Windows 10 upgrade to be 'free' for one year

[techywarrior 688]

My comment about Xbox One support for MKV was in the more general sense. In that with the truly unified OS there would be parity between PC, phone, Xbox.

[Koleckai Silvestri 1150]

Have been using the Windows 10 technical preview for a while now and have to say that it is worthy of an upgrade from Windows 7. They aren't trying to enforce tablet mode on desktops and the OS has a better feel as a whole. OSes should be free in my opinion. Hopefully they all are in the future.

[techywarrior 688]

Been using the Win10 tech previews as well and it's definitely getting there. Win8 was just not finished. It had the tablet part (except for all the settings) but not the new desktop part. Win10 seems much more coherent. You can already see that they have migrated a lot over to the new visual style and everything is becoming an "app". Control Panel is a great example of how the rest will work I am sure.

 

I'm not as against paying for an OS as many others but if MS can get their revenue thru store apps and services it would behoove them to make the OS free to avoid the fragmentation they have experienced since WinXP to Vista failed transition.

[KarterJK 35]

Well, I have been using every version on Windows 10, and i am not impressed at all.  I think it is a mess, build 9926 is the worst to date, with the most amount of bugs.  Currently, you are able to do a registry hack that brings back the Windows 8 Start Screen, and older builds menu.  

 

I have not been able to install media center on the new build though older builds you could.

I have not been able to get any .mkv files to run natively, so am uncertain about that.

 

Personally, I believe Windows Media Center still rules for LiveTV content, and MediaBrowser and ServerWMC enhance that, so hopefully will remain in 10.   Currently, I don't think MS is clever enough to come up with something better, seems all their old school programmers are gone.

 

At this point, I see absolutely nothing that would compel me to switch to 10 (even if it is free)

I don't wish to begin on all the things I dislike about it.

 

I only have 2 hopeful futures with it;

1.  they will toss it and start all over

or 

2.  in a few years, they will simply abandon it, like most everything else they produce, and come up with something different.

Edited February 3, 2015 by KarterJK

[swhitmore 781]

You realise it's a beta right? Bugs are to be expected.

[KarterJK 35]

You realise it's a beta right? Bugs are to be expected.

LOL, yes... but the last build was quite a departure from the first ones, and that is why the reference to the "bugs".

 

I am disheartened with the menu and an (tiled menu).  I think windows 8 was great for tablets, so I was hoping they would have left it and just added a windows 7 menu.  I find the current method slow and difficult to use.

 

But, as you said it is a beta, who knows what the end game will be. 

[techywarrior 688]

We don't know yet if Win10 will have WMC yet or not. WMC failed. There is a tiny percentage of people out of the entire Windows universe using it. The world moved on and things changed. MS is now focusing on the Xbox One being their living room media center. (I'm a WMC user)

 

I'm not sure what your complaints are about the menu in Win10. You know you can remove all the tiles if you want just by right clicking on them and unpinning them right? The whole idea of a start menu is rather antiquated and something MS tried to illustrate with Win8. It failed in the minds of users though. Most people know what program they are going to launch when they click on Start to open the menu. The idea that anyone should scroll through a list to then find that program is slow and silly. The indexing of application names was created in WinXP so that you could instantly start typing the name and launch a program. I'm not sure why people still hunt through a list. Perhaps being an older computer user I am more accustomed to using the keyboard instead of only using a mouse for primary input.

 

At the end of the day Win10 is still a tech preview. It's not even a real beta at this point (although you could make the argument that this latest preview is). There will be bugs. There will be unfinished programs, functionality, and things may/will still change.

 

You are of course under no obligation to upgrade when it comes out but just remember that with anything new there is an adjustment period and learning curve associated with it. Go into the beta/preview with an open mind and use it the way they want you to. Give it time to become familiar and then decide if you like it or not.

[gthrift 57]

I tried it and immediately rolled back to my 8.1 install.  I use the Windows key and just start typing to open a lot of programs and apps.  When doing it 10 it was hit or miss and using the windows key and then typing a network path was a complete miss.  If I can't type a network path and access it immediately through the search it's a deal breaker considering how much I use it.

