tigerdirect is offering windows7 with mcaffee for $29

so I think they were given a heads up... get rid of your old stock... any price.

Well, it is supposed to be here and it is called Windows 10.    It is jest so wonderful MS jest couldn't bring themselves to call it Win 9 ....

Read about it here .....    http://www.zdnet.com/microsofts-windows-10-whats-new-and-how-to-get-the-previ...

Get the free preview here .....   http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/preview-coming-soon


Good luck with it .....   reviews are already coming in ranging from blah to perky depending on how experienced the reviewer is and just how bone tired they are of covering these "all new but still the same and oh btw it isn't ready yet" MS product introductions.  

There is nothing new about this that hasn't been leaked to death other than the new 10 vs 9 numbering scheme.   The product isn't lighter or faster, it requires the exact SAME resources as Win 8 and Win 8.1.

(mainly because it is the same exact stuff with a different set of start screens and a few screen resize tweeks).

It is free, apart from having to fill out forms and pledge to give them feedback.   The sign up site still hasn't gone on line and today is Oct 1st according to my calendar.  

What else is new?

MS is late again with the sign up site.   Or I am early, you take your pick .....   October first is the date and it is slipping away.



Expect that somewhere down in the fine print you are agreeing to sign up for the yearly subscription service that MS is kicking off with Windows 10 .....

(or you will be once it gets here)

None of the rest of the  "Windows 10"'s  are ready yet, just the China bribe portion.   There will be "Windows 10" tablets and phones and wrist watches and belly button rings .... all having the same "full Windows experience" no matter how tiny or non-existent the screen might be.

Hey, they are trying ......

http://liliputing.com/2014/10/first-look-windows-10-technical-preview-can-dow...

First look: Windows 10 technical preview (you can download it now)

Go here to sign up to start the process       https://insider.windows.com/

RECOMMENDATIONS:

"It’s probably a good idea to install the Windows 10 preview on a spare computer if you’ve got one rather than using it as your primary operating system. Microsoft isn’t guaranteeing that everything will work, and even if the operating system does run smoothly today something might break the next time there’s a software update. The free license will also probably stop working at some point in 2015 when Microsoft releases a retail version of Windows 10."

Windows 10

Windows 10 has dropped the most egregious of the interface irritations that were found in the Win 8.x series.

Microsoft is now claiming that by the spring of next year (April) they will have this same software running on all devices.   How well, remains to be seen.   At what memory and hard dive level remains to be seen.

This now becomes the heart of the Chrome War, starting when Win 10 actually comes out on light notebooks.    Boot time right now is 10 seconds to the OS and 15 seconds to the web and  Win 10 has resume times of 8 seconds.  

The hardware resources needed are still large compared to Chrome.  Win 10 is still slow compared to Chrome.

So, it all gets down to preference and "embedded".    Is the Windows Habit strong enough to keep you reeled into Windows?    Is this Windows10  better than Win 7 -- enough so to get you to switch out willingly -- or will your arm have to be twisted out of its socket to get you to go there?

Because go there you must ......
MS must get rid of all that legacy software as they continue to shrink.   The roll over program to the subscription model also requires that the old stuff  be replaced with the new.

Well that's where I am, mostly.    I have zero motivation to load the Windows 10 preview and put up with the constant upgrade virusdefragglization.  

(new term, that)

Mint is good for me, right up through gaming on Steam.

My old refurbished Dell Core2 Duo is a plenty good enough machine to run Mint for the next 10 years.