from me. But there are some serious problems with it. They may be self-inflicted. Maybe not.UPDATES
I've signed on to the Windows Insider program and thus became what they call a beta tester of the Windows 10 Pro Insider Preview version of their next operating system. This entitles me to download software that I know has bugs and untested features. I also know that Microsoft will be logging my keystrokes and storing a lot of data about my activities within their new software. None of this bothered me because I have a background in software development and know why they would be doing all this. Conspiracy theorists notwithstanding. There are two levels of testing, and I chose the fast lane instead of the slow lane. That means I get the latest builds before they have been tested thoroughly by the software developers. In return Microsoft gets my feedback early in the development cycle so that they can clean things up a bit for the next release. Even so, the fast lane has not been all that fast until very recently. New software has been forthcoming about once a month since last November. Now that the final release is just over two weeks away, the builds are being released a little quicker. That's because there is less new stuff being put in and more refinement of what they know works.
Each new build, be it fast or slow lane, is pushed via the native Windows Update application. This is the same Control Panel update applet we all know and love from previous versions of Windows with one exception. Automatic updates cannot be turned off. The theory is that you will leave your computer on all the time and Microsoft will update it at some point during the day when your computer usage is light. When you are asleep, for example. They keep track of what you are doing so that they know what is best for your network loading. Given that each new build is a complete operating system of nearly 4GB in size (just what would fit on one DVD disk), it seems like a good idea to not bog down my Internet connection for the 2 hours it would take to download such a monster. While all that sounds rather benevolent of Microsoft, they fail to realize that I turn off my computer at the end of my day. I don't need to waste energy nor do I want to keep my computers alive when I'm not there to watch them. This means I have to go into the update applet and manually request a search for any possible updates. If updates are found, I have no choice as to when they will be downloaded. It's done on the spot when I make the inquiry. Thus, whether it's convenient for me or not, the two hour download will begin as soon as I ask if it's available.
But wait ... since I'm using the computer, Windows 10 considers it not idle. The download will proceed while the computer is being used, but at a reduced rate. They deliberately throttle it back to something near dial-up speed. What would be a two hour download at 5MBs turns out to be nearly 24 hours at 90-100KBs. If by some chance the download does not complete, it starts over from the beginning at the next opportunity. Thus, if I spend 6 hours waiting for my fast lane build, and happen to shut down the system because I'm going to bed for the day, all of it is lost. When I know there is a mammoth download from Microsoft in queue, I will start the process before breakfast. Windows 10 may or may not think the computer is being used, and frequently it will start off at my maximum connection speed of 6MBs. I smile as I watch the network traffic monitor and then get some breakfast. When I return the computer is in its sleep mode and all download activity has ceased.
They told me it will download overnight unattended if I don't shut off my computer, but here I am ignoring it during the daytime and it ceases to download altogether. The good news is that when I nudge it, the download continues from where it left off. The not so good news is that since I woke up the operating system it thinks it is in use and throttles back the download speed. Fortunately, somewhere between six and eight hours later the full download completes if I keep nudging the system just the right way. The lesson in all this playing around is that there is no way to stop the system from downloading once it gets started. MBR WARS
I won't go into my frustrations over how it takes the better part of an hour to install the latest builds. It can take longer. Essentially it's a clean install and I expect it to take a while. However, just like Linux, Microsoft thinks they should have the authority to take over my entire computer merely because I'm installing their software on it. My computers have the ability to run one of several different operating systems that are installed on one or more hard drives. Nobody, including Linux, encourages this, but they all support it. There is after all a legitimate need for such things out in the wild. When turning on the power the first question from the computer is, "what operating system do you want me to run?" Answering this question involves a little dialog wherein the user will pick what they want from a list on the screen. Linux uses something called GRUB and Microsoft uses BCD (Boot Configuration Data), both of which record instructions on the very first track of your storage device, known as the MBR (Master Boot Record).
