The Plus Sides of Windows 10….

It has taken awhile. And I kept switching from Windows 7, Windows 8.1 Pro Pack, and Windows 10 but I’ve finally settled on Windows 10 Professional. It has been said that The Anti-Christ skips every other generation when it comes to OS development. Windows 98 was the first really good operating system. Windows ME was the bastard child of Windows 2000 and Windows 98. And it sucked. It was call Windows Millennium Edition, but it should've been called Windows Malfunctioning Edition. I’m not counting Win2000 in this, as it was not developed for consumer use, and I never used it. Windows XP was great. I used it for the longest of times. Over 10 years. In fact, I still have a Virtual Machine of it for when I have to run something (like a really old game), and it won’t run on Win10. Then there was Windows 8. It was so bad that when Microsoft developed it’s successor that they skipped a number to distance it from Windows 8.

Anyway, here’s what I like about Windows 10:

• The app store. Google Play has it. Spamazon has it for Android. Why not Microsoft? This way, apps distributed by Microsoft (like calendar and email) can be updated without windows update.
• The apps. With Win7, for example, you could Netflix through Windows Media Center. With Windows 10, Windows Media Center is gone, but Netflix is available as an app from the app store. As is Hulu (I myself have upgraded to the ad-free Hulu Plus). And there are a few other video apps. There are also other apps. Like CNN, USA Today, several news organizations…..
• Facebook and Twitter have Windows 10 apps. Which means I no longer have to fire up my browser to respond when I get trolled on Facebook. Though as a side note, I’ve found the best thing to do when you do get trolled is absolutely nothing. They will go away if you just don’t feed them. Something I learned from Usenet…
• The calendar and mail apps. I just realized today that all I have to do is put my Google account (where I keep my contacts and my calendar) in, and now my Google contacts and calendar are automatically populated. Even with the latest version of Outlook 2016, I still have to use a third party app (I use GoContact Sync) to sync my Google Calendar & Contacts. Whereas with Thunderbird, it takes a couple of extensions, but once I install and configure them, I don’t have to do anything else…
• ISO support. During my misadventures on the internet, I’ve downloaded .iso images off the internet, and in the past, I’ve used Gizmo Drive to mount the .iso file like an optical drive to browse what I’ve needed (especially when I’ve installed Visual Studio Express). With Win10, windows explorer supports .iso images natively. Which is good, as I only have Nero 2015, and won’t be able to afford Nero 2016 for a while….
• The start menu. I liked the start menu in WinXP and Win7, and the ability I had to reorganize according to my tastes (and I had my ways of organizing it). With Windows 8/8.1, the start menu was replaced by the metro start screen. I hated it. With Windows 10, a compromise was reached. I have the start menu now. And though I can’t set up and rearrange the folders like I want, I can rearrange the Metro Style tiles as I see fit. And with the November update, there is extra space for tiles to make Windows 10 my own…

All in all, I’m still ‘moving in’ to Windows 10. I haven’t installed any of my Flight Simulators, or any of my MechWarrior games, though I think my Combat Flight Simulator and MechWarrior games will be destined for my WinXP virtual drive. It’s not something that is going to be done overnight. But I have all my hardware drivers installed, and Firefox. So, it’s a work in progress. But I’m still using it.