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Latest Windows 10 Preview Build Brings Slew of Enhancements

Posted by Soulskill on from the lots-to-break-and-lots-to-fix dept.

Deathspawner writes: Following its huge Windows 10 event last Wednesday, Microsoft released a brand-new preview build to the public, versioned 9926. We were told that it'd give us Cortana, Microsoft's AI assistant, as well as a revamped Start menu and updated notifications pane. But as it turns out, that's not even close to summing up all that's new with this build. In fact, 9926 is easily the most substantial update rolled out so far in the beta program, with some UI elements and integral Windows features seeing their first overhaul in multiple generations.

33 of 214 comments (clear)

  1. meh by McGiraf · · Score: 4, Informative

    meh

    1. Re:meh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      That's the best Windows review I've seen in a long time.

      Exactly. Much better than the typical review of Windows 8.x which is "HOLY FUCK WHAT IS THIS SHIT?!?!?!!".

  2. 9926 is so awesome by krkhan · · Score: 2

    We can't stop putting the same build on the front page.

  3. Change for change's sake by rossdee · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Because people have been using largely the same UI for the last 19 years, and are used to it. Thats a good enough reason the screw it up isn't it.

    1. Re:Change for change's sake by SeaFox · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Because people have been using largely the same UI for the last 19 years, and are used to it. Thats a good enough reason the screw it up isn't it.

      It is for Microsoft. If they don't make a new Windows release visually different in some significant way most people will see no reason to upgrade, which will make the product a commercial failure (or at least, not enough of a success to make Wall Street happy). Now, it's true, if Microsoft were do make a new version of Windows significantly faster performing and more secure then they might get a bunch of people on board even if it had the same interface as before, adding shiny to software is much less work than actually improving the product itself.

    2. Re:Change for change's sake by afidel · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The problem is the previous build was visually different while being MORE functional, this build is less functional if you have 19+ years of Windows experience. The previous build had the Windows 7 Start Menu with the addition of a live tiles dock area to the right, it added new useful functionality to the familiar and functional paradigm, the new build is basically a shrunk version of the Start Screen with all the crap that entails and which the majority of users have derided as being less functional on desktops (still the VAST, VAST majority of Windows machines). We had actually started plans for a Windows 10 rollout to our enterprise based on earlier tech preview builds, but those are now on hold and will be cancelled if they don't reverse the insanity. We can just keep using Windows 7 for the next 5 years.

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    3. Re: Change for change's sake by dunkelfalke · · Score: 2

      And fugly flat looks. Besides, what good is better battery life if you have no battery?

      --
      "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
  4. Ugly as it can be? by cpotoso · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Ugly as it can be? All decoration gone? Why does everybody have to copy Apple? I understand copying when it is beautiful, but apple is now engaged in making computer graphics look like an X11 system from the 1980s and everybody else is following suit. Awful... truly awful.

    1. Re:Ugly as it can be? by Pentium100 · · Score: 2

      Yea, at least give an option of having either the classic look or the Windows 7 basic look. But then it wouldn't look like a tablet interface and not as modern. The look the primary reason for my hatred of Windows 8. I can get Start menu by using classic shell, I cannot get a proper interface though.

    2. Re:Ugly as it can be? by bondsbw · · Score: 2

      If you can't see the difference between X11 and Yosemite, I'm just going to ignore the rest of what you have to say on the subject of graphics.

      --
      All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
    3. Re:Ugly as it can be? by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Sigh... I absolutely agree about the conclusion. But it's a stretch to say this trend is copying Apple. Windows 8 came out long before Apple's new "flat" look came out, unless I'm aware of a trend that started before that in the Apple camp.

      Seriously, though, I'm already completely sick of this "flat, clean, simple" trend. But more importantly, the usability is often worse, sacrificed on the alter of the new aesthetic. In the new design language, button borders are uncool, so they've simply done away with them in many cases, and don't offer any indications of what you can click, or where clickable regions are. Windows 8 was particularly bad with this, so we'll see if Windows 10 does any better, despite using the same basic theme. I understand that aesthetics are important, but they should always, always, always take a back seat to functionality and usability.

