[OFFICIAL] Windows 10 Insider Program

By Ian S.
in The Fast Ring (Insider Previews)

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Windows Technical Preview  

1031 members have voted

  1. 1. On a scale of 1-5, 1 being worst, 5 being best. What do you think of Windows 10 from the leaks so far?

    • 5.Great, best OS ever
      156
    • 4. Pretty Good, needs a lot of minor tweaks
      409
    • 3. OK, Needs a few major improvements, some minor ones
      168
    • 2. Fine, Needs a lot of major improvements
      79
    • 1.Poor, Needs too many improvements, all hope is lost, never going to use it
      41

  2. 2. Based on the recent leaks by Neowin and Winfuture.de, my next OS upgrade will be?

    • Windows 10
      720
    • Windows 8
      20
    • Windows 7
      48
    • Sticking with XP
      3
    • OSX Yosemite
      35
    • Linux
      24
    • Sticking with OSX Mavericks
      3

  3. 3. Should Microsoft give away Windows 10 for free?

    • Yes for Windows 8.1 Users
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    • Yes for Windows 7 and above users
      227
    • Yes for Vista and above users
      31
    • Yes for XP and above users
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    • Yes for all Windows users
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    • No
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Recommended Posts

Grand Master

+Frank B. Subscriber²

Posted
  • Subscriber²
Posted

In my humble opinion the OS/2 Workplace Shell was the bee's knees. Let me submit a wishlist bug to MS: 'License the WPS code from IBM. Replace explorer.exe with it.'

 

... no?

  • Ice_Blue and MikeChipshop
  • Like 2
Grand Master

Quillz

Posted
Posted

In my humble opinion the OS/2 Workplace Shell was the bee's knees. Let me submit a wishlist bug to MS: 'License the WPS code from IBM. Replace explorer.exe with it.'

 

... no?

Never had a chance to use it, but watched lots of videos on it. Being able to turn everything into a template seemed like a neat idea, and something that I don't think more recent operating systems have ever tried to replicate.

Grand Master

deadonthefloor

Posted
Posted

In the earliest releases of 95, it was possible to use Program and File Manager by default, though even then, it didn't really work the same.

 

In the earliest builds of 95, it was also possible to move the start button to the middle of the taskbar.

They eventually called it a bug and fixed it for 95b 95c releases.

 

not sure what my point was, just had to get that out there.

Grand Master

Quillz

Posted
Posted

In the earliest builds of 95, it was also possible to move the start button to the middle of the taskbar.

They eventually called it a bug and fixed it for 95b 95c releases.

 

not sure what my point was, just had to get that out there.

I think I remember that, actually. Man, I really miss those early 9x UI experiments.

Grand Master

Quillz

Posted
Posted

With the latest 9926 updates and the latest release of VMware Player, I found performance has improved a little bit. It's not much better, but the VM starts up noticeably quicker and many of the Win10 apps aren't hanging as long. This is making me thing that perhaps the issues with 9926 are due more to VMware than anything else. I do expect the next build to have all-around better performance, though.

Neowinian

Dannyu

Posted
Posted

Am I missing something here?

Why would you want to do this? The whole point of a preview/beta is to test the functionality that is proposed to be in the final product and to test if it works, feeding back on usability, functionality and reliability.

The point certainly is not to find hacks to restore the old way. Typically old code isn't taken out until much later.

So I suppose the fact that I also made it so when you hit WIN+R and type calc and press enter that now the old fast win 8.1 calc loads and also restores multiple instances feature is also a bad thing I did to my own computer, right!

Grand Master

Eric Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted

So I suppose the fact that I also made it so when you hit WIN+R and type calc and press enter that now the old fast win 8.1 calc loads and also restores multiple instances feature is also a bad thing I did to my own computer, right!

 

It certainly doesn't help them gather feedback on the calculator app. The "restoration" process for calc also might be replacing newer files that could cause issues.

Experienced

Andy1369

Posted
Posted

I'm having a very odd problem with the most recent version of the Technical Preview (9926). Did a clean install. Upon first boot, everything worked normally. Then, for some unknown reason, the whole UI with the 'modern' area of the OS went berserk. I can't view any text in the Start Menu, the Settings window doesn't show text, and it's just a mess - see attached screenshot. "Classic" Windows text and areas such as the Explorer, Control Panel, etc., work and look just fine.

 

Not sure what happened - any suggestions on how to fix this?

 

Thanks!

 

Just an update - Parallel Desktop Tools was causing this. Upon uninstalling Parallels Desktop Tools, everything went back to normal. So, if anyone else has this issue, that probably is why.

Grand Master

Quillz

Posted
Posted

Transparency is not Aero Glass

 

One of the features of Aero Glass was transparency. It also included blur! ;)

The Win8 taskbar still does blurring with its transparency, it works just like it did in Vista and 7. Only difference was 8 obviously didn't include the Glass theme which also extended to the window chrome. It seems we're getting transparency with the Start menu in addition to the taskbar, only time will tell if they bring back the full Aero Glass theme for the window chrome. I would like them to, only because having choice is good. I wouldn't expect it on by default, though.

Veteran

Ian S.

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Transparency is not Aero Glass

 

One of the features of Aero Glass was transparency. It also included blur! ;)

Instead of bringing back Aero Glass, they could bring back just transparency (disabled by default) with a light/dark theme, so it doesn't imitate glass.

