Windows 10 S review: faster, simpler … and incredibly painful to use | Windows 10 | The Guardian

At least in the short term, Microsoft has announced Windows 10’s pricing will stay the same as Windows 8. With Microsoft meaning to build Windows 10 into every type of device — PCs, tablets, phones, Xbox, HoloLens, IoT appliances — there may be a future where consumers may never have to pay for Windows again.

Even today, OEMs are no longer paying for Windows on devices smaller than 9 inches. But evidently a world where Microsoft makes no money is nowhere near to reality. What we’re seeing instead is the disruption of a model that has served them well for the last three decades, but is no longer sustainable when your list of direct competitors includes the likes of Google, Apple, Amazon, Samsung and Facebook, to name a few.

Making money from an active base of Windows users is the company’s next big challenge, but to get there they’ve first set sights on building massive adoption into a single platform. The company learned this the hard way with mobile: there is no product to monetize if no one is using your product.

Read Next: Windows 10, the TechSpot review. Also, all the latest news about Windows 10 in a single place. Features Windows Is Windows 10 Free? Yes, and No. So where’s the confusion? Windows 10 for Insiders If you are an Insider beta tester , there are three things you need to know: Microsoft is giving Insiders a free upgrade path to the final release of the OS. This only means you will be able to upgrade from the Preview to the final RTM Release to Manufacturing code without the need of a clean install, but this doesn’t get you a free copy of Windows For more about this, see the section below “Windows 10 for current users of Windows 7, Windows 8, 8.

Microsoft plans to continue the Insider program after Windows 10 ships. This means you can keep using Windows 10 Preview builds even if they are exactly as the final release and subsequent builds in the Fast and Slow ring. These builds have an expiration date, but as the Insider program continues, you can just keep getting newly updated builds and automated extensions of your Windows install indefinitely, as long as Microsoft doesn’t pull the plug on the beta testing program.

Windows 10 for pirates Users running pirated copies of Windows 7 and Windows 8 will be able to upgrade to Windows User Comments: Add your comment to this article. You need to be a member to leave a comment. Join thousands of tech enthusiasts and participate. But my primary mobile device is an Android phone and not a Windows Phone, which keeps my interactions with Cortana sequestered to my desktop.

She’s not especially useful here. Windows 10’s Voice recognition is rather accurate, but if I have to send an email message and I’m at my desk, I’m just going to use my email client. She’ll offer recommendations for places to eat or things to see, but that’d be a lot more useful when I’m out and about than at my desk. The same goes for reminders, which are decidedly less useful if I can’t access them anywhere.

Cortana will be making her way to Android and iOS devices later this year, which should clear up most of these issues — provided most of her functionality crosses platforms without issue. I’ll still turn to Cortana for the occasional joke, but until it’s available on a phone I use regularly, I’ll be sticking to Google for Now.

Microsoft has added a brand-new browser into Windows 10, and it’s called Microsoft Edge. Introducing a new browser in a world that already has Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Apple’s Safari is a pretty bold move.

Doubly so when your previous effort was Internet Explorer — once a juggernaut in the space, now the Internet’s favorite punchline. Edge is a fast, modern browser that offers quite a few commendable features. Cortana is integrated right into the browser, and she’ll offer detailed information on things like the weather or flight statuses while you’re typing into the browser’s address bar. Navigate over to a bar or restaurant’s website, and Cortana can pull up a little sidebar full of useful information, like reviews or directions.

The webnote feature lets you scribble on webpages and share your annotations to OneNote or via email, and you can use the Reading view option to strip a website down to its bare essentials.

Edge has also been built with tighter security from the start, to hopefully circumvent some of the headaches that erupted from Internet Explorer. But there are no extensions to tame overzealous advertisements, or enhance websites like Reddit, or simply organized my tabs — I’ve been thoroughly spoiled by Google Chrome.

There’s no way to sync tabs or bookmarks across devices, and you currently can’t import bookmarks from other browsers. All those features will be available eventually, with support for extensions coming sometime before the end of the year — like Windows 10, Edge is a constantly evolving work in progress.

But it’s going to take a lot for someone like me, wholly enmeshed in Google’s ecosystem, to ditch Chrome for something new. Internet Explorer also isn’t going anywhere: it’ll remain a part of Windows for the foreseeable future, as legacy apps are dependent on it. Head over to my Microsoft Edge preview to learn more about Microsoft Edge. Windows 10 adds and tweaks a few things in the entertainment department.

Their function is identical: any music and video files on your device can be found here, but it mostly serves as a means to convince you to buy or rent content from Microsoft’s stores. You’ve got plenty of streaming services to choose from, for music and video. If you’re a gamer, the Xbox app will prove far more interesting.

