WinX

Day One:

The update took over an hour, but was uneventful. There was a point where WinX was likely installing device drivers, and the screen went black for ~2 minutes, but no worries.

So, a fast, sleek and responsive machine! This is what an Intel Core2 Duo @ 3.00GHz with 4GB/RAM should  feel like.

All my settings are locked down, Windows Defender is active, Windows is active/registered (that took a few reboots, but go figure... 1st day the OS is in the wild, so lots of drones calling the mothership), my private stuff is private (not that I have any) and all my apps are working. Oh, and the part where WinX shares your WiFi passwords using WiFiSense?  As long as you don't authenticate to Microsoft's cloud services, those options won't even appear. If you need  to authenticate to, say, the Windows Store (which I did  to get Majongg back, heh), you have the option of ONLY letting that one app (Windows Store) authenticate, and afterwards, I verified that indeed, the WiFiSense was still turned off and not sharing those passwords with outlook.com contacts, Skype contacts and/or faceborg friends.

The true joy of WinX so far is that I have been able to switch back to Chrome from Firefox. Chrome no longer runs out of memory trying to display photos on web sites (a maddening bug I could not resolve in Win7, due to a shitty Intel onboard video adapter in this refurbed corprobox Dell PC -- 256MB of VRAM, with all but 64MB SHARED with system RAM. Win7 just could not swap fast enough and deal with all the processes Chrome had running -- WinX can, so far. Even Google+, which would every TIME cause Firefox to stop responding for 5-10 seconds upon loading, is like buttah  on Chrome under WinX.

Google integration is not as simple. M$ wants you to use their cloud management, but it isn't pushy about it at all. But unless I'm missing something, I can't find a "live tile" for Gmail, GoogleCalendar, etc. However, much of the same functionality is available through Chrome Plug-ins and Extensions. If you can deal with Chrome, of course.

So far, only very minor issues. On my second full reboot, the Start Menu and notifications were non-responsive, and all icons in the "system tray"were gone. A three-finger salute/reboot fixed that, and I've booted several times since with no repeat of that behavior.

Page load/refresh times with ~200 comments on Disqus, under WinX/Chrome? ~2 seconds. That is a vast improvement over Win7/Firefox.

Day Two:

I had some frustrations with WinX early this morning (as I lay me down to sleep). Silverlight does works, Netfix remembered who I was, and I start The X Files, and strap on the mask.

Then, buffering.

Then, more buffering. WTF?

30 seconds of play, 90 seconds of Red Spinny Circle. I finally shut off the PC, and switched to the phone, which had no such issues. So, I'll report that if I don't see it reported elsewhere.

Booting up from being "cold" for six hours, the damn thang booted so fast I would have bet on it booting from an SSD. Which I don't have.

This afternoon, I fired up Netfix for a nap. No buffering issues. I'll keep watching for this, 'cause unless there was a network issue that resolved between the time I shut off the PC and picked up the Moto-E phone, somethin' doesn't add up.

Day Three:

32.6 seconds from power on to lock screen. The PC was "hot," meaning it'd barely been off for five minutes after being on for 24 hours before this full, from power-on, bootup. I'll time a cold start, where the box has been off 6+ hours and report back, here. It seemed faster when I did it yesterday, cold.

Day Four:

No additional issues, and have had no repeat of the few mentioned issues. Cold boot is ~30 seconds.

Oh wait -- one issue that only occasionally happened under Win7 on this box happens more often than not  in WinX. On reboot, it forgets that I leave the NumLock key on. Most of the time, but not always.

Day Five:

Noticing now that occasionally, the Notification icon (just to the left of the time/date, above) will indicate a new notification when none actually exists. Another minor glitch.

Day Six:

Doing something different. PC has been on since about 1800 last night. Gonna see how long before I have to reboot. All is well, so far.

Days Seven & Eight:

Nothing really to report. Not rebooting has not caused any issues or slowdowns. I just shut off the monitor and mouse and leave the box a-runnin'. I'll leave it running while I'm on this family trip the next couple of days, and report back on Day Ten in the evening. 

Will show you the automagic updates Micro$oft has foisted upon me in the past week: