General Discussions

Strongly depends on your use case. There's many small things I do greatly appreciate. Here's some of them:

1. DPI support is massively improved from Windows 7. In comparison, Windows 7 looks really clunky.

2. I am a fan of the Ribbon UX design.

3. Multi-monitor support is much better from Windows 7. You don't have to go find 3rd party software to augment stuff that feel should be standard. Windows 10 furthers that with virtual desktops. Tying in with one, if you have different DPI requirements with monitors, you can set them individually on each monitor now.

4. IE8 can go die in a fire for all I care. Won't happen until Windows 7 is dead though (trust me, corporations will hang on to it kicking and screaming until the bitter end despite the new lifecycle changes next year).

5. Windows 7 does not do native VHD and ISO mounting. You need a 3rd party tool to do that.

6. On-board drivers have improved a bit. It may be a small difference but moving towards more efficient on-board drivers means better efficiency standards.

7. The command prompt is getting much needed love in Windows 10 which is a good thing.

8. I do use some of these modern programs (Videos for example).


[Edited by Neo7, 3/12/2015 6:24:39 PM]

Another post: There is a recent post to the Insider Hub indicating that the Fast Ring is about to kick it up a notch in terms of the speed that builds are getting pushed out. This means that:

1. Fast Ring will see more new stuff and potentially new fixes.

2. Less polish and potentially more bugs. This will look ugly.

3. Potential much bigger gap between Fast Ring vs Slow Ring. Remember that the requirement for a build to go to Slow Ring is if the Fast Ring collectively sends enough feedback to indicate the build is stable enough. We have the power to reject a build from going to the Slow Ring.

If #2 sounds unappealing to you (and it will happen and it will **** you off), now is your time to go back to the Slow Ring.

[Edited by Neo7, 3/12/2015 8:13:30 PM]

Build 10036 was leaked out and many users dared to try it out. Here's a video detailing some of the changes between the official preview vs that one. One interesting note is that there is more transparancy with the Start Menu (aliet not well polished) which is a strong suggestion that transparency may be coming back.

Very buggy but this build did not appear to pass the requirements to reach the Insider's group for testing so officially we will get a later build.

Link

Very informtive, thanks.
About DPI support I have a small question if you will: my desktop is on 4k resolution and my DPI is about 200% obviously because the icons are too small at 4k res, the problem is it looks very buggy in many prgorames and their menus and even certain games wont start at that DPI settings.
When you say DPI support is massively improved do you mean it generally looks better or they also solved these compatibility view issues somehow?

It depends on what the program was written in. My DPI is set to 150% (which is what the system defaulted to without any interaction from me). Most programs that I've thrown at it do render much better and the form controls and inputs are resized without distorting the window. I have not found a game on my end that does not run properly. I do not run games beyond 1080p as I have a stock cooler on my GPU and the thing melts itself to a BSOD with anything higher. There are some games I have ran with 4k though and they ran fine before the card shuts down.

The main problem area is with Java based programs (e.g. Eclipse, LibreOffice). Java does not seem to translate DPI settings well but this is not something Microsoft can support well on their end. The program developers will have to update their programs to the new DPI settings. It's not just Java programs as well but programs that need to be updated.

Do note I did not get a 4k monitor until after I had Windows 8.1 so I don't have much data to compare to with Windows 7.

Link

A free upgrade to pirates too? wtf..

I would take that with a grain of salt. China is very well known for having a horrific percentage of pirated versions of Windows and still remains to be the leading nation that's powered by IE6 (meaning they're on a horrifically outdated Windows XP). Most in China probably don't bother upgrading to newer technology because they can't turn off WGA (popularly referred to as a virus in China) reliably.

I strongly suspect that it's a desperation move only to happen in China to get them to technology that's supported and that news outlets misinterpreted that.

I dont understand why would they want china to get up to date if most of china pirate anyway?