Windows 10: What I love and hate about Microsoft's new operating system

After a couple of weeks of use, what's Windows 10 really like on a day-to-day basis?

Windows 10 has been available for 12 days now, and I, wisely or not, adopted it on day one. While other reviewers decided to throw out a "review" the moment Microsoft hit the launch button - based on still-unfinished code that was weeks old - and evaluated as quickly as possible, I decided instead to give Windows 10 time to marinate slightly, and to integrate with my daily life a little.

The result is a mixed bag of positives and negatives, so join me while I share my findings.

The Good

It just feels right

Windows 10 is an overall better operating system experience than Windows 8. The 'Start Button is back!' hype was actually warranted. The Start Button is genuinely the perfect replacement for Windows 8's tricky and pointless Modern tiles. Stick a few of them on a pop-up menu on the desktop, and it turns out people will actually use them. The "Most Used" bar is also absolutely the kind of thing we all needed.

Dragging and dropping things from "Most Used" into the regular "Life at a glance" bar opposite is also a doddle.

Pinning things to live permanently on the taskbar became something of a habit for me back in the dark Windows 8 days, and even though it's less necessary with the new Start menu, it's easier than ever to do. It basically all fits together wonderfully.

Modern on desktop

Some have said that putting Modern apps on the desktop, running in proper windows (as opposed to taking up the whole screen, in their own shell environment) as they now do, creates some sort of horrible disjointed visual effect, but I just don't see it at all. Modern apps have now genuinely become usable applications that don't exist in their own weird little separate universe, and I've slowly (a little begrudgingly, I'll admit - it's been three years of hurt) integrated them into my day-to-day behaviour patterns now. I've even started to venture back into the Microsoft Store, and that's saying something.

Tablet mode

I'm still not entirely confident putting my life entirely in Modern's hands (look how Windows RT ended up), but it's satisfying enough just to show people your UX mutating before their eyes as you snap the Surface keyboard off. I'm tempted to say that Microsoft still hasn't got this 100 per cent right, but at the same time feel hard pushed to say how it could be better.

However, try as I might, I still can't take Windows seriously as a tablet OS. Sure, I can easily navigate my way around Win32 with my fingers, but I still have to force myself not to fall back on the Control Panel. It's a great start, though.

The Action Center

A reason I can see Tablet Mode working for me some day (if a resurgent App Store ever makes it worth a real look) is the excellent Action Center.

Covering everything from wireless connections, airplane mode, updates, Bluetooth controls, VPN and quick brightness settings, it's an absolute one-stop shop for everything remotely useful in the average Windows session - tablet or traditional.

And just one click away is the "All Settings" menu. This is Microsoft doing away with the dreadful "Charm Bar" (note: a new, modern OS should not require a five-minute tutorial to learn how it works) and instead sticking Control Panel's most useful bits into a friendly, rectangular grey menu that makes sense.

Compatibility

Nothing - from the lowliest DOS emulated session of Doom to a Dell-driven VPN client built for Windows 7 (not so much luck for Citrix here, however) - has refused to run for me on Windows 10 so far. This is a huge triumph on Microsoft's part, and probably the greatest reason to hit that upgrade button immediately.

The Bad

Microsoft Edge

Sorry, but I'm just getting nothing out of this browser so far. On my first morning of use, I logged straight into Incisive's CMS system to upload a story, and it wouldn't let me press the space bar. A specific and weird fault to be sure, but put me in the wrong mood.

As the day wore on, I started to find Edge just as much of a system hog as the dreaded Firefox on my humble Surface Pro (first generation), and the real clincher to stop me using it was this:

When I logged into Office 365's Outlook environment in the browser, I couldn't see my own hotlinks after pasting them into emails. So Microsoft's flagship browser wasn't working properly with its flagship enterprise cloud environment.

This happened another couple of days too. It's all over between Edge and me for a while, but I'll check back in time.

Er...you want HOW much of my data?

The biggie for me is, boringly enough, the still-contested and now rather stale online "feedback and privacy" debate. I've already picked up enough flak for the stories I printed about Windows 10's obsession with giving your every keystroke and more besides to Microsoft, but I'm not going to stop there.

Yes, I know you can turn everything off and I know "other versions of Windows did some of these things too" but come on: in your darkest hour, it's actually possible to interpret Cortana as nothing more than a carefully-prepared mule to make you retick all the boxes you carefully unticked at the installation stage.

Just look at all this:

I don't seriously believe Cortana - or the OS's basic search function, come to that - needs to know quite so much about me. It seems far more likely that now Microsoft has realised that "data is the new oil", it's making a fairly bare-faced attempt to learn everything it can about all its users in order to share them with "carefully chosen affiliates" to introduce you to "super exciting products and services".

I unticked the lot, and as such have had to refuse to have any contact whatsoever with Cortana. It's creating that icy sort of atmosphere when you've had a bit of a tiff with a colleague, and you're temporarily avoiding each other. Eugh.

When free is not free

This isn't an argument I'm hugely keen on engaging with, but it's certainly interesting when a company makes a song and dance of giving everybody a free operating system then wants $10 a year (not a one-off) to play a quick card game and $15 just to play a DVD (when it's free to do so in any number of downloadable Win 32 applications).

I'm tempted to say "don't look a gift horse in the mouth", but let's face it - Microsoft probably gave Windows 10 away for free because it knew it could no longer charge money for it rather than out of the goodness of its cold, metallic heart.

Adding transactions I wouldn't even call "micro" on the back just seems a little disingenuous. I'll wait for the total bounty to rack up before making a formal judgment, but it's not the most auspicious start for "free" Windows 10.

The Bottom Line

Windows 10 is basically excellent. On a core functionality level it's up there with Windows 8 - perfectly solid and dependable on a day-to-day level.

Usability-wise, it's leaps and bounds ahead of its progenitor. If you're running Windows 8, there is absolutely no reason on earth not to go ahead and grab this upgrade.

Next to Windows 7, however, it's perhaps not as clear cut. If you've not been swimming around in an environment of hobbled gesture-based interaction and the deserted vacuum of Modern for the past few years, you might well still be happy with what you have. I wouldn't say Microsoft Edge is any reason whatsoever to check out Windows 10, but if you fancy using your device as a tablet or just want to feel cooler, Windows 10 is stable, friendly, usually not confusing and well... free.