Windows 10's make or break feature: The Start menu

[UNA Lion]

Linkage.

After taking a three-year hiatus, the Start menu is back in a big way in Windows 10, which Microsoft is set to release on July 29. Clicking the Start button in Windows 10 will provide a gateway to the most important and most-used apps on your PC.

As in every version of Windows from 95 to 7, the Start menu in Windows 10 will be where you access all of your programs, organized alphabetically. It also will have quick links to important items like settings and power.

But like Windows 8, the new Start button will also feature two columns of resizable tiles that update with the latest information about weather, social media messages, sports scores, stock prices, your latest photos and more.

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All our Windows machines (including three Macs with Boot Camp) will be eligible for the free upgrade to Windows 10 in late July.

 

[WizardHawk]

Like it or not, the whole world is updating to 10.

Not really thrilled about this 'Get windows 10' button that appeared on all non domain machines at work. I'd really rather not have our work machines involved in the madness of this roll out and telling dozens of users to not click on the pretty little button is always sketchy.

You just know there are going to be thousands of pissed off people on launch day because of bugs and problems. How many people will have their upgrades go wrong and render their machines corrupted? Happens every roll out so this won't be any different.

 

[UNA Lion]

If it weren't free, I'd likely not be getting the upgrade. Really like Windows 7, which is on all but one of our machines.

Still, think I'll upgrade on only one of the machines when the roll-out occurs, to see how stable it is ... or isn't.

 

[WizardHawk]

We all really won't have a choice to take the free candy at some point. They plan to prematurely bring the end of life to both 7 and 8.1 to close those units and roll all of their resources into the everlasting 10 program.

There won't be an 11, or at least there are no plans to ever grow the nomenclature again. 10 will simply be updated and upgraded ongoing from this point forward. Which of course means regularly breaking things on automatic updates. Fun stuff for us IT folks.

The prices are out for 10 and they are roughly the same as 8. Those who do not have a genuine copy of 7 or 8 will have to pay the full price to get theirs updated before the EOL of those products.

I'll have 10 on my home machines as soon as they roll out just to have that extra time with the release version before I even think about testing them at work. I can afford to have my home machine broken.

 

[HaroldSeattle]

We all really won't have a choice to take the free candy at some point. They plan to prematurely bring the end of life to both 7 and 8.1 to close those units and roll all of their resources into the everlasting 10 program.

There won't be an 11, or at least there are no plans to ever grow the nomenclature again. 10 will simply be updated and upgraded ongoing from this point forward. Which of course means regularly breaking things on automatic updates. Fun stuff for us IT folks.

The prices are out for 10 and they are roughly the same as 8. Those who do not have a genuine copy of 7 or 8 will have to pay the full price to get theirs updated before the EOL of those products.

I'll have 10 on my home machines as soon as they roll out just to have that extra time with the release version before I even think about testing them at work. I can afford to have my home machine broken.

I wait until things get fixed, then upgrade from windows 7, which I think is great.

 

[WizardHawk]

Well 10 is really what 8 should have been to begin with. Just like 7 was what Vista should have been and XP couldn't have come quick enough to erase the bad memory of ME.

Basically, MS has only put out a reasonable OS about every other release. They always rush big epic changes to market way too early and take a few years to get their heads back out of their asses and make it right. Those worried about the jump to 10 really shouldn't with a couple of minor exceptions.

The only people who are really going to be mad about this 'free' upgrade are those using media center features. There will be no such thing as MC in the new line. If you currently play DVD's on your laptop you are going to be shit out of luck. You will have to pay for the software to allow your machine to play DVD's again. 10 won't be quite free for you because of that.

 

[Davis_Mike]

I have a get Windows 10 icon on my laptop & PC now. I "reserved" my copies.

What I want to know is, how will the upgrade effect the programs & data currently on my hard drive? Am I going to have to backup or save all that "stuff". Will many or all of the programs be incompatible with Windows 10. This is the shit that I really don't want to deal with that makes me reluctant to upgrade my systems.

 

[WizardHawk]

Your 'reservation' is really an approval to let it automatically DL and setup the upgrade. It is done through windows update, not like an ISO.

Will it impact your current stuff? Well that's the 64k question isn't it? The short answer is that it shouldn't have an adverse impact on most programs, but impossible to say for sure on everything out there.

This is why I'm not going to accept that reservation on most of my machines. Let others get the first DL's and find all the problems.

 

[Davis_Mike]

Your 'reservation' is really an approval to let it automatically DL and setup the upgrade. It is done through windows update, not like an ISO.

Will it impact your current stuff? Well that's the 64k question isn't it? The short answer is that it shouldn't have an adverse impact on most programs, but impossible to say for sure on everything out there.

This is why I'm not going to accept that reservation on most of my machines. Let others get the first DL's and find all the problems.

I understood the first part. I just want to make sure all my data carries forward. Mainly my work, personal, & family data that is on my hard drives. Over 100+ hours of videos & thousands of pics of my family are on my desktop. Plus all my financial info is there as well. Will I need to buy an external hard drive to back this up?

After my initial post, I did a little research. I found out how to check the compatibility of all my programs & apps, it found no compatibility issues.

I guess I'll look into Microsoft OneDrive to backup a lot of the files.

 

[WizardHawk]

There is zero chance I let MS do a massive OS upgrade on any system I manage without all data being backed up.

The odds are fairly high that nothing will happen to most of the systems going through this, but there will be a few unlucky bastards and I intend to not be among those few.

 

[KansasSooner]

I guess I'll look into Microsoft OneDrive to backup a lot of the files.

Backing up data files is just one thing to do. Before letting the upgrade commence make a system repair disk (found in the Maintenance section of the start menu of Windows 7) and then do a full system image backup (you'll need at least 80-120 GByte drive, internal or external). If the upgrade bricks the PC it is a time saver to use the repair disk and system image backup to get back up and running. Having to start fresh with either 7 or 8.1 would take much longer.

Also like I mentioned in the nightshift thread once 10 is installed there will also be an option to then do a clean install if you do want to start with a "fresh" PC. Though you'll have to reinstall all software afterward.

As cheap as external drives are if you have a lot of data I would look into buying one instead of using the cloud services, it will be faster and more convenient to back up to, plus you can then use it for regular backups after.

 

[KansasSooner]

Sneak peek of Windows 10 build 10136 shows Office 95 running just fine, thank you | PCWorld

Hell, it may seem strange but I know people still running Lotus 97, so maybe this is a good thing.