There's a bit of a misconception going on.
MS is not giving away W10 licenses, licensed versions of W10 are not a reality yet.
They are simply granting users the privilege of obtaining W10 upgrade, freely on a licensed W7 or W8 machine.
I agree. However, the insider program suppose to continue even after RTM. It would be bad for the insider program if they required valid license from Windows 7 or 8.x program. There is still a debate on how that will work.
What I am think now and this is just my opinion that Microsoft is going to let advance home users test builds by giving them fast and slow ring builds like they did the preview. That why they said you would need a valid license for 7 or 8.x but how that will work is anyone guess.
that's what i thought of any new version after 7
i mean apart from wddm and dx12 almost every newly introduced functionality in 8/8.1/10 can be replaced by freeware for w7.
"apps" is a cool concept for mobile. but thanks... i have my perfectly tuned system and dont need a new weather/search/contacts/mail/calendar/etc. app
its like a car manufacturer who installs new types of seats and programs in some new radiostations into an older model of his cars and sells it as a new one without replacing the engine. ... THANK you but i like the radio stations as i have them after driving my car for 10 years, and i certainly dont need the manufacturer to reprogram my radio stations...
10/8.1/8 is 99% of windows 7 - kernel wise
i like windows 7 very much. thats why i like w10 also. because it's the same. i just dont like pretending that it's something new and that it is a milestone and neccessary replacement for 7.
microsoft forces and lures many to replace it.
1. by not developing wddm 2.0 and dx12 for w7
2. by giving us the free upgrade possibility for 1 year
3. by making new stuff incompatible with older versions ON PURPOSE through exclusion (sarcastically simplified --> "IF winver != 10 THEN PRINT "ERROR: This application only runs on ...blablabla")
the sad thing is many people just cant avoid to upgrade. either because they are in need of certain new hardware which will be then only fully supported by 10.
or because they dont know better and they really think 10 is something "revolutionary".
i stick to my unchanged opinion about windows. apart from versions before 3.11 and apart from "semi"-server editions (or mainly non-consumer editions) like 2000 or NT 3.1-4.0 there were only these windows versions that deserve acknowledgement as full versions. everything in between and afterwards was refurbished and/or completely fail
win 3.11 -> win 95 -> win 98(SE) -> win xp -> win 7
completely fail: win ME / windows vista
refurbished: win 8 / win 8.1 / win 10
i find it also kind of sad and disappointing that the announced "last version" of windows is nothing else but a GUI rework with apps, special xbox compatibility and the possibility to copy and paste in CMD.exe now. (this feature ennumeration was shortened for illustration purposes and satirical conveyance, just keep in mind that all unnamed features are equally or even less important than those mentioned before anyway)
i would have wished for MS to make a new windows from scratch with all the gained experience from user modifications over the years. but no. they want to make some quick final money for the last time and then reduce investing in consumer OS development once and for all.
w 10 could have been so much more:
- optional completely customizable installation from the start (like a windows setup.exe integrated ntlite/wintoolkit)
custom installation in windows has always only meant that i can do some partitioning myself...great stuff...
- completely customizable shell (if i want my windows 10 not to have aero and look like windows xp, then i can turn a switch and tada there we go) with full color and icon control without the need for 3rd party tools.
why do i have to use different software to make my desktop look like this ?
http://www10.pic-upload.de/12.07.12/lswn8ts53iof.png
or this http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/5...sktop19712.jpg
why cant there be one central shell customization tool which allows me to switch any graphic and any placement of shell elements ...
- if they already make neat visual changes for tablets then maybe introduce features like fully borderless windows (like f11 in browser, just for EVERY program) ... because that would be even good on desktop pcs
dont understand me wrong, i dont want people not to have the apps, or not to have the xbox compatibility, or not to have the possibility of a tablet GUI. i just dont want that stuff to replace what made windows 7 so convenient, fast and reliable. why am i almost forced to use apps unless i start uninstalling them manually through powershell with dependency errors etc. why not just have the option to not install apps from the start if i dont want them?!? WHY?
does modularity doesnt mean anything to MS?
You seem to be under the mistaken impression that the kernel has not changed since Windows 7. In fact, there has been major kernel changes since Windows 7. Windows 8 and 8.1 made many improvements, which you will never see in a GUI. Windows 10 has also added major changes, and reduced the footprint of the OS immensely.
You also fall into the trap of thinking that apps are only for mobile devices. Universal Apps are an entirely new OS, which Windows is slowly migrating to. Win32 will eventually be relegated to a virtual infrastructure with WinRT (the core OS that Universal Apps use) becomes the primary OS.
All new app development will eventually be WinRT based, and this has nothing to do with being touch oriented. WinRT is a cross platform operating system that allows apps to be written and deployed on any architecture. While it's true that the WinRT API is currently less capable than Win32, that will change over time. Eventually parity will be achieved, and with each new release more of the core OS will become WinRT based.
