And once you've got more than a few live tiles activated, your screen can start to look like a Las Vegas casino, with a wall of rotating, scrolling squares each trying to catch your eye. Yet, it's undoubtedly an improvement on what went before for non-touchscreen devices.
Other notable new additions are the Cortana search bar in the bottom left of the Taskbar. We'll talk more about Cortana later, but the search bar lets you enter voice or typed searches for apps or files stored on your PC.
You can click the My Stuff button in search results to perform more advanced searches of your own files, which certainly makes it easier to hunt down specific files than with Windows 8. However, we still find it easier to instigate advanced searches from within Files Explorer called Windows Explorer in 8. Windows 10 did eventually add the option to search emails through this box, which is a great addition. Talking of Files Explorer, that's had a refresh too.
Aside from a stark new set of icons, Explorer now has a Quick Access view which shows your most frequently opened folders at the top of the window, with a list of recently accessed files just below, making it easier to quickly pick up where you left off on files that are nested deep in folders.
You can still pin your favourite folders to the left-hand pane of Files Explorer, but this does create some duplication with the frequent folders pane just next to it, whilst the Libraries first introduced in Windows 7 are now almost hidden from view.
The new Explorer is a modest improvement on Windows 8. One significant new interface element for businesses is virtual desktops. An idea brazenly lifted from the Linux world, Windows 10's virtual desktops let you keep different sets of apps open in different desktops.
You might, for example, have one desktop dedicated to communications with, say, Outlook, Slack and Skype running and another for work on a particular project Excel and a web browser. It allows you to compartmentalise your work, and avoid having desktops cluttered with several open windows, but it's frustrating that many apps designed to run full-screen on a touchscreen can only occupy a single desktop. Winner : Windows 10 corrects most of Windows 8's ills with the Start screen, whilst revamped file management and virtual desktops are potential productivity boosters.
An outright victory for desktop and laptop users. Even though it was the biggest overhaul of the OS since Windows 95, Windows 8 was remarkably stable and bug-free from the get-go. Indeed, we had it running on everyday work systems six months before launch. Windows 10 has been, to put it charitably, a tad wobblier. Microsoft is regularly issuing updates for the software, but these updates often cause problems.
It seems like every few months there are new reports of accidental file deletions, glitches, crashes and other assorted errors. General stability is certainly better than it was, but the fact that these errors persist is frustrating.
So far, we haven't seen any bugs that we'd consider enough to warrant downgrading to an earlier version of Windows, but it has to be said that reliability isn't Windows 10's strong suit - and it doesn't look like it ever will be. On the other hand, Windows 10 Enterprise users can cut out a lot of this headache - which we'll talk about more in a minute - meaning it's not quite so much of an issue.
Winner : Windows 8. Businesses can opt to skip many of the issues introduced by Windows 10's rolling updates, but the fact that they have to in the first place is hardly encouraging. Windows 8. All of those features remain in Windows 10, and there are others that could have a hugely significant impact on business rollouts. In-place upgrades have been made much smoother, meaning IT managers won't have to wipe and reimage as they may have done before.
On our ThinkPad loaded with business-oriented desktop apps Office , Slack, Creative Suite amongst others , we performed an in-place upgrade to Windows 10 Pro in less than 40 minutes, with all documents, applications and settings perfectly retained. Snapping apps into place is an easy affair.
Touch users can swipe slowly from the left edge and drag a thumbnail of an app into place. Mouse users can activate the Switcher in the top left hot corner and then drag an app into place. One last radical change for Windows 8 is the changes to the lock screen. Microsoft has opted to provide time, date, calendar entries, network status, and battery levels as default, but you can display up to seven lock screen apps that will provide quick status and notifications when a screen is locked. This is particularly useful if you want to glance at a mobile device to see how many calendar appointments you have during the day or the amount of emails in your inbox.
Microsoft has created a built in picture password option that will allow you to sign in by tapping secret areas on a picture of your choice. System-wide notifications are also present in Windows 8. The Start button removal is the biggest visual change, but there are a variety of ways to trigger this traditional functionality with the hot corners of Windows 8, or by using a gesture-enabled mouse or trackpad.
Users who are upgrading will, depending on the previous OS, likely launch most applications into desktop mode. Windows Explorer is also improved and renamed, now referred to as File Explorer in Windows 8. Microsoft has added the ribbon interface to File Explorer, which is collapsed by default. Although it takes up a significant amount of space when enabled, it helps surface a number of common file management scenarios and certainly speeds up some of these tasks.
Microsoft has also brought the up arrow back, something the company attempted to kill off in Windows 7. Microsoft has also improved the move and copy dialogs in File Explorer, a single window lets you pause, cancel, and assess file operations. An updated Task Manager is simplified in every sense of the word.
The default view will list all currently running applications. A secondary view provides even greater information, with performance metrics and app history throughout a number of detailed tabs. The Windows 8 desktop also provides access to a new File History option, Storage Spaces, and restore or reset options. Storage Spaces lets Windows 8 users group together physical disks into a larger RAID-like storage pool for increased resiliency in the case of a physical failure.