If you only used one operating system in your entire computer career, then none of the above makes sense. It just boots up as expected. But, if you have Windows installed and want to add Linux as an alternate choice at boot time, a rather irritating problem rears it's ugly head. Linux will erase whatever Microsoft placed in the MBR and put GRUB there instead. GRUB is kind enough to let me know it can boot up Windows on demand, but it is freaking arrogant to assume I want GRUB to give me that choice. If I want to keep the Windows BCD screen, I'm out of luck. I have to do something very weird to keep the two versions of boot screens separate. Windows is no different. Linux and its GRUB is installed on my laptop. When I put Windows 10 on that computer, the Redmond gang erased GRUB and put their own firmware into the MBR. Windows, unlike Linux, does not recognize anything but Windows. That means by default Windows 10 (and every other version of Windows) prevents you from seeing anything but Microsoft products at boot time. This is even more arrogant that Linux, but in the case of Windows I understand why they do it. Each time an important update comes along, Windows needs to reboot. They don't want you flipping through a menu of alternate operating systems in order to reboot. It has to be done clean and smoothly and unattended. Fair enough, inconvenient as it is. I found a way around this problem, but I won't get into it right now. Suffice it to say that once Windows 10 is installed, it does it's damnedest to take over everything.
S4 RECOVERY MODE
Before you ever see the list of available operating systems, the firmware on the motherboard is invoked. It used to be called BIOS but these days it's a Unified Extensible Firmware Interface or UEFI. This firmware does a lot of low level stuff that a normal human being doesn't need to know about. One of it's responsibilities is to keep track of all the hardware you have installed and to point you in the right direction for booting up your operating system(s). If you hit the right keys on your keyboard, you can stop the UEFI boot process and manually select what hardware memory device you want to go to and boot. It might be an external hard drive, an optical reader, a USB memory stick, or one of several hard drives installed internally. Normally one of those is picked as a default and no further action is required. But, when you want to get an operating system from some other place than the default, hit f12 (in my case) and you get a list of all attached bootable devices. This is valuable only for geeks.
Windows 10 plays havoc with this ability to select hardware. The reason for the havoc is because even when you tell Windows 10 to shut down, it doesn't. It looks like it shut down, but what really happened is that it went into hibernation. When a computer hibernates it stores the state of the computer in a safe place so that when you un-hibernate, the system returns right back to where you left it. The way it goes about recovering is through UEFI/BIOS by invoking the S4 recovery mode. When in this mode UEFI knows not to poll anything for bootable software. It just goes directly to the device that sent the hibernate command. Microsoft does this so that Windows 10 does not have to turn on from a cold start but simply recovers from hibernation. Clever, but a PITA for geeky people who want to select their boot device manually. They don't get the opportunity no matter what keys are pressed because S4 recovery does not allow choices.
I used to hard crash Windows 10 to prevent it from hibernating. That ultimately corrupts the operating system. Since I got tired of constantly reinstalling and then updating, I found a better way to avoid the unwillingness of Windows 10 to shut down for real. Simply tell it to RESTART. This prevents hibernation during shut down and takes you back to the turn on state of UEFI. At that point I hit the power switch to stop the rebooting. Next time around there is no S4 recovery to deal with. Some folks swear this is Microsoft's way of forcing you to use only Windows on any given UEFI equipped computer. I don't like what Windows is doing, but they are not conspiring to do anything. They are just plain stupid and inconsiderate.
CLOUD COMPUTING
Windows 10 requires that you log into an account that is associated with the computer and software. This nuisance procedure, unfortunately, cannot be avoided if you want to use all the features of the operating system. It's something that every mobile device requires these days. Microsoft likes to say it's needed for security purposes, but the real reason is to give them some assurance of who is on the computer and accountable for buying stuff from their store. It also allows them to store information about how you use the computer up in their cloud system. The cloud is not an entirely bad idea because it allows for synchronization of all your devices. You can save your browser bookmarks from your tablet, for example, and they will propagate to your smart phone and your laptop and your desktop (if you still have one of those) without intervention on your part. The glitch is that all those devices have to be on the same cloud - yes there are many clouds. Microsoft has "One Drive" for all this synchronization business and it will update your X-box, your Surface, and your Windows phone. If you happen to have Apple hardware or Android, then you are SOL. None of them talk to each other. So the net effect (no pun intended) to all this cloud computing is to steer the user into using one brand across the spectrum of mobile devices. Again you might be smelling conspiracy here, but it's a technical necessity until the time comes when all mobile devices will be able to use the same software to communicate with each other. The battle for world dominance has been going on for several years now, and Microsoft is just getting into the game after Apple and Google took half their business away. Because of this lateness in coming to the game there are glitches in One Drive and very little of value to choose from in Microsoft's app store. It may all change down the line, but for now it's playing catch up and may not be worth the effort for a lot of people who already have the competition's mobile devices.
