Windows 10 – not long to go!!

WIndows 10

 

Windows 10 arrives on July 29th 2015. This is being made available free to all machines which currently have a legitimate copy of Windows 7 or Windows 8 installed. This is as long as the upgrade is performed within 365 days of the launch date – so you can do this early or wait a bit.

To get your upgrade click on the windows symbol which has arrived in your taskbar (bottom right corner of your screen) Get Windows 10and register. This will request your email address so that it can reserve a place in the queue for the upgrade.

Why a queue?

There are estimated to be well over a 100 million machines around the world which qualify for the upgrade, but this can’t be achieved in one go therefore Microsoft have decided the best way to handle the load on their servers is to upgrade machines in batches on a first come first served basis. That’s why the queue.

Has it been tested?

There are more than 5 million testers, myself included, based around the world who have been part of the ‘Windows Insider Program’. The whole point behind this has been to test how it looks and feels and to help the development team gauge what people do and don’t like.

What will I see?

For those who currently have Windows 7 installed, it’s faster and contains the new web browser ‘Microsoft Edge’. This is the replacement for Internet Explorer which had been enhanced as far as possible. You’ll also get access to the new Windows Apps and these will run in a window on your normal desktop.

For those running Windows 8, the block style start page has been removed and this has now become part of the ‘Start Menu’ that all previous versions of Windows had.

There are new versions of Mail, Calendar and Contacts along with a raft of other improvements.