Technology, Support, and News Forum

[JabbaPapa Profile]

Hey guys !!

Wow, been kind of busy with a whole bunch of *stuff* (to use the polite term hehehe)

** 2 main desktop PC implosions, + laptops R.I.P. passim

** A Pilgrimage to Compostela (yep -- another one !!)

** Moving (and shaking)

** Switching from being a non-gaming IT enthusiast into a gamer LOL

** A healthy dose of Catholic activism

...

** ... plus the whole great big package of Real Life we each get handed to us by our Good and our Evil Fairy Godmothers ...

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Anyways, simply couldn't *not* comment on W10 @ PROnet

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hmmmmm, for starters, well, I'm running both the W10 Mobile on my Lumia 635, and the latest Fast Track builds (currently the 10130) on my main rig -- still a slightly compromise one, but a LOT less compromise-y than my usual -- 6-core AMD Phenom II, AsRock UEFI mobo, still the sturdy and excellent BeQuiet PSU, 16 GB DDR3 RAM clocked @ about 2133 MhZ IIRC, crappy multimedia nVidia last-generation graphics card, though it's silent with passive cooling (got burnt one time too many with mid-range gamer cards), still no SSD for the system drive but a nice 4 TB HDD job for storage, and my lovely 2560x1080 LG ultrawide display monitor ...

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I've certainly fewer problems with wanting to run it as my Main OS than I did with either the Windows 8 or the 8.1

8.1 is perfectly fine for a business-centric PC in need of a speed boost compared to 7, but it falls short of what the enthusiast or the typical gamer would want, except for the hardcore speed junkies of course.

To compare with the other Betas I've been peripherally or more centrally involved in -- I find it less exciting as such than the promise of the old Longhorn 4074 Alpha of pleasant memory ; less solidly cosy than the Windows 7 Beta ; but greatly superior of course to the Vista and Vista SP1/SP2 Betas ; and just hands down better in every area than the 8.0 & 8.1 versions, both Beta and RTM.

Apps are still very disappointing, as well as the new Store, with many apps just not working, or not working in their old versions, and frequently glitching -- and especially in the W10 Mobile, which on top of that not only has some deep-rooted data formatting glitches (which can force you to end up having to try and clean install Windows on your phone 3-4 times, just to get it up to speed on basic phone functionality), but its Mobile iteration is also clearly being designed for hardware that is yet to be released, or even announced, to the public...

The under-the-hood basics of the full PC/laptop version of the OS, thankfully though, do run as smoothly as you'd hope for, with the occasional Beta weirdness one's come to expect, apart from the odd bad Build hehe, and it's quite clear to me already that I'll shift on from my good trusty old Windows 7 x64 Ultimate onto getting my free upgrade to the Windows 10. (though I'll probably use my second W7 Pro license to upgrade, and keep my W7 Ultimate in dual-boot backup)

Windows 10 doesn't quite get the combination of the better features of W7 with the underlying speed and App-a-bility of W8/8.1 right -- Apps still need a great deal of stabilising, and the pleasing eye candy and overall elegance of W7 is only partially simulated.

Still though, the W10 Start button is "good enough" without any pressing need for a 3rd-party one, nor any correcting regedit or other -- though the alphabetised App/Program/Software list in "All Apps" is pretty annoying in its non-customability -- and most importantly, it's clear that W10 is faster even than W8.1, and it "feels" enough like "real" Windows to be eminently usable as one's Main OS, whether for business, work, gaming, multimedia, or creativity.

... and there are even good, decent desktop gadget solutions for those of us with an excess of IT nostalgia coursing through our veins !!!

[JabbaPapa Profile]

Oh, OneDrive is getting kind of cool now too, though it seriously needs to provide at the very least enough free storage as you'd expect from a free e-mail provider or free image host -- though the easy free storage provided is most certainly a good thing for the more casual user.

My biggest annoyance with OneDrive and W10 is actually that MS provides no solution at all for integrating 3rd party Cloud storage into Explorer.

[shreader]

Yesterday I downloaded & updated the Windows 7 & Windows 8.1 builds (1 of each) to Windows 10 RTM on the Main rig & Test rig 2, no problems, I just used the Microsoft Windows 10 Media Creation tool & it downloaded the data quite fast & also installed it & it took around 1 hour to hit the desktop. The tool will also DL the media to burn to a DVD or put on a flash drive.

I checked the ‘update’ product keys & they were both the same!

Today I tried the update on the Test rig 1 w/ a P5QC MB & a Q6600 CPU.
That wasn’t as easy as on the previous updates as after 2 trys & both times I got a popup that said “This PC can’t run Windows 10”.


I did some BIOS research & found that I had the “Execute Disable Bit” enabled which seemd correct but since it affects the XD feature which is similar to the NX feature, I disabled it, saved & restarted the PC. This time Windows 10 did the upgrade, I used a DVD this time to save time.

I checked the product key again & they matched those from yesterday.
I used Magic Jelly Bean & a .vbs script to find the keys, each turned-up a different key but they did match the others when confirming on the other Win10 updates. The Magic Jelly Bean key last 5 #s matched the command prompt “slmgr /dlv” answer.

[shreader]

Yesterday I did a clean install on the test rig using a Windows 10 (x86) RTM ISO.DVD.
I formatted the updated Win10 (x64) that I copied to a blank partition then installed it & it took 23 minutes from hitting "Next" after formatting to hitting the desktop.
The PC restarted 3x & Win10 asked me for a product key 3x also, I declined every time.
I also skipped entering a PW this time & now Win10 boots to log-in screen then desktop, skipping the lock screen.... I like it.

After letting the OS settled down & restarting the PC I checked if activated in 3 places, incl. command prompt, all said it was activated w/ the previous key from the (copied) Win10 update.

I found that the Windows Photo Viewer doesn't work on my install leaving only the default "Photo" app to view one's screenys, but I did find a .reg hack that fixed that hick-up.

Think I'll keep it.

Edit: Be sure to read the Eula, there are some privacy (spying) concerns being raised.