[OFFICIAL] Windows 10 Insider Program

By Ian S.
in The Fast Ring (Insider Previews)

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Windows Technical Preview  

1,031 members have voted

  1. 1. On a scale of 1-5, 1 being worst, 5 being best. What do you think of Windows 10 from the leaks so far?

    • 5.Great, best OS ever
      156
    • 4. Pretty Good, needs a lot of minor tweaks
      409
    • 3. OK, Needs a few major improvements, some minor ones
      168
    • 2. Fine, Needs a lot of major improvements
      79
    • 1.Poor, Needs too many improvements, all hope is lost, never going to use it
      41

  2. 2. Based on the recent leaks by Neowin and Winfuture.de, my next OS upgrade will be?

    • Windows 10
      720
    • Windows 8
      20
    • Windows 7
      48
    • Sticking with XP
      3
    • OSX Yosemite
      35
    • Linux
      24
    • Sticking with OSX Mavericks
      3

  3. 3. Should Microsoft give away Windows 10 for free?

    • Yes for Windows 8.1 Users
      305
    • Yes for Windows 7 and above users
      227
    • Yes for Vista and above users
      31
    • Yes for XP and above users
      27
    • Yes for all Windows users
      192
    • No
      71

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Grand Master

MikeChipshop Member

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vectors are infinitely zoomable, BUT they don't scale well, you can't use the same icon for 32x32 and 256x256 size icons.

 

you have a good icon at the designed size, but make it smaller and it becomes a blurry mess trying to gave to much detail, make it bigger and it's cartoon land.

 

vectors are not a magic bullet for ui and icons.

 

if the GUI is a fixed size me and to be the same physical size or relative size(relative to screen size) at different while being resolution independent, then yes vectors make sense. however that's not what people want or need. that is scalable GUI's. pro users want it small , old people want large stuff.

Thank you!

Too many people thing vector is the be all and end all of icon scaling when clearly it's no such thing.

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HawkMan

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Thank you!

Too many people thing vector is the be all and end all of icon scaling when clearly it's no such thing.

 

many don't understand that zoom is completely different from scaling.

 

sure vectors would be great for supporting, different dpi screens and/or screen sizes. BUT you'd still need the icon drawn in several different "scale"/size vectors for different scales if you want bigger or smaller icons.

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DeadEndAccount

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vectors are infinitely zoomable, BUT they don't scale well, you can't use the same icon for 32x32 and 256x256 size icons.

 

you have a good icon at the designed size, but make it smaller and it becomes a blurry mess trying to gave to much detail, make it bigger and it's cartoon land.

 

vectors are not a magic bullet for ui and icons.

 

if the GUI is a fixed size me and to be the same physical size or relative size(relative to screen size) at different while being resolution independent, then yes vectors make sense. however that's not what people want or need. that is scalable GUI's. pro users want it small , old people want large stuff.

 

 

Thank you!

Too many people thing vector is the be all and end all of icon scaling when clearly it's no such thing.

 

 

many don't understand that zoom is completely different from scaling.

 

sure vectors would be great for supporting, different dpi screens and/or screen sizes. BUT you'd still need the icon drawn in several different "scale"/size vectors for different scales if you want bigger or smaller icons.

 

Thank you for the correction although operating systems such as Irix Magic Desktop have shown that SVG based icons are doable. That being said, I really do hope that Microsoft get their act together rather than with previous versions of Windows they couldn't be bothered replacing icons that are circa Windows 95. Honestly, I wonder whether anyone at Microsoft does give a toss about fit and finish.

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patseguin Global Moderator

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Also, a flat design is not as power-intensive as a 3D (even fake-3D) UI design - which is why portable  PCs (even "traditional" laptops and notebooks) benefit, due to that age-old bugbear of anything portable - battery life.

That is one thing I discovered with my own "legacy notebook" that is in the testing pool - it actually originally shipped with Vista.  The Windows 10 Pro technical Preview - for reasons of a flatter UI, among others - has better battery life than the SAME notebook running any other flavor of Windows.  (Remember, if anything, 10 will be on more styles merely of portable hardware than any previous version of Windows - and that is without including phones.)

 

That is, in fact, why I wonder if any of the critics of the flat UI (not just in Windows) even own ANY portable hardware, let alone 10-capable legacy hardware.

How exactly are the colors used in a UI power intensive? Mac OS X has always had a beautiful UI and they don't have issues with power. That seems like the thing that people who support boring flat graphics like to claim. If people are concerned about power that much, why not just drop a graphical UI completely and yo back to ms-dos?

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Grand Master

+Fahim S. MVC

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How exactly are the colors used in a UI power intensive? Mac OS X has always had a beautiful UI and they don't have issues with power. That seems like the thing that people who support boring flat graphics like to claim. If people are concerned about power that much, why not just drop a graphical UI completely and yo back to ms-dos?

 

Effects such as glass have a massive impact on power as the calculation to blur the background elements is more than nothing.

