Microsoft put out a number this week that I keep turning over in my head: 75 million machines now running Windows 10, a month out from launch. Terry Myerson posted it on the Windows blog, all cheerful and milestone-y, and I believe it, honestly. Not because I trust corporate blog posts by default (I dont, generally) but because I watched it happen in my own house. My desktop upgraded the last week of July, my moms laptop got pulled in sometime around the second week of August because I set it up for her and didnt ask, and a coworker was showing off the new Start menu on his ThinkPad just yesterday like hed personally built it.
The upgrade itself, for me, took about an hour and forty minutes, most of which was just sitting there watching dots move. Not bad. Everything I actually use survived the jump, Chrome, Steam, my weirdly specific folder structure from 2013 that I refuse to reorganize. Edge is fine. Its fine! Its not going to replace Chrome for me but its fast and it doesnt choke on PDFs the way IE did, so, progress.
Heres my actual complaint though, and its a small one but its been bugging me for weeks now: the "Get Windows 10" icon. That little white flag thing that lived in the system tray for months leading up to launch, promising you a free upgrade, it will not go away. I upgraded. Im running Windows 10 right now, typing this post in it. And somehow the nag app itself is still installed, still occasionally popping some reminder about reserving my copy of an operating system Im already using. I had to go dig through the update history and manually uninstall a KB number to make it stop, which is not something a normal person should have to do. My mom is not going to find that update number. Shes just going to live with the icon forever, probably, or ask me about it at Thanksgiving.
I dont think this makes Windows 10 bad. I actually like it more than I expected to, the Start menu is back in a form that doesnt make me want to throw the mouse, and having actual windows instead of that full-screen tile nonsense from 8.1 makes this feel less like Microsoft trying to force a tablet interface onto my desktop against its will. Cortana Ive mostly ignored. I dont really want to talk to my computer, I want to type at it, thats sort of the whole appeal of a keyboard.
What I keep thinking about is the free-upgrade window itself. A year, they said. Free until next July. Which is a genuinely different move for Microsoft than what Ive seen from them before, and I think its smart, even if the rollout mechanics (the aggressive icon, the auto-downloading in the background even for people who havent clicked yes yet) feel a little pushy. Theres a difference between "hey this is available" and quietly grabbing several gigs of install files on someones metered connection because the app decided they were eligible. I have a friend on a data-capped rural connection who was furious about that exact thing two weeks ago.
Unrelated but adjacent: Monday last week was one of those days where I had my brokerage app open more than I should admit, watching the market do that thing where everything just falls off a cliff at the open because of what was happening with Chinas markets over the weekend. Apple was down something like thirteen percent at one point before clawing most of it back by the close. I dont day trade, I own like four shares of stuff through an old Roth IRA, but I still refreshed that app probably nine times over lunch like a crazy person. Anyway.
Back to the actual point. 75 million installs in a month is a real number and Im not going to pretend its not impressive, especially compared to how slow the Windows 8 rollout felt. But numbers like that always make the rollout sound smoother than it is on the ground, where its still mostly free upgrades to people who were going to upgrade anyway, plus one very stubborn taskbar icon that apparently has tenure now.