Video: My non-technical partner tries Windows 10 for the first time
You may have watch my YouTube series on being an effective user of Windows 8 and 8.1. I've made a short URL for you to give to your friends and family http://hanselman.com/windows8. It'll take you to a YouTube Playlist that includes all my best tips and tricks on using Windows. The most popular is "Learning Windows 8 in 3 minutes" but if you're looking to get yourself, or perhaps non-technical Dad and Mom up to date on Windows 8, I recommend they check out "Windows 8: The Missing Instruction Manual." It's calmly paced and explains everything they'll need to know.
A lot of people say "Windows 8 isn't intuitive." That's up for debate, I think, as there's a big difference between unfamiliar and unintuitive. A few minutes of your time and you'll feel a lot more "intuitively" about Windows.
That said, Windows 10 is coming. If you have an extra machine you can sign up for the Preview here. It's very early and I would not put this on your primary machine.
I thought it would be interesting to show my very smart, but rather non-technical wife Windows 10 for the first time. Here's an uncut video of her experience running the first build of the Windows 10 Technical Preview.
I encourage you to watch it, it's rather interesting the way that she discovers "new" features, but also learns about existing features from as far back as Windows 7. If you've ever do a usability test you'll find the interactions fascinating.
And again, do check out and share http://hanselman.com/windows8.
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Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.
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- I wonder if better tiling options are needed with 2+ monitors and 4K monitors, where you might only need a corner
- I've gotten use to the tiled start screen and prefer it now
- I'd prefer the search to show results from everywhere and I could just pick the file I wanted or the internet link that made sense
- I want more dynamic tiles with more info displayed
- With users having multiple devices, I wonder what there'll be for that?
- I wonder if this is the OS that will fundamentally run on every device so apps will be cross compatible?
I guess I'll have to install this
Taki
"Ok, honey. Now say you're in cmd.exe running a batch file and you need to copy a few lines to the clipboard. How would you do that?"
:)
Very interesting video. It's refreshing to see the facts "non-technical" people take from Windows 7/8/10.
I was wondering though why so many people do not know about Windows-Left, Windows-Right, Windows-Up and Windows-Down key combinations that have also been available "a while", but instead are trying to position and size windows usings the mouse.
I'm glad to see your wife has already gotten used to rather typing the first letters of apps than to search for a menu entry or a tile. It seems a lot of people are not getting used to this at all.
Maybe it would be nice if Microsoft could add a kind of assistant that "watches" what the user does (e.g. resizing or positioning windows, searching for an app,...) and offer help how to do that quicker with a few keystrokes?
Thanks for sharing your wifes experience with us!
Best regards,
Andreas
Overall, Mo's reactions seem entirely, well, normal. Shows how far UX design still has to go in the Windows space, I guess.
After 30 minutes working with me she couldn't understand what a folder was for in XP, Win7 or 8.
That would explain her closet.
I gave up.
This proves it. You are the man.
One of the things that I noticed was how Mo double clicked shortcuts on the start menu to open them - I could see how one could get into that confusion.
Then today we had a client contact us which made me chuckle. A colleague had made a video for them and emailed them the YouTube link - they dropped an email back saying they liked the video but asked if we could do something about the echo. Turns out that they'd double clicked the link in the email so had two slightly out of sync YouTube videos playing - quite amusing!
I literally LOL'd
To this woman it is clear that you are either some sort of superhuman or an OCD lunatic. ;)
My users do this all the time for web links... double post galore...
Taki : ""I'd prefer the search to show results from everywhere and I could just pick the file I wanted or the internet link that made sense"" :
no this should be optionnal, it's my second gripe with Windows 8.1u1, one of the first things I disable on a clean install, i don't want internet search on every search. European privacy concerns.
(the first gripe is the f...ing Microsoft live login that MS is trying to force feed us, I gave up on OneDrive because of it, i don't wan't MS to handle my credentials, except for specialized tasks and files I explicitly put on the internet. European privacy concerns again, we were countries with nasty dictatorships and / or foreign armies once).
David Woakes : it works for me, and has worked since Windows 7 (at least Windows+Right and Windows+Left). the new thing in Windows 8.1 is Shift+Windows+Left (moves between monitors).
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Could you please show us hot to install windows 10 on a virtual hard drive and dual boot? I'm sure lots of us don't have an extra computer but would love to try windows 10.
Thanks,