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A new version of Windows is upon us. On July 29th, Windows 10 will be released, and PC users in 190 countries will begin the upgrade process. The question is – should you do it?
Windows 10 offers some pretty compelling reasons to make the switch. At least compared to its immediate predecessor Windows 8.1, it’s set to be a big hit among home users, enthusiasts and IT pros alike. Musicians and sound engineers using a PC also have much to look forward to. Windows 10 offers some decisive advantages and shiny new features over Windows 7 and 8 which I’ll come back to.
On the other hand, Windows 10 looks and feels strikingly similar to Windows 7. This is a deliberate move by Microsoft (with its tail between its legs) to pander to the Win7 crowd who violently rejected Win8. On its official page, Microsoft proudly declares that the experience is “familiar”, that “It’s the Windows you know”, and that “You’re already an expert”[1]. Given that Win10 operates in basically the same way as Win7, the question becomes “Why should I bother?”. This question is especially potent for happy, longtime users of Win7 who aren’t inclined to change something that “Just Works”- particularly when stricken by fear of change and fear of losing data or causing damage.
As a composer who uses the PC for 8+ hours a day at work, it’s important to have an operating system that works with me and that I can rely on it 100%. It needs to have great hardware compatibility, great resource management, and not get in the way of my creativity. The last thing I need is to hit a crash or a stop error halfway into working a client’s project.
I’ve been running the Windows 10 Technical Preview for a few months now on my primary studio computer. The experience has been overwhelmingly positive, with a handful of kinks and mishaps along the way, and has left me eagerly anticipating the public release on the 29th of July. These last 2 months in particular, Microsoft have upped their game substantially, with the beta builds becoming ever-more refined. Thanks to the millions of beta testers like myself providing constant feedback and a herculean effort by the Win10 team all of the bugs that I had with it in the past have been squashed, and I can now say with some confidence that we finally have a worthy successor to Windows 7.
So with that – should you upgrade your OS? That depends on who you are and what hardware you’re running, but on the whole, I am inclined to answer with a whole-hearted and enthusiastic “Yes”. While most of the improvements and additional features of the OS seem small and relatively trivial, when taken in combination they form an arresting case for taking the plunge. With that, I will present some great reasons why upgrading is a good idea.
It’s Free!
Who doesn’t love free stuff, right? Windows 10 is a free upgrade for anyone with a valid Win7 or Win8 license who upgrades before 29 July 2016. And that means free forever – not a free trial or something that will morph into a payed subscription service in the future as some have speculated.
Ease of Upgrade
Perhaps the most dramatic difference between this and the previous iterations of the OS is how it will be distributed. Microsoft has made it possible to do an in-place install, meaning you won’t have to go installing it from scratch, wiping your hard drive and losing your stuff in the process. You may have noticed the “Get Windows 10” icon in the system tray nagging you to reserve your copy. Come July 29th, users will be able to perform a one-click install. Just click “install”, and wait for the process to finish. Best of all- all your programs and files will remain intact. This is a giant leap forward in the evolution of how Windows gets installed, which used to require a clean install.
Should the installer fail for any reason, it will revert Windows back to your current version no questions asked, no harm done. I actually had this happen: My upgrade failed initially, but the problem was trivial to solve (I ran “sfc/scannow” from the command line) and after that, the upgrade finished successfully.
Stability
I can only speak from my own experience on this one – the Technical Preview has been extremely stable and reliable for me – and notwithstanding some slight bugs to be expected in any beta software, I haven’t had a single crash. In that way, the beta has been comparable to 7, which is a great sign. I have installed it on 5 different PCs (2 new-ish laptops, 1 crappy old laptop and 2 desktops) and they have all been rock solid so far.
Performance
There are tangible performance boosts to be had here – faster boot time, better hardware acceleration and better memory use. Windows 10 has lots of under-the-hood tune-ups that can boost your PC’s overall speed and performance (especially compared to Win7 on identical hardware). It uses less memory when it’s idle and less graphics memory when you launch and switch between windows. It’s also designed to run background services like Bluetooth only when you need them. Win10 also supports DirectX 12, which will be of great interest to gamers running graphics-intensive games. I’ve been using it for several months now running some massive Studio One sessions and it’s been nothing but a delight to work with in terms of getting the most from the hardware.
