Windows 9 anyone upgrading?

unkel · 02-10-2014 12:33PM

Had to uninstall and reinstall AMD Catalyst software after upgrading to 10. All working fine now.

Moon54 · 02-10-2014 01:45PM

MS seems to have cleared out a lot of bloat from the previous OS's,
a System Image backup in Windows 10, after installing my usual few applications, is only 12GB.
On windows 7/8/8.1 my system images would be about 25GB-30GB!

unkel · 02-10-2014 01:59PM

Moon54 wrote: »

MS seems to have cleared out a lot of bloat from the previous OS's,
a System Image backup in Windows 10, after installing my usual few applications, is only 12GB.
On windows 7/8/8.1 my system images would be about 25GB-30GB!

You could always (in 7 / 8 / 8.1) cut that down drastically by disabling hibernation and moving the swap file to a different drive

I see no significant difference in free space after my upgrade (and that's after deleting the windows.old directory)

Perhaps you culled out a lot of crap by doing your fresh install

Moon54 · 02-10-2014 02:38PM

Btw, System Image doesn't save the hiberation or swap file data.

It could be the fact I'm testing win 10 on an old x86 laptop and maybe the x64 version is larger as it might need both x86 & x64 versions of files on the drive.
On my x64 PC the C:\Windows folder in Windows 8 is 20GB, on the x86 Laptop Windows 10 the C:\Windows folder is 8GB.

02-10-2014 02:55PM

That's definitely it. 64-bit is much bigger because 64-bit binaries are bigger and it also has the SysWOW64 folder which has 32-bit duplicates of the 64-bit binaries in System32.

Fysh · 02-10-2014 04:32PM

Just got it installed on my test system and had a bit of a poke around. Initial thoughts: it installs nice and quickly, though the hardware requirements look like they'll prevent it being installed on anything more than ~4 years old (I need to poke at it a bit more, but it looks like it just won't install at all on non-EFI systems - at least, when attempting to install it in a Gen1 HyperV VM it wasn't having any of it, though I got as far as the disk selection screen before this became apparent with an error complaining about un supported boot options)

The UI is a nice refinement on 8 (which I'm on record as actually quite liking, once I spent a bit of time getting to grips with it). The new version makes more sense for the desktop, but I suspect it would be a step backward on a tablet - which may be why I've seen rumours about the Modern UI from Windows 8 remaining mandatory on tablets, being optional on desktops and being unavailable on servers in future.

The preinstalled software has improved - OneNote, OneDrive and Skype are all installed out of the box, which hopefully means that Skype will update itself through Windows update (there has been a period of a couple of years where managing Skype updates was an absolute pain because you had to fully uninstall the previous release before installing the new version; I still have a copy of the 2-3 page batch file I had to write to make sure that new versions would reliably install on computers with an old version - and that wasn't an exhaustive version...).

Most exciting to me so far is confirming that it will launch with PowerShell 5, which means even more scripting and automation adventures for me

Overheal · 02-10-2014 06:28PM

I dont really use skype and kinda hate it, but it is one of those things that would be better if more people used it I guess. OneNote needs more attention, good for it.

02-10-2014 09:12PM

The only Skype I see is the Metro version, which is preinstalled in 8.1 anyway. Am I missing something?

Have it installed on my laptop, had no issue with doing a BIOS/MBR install. Set up my flash drive with Diskpart and copied the install files to it. Since I'm used to using the Metro Start screen, it actually feels a bit strange to be using a Start menu again.

unkel · 02-10-2014 09:33PM

Karsini wrote: »

Since I'm used to using the Metro Start screen, it actually feels a bit strange to be using a Start menu again.

I hope that's not a complaint :pac:

Overheal · 03-10-2014 10:39PM

No feedback from anyone yet on Cortana? Is that implemented?

Fysh · 03-10-2014 11:04PM

Karsini wrote: »

The only Skype I see is the Metro version, which is preinstalled in 8.1 anyway. Am I missing something?

