Category: Kev’s Blog

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Windows 10 – is it ready?

Only a day away from Windows 10 starting to rollout on July 29th, and people are wondering whether it’s really ready for release or not, or as The Register puts it, Microsoft are still playing ‘whack-a-mole’ with bugs before the actual release: “A number of nagging bugs have cropped up in the last few days that have some Windows 10 testers scratching their heads at just how an OS this raw can be considered production-ready.”

But if we’re prepared to accept’s Microsoft’s concept of ‘Windows as a Service’, this is all perfectly ok, because you’ll be getting a continual stream of Windows Updates to patch all the issues after the first release is pushed out. I’m not sure how this differs from any other Microsoft release of any prior release of Windows, but ok then, if you say so.

So your release forecast for tomorrow is: extremely buggy, with a very good chance of patches released later in the day.

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Is Microsoft planning a ‘bait and switch’ with the ‘free’ upgrade to Windows 10?

There’s a lot of uncertainty around exactly what Microsoft are offering for the ‘free’ upgrade to Windows 10 that’s going to start rolling out on July 29th. winsupersite.com have a good collection of questions people are starting to ask about what is included in the upgrade offer.

An article in Forbes discussing some internal presentation slides that ComputerWorld obtained is suggesting that the ‘free’ upgrade may not turn out to be entirely free after all, as a cryptic statement from Microsoft states:

“Revenue allocated is deferred and recognized on a straight-line basis over the estimated period the software upgrades are expected to be provided by estimated device life…. [The estimated device life] can range from two to four years”

We can only speculate exactly what Microsoft means by this statement, but it implies the ‘free’ upgrade is only initially free, and thrn at some point during the lifetime of your installation, the cost will be recouped. Exactly how or on what timescale the cost is recouped is unclear, but this statement implies at some point you will be charged for your Windows 10 – possibly ransomware style (‘Pay $199 now to continue using Windows 10’), or maybe subscription style (a monthly subscription to keep the install active?) – at this point there’s not enough information to be able to say. But it does seem clear, we’re not getting Windows 10 for ‘free’.

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Windows 10 Users “34 per cent more likely to be strongly satisfied with the filtered Taskbar”

Let that statement sink in for a minute – in Windows 10 Insider Preview builds, users have indicated they are:

"34 per cent more likely to be strongly satisfied with the filtered Taskbar"

… and based on that not-so-convincing statistic it’s been decided that the taskbar for a virtual desktop will only show apps running on that desktop (presumably hiding others that are running on other desktops at the time time?).

Gabe Aul at Microsoft describes in this post the latest features in the Windows 10 preview build and how feedback from preview build users is helping Microsoft decide what new features will make it into Windows 10, and which won’t.

And there you have it. Apparently the design of the Ribbon Bar in the latest Office versions was also designed the same way, based on observed/recorded usage patterns of ‘actual users’. If you think the Ribbon Bar is actually a good design then I won’t waste my time arguing with you, but most would probably agree from a usability point of view it’s a horribly cluttered, confused mess of somewhat related options. The Ribbon Bar reminds me of a set of cluttered drawers that are where you stuff your junk that you don’t have anywhere better to put. Each drawer has vaguely related things in it, but good luck trying to find something specific – you open a drawer and spend 10 minutes digging around in there trying to find what you’re looking for. Similarly for the Ribbon Bar – good luck finding that one specific feature.

So at some point if your’re lucky enough (?) to have Windows 10, you might wonder exactly how Microsoft arrived at a decision for why a certain feature is a certain way. And you can be assured that it was designed that way because 34% of preview build users (by a long way as far from a typical user as you can get) decided they were ‘most likely to be strongly satisfied’ if it was that way.

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