Review: Windows 10 is the best version yet—once the bugs getfixed I'm more conflicted about Windows 10 than I have been about any previous version of Windows. In some ways, the operating system is extremely ambitious; in others, it represents a great loss of ambition. The new release tries to walk an unsteady path between being Microsoft's most progressive, forward-looking release and simultaneously appealing to Windows' most conservative users. And it mostly succeeds, making this the best version of Windows yet—once everything's working. In its current form, the operating system doesn't feel quite finished, and I'd wait a few weeks before making the leap. From highs to lows Windows 7 was a straightforward proposition, a testament to the power of a new name. Windows Vista may have had a poor reputation, but it was a solid operating system. Give hardware and software vendors three years to develop drivers, come to grips with security changes, fix a few bugs, and freeze the hardware requirements, and the result was Windows 7—an operating system that worked with almost any hardware, almost any software. It was comfortable and familiar. Add some small but desirable enhancements to window management and the task bar, and the result was a hugely popular operating system, the high point of the entire Windows family's development. Windows 8 was similarly easy to understand. With it, Microsoft wanted to make Windows work well on tablets while also wanting an operating system that continued to support the enormous legacy of Win32 applications. Windows 8 did both of these things—just not at the same time. It contained the basics of a very competent tablet platform, with particularly strong handling of multitasking. It also contained, in most regards, a solid desktop operating system that was very similar to Windows 7. Some things it even made a little better; in Windows 8, for instance, the taskbar finally became multi-monitor aware, ending the need for various third-party hacks. But these worlds collided in an ugly fashion. The tablet part was never self-contained, with touch users forced to visit finger-unfriendly desktop apps to access a full range of It was very incomplete. Other settings didn't have to support this kind of extensibility and so migrated to the new Explorer-based Control Panel system. Windows 8 introduced a third style of settings. and Microsoft has never really seemed to prioritize it. because third parties could add their own tabs to provide extended functionality. .system settings. the inconsistencies too great. the differences were too jarring. Windows 8 introduced yet another new and very different appearance and set of interface elements to Windows. live tiles) flung together with little consideration of how this would feel to use. Make no mistake: Windows 8 wasn't the first Windows version to contain a ton of inconsistencies. For example. It didn't feel like a complete. After all. for example. manage files. This kind of work requires lots of new settings pages to be designed and tested. But part of the issue is also that Microsoft doesn't seem to care a whole lot about these details. Lots of settings required the use of the traditional Control Panel (and sometimes its even older tabbed dialogs). This operating system showcased some of Microsoft's worst habits. where settings could be changed within the Explorer window itself. it's just changing the way it does existing things. with its touch-friendly Metro-style settings app. and so on. Windows 8 took this incoherence too far. multiple different styles of "menu. where settings are configured in grey tabbed dialog boxes." While these all do roughly the same thing. but because the company didn't make the effort. not because Microsoft couldn't migrate them to the new style to retain compatibility with extensibility APIs. It contains. they differ both in how they look and in some of the finer points of their behavior. Windows has always been a frustratingly inconsistent platform. Part of the issue is legacy compatibility. It's a longstanding Windows problem. was clearly designed for touch users first. not separate pop-ups. while perfectly functional. some bits of Windows still use the old-style applet Control Panel system. it isn't making Windows do anything new. with no effort to unify and integrate. fully thought-out operating system. instead being some ideas (an adaptable operating system for both tablet and desktop users) and some partial solutions (the Metro-style apps. And many desktop users resented being forced to use a full-screen application launcher that. sporting a mix not just of visual styles but also of user interface elements. saying that consumer satisfaction among Windows 8 users is the highest Windows has ever had. especially when paired with perhaps the best form factor innovation that has come from the Windows 8 experimentation: the 360- Enlarge / Microsoft's Surface Pro 3. and keyboard has won plaudits. But there's an important proviso: it's true only on touch devices. Nearly three years after the initial release. Since Windows 8's launch. Microsoft continues to want to make Windows an operating system that works across this