Windows 10 is coming

Got a notification that W10 upgrade will be available soon via Windows update. Should be interesting - Windows 8 startup speed with Windows 7 layout.

Modified Windows 7 layout, the start page will be incorporated into the old start menu for desktop machines, but the old start menu will make a return on the desktop.

Universal apps will run windowed on the desktop, in other words tablet style apps will run on the desktop in a window.

Cortana will be integrated with the OS at some point as well (I'm quite impressed with the voice recognition in Cortana).

The OS User Interface will automatically change personality on different devices so in tablet mode it will be like Windows 8, on a desktop closer to traditional windows and on a phone it will look like Windows Phone does just now, although sadly they are taking some steps back with Windows phone with Windows 10, existing Windows phone users are likely to be disappointed to some extent, there have been a lot of negative comments about the proposed changes for the phone.

And more importantly it is a free upgrade to anyone on Windows 7 or later for the first 12 months.

And I believe that applies to both legit copies of earlier OS and pirated versions.

Personally I have a preference for doing clean installs rather than in place upgrades, if I use the Windows Update approach it will probably be the first time I've ever performed an upgrade on any of my PC.

So have I...........

It says it is free..........

It is free, for the first year, actual release date is sometime in July I think.

And by the first year I only mean that is the upgrade period, as always your copy of Windows is a perpetual licence and not a subscription, as long as you do the upgrade in the first year you will get it for free.

And although I have not checked out this version yet despite having access to the CTP's and Release Candidates, I expect it to be very good this time.

In the notification area in the taskbar Mike. You should a Windows symbol.

Yeah me too, I'm assuming Windows will allocate a new serial number anyway, so a reinstall should be ok.

I don't see why not - I've used MS Money 2004 on Windows 8.1. I still use Cool Edit 2000 on my W7 and W8.1.

Unless it used some weird API it'll still work, backwards compatibility has always been Microsoft's strong point it has also been their curse as it limited innovation in many ways.

Well for whatever reason, I've still not got the invite, but then again I am on Windows 8.1 Enterprise and had automatic updates turned off as I was sick of the updates eating up my available space on my SSD.

Windows 10 will apparently be a 3GB download which is why I'd prefer a clean install rather than an upgrade. I only have a 128GB SSD, but still have 80GB left, so its not a problem.

It will be interesting to see if the upgrade goes into the Installer $PatchCache$ folder or not, my Windows Installer folder currently has 20 GB worth of files in .\Installer which can't be removed and nearly 8 GB in .\Installer\$PatchCache$ which I could take a risk on attempting to remove but won't

In total my Windows installation is using 49 GB of my 250 GB SSD which is very annoying.

The main reason it is so bad is the continual patching of my development tools, as a developer I have an application profile that is very different from most peoples but still 49 GB !