The other day, I downloaded the Windows 10 Technical Preview. Being the good nerd I am, I installed it immediately – against the moaning and groaning prompts of several co-workers.

"Dude, it's going to be worse than Windows 8."

"I hate the two user interfaces Windows 8.1, Metro, and Desktop. You'd hope they'd nix that."

I am in agreement. I felt Windows 8 was a pile of steaming… . Well, let's just say I wanted to see for myself if Windows 10 could get the bad taste out of my mouth. Thus far, the experience has been spot on. Before talking about the SOLIDWORKS installation, let's look at a couple of things you will get with Windows 10.

Metro App Interface = "Start Screen" is now optional

When you install Windows 10, it detects if you have a device that is driven by a mouse and keyboard or a touch screen. If you have a laptop like mine, Dell Precision m6800, you will get what looks like Windows 7 with a start menu. I'm switching to Windows 10 just for that. If you have a Windows Surface Tablet or something that is primarily a touch interface, you'll get the Start Screen. Never fear, you have the option for either – USE THE START MENU!! Yes, I'm yelling.

Start Screen

Start Menu

Program Snapping

This one is my other favorites of the Technical Preview. When you are running multiple monitors you can now snap a program to either edge of the monitors and have the program take all or half of that display. It's the little things, you know. You can also snap programs horizontally and vertically at the same time two up and two across- COOL!!

Installing SOLIDWORKS

Installing SOLIDWORKS seem to go off without a hitch. The only big issue you'll see in the YouTube video below is the Technical Preview of Windows 10 did not have dot net 3.5 and 2.0 install. When the SOLIDWORKS Installation Manager went to check it, Windows 10 did something I didn't want and got the dot net frameworks and installed them. I'm cool with that here, but it made me think about mass deployments. I'm pretty sure SOLIDWORKS will add this to the prereqs folder so Windows doesn't have to go download and install it. I have a fast internet connection at work and it took four and a half minutes to complete that process. Except for that one concern, I see no issue with the install at all.

Enjoy everyone!!!!

Robert McGaughey

CATI Technical Applications Manager

www.cati.com