      With any luck, after a few years, when everyone else gets sick of flat, uninspired graphics, someone will create a new, "retro" look and start adding some bevels, gradients, gloss, and transparency back into the UI.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    4. Re:Ugly as it can be? by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 2

      They made that argument for Windows 8, and one could conceivably buy that argument for the Metro UI running on very low-powered devices, as MS phones often are. However, there's no conceivable reason to skin your traditional Windows applications in the same way, which are obviously going to be running on desktops and laptops. For a modern GPU, whether or not they're rendering a transparent windows or rounding a border isn't even remotely a concern in terms of efficiency.

      No, I think this is an aesthetic decision through and through. I think the "efficiency" angle was probably just an argument made to help sell it. I'm really hoping the "flat, boring, and ugly" trend dies a fiery death soon.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    5. Re:Ugly as it can be? by Dutchmaan · · Score: 3, Informative

      "Why does everybody have to copy Apple?"

      As far as UI goes, Apple has been taking cues from Android for years. Remember Apple was all about glossy rounded icons before Android's flat and efficient become trendy.

    6. Re:Ugly as it can be? by itsdapead · · Score: 2

      But it's a stretch to say this trend is copying Apple. Windows 8 came out long before Apple's new "flat" look came out, unless I'm aware of a trend that started before that in the Apple camp.

      Nah - I think the "skeuomorphism considered harmful" movement comes from form-over-function graphic design numpties who were tired of actual content, meaning or useful visual cues for functionality polluting their minimalist design and stealing valuable screen area that could be used for whitespace, irrelevant generic images of shiny happy people or corporate identity guff. It was showing up on websites etc. (Slashdot's Bucking Feta was fairly late to the party) long before Apple went flat. Google have been going down the same route for some time, too.

      Apple didn't help by coming up with some appallingly bad skeuomorphic UIs shortly before they went flat: someone had completely forgotten that the point of making something look like, say, a physical book is to suggest to the user that it works like a physical book (e.g. with data arranged in pages). Apps like Contacts and Calendars looked like books, or flip-over calendars, but didn't work remotely like such things, leaving the user with a load of totally misleading visual cues. (Subsequently copying them from iOS to OSX, where the mouse-based interface made them work even less like the physical object didn't help, either). Now, the baby has been thrown out with the bathwater, and we're left with "mystery meat" UIs with nothing to distinguish the controls from the content.

      --
      In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
  5. Looks Great! by dark.nebulae · · Score: 2

    I'll stick with linux, however.

  6. Have some! by Sir_Substance · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I see the ~cloud~ is mandatory again.

    The ability to remove skydrive has vanished since the previous, despite being the most requested feature on the feedback app, and cortana is now stapled to your startbar, taking up 50% of the space with no apparent way to remove it.

    Creating a local account rather than logging in with a microsoft account has been made more confusing by making the UI components for creating a new microsoft account bigger, so that the "log in without a microsoft account" button is pushed off the bottom of the page. Microsoft really wants your grandmother confused and scared so she makes an account without understanding what she's doing.

    1. Re:Have some! by corrosive_nf · · Score: 5, Informative

      Right click on the task bar.
      Select the "Search" option.
      You'll now see three new options for what to do. To make it go away altogether hit "Disabled."

    2. Re:Have some! by PRMan · · Score: 2

      I upgraded from Windows 7 and I didn't put cloud info in at all and it's working just fine.

      --
      Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
  7. Nice by denisbergeron · · Score: 2

    Now we have Google Now and Google design in windows without the quality of Google search.

    --
    Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
  8. God, what drivel ... by gstoddart · · Score: 4, Insightful

    We were told that it'd give us Cortana, Microsoft's AI assistant

    OK, I'll preface this with a "get off my lawn" to get it out of the way.

    But I have to say, I have precisely zero interest in this. The more I read TFA, the more I cringe.