BACKUP AND RECOVERY
In case you have been away from the planet for a few years and did not notice, the way people use computers here in 2015 isn't what it used to be. There are enough of us old timers around, but the writing on the wall is clear. Operating system software is free, but anything useful or productive comes out of the cloud and the store behind a given product. Thus, functionality is added to the basic operating system by purchasing apps - some are free. Microsoft is making a huge effort to appease us old timers by keeping the old style side by side with the new apps in Windows 10. The hopes are that the transition for us XP and Win7 die-hards will be made easier this way. Success depends heavily on the app store having some compelling software, and access to the app store is critical for that.
The app store is itself an application. It's not needed for the operating system to work, but you can't add any cool stuff to the bare bones without it. Thus Microsoft does not allow you to uninstall the App Store app. You can't uninstall it from Android or Apple either. That does not mean it cannot be done. As I became more and more frustrated with the half-functional updating service on Windows 10 the operating system became corrupt. There is a recovery applet in the Control Panel but it's a bit different than what the old Windows offers. One of the options now is to blow away all the settings you might have accidentally changed
and to reset the system to some pristine default condition. Awesome Idea considering I could not restore from an image or a previous restore point (more details to follow). So I clicked the "clear" button and was duly notified that the system will never be the same again. It will now erase anything and everything I might have done and go back to some prenatal condition. I agreed just to see what will happen. Well, as promised, everything disappeared. All the apps I installed, the extra software, and any system settings I changed all went back to whatever was safely hidden away in the system recovery partition. I fixed the problem I was having, but created a new one. All the apps got blown away, including the App Store app. So now I had no way to download the apps I once had. A search of the online forums revealed that this App Store app cannot be removed by mere mortals. Plus, no matter where I looked, I could not find a way to reinstall what "could not be removed." After much wailing and gnashing of teeth I had to reinstall the entire operating system from scratch. The good news here is that I had downloaded an iso image of it just the day before. After doing a clean install everything was back to normal along with the default apps. I still had to reinstall what I had before the crash, but at least I was able to do it now.Backing up a Windows 10 system has a few nice features. A history of your files can be configured, for example, so that you can retrieve any files that may have been lost. That is the theory. In my case I was storing the history on my NAS off line. This worked fine until the next fast lane release wherein the name of my computer was changed. Any history files, images, or restore points made previously were lost. Also, because I configured my Windows 10 to boot from GRUB, backups to a network drive were prohibited. This is something built into every operating system since Vista and it took forever to figure out. Network backups are only allowed if you boot from the BSD Microsoft hides somewhere inside it's bowels. The net effect of all this is that I cannot do a reliable network backup of my system because I'm not playing by Microsoft's rules. The solution, obviously, is to use third party backup software and not the native crap Microsoft provides.
DO I REALLY WORK FOR MICROSOFT?
In spite of all the above, I still think Windows 10 is a candidate for being an excellent operating system. My opinion is derived from the fact that I've been using it since November last. The side effect of beta testing is that I'm familiar with it and am exposed to the hype built into the product on a daily basis. Having all this experience and knowing what is possible, why would I not recommend this product to anyone? Yeah, right. That is precisely why Microsoft broke with tradition and released beta versions of it's forthcoming operating system. Us beta testers, so they hope, will be their biggest promoters.
Being the cynic that I am, it's hard to believe that we are just over two weeks away from a final release. There are many more things wrong with Windows 10 than I have mentioned here. I don't see how some of these basic issues can be resolved in a mere two weeks time. This leads me to believe that what we are beta testing is only part of a greater whole that is being developed behind the scenes and not visible to the general public. The real Windows 10 will be released at the end of the month. At least I hope that is the case.
