Windows 10 Technical Preview deep-dive: A promise of better things to come

Microsoft's Windows 10 Technical Preview offers a first glimpse of the future of its operating system. Our reviewer takes a close look and thinks the upcoming OS could work.

It's been nearly a week since Microsoft announced that it will follow Windows 8.1 with Windows 10 -- and released its Technical Preview so that those interested could take a first look at the new operating system. Since then I've been exploring the new OS, alongside the sparse documentation Microsoft has released.

Much of the under-the-hood kernel level work has been done; the Preview is a tool for Microsoft to understand how to bring its next-generation Windows to its desktop users. That's an important problem for the Windows team to solve before the new OS is released in mid-2015. Some enterprise customers are still moving from Windows XP to Windows 7, so Microsoft needs to put in place an upgrade path from Windows 7 to this new version. It needs, as Terry Myerson, Microsoft's executive vice president of operating systems, said in San Francisco, "to feel like going from a Prius to a Tesla" -- without having to learn to drive all over again.

There are actually two versions of the Windows 10 Technical Preview. The Technical Preview that most people are referring to is aimed at individual enthusiast users or SMBs and can be downloaded from the preview.windows.com site. An Enterprise Preview for volume licensing customers is available from the TechNet evaluation center.

(If you're planning on evaluating an entire Windows 10 infrastructure, there are also technical previews for the enterprise-directed Windows Server and the System Center management suite, which can be downloaded at Technet.)

While this review focuses on the Technical Preview, as it's the release that most users will explore, I tried out both releases. There's very little difference between the two at this point, with the Enterprise Preview adding security and networking features on a par with the current Windows 8.1 Enterprise releases.

As test machines, I used a Surface Pro 2 running Windows 8.1 (which I used to examine update scenarios) and a series of Hyper-V virtual machines (which I used to test clean installs). In both cases, I found the installation process quick and easy.

I created USB installation media from Microsoft's ISO downloads. It's a surprisingly forgiving installer: One of my test machines was mistakenly set up with the Technical Preview release rather than Enterprise, and I was able to install Enterprise over the top of Technical Preview without having to reset the test PC between installs.

One thing is clear: This is a first cut at the Windows 10 desktop experience and so naturally it is more than a little rough around the edges. This should be kept in mind.

User experience

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Windows 10 Technical Preview deep-dive: A promise of better things to come