First Click

First Click: a Mac user installs Windows 10

March 31st, 2015

By Thomas Ricker
on March 31, 2015 07:30 am
@Trixxy

Last night I decided it was time to give Windows 10 a try. The catalyst to install the tech preview was equal measures curiosity, opportunity, and boredom. I needed to see for myself what Tom Warren’s so excited about, and I just happened to have a rarely used Windows 8.1 tablet nearby that I needed for a legacy .EXE earlier in the day. So, during a country music segment on The Voice I Googled, “how do I install Windows 10.” An embarrassing number of missteps later and my old Hotmail address was registered with Windows Insider and I was up and downloading.

I haven’t used Windows regularly for years, having abandoned the platform professionally just prior to Vista. I’ve tried to keep up, but never managed more than a vague acquaintance with subsequent releases. Now that I’m digging in, I find it all so… weird, but not in a negative way. It’s like seeing an old flame at the high school reunion: there’s a hint of passion and familiarity obscured by the unforgiving chisels of time and regret. Windows 10 is so different than my hardwired memories but it’s still unmistakably Windows. At one point, I accidentally opened the Device Manager after burrowing a bit too far into the Advanced Options. The pang of nostalgia for my sysadmin days surprised me, half tempted to go edit a config.sys.

My upgrade hasn’t been easy and it sure as hell hasn’t been fast — and I’m updating again this morning in order to try out the Project Spartan browser. It’s laborious, sure, but it’s also fun in a way only geeky spelunkers of beta software can understand. It’ll be months, and probably require some time on a new Microsoft Surface, before I know if this will lead to anything permanent. But it's all about the journey, right?

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