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
Inspired by the Smartphone: Action Center Arrives on the PC
Originally released on Windows Phone 8.1, Action Center is one of many features that have been inspired by the rise of the smartphones. In fact, the end result on Windows 10 is practically identical to what is available on Windows Phone 8.1.
Having all of our programs place their notifications in a single location is as useful on the desktop as it is on the smartphone. You can, at a glance, check out what has happened. Windows Phone 8.1 also introduced several configurable settings toggles, where you could easily enable airplane mode, screen rotation lock, turn off Bluetooth, or more.
Windows 10 offers this same experience, including the customizable toggles. New to Windows 10 though is the ability to add more toggles, and expand the list to display them all. It is very handy for tasks like connecting a Bluetooth speaker, since you can now just use the Connect toggle in Action Center, select the speaker, and away you go.
At this point, everyone is pretty comfortable with notification systems, so we don’t need to dig in here too deep. For the moment, notifications can either be dismissed by swiping them to the right, or selecting them will open the corresponding app. In the not too distant future, apps like Messaging will be actionable from right within Action Center which will be very welcome.
Like practically everything in Windows 10, this is fully customizable and you can even disable Action Center yourself if you find it distracting. This is one of the key points that I have noticed with the launch, is that almost every single feature they have added also contains a way to disable that feature. Compare this to the Windows 8 era, and you can see that Microsoft has certainly opened its eyes and ears to their customers.
More Smartphone features: Wi-Fi Sense, Data Usage, Storage Tracking
Windows Phone, despite its low adoption, has some other very useful functionality that Microsoft is bringing to the desktop. And honestly, it makes just as much sense here as it does on a mobile device. With Windows 10, PCs and phones are converging far more than we may have even thought possible, but I think the idea is that if an idea is good on the phone, why not see if you can adapt it for the PC too?
The first feature is Wi-Fi sense, and this one has likely gotten the most publicity. Enabling Wi-Fi sense lets Windows 10 automatically connect to hotspots, and if the hotspots want you to agree to terms, it will automatically do this and get you connected. It’s a feature I’ve had on my phone for a while now and it is very handy not to have to deal with that all the time. I’m excited for it to come to Windows 10.
The other big piece of Wi-Fi sense is that when connecting to an access point, you can optionally share the information with some of your social networks. If enabled, your outlook.com contacts, Skype contacts, and Facebook contacts can all get access to this network if you opt-in to enabling this feature. In settings, you can also select which group of contacts will get access with check boxes beside all three choices so you can enable or disable whichever ones you desire.
This is a feature that already existed in Windows Phone 8.1, but with so few devices out there it never really got the attention then. When enabled, Wi-Fi Sense shares the network information without the other person ever having to see the pre-shared key. In this sense, it can be more secure than the old way, because they do not have to be told the key, and they have no way of seeing it. If they have Windows 10 and have this feature enabled, they will just get logged into the network. They also cannot share this network with any of their contacts. This is a one time share, and any contacts which receive it can’t share it again.
Now remember, this is an opt-in feature, and it is per network. There is no “always share” option. Each time you connect to a new network, there will be a check box that is unchecked by default asking you if you want to share this.
Still, this can be an issue especially at a corporate environment where they are using pre-shared keys (likely because they lack the infrastructure for other methods) and it would be a bad thing if someone added the work network to their phone and shared it with their friends. For this reason, you can add _optout to the SSID of the wifi network to disable this completely.
Once a network is shared, it may take a couple of days for it to be accessible on contacts devices, and if you remove access, it may take a couple of days more before it goes away.
The implications of this change are that it should make it a lot easier to have friends and family get access to your Wi-Fi if that is what you want. From a security standpoint, it is a little dicey. The actual network information is encrypted during the exchange, but that doesn’t mean an enterprising person won’t gain access to the information once it’s on their computer.
You can at least use one feature without the other. If you want easier access to hotspots, enable that, and leave the Wi-Fi sharing disabled.
Windows 10 also gets what Windows Phone called Data Sense. It keeps track of all of your network activity over the last thirty days, and it displays it in a list which is per-application. It is a great tool to see how much you use per month, and if you have a rogue application using tons of bandwidth. Windows Phone allows you to set the maximum limit as well, and you can set it to not just a 30 day period. I expect this will improve over time as Windows 10 evolves.
Another pickup from Windows Phone is Storage Sense, or so it is called on that platform. On Windows 10 it is just Storage settings. Here you can easily set where documents, music, pictures, and videos are stored, and this will be very handy for devices with not a lot of storage out of the box, such as low cost tablets or notebooks. It will also give you a list of all of the things on your drive to give you an idea where your space is being used.
One feature of Storage settings which is available in the UI but greyed out at the moment is the ability to redirect Windows Store apps to another location. Once again, for low cost devices, you may have some SD storage available which you can then move your apps to. Or, maybe you have a smaller SSD and want to store those apps on a secondary disk based drive. This was originally intended to ship with Windows 10 but unfortunately they have not yet ironed all of the bugs out of it, so it is ready to go in the UI, but is currently greyed out.
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Brett Howse - Wednesday, August 26, 2015 - link
Page 4 on Continuum. Overall it's a slight step back on touch.marvdmartian - Wednesday, August 26, 2015 - link
[from the last page of the article] "But is this going to be the upgrade to move people off of Windows 7? In my opinion, yes it is."Perhaps in your world. Not so much, in mine. Nor, in many people I've talked to, who are equally unimpressed with this latest version of Windows.
In fact, so far, what I've seen (though, I admit, not yet experienced) of W10, I'd label it more of a Windows 8.2.....maybe 8.25. Still blocky looking. Still looks like the icons were drawn by a 3rd grader (no offense to the average 8 year old). Still.....just plain UGLY.
