Tuesday, March 19, AD 2024 12:32am

Windows Ten? Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down?

 

My bride has written a review about her experiences upgrading to Windows 10 on her laptop last week:

 I got several “upgrade failed” messages initially while waiting to download & install Windows 10 this week, but eventually succeeded in starting the download & installation process on 7/30 by forcing Windows Update to “check for updates,” even though it claimed there weren’t any available. The download & installation process took about an hour or so, including a couple of system restarts. Afterwards, I found Microsoft’s “Welcome to Windows 10” tutorial pages, which made a very good introduction (but would have been even better supplemented by a parallel series of tutorial videos). The Toshiba laptop with Windows 10 still boots up into a Desktop screen; however, pressing the Start button now brings up something much closer to the old-style Start menu, with an abbreviated and vertically-arranged version of the Window 8/8.1 Start Screen tiles immediately to the right of the Start menu. What looks like a search box just to the right of the Start button is actually how one accesses Cortana (a “kissing cousin” of Siri on iOS devices or Google Voice on Android devices). I’m not really used to using the built-in microphone on laptops yet, but did get the microphone on this Toshiba laptop configured to work with Cortana (I think); in the meantime, one can type questions for Cortana into that search box, or just keywords like an ordinary search window. I’m still getting used to the new Edge browser; I had to import my Favorites from IE, but now have both those and the Favorites Bar I had set up. Edge allows searches directly in the address window (like Google Chrome); I may still compare both Chrome and Firefox with Edge before settling on a preferred browser. Not all programs will run properly immediately after installing Windows 10; f.ex., I had to repair my installation of Bitdefender before it would work, and now have issues with the Bitdefender interface covering required bits of game graphics — so I may have to look into other free AV programs to find one which will “play nice” when other programs are running. (Windows Defender pinch-hits nicely in the meantime, though.) I’m also having issues with the cursor skipping forwards and backwards when I’m typing in a comment box online — but I had that same problem with my previous laptop, too. (Wish it wouldn’t do that, though; it’s very annoying!) Although Windows 8.1 wasn’t as rough a transition from Windows 7 as I had feared, I’m finding even more to like about Windows 10 thus far. Since so many people have signed up for the free upgrade to Windows 10, you may have to wait a bit before you can install it on this laptop yourself — but, on balance, you will probably be well-pleased with the new OS, as I was. I can recommend both Windows 10 and this Toshiba Satellite L55W-C5236 laptop. Great job, Microsoft & Toshiba!

 

Go here to read the rest:  Trailing-edge mom meets leading-edge OS & hardware.  Any of you who are upgrading, let me know how it is going for you in the comboxes.

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Leo
Leo
Sunday, August 2, AD 2015 12:47pm

I upgraded from Windows 7. The upgrade itself worked, but after I booted into Windows 10 none of the programs worked – everything I clicked on just hung, including task manager.

Thankfully, I have Fedora Linux installed on another hard drive. From there, I downloaded the Windows 10 iso, burned it to a dvd, and installed it. Everything is working fine so far except for Cortana, probably because I set the language to UK (real) English and the locale to US. Now it is saying Cortana is disabled by company policy. I don’t feel like trying to fix it.

Now I’m just downloading all my games and other software, which will take a few days.

Barbara Gordon
Barbara Gordon
Sunday, August 2, AD 2015 7:55pm

Re: updates in general: I truly do not understand why “they” need updates when usually they are just trading one set of problems with a different, sometimes worse set. I think it is all some grand scheme to shorten our life with stress/frustration and charge us more money–no matter how much they claim updates are free (at times.)

Foxfier
Admin
Sunday, August 2, AD 2015 8:59pm

Using it on my writing laptop. (AKA, “mommy is going to hide in this while the kids play at McDonald’s” laptop.)

Everything works on my laptop except for (of all things) an addon for an MMO that I didn’t really want on the machine anyways.

Once I uninstalled the Lenovo Junk ™, it’s running rather nicely.

c matt
c matt
Tuesday, August 4, AD 2015 12:00pm

Do we have a choice? Once your PC becomes obsolete (every 4 years or so?) you’ll be getting 10 (or whatever latest version) regardless.

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