Following the longed-for release of Windows 10, which hit all laptops and PCs running Windows 7 Home Premium, Windows 8, Windows 8.1 and Windows 8.1 with Bing, I am absolutely delighted to write this article as a way of thanking Microsoft for really nailing the best of both operating systems in one OS.
If you’re on Windows 8, Windows 8.1 or Windows 8.1 with Bing, get ready to relive the nostalgia of the old Windows, as Windows 10 officially brings back the much-loved Start Menu, which has seen a massive upgrade in design. The Windows 10 Start Menu does away with the controversial Windows 8 Start Menu, as many users felt uncomfortable with the Windows 8 Start Menu layout, given that a lot of the main features were moved around.
I personally thought the Windows 8 layout was alright, I didn’t have a problem with it, apart from a few small bugs, but now that Windows 10 is finally here, I will miss the Windows 8 Start Menu layout, but it’s had a good ride. Now that Windows 10 is finally here, I can, for the first time in a long time, relive the nostalgic days of Windows 95, 98, XP, Vista & 7 all in one operating system alone.
Microsoft have taken the best bits of Windows 7 & Windows 8 and put both of them together to create Windows 10, and with the way they’ve done it, they have actually nailed it 100% spot on. I absolutely love Windows 10, as the voice assistant, Cortana, is now a part of the operating system, and for the first time, Microsoft has now given every user the ability to add new desktops while on the same user account, meaning that you can open a new desktop, and use any other software applications that are not on the original desktop.
Microsoft’s successor to Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, is also a part of the release of Windows 10, and I can say that it is perfect, in fact, it’s much better now than Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. I have noticed now when I use Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome that they now seem to slow down a bit more than they did before. Microsoft Edge really has put the icing on top of the cake for Windows 10.
Microsoft Edge debuts with a brand new, and refreshed look, and is also similar to the design aspects of both Mozilla Firefox & Google Chrome, but is efficient for everyday use.
Statistics showed that after Windows 10 was released on the 29th July 2015, 14+ million users have since downloaded and installed Windows 10, due to unprecedented demand. This is an extremely positive outlook for Microsoft, as Windows 10 has been welcomed to mostly positive reviews, despite critics, as they had made sure to iron out all the bugs in Windows 10 before its general release.
Since I upgraded to Windows 10, I’ve not only used Microsoft Edge frequently, but I have found that Microsoft Edge is now a lot faster than Mozilla Firefox & Google Chrome.
As well as this, I have also found that opening software programs are a lot faster now, and not only that, but it’s much quicker now to get to certain parts of the operating system that I couldn’t get to as quick as I did before.
In light of the update, Windows 10 was also released for selected phones that are compatible with the update, and this is useful for Microsoft because they want to make sure that they can get everyone to upgrade to Windows 10, given that Continuity is now an official feature.
Windows 10, since it’s release on the 29th July, has been welcomed to massive positivity across the world, as Microsoft have been tweeting the Twitter hashtags: “#UpgradeYourWorld” and “#DoGreatThings”, which are both encouraging many users around the world to upgrade to the best Windows update yet.
Upon start-up of Windows 10 for the first time ever, you will notice instantly just how much Windows has changed since it was first released on the 20th November 1985. On start-up, the login screen has been given a much needed overhaul, as the user account or user accounts that are on your computer are now located at the bottom left of your computer screen, and to make things a lot quicker to access, the power button is in the bottom right corner, along with other options that you can use on your computer. Also on start-up, your display picture, name and email address will appear straight in the middle of your computer or laptop screen, with the password bar underneath for you to sign in.
It has been confirmed by Microsoft Corporation that Windows 10 is the last major version of Windows, with all of the subsequently important updates being issued in regular installments.
For a limited time, Windows 10 is completely free to download and install as of the 29th July 2015, and the limited time offer comes to an end on the 29th July 2016. If you haven’t yet downloaded and installed Windows 10 on your laptop or PC running Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1 or Windows 8.1 with Bing, then I strongly recommend that you go ahead and install the update whilst you can, because after the 29th July 2016, if you haven’t upgraded to Windows 10, then you will be expected to pay for the Windows 10 Operating System. So please, if you haven’t already, Upgrade Your World of Windows to Windows 10 for your definitive, yet redefined experience.
My final thoughts? This update is fast, reliable and has improved my own way of using Windows altogether, and I have had absolutely no problems with it at all since I downloaded and installed it on my laptop. Microsoft Edge is also fast and reliable, and since I made the jump to Windows 10 and Microsoft Edge, I haven’t looked back since.
