Windows 95 - happy 20th birthday

Is it really 20 years since I spent what felt like a day feeding 13 floppy disks into a computer to nervously upgrade my trust 486 running Windows 3.11 to Windows 95. The new all fangled, all shiny brave new world of a "Start Menu" that replaced the classic "Program Manager" that we had all been used to in the past. Wow what a legacy it has produced.

Windows 95 also introduced the most distinctive change that I think stood the test of time even better than the Start menu, the Task Bar, often neglected and overlooked it sits there quietly at the bottom of the screen allowing a visual clue as to what is running and allowing easy application switching.

Welcome to Windows 10 - the last version ever...?

I've actually been looking forwards to Windows 10 coming out for quite a while. Having been exploring "Internet of Things" (IoT) and the concepts that could offer I was quite keen on the new version of Windows arriving as its the first one that can run on micro computers (like the Raspberry PII 2) and I liked the idea of a harmony operating system across all devices. The concept of the Universal App framework as a means to speed up development and maybe do away with that need to create the same thing multiple times in various different ways to handle different devices abilities.

I tried an early Windows 10 RT version a few months ago and felt it was all a bit buggy (as you would expect for a preview version) and thought that I would wait for the consumer version to be released.

I have a lovely Dell 24-inch XPS (see a different post!) which being the latest form factor of a portable yet powerful tablet it seemed a perfect candidate to upgrade from Windows 8.1 to 10.

My XPS doesn't have anything (apart form Microsoft Office) installed on it, so being the closest I have to a vanilla PC available I hoped it should be a smooth and seamless upgrade and once complete I can then add Visual Studio 2015 onto it and then start exploring the Universal App capabilities.

This post is one I've decided to update as it goes along so lets start at the beginning...