Yea, i think rumor points to it being launched around April 2015 IIRC.

Yeah its supposed to be early 2015.

I was going to download and install the Windows 10 Technical Preview but having seen videos of it running on YouTube, it pretty much looks exactly like Windows 8.1 with a slightly different Start button to the Start8 one I'm using. It does not seem to otherwise be that different and I'm assuming it is still using DirectX 11 since DirectX 12 has not been finalised yet has it. I will wait for the final release and upgrade then. I never bothered trying Windows 8 either until it was released. There's not really anything particularly interesting about operating systems these days and upgrades seldom offer anything in the way of graphical or performance improvements for games. It looks to be such a minor update that the only reason it isn't a service pack or update 2 and is being given away free to Windows 8/8.1 users is because Microsoft are so desperate to distance themselves from Windows 8. If they were that desperate then they should have just called it Windows or Windows Next or something that did not have a number in it!!! :3eyes:

its gives me a headache knowing that there are people that dont know to use windows,are downloading the preview and complaining they cant figure it out.

compatibility for directdraw still broken...... although maybe microsoft will listen now. sense its mentioned in the feedback. edit: but then again it seems like they removed some feedback that was showing yesterday.

Aero requires horsepower from the graphic card which causes higher power consumption. This is why they moved away from it and it's never coming back. To be honest Windows 7 is so much snappier with Aero off.

That's absolute rubbish. My GPUs have always powered down to the lowest state when viewing Aero windows and monitoring tools show that they stay at 0% usage even when in the lowest state. Whatever "power" Aero requires was negligible even in 2006.

That's absolute rubbish. My GPUs have always powered down to the lowest state when viewing Aero windows and monitoring tools show that they stay at 0% usage even when in the lowest state. Whatever "power" Aero requires was negligible even in 2006.

Doesn't even matter as the aero theme literally added nothing in terms of usability. It's an outdated design and other than being a personal preference by a few users serves no purpose what-so-ever. You can always download a theme for it if you really want it. And before you say it, for every single person that thinks this stuff should be optional in Windows 8/10, there is a person that wants Microsoft to remove all the feature "bloat". I'd much rather Microsoft ship the updated flat look that the entire industry is moving towards then ship an old faux design look that bloats the interface with wasted pixels and useless translucency.

MS had the classic theme and Luna and later Aero .. choice was there until Windows 8 showed up. Hopefully that choice will return with 10 despite the Win8 defense squad.

It's important that the screen looks nice though, aesthetics are important. If you disagree with this than by all means, go out and buy a butt ugly car even though there is a nice looking car that is as good functionality, quality, and performance wise.

But it's matter of preference. Like your analogy implies that Windows 8 theme is "butt ugly". I personally find it pretty and in style. Could it be improved? Sure but I personally think it's significantly better than Windows 7's theme. And it's not like I'm the only person that thinks this. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Both iOS and Android both moved to flat, semi-minimalist designs with a focus on animations and in android's case color. Microsoft's a step ahead in this regard. Really good design will convey information to the user. Google's Material Design is incredibly effective at doing this. Interacting with an object should have animations that convey what that object is capable of doing. Transitions should provide users with input of where that window is coming from and how it can move and be dismissed. In Windows 8 for example, long pressing a tile on the start screen to move it pushes the object towards the input location, giving the object a physical property. That's a good design as it shows the user, hey you can interact with this object by long pressing it. This may be intuitive to anyone who used a computer but that type of design/thought should go into every action, every animation, every style, every layout. The entire theme, interface, it should all act to convey information to the user and get in the way as little as possible. Aero added nothing other then aesthetics. It gave excuses for bad app designers to paint their interfaces in faux-glass designs. It also took up a ton of space, I think you gain back like 50-60 pixels of vertical space by removing it iirc. Anyway I'm glad it's gone. Obviously Windows 8 isn't the pinnacle of design but it's definitely better.

MS had the classic theme and Luna and later Aero .. choice was there until Windows 8 showed up. Hopefully that choice will return with 10 despite the Win8 defense squad.

It's already there, you can download a theme for it. Why should Microsoft support an outdated theme? This has nothing to do with Windows 8 and everything to do with common sense. It's like saying "I prefer icons from Windows 98, I prefer the pinball game, I prefer clippy in office. Microsoft should add options for all this." Why should Microsoft spend man-hours on ensuring backwards compatibility with new application designs because you prefer a look? Let 3rd parties take care of that. A better suggestion would be for Microsoft to implement an official theming engine instead of asking for them to maintain backwards compatibility for a bunch of meaningless stuff.

