Technology Ramblings

Overall Windows 10 build 10041 is a pretty fair build and I believe is pretty close to being what MS used to term "feature complete" in previous Windows editions.    While there are still certain aspects of Windows 10 that I am not a fan of - I don't think there is going to be much change in the core experience. With the exception of the Spartan browser - I believe all of the pieces parts that make up Windows 10 are included in the 10041 build and what ships come this September is going to be pretty close to the experience current provided by the 10041 build.   But not all is copacetic when it comes to installation on some devices.  This last weekend I decided to update my daughters HP Pavilion DV6t laptop to 10041.   This is a Core I3 based laptop with 6Gb of RAM and an Intel 525 SSD.   The results were pretty bad both from an update of Windows 8.1 standpoint and from a clean install standpoint booting from DVD.  While both installation methods completed successf

On March 16th - MS announced the release of a new Office 16 preview - called Preview for Business.  So like any techie - I registered at the MS Connect site - downloaded - did a quick peruse of the installation instructions and tried to install.  What a mess.... The install not only wiped out my existing Office 15 install - but then failed to install itself leaving me with without any Office at all and was a part of the cause for me to have to completely re-install Windows 10 build 9926 on my Dell Venue 8 Pro. So I am partially at fault for this.  I didn't read the instructions deep enough to understand that this release was targeted toward Office365 Business License E customers and not stand alone Office users like myself.   So I was a little too quick to pull the trigger on this preview. But I also blame MS for helping to make this such a mess.  I have previously installed Office 16 preview apps from the MS Store and they easily ran right along side my existing Office 15

Okay - so MS finally released the next public build of Windows 10 - build 10041 and I loaded on both testing platforms I've been using - a traditional desktop and an 8" Atom based tablet. First - As with 9926 - the desktop install was a breeze - run Windows update - new build shows up - and installs.   The tablet on the other hand took some doing to get the build to show up in Windows Update at all.  With 9926 - one of the updates that came down the line was for the Intel HD Graphics driver.  That update would consistently fail with a compatibility error with the device in my case the Dell Venue 8 Pro.   I even tried to download the latest drivers direct from Intel but ran into the same issue.  The challenge was that MS never provided an option to skip trying to download and install that update - so every subsequent time you tried to run windows update - the HD driver would show up - download and try to install yet to fail again.  In Windows 10 MS seems to have skipped t