If your computer runs Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1 and Windows 8.1 with Bing, please make sure to download and install it now, and if you have the latest version of the Windows Phone, please make sure to download Windows 10 on that as well, as Windows 10 Mobile is now available for Windows Phone.
Speed: 10/10
Microsoft Edge: 10/10
Windows 10: 10/10
Overall Performance: 10/10
Reliability: 10/10
Alex Smithson
© Microsoft Corporation 2015
© The Official Windows 10 Wallpaper, the Windows 10 Logo, the Microsoft Logo and the tagline used in the Featured Image are courtesy of Microsoft Corporation. No Copyright Infringement Intended.
Mother Nature 
Excellent review and observations, Alex. I’ve recently got the free upgrade from Windows 8.1 and it has largely gone without a hitch. It is fast and I like the way they have combined previous versions and although I’m a Google Chrome fan, I do appreciate the speed and no-fuss look of Microsoft Edge.
Vijay
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Thanks so much Vijay, I really appreciate it a lot. I must admit, after installing Windows 10 and using Microsoft Edge, I haven’t looked back and I very rarely use Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox now, now that Microsoft Edge and Windows 10 are here :-).
Alex Smithson
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Hi Alex,
You really seem to be a 100% MS person! 😀
But I must agree in a lot of points… I like Win10 too and I had liked the Start Menu of Win8. That’s why it was one of the first things I did, configure it to look like the Win8 Start 😉 In the 10 it works more flexible, I must say.
I also agree that Edge is indeed faster than Firefox (still my favourite!)… With no plug-ins and extensions to hold it back, no wonder… But I still have to see one of these days how far it will go… And I am still very much in a try-out-mode and there are snags and bugs here and there that still need some ironing out 😉 As I wrote on my blog, that is only to be expected and I am sure fixes will be found.
Thanks for passing by 🙂
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I agree, truth be told though, I decided to restore the HP Stream 11 I purchased back in December last year back to factory settings after I upgraded to Windows 10, because I needed to free up space that I had trouble freeing up despite using the Disk Cleanup tool.
Mozilla Firefox has been okay up until Windows 10, but no wonder Microsoft took all of the time they needed to make sure that Microsoft Edge was much better than Internet Explorer, because Internet Explorer was good, but wasn’t good as to how I wanted it to be.
I’ve never looked back since using Windows 10 & Microsoft Edge. I agree with you though Nil, there are some bugs that still need ironing out. The only two bugs I’ve come across are:
-Microsoft Edge suddenly closes (rare)
– Settings app suddenly closes when you go to Windows Defender (also rare, but can be retriggered if it is pressed when in the Settings app).
Aside from all of that, Windows 10 and Microsoft Edge are perfect for everyday use :-).
Alex Smithson
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Firefox is still ok in Win 10 and is still my default while I carefully walk around in Edge 😉 Well, I have all the time as mostly I am working on the PC till september… By then I hope I will have a better idea what works and what not. Some funny stuff in the mail app too… I have two accounts there. And suddenly, when I minimized the app to do something else first, it switched to the outlook account while in the list the second account was still selected. Only closing the app and opening it again got me back to my mails… Some sync issues too in contacts and in folders… Feedbacked it all to MS… let’s see what comes of it… 🙂
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I’m surprised Firefox works okay for you, I tried to play a video on Firefox recently and it kept going out of sync. I used Edge, and I’ve had no problems as of yet.
I recently managed to get Cortana working on my HP Stream 11 after restoring the laptop to factory settings, though for some reason, I’m trying to find my way around a little bit with the All apps Section. Which features of Windows 10 are you trying to find your way around at the moment Nil :-)?
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I hadn’t tried videos yet – so now I did – and no problem at all in Firefox – nor in Edge…
The big difference between your and my installation is probably that you do have Cortana and here in Belgium we do not have it (yet?)… I still don’t really know what it is supposed to do and didn’t think it a priority to find out as we don’t have it anyway…
I had another go at the mail app and it was again a bit of a fight, really… a feature I am not so happy about… Of course there are alternatives but if it is there, it should work properly… so I sent some feedback. Thunderbird does not work so well, by the way… It keeps on freezing 😦 The first days I have been looking around a lot in all kinds of settings, where to find what if things go wrong… 😉 Next I am going to try out Edge a bit more thoroughly, like internet banking, the federal sites (Belgian) that are not easy to access at all times with all the security and stuff, like scanning the ID card and having the certificate accepted… I’m really curious about those as we use that a lot and in all other browser you need a bunch of plug-ins and extensions which Edge will not take… Some of those won’t even work in Firefox and I need to switch to IE…
And then I will probably try out all my photo software – not to really use on the laptop but to know if I can ever use Win10 on my PC… still enough work, really… 🙂
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I must admit, you’re not wrong, it was mentioned recently on the internet that forced Windows Updates caused endless crash loops for those with NVIDIA Graphics Cards, as a bug caused a number of users running Windows 10 on NVIDIA to experience crash loops instantly. I’ve only just found out now that Microsoft have apparently fixed the bug that caused the endless loops.