[techywarrior 688]

Was that with the latest preview? I found that once they added Cortana into this latest preview my Win key search did become a little more erratic and slower as Cortana was now involved. Since Cortana was just added I am assuming that it's going to be tweaked a lot before release. I know that MS have been a big proponent of using search to find/launch programs so I would imagine they won't want to make it worse.

 

Never tried the network path search. I'm going to try that this evening and compare to my Win8.1 machine. Lol, for some reason I always launch explorer and either type in the network path or click to it. Not sure why I didn't even think of using search.

[KarterJK 35]

We don't know yet if Win10 will have WMC yet or not. WMC failed. There is a tiny percentage of people out of the entire Windows universe using it. The world moved on and things changed. MS is now focusing on the Xbox One being their living room media center. (I'm a WMC user)

 

I'm not sure what your complaints are about the menu in Win10. You know you can remove all the tiles if you want just by right clicking on them and unpinning them right? The whole idea of a start menu is rather antiquated and something MS tried to illustrate with Win8. It failed in the minds of users though. Most people know what program they are going to launch when they click on Start to open the menu. The idea that anyone should scroll through a list to then find that program is slow and silly. The indexing of application names was created in WinXP so that you could instantly start typing the name and launch a program. I'm not sure why people still hunt through a list. Perhaps being an older computer user I am more accustomed to using the keyboard instead of only using a mouse for primary input.

 

At the end of the day Win10 is still a tech preview. It's not even a real beta at this point (although you could make the argument that this latest preview is). There will be bugs. There will be unfinished programs, functionality, and things may/will still change.

 

You are of course under no obligation to upgrade when it comes out but just remember that with anything new there is an adjustment period and learning curve associated with it. Go into the beta/preview with an open mind and use it the way they want you to. Give it time to become familiar and then decide if you like it or not.

If you like it, use it

I am not fond of it, I have Windows 7, 8, 8.1 I don't need Windows 10, I also doubt it will have WMC, which is a game breaker for our household.

 

We have 7 HDTV's, attached to PC's (they are our monitors), then we use Silicondust HDHomerun Prime tuners and Windows Media Center for all of our LiveTV connections.   It saves us $5-$60 US dollars a month, instead of renting set top boxes from Comcast, and we get a higher quaiity picture.

[jhoff80 87]

Personally, I find that Windows 10 has ruined tablet mode (so far at least), and by extension they've also ruined the way I set up my main HTPC, which uses the 8.1 start screen as its main launcher.  If I upgrade the HTPC, it'll only be so I get DX12 support (as that's used for gaming too).  As far as tablet use, if it doesn't improve drastically, my Surface is most likely going to stay on 8.1 as long as possible.  I mean, I've used XP Tablet Edition/Vista/7 on tablets, and I am very much against returning to that style of desktop and taskbar-based interface like 10 is doing.

[techywarrior 688]

Personally, I find that Windows 10 has ruined tablet mode (so far at least), and by extension they've also ruined the way I set up my main HTPC, which uses the 8.1 start screen as its main launcher. 

 

Click the maximize icon in the top right of the start menu in the newest preview builds of Win10 and it will switch to a full screen start screen. It should stay that way until you click to minimize. So if you enlarge it once I believe it will always stay like that.

 

Also, you may be able to just turn on tablet mode (I've only been doing light testing in a VM on my laptop so I don't know if it is there on desktop)

[Deihmos 154]

Microsoft does not seem to know what they are doing lately. So many products released then abandoned or the product was botched. Windows 8, Vista, Zune, MS Kin, Kinect, Windows Phone 7 and even the Xbox One with their DRM announcement. I refuse to invest in a Windows Phone for several reasons.

 

They released Windows 8 that booted to a touch screen interface and was very touch screen focused then kept updating it because of complaints. I thought they finally got it right with Win 8.1. It works well on tablet and desktop but they needed to disable some of those gestures by default. Now they are releasing Windows 10 with a different UI that might work well on the desktop but really sucks on tablet. Hopefully they can get it right before release.

 

I can guarantee that Win 10 will have WMC.