The point is, things are not going to stay stable for your "perfectly tuned system", because that system is going away with future releases. You can either get on board now, or stick your head in the sand until you are dragged kicking and screaming and then wondering why nothing works anymore (I'm looking at you WMC users who ignored the writing on the wall, and are now saying "What happened?" and struggling to find a replacement.)
Microsoft is not going to be investing any resources into keeping Win32 alive. They're not going to give you more Win32 options, and they're not going to give you customizability for Win32 or the ability to only have Win32. That would be like giving the people you are evicting from a building that is being torn down a new renovation of their interiors.
You have to stop thinking about Windows 10 (or even 8.x) as a new version of Windows 7. It's not. It's a whole new OS that has backwards compatibility with Windows 7, and that compatibility will slowly be moved to the background over time.
Well said and may I ad that I don't find ME a disaster, had it running perfectly for short time it existed. I was a bit late for Vista but even after Win7 made appearance had it running on surprisingly lo end HW without any problems.
Ok, mine is just an analogy in relation to the issue with license keys and not about the structure of the OS.
EL-O-EL
so they reorganized (shuffled around) the win32-api and call it winrt now... both built on top of win32-subsystem or 64 subsystem.
and you want to tell me that is something groundbreaking? i just say one word that's important in this context: Windows Store
i expected a little more and of course rt has been primarily introduced to improve interoperability between pc, tablets and smartphones.
denying that would be pretty ridiculous.
there are almost 0 advantages for a pure desktop user in the winrt api.
again. i am not saying the winrt api is useless. but it cant be held as a main improvement for desktop computing OSes.
and it certainly doesnt justify a new version.
they could have implemented winrt in windows 7 and keep the name windows 7. and called it sp2.
its all the same subsystem still! win7, win8, win10
instead they try to trick the standard desktop user into thinking he gets a new, faster engine every time windows adds +1 in their version number, when the only thing that happens is he gets a tow coupling installed for a trailer he doesnt own. and a cb radio antenna for a cb radio he doesnt own.
you see those improvements are not the main quality of an OS. they are mostly gimmicks.
the main quality of an os is the fastest possible desktop performance with the adequate resource usage.
another main quality of an os is that it has to be quickly adjustable for individual purposes.
this means for example NOT forcing users to use apps instead of their own programs (be it freeware or $-ware) from the internet.
of course i am not forced to use the apps you might say. but why is my start menu full with it from the beginning and why is it so hard to get rid of this... and why is it so hard to just chose not NOT install certain (or ALL) apps at all in setup?
you see... i want that car without the cb-antenna. but microsoft says "no you have to keep it or the engine wont work correctly sometimes".
dont you think thats crazy?
also another main quality of an os is stability and driver availability. this is really important... a weather/settings/spartan/money/calendar app are all nonsense compared to that. stability and drivers are essential.
so why doesnt microsoft start working EVEN closer with the hardware manufacturers and provides a comprehensive driver library via vendor_id like other driver-webpages do?
i mean for example me and many other people in my working environment talked about this lately: we'd rather have the x gigabyte of appdata removed from the w10 installation and replaced by a driver compendium that covers more recent devices.
sure. nvidia display driver, ati display driver, standard network cards...thats all nice... it has improved over the years no doubt. but it is far from optimal. i dont expect from ms that they store all drivers. but it should at least be possible to work together with hardware manufacturers to build up a standardized manufacturer's ftp folder structure with standardized device ids so ms can actually find drivers when you click the "search the web for a driver" button.
also system_halts are an annoyance which could be handled WAY better through optimizing error handling.
and again . yes from win95 to win7 many things changed concerning the amount of bluescreens appearing. but there is still so much errors that could be handled better than they are. you will find many threads with the typical exception errors (IRQL_xxxx, DRIVER_xxxx, and much more) which is the other part of optimizing driver implementation.
i can name many more CORE features of an os that are untouched since W7.
and i tell you that. apps are no CORE feature of an os. apps (as in applications) is what you install after your os runs. and best case scenario is you install ONLY those applications you need, or none at all if you use your computer just for a single purpose like computing or data mining.
but what microsoft is giving us with those apps... thats SHOVELWARE if you know what that is.
if not, be my guest Shovelware - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This will be my last post on this topic. I read that you can still use the TP after the RTM and still get new updates, as MS will continue to push new updates after it goes final. I read this in the Technet Forum which I believe is run by MS. I said nothing about updating from Win 7,8,8.1 XP, Win 95.....etc. I also posted that I believe you will be able do do this until the expiration date of 10.1.2015. If this is not the case then I possibly will update my Windows 7 364 days from 7.29.2015
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