My only criticism’s so far, which I didn’t mention in the article are:
– Forced Windows Updates (ultimately taking away the right for users to choose which updates they want to install, and don’t want to install)
– There’s no way of being able to use plug-ins in the Edge Browser, such as Zemanta (the plug-in I regularly use for pinning related articles to the article I’m piecing together)
– Some YouTube videos can be watched without a problem, but when it comes to watching certain videos on YouTube (e.g. Loose Women or ITV’s This Morning), the videos load, but then after a few seconds of watching a video, it buffers, and continues to buffer (a most recently reported problem that everyone has raised by providing Feedback to Microsoft).
– Apparently Microsoft can gather your personal data from Cortana, which is something that has somehow rubbed everyone’s noses out of joint as a result.
– On a very rare occasion, Microsoft Edge sometimes closes without warning.
I’m surprised that Firefox & Videos work okay for you Nil, but truth be told, Microsoft Edge could do with the ability to install add-ons and plug-ins :-).
Alex Smithson
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Up to now Edge certainly is a winner from where I sit 🙂 Whatever I threw at it, it just took it in a stride – and fast… I tried more videos as well on Firefox – no problem here… (?)
NVIDIA always seems to be one step behind with these updates and upgrades… My really very old other laptop had been the chosen one for Win8 when it came out and that one has NVIDIA… And it also has the best screen of all, best colors… But after installing the 8, the card went completely awol. I had a screen with characters looking like something of 20-25 years ago… ough! It took me some searching and being ping-ponged between Acer and NVIDIA till at one of the help sites someone told me where exactly my driver was – what a relief!… It was tucked away somewhere in a very remore corner where apparently only insiders could find it… So I am not surprised that there was again a problem with it… 😀 The laptop with the 10 has an Intel card – by far not as good as NVIDIA – but at least it didn’t chase me around for a driver 😉
Now I understand why we don’t have Cortana… It is against the privacy laws here… and probably in more countries all over Europe… So we will (hopefully) never get it 😉
What I couldn’t get working properly is Snagit… I use that quite a lot but it kept on freezin on me… Guess I’ll have to look for a newer version after a while 😦
Yep, we have no say any more what we want to have updated… I used to be quite specific on that but well… good old times… 😛 But at least we can untick the ‘other MS products’ if we want to…
When you need plug-ins, you will have to revert to IE or FF, I guess… If Edge takes plug-ins, it will become as slow as IE was, a bit top heavy…
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You’re absolutely right, Microsoft Edge is most certainly a winner, though truth be told, there was only one problem that I felt slowed Internet Explorer down more, and that was having toolbars, because I remember installing Google Toolbar once, and every time their Google Instant feature came up whenever I wanted to search for something, it always slowed down, that’s why I made the switch to Chrome, and then to Firefox, before making the jump to Microsoft Edge, because Internet Explorer & toolbars just didn’t seem to go together. Plug-ins would probably be a good thing for the Edge browser, but any developer creating a plug-in would really need to think carefully about the user’s computer space, as well as the computer or laptop’s ability to work with something well without the speed of the browser and computer being compromised as a result.
Snagit is a bit like Adobe Photoshop isn’t it? I hope Microsoft gives us all back the option to untick the unimportant updates that don’t need to be on our systems, and only install the updates that are important and require installing. It’s like they want to take control of how we use our computers, it’s kind of a way of being stalked for information that is personal and private to us, private and personal information of which we wouldn’t want companies like Microsoft to know.
Give credit where it’s due, Microsoft have got it right with Windows 10 and Microsoft Edge, including bringing back the Start Menu, but they have to respect the user’s privacy, and they shouldn’t be allowed to have access to the files of a person’s computer, whether they are private or not. They have been in the news frequently in the past few days as a number of users were angry for their privacy not being respected. Recently, they issued a statement, stating that “Windows does not collect personal information without your consent”. Even if we don’t want them to, they kind of do it anyway.
I hope they can give back what all of us want, because all of us have the right to keep our personal information private, as well as any files that are private as well :-).
Do you think they shouldn’t collect personal information and also have access to private files and folders Nil???
