Review by James

I’ve been playing around with Windows 10 for a few days now, it’s the downloadable version but this should be the same. I had originally hoped it would be a viable desktop OS going forward but unfortunately it seems this is not to be. Microsoft made some much needed changes to the desktop experience after the Windows 8 disaster, however they did this at some expense to the touch experience. The user interface continues the flat, sparse trend that started with Windows 8. The icons look like placeholders hastily drawn in mspaint and the whole interface just feels stripped out, sparse and unfinished with huge amounts of screen-wasting white space. The result is an operating system that still doesn’t come close to Windows 7 on the desktop and isn’t as good as Windows 8 on a touch device. On top of that, it throws out any performance advantage Win8 may have had over Win7, and it feels more like a platform to push Microsoft subscription services and paid apps than a desktop operating system. Then there are the mandated updates which are not limited just to security patches but can include arbitrary changes to the UI or features. In a nutshell, by obsessing over this one OS, one experience across the board, Microsoft has created the Spork of operating systems that tries to be everything to everyone and doesn’t do a particularly good job at anything. They seem to be doing their best to throw away their desktop dominance in order to chase after mobile in a battle they already lost. I should have stocked up on a few more copies of Windows 7 before prices went through the roof.