To Windows 8, virtual disks look like regular physical disks, and users can partition, format, and copy data to the drive much like traditional storage. Windows 8 also includes restore and reset options, allowing users to refresh a PC while keeping documents, accounts, personal settings, and Windows Store apps — but returning Windows to its original state.
The company has struggled to provide adequate multiple monitor support in previous Windows versions, leaving it up to graphics card vendors to supply additional functionality with drivers. Not everything is improved here, but basics like different desktop backgrounds on each monitor are now supported. You can now span a single picture across multiple monitors. Taskbar options are greatly improved, with the ability to display the taskbar on all displays and options to show buttons on all taskbars or individual ones where the window is open and the main taskbar resides.
Thankfully the traditional keyboard shortcuts still work, so power users can run Windows 8 on a desktop in a similar way to Windows 7. Microsoft has also added a power user menu to the Start screen tile that appears in the lower left in desktop mode. Windows RT is based on Windows 8, with the new Windows 8-style user interface, but it will not run traditional desktop applications — an important difference to understand.
The desktop remains, but aside from the legacy built-in apps like Paint or Notepad , the only desktop apps that run are Internet Explorer 10 desktop and Office RT. I have previously discussed the confusing choice to keep a desktop mode in an operating system that will primarily ship on tablet hardware, but Microsoft is justifying this with its inclusion of Office RT. This will be an inevitable source of confusion for consumers once they realise that Surface RT tablets and other Windows RT tablets do not run legacy apps.
At a time when Microsoft was promoting the release of Windows 7 at CES , Apple was preparing to launch its iPad — a tablet computer that altered the mobile computing landscape.
Microsoft had tried to launch its own tablets with its partners back in , but they failed to gain any traction due to a combination of hardware and software restrictions.
Windows 7 added the basics of touch support, with some slight improvements to make the traditional desktop manageable in this mode. It was nowhere near enough and Windows 8 breaks away entirely from the desktop in an effort to promote a new style of applications that Microsoft is betting the future of Windows on. The focus on touch-based computing in Windows 8 is huge.
At the same time, Microsoft hopes this bet will encourage developers to create Windows 8 style apps thanks to the number of devices that will run the new operating system. This approach is incredibly risky. If you use Windows 8 on a desktop PC with a keyboard and mouse it can feel awkward at times, frustrating at others, and confusing. The secret to its success is Cortana, a voice assistant ported over from Windows Phone and whose name comes from the Halo video game franchise.
Like Siri on iOS and Google Voice Search on Android, Cortana can respond to voice commands and perform everything from quick Internet searches to core tasks around Windows 10 like opening a new email, creating calendar entries and much more. Edge works significantly faster than Internet Explorer and is only available on Windows These allow users without multi-monitor setups to create multiple virtual desktops which are handy for splitting usage between work and leisure, work into projects or whatever you require.
Those specifications:. I suspect a major motivator for Microsoft here was that Windows 10 needs to run smoothly on both phones and tablets as well as PCs.
That should make it efficient enough to run on most PCs these days, with the exception of some very old Windows XP machines. Security - While both Windows 7 and Windows 8 do a pretty good job of keeping users secure, Windows 10 ups its game with several new features.
Device Guard can also operate virtually so even if it is compromised a remote version can recognise and neutralise malicious software. Lastly in Windows 10 Microsoft now delivers security patches outside Windows Update so they go straight to your computer the moment they are available.
In theory this means Windows 10 computers are always up-to-date which gives hackers a much harder time, even if there are also some notable downsides. Great as a free price tag, longer support, better apps and gaming, searches and security may sound unfortunately the list where Windows 7 and Windows 8 current beat out Windows 10 is just as strong.
Among these are disappearing icons from the taskbar, Start Menu lock-ups, Windows Store download bugs, copy and paste errors, problems with audio and more. In fact Microsoft is about to release a massive one gigabyte download of bug fixes, which gives you an idea of the scale. The trouble is such numerous patches always bring new bugs of their own. This has included automatically installing a broken graphics driver which crashed displays , a security patch which crashed Windows Explorer and more.
I believe the ideal solution lies halfway between the two: make all updates automatic by default, but give users the option to stop or delay any update categories or individual updates they like. Right now this lack of flexibility makes Windows 10 a deal breaker for some. Microsoft requires users to accept these terms in its Windows 10 EULA end user licence agreement and security updates now sidestep Windows Update and are installed to all versions of Windows 10 without warning.
Meanwhile driver and feature updates through Windows Update can be delayed up to one month by Windows 10 Home users the vast majority of consumers and eight months by Windows 10 Pro customers most businesses , but after that time Microsoft will cut off the next round of updates including security patches from users until they accept the previous ones.
Windows 7 and Windows 8 have had similar policies for major updates in the past Service Packs in Windows 7, and the Windows 8. Privacy - If the enforcement policies were tough, however, they have nothing on the privacy violations Microsoft requests in the Windows 10 EULA.
A notable section reads:. Ease of Use - In fairness Windows 7 is so ubiquitous that Windows 10 was never going to be more intuitive to use than its much loved forebear.
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