spectrum—and the dream lives on in Windows 10. a hybrid machine that has found a market. Windows 8 and 8. While there's still some skepticism about the value of touch on a desktop PC. it looks as if Microsoft is starting to build a small but credible PC hardware business. Touch makes it practical. . and while there was some initially awkward experimentation. and.1 were considered by many to be a low point. devices such as Microsoft's own Surface Pro 3 have found a small but growing audience. while it's still early days. degree hinge. Microsoft continually tries to put a positive spin on this situation. touch PCs have proliferated. which will almost never use anything but touch. there's a continuum of devices. Touch systems are not some discrete category entirely disjointed from more traditional machines. Similarly. the two Windows 8 versions stand at around 15 percent market share (according to Net Market Share). the ability to use a laptop in "stand" mode or "tent" mode for watching movies is genuinely useful. while Windows 7 stands at more than 60 percent. Which all means that Microsoft's broad desire with Windows 8 was perhaps not entirely off-base. manufacturers today have a decent idea of how to do touch systems. pen. As an occasional business traveler sitting in misery in cattle class. Rather. ranging from the dedicated mouse-and-keyboard machine through to the tablet that may occasionally be paired with a Bluetooth keyboard and all the way on to the smartphone. on laptops it's an attractive feature. Its combination of touch.If Windows 7 was a high point in Windows' life. we have the Windows 10 Start menu. Windows 8. the Start menu never went away.Re-embracing the desktop But first." It's peculiar messaging. For the many Windows users and enterprises that stuck with Windows 7. To prove to the world that the company has done this. one familiar enough that enterprises wouldn't incur significant training costs.1 addressed some of the major complaints about Windows 8's Start screen —it reinstated the Windows button. Home users should be able to pick it up as a natural evolution of Windows 7. For those of us who adapted to Windows 8 and 8. then the only Microsoft-supported solution is to run Windows 7. What we have in Windows 10 is something else. of course. If you want something that looks and works like the Windows 7 Start menu. the company wanted a operating system that wouldn't scare off traditional desktop users. Microsoft is saying that. in Windows 10.1. And something sort of broken. the "Start menu is back. its non-presence wasn't such a big deal. Something new. for example. It's also not really true. rather than requiring the use of an invisible hot corner—but one characteristic of the Start screen was deemed by many . it doesn't fix . The layout is quite different. Stupid and annoying. too. On fresh Windows 10 installs you'll probably never notice the difference. For search-to-start apps. Except that searching breaks. but some created their own elaborate hierarchies and structures to group their applications in whichever way they felt was appropriate. and many more applications besides. it's used to show recently used and new apps and has an "All apps" view that is supposed to show all the apps you have installed. This would be tolerable if that's all that happened. The result? The All apps view didn't show all my programs. from Windows 95 to Windows 7.to be wholly inappropriate for desktop usage: its full-screen nature. In every Start menu-equipped version of Windows. it's used to show live tiles. Visual Studio 2013. of course. As such. I've launched apps from Start in exactly one way: by typing the name of the app to search for it. It is this that the Windows 10 Start menu primarily addresses.. And at the time of writing. the Adobe Creative Cloud suite. it's. it won't find your apps and you'll have no good way of launching them. On mouse and keyboard machines. On my main PC with a full install of Office 2016. pressing Start shows a thing that's more or less the same size as the Windows 7 Start menu. Those folders and shortcuts were all reflected in the Start menu. since it'll take some time to build up 500 or so entries. just as were found on the Start screen of old. the Start menu was driven by a set of folders and shortcuts on the file system. In Windows 10. Windows creates a per-user database containing all the entries that are in Start. both the live tile portion and the All apps portion. Better yet. this database has the oh-so convenient feature of being limited to around 500 entries. I don't really care about All apps at all. because since Windows Vista. however. Many stuck with whatever random folders applications created when they were installed. I blew right past this number. including their hierarchical organization. and a few other places. Visual Studio 2015. Instead.. organization of the Start menu was user-controlled. Control Panel. so sad. A new Start menu. this is not the All Programs view of Windows 7 and below. Windows appears to use the same database. but tolerable. The righthand side is used not for quick access to your user directory. different. If that database is incomplete (because