I understand the reasoning for the postage stamp sized blocks, as it makes touch interface much easier. But if they want TRUE switch-ability between touch interface and mouse/keyboard usage, they need to change the look of things, to go with the 2nd choice. Then there's also the return to the 90's screen resolution. Necessary for touch interface, perhaps. But when a person has spent hundreds of dollars on a high resolution monitor, then "upgrades" to Windows 10 (8.25?), they do NOT want to have to dial back their resolution to that which was supported first by what? Windows 98??
And don't even get me started in on the privacy issues. Yes, some people might not have a problem with the information Microsoft is gathering. But I'm betting plenty more will, once they're made aware of it. And for MS to force you to opt OUT of information gathering, makes them somewhat "big brother"-ish, in my book.
Sorry, Brett, but in my book, Microsoft is quickly striking out with this operating system. As far as their support of Windows 7, don't be surprised if they don't extend it, just as they did with Windows XP, if the majority of 7 users don't bother upgrading to 10.
chrome_slinky - Wednesday, August 26, 2015 - link
Unfortunately, for people who think, we must realize that the average user IS stupid, and FREE is making them weak in the knees.I will be on Windows 7 until 2020 at least, and carefully removed the "updates" which install more telemetry from my list of updates.
BTW, you could always use the "illudium235 space modulator" to take care of things, couldn't you? <g>
uhuznaa - Wednesday, August 26, 2015 - link
I'm sick of repeating this over and over but you really shouldn't confuse "is not interested in how computers work" with "stupid". I've seen people who are really bright in their fields totally struggling with their computers because they're just not interested in nor care for how these things work.It's like calling you "stupid" because you are not interested in knitting your own sweaters. I bet there are thousands of things you don't care for and are not interested in which others who are not necessarily smarter than you are really good in.
On the other hand not understanding this may be reason enough to call you stupid.
Michael Bay - Wednesday, August 26, 2015 - link
So, it`s you and your two and a half friends. Such tremendous loss for MS, certainly, somewhere in some basement Nadella is crying crocodile tears.Da W - Wednesday, August 26, 2015 - link
I moved from the FRENCH version of windows 7 to the FRENCH version of windows 8 to the FRENCH update of windows 8.1, somehow it installed the ENGLISH version of windows 10.chrome_slinky - Wednesday, August 26, 2015 - link
Zut alors!Billy_Boy - Wednesday, August 26, 2015 - link
The most thorough, well thought out review of ANY product I have read in a long, long time.Bravo!
milkod2001 - Wednesday, August 26, 2015 - link
I gave it a try and got w10 installed on top of my w7. All took about 30 minutes. All applications/games are working which is great. But that got me thinking what is WINDOWS 10?It feels just like windows 7.1 upgrade. New graphic interface, better boot time and slightly faster copy of files. OK lets not forget dx12 and Cortana. It took MS 6 years since release of w7 to put together this massive update and call it w10. Now i get why MS gave it to us for FREE. It just could not dare to charge us for bunch of mediocre updates.
Happy w10 user here :)
azazel1024 - Wednesday, August 26, 2015 - link
Can I just say, if you are coming from Windows 7, Windows 10 is a fairly nice upgrade. If you are coming from Windows 8.1, especially if you have a touch interface, it is a serious reversion in almost every possible way. Most of the apps seems half finished at best. As eluded to in the story, the mail client is about 10 steps back from the one in 8.1. How basic is it to have the ability to change from conversation view? Photos app doesn't support the ability to view images by folder (which can be nice instead of seeing every single one of your pictures spread out by date). Edge can't download some file types, so you have to open them in IE11. If you want to change audio volume, there is no option to do that in the action center (plenty of room for a button for it). So for a tablet, you have to pull up the task bar to do it, which doesn't make sense. Want to change a wifi network? Oh, there is a button in the action center to do...oh, it only turns Wifi on and off...but, wait, there is an airplane mode button also in there to do that. Oh, you can long press on the wifi button, then go in to settings and then select a different wifi network. Want to change the brightness to anything other than 25/50/75/100%, long press again and go in to settings and then you can adjust it from 0-100% in 1% increments. But...why can't there at least be a 0% brightness on that short cut button? 25% is too bright in a dark room. WHY!Sooooooo much of Windows 10 from what I have seen is "why in the hell would you do it that way?" Sure, some stuff in 8.1 was non-intuitive and took awhile to get used to, but a lot of stuff was a quick gesture and done. Want to change the brightness or audio? Swipe in the charms bar, hit the button and adjust away. Now they are found in different places and one of them takes several extra actions to really be able to adjust where you want it. Many of the apps have lost functionality, even if they look a little nicer or have a few new and nice features. I love that Edge is faster, but it sucks for touch input now and a lot of features have been lost that were highly useful, even with keyboard and mouse input.
Windows 10 at best feels half finished as an operating system. I don't mean "they'll innovate the 'OS as a Service that is Windows 10'". I mean, they needed to have spent at least a few more months baking this thing before sending it out the door and if a lot of this stuff isn't "changed" or give the user the ability to customize (why not add more options that you can add to the action center? What about allowing the user to ELIMINATE options in the action center too, I don't need half the crap that is in there as a short cut) then frankly Win 10 is a big step backward in a lot of ways.
I am willing to give it a try for awhile, but I am itching every single day to reload Windows 8.1 on my Asus T100. I am certainly not going to load Windows 10 on any of my other machines for a very long time to come (either right before the 1 year upgrade period ends, or possibly never).