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Inspired by the Windows 8.1 experience thread, we have put together a Windows 10 satisfactory poll.

Vote!

Leave your comments below.

Some facts:

Disclaimer: I only installed it in a virtual machine. Not on actual hardware yet.

 

Installation was fast. No problems here.

Compatibility: The software I've thrown at it thus far all worked. As for hardware compatibility - I'll report when I get to install it on a dedicated machine.

Features: 3/5 at this stage. I'm eagerly awaiting whatever features MS are going to add to Windows 10.

 

All in all it is a huge step in the right direction.

I tried it on a junk computer that is nothing fantastic. Gave it a 3 on all matters as it's just an OS that does do what it's supposed to do, so far. :)

 

Still not even beginning to think of dumping my Windows 7 though, even if this was a final release.

 

Wasn't impressed with Windows 8 and this version doesn't blow my hair back any more than that did.

  • Like 3

i give it a 2 out of 5 on everything. had big compatibility problems with a game, the first time i boot the startmenu looked weird and small, i don't like nor understand the keylogger they have implemented.

on the plus side i like the themes.

Installation was excellent in Virtualbox. Very quick, and I love the fact that it let me import settings from another system - I had the Start Screen on first boot!

 

Compatibility - good so far, but I haven't tried pushing the envelope. My monitor is stuck at old-school screen ratio rather than widescreen, but so is my virtual Win7 setup. I think that's a problem with my Virtualbox setup rather than the OS.

 

Features - decent for the desktop-oriented. If I didn't love 8 and Metro I'd probably be much happier; as it is I think its decent, if a little retro.

 

Opinion to be revised once I see how the Modern side looks. Hopefully "everything runs in little boxes" will just be one option rather than the only option. Lots of windows are useful sometimes, but I don't need that capability all the time. Sometimes a clean, full-screen UI - Modern - is more efficient. and I want the option for both.

  • Like 2

Used an old test system to toy with it. Installation was quick and painless, no complaints or surprises. 5 for me.

Compatibility -- only tried a few things with it so far, everything worked. Couple applications, couple games. Didn't test too much but what I did test worked, so *shrug* 4.

Features -- this build isn't really isn't showing off a lot of new features yet besides the obvious, that comes later. What I did see was pretty decent but a little rough yet, sure it'll be vastly improved down the road. 3/5 for now. More curious about the CP next year.

Still got a long way to go, but definitely liking where it's going. Performance was surprisingly good considering the POS I got it running on, running smoother than my previous 7 and KDE installs on it. The start menu may be the first one I keep since the 2K days, I've replaced each and every one since XP. No interest in virtual desktops but nice to see it baked in versus third party. Visually *shrug* I've yet to find any OS that I was happy with out of the box, always replace the look anyway so don't care. But all in all, if the current trend continues, Microsoft is going to have a killer release this time around.

Install - Upgraded from 8.1, took forever but that seems to be a constant. I was expecting it to.

Compatibility - Zero issues except Dragon's Lair. The UI doesn't redraw properly when changing screen modes.

Features - Getting there, but awkward. I expect there will be many fixes and improvements over the next few months.

 

Seems snappy!

  • Installation (5/5): I experienced absolutely no issues during the upgrade from Windows 8.1 to the Windows Technical Preview. Applications, drivers, and et cetera worked flawlessly on real hardware?a Dell Inspiron 1525 circa 2008.

     

  • Compatibility (5/5): As mentioned above I experienced no issues with application compatibility. Applications that I use on a daily basis, such as Pale Moon, work flawlessly; my bookmarks and settings were retained after the upgrade.

     

  • Features: (3/5): I had originally wanted to give this a 2/5, but seeing the features in the Technical Preview gives me hope that they will improve and that Microsoft is listening. I was honestly quite surprised that the Previous Versions tab was reinstated, and the Empty Recycle Bin option on the context menu of the Recycle Bin shows that Microsoft is paying attention to detail. Perhaps more importantly, the option to use either the Start menu or the Start screen shows consideration for users of the software.

    With that said, I do hope for other features, including Interactive Live Tiles, additional improvements to the Start screen, and additional improvements to notifications.

