Windows 10 beta download links now live

[vailr]

Windows 10 (January 2015) beta download links now live:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/preview-iso

Some good info on new features here:
http://www.winbeta.org

 

[ViRGE]

Somehow Microsoft has made the Start Menu worse. Again.:|

We've gone from a Menu to a mini-Start Screen.

 

[bbhaag]

Have you tried it yet Virge? Hows Cortana work on the desktop? I haven't tried the tech preview in a few months but what did they do different to the start menu with this release? Can you post a pic?

 

[IamDavid]

It's 100x's better. Not sure why Virge doesn't like it. Intuitive but still takes a couple seconds to get. Been playing now for 3 hours and its good so far.

 

[rpsgc]

You can't shrink the 'start menu' now. Like ViRGE said, it's not a start menu any more, it's a smaller start screen, and it's hideous.

 

[MongGrel]

Tempting, but ...

:hmm:

No recovery partition on here and it's 8.1 so I don't think I'm trying it out yet.

*edit*

http://www.pcper.com/news/General-Tech/DirectX-12-Preview-New-Windows-10-Build-No-Drivers-Yet

Gonna sit on the fence on this one a bit yet.

 

[Dahak]

Somehow Microsoft has made the Start Menu worse. Again.:|

We've gone from a Menu to a mini-Start Screen.

You can't shrink the 'start menu' now. Like ViRGE said, it's not a start menu any more, it's a smaller start screen, and it's hideous.

I have not tried it in a while, and have not tried the new build, but what if you remove all the "live" tiles that are on the right would that make it more menu like?

 

[ViRGE]

I have not tried it in a while, and have not tried the new build, but what if you remove all the "live" tiles that are on the right would that make it more menu like?

Unfortunately not. Then you just have a bunch of empty space.

The Start Menu in the earlier preview was basically a proof of concept for what they wanted to do, mostly using the old menu code. Now they've rewritten the entire menu in XAML (the same thing the Start Screen was written in), but they haven't finished and there are a bunch of missing features. This includes the ability to resize the menu, and the ability to control the All Programs list in any meaningful fashion (sort order, icon size, etc). You really are using a smaller version of the Start Screen, complete with giant letters separating programs in the list.

I'm sure it will get better over time. But right now it's a definite regression.

 

[ViRGE]

Alright, some pictures:

Have you tried it yet Virge? Hows Cortana work on the desktop?

I have not tried Cortana yet. In fact I am trying to turn off web searching entirely, and it's not working. The control panel for controlling Cortana and search settings doesn't work. So I'm stuck with web search on.:|

 

[Ketchup]

Somehow Microsoft has made the Start Menu worse. Again.:|

We've gone from a Menu to a mini-Start Screen.

No kidding. HATE it.

And why do I want half my taskbar to be a search box? As if the huge search button the the start menu wasn't enough.

 

[Mem]

No kidding. HATE it.

And why do I want half my taskbar to be a search box?

Hehe got to be one of the worst ones ever.

 

[RampantAndroid]

No kidding. HATE it.

And why do I want half my taskbar to be a search box? As if the huge search button the the start menu wasn't enough.

You can turn it off, FYI. With it off, the search box is only there while the start menu is open.

 

[Ketchup]

You can turn it off, FYI. With it off, the search box is only there while the start menu is open.

I already did, lol. I also had to laugh when I hit the resize button on the start menu and it actually made it BIGGER. What a joke.

 

[ViRGE]

You can turn it off, FYI. With it off, the search box is only there while the start menu is open.

Just be careful not to set the taskbar to auto-hide. That breaks the search box...

 

[Ketchup]

Just be careful not to set the taskbar to auto-hide. That breaks the search box...

Man you have been busy. Have you sent MS feedback yet?

 

[vailr]

 

[ViRGE]

Man you have been busy. Have you sent MS feedback yet?

Yes. Though with something like that I suspect they already know and just didn't have time to get it fixed, especially since auto-hiding the taskbar is a pretty common thing.

Overall this build is a bit on the ugly side. I think they just wanted to put out whatever the latest build was to show their progress, rather than having a specific milestone build that has been more fully tested.

 

[bbhaag]

Thanks for the pics guys! It looks um....interesting. I might dl the ISO to try it out.

 

[Ketchup]

The "This PC" and "Network" icons really look out of place. They should have altered the look of all icons, or left them alone. As it is, they really stick out, and not in a good way IMO.

 

[Burpo]

I think they just wanted to put out whatever the latest build was to show their progress, rather than having a specific milestone build that has been more fully tested.

Plus they wanted to get DX12 out..

 

[corkyg]

I'm sure that Stardock will come to the rescue. Can't stand those text boxes called "Tiles."
http://www.stardock.com/about/newsitem.asp?id=458719

 

[Makaveli]

lol atleast you got it installed, I tried to update in my VM only to get this error.

There was another screen in blue that came up on its own at one point saying I didn't have enough drive space for the install. I apparently need 8GB's of free space.

So looks like I will have to resize my VM.

 

[Ketchup]

The last preview build I did through the update took forever. I just downloaded this one and removed my old one, but I have another one that I may actually take through the update process.

A couple things to note:
As of the update before this one, I see that Microsoft saves all the data from the updates an preview build installations, so removing those through Disk Cleanup will save you a lot of "virtual" space on your machine.

To save actual space, I cloned the drive to a new vmdk and removed the original one.

 

[Makaveli]

The last preview build I did through the update took forever. I just downloaded this one and removed my old one, but I have another one that I may actually take through the update process.

A couple things to note:
As of the update before this one, I see that Microsoft saves all the data from the updates an preview build installations, so removing those through Disk Cleanup will save you a lot of "virtual" space on your machine.

To save actual space, I cloned the drive to a new vmdk and removed the original one.

Thanks for the info I will look into cleaning out those area's soon.

I had already started to increase the VM another 5GB's and that is almost done so will just let it finish.

 

[vailr]

I downloaded the 4.5 Gb .iso file and created a bootable USB thumb drive. Then booted into the previous preview build from 6 weeks ago, and ran the setup.exe from the USB thumb drive. However, the setup sequence totally ignored the data already available on the thumb drive, and went on to download a further ~700 Mb in updates. Chose to save existing programs and settings. After completion, there was about 4 Gb of old data in the windows.old folder, which the CCleaner program found and disposed of. Windows Media Player is no longer the default .flac audio player, unless manually re-set.
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Some good info on new features here:
http://www.winbeta.org