 

Even in OS X the glass effect is sparingly used.  In the past when it was used, it wasn't so much the obfuscated glass as much as just transparency.  On my corporate Thinkpad, switching off transparency doubles the battery life.

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Steven P. Administrators

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Effects such as glass have a massive impact on power as the calculation to blur the background elements is more than nothing.

 

Even in OS X the glass effect is sparingly used.  In the past when it was used, it wasn't so much the obfuscated glass as much as just transparency.  On my corporate Thinkpad, switching off transparency doubles the battery life.

Well considering you also needed a 5xxx series of Nvidia cards to be able to use Aero Glass in 2007 says a lot too :p My card was one of the few in the lowest supported series that supported it, and that was a 5950 "Ultra" card too (cost hundreds of Euros at the time) :p

 

All of the budget cards in the next series (6xxx) did support Aero Glass though.

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patseguin Global Moderator

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Effects such as glass have a massive impact on power as the calculation to blur the background elements is more than nothing.

 

Even in OS X the glass effect is sparingly used.  In the past when it was used, it wasn't so much the obfuscated glass as much as just transparency.  On my corporate Thinkpad, switching off transparency doubles the battery life.

Fair enough, I'm definitely not an expert. I just thought with recent technology, the colors used for a UI would not impact power. I wonder why they couldn't have one UI for battery powered devices and another for desktops on ac power. I suppose that would go against a unified UI concept.

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PGHammer

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How exactly are the colors used in a UI power intensive? Mac OS X has always had a beautiful UI and they don't have issues with power. That seems like the thing that people who support boring flat graphics like to claim. If people are concerned about power that much, why not just drop a graphical UI completely and yo back to ms-dos?

I'm talking about effects OTHER than color (such as Aero Glass or 3D).  Both are largely irrelevant on desktops (even servers) - because they are always plugged in.  DO the same on a laptop or notebook and you'll be looking for a plug well before you want to.

 

If anything, the Windows Server UI - I'm talking even that of 2008R2 - is flatter than that of stablemate 7 (just as Server 2012/2012R2 is flatter than that of 8 or 8.1, respectively), and that is despite Desktop Experience being installed on the server side (it's an option in all three server OSes).  Why would the UI be so flat in a server?

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DeadEndAccount

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Effects such as glass have a massive impact on power as the calculation to blur the background elements is more than nothing.

 

Even in OS X the glass effect is sparingly used.  In the past when it was used, it wasn't so much the obfuscated glass as much as just transparency.  On my corporate Thinkpad, switching off transparency doubles the battery life.

 

Some Mac's using Yosemite experience an improvement in speed and battery life by checking 'Reduce Transparency' under 'Accessibility' the 'System Preferences' - I know for me I'm not much of a fan so I've enabled dark menu and dock along with 'Reduce Transparency' which is a whole lot nicer than the gaudy and bright interface that comes as standard on OS X.

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Grand Master

chrisj1968

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Well considering you also needed a 5xxx series of Nvidia cards to be able to use Aero Glass in 2007 says a lot too :p My card was one of the few in the lowest supported series that supported it, and that was a 5950 "Ultra" card too (cost hundreds of Euros at the time) :p

 

All of the budget cards in the next series (6xxx) did support Aero Glass though.

 

I'd say, atleast give us Aero Glass. we will be staring at the UI on a daily basis, seems reasonable to be able to look at something that is asthetically pleasing.

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Ian S.

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All of the budget cards in the next series (6xxx) did support Aero Glass though.

 

Barely...I owned a 6200, don't remind me. It was running full transparency with Windows 7 at the time  :(

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Ian S.

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New Lock Screen features coming:

 

Javascript is not enabled or refresh the page to view.

Click here to view the Tweet

 

https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-10/1198/windows-10-technical-preview-2-tip-find-hidden-lock-screen-images

 

All images (download from OneDrive):

 

http://1drv.ms/16ipfVW

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Dot Matrix

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New windows 10 video showing off cortana. Build 10011 shown in this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qI4tj1YZbiM

Leak Images from that Chinese website where real.

asf.jpg

Transparent task bar.safa.jpg

I'm actually coming around to the new icons. They really need to move Search/Cortana back into Start and off the taskbar.
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Ian S.

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I'm actually coming around to the new icons. They really need to move Search/Cortana back into Start and off the taskbar.

Like I've said 9901 had the best icons. I really hope they is those since they match Office 2013

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ViperAFK

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I'm actually coming around to the new icons. They really need to move Search/Cortana back into Start and off the taskbar.

Yeah there should at least be an option to collapse it

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George P Global Moderator

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You can do it now, Cortana has three options, the default search bar, a search button, or off in which case it goes back to being in the search menu.

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Dot Matrix

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You can do it now, Cortana has three options, the default search bar, a search button, or off in which case it goes back to being in the search menu.

Off puts search back into the menu? I'll have to try that when I get home.

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