It’s no secret I’ve been spending a considerable amount of time working only with my MacBook Pro. The tools I want and need are available on that platform, and I like the way Mac OS X works and looks. When I’m not working on the MBP I’m working with Linux, either with the old Samsung notebook and Ubuntu, or via virtual machine guests hosted on VirtualBox under OS X. The only time I even power on my Windows 10 notebook is to pick up the security updates that Microsoft continues to release. I am grateful for those updates.

And then one day I finally decided to become part of Microsoft’s Windows Insider Program. I put this notebook on what Microsoft refers to as the “slow ring” for early releases. I get early releases that are as stable as possible, and on a slow release cadence; hence the name. Tonight build 14393 was downloaded and installed on this system. This should be the final early release before the official Anniversary release.

Nothing horrible has happened. If anything, the overall Windows 10 system is fast and stable. The look and feel of the desktop has been changed in subtle ways so that it’s now noticeably different from what this Samsung notebook was originally sold with, Window 8 Pro. I played a bit with some of the applications, one of which is Edge, the browser replacement for Internet Explorer. I must admit I like the way it operates. I reminds me a lot of Vivaldi. I installed the Adblock Plus browser extension to turn off the incredibly intrusive and annoying ads from Wired and Ars Technica.

I also decided to see how compliant it was, so I visited the Google Dart web page and brought up DartPad, the browser-based editor and execution test tool.

From what I can tell there is absolutely no difference between how DartPad works with Edge or any other browser under Windows 10 (Vivaldi, Chrome, and Firefox). It just works. Oh, and I’ve enable the dark theme, just like I’ve enabled every other application’s dark theme if it has one. Not only did I run this sample Dart example, but I wrote this entry with Edge. I’m thinking maybe that Edge is a pretty good browser. Windows 10 is certainly being refined into something different than Windows 8. Please note I liked Windows 8 quite a bit and had no issues using it. I was not happy when Windows began to “regress” back towards Windows 7 and earlier. I was very unhappy with Windows 8.1. But Windows 10 might not be so bad.

Still, I’m distrustful of Microsoft; because of that mistrust I’m still on the long path away from Windows, only using it when I have to, or when I want to try something out, like this little test. For the most part it sits powered off in its bag until I pull it out to check for security patches and updates. But for people who are still committed to the Windows platform I believe that Windows 10 Anniversary edition, which is to be released in August, will be a very good release.