Smartphones are limited in what they can do compared to a pc running Windows. I have had this discussion with a friend a few times. Touchscreen's are very limited in what they can do. Nothing will ever truly replace a pc. I bought a laptop for that very reason. I hardly even touch my smartphone now.
I call those useless Metro apps "Apps", and real x86 programs "Programs" to save confusion and to not insult real programs, with gimmicky crApps
Outside of forums, I don't deal with many people that I could discuss smartphones or "apps" with, without insulting them.... Most of the people I work with, still don't know how to restart a PC. Some of them still don't know how to turn a cellphone on or off.... As a result of having to "dumb it down" all day, I get a bit frustrated when I login and end up reading some of the elitist "pc master race" crap that gets posted because so many "pc enthusiasts" think that the tech industry should revolve around them, even though they make up roughly 0.1% (or less) of the target customer base. Which of us are you referring to? Some of us are tech enthusiasts, while others are "pc enthusiasts" (commonly referred to as "pc master race")....
Electronics "Elite" here: Programs, executables, binary machine code, applications, apps, etc are all realistically the same thing. It is true however that we use different words to refer to certain things more easily. I personally don't think there's a point in diving into why we call executables certain things; call it what you want, don't fight over it. I will, however, poke at the fact that "Apps" for smartphones are no different than the programs installed on your computer. They are compiled, they have dependencies, they use a runtime, and they are an executable file on your device. They take just as much difficulty and time to code for a smartphone as they do for your PC. Calling them "crap" or "useless" is an insult to the people who worked to make them run on seriously fewer MIPS. Just my two cents, there. Last bit of off-topic: Windows 8/8.1/10 are a step in the right direction, although Microsoft has definitely stumbled along the way. Desktop sales are down because people are able to do the majority of your daily tasks on a tablet or smartphone. What was Microsoft's response? Design an operating system that'll run on everything. To do this, you have to make compromises. It's far easier to design on system to rule them all than to create several different systems that you will have to develop for separately and provide different updates and interfaces for all three of them. Of course, I'm not saying it's *that much* easier to design one interface that will adapt to different screen sizes, resolutions, pixel densities, aspect ratios, processor capabilities, storage space... and more. I'm just saying that they're doing the right thing by trying to create an OS that someone will be used to regardless of the device they use. And I think we should be supportive of Microsoft's efforts and their great decision to actually take the feedback of users to improve their next OS. If you're such an "enthusiast" or "elitist", you should be trying it out and providing your input so that it can finally satisfy your requirements too. VMWare Workstation or VirtualBox will let you do this; or you can dual-boot the OS in a VHD! To the original question: No, you should not download and install Windows 10 Tech. Preview on your daily PC. The reason why is fairly simple: It's a preview. When the full release comes out, you will be better off doing a complete install. It has bugs, it will constantly change, and it will be better to learn how to use the finished product than constantly adjust to little changes that are made as we get closer to release.
This is very true. A good example of this misconception of Smartphone's would be 2 days ago when some Dork with an i6 asked me why I was using my Canon SLR to takes some photos when, (In his words "no need for that because my phone has a great camera.") It was such a stupid comment I couldn't even entertain a reply. I suppose the same reason my Garman GPS is way better that any phone GPS. Smartphone's just do a lot of everything only ok, but none do any one thing perfect. Did you know 99% of people do not know that is a fundamental fact?
I have a Sony digital camera for pictures. A Garmin GPS for going on trips and a "smartphone" for when I need to check e-mail or make phone calls while "on the go".... Quite honestly, most smartphone "apps" are completely useless. Hell, if you look at the Windows Store, you'll find that the majority of "apps" being offered there are useless as well. I'm aware people took the time to code the "apps", but most of them fail to actually be useful. The few useful "apps" are inferior compared to their desktop counterparts. I do so love the "pay $2.99 to get a link to download Avast Free Edition" crap that people manage to get listed on the Windows Store, though. Shows how poorly MS is doing at regulating it. There was even a "ModernUI" style "CCleaner" listed.... They claimed it was authentic but there were several listed. Unfortunately, the method of reporting fraudulent "apps" never seems to work for me.
