Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Windows 10 for the First Time

Introduction

 Here's another Tuesday post!

I got a top-of-the-line new laptop (at Walmart...) that I've been delaying for far too long.  My four year old laptop barely runs ONE tab in Chrome.  I've had to revert to the old (original!  From 2006!) gmail settings a few times just to get anything done.

Original author unknown
In the same spirit as OSX for the First Time, here is Windows 10 for the First Time.

Background

As I mentioned before, I've been using MS-DOS / Windows for a long time and was fortunate enough to know enough to avoid Windows ME and Windows Vista.  It's been said that Microsoft gets every third product right (unknown attribution), so after Vista and Windows 8 I have moderate expectations for Windows 10.

First Day

The first day went pretty well.  The initial set-up process was really smooth, it connected to my WiFi and the internet just fine and there were not a whole bunch of updates to download right off of the bat.  I tried using YouTube with the new Edge Browser and it worked OK for the first half-hour, after that there were unforgivable errors (e.g. not being able to click inside of the video box).  I mean, who messes up Clicking these days!  I was not impressed.

Somewhere in there I asked "Cortana" how big my hard drive was... she sent me to Bing... I was, again, not impressed.  Also, it's just a text box.  No pretty face or anything!

Cortana from Halo - Copyright Microsoft
I downloaded Firefox at around the hour mark of "real usage" (e.g. not setup time).  Firefox was able to run video just fine on YouTube with no problems.

Second Day

Second day, I needed to print and scan with my networked printer (hp deskjet 2542 wireless all-in-one printer).  Printing worked great and the default drivers installed flawlessly and "just worked" for printing.  +1 to Microsoft, who is now shooting at 1 win and 2 losses.  Funny thing, the biggest hastle was figuring out how to bring up Notepad... I told Cortana to "Open Notepad" after futzing with the new Windows Button in the lower left and at least that worked.  I'll put that as 1 lose for the Windows Button and one win for Cortana, putting us at 2 wins and 3 losses.

Next up was scanning.  I had to install the custom HP software, which claims to be Windows 10 ready, in order to scan.  It kept being unable to setup the printer... which is already set up.  It said to uninstall the HP printer driver and restart the printer... and was then still unable to setup the printer.  Three hours later I booted up my Windows 8 dinosaur and scanned using that.  Epic fail for device drivers!  It was so frustrating it drove me to drink (a reasonable amount).  Windows 10 is now looking at 2 wins and 4 losses.

Conclusion

Avoid using Edge, peripherals and Cortana and it is working OK.  Microsoft usually has a long time frame in mind when releasing a new OS, so it's usually two years until a new OS is generally usable and Windows 10 looks to be no different.  Keep your old OS so that you can have working 3rd party device driver!  Final judgement 4.4 / 10, compared to the usual Microsoft products 8.0 / 10.

Why do I use Windows?  What's that phrase, devil you know?

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