The Windows 10 Review: The Old & New Face of Windows
by Brett Howse on August 25, 2015 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Operating Systems
- Microsoft
- Windows 10
OneDrive
OneDrive is Microsoft’s cloud storage for consumers, and it of course is built into Windows 10. For free, it comes with 15 GB of storage, and there are a couple of paid tiers to increase that storage. If you purchase Office 365, as a bonus you get unlimited OneDrive storage (right now it just shows 10 TB but it's increasing over time) so if you do need space in the cloud consider that.
OneDrive has changed dramatically from the Windows 8.1 implementation, and not necessarily for the better. In Windows 8.1, going through the Windows Explorer view you could see all of your files in OneDrive whether they were synced to your PC or not. Opening a file which was not on your PC would initiate a download of it, and then the file would open and stay synced on your computer. If you wanted to free up some space, you could just right click a file or folder and choose “Make available online only” and it would remove the local copy.
OneDrive in Windows 8.1 showing "Online-Only" Placeholders
This was an incredibly simple way to access a huge amount of online storage without having to have it copied to your PC first. However, for Windows 10, that feature is gone, and we have a reversion to the Windows 7 style of sync client.
In Windows 10, OneDrive is installed by default, and out of the box it does not sync any files or folders from OneDrive. If you don’t interact with it, you will get a pop-up asking you what files or folders you want to sync on this PC. You can drill down to subfolders just like in Windows 7 and just keep those synced, but compared to Windows 8.1 this is a major downgrade. Once you get used to being able to see all of your folders, it makes it really easy to save files and access them later. According to Microsoft, this was too complicated for end users though, and people would see the placeholder files for their online data and assume it was on their computer. Then they would go somewhere with no internet access, and they would have no access to their data which they thought was on their computer. I can kind of get that argument, but regardless the solution we have in Windows 10 is a huge step back in terms of functionality.
OneDrive Sync Client in Windows 10
With the huge amount of storage you can get in OneDrive now, and the relatively small amount of local storage available on SSDs, the placeholder system in Windows 8.1 was really nice.
In the Windows 10 sync client, you get all of the options you would expect. You can set where your OneDrive folder is stored on your PC, choose which folders to sync, and enable things like automatically copy photos to OneDrive when a camera is connected.
There are also a couple of other features which have come to OneDrive lately. You can now (finally) sync folders that other people have shared with you, although the method to do so and the end result is kind of complicated. In OneDrive on the web, you can now “Add this folder to your OneDrive” which will add the folder within your own OneDrive, and there the files will be synced as you want based on your settings. It’s a kind of clunky solution, and I’m not sure why they didn’t just add a “Shared” folder in the OneDrive shell. Also, I’m not sure if this will cut into your own storage, and since this feature is rolling out to users now, I don’t have access yet to test it.
You can also set OneDrive to let you "Fetch" files off of your computer through the OneDrive web client. This feature is one that was part of older Microsoft tools, and those tools have been phased out in favor of SkyDrive/OneDrive, and Microsoft is bringing their feature sets to OneDrive.
With that out of the way, Windows 10 does have some functionality for OneDrive which did not exist on Windows 8.1, and it is very handy. From within the Windows Explorer shell, you can now share a file directly from OneDrive by simply right clicking the file and choosing “Share a OneDrive link”. This was only available on the web before, and being able to create a web link for a file from within Windows Explorer is much more convenient.
It seems like I’ve been harsh on OneDrive, and I have, because Microsoft offers some of the most competitive priced online storage, and then they make it difficult to use. The Windows 8.1 solution was much nicer for many people, but perhaps with the changes to allow unlimited storage for Office 365, the placeholders would themselves take up too much space and be too much work to sync. Regardless, I’m hoping this gets improved over time.
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SeleniumGlow - Wednesday, September 2, 2015 - link
What about the changes and enhancements to the Audio stack. The new windows 10 Audio stack is redesigned completely so that it reduces inputs and recording latency. This supposedly makes windows 10 Audio API on par with something like ASIO, by reserving a complete CPU core.Rickkins1 - Thursday, September 3, 2015 - link
Bwahahahaha, this is comedy gold. Browse microsoft's forums to see the multitude of complaints about win10 breaking sound cards etc.Rickkins1 - Wednesday, September 2, 2015 - link
I'd just like to thank microsoft for that totally unbiased review of windows10.But seriously, c'mon, will ya...?? Do you really take us for complete idiots...??
