I can’t explain it.

I mean I just can’t explain it.

How is it that the folks at Microsoft can’t release two good Operating System versions in a row??

If you look at their track record over the past 20 years or so of new Windows releases, you can discern a pattern.

1995 – Windows 95 – Good
1998 – Windows 98 – So, so
2000 – Windows 2000 – Good
2000 – Windows ME – Disaster
2001 – Windows XP – Outstanding
2007 – Windows Vista – Disaster
2009 – Windows XP – Terrific
2012 – Windows 8 – (Another) Disaster

So, the law of averages would tell us that the release of Windows 9 would be a success, right? Hmmm! How much do we want to tempt fate?

Two things!

(1) The next release of Windows will not be called Windows 9. It will be called Windows 10. Why? Who knows, perhaps they are trying to break the hoodoo of the every other version curse (I mean, have you tried Windows 8? Ugh!).

(2) The next release of Windows, called Windows 10, looks like it will be a winner! I volunteered to be a beta tester and have been playing with the new release for several weeks, on and off.

My first impressions are favorable – they’ve gotten rid of the most annoying parts of Windows 8. The pop out sidebar is gone, so finding the Control Panel and Power switch is easier; the screen full of tiles is gone. Selecting the Windows button or Icon gives you a modified Start Menu; much of the old Start Menu has been restored with the addition of just a few tiles that the user can configure (size, location, and which tiles are shown).

Other, less obvious changes are meant to make some of your daily tasks easier, while binding you into the Windows infrastructure. The addition of a Search Icon on the taskbar is good, but it is tied to the Bing search engine (Windows own search tool) which opens in Internet Explorer (Windows own Browser).

The Evaluation Copy Build 9841 I’ve looked at is not the final release, but is smooth and polished. Despite loading the Windows 10 on a new hard drive, the system recognized my HP Elitebook 2540p and loaded all the drivers. All I had to do was start the machine and it all just worked!

We’ll have to wait and see what else Windows does with this release – will it add tabs to the File Explorer? Will it help battery life for laptops? How much will it cost? I don’t have any of those answers, but so far I’m a fan of Windows 10!