The revamped, customizable Start menu.Screenshot by Nate Ralph/CNET
Boot up a PC running the Windows 10 Technical Preview, and you'll be dropped off at the oh so familiar desktop. A taskbar with familiar looking icons sits on the bottom, and the recycle bin sits in the upper left corner. A build number sitting on the right side of your desktop is the only indication that this isn't Windows 8 all over again.
And then you press the Start button, and are greeted by the return of the Start menu. It's a proper Start menu too, with your apps all stacked in that endless column of nested folders we've all been scrolling since Windows 95. And sitting alongside that column are Windows 8's lovely Live Tiles, with news-bites and social updates spinning ad infinitum.
Windows 8 was a bold reimagining of the operating system, but the Start screen has proven contentious. The colorful Live Tiles offer useful notifications and information, but they were designed with touchscreen devices in mind: much of the work we do in Windows involves a keyboard, a mouse, and large displays chock full of windows and apps. Windows 8's Modern apps demand a full screen's attention, oblivious of our need to multitask. And many app developers have stuck to apps that rip us back to the desktop, creating a confusing experience for folks who want to make the most of Windows.
The Windows 10 Start Menu sidesteps those problems entirely, giving us the best of both worlds.
Old is new again
Virtual desktops keep work and play separate.Screenshot by Nate Ralph/CNET
With Windows 10, the familiar and the new are mashed together in a form that's only a little different, but suddenly more useful than ever before. The new Start menu behaves much like older versions of Windows, with frequently used apps and any folders you've pinned lined up in a neat little column. To the right of that column are the Live Tiles, which function much like they do in Windows 8 in a fraction of the space. You pin apps as new tiles on a whim, and also resize and rearrange tiles to your liking. You can also resize the entire start menu, making it tall and narrow, or short and wide. And if you'd rather not deal with the Live Tiles at all, just right click them and remove them.
Press those Live Tile shortcuts, and the Modern apps introduced in Windows 8 open as classic windowed apps. This is a welcome change, allowing us to sample the new aesthetic Microsoft is pushing for the next generation of Windows without sacrificing our entire display. You can now drag these Modern apps around, snap them to half of your display, or minimize and maximize them at will.
Windows 10 lets you work smarter, too. Click the Task view button, and you'll get a quick glimpse of all of your open apps and windows. A black box running along the bottom of the display prompts to create a virtual desktop: that's a sort of private island that keeps everything you open there as an independent workspace. You can, for example, create one desktop for all of the applications you use for work, another to browse gaming forums or sites like Reddit, and yet another for games, or whatever you want. The virtual desktop feature alone tempts me to install the preview on my primary machine. Of course we've had virtual desktops on Linux and Mac machines for years (and on Windows, from third-party apps), but it's nice to see Microsoft catching up here.
Modern apps no longer take up the whole screen.Screenshot by Nate Ralph/CNET
In Windows 10, You can press Ctrl + Windows key to jump between your desktops, triggering a slick little sliding animation that was added in the latest build of the Technical Preview. You can also right click an app when you're in task view and select a specific desktop to move it to.
It's not completely there yet, however. I'd really like to be able to drag and drop open apps to different desktops instead of right click all of the time. And being able to rearrange the virtual desktops I've created would be a huge boost to my productivity. A step forward
But Windows 10's real game-changing potential is still purely theoretical: this'll be one operating system to rule them all, serving up a device-specific interface that'll scale from desktops down to smartphones, and everywhere in between, with universal apps that will run everywhere too. Microsoft has also offered a look at new trackpad gestures that are slated to make their way into the Technical Preview.
Some of these gestures will likely be familiar to folks who've used the trackpad on a Macbook: swipe down with three fingers for example, and you'll minimize all of the open windows on your desktop. Swipe up with three fingers to reopen them. You'll also be able to jump between open applications by swiping three fingers to the left or right, if you'd rather not use the Alt + Tab shortcuts, or are on a device without a keyboard.
These features haven't yet made their way to the technical preview, but you'll eventually be able to pop a 2-in-1 convertible device like the Surface Pro 3 onto its keyboard base, and watch the full-screen Start screen melt away, offering instead the new Start menu and the familiar desktop.
That could be a cure for the confusing mess that is the current Windows 8 PC ecosystem, chock full of laptops that bend over backward or split from keyboards, or simply graft touchscreens onto familiar designs. We should finally see an end to the jarring, generally unsatisfying experience that urges us to dance between the desktop and that weird, full-screen purgatory where Modern apps live.
And if you want to flirt with the Windows 8 experience you can do that too: just right click the taskbar and choose the option that disables or enables the Start menu. If Windows 8 had shipped with that option to begin with, we would probably have avoided this issue entirely.