Here are a number of apps that I use daily either for personal use or for business purposes: OneDrive, for sharing PDF, Word, Excel, and other documents between my desktop, Surface Pro 3, and phone. Office 365, as quite frankly it is superior to Google's Docs app. It also has integration with OneDrive. Remote Desktop, for when I need to access my server when I am out and about and don't have my Surface with me. Google Keep. It is great for taking quick notes. Also supports voice recordings and photos. Office Lens, I use it to take photos of receipts Payd App. I have a debit/credit pinpad that linka to my phone for mobile payments at a customer's residence. Google Maps. Despite it isn't as good as a dedicated GPS it has done the job for me for the past year. Facebook Business, this may seem like a terrible way to keep in contact with customers but this is where I get a lot of my appointments. A lot of people nowadays contact me via Facebook. I don't believe most apps are useless. They do the job quite well for on the go, and that's what they are designed to do. To expect them to match up to their Desktop counterpart is like expecting my Surface 3 to match the performance of my desktop. I don't mean to offend, of course, but that's how I see it.
I think part of the reason for lackluster smartphone app regulation and approval has much to do with total count. WP, Android, Google, and ios bragging rights of total app count and not quality. For example ios offers 20 plus apps for Fart Machine, but even an immature kid needs just 2 or 3 good ones to choose from. Who needs 22 different apps for guitar tuner? It's all about app count, by which all variants are counted as a total regardless of redundancy. Gotta love Traffic Cam... Has there ever been one that works perfect on any SP? None that I've seen yet. Of the endless thousands on any device only about 300 separate apps would cover every want and need from age 10 to age 80 if each worked perfect. As for Win 8.1 & 10 for desk and laptop... I don't get it. Win7 works great if you have a brain. No need to change what works just fine. Instead better to build on what you have in that area. MS did the same crap with Excel 2013 version. 2010 works great. 2013 was a complete waste and made many things more laborious. New is great, but only if it's better.
You're basing the usefulness of hundreds of thousands of apps (most of which are duplicates anyway) on only a handful of apps that you use daily. Take some time to actually look through Google Play, Apple's app store, Windows Store, etc. Most of the apps, serve no actual purpose. They exist within the app stores simply because none of them are properly regulated and people are dumb enough to pay money for an app that actually does nothing of any value. A perfect example. There used to be an app in the Windows Store, priced at $2.99. The purpose of the app was to direct people to Avast's website to download Avast Free Edition. If the Store was regulated properly, that app would have never been posted as the "author" had no right to do so.
Hell NO! I decided to install Windows 10 on my other HDD and that was a disaster! It overwrote my MBR on my primary SSD (encrypted... mind you) and I couldn't even fix the MBR because the SSD was encrypted. FML. **** you Microsoft and your abysmal TPP indies.
That's not really Microsoft's fault. Part of their installer's script is to add the Windows install to the BCDBoot entry, which also means that it'll often add the entry to an available WBM. If you didn't want that to happen, you should have created the partitions manually and ran BCDBoot manually (which is actually extremely simple). One of the rules of whenever you're installing an OS on a second drive is to, just in case, unplug all other drives unless it's otherwise required. FYI: If you're using an encrypted drive, Write access is still available regardless. You simply need to decrypt the information if you want to Read from the drive. I strongly suggest always backing up your Encryption key in a secure location to prevent data loss for situations like these.
The future looks very dark for modern desktop users, metro apps introduced in windows 8 are extremely regressive compared to win32 programs. Sadly MS continues to force this metro garbage onto the consumers, now masked as "universal apps" and is slowly replacing modern win32 elements in windows with regressive metro junk, currently the control panel is being slowly replaced with a metro "settings" scheme as well as many other bundled programs being replaced with inferior metro apps. Eventually win32 will disappear completely in favor of 1995 era apps that have far less features and functionality than win32, MS will also have a stranglehold on users, dictating what you can and can't do with your pc as they eventually force you into a cloud OS that will give them 100% control over your computing. Windows 10 will practically be forced onto consumers, if you want DX12, edge, continuum etc then you have no other choice but to go with 10. Making windows 10 free is nothing more than ammo for the shills (windows 10 is free so you have no excuse to avoid it). Windows 10 is the worst OS in the entire history of computing and is best avoided altogether unless you don't mind going backwards and giving up eventual control over your computing.
