The World According to Mitch

I sat down at my computer this afternoon to a notification that my Windows 10 beta was done, and the actual Release to Manufacturing (RTM) bits were downloading.  Woohoo!

Okay… I’m not nearly as excited as I once would have been, but it’s not a bad thing.  It is however amazing for me to think that it was only three short years ago that I was criss-crossing the country showing Canadian IT Professionals the advantages of Windows 8.  Heck, it is still pretty fresh in my mind how three years before that I was doing the same thing with Windows 7!  Well here we are, Windows 10 is the thing, and some people will like it and some people won’t… and for the first time in a decade I have absolutely no responsibilities with regard to getting people excited about a new Windows operating system

With that said, I like it.  It took me a little time to get used to (as did Windows 8, which eventually grew on me), but now that I have been working with it for nearly a year it’s got some game, and I am glad it’s here.  Of course, if you have ever spent any amount of time running beta (sorry… pre-release) code, you know there is a feeling of relief when you are finally supported again.

Of the myriad OS upgrades I have done over the past two decades (3.11 – Win95 – Win98 – WinME – Win2K – WinXP – WinVista – Win7 – Win8 – Win8.1 – Win10) I am happy to say this was the easiest of the upgrades; I didn’t have to burn an ISO, I didn’t have to acquire a DVD (or CD… or floppy disks), all I had to do was let Windows Update work its magic.  It took a while – I do wish there had been a notification or something.  ‘Hey, Mitch!  We’re taking away your ability to work for the next hour.  Go for a walk!’ But whatever… I have another computer handy, and I didn’t lose any productivity.  (Note to self: That PC will be upgrading itself any day now, so make sure you are aware!)

I will spend a few days working on it before I make my final decision, but so far I like it.  I’m not sure about the new browser though… Microsoft Edge it is called.  They touted it as the great new thing that would be completely compatible and totally secure… and then I got this message the first time I tried to load a website more complex that nbc.com:

Ok, I’m glad it is willing to tell me it has limits, but I am glad that a) I have Internet Explorer as a fall back, and b) I have Google Chrome at the ready

One good thing I should mention… So far everything that was installed before the upgrade seems to be working after the upgrade.  That is not to say that I didn’t have a couple of applications that didn’t work with the beta version either (Any VPN clients in da house?) but going from dogfood to final was seamless.  Let’s home it stays that way!

Hey Cortana! Let’s get started!