It's already there, you can download a theme for it. Why should Microsoft support an outdated theme? This has nothing to do with Windows 8 and everything to do with common sense. It's like saying "I prefer icons from Windows 98, I prefer the pinball game, I prefer clippy in office. Microsoft should add options for all this." Why should Microsoft spend man-hours on ensuring backwards compatibility with new application designs because you prefer a look? Let 3rd parties take care of that. A better suggestion would be for Microsoft to implement an official theming engine instead of asking for them to maintain backwards compatibility for a bunch of meaningless stuff.

Heard the same crap about the Start Menu - "you can download classic shell".

Heard the same crap about the Start Menu - "you can download classic shell".

Well you can, can't you? Should they add options for Windows 95-2000 style start menu? What about XP? They changed it again in Vista? As for the start menu, a recent post by user h4m0ny summed it up perfectly:

"There are arguments for sticking with the Start Menu but I find nearly all of them come down to familiarity. And that has merit, but it's also something that doesn't make the menu objectively better as a thing, and it's also an attitude that leads to lack of improvements to things because change has a cost."

http://forums.guru3d.com/showpost.php?p=4932017&postcount=13 I couldn't agree more with this statement. And the rest of his post sums up perfectly why the Start Screen is just a superior design. In order to build the best of anything you have to iterate designs. You need to improve, release, improve, release. The start screen fixed major flaws with Windows. And through iterative design, Microsoft have managed to bring the best of both start screen/menu together in Windows 10. At this point why should Microsoft have to support previous designs? If you want to go back, download an application. Why should future design be hinged on whether or not it's going to be compatible with an old one? Say Microsoft wanted to change the desktop and completely interfered with some old depreciated setting they left in as an option? What are they going to say? "No we can't make this awesome change because 5 users use this old setting no one cares about"?

Well you can, can't you? Should they add options for Windows 95-2000 style start menu? What about XP? They changed it again in Vista? As for the start menu, a recent post by user h4m0ny summed it up perfectly: http://forums.guru3d.com/showpost.php?p=4932017&postcount=13 I couldn't agree more with this statement. And the rest of his post sums up perfectly why the Start Screen is just a superior design. In order to build the best of anything you have to iterate designs. You need to improve, release, improve, release. The start screen fixed major flaws with Windows. And through iterative design, Microsoft have managed to bring the best of both start screen/menu together in Windows 10. At this point why should Microsoft have to support previous designs? If you want to go back, download an application. Why should future design be hinged on whether or not it's going to be compatible with an old one? Say Microsoft wanted to change the desktop and completely interfered with some old depreciated setting they left in as an option? What are they going to say? "No we can't make this awesome change because 5 users use this old setting no one cares about"?

When I was building and selling computers, one of the biggest complaints I got from customers was that they felt like MS was ripping them off by selling them the same version of Windows over and over again, but with a different "name". They could never see where MS had improved anything because it always looked so much like the previous version. I've learned over the years, and it's the biggest reason I stopped selling computers, that regardless of what a customer says they want....they may not really want it. When it comes to an operating system and software, what people really want, regardless of how much they claim otherwise, is more of the exact same. People want technology to advance....but don't want it to change in any way that forces them to learn something new.

It's already there, you can download a theme for it. Why should Microsoft support an outdated theme?

Because their new theme looks like it's 30 years more outdated. AoL Kids 1996 at absolute best. Everything about Win 8 seemed regressive, it's like they had extensive research done about how they could make everything as old looking and inconvenient as possible. And where do you pull these ideas out that only a minority liked aero or that anything about Win 8 is popular? The opinion on the subject from anyone who's ever said anything about it to me is that Win 8 looks like puke and it pisses them off.

Because their new theme looks like it's 30 years more outdated. AoL Kids 1996 at absolute best. Everything about Win 8 seemed regressive, it's like they had extensive research done about how they could make everything as old looking and inconvenient as possible. And where do you pull these ideas out that only a minority liked aero or that anything about Win 8 is popular? The opinion on the subject from anyone who's ever said anything about it to me is that Win 8 looks like puke and it pisses them off.

iOS/MD/Windows 8 are all flat designs. Flat is in, skeuomorphism is out. I don't know how else to convey that to you. Obviously it's your opinion if you don't like it, but that's how it is. I prefer it and obviously the rest of the industry prefers it, hence why they are all moving towards it. It's like fashion, it changes and old themes come back with refreshed looks. Same thing is happening here. Also I controlled + F for "minority" and the only person who said that is you. I can't find anywhere where I said or even inferred that the minority of people liked aero. The only thing I stated, was that as a design it was useless other then aesthetics and that it wasted a lot of pixel space. Again you're obviously free to have your own opinion, just as I hated skeuomorphism, you can hate flat designs, but to say it's outdated is laughable when the entire industry literally just moved to it. Material Design is just now being worked into Android and iOS 7/8 basically flattened everything and began to square elements off similar to 8. And it's not like you can't get transparency in 8, they have it built in for some elements and you can just download a glass mod for the rest to make it look like aero. I fail to see the problem here.