    After setting Cortana up, which involves telling her your name, and adjusting some other minor settings, sheâ(TM)ll be good to go. If the respective option is enabled, sheâ(TM)ll always listen out for âoeHey, Cortanaâ, at which point your question can be asked. In the example below, I asked, âoeHey, Cortana. Could you please show me the weather?â, at which point she queried the Internet and spit back the accurate info â" without me having to state a specific location.

    Talking to Cortana is finicky at best. After stating âoeHey, Cortanaâ, Iâ(TM)ve found that Iâ(TM)ve either had to keep talking right away to be heard, or have her say, âoeHey, Robâ and then me have to click the microphone icon again to speak. It seems some thresholds need to be adjusted, because in the current implementation, itâ(TM)s easier to avoid potential hassle and just go find such information online.

    I don't want my fucking computer to feel like it's on a first name basis with me. I don't want to talk to it. I don't want my computer constantly listening to and parsing everything I say. I sure as shit don't want that crap integrated with an ad platform.

    If I want to see the weather, I'll go to the tab I keep open with the weather.

    This is a bunch of dreck I can't see myself wanting to use, which is mostly a "make pretend" version of AI which is at best a shortcut to search. I don't see the value in voice commands -- in fact, I see great nuisance in it (like in Offices, or just everywhere).

    This sounds like an OS which is heavily focused on "teh social" integration with XBox, with the new lame-ass crayon interfaces Microsoft seems partial to, and a bunch of dorky features which seem like they're trying too damned hard.

    I don't see any of these features being useful, I see them as being pointless eye candy, which is full of gimmicks I don't see myself using in the long run -- in fact, I see me disabling as many as possible.

    I'm afraid Microsoft's "vision of the future" is a glimpse into hell. At least half of those features sound like shit which will slow down the machine and add zero benefit.

    Now, seriously, get the fuck off my damned lawn.

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    1. Re:God, what drivel ... by bmajik · · Score: 2

      You know, you're right. Nobody should ever try anything new with voice interaction. We should leave that shit off because its buggy or only knows how to do web searches based on bad guesses.

      We shouldn't spend any time putting this stuff in front of users and learning what works well, what doesn't work, what people like, what they don't like. God forbid we try and see if there are ways to integrate it with how people currently use computers.

      Instead, what we should do is wait until the 23rd century, when we have starships. Even though we've done no incremental work between now and then, in the distant future, voice recognition and natural language processing is just going to be really, really good, because The Future. It's just going to build itself, and when we are bald and say "COMPUTER" to our starship, its going to listen and then do exactly the right thing, and nobody is going to ask why the bridge has so many buttons and levers and consoles and shit if there is a ship-wide computer with unlimited power and perfect human voice recognition. And we're going to gloss right over how a near-Ai level of natural language understanding still needs us to say COMPUTER first before it figure out who we're talking to, as if anyone else on the bridge could execute the command we're asking when we're staring off into nowhere instead of at another human in the same room...

      Anyway, I'm running 9926 on two machines - neither of which are touch-enabled. I've never talked to the thing yet. It appears to run faster than 8.0/8.1. The start menu behavior is better, and you can flip back and forth between little-menu-on-desktop or "big screen of metro" with a simple gesture.

      The UI feels positively snappy. The paradigm has been reversed entirely from 8 - now, metro apps run on your desktop - instead of your desktop is some weird bad neighborhood nobody wants you to go to.

      I think a lot of people will like Windows 10.

      --
      My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
    2. Re:God, what drivel ... by jones_supa · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You can disable her.

      But why get an OS of which you have to disable half of the features? I don't want Modern UI, I don't want to send information to Microsoft to help to improve my computing experience, I don't want a Windows Live Account, I don't want SkyDrive, I don't want Cortana.

      Me no want anything! Waaah!

  9. Re:Wiped my Grub though. by ledow · · Score: 3, Informative

    "update"... I think he means he went from one to the other, I'm assuming MS put out Windows Updates to 10 just the same as anything else? But I could be wrong.