you have too many entries) then too bad. not necessarily a better one However. This database is (inexplicably) maintained by a system service running as the superprivileged SYSTEM identity. even if you reduce the number of apps to below 500 or so. The left-hand side is closer to Windows 7. Upgrading is always an option. Even among those who switch operating systems. the 500 entry limit is going to be hard to hit. Enlarge / Where oh where are all my icons. In principle. That the database doesn't track changes to the file system and remain up-to- . For search. And this means that people are going to have machines with lots of apps installed.anything. This problem has bitten me and a few others. In clean installs. Windows 10's new Start menu is going to deny them access to some of those apps. There's no easy way to make it re-read all the short cuts in the Start menu directory (that still exists. for the live tiles portion of Start. but mainstream users tend to keep the operating system that their hardware came with. of course. The entire design of the database system is baroque. And the entire thing perplexes me. because it's quite debilitating right now. I daresay that most Windows versions never have many people upgrade them.. But using a service to maintain this database (rather than a regular user process) and making the entire thing opaque with no easy means of altering it or modifying it. you probably want some kind of cache rather than crawling through the file system every time someone tries to search for an application. it's bizarre. I can perhaps see some justification for the database itself. because it's where installers expect to put their icons) to regenerate the database.. Start menu? But Windows 10 promises to shake that up. there needs to be a record of what tiles you have and how you have arranged them. many prefer clean installs to the inplace upgrades. Even Windows 7 systems that may have been in regular use since 2009 will be offered the upgrade. In-place upgrades to Windows 10 should be abundant. I'm hoping that Microsoft will release a patch soon. the upgrade floodgates are going to open now that Windows 10 is officially out. Windows 8. While it's not an exact clone of any previous Start menu. the Start screen layout was maintained by the Start screen itself. the capability is gone in Windows 10.1. for example. they have a new animation for flipping between pieces of information. or even icons with a counter in the corner. The addition of the live tiles makes it better.1.1 system worked. it's close enough to seem familiar.1 All apps and tile view is beyond me. The new one doesn't. live tiles have been spruced up a little. The Windows 8. Windows 10 does nothing to really make it any better. if you want more live tiles. pre-pin line-of-business apps. This new design also appears to break things that were possible in Windows 8. I'm also not sure it represents quite the victory that Start menu fans think it is. And that the database has such a ridiculously low limit on the total number of apps is inexcusable.1 also supported syncing the Start screen between devices. and if you don't care for them at all you can get rid of all of them and eliminate the space they take. and it was possible for administrators to roll out standard sets of pinned tiles to systems they were deploying. I continue to like them. The Start menu continues to be a problematic user interface. They're genuinely more useful than plain icons. The live tile portion of the Start menu is straightforward.date is weird. Since Windows 8. double width square size available. It simply doesn't scale very well. and there's a new double height. you can make it bigger. I think it's going to achieve Microsoft's goal of reassuring traditional desktop users handily. Admins could. Even if all my icons were showing up correctly—and I'm sure they will eventually— All apps view represents a poor way of finding the icon I'm after. the traditional Start menu is actually a disaster. In that operating system. The Start menu can be resized by dragging its edges. Enlarge / With a few programs installed. While I'm unhappy with the specific details of how the Start menu has been implemented and the bugs that it has. . Quite why Microsoft felt it necessary to gut the Windows 8. they provide a convenient dashboard for things like news and weather (I have come to enjoy the steady stream of nearby murders and assaults that Cortana's tile tells me about since moving to Brooklyn) and are great for keeping track of appointments. and that works well (though again.Arguably. That's a big part of why Windows 8's Start screen never really offended me. the Start menu took a big step backward with Windows Vista. The process was the same: hit the Windows key and start typing. searching was also introduced in Windows Vista. which replaced the conventional fly-out menus used in Windows XP and below with the weird expanding-in-place scrolling list. . it's broken for me until the icon limit is relieved). the change from a menu to the tile view didn't change how I launched programs. I'm convinced that this is far and away the best way to start programs on Windows. Fortunately.