Windows 10?

Andrewf · March 4, 2015

Should I try it? How stable is it? I have 2 HDDs, I need more, but how does it work? Should I just upgrade or dual boot? They're both actually pretty full and dual-booting might not be an option. What do you think?

Also, does it upgrade without having to format a HDD? If so, could I use a USB?

GoodBytes · March 4, 2015

Windows 10 has over 2.8 million people registered to use it.

It is fairly stable, but you need to remember the risks of using a beta OS. Remember, it operates your system from a to z, else your system is just a door stop at best, without one.

So backup a lot, and you must expect that at any time, unexpectedly you may need to format and re-install. Why? Not that it is expected to do it, but you never know. Again, it is beta, so you never know.

Other issues:

-> Drivers for your hardware might be buggy or not well optimized, so expects games or driver itself or some programs to crash while using them. Usually optimized drivers are the second release of the drivers after the OS is released, which is sadly after reviewers starts benchmarking performance, and like on every result, they'll conclude that it is the same or slower performance than the previous Windows, despite everyone agreeing that after actually using the OS, it is faster, more responsive, and notice no performance difference, or increase performance depending on specs.

Try and keep them up-to-date to the latest beta drivers.

-> Expect non-polished GUI and experience. Things will improved as new builds are being released. You can upgrade to each builds within Windows. The process is, however time consuming as you need to download 2.7GB (OS new build), and the upgrade needs to take place.

Keep in mind, as per the license agreement and terms of condition of becoming a Windows Insider (requirement to participate in Windows 10 beta), high amount of telemetry data is collected. This means that this is not only more frequent collection of data is taken place, but what you do, what you click and type is being tracked. This is used to adjust feature/GUI design and bug fixing. While Microsoft doesn't care about your sensitive data which might be collected (passwords), the transmission of the telemetry data, when it occurs, might be intercepted by a hacker or Microsoft server could be compromised, or a rogue employee might access such sensitive data for criminal intent, it can be a security issue.

Microsoft doesn't recommend it to use a main OS, and recommends to avoid doing stuff like banking on it. So you may want to setup a dual boot.