Search: In Windows XP, searching for anything other than a filename involved an enormous kludge of an add-on that sucked up computer cycles and overwhelmed your machine. In Windows 10, search is part of Windows itself, and it works quickly.
On the security front, Windows 10 is light years ahead of Windows XP. From protection against rootkits to browser hardening, and a million points in between, XP is a security disaster — Microsoft no longer supports it — while Windows 10 is relatively (not completely) impenetrable.
Although Windows 10 isn’t the Windows XP of your dreams, it’s remarkably easy to use and has all sorts of compelling new features.
What’s New for Windows 7 Users
Three years after Windows 10 hit the ether, Windows 7 was still riding strong. Depending on how you count and whose numbers you believe, at the three-year mark, Windows 7 was still driving about half of all Windows computers in the world. That’s staying power, and it’s worthy of your respect.
Nonetheless, Windows 7 is clearly on the way down, and Windows 10 is on the way up. One big reason for that is that Microsoft has stopped providing updates and support for Windows 7. That’s as it should be, nostalgia notwithstanding.
Don’t be worried. Anything that works with Windows 7, 8, or 8.1 — and almost everything from Vista — will work in Windows 10. Programs, hardware, drivers, utilities — just about anything.
That’s a remarkable achievement, particularly because your Windows Desktop apps/Legacy programs (there’s that L word again) have to peacefully coexist with the WinRT API-based Windows/Universal/Modern/Metro apps.
Windows 10 does have lots going for it. Let me skip lightly through the major changes between Windows 7 and Windows 10.
Getting the hang of the new Start menu
By now, you’ve no doubt seen the tiles on the right of the Start menu (refer to Figure 2-6).
FIGURE 2-6: The Windows 10 desktop and Start menu.
If you’re coming to Windows 10 from Windows 7 — without taking a detour through Windows 8 — those tiles are likely to represent your greatest conceptual hurdle. They’re different, but in many ways they’re familiar.
In Windows 10, you have a layout that’s more or less similar to Windows 7, but it has fantastically good gadgets. Microsoft rebuilt all the plumbing in Windows to support these really good gadgets. Those updated, enormously powerful gadgets are now called Windows 10 apps.
FIGURE 2-7: Windows 7 gadgets — at least from the interface point of view — work much like the new Universal Windows app tiles.
The new gadgets/apps run in resizable windows on the desktop. They can do phenomenal things. In fact, Microsoft Edge is quite superior to Internet Explorer, even if it doesn’t yet have all the bells and whistles. Edge, which runs as a gadget/Windows 10 app, has become the new default browser.
Tiles for these gadgets/apps appear to the right of the list of programs in the Windows 10 Start menu.
In Windows 10, you can switch from a finger-friendly view of the desktop to a mouse-friendly view and back. The finger-friendly view — called Tablet mode — has larger app tiles, opens the apps at full-screen, and hides most of the text. It takes three clicks to change modes. Or you can plug or unplug your keyboard on a 2-in-1 such as the Surface Pro, and Windows 10 will ask if you want to switch modes.
Here’s the ace in the hole: Programmers who write programs for Windows 10 app can have their gadgets run, with a varying amount of modification, on Windows 10 for PCs, Windows 10 for tablets without a keyboard, Windows 10 running on mobile-phone-like ARM chips (primarily from Qualcomm) and even Xbox One. At least, that’s the theory. It remains to be seen how it works in practice.
The only way you can get these new gadgets/Windows 10 apps is through the Microsoft (formerly Windows) Store, so — again, at least in theory — they should be well-vetted, checked for malware, and generally in good shape before you can install them.
Exploring new stuff in the old-fashioned desktop
You’ll notice many improvements to long-neglected portions of the Windows 7–style desktop. For example, if you copy more than one file at a time, Windows actually keeps you on top of all the copying in one window. Imagine that.
A new and much better Task Manager rolls in all the usage reporting that’s been scattered in different corners of Windows (see Figure 2-8). The new Task Manager even gives you hooks to look at programs that start automatically, and to stop them if you like. Some serious chops. See Book 8, Chapter 4.
FIGURE 2-8: The new and greatly improved Task Manager.
Taking a cue from iPad, Windows 10 also offers a one-stop system restore capability. With Reset This PC, you can remove apps and settings and keep personal files, or wipe everything and reset Windows 10 to its factory defaults and files. It's like it pulls in a brand-spanking-new version of Windows 10. See Book 8, Chapter 2 for more details.
