Windows 10 trial impressions

As all the world (not literally) knows, the newest version of the Windows Desktop operating system Windows 10 (X?) arrives at the end of the month. I've been playing with it since it's early days and throughout the updates and newer iterations of it my feelings haven't changed much.

I think the overall vision for the UI is missing internal design cohesion. My initial feeling was that they've tried to take elements of the Windows 8 menus, and blend them into the Windows 7 (and previous) familiar menu style. I don't like it. It's gaudy and unpleasant and for straight business work it doesn't speed things up at all.

My other gripe with it has been that under a VMware Player install, it only starts up once every 3 or 4 times. That concerns me. What also concerns me is the dumbing down of the control panel. Accessing the stuff in there isn't for everyone, but the people who do want to get into it need access to the internals of the machine. I can't help but compare it to Mac OS X. The new release of that 10.10.4 is out, and although there aren't huge differences, I've been able to migrate my MacBook Air from 10.8 through to 10.10.4 without any difficulties, or needing to learn a whole new GUI.

My final gripe, and I'll keep this bitch session relatively short, is the move towards subscription model licensing for Windows and Office. I'm happy to pay for an OS, or a piece of software. No worries. I'm not happy to have to pay every year for it. Particularly when I use about 1% of what Office is capable of doing *and* I can get all I want out of Google Apps, plus my email and blog and website etc for $5 / user / month! It's not that I don't want to reward the people who've worked so hard on this, but frankly, they get bugger all of the money I pay anyway. If I'm being forced to use some tarted up version of Windows, it had better be good. Windows 8 was rubbish, and we've successfully avoided upgrading most of our clients and home machines. The way Windows 10 forces itself to be know with a "free" upgrade worries me. We all know how wonderful the first iteration or two of an OS are, and I can only begin to imagine the problems we'll have with Windows 10 when it comes out.

By the end of the month I guess we'll know more!