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Urthman

Windows 10: "It wouldn't be right to call it Windows 9."

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Best discovery of the day is that Windows 10's version number will actually be 10.0, not 6.3 or some nonsense.

 

I found out in a conference last week that this is causing versioning problems with programs that check for something like "version >= 6.0" since it's a string comparison and 10 comes before 6 alphabetically. So I guess they were screwed with version numbers no matter what they do.

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People who strcmp() version strings deserve what they get.

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People who do string comparison on versions deserve what they get.

i was gonna say, yeah

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People who strcmp() version strings deserve what they get.

 

I entirely agree with this and will probably discover myself having done this stuff in scripts from earlier in the year at some point.

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i thought they went with 10 to AVOID version comparison issues (9* being read as win 95 or whatever)?

 

It depends on whether they are looking at OS Name (Windows 95) versus OS Version (Version 4.0)

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I have a Windows Phone, and I actually really love Cortana?????

Don't tease me.  You know this is my fantasy.

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Turns out it's pretty good for blind people. The instance where I saw it used seemed to go fairly well, although there was a little repetition involved.

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I learned the other day that messing with tiles in Windows 8 is called, by even the process that handles it, tickling. This is adorable and if it's not carried over, Windows 10 is dead to me.

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I just installed the Insider Preview yesterday and I'm liking it pretty well so far. Kinda feels like a blend between 7 and 8, with a few things taken from mobile OSes but in a way that makes sense on a desktop. The upgrade process from 8.1 was slick and painless.

 

I'm curious to see how Cortana and the other accessibility features turn out -- my dad's vision is declining so he uses the Narrator pretty heavily in Win 8. Wonder if it will be viable to use Cortana exclusively without a keyboard.

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So this is getting fantastic reviews--though Ars Technica has recommended waiting a few weeks to update your system in the hopes that a few rough edges can be sanded down via updates.

 

I'm torn; do I update tomorrow or wait a bit and miss out on all the launch day fun?

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I'm updating tomorrow!  I've never really had a capable machine that was worthy of upgrading right away, so I'm kind of excited to experience it.  What sorts of rough edges are we talking here?

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Am I correct in reading that they got rid of that caveat that you only get updates for two years and then you have to buy it?

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Am I correct in reading that they got rid of that caveat that you only get updates for two years and then you have to buy it?

 

No, I think it's that you have a year to upgrade for free, and after that you will have to pay for the upgrade.  Unless there's some other thing that I was unaware of!  They're doing this to keep people from staying on 7/8 like the problems they had with people staying on XP.

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Most of the complaints in the Ars review are only relevant if you have more than 500 programs installed. There are also some minor visual bugs here and there.

 

Nothing that sounds horrendous and most of it seems like an edge case, honestly.

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I plan on updating on my Windows 8 Tablet this weekend, but holding off for my gaming PC for 6 months or so. I play a lot of old games that just don't cooperate well with new OS's.

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No, I think it's that you have a year to upgrade for free, and after that you will have to pay for the upgrade.  Unless there's some other thing that I was unaware of!  They're doing this to keep people from staying on 7/8 like the problems they had with people staying on XP.

I finally found where I got the two year thing. It was a Forbes article I had read a while back: http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2015/07/10/free-windows-10-charges/ but it looks like the article now has a bunch of updates and edits on it as new information was clarified.

 

It looks like whatever happened was either confusion was cleared up or Microsoft backpedaled, either way, it seems like there is no reason not to update now and updates are free for the supported lifetime of the OS.

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Okay, so I now have upgraded. What is super cool that I HAVE to do immediately, or can I just forget it exists?

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The 'problem' is that it's on by default and you might not want it to be turned on. Just posting a reminder.

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Most of the complaints in the Ars review are only relevant if you have more than 500 programs installed. There are also some minor visual bugs here and there.

Nothing that sounds horrendous and most of it seems like an edge case, honestly.

When I download a hobbyist game and run the .exe is that an "installed program"?

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I definitely recognize the weirdness that is "i had over 500 apps and when i reduced the number below 500 the sidebar database didn't update" seems legit, but also I feel like 500 apps is a LOT. if i had my full steam library installed which i often feel is sort of silly in its excess it wouldn't be half the limit. 

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