Alex Smithson
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Toolbars are something I try to avoid… no matter which browser, they always slow down things, to begin with… And if you accept them each time, after a while your browser is so filled with toolbars that you hardly have space to see what you are looking for… 😀 No, I am not exaggerating… I really have seen browsers like that… 😀
Snagit something like Photoshop? Ooops! Certainly not!… 😀 It is something like the snipper tool to get screenshots, bits of text, a picture… very practical if you are creating a manual for something, really… you can send your capture straight to your mail, to Word and a few other things… It is also ideal if you are trying to explain a computer problem and you don’t want to type over a long error message and has more possibilities than the snipper tool of adding boxes, text, arrows and such.
Plug-ins… well… Most software creators only think of what their ‘baby’ will do, not where it will be used… and Edge does not seem to need it at all… In Firefox I need 2 different ones for the federal sites and the card reader… Edge just jumps to it with no problem whatsoever and a lot faster too. 🙂 Maybe you should look for alternatives for the ones you are missing? And with time I’m sure the sites you need them for will be updated to work with Edge – or new apps will be created?…
I am still having issues with the mail app and my local email from the internet provider (POP3)… A pity really… but Google is having the same problems on my Android tablet… so, I wonder on which side the problem is… Maybe they will wake up to the 21st century after a while on the provider side?…
And then privacy… of course I don’t like the idea that there is less and less privacy… but it seems to me that whatever you do, the moment you connect to the internet, it is bye-bye privacy anyway… This, of course, is still a step further – and no, I don’t like it… When I look at the privacy settings of the 10, it makes me shiver… And another thing is that by default the 10 has the possibility to communicate updates to/from other machines in your network, just assuming that all will run on Win10… Hey-ho! Can you imagine what might happen if an 8 machine, the 10 and a 7 PC try to update each other? 😀 Those are things that might make Win10 less successful, especially in the business sector – which must be a big chunk of Microsoft customers…
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That’s actually true, on occasions when I wanted to disable a toolbar, for example Google’s, even if I disabled it, it would always come back on after the next log-in, but that was, until I uninstalled it, because it used to make the computer I used to use at the time awfully slow, considering the fact that the computer I used to use ran on Windows Vista, and even that wasn’t as good as I thought to be honest.
Oh, I see, it has that kind of similar appeal after I searched Snagit up, now I know it’s a good program to use, thanks for the heads up on that :-).
The two browsers I can use mainly for Zemanta are Chrome and Firefox, but hopefully they should help me over while Microsoft update Windows 10 over the course of time :-).
There’s an alternative app I once used for emails on Gmail, I don’t know if you know it, but have you heard of Mailbox? That works wonders and is a really good alternative to the Android Mail app.
It’s true what you’ve said though, once your computer or laptop is connected to the internet, that’s your privacy gone. I really like Windows 10 a lot, but if I’m honest, there’s a large line of improvements that Microsoft need to resolve, such as privacy, the ability to install and not install updates, the ability to have personal and private folders not be looked at by Microsoft, and not only that, but they will need to help those install drivers again for their computer or laptop.
Still, Windows 10 has outperformed far better, as it apparently only uses up to 1GB of the computer or laptop’s RAM, which is much better than before, as Windows Vista, 7, 8, 8.1 and 8.1 with Bing often used to be dependent on RAM. It’s much better now than it was before :-).
Alex Smithson
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Realizing this is older…I have been slow to make the leap to Win10 simply for the reasons discussed here. The main one being the privacy issue. I do realize that we cannot the invasion of our privacy regardless, but I read at the total lack of control of it in regards to issues of Microsoft collecting it with 10 and I have avoided.
I was just reading over some TechMags, and I must say that this article covered them as well or better. Great post! I think I am going to go ahead and install. I had no problems with 8, however I did miss 7 and personally always liked Vista. LOL. I also do not like forced installs at all. But, I am reading great things and we cannot hold back progression. (I do have an old boom box, though 😉 )
Thanks for the article.. and great comments…
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I must admit, until I sort of read into it a bit more, I was initially worried as to how they would handle everyone’s personal information. It turns out though that they only have access to your files, even files in private folders, and your personal information, only because they want to personalise your own experience, and your own experience only.
I loved using Windows 7 and 8, because I had no problems with either, but for Windows Vista, I absolutely hated it, because it was always slow and there were quite a lot of occasions where my old computer would have to go off to a repair centre to be repaired due to the motherboard blowing, mainly because the computer’s speed couldn’t keep up with the operating system. The only thing I did like about Vista was the ability to play an old-school PC game that was only meant to be compatible for Windows 98/Me/2000/XP, which worked surprisingly on the old Vista laptop before I made the switch.
You’re very welcome, and thanks for the compliments on this article CC, I really appreciate it :-).
Alex Smithson
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