Future-proofing
Windows 10 isn't going to fix everything, but a seemingly simple tweak to one of Windows 8's most divisive elements has made a world of difference to the OS. And that's crucial to Windows' future, as Microsoft is still looking at the big picture: PCs are old news.
Desktops and laptops still handle most of our work and play, but tablets and smartphones have long since stolen the limelight: future operating systems will need to work to bridge that gap. We've seen steps in this direction from Apple, with OS X Yosemite's ability to hand off files and things like emails and calls from your phone or tablet. And some Android apps are making their way to Google's Chrome OS, and interesting sign of where Google might be headed.
Microsoft's vision of tomorrow's ideal operating system is grander still. The goal is to offer a unified experience across devices of all shapes and sizes, and one that will morph to make sense: icons to tap and home screens when you're on a phone or tablet, but windowed apps and nested folders when you're armed with a keyboard and mouse.
Windows 8 dreamed of dragging us into that future, but we kicked and screamed at the inefficiency of its one-size-fits-all approach. With Windows 10, Microsoft seems to be getting it right.
Recently I noticed there was lag whenever I tried to access internet. I guess the recent government directive to Streamyx and other ISP providers in Malaysia in an attempt to use DNS block has resulted in a slower internet access. Such DNS blocking is futile as it was very easy to bypass DNS block.
The Malaysian government went against their promise (perhaps even illegal since it went against the MSC Malaysia Bill of Guarantee) of giving its citizen unrestricted access to the internet and instructed Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) to block off certain sites. So much for freedom of information. The reasoning behind it was to fight against piracy and against illegal file sharing sites. That’s the overt reasoning, I should think there is also a covert conspiracy to also shut off opposition website as well too since they did get a hammering during the 2008 general election as the opposition used the internet media to voice out their opinion thus making the current coalition losing so many Parliament seats that they are now so desperate to get back their 2/3 majority.
If government can go against what they have tabled in the parliament then surely they can do whatever they pleased legally or illegally. Anyway, I’m not here to blog about the ills of bad governance, but rather to find a solution to bypass the DNS blocking. So far the blockage is fairly simple unlike the Chinese government far more advance method of clamping of freedom of information (you can’t even watch Youtube in China and you need sophisticated DNS proxy to get around China government blockage plus you might end up in jail too!)
Anyway, the DNS block seemed to have caused my Streamyx internet connection to slow down to certain web sites. These site that slowdown I can’t even get a decent connection to do anything. I wasn’t really planning to do any DNS block bypass since I don’t do any of those file sharing download stuff, unfortunately it was collateral damage to normal users like me and so no choice but to use it.
My brother showed it to me and it was simple and straight forward. Instead of using TM/Streamyx primary and secondary DNS of 202.188.0.133 and 202.188.1.5 respectively, all that was needed was to change it to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 and that’s it! This set of DNS belonged to Google it seems. So now my internet data is no longer routed via TM/Streamyx servers where the DNS blocking is done, instead it now goes through Google without facing any censoring. I believing the censoring is causing a heavy load with their subroutine thereby slowing down my broadband connection, bypassing it, now I get faster connection. I’m not sure if my explanation is right but the faster connection seemed to prove it.
And of course, the censoring of the internet has caused ire from the underground international internet community and the backlashed caused many government website to be hacked. Fortunately mostly minor defacement. Hah! Even the government engages hackers (though not confirmed, mostly conspiracy theory, but how else to explain why the alternate media went down in the first place?) to create Denial-Of-Service against alternate media to clam down on opposition reporting. So sort of an irony here.
Today at its Build developer conference, Microsoft released the preview of the Windows 8.1 update and it is now available for users to download and try out.
Search once. Go anywhere.
A single search now brings you results from your PC, your apps, and the web. See results in a clean, graphic view that lets you take immediate action and launch apps. Search, click, do. Find a song and start playing it, or find a video and watch it right away. Powered by Bing.
More apps to love
You’ll notice that the Windows Store has a new look which makes it easier to discover and download new apps. And the apps that are included with Windows 8.1 Preview let you do a bunch of cool things. For example, with Reading List you can save articles and stories across apps and devices, and the updated Photos app gives you fast and fun editing.
Make it yours
Set up a slide show on your lock screen by picking your favorite pictures. Arrange the stuff on your Start screen so it's just the way you want it. Choose from more tile sizes, more colors, and more backgrounds—including animated backgrounds.
Built–in cloud storage
SkyDrive is now the default location for saving documents. So you always have your files wherever you go, even when you’re offline. And with the included SkyDrive app, you can manage both local files and SkyDrive files in one place.
Fast, full-screen browsing
When you get Windows 8.1 Preview, you also get to check out the new Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer 11 Preview is built for touch, with faster load times, a full-screen experience that includes side-by-side browsing of your sites, and real-time info delivered on your Start screen through live tiles for your favorite sites.
