upgraded to Win10 (build 10240). Turned on all updates, insider, fast ring. Now sat around for ages waiting for insider fast ring build to decide to start downloading. Manually 'checking for updates' doesn't seem to be working either. Grr.
To address your bullet points:
- The tile colours in 10 may be less varied than in 8, but that comes with one huge benefit. 8 had a problem where the tile would pick the dominant colour of an icon and use that as its background; I have no idea who at MS thought that was a good idea, in practice it meant many monochrome icons resulted in tiles where you could barely make out the icon at all. And there wasn't even an official method to specify a tile's background, you just had to try and see. It may be less colourful, but 10's method is definitely more usable.
- The charms clock is redundant now as the taskbar clock is always visible. There are third-party clock tiles if you want a large clock on your start screen/menu.
- I agree about the forced space, same for the need for titles (even empty ones) of the columns. MS seems to think this works better for tablet displays and other rotating displays, and I can see their point but there should be more flexibility.
- You can turn tablet mode off, so that's a non-issue. The only slight problem I have is that there is no option to have the start screen showing after logon if you just have full screen start on as opposed to tablet mode. I suppose I could use an app to trigger the windows key after startup, but that would be an ugly solution.
- The charms bar start and power options were handy on tablets, hopefully MS will allow us to add other settings and custom shortcuts to the Action Center in the future so we can replicate that functionality.
- I can't say I've noticed Windows 10 taskbar icons being any worse than 8, but in general the icon design in 10 is pretty ugly IMHO. "Flat" style icons are all well and good, but MS really didn't do a very good design job on these. I'm using a Windows 8 icon pack on all my Windows 10 installations now.
- You can easily make a shortcut to the full control panel brightness settings if you need finer control over brightness.
- There are tweaks (see winaero.com) to restore the previous behaviour of the power, volume, etc. popups. You're right, being able to change your power plan from the taskbar can be very handy. I prefer the Windows 10 volume slider on a tablet, but on desktops I revert to the old UI.
- I honestly can't remember how the other default on-screen keyboard layout looked on 8, but you can just enable the full layout in settings which does have the numbers and letters on the same page.
- I much prefer the Windows 10 Mail/Calendar apps. They still have a way to go though, they don't yet have the full functionality you get with the current default Android email client for example. I'm not sure what your problem is with other calendars, I seem to be able to switch between my Google and MS calendars?
- I have no idea why they changed OneDrive like that for Windows 10, being able to access 'online only' files as if they were local was great. That seems like a big step backwards, I agree. I can't say I used the modern version of OneNote all that much on either OS, I can't see the point in it really given that the desktop version is free anyway if you don't have Office.
- The photo app in Windows 10 works correctly for me, nothing zoomed in like you describe, but for quick previews the old desktop Windows Photo Viewer seems faster. Again, this can be re-enabled if you follow the instructions on winaero.
- I'm not sure why you're having that issue with the file explorer, it opens in the same position and size as last used for me. But while we're on the subject, the file explorer still hasn't been properly optimized for touch on Windows 10, which is mind-blowing! Why have they not added a simple selection toggle button? MS even made a touch-friendly file manager for Windows Phone, but for some reason neglected to make one for their principal OS.
- Cortana's a gimmick IMHO, I've got it turned off on all my machines. Google Now is the only voice-driven PA system that comes close to being useful in my opinion, and even then I rarely use it.
Last edited by xtcrefugee; 16 Oct 2015 at 09:54.
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