So last week I admitted to the fact that I bought a laptop a few months back, and that I named said laptop Fred. Fred is mine and mine alone. No one else is allowed to touch him. Not the kids, not my husband, no one. It is absolutely glorious being able to leave reminders and notepad files open strewn across my virtual desktop and know no one is going to close them without saving or reboot the darn machine on me. The down side is I am entirely responsible for the care and feeding of Fred.
This laptop is the first computer I’ve had that is strictly mine. All the various computers I’ve had over the years I’ve shared with my comp. sci degree wielding hubby. So while I am relatively tech savvy, I’ve never had to worry about virus protection, installing or uninstalling programs, or doing system updates, because someone else has always taken care of those pesky details. There was a definite learning curve, and a few times I’ve wanted to hand it off to my husband and let him take care of it. However, I forced myself to stick to it as I suspected there was a slippery slope that started with “Could you help me instal this?” and ended with my husband using my laptop for gaming.
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| My space in the chaos. |
When the big free Windows 10 update came out, I was hesitant to upgrade. I had owned Fred for about six months at this point, and had grown pretty comfortable with doing all that maintenance stuff. Yet I put it off because I’ve found that upgrades are always a bit of a time consuming pain. Then I heard some muttering online from a few folks that upgrading to 10 had been a grievous error, or hadn’t gone as smoothly as they would have liked, and I felt a touch of dread and panic setting in. Finally my husband updated our desktop PC and it went horribly wrong. It was like all my worst fears confirmed. If he couldn’t get it to go right, how the heck did I think I was going to do it?
The thing is our desktop PC is past it’s prime, and is long overdue a hardware upgrade. Also, until hubby attempted this update, the PC was running Windows 7. I’m going to skip the details of what went wrong with our desktop upgrade, as frankly I’m foggy on exactly what happened and wasn’t in the room for much of it. I’ll just say there was a lot of cursing and something went south with the admin account, but over the course of several days my husband was able to figure it out and get things sorted.
In the meantime I decided to take the leap and update Fred. I was absolutely floored by how simple it was. It turns out all of my reservations were baseless. The upgrade didn’t take long. The instructions were easy to follow, everything was very straight forward, and adjustments to learning the new operating system were minimal. Basically if you’ve ever used Windows, in any of it’s various incarnations, you’re going to be able to figure out how to get around in Windows 10 pretty much instantaneously. Another thing I love about Windows 10 is how it swaps seamlessly between laptop and tablet mode, making it indispensable for an Intel 2-in-1
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| Welcome to Windows 10! Cool to find a number of helpful videos to walk you through the updates. |
Now the thing with Fred is, he’s a bit on the big and heavy side. I find this laptop is great for moving from one spot to another in the house, but it’s not the first thing I am going to reach for when packing to travel, or even when heading to the local coffee shop. So, despite my ongoing love affair with Fred, I was pretty happy when Intel sent me a new, smaller, sleeker, Dell Inspiron 3147 2-in-1 to check out.
Fresh out of the box, I opened up the Dell Inspiron and walked through the setup. I was happily surprised to find Windows 10 already installed. I was also surprised to find it ported some things from my laptop over to this new machine. When setting things up I signed in with the same Microsoft Live account that I use with Fred. Opening my new Dell for the very first time I was surprised to see my favourite background screen already waiting for me. It felt a bit like checking into a hotel only to find they somehow magically had your bedding from home spread out on the mattress.
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| My favourite background, a photo I took while on my trip to Puerto Vallarta, already waiting for me when I booted for the first time. |
When it comes to upgrading to Windows 10, after talking to friends online I’ve come to the conclusion that on any newer system, on anything that is already running Windows 8, I would say the upgrade to 10 is a no brainer. While on older systems, and/or those running Windows 7, there may be some snags. So if your computer is older than your kindergartner you may want to enlist professional help, otherwise you’re probably good to go.
Or you know, just give in, splurge and buy a new machine. One that already has Windows 10 installed, like my trusty little Dell Intel 2-in-1 here.
Have you made the big bad upgrade to Windows 10? Did you run into any snags? Or did you find it as quick and easy as I did?
Disclosure: I’m required to disclose a relationship between my site and Intel. This could include Intel providing me with content, product, access or other forms of payment. As always my words and opinions are my own.
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