It’s a window into your Xbox Live feed, letting you see what your friends are up to and send them messages, browse recordings people have made, compare achievements, and all of the expected ways of interacting with the social network.

But if you own an Xbox One, you can stream activity from your console to any device running Windows It’s awesome. No, it’s not a game changer, and certainly not a reason to run out and grab an Xbox One. But it’s still awesome: if someone wants to use the television, I can just plug an Xbox One controller into one of my PCs and continue plugging away at the Xbox One version of The Witcher 3.

The quality of the experience is going to be dependent on your network, so I’d recommend making sure both your console and the PC you’re streaming to are connect to your LAN.

The console also can’t be used by others when it’s streaming so this won’t enable cooperative gaming. But if you frequently find yourself sharing the TV and have a PC with Windows 10 on hand, it’s a fun little addition that could come in handy.

The new Photos app isn’t going to replace something like Adobe Lightroom, but if you take a lot of photos and are looking for a simple tool to keep things organized, you’ll do well here. The Photos app scans your devices and OneDrive account for photos, and automatically arranges them into albums. You can use the app as a way to keep track of your pictures, but it also offers some basic editing tools too. If you prefer a hands-off approach, Photos will automatically enhance all of the photos it finds, wrangling red eye and sorting out exposure levels — it works on RAW files, too.

But don’t worry: the edits Photos makes are non-destructive, so you can undo any changes it makes, or prevent it from altering your photos altogether. Windows 10 has finally arrived, but this version of Windows is fundamentally different from any that have come before it.

We’ve been here before: apps developed for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 could share much of their code, which was supposed to make it easy to create a single app that ran everywhere.

Microsoft’s universal apps share an identical codebase: the Excel client on your desktop, for example, will be the exact same client as the one on your phone, with elements adjusted to make sense of the different display, and the lack of a keyboard or mouse. You can currently get a taste of this on the latest version of Windows 10 Mobile, and while I wouldn’t recommend editing spreadsheets on your smartphone, it’s possible. Universal apps will lead to their own challenges, as developers will have to weigh creating rich, robust apps that can run on a mobile device, against developing apps that can make use of all of the power a full PC can bring to bear.

Microsoft is already drafting a solution using Continuum. Microsoft has demonstrated Continuum for phones : plug a Windows Phone into a display, and the interface will one day morph to mimic the PC-based version of Windows.

You’ll see the desktop, desktop-versions of Windows Store apps, and get full mouse and keyboard support. There’s no word on when Continuum for phones will be available, or what devices it’ll run on, but it offers a tantalizing glimpse of what Microsoft has in store. The Windows Update process will be key to getting everyone on board with Microsoft’s vision of the future of Windows.

It’ll also prove to be one of the most contentious elements: if you’re running the standard Home version of Windows 10 , updates are automatic and can’t be refused. This is a great thing. Windows’ Achilles’ heel has long been its nigh-ubiquity, which makes it a prime target for malware and other digital nastiness. A computer that’s kept up to date is a happy computer, as it will offer you the best chance of avoiding viruses and other unpleasant things.

This is also a terrible thing. Many of us have encountered software updates that don’t quite work out, occasionally breaking more than they fix. One of the last updates to the Windows 10 preview has been triggering software crashes, a recurring reminder that things occasionally don’t work out as intended. Microsoft has plans in place to mitigate these snafus: those of us who’ve signed up for the Windows Insider program can opt to continue serving as beta testers in perpetuity, and we’ll be receiving every update first, for better or worse.

But an army of five million testers could go a long way toward making sure these compulsory updates go as smoothly as possible. Insiders will also be able to continue driving the future of Windows by sharing feedback on features and functionality in Windows as they are developed.

I still worry that something will eventually slip through the cracks, and that will be the forced update that sours everyone’s mood on the whole process. But I still favor Microsoft’s approach: better to deal with the occasional botched update than have the legion of vulnerable or compromised devices that currently exists. In an ideal world, we’d just call Microsoft’s latest operating system “Windows,” and sweep version numbers and codenames under the rug.

That “10” gives the impression that something comes next, when in reality Windows is transitioning from something you buy begrudgingly once every few years, to a living document that’s constantly being updated, and tweaked. For many Windows users expecting a predictable upgrade cadence, this is going to be a difficult transition. Windows 10 will mean the end of grand, sweeping changes, with a marked increase in the sort of minute, quality-of-life tweaks we’ve grown accustomed to on our smartphones and tablets.

