I have adapted to all of the previous Windows and ended up liking them a lot. I don't have a great feeling about #10 though...
That is what I find so strange about Windows 10. It is the first Windows OS that I cannot really think of much to say that is positive. Compared to Windows 8.1 it ends up with "negative points" because of all changes I find negative. Supposedly they are planning a Service Release or something next month. Maybe that will address some of the issues I've seen/had. But it is very disillusioning as I now find myself on the opposite side of the fence, so to speak.
That isn't to suggest it doesn't have positive points. I mean it's certainly
usable, it's free, and as far as I can tell pretty much any desktop application still runs on it, so it's more a question of whether what it provides is worth switching from your current OS.
I haven't even opened Microsoft Edge yet because I feel I'll just be disappointed. Is there any encouraging words on the new browser? Should I just leave it alone or go ahead and figure it out?
It's OK. Probably better than IE in some respects. The main issue I have with Edge is that it's one of their "new" Universal "Apps" What this means is that it doesn't actually have an executable and runs inside explorer.exe, I'm not a fan of that whole model because it seems like it could be exploited to hide malware once malware authors figure it out. (Though perhaps you'd be more qualified in that area
). I've seen some articles about Windows 10 changing something such that browsers cannot automatically change what the default browser is. Personally I don't mind this, as I don't like how browsers constantly ask that anyway, and I had no issue switching to Firefox as the default.
Not sure why you say this "... Win 8.1 Start Menu and I had pretty much forgotten it even existed but now I want it back so I can forget about it again." but you can configure Win 10 to use the same Start screen as Win 8, go to Settings->Personalization->Start and enable "Use Start full screen".
Interestingly, This has been suggested to me repeatedly. I think the people suggesting it have either not used the setting or have not used the Windows 8 start screen much, because the full-screen Start Menu behaves quite differently from the Windows 8/8.1 Start Screen. Search Results appear on the opposite side of the screen, the power button is moved from the upper-right to the lower-left, and the profile button is moved into a foldout that appears to be effectively the left pane of the Start Menu expanded to full height. "All Apps" in Windows 8 was pretty silly, since it filled the screen with a whole bunch of applications. Windows 10 keeps those entries the same, large size, but puts them in an area with limited horizontal space, sorted by letter. I don't think this really works for those who actually used the Win7 All Programs Menu, as the reason that was likely appealing was because you could see a number of entries at a time, whereas with Win10's All Apps there is going to be far more scrolling and there is significantly more dead space. One could argue that it is
a Start Screen, but it is most certainly not anything like Windows 8's beyond a surface-level comparison. On the bright side, Windows Key+ Typing usually works the same as before, if the Start Screen/Menu decides to show up.
It seems that in some ways what they have done is create a sort of hybrid between the Windows 7 Start Menu and the Windows 8 Start Screen that has succeeded in, at least to some extent, finding detractors from users of both.
One of the negative changes that I cannot even think of an explanation for is reducing the customization options. For a "Theme" you can select a background colour and an accent colour, and that is pretty much it- That is all I could find, anyway. It seems strange that the Windows version they have tagged "The Best Windows Ever" (again) has effectively removed so many customization options. Really this removal of options started in Windows Vista as customization options slowly started to get removed. Windows Vista removed the full "Themes" concept, for example- whereas XP had several different themes (Default, Olive, Silver) Vista had just Aero; Windows 7 only used Aero as well, and Windows 8 stripped down the "Advanced Appearance options" dialog to a few options in the personalization options. Windows 10 has removed it entirely, as far as I can tell.
Arguably my biggest issue is their focus on "Universal Apps" since Windows 8, which they are now really pushing hard. A silly name, since they will only run on Windows anyway, and only newer versions. I actually investigated the feasibility of being able to create some ports of our software to work as Windows 8/Universal Apps, since some of our software is run on Windows 8 tablets and it would be nice if we didn't have to require the Pro versions to run our standard desktop programs on them. That was interesting.
It seems the development model is oriented around development on Smartphones. In that context, the limitations make sense- for example, due to trust it makes sense that a smartphone program might not be allowed to include and use arbitrary libraries. In my case, I needed a library for accessing Postgres Databases, as well as one for interfacing directly with our server software.
The odd thing is that this is all not allowed. As far as I can tell it is impossible to create a "Modern UI/Universal" style program that has similar capabilities and underlying architecture to a desktop program but presents it with the new UI; the entire thing needs to be rebuilt. Really the only external interfacing you can do is with "Web services"; so for example in order for the tablet idea to work it would be necessary to create a "Web service" that effectively creates a whole new protocol for interacting with postgres and the server protocol. Seems very strange. Makes sense for Smartphones, again- but not so much for applications intended to run on the desktop. I'll probably have to give it an honest go again this weekend, it may be a case of me not understanding it and thinking it is crap as a result, as that has certainly happened before.
