If you're using Windows 7 or Windows 8.1, you'll be seeing that little Windows icon in the taskbar reminding you that you can upgrade to Windows 10. You might be reading about new features - like
being able to sync folders on OneDrive that other people have shared with you - that are only available on Windows 10. But if you haven't already upgraded, chances are that you still have some questions about whether you should upgrade.
Windows 10 is a great release. it will improve performance on many systems. Windows itself takes up a little less disk space but what you'll notice if you're coming from Windows 7 is much faster boot times and longer battery life.
It also has a new way of handling memory - when programs are asking for more memory than the system has available, rather than copying what other programs have in memory to disk so it can shift that memory to the new application the kernel compresses the contents of memory to make room without slowing things down.
Gaming performance on windows 10 is similar to Windows 7 and Windows 8.1, but DirectX 12 support means new games will get better performance on existing hardware. Plus you can stream games from your Xbox to your PC to play them and capture snapshots of gameplay in any game to share with friends.
If you avoided Windows 8 because of the Start screen, or you just didn't get around to upgrading, Windows 10 is your chance to benefit from a host of improvements. These include more tools in File Explorer and Task Manager, the simple refresh and reset tools that make it easier to fix your PC, having settings automatically sync to other PCs that you use with the same Microsoft account, and the new picture password that makes having a password on your account far less tedious. If you have a new notebook with the Intel RealSense camera built in, Windows 10 makes things even easier by recognising your face.
Other big new features in Windows 10 include Passport, which Microsoft hopes will replace passwords by using that secure logon to give websites and services your credentials - that won't work for a while, because the FIDO Alliance standard it's compatible with isn't quite finished.
The AI from HALO, Cortana, is the new voice assistant for Windows 10 , it helps in finding programs and files on your PC, suggesting matching apps from the Store and looking up information from the web, all in one place. Cortana is both fun and useful now, and could get a lot more useful as more apps and services integrate with it.
Windows 10 includes free Office apps, although they're more like the Office apps on a phone or tablet than the full version of Office. There's also the new Edge browser - if you want to use sites that don't work in IE, without having to switch to Chrome (which is ever more of a resource hog) or Firefox, Edge is an interesting option, and it's only available in Windows 10. But with no extension support and no ad blocking, Edge is still a work in progress. To a certain extent, that's true of Windows 10 itself
Any new version of Windows has advantages and disadvantages and Windows 10 is no different - except that the free upgrade for the first year makes it more tempting to go for it without necessarily thinking things through.
Check how well Windows 10 will work on your PC, look at the new features and decide how useful they are to you, and look at the changes and the features that you'll lose in order to decide if any of those will cause you problems.
And while there aren't any major flaws in Windows 10, if you're worried about the niggles, remember that you don't need to rush - the free upgrade will be available for a year after Windows 10's launch and Microsoft keeps adding improvements and fixes.
If you are still not able to decide to upgrade or not then try Windows 10 for yourself and roll back to your previous version of Windows if you subsequently decide it's not for you (just ensure you make a backup first).
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