Windows 10 saga

Spoiler alert - I'll pass on Win 10v

I've watched Amazon Prime's videos on Windows 7 and Ubuntu 14 with no problems. Dping that today, I crashed Win10 four or five times.

I've had an interesting time just getting Windows 10 so bear with me.  I've run Windows since 3.0.  That means Win 3, 3.1, Windows for Workgroups, Win 95, Win 98, Windows ME, and Windows NT 3.0, 3.5, 3.51, 4, 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1.

I like 7, not 8, 8.1 was a little better but my Windows machines were all Win 7. Thought I'd try Windows 10 and see if it was better than 8.1. 

I reserved Win 10 on my machines but then thought I should try it on a test machine first before putting it on one of my production ones.  There were hints to capture the OS image  by starting the install and then stopping it.  That seemed risky on a work machine. 

I set up a Windows 7 machine but had to install all the updates for Win7 before it would consider registering for the download.  Even though this was a Service Pack 1 version it took 2 DAYS (!!!) to download and install the updates.  Sure, I wasn't watching that machine for 48 hours unblinking but it still took a loooooong time. 

Then I had to wait for Win 10 to download.  That took another day or so but I agree with Microsoft's idea of rolling it out over time.  With a big release like Win 10 where it is free, it makes a lot of sense to control the bandwidth.

Then the excitement of installing the new OS.  After what seemed like at least an hour, Windows 10 announced it was not compatible with the processor (which was completely fine with Windows 7).

Then I found a hint that I could just download the ISO and burn it to a disk.  Done. But that way of installing wanted a Windows 10 product key.  Hey, this was supposed to be a free upgrade.

Back to square 1.  Is this Chutes and Ladders or The Game of Life?  I replaced my Ubuntu machine's disk with a Windows 7  disk and waited for Windows 10.  The download rush mush have abated because it happened relatively soon. It installed and, voila!, Windows 10.

My first impression was good.  It seemed like as much improvement over 8.1 as 8.1 was over 8.  Maybe it could be as good as Windows 7.

After my experience with Vista where it could not play a DVD without glitches, my first tests of the OS has been to play a DVD.  Windows 10 offered to install some DVD player for $14.95 or VLC.  I really like VLC and downloaded it from the 'Windows Store'.  I could not get that 'VLC' to work at all and gave up.  I just downloaded VLC from it's home website (videolan.org) and it played a DVD just fine.  Good.

Then I watched some videos from Amazon Prime.  I'd been watching them on other OSes via Mozilla Firefox just fine. I watched most of an episode but had to pause it.  A day later I had to start up Win10 because it had turned the computer off.  I moved the slider back to refresh my memory of the video and let it play. Windows crashed.  I restarted it and tried again, Windows crashed.  then it just hung and had to be powered off and on. Two more times it crashed.  The blue screen of death is a little friendlier now and the crash reason is more prominent.  I forget the first two reasons but the second was IRQL NOT LESS ...

Maybe it is the fault of Firefox but I've run the same scenario with Win 7 and had no problems. 

I'll try the same tests with Chrome and IE, er, Edge and let you know.