Windows 10 Screenshots

[Spectere]

As promised, here's some screenies of Windows 10!

Here's the new Start menu. By default it starts with some Live Tiles preloaded in it, but if you want you can eschew them entirely and get yourself a nice barebones list, somewhat reminiscent of the classic Windows 95-style Start menu, albeit with a bit more customization and modern conveniences built in:



Modern UI applications will be placed in the start menu like any other application. From here, you can right-click on them and add them to the taskbar or the start menu if you like:



The new Start menu supports live tiles, so you can get your weather and all that crap there. Also note that the base OS comes with Skype (not really all that surprising) and the Modern UI version of OneNote (which is a little bit more surprising, not to mention useful):



Speaking of Modern UI, you can run Modern UI applications windowed now. Do note that you can't resize them all that much vertically since they were designed for full-screen use (the windows in the screenshot are as narrow as they'll go), but it's still considerably better than the alternative (you can click this screenshot to see the full 1440x900 shot):



And finally, this shot shows the new Explorer Home page--which I find significantly more useful than the obnoxious folder view that Windows 8.1 introduced--as well as the new window shadow. The shadow is more subtle than the one in Windows Vista/7 and OS X, but wider. It definitely helps to give the windows some much needed definition compared to Windows 8:

[Sneaky]

I like the way that looks; I may actually purchase this OS when released! Seems like it keeps the nice stuff from 7 and 8.1, tying it together with a new look and new functionality

[Zephlar]

I like the way that looks; I may actually purchase this OS when released! Seems like it keeps the nice stuff from 7 and 8.1, tying it together with a new look and new functionality

I concur. That actually looks pretty good.

[Spectere]

Seems like it keeps the nice stuff from 7 and 8.1, tying it together with a new look and new functionality

Yep, my thoughts exactly. There are a few things that I'm concerned about, namely the search and task switch buttons on the taskbar (you can't remove them at this point...I really hope that changes in future builds) but aside from that it offers a nice desktop environment while still keeping the nice tablet UI that Windows 8 introduced.

[Zephlar]

Well, look like I can reserve a free copy now. I am really skeptical of jumping onto a new OS right away though. Seems like there is always something wrong the first year.

Spectere are you jumping in on launch?

[Spectere]

I always jump in at launch. I honestly don't remember having any problems with doing so in almost a decade. I was even an early adopter to Vista (64-bit, even) and I always thought that the hate on that was royally overblown.

Also note that the screenshots above are pretty old. I'll have to update them when I get back to work tomorrow. One thing that I'm happy about in one of the newer builds: they brought back blurs! It really seems like an aesthetic thing, but it does make it easier to discern objects on translucent surfaces because of how it can dull out sharp backgrounds. I believe they've also tweaked the window shadows in recent builds as well, but I don't remember for sure.

[Bobbias]

I always jump in at launch. I honestly don't remember having any problems with doing so in almost a decade. I was even an early adopter to Vista (64-bit, even) and I always thought that the hate on that was royally overblown.

Yeah, the Vista hate circlejerk was dumb. Sure, it ran like ass on underpowered toasters, and it happened to make some changes and have some issues, but it was nowhere near as bad as it was made out to be.

[Spectere]

The funny thing is that it didn't really run all that badly on lower end systems. I've used it quite a bit on a Dell Inspiron E1505 with a 1.73GHz Core Duo with Intel graphics and it actually ran quite well. As long as you had at least 2GB of RAM you were fine, and even my XP system at the time had more than that. Most of the "issues" with Vista were from manufacturers throwing 512MB of RAM in the systems (though, to be fair, Microsoft should have set the requirements to at least 1GB, but it still makes me wonder if these manufacturers even test their shit before they ship it), people not understanding how Task Manager reported memory, and "tech wizards" not understanding that unused memory is wasted memory.

I'm not going to try to say that the gradual paring down that they did with Windows 7, 8, 8.1, and 10 wasn't welcome, but Vista--especially by the time SP2 came out--definitely wasn't as bad as everyone said it was.

[Bobbias]

My mom has a vista laptop with 1gb of ram. I haven't done a full system check to see if there's some other BS slowing it down, but on 1gb it's always run like ass. At this point it's so bad you open a chrome tab and can walk away while you wait for it to come to life.

[Spectere]

I would probably make sure that there aren't many spurious processes getting started when the system boots. Vista with 1GB of RAM definitely isn't ideal, but it shouldn't be that bad.

Chrome definitely isn't helping matters either. It definitely lost the speed crown a loooooong time ago (I've had it hitch and lag on well-stacked i7's). If it weren't for the extensions I'd probably be using IE, to be honest.