I downloaded and installed the Windows 10 Technology Preview today because I was interested in seeing how it would behave on my Surface Pro. I started out creating a VMWare VM with the following hardware settings:

• 2 CPU / 2 cores each
• 4GB RAM
• 40GB HD

Install time from mounting the ISO to logging in for the first time was lightning fast, < 10 minutes with minimal prompts. This blog post is being written from the new Windows 10 OS. Performance is still excellent, I'd take a screenshot of the task manager view but I'm also installing Visual Studio 2013, so CPU and RAM consumption is slightly skewed, but things are still runnign very smoothly. Here's a couple of screenshots:

Start Menu

Looks like they combined the traditional start menu with the Windows 8 Metro desktop. So far I like it. Now, I liked the Windows 8 tiled desktop, but I can certainly understand their decision to restore the start menu based on hearing the public’s feedback. I like what they did here.

Task View

The Task View button comes in the Taskbar and behaves a lot like the Alt+Tab functionality of previous versions. As you can see I’m not only writing this post, but also downloading VS2013. My next step is going to be testing out development on Windows 10, and as long as I can build and debug code I should be ready to test it out on the Surface Pro!

Installing Windows 10 on Surface Pro

I successfully installed Windows 10 TP on my Surface Pro. The install took considerably longer than the empty VM, as was expected. However, like going from Windows 8 to Windows 8.1 everything came over, including my metro and non-metro applications, WiFi settings, personal settings, etc. Minimal prompting. Very cool! By default my start menu remained with the metro desktop. Here’s how to change that very easily:

Switching between Start Menu and Metro Desktop

All you need to do this right-click on the taskbar and choose Properties. Select the Start Menu tab, and check the box that says “Use the Start Menu instead of the Start Screen”. It will make you log out and back in to take effect, but it’s just that easy!

I didn’t have to re-install ANY applications! Everything remained the same as before. Just awesome!

I’ll keep adding photos and reviews as I play with this more. If you’ve downloaded Windows 10 TP and have feedback or findings please feel free to comment!