Hyper-V is free on Windows since 8, and is a full hypervisor - should be a lot faster than virtualbox (definitely faster than VMWare Workstation - .binned several licences for that when Win 8 came out).

You just have to decide to leave you start menu behind, or use 10 preview and see how badly they are screwing up bringing it back.

The new menu is both less functional than the old menu AND less functional than the old start screen (see my post http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... below), and there is now no choice.

It's not the start screen though - it's a crippled version of it, with all-apps in a long list instead of over the whole screen. So rather than have everything shown by scrolling over two screenfuls, I have to scroll down over 5 screenfuls and then expand the ones that are hidden in folders. Some applications are randomly in a folder of one item, which has to be expanded before you can click on it. To cap it all they've crippled the search so that you have to click a search bar (it loses focus for no reason), it only shows one result when searching incrementally for applications, and that looks exactly the same as no results - no change if it is clickable (try search for "reg" and "regedit" - exactly the same look but one is a non clickable non result and one gives a clickable result).

It's almost as though they want to make it as difficult as possible to find what's installed on your machine - possibly because so much is metro crap.

So was Windows 8...

Well we've sure as hell lost the start screen, I tried to like the start menu on previous build but reverted to start screen which I've always found much more efficient, now that option is gone - it's start menu only and search for applications is completely broken.

Good news: charms bar's been gone since early preview builds, wonderfully refreshing to be able to hit the scrollbar reliably again.

Bad news: the start menu has not got more functional and sensible, it's gone way backwards in the latest build, and it's now the only option. Incremental search for applications is now completely broken, you get one result (if you are lucky) and half a screen of completely irrelevant web search results. In fact after enjoying using the previous builds, I may now revert to 8, it's that bad.

You need _an_ email account - nothing more. It doesn't have to be windows or live.com or outlook,.com at all - I use a throwaway on one of the domains I own.

If you want to have things shared across multiple devices (I am finding now that I do - and I suspect it will become more of a requirement not less) you need a common identity, and without a corporate domain, windows is simply doing what most websites and services do and using an email address.

Also, you can stop it requiring email account, even in 10 (tech preview) - simply disconnect the network during installation, it will allow local account - if you think about it there isn't much else it _can_ do...

I agree, but don't see the difference, you either know what you want to do next or you don't. Menu or start screen, mouse or keyboard, the process or launching the next thing is one process and I don't see how you'd forget half way through. I use the keyboard mostly now, and I have typically already started the next keypresses before processing the visual of the start screen (or before it appears). I don't see how there is time to forget. Even if you do, it is one keypress to go back to the desktop to refresh your memory..

Um, what ? That is command line / run dialog. It is "remote desktop connection" on the menu - but remembering what it is called is not the problem with start menu, it is remembering _where_ it is.

It was actually in "programs -> accessories -> communications" on 7 (but I had to look that up), sometimes it's in "programs -> accessories" on servers, but it's easy to think it is in "administrative tools -> remote desktop services" or "accessories -> system tools" (accessories -> communications being absent...). All that is why most people just use the run dialog and try and remember "mstsc".

On the start screen, I usually pin it so it is right there, because there is room to pin a lot more, or it is two keypresses away - "r" and "e". So much easier.

I have tried to like the new / old start menu on 10, really, I kept resisting the urge to disable it, but in the end I only lasted a week. Start screen it is, for me. I guess the nice thing about 10 is we can choose.

1. users (or at least us power users) can configure away

2. (Charms bar) is I think the single most annoying piece of UI design since the blink tag, or possibly ever. It's right there to annoy you every f***ing time you go for the scrollbar (particularly the *$£!%^ new Chrome ones).

Best news of win 10 ? Charms bar is gone. I scrolled happily and error free for days without noticing, before I suddenly realized it had gone - bliss. Free upgrade is good news for that reason alone - I do not want to have to go back from the previews to that stupid charms bar !

The fact that it's forced full-screen rather than snapped is the problem. At least with the Windows 7 Start menu, I could see a bit of what I was working on [...]

I have never understood this argument, why do you need to see what you _were_ working on when starting a _new_ program ? The article you cite doesn't help - it says there is a cognitive burden from the metro/desktop split and hot corners etc., all of which I agree with, but it _doesn't_ say there is a cognitive burden to the start screen (in fact it concludes it's the best choice for tablets and justified on grounds of commonality for desktops).

I fully understand the need to have multiple windows visible when working in one and referring to another, or for drag and drop, and un-moving dialogs (and metro apps) can be a right pain in this regard. But starting a new program is the one part of the desktop workflow where you _don't_ need that at all, at absolute worst case you need to read the name of the new program from another window and remember it - most of the time you already know what you want to start at that point in your workflow.

The start screen is something you flick to, find what you want (with the full screen available to show your options or search results, at least in 8) and then leave, the full screen rendering seems to be faster and a better workflow. I see no reason for the live tiles - I'm not on the start screen for long enough to use them.

In contrast the start menu on 7, with a lot of things installed, I found slow to render and cumbersome to use once you got to two or more levels deep and/or more than a screenful (I seem to recall menu scroll was horrible - 10 is better in this respect but more limited, still prefer the start screen), quite often the start menu would cover most of the screen anyway - it would just take a lot more clicking and scrolling to get there.

If something works, then don't break it. If a vanishingly small number of people need a different alternative, then don't shove it down everyone else's throats.

OpenRC, upstart, launchd, smf, dmd (hurd) and various others. And systemd obviously. All designed to replace sysv/bsd style init.

That's a lot of projects created to replace something that didn't need fixing. Seems to me there must have been a lot of affected people, not "a vanishingly small number" to make all those projects happen.

You may not have problems with sysv init, but that doesn't mean there aren't problems.

Whether systemd is the right solution is a different question, but denying there was a problem just seems silly.

"Great" clearly means different things to different people.

To malware authors, JRE is clearly great, because it is a frequent (successfully attacked) target. Maybe it's also great if you trust Oracle, which I don't.

Oracle's JRE patching record is not great, but worse than that you daren't set it to automatically update itself because Oracle has previously distributed malware bundled with JRE security updates ( http://www.zdnet.com/article/a... ).

Er, yes, for many/most people, but for a significant minority, it is not, which is the point (and actually even if it is all about the chromosomes, you still have the trisomy etc. conditions).

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medline...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I... (see definitions section)

Thought I'd actually look up some real numbers for reliability by country (terms can be found on wikipedia, larger is not better...):

Sounds more like doing a crap job does not work - which is pretty much a universal truth.

The underground cable coming into our property looks to be at least 50yrs old and I doubt the path above it has been lifted in that timescale either, and it definitely hasn't been touched in the 17yrs I've been here. Some of the distribution wiring out in the street has been upgraded in the last ten yrs because we were getting outages every couple of months, now we get zero, I doubt that wiring had been touched for decades and I don't expect the new stuff under the street will be replaced in the next few decades either. Doing this stuff right isn't rocket science and we knew how to do it over 50yrs ago.

Transformers sometimes flood, but new ones shouldn't unless you don't have design standards or don't enforce them - just looked up some here and for consumer substations it's 300mm of concrete above the 100 year flood level. There are problems with older substations built to lower standards or because flooding risks have simply changed - there are places that haven't flooded in over 100yrs and then this century have flooded several times, call it climate change or whatever, it means the 100yr flood line has effectively moved. But that is older infrastructure, if you have new areas where transformers are "constantly" getting flooded then you have poor standards or poor monitoring of standards.