    However, even so, in the world of UEFI, GPT, etc. why the fuck does Windows still stomp over the boot sector as if it owns it? Add your partitions, mark yourself as active, put an entry in the UEFI if you find it. Otherwise, stop. You don't need to overwrite the boot sector if you've got that far because it worked well enough to boot your installer! And anyone installing non-standard boot sectors will be smart enough to just add your partition in as an option to boot from.

  10. Re:Full Screen Start Menu! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    To make explicit the concept that the Start Screen is nothing more than a full screen Start Menu, a maximize button on the Start Menu transforms it into the Start Screen. Finally, the vertical Start Menu users can shut the fuck up about it!

    There's still a UXtard in Redmond who needs to be shot for making the resizable start screen nonresizable in 9926. The 9879 build was resizable, so you could make the useful part of it (the list of things on the left, even with the atrocious waste of vertical whitespace) taller. 9926 gives you two options: scroll like a motherfucker or fullscreen shit,.

    The start menu of 9926 can be *FORCED* to be as resizable as it was in 9879 as follows: Create a DWORD32 named EnableXamlStartMenu in HKEY_CURRENT_USER>Software>Microsoft>Windows>CurrentVersion>Explorer>Advanced and leave (or set, if it already exists) its value to 0.

    Now if only there were a way to restore the wasted vertical space in the task manager. Sigh. The W10 task manager is good, it's just utterly wasteful on space. On W7 I can see damn near everything running. On W10, the UXtard with the vertical whitespace fetish won the debate. For fuck's sake, we gave up the Status Bar in Firefox 4.0 because 10 pixels was too much space to waste... and we got this shit - in Firefox, in ribbons, in Win8/10, and even in goddamn Google's Material Design / Android - in return.

  11. Not the review I wanted. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What I want to know about is performance. I don't care about the changes in explorer, taskbar, or start menu. I don't need them I use Directory Opus.

    Here is what I'd like to know about.

    CPU Usage of system processes 7/8 vs 10
    Memory usage 7/8 vs 10
    Services performance 7/8 vs 10
    Load times
    Thread performance/handling/optimization
    Memory leaks
    Page file performance
    Virtual memory management upgrades?
    Indexing performance

    I feel like I visited an art gallery, but instead of talking about the pictures they talk about the plumbing. Well in reverse at least O_o..

  12. Wow so negative here by Billly+Gates · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yes this is a Linux oriented site yada yada.

    But why so strong resistance to change on a technology site of all places? Does anyone else find this weird? Never in my wildest dreams would I picture slashdot turn into +5 comments with "CHANGE FOR THE SAKE OF CHANGE etc" I ask because I am curious and wonder if I am alone? You would not expect to see comments in a fashion oriented blog like "NEW LOOK FOR THE SAKE OF NEW LOOKS" be posted as an example.

    It kind of saddens me a little bit as we computer geeks came here because we love technology and like to have new new things. Now that is uncool and I have seen it become more prevalent in other articles. Is it age or just scarred from experience?

    What happened?

    Anyway my unbiased 2 cents ...

    I think this would be a good upgrade for a notebook or tablet. Much improved battery life and the ability to run Netflix and Hulu on the road is really cool. As long as the applets are not like Windows 8 and I can do work too I am fine if they can integrate.

    For the desktop? I see little reason to upgrade. Windows 7 works fine. However for those reading my previous paragraphs I do not hate 10. I just think it offers little value besides enhanced security over 7. I probably will upgrade next fall after it stabilizes since the upgrade is free.Now if I bought a new computer with it on it I would not downgrade it. Can't say the same with Windows 8.1 though :-)

    On my i7 4770k I have to say I find it faster and more responsive than 7. It was surprisingly stable with just 1 bug with nvidia if I do the dual screen 4k hack to stretch it. A MUST if you already ahve 8.

    It is nice modest upgrade for desktop users and a BIG upgrade for mobile users.

    --
    http://saveie6.com/
    1. Re:Wow so negative here by serviscope_minor · · Score: 3, Insightful

      What happened?

      I'm guessing that people got fed up with churn and started to realise that change for its own sake is annoying. Getting irritated at having to get used to a new system AGAIN that does things worse in many cases is not unreasonable. Being fed up with churn is not the same as fearing change.

