What is it like to upgrade to Windows 10?
I finally got around to upgrading my Lenovo notebook from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10. I can tell you in short it was a relatively fast and easy upgrade. My Lenovo is fairly quick and I have all solid state drive storage so that probably helped make things go fast.
Here is how my upgrade went:
- I did the pre-download option of Windows 10 so all the files were already on my system when I started the upgrade.
- Once launched the Lenovo ran for about five minutes with a green screen of various updates.
- It then ran about another six minutes copying files and doing some reboots in the process.
- The longest process was “Installing features and drivers” and then “configuring settings.” This took about 10 minutes.
All-in-all the whole process took less than 30 minutes. All my settings and favorite website links were retained so that is all good and keeping life easy. I must confess I was a bit concerned about losing some features like my Lenovo finger print log-in reader, etc., but all that works just fine.
As far as new features go, the things I noticed and like first and best are:
- The return of the Start menu
- You will meet Cortana, the Microsoft version of Apple’s Siri. I have not used Cortana, yet, but one cool thing is that in Windows 10 Cortana will look at my Outlook Calendar and see where I am going. Cortana will check traffic to that destination at come back with a message if required that says something vaguely similar to “There is heavy traffic going to Burbank, I suggest you leave at 11:30 AM.” That is very cool.
- There is a new browser called Edge. I don’t have enough experience with it to comment, but anything has to be an upgrade from the old tired Internet Explorer.
Rather than write a whole column on the “Best of What’s New” in Windows 10, you will get more if I direct you to this page at PC World that covers the Top 10 best things about Windows 10.
Here is an 8 minute video of a side-by-side comparison of some features and the look of Windows 8 vs. Windows 10.
Windows 10 is definitely a big improvement over Windows 8.1. Do I recommend companies upgrade all PCs from Windows 7, no, not necessarily. There are a lot of other issues to be considered in a corporate desktop environment. But for laptops and touchscreen devices this upgraded is a thumbs up.
PS. Here is a hot tip recommended by Kevin McDonald. If you have problems doing the upgrade due to corrupted registry keys and other maladies, try out this tool from Microsoft called FixIt by Clicking HERE.
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