At least have the honesty to label such a piece as "advertisement".
Oracv4Prez - Friday, September 4, 2015 - link
Amongst all the glow and gushing comments I think that Windows 10 is horribly flawed. Lets start with the upgrade: Th new font renders incredibly poorly on my screen (1920 x 1200) Samsung and looks horribly blocky - like an ancient PC from the 80's. Secondly, half of the programs dont work anymore and when I tried to open Microsoft's own office applications, the links all failed.SO you want to try out Edge??? No doubt it is faster for all the sites I visit. But...what about your bookmarks/favorites. It wont except anything but IE 11 and if you have them neatly sorted and try to move from another browser to IE the organisation dies.
And finally when you think you have a few things working, it crashes. Oh well, we all have the dreaded blue screen of death now and them. It politely tells you that there is an error so it will restart. You could wait --- and wait ... and wait for something to happen, but no - nothing!!!!
Tried the solutions on the web, but obviously there are still a LOT of holes to patch. Oh, and the last update (before I banished it) did more damage than the initial install, causing perfectly functioning applications to crash/or the link to disappear.
Rating: - pre-beta software status. Use at your peril!
TheReviewWriter - Monday, September 7, 2015 - link
I love it Very smooth makes me feel organized and smart LOL :)Ramon Zarat - Monday, September 14, 2015 - link
No matter how you slice it, Windows 10 is a step in a VERY wrong direction. If the product is free, YOU become the product. I *HATE* this business model consisting of trading most if not all your privacy *AND* control over your product for $149.00 (typical Windows license price).The entire M$ product portfolio is going into that direction. Their first failed move was the Metro atrocity to force you into the M$ store with Windows 8. Then you had Office 365 you rent for a monthly fee FOREVER instead of owning the product. Then they tried to impose an "always on" connection to the XB1 + restriction on sharing games and failed miserably. Now, it's the turn of the entire OS to be free, but at what price?
I'm a paying M$ customer since Windows 95 but this time, I'll wait until a fully hacked and fully sanitized version of Windows 10 comes out, including with the choice to install or not "upgrades" from Windows update and turning off and all the spyware shit for good.
I want to own my stuff, not rent them forever, not for free with tons of negative impacts either. I want to control what I own. I want my data stored locally, not in the cloud. And finally, I don't want to share anything that concerns only me. The *ONLY* technological improvement Windows 10 bring to the table compared to Windows 7 that is worthy of mention to me is DirectX12. If hackers can one day bring DX12 to Win7, I'll simply never upgrade.
clarkrptg - Tuesday, September 15, 2015 - link
I would think twice about upgrading to Windows 10. I did so and now have a completely unusable computer with a black screen. I guess I should have known better,but don't understand how Microsoft gets away with this crap over and over and over again. I am moving to Mac . . . no doubt about it. I googled the issue and find a comment from Microsoft, oh, gosh golly,yes, resulting black screens are a problem. Oh, gee whiz, sorry about that. Take your computer into a Microsoft store, blah, blah, put back to factory settings, blah, blah. I have a suggestion for you Microsoft . . . I WILL NEVER BUY ANOTHER MICROSOFT COMPUTER AGAIN.Miller1331 - Tuesday, December 1, 2015 - link
Such an upgrade over Windows 8. Microsoft have done good this timeConcettaBustamante - Wednesday, June 29, 2016 - link
My colleagues were searching for NY DTF IT-2663 a few weeks ago and used a document management site that hosts a lot of fillable forms . If others want NY DTF IT-2663 too , here's a link http://goo.gl/JQA7yVkelli stark - Tuesday, February 20, 2018 - link
WINDOWS 10 reviews are coming positive mostly like start menu is back, internet explorer is replaced by Microsoft edge there are soo many changes that are done to windows 10 you can also check reviews on this site https://www.ticketgateway.com/profile/user_profile... and you will get more updates about Windows 10