't like that.
To configure auto volume control you have to go into device properties. The best option is to set it to do nothing, because from my experience it muted other things more than it should too often.

With the new way audio works in Windows, you can rout any program to any audio hardware.

"I'm making damn sure I have my W7 installer on a pen drive ready to reinstall at a moment's notice."
^This.

I'll image my entire drive before upgrayedding, just-in-case I don't like it and/or W10 breaks anything.

That's good to hear about the multiple-monitor support doe.. Can't believe you never saw the audio mixer before PB, you must not be a big multitasker =)

Normally I would wait for a few months to hear what people think of it, but my current computer is owned by my university so for all I know they might be updating their systems and force me to change. Or they might not, until I get a computer that's actually mine I won't have a choice in the matter.
And while the Windows 7 volume mixer is useful, it would be better if there was a way to change which programs use which outputs from the mixer. I've occasionally had problems in the past where a program will use the wrong output and it's not obvious how to change it. For example a program might sometimes play through the speakers instead of the headphones.

That's odd, normally plugging headphones in turns off speakers completely.