Leonhard - Windows 10 All-In-One For Dummies

Windows 10 All-in-One For Dummies, 2nd Edition

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Copyright 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2016950189

ISBN 978-1-119-31056-3 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-119-31060-0 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-119-31059-4 (ebk)

1. Table of Contents

Think of Windows 8/8.1 as an extended, really bad, no good, horrible nightmare. Microsofts woken up now. They fired almost everybody who ran the Win8 operation, cleaned out the house, and brought in some truly gifted engineers. Windows 10s a brand new day. Whether its your brand new day is another story.

Windows 10 looks a little bit like Windows 7 and a little bit like Windows 8.1. It doesnt work like either of them, but for the billion-and-a-half Windows users out there, at least its recognizable as Windows.

If you havent yet taken the plunge with Windows 10, I advise you to go slowly. Microsoft is furiously working on extending the product and shoring up problems. The Windows 10 you know today will change in a few months, and you may like the new one better. Before installing Windows 10, I would simply count to ten.

For most Windows 8 and 8.1 users, Win10 is a no-brainer. You can kvetch about some problems the disappearance of Windows Media Center, for example and Microsoft cloud storage OneDrive users are going to have a hard time adapting to the now-you-see-it-now-you-dont interface (see Book 6, ) until Microsoft figures out how to fix it. There are dozens of additional details, but by and large, Windows 10 is what Windows 8.1 shouldve been.

Windows 7 users, though, dont have as much incentive to move to Windows 10, but there are some good changes. Microsoft effectively ditched Internet Explorer and built a much lighter and more capable browser, called Microsoft Edge. Instead of desktop gadgets, which in Win7 were held together with baling wire and chewing gum, Win10 sports an entire infrastructure for tiled Universal apps. Win10 works with all the new hardware, touch, and pens. Theres an improved Task Manager, File Explorer, and a dozen other system utilities.

Is that enough to convince Win7 users to abandon ship in droves? Probably not. The single biggest allure of Windows 10 for the Win7 battle-hardened is that its clearly the way of the future.

If you want a better Windows, for whatever reason, youll have to go through Windows 10.

Heres what you should ask yourself before you move from Windows 7 to Windows 10:

• Are you willing to learn a new operating system, with a number of new features that may or may not appeal to you?
• Are you willing to let Microsoft snoop on your actions, more than they do with Windows 7? We dont know exactly whats being snooped, but it appears to be roughly on par with Google snooping and arguably less intrusive than Apple snooping.
• Are you willing to let Microsoft take control of your machine? MS has already shown that it can take Win7 and 8.1 machines to town, with the Get Windows 10 campaign. But in Win10, its considerably more difficult to keep patches at bay.

This isnt the manual Microsoft forgot. This is the manual Microsoft wouldnt dare print. I wont feed you the Microsoft party line or make excuses for pieces of Windows 10 that just dont work: Some of its junk, some of its evolving, and some of its devolving. My job is to take you through the most important parts of Windows, give you tips that may or may not involve Microsoft products, point out the rough spots, and guide you around the disasters. Frankly, there are some biggies.

I also look at using non-Microsoft products in a Windows way: iPads, Androids, Kindles, Gmail and Google apps, Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, Firefox, Google Chrome, iCloud, and many more. Even though Microsoft competes with just about every one of those products, each has a place in your computing arsenal and ties into Windows in important ways.

Ill save you more than enough money to pay for the book several times over, keep you from pulling out a whole shock of hair, lead you to dozens if not hundreds of Aha! moments, and keep you awake in the process. Guaranteed.