Neowinian

Dannyu

Posted
Posted

It certainly doesn't help them gather feedback on the calculator app. The "restoration" process for calc also might be replacing newer files that could cause issues.

Already gave my feedback on the new calc app. Its slow to open and doesnt allow multiple instances and is still to big even after they made it smaller.

Actually all I did was to replace calc.exe in C:\windows\system32\calc.exe and calc.exe.mui in C:\windows\system32\en-US\calc.exe.mui and repeat the same steps for the SysWOW64 folder. If you want to leave the new one in place and run the old calc as a stand alone then you need calc.exe, uxtheme.dll, WindowsCodecs.dll, winmm.dll, winmmbase.dll. Also the calc.exe.mui from the en-US folder. In the stand alone folder the first 5 files are in the same folder and the mui needs to be in a folder called en-US.

Mentor

AnotherITguy

Posted
Posted

I wish they would return WINDOWS HOME SERVER, but I know that the possibilities of that are one in like 20 trillion, but  hey, we could always use lower prices to Windows Server 201x Essentials, and maybe opening up Foundation edition to us hobbists?

Grand Master

George P Global Moderator

Posted
  • Global Moderator
Posted

We're going to get transparency in the start menu, start screen, probably taskbar as well, but that's it. If anyone expects to see glass return for window boarders and title bars then I wouldn't hold your breath.

 

Speaking of old UIs and such, most people hate the old networking fly out in windows 8.1. It's empty and lacks options, heck I'd like to see MS update the Network Center, or whatever they call it, into something new, or maybe they already started adding it into the new settings app? I don't have 9926 installed so I can't check.

Grand Master

+Fahim S. MVC

Posted
  • MVC
Posted

So I suppose the fact that I also made it so when you hit WIN+R and type calc and press enter that now the old fast win 8.1 calc loads and also restores multiple instances feature is also a bad thing I did to my own computer, right!

 

What you do with your machine is entirely your business.  Publishing and encouraging the same thing in others just makes the process of technical preview and feedback somewhat farcical.

 

I'd rather that people feedback on the incumbent Windows 10 Calculator app, so that it is made better.  Ignoring it, by circumvention, really means that the overall experience doesn't improve for those people that don't want to, or have the technical skills, to revert their application to the previous version.

Grand Master

Stokkolm

Posted
Posted

I've been using Windows Technical Preview and on the latest build there isn't still any driver available for current Intel Graphics. If you try to install the drivers available for Windows 8/8.1 it simply says it isn't compatible with the system and it doesn't run it. I guess Intel will not bother to make it available until around RTM stage.

New drivers from Intel are available on Windows Update today....at least they are for my SP3.

We're going to get transparency in the start menu, start screen, probably taskbar as well, but that's it. If anyone expects to see glass return for window boarders and title bars then I wouldn't hold your breath.

 

Speaking of old UIs and such, most people hate the old networking fly out in windows 8.1. It's empty and lacks options, heck I'd like to see MS update the Network Center, or whatever they call it, into something new, or maybe they already started adding it into the new settings app? I don't have 9926 installed so I can't check.

It's funny, you can tell they're starting to, but the old Control Panel is still there (buried, but there) for advanced tasks. I agree that the flyout for choosing a wireless network wasn't great, but it was better than nothing. As it stands in 9926 when you click on icon in the taskbar to choose a wireless network the PC Settings app opens to the Networking section for you to choose one there. There needs to be a more streamlined way to accomplish this.

Grand Master

Quillz

Posted
Posted

I hope it's possible to have a black taskbar and title bar in explorer windows and actually be able to read the window title!

Same. And it's one of the biggest requests in the Feedback app. Let's hope Microsoft actually reads it.

Mentor

DeadEndAccount

Posted
Posted

I wish they would return WINDOWS HOME SERVER, but I know that the possibilities of that are one in like 20 trillion, but  hey, we could always use lower prices to Windows Server 201x Essentials, and maybe opening up Foundation edition to us hobbists?

 

Depending on what you're going to use it for you might be better off just purchasing an NAS like a Drobo 5N which has the ability to run server applications like Apache, PHP etc. or maybe use something like a *BSD which are pretty easy to setup :-)

 

Regarding the Wifi thingy - maybe they're going to throw it all together in the notifications as to avoid having a task bar chocked up with numerous icons? given that things are still in development I'm sure we'll see them come out with more UI changes and get more feedback to fine tune the UI.

Grand Master

Jim K Global Moderator

Posted
  • Global Moderator
Posted

I hope it's possible to have a black taskbar and title bar in explorer windows and actually be able to read the window title!

 

This times infinity.  It isn't so much I love aero glass (though I prefer it)...what I do love (about 7) is that I can have black borders and read the text.  Windows 8 (and as of now 10...not including Modern UI apps) make it hard to "like" black borders because you can't read the text.

 

I also, as of the 9926 build, do not like how Modern UI apps have different border colors than want I've selected in the Personalization section (they are more or less grayish).

Grand Master

Stokkolm

Posted
Posted

What matters is, it's worse than the networking popup in 7/Vista... and that wasn't that great either but still way better...

That depends if you were using a touchscreen or not.

Grand Master

HawkMan

Posted
Posted

Even with a mouse the win8 one is better for connecting to wireless networks, the only complaint people have is that it takes up the whole side of the screen, you know for the two seconds you use it every once in a while...

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