Well I have been using the “Technical Preview” of Windows 10 for about a day, and I thought I would let you know what I think. It is pretty much Windows 8 with a Start Menu, or if you prefer Windows 7 with an App Store. Now Microsoft has said this preview has only 10% of the changes that are going in to Windows 10, so I am sure more is on the way, but at this point it is not a huge change.
The Start Menu works very similarly to the one from Windows 7, with the added benefit that you can put Live Tiles in it. They are almost like Widgets from Windows 7 except now they live on your Start Menu. If you are on a tablet and you want the Windows 8 Start Screen back all you have to do is right click on the Start Menu and uncheck a box then log off and then back in again, and boom you are back in “Tablet Mode”. Microsoft showed a thing called Continuum that was supposed to make that transition seamless, but it is not in this build, so for now it takes a few extra steps.
There are also multiple desktops now. They are pretty much just a new way to handle multiple open windows and screens. You can have all your email and work stuff in one desktop, and all your webpages and apps in another, and then you can fast switch between the two. If you are a person that uses a lot of running programs this will be a big deal, if not than you will probably never use it.
Apps from the App store now run in Windows instead of full screen, so you can move them around and arrange them the way you want them. The”Charms” bar is now a menu, so kind of like the app version of the “File” menu in other programs. It works, and is nice to move them around freely. If you want the large frameless look of Windows 8 you can use the “Charms” menu to put them in full screen mode, and you are good to go.
The other changes are mostly cosmetic. New Icons for things that look kind of like a throw back to Windows 2000, and the frames around programs are mostly gone, but now they have drop shadows to give kind of a 3D look when they are stacked. Nothing ground breaking, but it does look nice.
I was disappointed that they are not showing off a lot with this build, but I guess that gives us something to look forward to in the “Consumer Preview” that will be out sometime in the first of next year. If you have any questions let me know and I would be happy to try and answer them.