      Personally, I like to see "change" actually make things better, because if it doesn't then why bother with the change? And if it makes things worse, then WTF?

      A lot is just uninspiring and meh. Going from flat to bevelled to bulbousd and back to flat (hello Athena!) user interface elements is just a huge meh. I mean sure, now they're coloured and antialiased and with nice fonts and whetever, but I really can't feel myself getting excited about "flat" design. Actually, personally I think it's a bit of a usability regression becase it's harder to explain to people which the active user interface elements are.

      Change where it's an improvement I like. I like large, high res screens. I like running a modern kernel with all the new power saving features and better, newer filesystems and so on and so forth. I tend to run recentl builds of tools I like like vim and mplayer because the changes make them better than the old version. I keep promising myself I'll finally switch from Xterm to Terminology, but I can't get some of the features to work properly at the moment.

      All those things, all those changes have made stuff better. On the other hand, I still run FVWM2. I've tried more modern things, but they all seem to make things worse in interesting ways. I've still adopted some changes, however which make it more modern.

      I think there are quite a few people here with similar opinions to me. Another example: the reason that tablet stuff coming to laptops is bad is because a lot of the UI stuff is designed around single, non cooperating, full screen apps. I don't want that, not because I fear change, it's because I changed AWAY from it in the 90s and I have no desire to go back to the bad old days. I remember what it was like all too well (and my phone just keeps on reminding me). What I fear is being dragged back to something I know from experience is inferior.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
  13. Re:Wiped my Grub though. by richy+freeway · · Score: 2

    It's not an update, it's a preview, and it's not in Windows Update, you have to download it and INSTALL it.

    Can you explain this then?

    http://i.gyazo.com/c6741512c4e...

  14. Re:Wiped my Grub though. by bickerdyke · · Score: 2

    How about ASKING the user if an unknown bootloader is detected during install? "Hey, did you install this here on purpose?"

    --
    bickerdyke
  15. Polishing the brass on the Titanic by Art3x · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Cortana is probably a new and better Clippy. But besides that, the rest seems like polishing the brass on the Titanic.

    New folder icons? I remember visiting gnome-look.org for the first time ten years ago and being blown away: page after page of themes, icon sets, etc.

    Start menu tweaked again? Why is this so hard? And it still looks awkward to me. Program names are inside squares, instead of just being text items in a list. Or small squares at least, like the launcher in Chrome OS.

    I've used Mac since 1984, Windows since 95, and Linux since '05. I've either not minded or actually liked all of the iterations of program launching in Mac and Linux. But I have never, never, like the Windows Start menu.

    Let's start with the word Start, which is where you go to Shut Down. Makes sense. And while it was a little more straightforward than today's shenanigans, it wasn't exactly pleasant to dig through. Plus, I was always stymied by why Windows took several seconds sometimes to me just trying to open the submenu --- not launch a program, just open a folder within the Start menu to see what's in there. It's like Windows was going to the bathroom, and I had to wait for it to finish even to answer a simple question.

    And then there was the My everything fiasco, where Documents became My Documents, Computer became My Computer, and so on.

    There is the trash can that they still won't default to the bottom right, because if you ever resize the screen, it messes up the position, since Windows calculates everything as the number of pixels from the top left, apparently. So they put the trash can in the top left. This never looked right to me. A trashy-looking thing like a trash can should be in a minor part of the screen (bottom right) even if they call it a Recycle Bin. The Macintosh somehow figured out how to do this 30 years ago.

  16. Re:Wiped my Grub though. by RabidReindeer · · Score: 2

    Because you're installing an operating system, and Microsoft does not make a multi-OS bootloader.

    Sure they do. You can install and boot multiple Microsoft OS's.