Install (3/5): Upgraded from 8.1. Took a while for it to initially start but after the compatibility(?) check it worked flawlessly

 

Compatibility (5/5): Games I've tried work fine (Mordor, Injustice, Dota), Crossfire works and so does the usual Office suite

 

Features (3/5): I enjoy the multitasking improvements as I use a 34" LG monitor and having apps snapable to corners now is a good change. Start menu is also a welcome improvement.

 

 

I have found that using Windows 10 I've changed my desktop habits. Gone are application grouping on the taskbar, the size has been reduced to small and I'm starting to treat Win10 with an old school flair. I have encountered one issue however, I'm unable to enter text into the start menu (WinKey -> Type) and when i do, it closes the start menu and inputs the key onto the desktop or currently running app. Apart from that, Windows 10 is quite the upgrade to 8.1. I'm using it on my main machine as I don't have any sensitive data or anything I care about losing and for the things that I do, it's all backed up. And as a main system, it seems quite readily stable.

Installation: 5/5

Compatibility: 5/5

Features: 5/5

 

 

One question that wasn't asked: Stability, and here's where I would vote 2/5. I know it's just an alpha, but I've found it less than stable to use day to day.

Installation (every which way) has been flawless - two bare-metal installs (dual-boot with 8.1 on my mini-tower, and replacing 8.1 on my refurb notebook) and two VMs (Oracle VB and Hyper-V).  Except for two MMOs, everything works as good as - or better than - 8.1 update 1 - which says a great deal as THAT OS's underpinnings, the Windows 8 Developer Preview, was the previous alpha/beta backward-compatibility champ as far as Windows went.  Origin (EA's download service) and Steam (Valve's similar service) both work swimmingly - so much for Microsoft sniping at the competition.  If it weren't for the MMOs, the Technical Preview would have run the table.

Running it on my main machine, upgraded my 8.1 installation, yeah yeah, I know it's not recommended, but hey I made a full image of my system in case I don't like it or if I want to go back at anytime, I'm just a few clicks away, but so far I'm liking it, very fast and responsive, love the new features and animations, the new Start is growing on me, I was already getting very used to the Start Screen.

I installed on my main work PC, because im fine with rebuilding if need. Im expecting a lot of our clients to want it shortly after it is released.

 

So far everything is going fine except the below.

When I snap an rdp window to the top of the screen it doesnt maximize properly, it has scroll bars on the side and bottom but if you select the maximize button it works fine, This is a small thing but is infuriating since i do it without thinking.

The default settings for text size in command prompt needs to be changed, too hard to read.

AV not working, but not an OS issue.

 

But apart from the above grips which are small things, im liking it, but on the UI side its not like its massively different, just small things here and there.

Kids Windows install died, so installed fresh on it

Install was fast

 

Steam works, Chrome works, kid's happy, running steam in compatibility mode because a few Team Fortress serves gave VAC errors, not sure if Windows or Steam

 

 

And yes all he does is play TF2 and browse the net, nothing fancy so it's fine, not concerned over MSs so called "keylogger" he understands the implications and does all his important stuff on his phone 

 

One small issue was getting the Nvidia drivers to install, but a reboot fixed that 

 

Interesting thing I noticed, it's installed an a HP form a couple of years ago, somehow it self installed the Beats sound manager, we didn't manually install it, heck I forgot about that thing completely 

My main pet hate is that we can't change the taskbar-pinned File Explorer to start directly in "My Computer" ("This PC").

 

The old change target to %windir%\explorer.exe ::{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D} no longer works because the "Target" is greyed out.

 

Something so simple, how on earth can they not have an option for this?

Installation:

Tried using the upgrade feature twice but each time it rolled backed to my previous Windows 8.1 installation. In the end I had to delete the partition and do a clean install.

4/5

 

Compatibility:

Haven't had any problems so far. Everything I've tried works as normal.

5/5

 

Features:

What features? The Mini Start is nice but nothing anyone would upgrade for; the new Alt-Tab is nice but not important, while the multiple desktops are only really useful for production systems; running Metro apps in a window is an improvement but it should have been that way to start with; the new 'Home' view in Explorer is unnecessary when I'd rather boot straight into 'This PC'. As it stands Windows 10 is easily the best version of Windows but there is no reason to upgrade to it from Windows 7 or 8.1.