Windows Audio
Something that I didn’t expect to find, and something I have not heard anyone mention, was a vastly improved native audio driver system. I have no evidence other than personal anecdote, but I have found that the default Windows Audio driver has far less latency than it had in Win7. It is also more stable and reliable – I can now mix large sessions on it without pops, clicks and dropouts which was not the case before. On Win7, I wouldn’t dream of recording with the default Windows audio driver, as the latency was through the roof, even at the lowest setting. That all seems to have changed – the new Windows Audio driver can operate with as little as 10ms latency. While it’s not perfect and there are lower latency drivers out there, it is low enough for me not to notice at all. It’s gotten to the point that I have not used ASIO4all in months – meaning I can now use Studio One in non-exclusive mode, allowing me to record stuff while having the audio enabled in other apps like Chrome, Skype or Spotify.
System-Wide FLAC Support
Win10 will make it easier than ever to enjoy lossless music, as it will be supported right out of the box. We’re talking about platform-level support, so any modern or Win32 application will be able to handle the format. This is great news for the proliferation of the format, and should be a great boost to its adaptation among sound junkies.
Windows Store
With the introduction of touch-friendly Metro Apps in Win8, Microsoft continues to grow and expand the number of Apps available in the Windows Store. While it’s still a tasteless joke compared to Apples App Store (Quality control appears to be on permanent vacation…), there are some genuine gems to be found there. I quite like the idea of being able to try out an app, have it install in its Modern App sandbox, and then be able to get rid of it in a flash if I don’t find it useful- all with greatly reduced risk of getting a virus, and zero risk of the app leaving nasty traces of itself deep inside the registry.
Compatibility
Seeing that Win10 runs on a similar architecture to Win7, there should be very few issues with hardware/software compatibility. Anything that runs on Win7/8 should run also on Win10. The overwhelming majority of beta testers have confirmed this. Interestingly, when I was downloading drivers for my old Dell printer, the download page kindly informed me that the printer/ driver was not compatible with Win10. “Damn” I said. But I decided to proceed anyway, and the driver and printer work perfectly. I’ve been happily printing things ever since. Very odd!
Design
Admittedly this is a matter of taste, and with V10, Microsoft have really gone for the modern, flat aesthetic. Not everybody likes it, I happen to love it. Compared to Win8.x, it’s nothing short of a triumph.
Cortana
The new personal assistant is one of the more talked about new additions to the OS. Cortana’s features include being able to set reminders, recognize natural voice without the user having to input a predefined series of commands, and answer questions using information from Bing (like current weather and traffic conditions, sports scores, and biographies). It also includes a music recognition engine, so it can help you identify that song in your head you can’t for the life of you remember the name of.
File Management
The tools used for finding and managing your files are some of the most oft used, and are crucial to any good OS. Windows Explorer, like in Win8, sports the ribbon UI, with most of the common functions visible without having to dig through menus all the time. The search function has also been greatly enhanced, and can return results from within your files & folders, or from the internet. They have made countless tweaks to make managing files that much faster and easier, which, when you do it for the greater part of our day, is a damn big deal.
Start Menu
Not really new, but back from purgatory since it was abandoned in Win8. And it comes with a section for pinning Live Tiles – in a sense it’s a good compromise between Microsofts abhorrent Win8 Start Screen and the traditional Start Menu.
Multitasking
Microsoft playing serious catch up in this department. But to their credit, now that they have made it to 2015, the multitasking in Win10 is terrific. Easily snap up to four apps in place and see all open tasks in a single view. And joining the Mac most Linux distros, Windows now allows you to create multiple desktops and separate related tasks into their own workspaces.
Updates
Microsoft have dubbed this new OS “Windows as a Service”, which is to say that now major updates such as added additional features will be delivered through Windows Update. This represents a clean break from the past, where MS confined its updates mostly to bugfixes and security patches.
This ostensibly means that your copy of Windows will always stay up-to-date, and will periodically receive new features as part of the core OS. For those who like to be on the bleeding edge, this is exciting news. It also means that this will be the last “major” version of Windows- so you won’t have to upgrade again like this for a very long time. I speculate that they will be following the same model Apple have been doing with OS X – One OS that receives constant updates, rather than coming out with a brand new version every few years.
One controversial element of this new OS is that it reduces the control users have to decide when these updates get installed. It’s a much more aggressive updating system than before, and some have voiced concerns over stability and security. Whether these concerns ring true remains to be seen.
In summary, there are plenty of good reasons why you should grab a copy of Win10. As I said earlier, while no one feature is earth-shattering enough to make the upgrade worthwhile, when taken together they offer an impressive package. The whole OS feels really mature (even in beta) and there are truckloads of enhancements to UX/UI. I can heartily recommend this one, especially given that the upgrade is both free and greatly simplified for current users of Win7/8.
[1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/features
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