Windows 10, is it the next successor, or another lab-rat OS?
It is a question we've asked ourselves on every other Windows OS, 95, 98, XP, and 7 were great, as NT, 2000, Vista, and 8 were more of a testing ground, that seems to be a trend with Microsoft, but only this time there is substantially more "new" than bug-fixing. Windows 10 is built for Phones, Tablets, Desktops, and even the Xbox One, taking that into consideration this is a pretty big thing since it was never really done before, sure there are OS's for Phones that are adaptations of the Desktop counterpart but this is one singular Operating system running on a span of devices. Without further ado I'll be reviewing this thing because, well, there are still a lot of people skeptical and I wanna spread awareness because it's what I do.
Desktop environment, the new Start, and Cortana.
Desktop is on par with windows 7, not much I can say more, the Notifications being all merged into the action center is brilliant, also the new Calendar is much easier to read at a glance. The new and semi-revived Start menu is also Really good, The Metro apps and tiles are back but in a very less intrusive way. It can also be customized quite a bit to your liking, for me having the basics such as control panel in the Start menu is a must, whatever can't be pinned to the context menu can be pinned as a tile, which is cool. Tiles act similar to windows 8/8.1 having a live option and the ability to resize them. The Search bar has been redone with Cortana, and rather than being solely in the start menu, it is in the taskbar. At first, I thought this was pretty stupid, but when I used it, not only is the searching way faster and more responsive than ever, you can have Cortana do other things for you such as check the weather and other neat little things, I think the instant searching on the web on the fly is awfully convenient. speaking of convenient, I tested the voice activation and responsiveness of Cortana, turns out it is extremely accurate on voice recognition. Overall very well done, a few minor things such as Control Panel being split into Settings is a minor complaint.
Apps.
Built in applications and the Metro stuff, pretty damn useless in windows 8/8.1. In windows 10 all apps are given the desktop treatment, all launchable, resizable, and best of all, some useful ones. Xbox app is interesting, It wants to be your all-in-one hub for gaming, so you will naturally see all your steam games, and your win10 games launchable from the app, it's a nice touch, but the show stealer is the Xbox One Connect. Connect your Xbox One and stream your console to a window, it's almost like emulation. the stream is a very descent quality. Groove music is the attempt to replace your old music manager, in this case, iTunes, and it works, not only does it sort albums in a fashionable manner it also has a dark mode and full response to the media keys and a groovy display next to your volume ticker (if you use the media keys to change volume). Email app allows you to add all your accounts into one hub, and yet again, it's well done, I actually use it instead of using the website. comes with candy crush and Minecraft win10 plays well. Edge is also great, really fast but that's about it, sure it can load a page fast and accurate, but it's lacking some context options and a lack of adblock hurts, on top of that none of the optional buttons for posting works, so I'm glad I remember a good bit of the forum's code to punch it in manually. I hope to see Edge improved since it has a great deal of potential.
Performance
it performs very well, boot times are seamless.
Overall, to answer the question, Yes, it is a true successor if not more. The new additions are good and the built in applications are actually useful, it also has multiple desktops that are easy to navigate as well, for all of it's bells and whistles I find it extremely generous for this OS to be given away for free. I highly suggest this thing.