Windows 10 Technical Preview

So, I installed Windows 10 Technical Preview. Actually, I was feeling so brave (foolhardy?) that I upgraded my main Windows 8.1 installation to Windows 10. The good news: The upgrade process went very smoothly indeed. The bad news: Well, except for a few small interface quirks, there doesn’t seem to be much bad news. Read on for my early hands-on impressions of Windows 10 Technical Preview — and a video of Windows 10 Technical Preview running on my multi-monitor desktop PC.

If you can’t watch this hands-on video, there are lots of screenshots below.

Upgrading from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10

First up, the upgrade process was very simple. I downloaded and installed Windows 10 Technical Preview, burnt it to a USB thumb drive, and then ran setup.exe from within Windows 8.1. I followed the on-screen prompts and kept all of my “settings, personal files, and apps” when given the option. After that, it was just a matter of hitting Next until the install completed. The upgrade took about 10-15 minutes (on a decent SSD).

Windows 10 Technical Preview upgrade screen. Yes, the rainbow colored section towards the end is still there.

So far I haven’t noticed any obvious issues (crashing bugs, faulty drivers) — but I haven’t done much more than run Photoshop, Premiere Pro, and a few games (Dota 2). Considering the Desktop side of Windows 10 is basically just Windows 8 (which in turn is essentially just Windows 7), everything should just work.

Read: Why is it called Windows 10, and not Windows 9?

Using Windows 10 Technical Preview

For the most part, if you’ve been using Windows 8 on a mouse-and-keyboard desktop PC for a while, Windows 10 Technical Preview will feel very familiar. Here are the new changes/features that immediately stood out:

• Windows 10 looks a lot sharper. The new 1-pixel borders on app windows, along with the drop shadow, really does make the Windows 10 Desktop look rather smart.
• The new Alt-Tab view is horrible. I’ve always hated Microsoft’s attempts to re-work the Alt-Tab app switcher into something more visual. The new Alt-Tab view in Windows 10 is pretty horrendous (picture below). Maybe it’ll be better once I get used to it — but if you’re used to a neat line of thumbnails that you can cycle through, you’re in for a shock.
• Snapping is indeed much improved. In Windows 10 Technical Preview you have many more ways of snapping apps than in Windows 8. You can now snap left and right, and left and right of the middle divider on a multi-monitor setup. You can also snap in a top or bottom corner. When you snap an app, if you have other apps minimized, a new interface pops up asking if you want to snap another app into the remaining gap. It’s kind of cool. Very much a throwback to the “tile view” of yesteryear.
• The Start menu is back. Personally I don’t use the Start menu much (I prefer to pin my apps to the taskbar), but yes, the Start menu is back in Windows 10 — and yes, you can remove all of the live tiles if you want. (Funnily enough, after removing all of the live tiles, I don’t know how to put them back.)

Windows 10 Technical Preview screenshots

Here’s a selection of screenshots from my Windows 10 Technical Preview adventures thus far. They mostly accompany the video; where you might not be able to see the detail in the video, I’ve provided a full-res screenshot below.

Windows 10 Technical Preview: The new Alt-Tab switcher

Windows 10 Technical Preview, Chrome. You can see the red X button is designed for the wider border of Windows 8, and thus it overhangs a bit in Windows 10

Windows 10 Technical Preview Start menu – without any live tiles

Windows 10 Technical Preview, snap helper UI thing

Windows 10 Technical Preview, improved app snapping

And finally, a very intimidating screenshot indeed: The new virtual desktops feature, on a multi-monitor Windows 10 Technical Preview setup. You will want to click this image to zoom in, to marvel at the power-userness of it all.

This is just the tip of the Windows 10 iceberg. The Technical Preview appears to be missing a lot of features, such as Cortana and the Notifications tray. There are also a lot of new configuration options to play around with — which is what I’m going to do now. I’ll keep this post updated as my exploration of Windows 10 Technical Preview progresses.

For now, you may want to install the Windows 10 Technical Preview yourself, or read ourcomplete list of Windows 10 changes and new features.