2/5

As it stands Windows 10 is easily the best version of Windows but there is no reason to upgrade to it from Windows 7 or 8.1.

I get it that there is no reason to upgrading from Windows 8.1 to 10 as there are only arround 5 new features at this moment, but that will change in the future. But no reason to upgrade from Windows 7 to 10? There are a ton of new features, major improvements, etc between those 2. USB3 support, better performance, major security improvements, new Task Manager, major update to Windows Update, new Explorer, etc.

I get it that there is no reason to upgrading from Windows 8.1 to 10 as there are only arround 5 new features at this moment, but that will change in the future. But no reason to upgrade from Windows 7 to 10? There are a ton of new features, major improvements, etc between those 2. USB3 support, better performance, major security improvements, new Task Manager, major update to Windows Update, new Explorer, etc.

Don't get me wrong, I thought Windows 8 was enough of an upgrade from Windows 7 to put up with the annoyances but right now Windows 10 is basically Windows 8 with the Mini Start. If people didn't upgrade to Windows 8 then I don't see why they'd upgrade to Windows 10, unless the upgrade is extremely cheap or free.

 

That said, I'm assuming that Microsoft is keeping the biggest features under wraps as right now it's basically Windows 8.2.

That said, I'm assuming that Microsoft is keeping the biggest features under wraps as right now it's basically Windows 8.2.

This isn't a secret. Right now, Windows 10 only has 10% of its planned feature set implemented, according to Tom Warren. You'll get most of that when Microsoft reveals the consumer features later next year.

This isn't a secret. Right now, Windows 10 only has 10% of its planned feature set implemented, according to Tom Warren. You'll get most of that when Microsoft reveals the consumer features later next year.

Exactly. It will be really interesting to see how Windows 10 shapes up when we get a better idea of the feature set.