Edited February 4, 2015 by Deihmos

[techywarrior 688]

How is Win10's UI worse for tablets? You still have the start screen, still have the charms menu, still have the same apps as before. And it seems like they are updating a lot of the older Windows functions/programs to be more touch friendly.

 

I don't see Win10 being that big of a departure from Win8.1. There are more concessions for desktop use but tablet hasn't changed that much.

 

I was disappointed that MS caved on Xbox One's always on DRM. It would sort of suck to not be able to trade in games but I liked the idea that you could share games with your "family" of 5.

 

Kinect didn't take off because people didn't use it. The technology just isn't there yet. Also, developers slapping in motion control where it doesn't have a direct benefit hurts consumer confidence in the tech.

 

I'll probably not upgrade my HTPC machine from Win7 unless I don't have to pay $100 for WMC (upgrade to Pro, then upgrade to WMC) but I'll upgrade my other 5 computers to Win10.

[Deihmos 154]

Windows 10 is like using Windows 7 on a tablet. Gone are the tablet optimized gestures such as swiping to go back a page in and switching apps. There is a taskbar in tablet mode. Windows 8.1 is great on tablets but I cannot say the same for 10. There are lots of people complaining so hopefully Microsoft listens for once.

I take it you don't have a Windows tablet?

Edited February 4, 2015 by Deihmos

[techywarrior 688]

So far MS has been listening a lot so we shall see what happens by the time Win10 is released. I wouldn't worry about IE just yet since I am sure the version of IE they expect to be used in tablet mode is IE Edge (or whatever it will be called) and that isn't available yet.

 

I have a two in one that I used for testing but Win10 is in a VM on the machine so it's not super fast/responsive (but good enough for testing).

 

I just tried the gestures and the charm menu is gone but switching apps is just as easy as before. Instead of it being the small thumbnails it's the larger ones same as Win-Tab (which I think is fine since you need the virtual desktop options with touch as well).

 

My VM is on a 13" screen and everything with touch was very usable. Not sure how well it will work on a smaller 8" tablet or something like that though.

[jhoff80 87]

Click the maximize icon in the top right of the start menu in the newest preview builds of Win10 and it will switch to a full screen start screen. It should stay that way until you click to minimize. So if you enlarge it once I believe it will always stay like that.

 

Also, you may be able to just turn on tablet mode (I've only been doing light testing in a VM on my laptop so I don't know if it is there on desktop)

I'm talking about with the explicit tablet mode (continuum) turned on.  This mode automatically maximizes the start screen.  It's just a huge step back with touch, akin to using a Windows 7 tablet (which itself dates back to pretty much be identical to Vista and XP Tablet Edition).  They pretty much destroyed it for the sake of appeasing desktop users.  There's still time of course, but the direction they've shown so far is really bad.

 

Anyway, to get back to more relevant stuff for this site, the fullscreen start streen still keeps the Windows 7-like text entries on the left side, and that's just not at all suitable for use on my HTPC.  The Windows 8 layout works far better, it's practically designed for use with a remote.  Like I said, I'll only be updating that PC for DX12 support (as my main HTPC is also my gaming PC).  And that's of course assuming WMC support remains.  Otherwise I'll have to rethink my whole setup, as I still do need live TV (including all of my premium channels) to be distributed to extenders.

Edited February 4, 2015 by jhoff80

[trooper11 63]

I would caution people that are jumping all over MS for ruining the tablet experience to hold on for a bit longer.

 

MS made it pretty clear at the last live event that they still had a lot of work to do UI wise for Win 10.  The entire touch experience has yet to be shown off for tablets beyond some mention of continuum. 

 

I also use Win 8.1 on my htpc because the start screen is the perfect media dashboard, so I'm certainly invested in seeing a similar UI for Win 10.  I'm just not jumping down their throats yet because they made it clear what we see now is not a finished product UI wise.

[donblitz 0]

running media browser theater on win 10 with few problems

[TolkienBard 54]

If MS can get Win 10 right, or at least mostly right (there are always a few quirks at first), I'll be taking the plunge and shifting every machine in the house over to Win 10, including the Win 7 box that has WMC on it.So far I have found that everything I have tried has worked fairly well. Search bar got a bit laggy recently, but since it was working well before, I have faith it will be smoothed out again by the time the release client is out.

