Upgrading to Windows 10 First Impression

A friend of mine asked me to upgrade her Windows 8 laptop to Windows 10. Without ranting or raving, here is the short story in case your are thinking of upgrading.

First off, make sure you are getting the upgrade directly from Microsoft. If not, I can guarantee it will be loaded with unwanted crapware. Also, make sure you have your present Windows installation key. If you don’t have that, you can find it with a simple, free program from Nirsoft. It does not even have to be installed to run. It is available here. Remember to only download software from the company and not via a file sharing site.

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/product_cd_key_viewer.html

or http://www.nirsoft.net/

To start your Windows 10 upgrade, go here:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

Download the Media Creation Tool. This will give you the options to upgrade your computer now or create Media to upgrade another computer, or yours later.

If you are upgrading another PC, choose language, your present version of Windows and32bit, 64bit or both. (P.S. – I originally tried downloading the ISO that had both 32 and 64bit but the size is over 5 gigs so it cannot be copied to a DVD)

I suggest using a USB. Either way, the files are loaded on the media and I am happy to say the all the files are verified on your media. So, you should not get file errors when installing. If you save it as an ISO, you will then have to burn it to a DVD. (if you choose both 32bit and 64bit, you will have to burn it to a Blue-ray disk as it is too large for a DVD)

It took me about 25 minutes at high speed to download, verify and create the install media. Now, to create the install DVD…..

Use your favourite program to burn the ISO to a DVD. If you have chosen USB, you will have the option to navigate to that USB stick and load the files on.

The installation went fairly smoothly which made me smile. This was after an entire day updating Windows 8 so that I could update that to Windows 8.1 which then needed to be updated so that I could finally be able to update to Windows 10. You can't go directly from 8 to10.

While installing, Microsoft will want you to access your contacts, accounts, search and probably the colour of your underwear for themselves and every other company they are affiliated with. Turn all of those off so that you are not continually monitored. Also, this will prevent your machine becoming a peer to peer host for propagating Windows 10 upgrades to others, thereby sucking on your ISP bandwidth.

Even going back to playing your beloved Solitaire will entail you signing on to “the cloud” in order to save your scores. Microsoft’s new browser ”the Edge” is no better.

Thankfully, the start button is back. A nice feature is that right clicking on the start button will give you instant access to all your system programs. Left click; however, sends you to the tacky looking tile page where you can find your installed programs which Microsoft now calls apps, as if your PC is now a cell phone. At least you can navigate from there to find the program you are looking for. Thankfully, on the boot up, you will now have a normal looking desktop until you go to start a program which will take you to the tacky tiles.

My final estimation is….If you have Windows 7, keep it, as it is a downgrade to go to Windows 10. If you have Windows 8 or 8.1, don’t hesitate. You may find your mind and soul a perfect match for Windows 10.

That’s my curmudgeon view. At least it isn’t Vista.