Have it installed on my laptop, had no issue with doing a BIOS/MBR install. Set up my flash drive with Diskpart and copied the install files to it. Since I'm used to using the Metro Start screen, it actually feels a bit strange to be using a Start menu again.

I hadn't noticed that the Skype Metro app was preinstalled on 8.1 - I remember having had issues using a non-Microsoft Account in that version anyway so generally install the desktop version straight away.

Good to hear that it's not UEFI-only - that would have been a strange/ballsy move tbh given that it might alienate the existing audience on older hardware.

I know what you mean about getting used to the start screen - even though one of my main machines is still running 7 I'm used to the Start Screen now and I'm not entirely sure I like the reversion. (But then, I never liked the way that the start menu evolved in 7 - I never used any of the pinning functions there, I'd either pin stuff to the taskbar or not at all, so maybe it's just me...)

03-10-2014 11:43PM

Fysh wrote: »

Good to hear that it's not UEFI-only - that would have been a strange/ballsy move tbh given that it might alienate the existing audience on older hardware.

I know what you mean about getting used to the start screen - even though one of my main machines is still running 7 I'm used to the Start Screen now and I'm not entirely sure I like the reversion. (But then, I never liked the way that the start menu evolved in 7 - I never used any of the pinning functions there, I'd either pin stuff to the taskbar or not at all, so maybe it's just me...)

Gong UEFI only would have restricted the OS to Sandy Bridge i3/i5/i7 systems or later. Still plenty of perfectly functional systems dating from before that.

I was kind of the opposite. I thought it was too "Maccy" to use the taskbar as a dock so I pinned nothing to it and used Start for everything. So I just repeated that on the Metro start screen. Worked fine for me so once I adapted to the change it didn't bother me at all. I also have an Acer tablet with full Windows 8.1 so that certainly helped me get to grips with the UI. The Start button feels a bit like I'm going backwards but hey, they're giving people what they want. Plus you can re-enable Metro start if you want to. Windowing the Metro apps is definitely welcomed.

Couldn't find any mention of Cortana, not sure if it's implemented yet.

unkel · 03-10-2014 11:49PM

Fysh wrote: »

the hardware requirements look like they'll prevent it being installed on anything more than ~4 years old

What?

Where did you read that? The requirements seem very basic. Any 10 year old PC with just 1GB or RAM will do.

My own PC, that I upgraded to Windows 10 on October 1st, is 6.5 years old and it's still working fine. I'm still posting from it now

seligehgit · 12-10-2014 08:36PM

For a those of a less tech savvy nature is it easier to install in a dual boot mode with Windows 8.1 or install Windows 10 Technical Preview on Oracle Virtualbox?

Zascar · 12-10-2014 08:59PM

Or just do an upgrade, works pretty well. I;ve been using it as my main OS for a while now and really liking it so far. Very fast and stable. A few apps not working perfectly but thats cause they have not supported it yet. Still very happy with it..

unkel · 12-10-2014 09:11PM

Zascar wrote: »

Or just do an upgrade, works pretty well. I;ve been using it as my main OS for a while now and really liking it so far. Very fast and stable. A few apps not working perfectly but thats cause they have not supported it yet. Still very happy with it..

+1

It doesn't expire for another 6 monts, so basically a free OS. The only program that doesn't work for me is Speccy (Piriform)

doubie · 01-01-2015 08:27AM

Microsoft already announced that there won't be any Windows 9. They jumping to Windows 10 directly.

unkel · 02-01-2015 12:11AM

doubie wrote: »

Microsoft already announced that there won't be any Windows 9. They jumping to Windows 10 directly.

We noticed that 4 months ago

PropJoe10 · 02-01-2015 12:34AM

doubie wrote: »

Microsoft already announced that there won't be any Windows 9. They jumping to Windows 10 directly.

This is brand new information!! :P

Windows 9 anyone upgrading?

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