 

The only thing keeping me from testing it out on m MB 3 server right now, is that I'm not sure whether or not my FlexRAID array would appreciate the OS change, and I'm not ready to plop more money down for another FlexRAID license. As it is, if I had it to do all over again, I would probably be using a different drive pooler and software RAID package.

[techywarrior 688]

Interesting article on Anandtech taking a preview look at DX12.

 

http://anandtech.com/show/8962/the-directx-12-performance-preview-amd-nvidia-star-swarm

 

a couple of things I took away from the article.

 

1. AMD's DX11 drivers apparently suck big ones
2. DX12 is most likely going to kick ass. (even the high level version)
3. thread 3 and 4 on my CPU are finally going to get some actual usage outside of zip/unzip and h264 encoding

They don't seem to have a lot of information yet (apparently MS is going to talk a lot more about DX 12 at GDC, which makes sense) and of course the DX12 API and video card drivers are still really early on but it's looking pretty impressive so far.

[dark_slayer 103]

 

• AMD's DX11 drivers apparently suck big ones

Fixed that for you

[techywarrior 688]

lol, well if you read the article you will see that the DX12 drivers for NVidia and AMD are pretty close based on the comparable products FPS.

 

It's just crazy when you look at the performance delta between DX11 and DX12 for NVidia and AMD. NVidia goes up like

200% and AMD goes up 500%. AMD left a lot on the table in their DX11 drivers for it to be that big.

 

I know AMD/ATI has had a long history of sub-par drivers but as someone who has used all of the major chipsets over the years I'll say that AMD drivers have been a lot better over the last few years then they had in the past.

[tman 47]

Microsoft does not seem to know what they are doing lately. So many products released then abandoned or the product was botched. Windows 8, Vista, Zune, MS Kin, Kinect, Windows Phone 7 and even the Xbox One with their DRM announcement. I refuse to invest in a Windows Phone for several reasons.

 

They released Windows 8 that booted to a touch screen interface and was very touch screen focused then kept updating it because of complaints. I thought they finally got it right with Win 8.1. It works well on tablet and desktop but they needed to disable some of those gestures by default. Now they are releasing Windows 10 with a different UI that might work well on the desktop but really sucks on tablet. Hopefully they can get it right before release.

 

I can guarantee that Win 10 will have WMC.

 

How can you guarantee that Win10 will have WMC? The early releases of 10 were just a new UI running on a Win8.1 kernel, so WMC was still available. Once MS move everything up to a full 10 kernel, I can see it disappearing. If you want WMC, stay with 7 or 8.1. Saying that, the 'free' upgrade offer for the first 12 months is only to get as many people to upgrade as possible - that's all. Just so MS can crow about how successful 10 is (and they do need a successful launch this time). WMC is a dead product as far as MS are concerned. They haven't really done any real development on it since 2009 when 7 was launched.

 

What I'd actually like to see is a new Universal app 'Media Center Hub' if you like, that would work on all Windows 10 devices. Live TV, guide, streaming, local media playback, 4k support with MKV/FLAC support. They could easily do it, but this push to the XB1 is wrong. I don't want an XB1, I'm not going to buy one, so if WMC dies, and there's nothing to replace it, I'm staying where I am, likely until MB3 naturally evolves into a viable replacement.

 

Finally, my thoughts on HoloLens is, yes, nice demo, but it's way off being a reality. MS had to drum up as much interest as possible during their announcement a couple of weeks ago. With the HoloLens, they were just showboating. Suddenly, it appears MS have their mojo back and are innovating again,  but that HoloLens pre-made video was just laughable. Maybe, possibly one day in 5 years or so it might be able to acheive part of what they 'made up', but the rest was just total fake.

Edited February 7, 2015 by tman

[ebr 15282]

They haven't really done any real development on it since 2009 when 7 was launched.

 

And they didn't even finish that.  There are some API features that the documentation wasn't even finished on and some that weren't implemented fully.  I think the decision to abandon WMC came during the Win 7 development cycle and they just basically dismantled the team right then.