This topic is now closed to further replies.
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Setup BIOS The F4-425 Pro includes an Aptio BIOS from American Megatrends [1, 2], and you can setup pretty much everything here including the boot order, which is locked to the UEFI OS, however above that choice you can enable or disable booting to the USB bootloader so this would still allow you to switch to a USB stick with an alternative bootloader and boot from it, or disable it to instead always start from the first disk with an OS installed on it. Initial Setup Setup is roughly the same as the F4-425 Plus, along with the new TOS 7 setup dialogs, so there will be no surprises here. Upon connecting to the LAN and booting up, the F4-425 Pro can be reached by navigating to http://tnas.local. If that doesn't work, you can use the local address assigned via DHCP, which you can find using the TNAS PC desktop application, which is essentially a TerraMaster NAS finder. The setup process is pretty straightforward, through a wizard, and in full below: TOS 7 Initialization As you can see, TOS 7 received a new coat of paint, and the initialization requires fewer interactions. Happily, TOS no longer decides to throw all disks into the same Storage Pool; 2.5-inch HDDs are allocated into Storage Pool 1. This is because two of the HDDs are allocated to hold system files. Previously (with TOS 5 and 6), if you pre-installed HDDs and SSDs, they were all placed into Storage Pool 1, even if you did not select the SSDs for inclusion during the onboarding. TOS 7 Setup On first boot, there is a tutorial and some steps to take to harden the TNAS (or not), which includes an immediate update from TOS 7.0.0616 to 7.0.0706, of which the changelog screenshot is also included in the above gallery. 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The app is evolving all the time and has made leaps and bounds since I first started reviewing TerraMaster devices almost three years ago. It is not quite there yet if you are comparing the likes of Synology, which, sadly, a lot of users online do all the time. OpenClaw setup One of the main selling points of the new F4-425 Pro is the inclusion of OpenClaw, with TerraMaster claiming that it is "powered by the world's first AI-native TOS 7 OS, supporting local-first smart workflows and independent data control." However, I immediately ran into problems trying to enable OpenClaw. After waiting 20 minutes at the "Enabling" message of the OpenClaw app following installation, I decided to do some searching online and discovered that it couldn't complete the installation process due to SPC being enabled, which is something TOS 7 immediately recommends to be enabled on first boot. SPC for NAS (TOS 7) is basically the same principle as UAC in Windows; it blocks executables from being launched by non-Super Users. After reaching out to my contact about these issues, I received the following response: Anyway, this only became clear when I closed the OpenClaw app screen and clicked on the OpenClaw icon in the taskbar; that is when I saw the message about disabling SPC. I think, due to the fact that this is a requirement, this should be a prompt during the installation process, not when closing the App Market and then trying to launch OpenClaw. There's also no 'Getting started' guide for people like me who have never used OpenClaw. I tried to add an LLM and discovered the tutorial led nowhere. That's when I started looking around the official TerraMaster forums, and I found a guide that helpfully explains that you won't get anywhere with OpenClaw unless you have a paid plan, which is disappointing because I imagined there would be an option to use a local LLM as I do in SubtitleEdit with Whisper-XXL. In addition, with the marketing imagery on the official site, it says that the OpenClaw feature is "all processed 100% locally for absolute privacy." which led me to believe that I could install a local LLM, not one that required paid tokens. In any case, TerraMaster does not provide guidance for this new feature, which was also a selling point of the F4-425 Pro! My contact also provided clarification about the above points I raised with TerraMaster Since it is not in the scope of the review to add paid services, I'll leave that to the people who are more qualified with OpenClaw. F4-425 Pro Surveillance App TOS also comes with a Surveillance app, which is not installed by default; it can be found in the App Market recommended section. In addition, after installing, it doesn't drop a shortcut on the Desktop or top taskbar, but you can "Send to Desktop" from the App Market listing for the app for a quick way to open it. Adding my Reolink POE doorbell camera was painless. TerraMaster doesn't appear to have a repository of preconfigured cameras; instead, the camera must be added using ONVIF or RTSP. No mobile Surveillance app TerraMaster still doesn't have a dedicated Surveillance app, although from searching online, Surveillance can be used and managed through the TNAS mobile app. I tried this with the updated TNAS mobile app beta in combination with TOS 7 and got a message that Surveillance was "Only accessible through web browser," so I reckon this must be limited to the stable versions of TOS 6 and the mobile app. More quirks In addition, whenever I minimized the Live View window in the browser Surveillance app, the feed appeared to switch to the Low-bandwidth stream, and there was no way to get the High-quality stream back. To get the High-quality stream back, I had to close Live View and then reopen it. Benchmarking A pretty cool feature of the TOS 7 is that it allows you to install directly to the NVMe M.2 SSD. In order to do that, you would have to leave out any HDDs during initialization, and even then, the system partitions are always written to two HDDs when they are eventually added. With three NVMe slots, this also gives an interesting scenario where you could build a TRAID storage Pool for installing all your apps and Docker on, and keep the third for SSD cache on the HDD pool. Limitless options! SATA PCIe 3.0 X1 A CrystalDiskMark test on a mapped network drive from within a Windows 11 25H2 PC (image above) connected over a 5 GbE hub was well within acceptable ranges. Although the read result on SATA was a little less than with the F4-425 Plus, for some reason, while writes were generally better. SATA PCIe 3.0 X1 I also ran the NAS Performance tester, which tests the link