Cortana will learn new tricks, and the interface will become flexible enough to support entirely new kinds of devices, like Microsoft’s HoloLens. Should Windows Phone survive , we’ll eventually see the world Microsoft envisioned back at the launch of Windows 8, when every device was supposed to feel right at home.

All of that comes later. What we have, at present, is a fast, functional OS that that is equally at home on a beefy gaming rig as it is on a Surface tablet.

It does everything you expect it to, and bakes in all of the improvements Windows 8 brought to bear. Both Cortana and Edge have a long road ahead of them before they’ll supplant Google’s vicelike grip on my digital life, but the novelty of dictating emails and requests to my PC is not lost on me.

And then there’s the price: free, for those upgrading from Windows 7 or Windows 8. If you’re running Windows 7 or Windows 8 you’ve little to lose, and quite a bit to gain, by making the jump to Windows If you’re still on Windows XP, you’ve probably got your reasons. But Windows 10 marks the first steps in a transition from operating system to ecosystem, a wild dream that gets a little less crazy every time I ask my PC a question, or pop the keyboard of my laptop to get some reading done.

This is Microsoft’s second attempt at bringing us the future, and this time they’re getting it right. Microsoft Windows 10 review: Microsoft gets it right Microsoft has succeeded in building an operating system that’s at home on PCs and mobile devices.

Nate Ralph. Nate Ralph Associate Editor. The Good Windows 10 bridges the gap between PCs and tablets without alienating anyone. The new OS combines the best bits of old and new Windows features into a cohesive package, while correcting nearly all of the missteps of Windows 8. The upgrade process is mostly painless, and free for most Windows 7 and 8 users. Many of the new features will be lost on those who don’t care about touch.

Automatic, forced updates could spell trouble later on. Cortana’s features are better suited for smartphones. Windows 10 delivers a refined, vastly improved vision for the future of computing with an operating system that’s equally at home on tablets and traditional PCs — and it’s a free upgrade for most users.

Late update The next generation of the popular Surface tablet, the rumored Surface Pro 5 , is expected to appear in the spring of — timing that may coincide with the rollout of the next version of Windows, a free update scheduled for the first half of Watch this: Windows 10 Creators Update takes 3D to the next level.

Windows 10 Creators Update takes 3D to the next level. Watch Now. Introducing the Windows 10 Start Menu and Continuum. Watch this: Cortana is your new desktop digital assistant. Here’s how she works. Cortana is your new desktop digital assistant. Unwrap Cortana’s Easter eggs.

Watch this: Microsoft’s new browser is called Edge. Here’s everything you need to know. Microsoft’s new browser is called Edge.

– Microsoft windows 10 home review free

You may or may not still get 10 for free, but you first have to see if 10 is compatible with your device. The free upgrade to Windows 10 offer from Microsoft expired on the 29th July, You will have to contact MS support and they may be able to assist you with a free upgrade to Here’s how you can still get a free Windows 10 upgrade ZDNet.

Windows 10 media creation tool on the Software download page. First thing to do is to make sure that you have the correct system requirements and that your Computer Manufacturer supplies the correct Drivers for 10 for your Model Number. Acer :. If you read those Microsoft’s system requirements for 10, you will find that if you only go on them you will be sadly disappointed in performance. For reasonable performance should have at least:. Acer – Windows 10 Creators Update. Dell computers tested for Windows 10 November Update and previous versions of Windows The following Gateway laptops, desktops and tablets have been tested as being suitable to install Windows 10 Creators Update.

HP Products Tested with Windows Lenovo devices tested for Windows 10 version October Samsung – Find out if your system runs Windows Toshiba – Models tested.

Toshiba Windows 10 Upgrade Information. If you do have to buy Windows If you don’t do the system checks and 10 is incompatible with your device and it becomes inoperable.

These are quite good programs to use for Complete PC Backup and are free:. Was this reply helpful? Yes No. Sorry this didn’t help. Choose where you want to search below Search Search the Community. Search the community and support articles Windows Windows 7 Search Community member. Is it still possible to get Windows 10 Home edition free? This thread is locked. You can follow the question or vote as helpful, but you cannot reply to this thread. I have the same question 0. Report abuse.

Details required :. Cancel Submit. Bill Smithers Volunteer Moderator. For reasonable performance should have at least: 2 gigahertz GHz or faster processor. Dell computers tested for Windows 10 November Update and previous versions of Windows 10 The following Gateway laptops, desktops and tablets have been tested as being suitable to install Windows 10 Creators Update HP Products Tested with Windows 10 Lenovo devices tested for Windows 10 version October Samsung – Find out if your system runs Windows Some people report they don’t get the free upgrade and want to reinstall 7.

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