I recently took the plunge on my primary workstation and clicked the Upgrade to Windows 10. I have been using Windows 10 on a Surface Pro 3 for over a year, but had delayed switching throughout the office. I had been using Windows 8.1 with Classic Start Menu enabled.
Apart from the hour it took for the PC to process the upgrade, there was very little I had to do. Of course, my Classic Start Menu was disabled, but then again Windows 10 essentially restored the Classic Start Menu found in Windows 7, and then threw some tiles on as an option. But what was surprising was that the computer seems to be “zippier”. I believe it is ultimately a programming trick, but programs load and start faster.
From my reading, Windows 10 does a slight of hand. When a program was opened previously, you could not begin using the program until every last DLL or executable was loaded. This sometimes took several seconds or more. Moreover, the whole system was often locked down until this loading action was completed. With Windows 10, the desktop no longer locks up when programs are loaded. The load occurs in “background”. Most likely, it occurs in a separate thread. And, more importantly, new programs will start and be available for use, even when related DLLs and drivers are still loading. The result is everything appears to work faster, with the same hardware. Another trick may be that when a program loads, other processes are temporarily throttled, just like a burst of adrenaline works, putting processing power and memory to work on the loading of the new program. It is often the case that new technology is “slower” and a “resource hog”. It is nice, for once, that new software works better with the older or at least current hardware.