speed performance. As you can see, it pretty much maxes out the 5GbE connection. Of course, you can also opt to bond the two 5 GbE connections for a bit more umph, but I didn't do that. TOS 7, which, as of testing, is still in Beta, comes with an App Center that has a bunch of handy programs you can install right off the bat, such as Emby, Plex, Docker, as well as in-house Backup and Surveillance solutions. As you can imagine, any media streaming services you would want to host off the F4-425 Pro will work great, thanks to the Intel Core N350 CPU and its 16 GB of DDR5 memory. Accessing from mobile is only possible if Security Isolation Mode is disabled, which can put your NAS at risk from external sources, so there was no way to access it from the TNAS Mobile app. It's also quiet. I had this sat next to my computer on my work desk for the past week, and I did wonder if the noise I was accustomed to with NAS devices would annoy me, but all I could hear was a soft whirring of the rear fan (which was a little annoying) when the disks were not actively copying or reading data. Conclusion So what have I learned? Unfortunately, this release raises a few important questions and concerns that I feel haven't been adequately addressed. What I didn't like Our variant shipped with TOS 7 beta, and it's advised not to use it in a production environment. I feel that's a bit limiting on an $800 device. The mobile app is also still in beta and does not support some of the first-party apps, like Surveillance, and it still has quite a few bugs. I am a bit confused about the OpenClaw marketing along with the F4-425 Pro. I feel like that if it's going to be a main selling point, then offer official guidance on how to get started with it. TerraMaster recommends enabling SPC, but then markets the NAS for use with OpenClaw, which requires disabling SPC to be able to use it, opening up genuine security concerns for the NAS; and that's before you get into the security concerns of OpenClaw itself. Of course, the above issues won't be a problem if you decide to install something else on it, or even go back to the stable TOS 6. I wish TerraMaster had just given TOS 7 as opt-in rather than shipping with it. TOS 7 has been available as a preview since December 2025 (so well before my last TerraMaster review), and according to a thread on Reddit where a user shared a screenshot from the TerraMaster Facebook page, it is scheduled to launch today, June 23, but there's nothing about that in the TerraMaster news blog. My contact confirmed over email that TOS 7 exits beta today. The rubber feet also deserve a mention as they continue to be a problem, with them coming unstuck the moment you shift the F4-425 Pro anywhere on your desk. What I liked What it comes down to, though, aside from what I already mentioned, you are still getting a quality, affordable device here, so recommending it will depend on the individual's use case. If you're just looking for a relatively small NAS device to manage virtual machines on, backup your files, and take care of your home theater streaming, then it is a great device that will certainly futureproof you for some time. It provides good performance, takes up little space, and is, on the whole, very quiet. Four bays afford proper redundancy using TRAID or RAID 5, and you can even expand on storage capacity by adding the 2-bay D5, or 4-bay D8 Hybrid DAS over a USB 3.2 (10Gbps) link. Considering the 2024 releases were more about power, with the likes of an Intel Core i5-1235U high-end laptop CPU under the hood, I asked my contact last time if we could expect more of the same in higher-end models and was told: It makes a lot of sense to use Intel's N350 chip inside a NAS; it is more than capable of doing what the F4-425 Pro is intended for, media streaming and backup. The only downside is still the clear lack of community and even staff support on the official forums. In the past, I have had topics go unanswered for days, or there would be generic-type "we've noted this and passed it onto our developer team" type responses. Along with the other things I mentioned, it all ends up costing it a couple of points. If you are comfortable with the command line, Docker, and setting up TrueNAS or Unraid, you'll be fine. You can do great things with this hardware. In TOS, the apps are a bit lacking, and things don't always work as expected.\ AI NAS?! What has become clear to me this year is that we are going to start seeing all kinds of "AI NAS" come to market, and while that might be good for us consumers, be diligent and research these claims. Although the F4-425 Pro technically comes with AI, it is really using a cloud service that is externally sourced off-device through the third party OpenClaw app. My colleague did review a newcomer to the NAS space earlier this year, and it includes a local AI assistant inside the Zettlab D4 NAS, and they do not even use AI in the product name, check out Chris' review here. Where to buy and a discount coupon However, it does not change the fact that this is truly a great entry-level home media-class NAS that you can buy right now. TerraMaster is having a 20% off launch discount, plus you can also still apply our unique 10% off coupon on checkout, which only works on the official website. So here is a breakdown of the pricing that is only valid on the official TerraMaster website. TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N350) + 20% discount + 10% coupon = $575.99 TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N305) + 20% discount + 10% coupon = $503.99 TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N350) + 20% discount + 10% coupon = £525.59 TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N305) + 20% discount + 10% coupon = £460.79 Use NEOWIN coupon code during checkout for 10% discount Over on Amazon US and UK, the F4-425 Pro also gets a 20% launch discount, but here, the above 10% coupon cannot be applied. TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N350) for $639.99 at Amazon US (was $799.99) TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N305) for $559.99 at Amazon US (was $699.99) TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N350) for £583.99 at Amazon UK (was £729.99) TerraMaster F4-425 Pro (N305) for £511.99 at Amazon UK (was £639.99) As an Amazon Associate, when you purchase through links on our site, we earn from qualifying purchases.
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