It's because he didn't want to have to download a different program to get something that was available 2 years ago. You know... probably the same kind of person who'd complain that MS should implement something like Fences into the next version of Windows so they don't have to download a program to do that, either. They want it force-fed, their way. Like i said in the last page... people are so happy now that there's a Start Menu again... even though it's just a condensed version of the Start Screen.

Also I controlled + F for "minority" and the only person who said that is you. I can't find anywhere where I said or even inferred that the minority of people liked aero. The only thing I stated, was that as a design it was useless other then aesthetics and that it wasted a lot of pixel space. Again you're obviously free to have your own opinion, just as I hated skeuomorphism, you can hate flat designs, but to say it's outdated is laughable when the entire industry literally just moved to it. I fail to see the problem here.

Whatever word you used even if it wasn't minority specifically, few or whatever it was you said, you know what I mean. iOS is not comparable to Win 8, their designs may be flat but it doesn't look like it's straight from the past. That's another thing people always comment to me about Win 8, it's pretty unanimous among them that it looks outdated, old. It offers nothing new while regressing unlike iOS. You fail to see that one the major reasons Win 8 was a failure (don't give me a thousand links calling it a success) was its terrible aesthetics, as much as you think it's modern or whatever the overwhelming majority think the opposite. Ask anyone you know and see what they say.

Whatever word you used even if it wasn't minority specifically, few or whatever it was you said, you know what I mean. iOS is not comparable to Win 8, their designs may be flat but it doesn't look like it's straight from the past. That's another thing people always comment to me about Win 8, it's pretty unanimous among them that it looks outdated, old. It offers nothing new while regressing unlike iOS. You fail to see that one the major reasons Win 8 was a failure (don't give me a thousand links calling it a success) was its terrible aesthetics, as much as you think it's modern or whatever the overwhelming majority think the opposite. Ask anyone you know and see what they say.

Idk anecdotal evidence is kinda meaningless to me (no offense). I mean I rolled out Windows 8 to 200+ users at work + various friends/family and stuff and I never once heard that it looks bad. It's mostly just complaints about getting stuck in full screen apps and lack of start menu. In fact one single person (my cousin) commented about how she thought it was cool that the bars changed color with the background. As she began to change everything to a hideous pink color. My eyes still bleed from that day.

Whatever word you used even if it wasn't minority specifically, few or whatever it was you said, you know what I mean. iOS is not comparable to Win 8, their designs may be flat but it doesn't look like it's straight from the past. That's another thing people always comment to me about Win 8, it's pretty unanimous among them that it looks outdated, old. It offers nothing new while regressing unlike iOS. You fail to see that one the major reasons Win 8 was a failure (don't give me a thousand links calling it a success) was its terrible aesthetics, as much as you think it's modern or whatever the overwhelming majority think the opposite. Ask anyone you know and see what they say.

Overwhelming majority? Exaggerate much?

It's because he didn't want to have to download a different program to get something that was available 2 years ago. You know... probably the same kind of person who'd complain that MS should implement something like Fences into the next version of Windows so they don't have to download a program to do that, either. They want it force-fed, their way. Like i said in the last page... people are so happy now that there's a Start Menu again... even though it's just a condensed version of the Start Screen.

Yeah I've been saying this since Windows 8 launch. I've had this same "new and improved" desktop that Windows 10 will have since Win 8 launch day. It's amazing how lazy people are at times, and can't click a button for a free start bar. They don't HAVE to use Start8, but I prefer it.

I completely agree with Neo Cyrus, the aesthetics of Windows 8.x is terrible. Looks like Windows 10 is no different. They should make less of a snorefest.

You can say that it looks bad, but Neo didn't say that -- he said it looks outdated. Flat as a style is what's in vogue. Windows 8/10 style is definitely not as good as say Material Design but it's hell of a lot better from a design perspective then Aero/Windows 7. http://sachagreif.com/flat-pixels/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8TXgCzxEnw

You can say that it looks bad, but Neo didn't say that -- he said it looks outdated. Flat as a style is what's in vogue. Windows 8/10 style is definitely not as good as say Material Design but it's hell of a lot better from a design perspective then Aero/Windows 7. http://sachagreif.com/flat-pixels/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8TXgCzxEnw

I've probably asked this before but, do you ever feel like you're just beating your head against a wall when discussing Windows8?