Windows 10: Microsoft's version aversion

OK, so there won’t be a Windows 9. Skipping version 9 is highly unlikely to have been the brainchild of Microsoft’s geek-trust.

No doubt some Microsoft marketroid discovered all sorts of bad joke possibilities with Windows 9 and suggested a fast-forward to Windows 10. We may never know. Perhaps the Redmondites should just release Windows 10.2 and pretend it’s a Win8.1 update?

Poor old Microsoft (well, not really that poor) doesn’t have the mega-brand loyalty enjoyed by rival Apple. The fruit company can blithely release an update
that stops its iPhones from even working as, er, a phone and its loyal fans wait patiently for a fix. 

When Microsoft released Windows 8 and forgot to provide a way for people who use a keyboard to get any work done, nobody was patient.

Of course, the company quickly released Windows 8.1 and got it fixed but by then the entire world had decided Win8 was a dud to be avoided. The fact that it now works as advertised and is stable and fast (compared with previous versions of Windows) seems not to matter. Even taxi drivers will tell you that Win8 is hopeless.

And the enterprise hordes have also refused to upgrade, with some of them steadfastly holding onto WinXP – for absolutely no good reason whatsoever.

Windows 10 is scheduled to be released in mid-2015 and that is indeed a very small time gap between operating system versions. By the time you read this, you can download your own beta version and start playing around. 

That used to be a bit of a chore, but with virtual machines virtually everywhere, it’s a no-brainer these days. We’re willing to bet there will be major problems with the first offering, but Microsoft seems intent on using the vast resources of the internet to publicly find the bugs and get them fixed before the shrink-wrapped edition is released to manufacture.

The new version promises to be all things to all people, surely a recipe for disaster if the brief history of computing tells us anything. Most of the ideas seem good; it’s just a matter of whether or not the code behind the ideas delivers the goods. 

An operating system that detects a keyboard and mouse, and behaves accordingly makes sense, but then turns itself all touchy-feely when there’s nothing but a screen, seems to make even better sense. We fervently hope Microsoft has remembered to cater for virtual machines, which don’t have anything at all connected in the real world.

Even more interesting, potentially, is the upgrade to Microsoft’s Windows Server. Whether this is also called Windows 10, or Server 2015 remains to be seen. The advances in Server 2012 versus Server 2008 were truly spectacular, particularly the all-singing, all-dancing Server Manager 2012, which you can even run from your PC or tablet.

Going back to a 2008 server and trying to manage the sucker without the benefit of the Server Manager 2012 tools feels pretty much like driving your old Kingswood. You might look cool, but steering it is a total arm wrestle.

Gotta go! Beta Win10 to download!