FASTER BOOT – SMALLER MEMORY FOOTPRINT

One of lesser known but great improvements in Windows 10 is its smaller memory footprint compared to earlier OS’s and the fact that it does smart compression. This reclaimed memory is now available to other applications. Check out this link from the windows team to see how this was achieved.
Additionally Windows 10 boots much faster due to a combination of optimization techniques. These improvements can make Windows 10 actually work better on even older PC’s as reported in this article that recommends Windows 10.
 
I updated the Windows 10 blog post with this. Having upgraded 3 machines to Windows 10 this weekend I can attest to the faster boot. Its interesting that their work on making Windows 10 scale to mobile platforms has benefits to the desktop OS as well.
My upgrades went pretty smooth - from a 7 year old core I7 to a 3 year old Lenovo Yoga, through my newest machine.
Very impressive that even an older PC performs better under Win 10 than it did in Win 8.
I did run into a snag where the Lenovo was prompting for a product key during the update but wouldn't accept the product kwy I entered, which had me scratching my head for awhile. It turned out that the Media Creation Tool USB drive image I had used was for Windows 8.1 pro and that machine only had Windows 8.1. I did the update using a proper image and it worked fine.
 
I did have to reinstall my MOTU Midi drivers and 828 firewire audio. I also updated my RME drivers and had to reboot once for everything to be recognized. Overall the OS is a huge improvement without the annoying metro divide and simpler search. I've even been using Cortana and it works great. Very impressive how good the voice recognition is even from across a room even with long sentences. I've been having fun saying "Hi Cortana, open SONAR" :) Apparently she is DAW agnostic - when I asked if she liked SONAR she said "Sorry chief, with few exceptions, I don't do opinions" lol.
 

Thanks for the info and review...

My laptop with 8.0 keeps failing to update to 8.1 and won't yield the win10 update...

My DAW with win7pro shows the update abailable, but as Im running under bootcamp there im gonna wait.. Esprcially as allowing auto-updates is jot currently a realuty for me...

So i will continue to keep tabs on this stuff...

Thanks again Noel!

Keni

Thanks for the info Noel.  I am going to do the update this week with the Media Creation Tool as I am going to enlarge the two partitions on the first drive.  I did have three, but wanted to give Windows (C) and my Programs (D) more room. 
 
Do you think I will run into trouble by having a blank disk drive to begin with after the new partitions are installed?  I have my 8.1 key in case, just hoping it will do the install/update without having to use it.  I could always do a reinstall of 8.1 and upgrade from there.
 
Thanks, Clint

Keni
Thanks for the info and review...

My laptop with 8.0 keeps failing to update to 8.1 and won't yield the win10 update...

My DAW with win7pro shows the update abailable, but as Im running under bootcamp there im gonna wait.. Esprcially as allowing auto-updates is jot currently a realuty for me...

So i will continue to keep tabs on this stuff...

Thanks again Noel!

Keni

FWIW I skipped 8.1 & updated from 8.0 to 10 using the download tool here-
http://www.microsoft.com/...are-download/windows10

SECURITY ALERT WINDOWS 10!!
 
It is easy to get excited about new stuff; however, if you are thinking about taking the plunge into Windows 10 make sure you allow time for optimisation as per Noel's suggestions and even more time to secure your computer.  Win10 has a number of new features and capabilities which will share your info and computer automatically.  Many of these are set to the least secure settings when you first install it.  Microsoft has adopted more of an "Android approach" with Win 10, they appear to see more value in gathering your information than in selling software.   Here are a couple of links to get you started, but there are many more settings you will need to consider as well.
 
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/s/windows-10-may-share-wi-164057617.html
 
http://www.businessinsider.com.au/how-to-turn-off-windows-10-wi-fi-sense-2015-7
 
Best of luck to all you Post-Release Beta Testers for MS and CW.  I have retained Win 7 on my DAW computer and have been playing with Win 10 for the past few months on a small notebook.
 
R

I did the straight upgrade from Win 8.1 Pro x64 to Win 10 Pro x64. Overall, a positive OS upgrade experience. I agree, I am finding Win 10 to be extremely stable and performing quite well. Faster boot times and better low latency performance are a couple that come to mind. I am finding Splat projects that would play fine @ 64 ASIO buffers but
crackle @ 32, now play crackle free at 32.
 
"Hey Cortana, open SONAR"........so we now our own built in recording studio assistant!  
 
 

Noel -
 
It sounds like .iso or install media that is created on a specific version of Windows is tied to upgrading that specific version. Is that right?
 
If so, I should label my install DVD as "Appropriate for upgrading Windows 7 Pro only!"

FCCfirstclass
Do you think I will run into trouble by having a blank disk drive to begin with after the new partitions are installed?  I have my 8.1 key in case, just hoping it will do the install/update without having to use it.  I could always do a reinstall of 8.1 and upgrade from there.

 
I read in this thread that you had to do an upgrade install first and then do a clean install later. However I didn't do a clean install so don't have any experience with this approach.

RD9
SECURITY ALERT WINDOWS 10!!
It is easy to get excited about new stuff; however, if you are thinking about taking the plunge into Windows 10 make sure you allow time for optimisation as per Noel's suggestions and even more time to secure your computer.  

 
I'm not that paranoid about privacy personally. Microsoft has a lot at stake and even has an official opt out website.
You can also run with a local account and avoid a Microsoft account login if you don't wish to share anything.

stickman393
Noel -
 
It sounds like .iso or install media that is created on a specific version of Windows is tied to upgrading that specific version. Is that right?
 
If so, I should label my install DVD as "Appropriate for upgrading Windows 7 Pro only!"

Yes, that was not that obvious to me as well and the error messages are misleading to say the least. The installer doesn't check for the Windows version and complain but fails to authenticate the product key! So if you want to upgrade win 7 make a sep media for that to avoid confusion.