  17. Re:Wiped my Grub though. by hairyfeet · · Score: 4, Informative

    .Jesus Tap Dancing Christ on a damned cracker are the FOSSies on this site so dang ignorant that they are actually gonna bitch that when A NEW OS IS INSTALLED it actually gives you a motherfucking way to boot the damned thing? Really? Does Grub ask if you wanna keep the Windows bootloader? FUCK NO IT DOES NOT so have some damned common sense and realize when you install a new OS you need a fucking bootloader! For fuck's sake the FOSSies is getting as bad as the damned knee jerk partisan political hacks, rushing to cheer or fucking boo without even understanding WTF they are cheering FOR or booing AGAINST, its just "us VS them" with no damned brains involved!

    And FYI you are previewing a build of a CONSUMER OS, its NOT made for those that load custom bootloaders, ok? its NOT FOR YOU so don't bitch when an OS designed for the masses doesn't assume that you know about loading custom bootloaders and leaves you to deal with it, that is Linux way of leaving the user with their ass flailing about in the dark, NOT the Windows way, again don't like the Windows way? ubuntu is just a hop to your left, enjoy the biannual update deathmarch and drivers getting crapped on,the rest of us will be enjoying an OS with 10 years of free updates WITHOUT reinstalls (which now even Ubuntu advises you to do, even Canonical couldn't fix the clusterfuck that is the Linux update process) where the drivers work from RTM to EOL as my Hairyfeet Challenge has shown, now celebrating 8 years of FOSSie fail.

    Now for those that actually care about Windows 10 and isn't just here to bleat on about ubuntu prostituting porcupine or whatever the fuck the latest one is called, or the "new hotness" distro, Mint? Elementary? Who the hell knows, more damned distros than bad coffee in a food court these days, but back to Windows 10...for those that do not know the way I like to test a beta OS is as follows, which I think gives us the best idea how it will run, I call it the "If it can run on that" test as I take the weakest system I current have (oh and for the guy who didn't understand CPUs on the last Windows 10 article...a first gen Core 2 Duo is NOT, I repeat NOT slower than an AMD E350, the E350 was to compete with ATOM and gives the performance of the Atom+Nvidia ION chipset so even if you have the shitty Intel IGP when it comes to raw CPU power your C2D curbstomps an E350) so here is the specs followed by my impression..

    AMD E350, 8GB of RAM (the only thing that could be considered not below average, but fuck I scored 2 4GB sticks for $30, how could I pass that shit up? Does NOT affect the performance of the OS enough to consider it a major factor, as Win 10 is pretty RAM light) with a 320GB 5400 RPM drive, currently running the latest build, whatever the fuck that number is...Cortana...cute idea, pretty voice, SUCKS on accents, will probably not use if I can help it as it just doesn't seem to be there yet. Reminds me of Dragon Naturally Speaking as it seems like something you will have to "train" and I can type faster than I can train the damned thing. New Icons....OMFG will SOMEBODY pretty please hire somebody with damned taste to work on icons? It reminds me of a bastard child of KDE 3 and those tablety Windows Mist8ke flat shaded abominations, blech. I see an icon themepack for my netbook in the future, yep those be fugly.

    Now for the important shit...how does it run on hardware so slow? WOOOO HOOO YEAH!!!! Don't ask me how they did it but this thing boots crazy fast, it seriously gives my Windows 7 desktop which is several orders of magnitude a run for its money on boot time, battery life? Meh, I'd say its added maybe 20-30 minutes maybe with the new battery saver on, but its an old battery so really not surprising. When you are dealing with ULV SOC like Intel Atom and AMD E series they either idle or go full bore, not really much tweaking you can do there, would probably do better on one of the new mainstream lappys like a Haswell or Vishera chip.

    Control panel...I'm REALLY mixed on this one, as the default that comes

    --
    ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
  18. Re:Wiped my Grub though. by toddestan · · Score: 2

    Actually, pretty much every Linux distribution I've ever played with (that comes with an installer) gives you the option of not installing a boot loader if you don't want to. Some will even make an alternate boot media for you to get into your Linux installation, such as a boot floppy or a USB stick, while others will leave it up to you to figure it out. And if you do choose to install Grub, they will almost always add an entry for any Windows installations it finds.

    Of course, there are the Linux distributions that come without installers, but if you're that hardcore you know what you're doing anyway.