Last month I said I would spend some time with the Windows 10 preview and tell you what I think. To assist in the review, I grabbed some spare parts and dropped them on the tech bench and asked "my boys" to help me out with a Windows 10 build. When they were done, I had Windows 10 installed on a 3 GHz, single core processor system with 2 gigs of RAM. For comparisons sake, my everyday system is a 3.2 GHz quad core processor running 8 gigs of RAM—or four times the system of the Windows 10 box.

So... first impressions are it runs a little bit clunky. I'm certain it is because I'm using old, slow hardware. Even with this hardware the performance is tolerable, although as I get used to where things are and start moving faster, the tolerance level will go down.

Windows 10 is a combination of Windows 7 and Windows 8. It has brought back a version of the start menu and it has kept the Windows 8 application screen. The built in accessories from Windows 7 & 8 are still there: Sticky Notes, Paint, Word Pad, Note Pad, Snipping Tool… All there. They have added One-Note. OneNote has been a part of the Microsoft Office Suite for awhile now. It's actually a pretty cool tool. You can take documents, spread sheets, web pages, pictures and combine them into "binders" to keep all of your research together in one place. It's the digital equivalent of a shoe box. The Windows 10 box has a preview version of OneNote. I believe it will be included in the final release.

Windows 10 has a new internet browser. My preview version calls it Spartan. Microsoft says it's final name will be Edge. Regardless of what you call it, it has new security built in that prevents you from visiting sites with sketchy security certificates. If you do need to visit a site with a "self-signed" certificate you can convert over to Internet Explorer—but you do so at your own risk. It does have a cool button that turns off ads for the pages you are visiting. Microsoft spokesman says it was designed to make reading web pages on your smart phone easier, but I like the fact that all of those "rabbit trails" disappear and with fewer distractions I might actually get my work done so I can go home on time!

The beauty (and the curse of Windows 10) is the convenience of getting to your documents from any windows 10 device (computer, laptop, tablet, phone). To achieve this you will need a Microsoft [email] account. Once you set up a Microsoft account it will automatically configure your email for you. I didn't want a Microsoft account on outlook or on Hotmail, so I chose to use an account from one of my private domains. I was not able to get the mail of my private domain to sync with Windows 10 and after 20 minutes I gave up. A separate calendar feature is also available but if you are currently using Outlook, you are not going to be impressed with the inclusion.

I do believe there is hope for Windows 10. It is definitely better than 8 but not nearly as polished as 7. For those who are being nagged by Windows Updates to “Reserve” your free copy of 10, I recommend postponing the reservation. Current scuttle butt says the free reservation will be available for a year. Over the course of the coming year, Microsoft should be able to work out the kinks and fine tune all of the features that are not available yet in the preview. If you are desperate to make your copy of 8 useable, I recommend installing classic shell, which is free, and makes windows 8 look like windows 7. It is available at: http://classicshell.net

~Janet