Microsoft Releases Next Edition of Windows 10 Technical Preview

Microsoft (MSFT) has released an updated version of the Windows 10 Technical Preview less than a month after the initial build was offered to testers, more than 1 million of whom have signed on so far to take the new operating system for a test drive under the vendor’s Windows Insider Program.

The new Windows 10 technical preview build (9860) can be found in the update and recovery section of PC settings or as an automatic download through Windows Update.

Microsoft said it has made 7,000 changes from the first to this version as the vendor further develops the extensive overhaul of its operating system. Many of the fixes are based on problem reports users submitted in the Community forum or through the Windows Feedback app, said Gabe Aul, Microsoft Operating Systems Group Data & Fundamentals Team lead, in a blog post.

“This is the first update build to Windows 10 Technical Preview, and we’ll continue to deliver more as part of the Windows Insider Program,” wrote Aul. “Sometimes they’ll be more frequent and sometimes there will be longer gaps, but they will always be chock full of changes and improvements, as well as some bugs and things that are not quite done,” he wrote.

Here are some of the major changes in build 9860:

Action Center comes from Windows Phone over to the PC as the place for users to see and follow up on all actionable items. “This build is focused only on enabling basic notifications—quick actions and cleaner UI will come later,” said Aul. “You’ll see notifications from the system and apps – from new emails and invites to IMs, Facebook posts and more—all in one place, so you don’t miss a thing.”

Moving apps from one monitor to another. “When you’re working on multiple monitors, use WIN + CTRL + to move the active app to another monitor,” said Aul.

Animation for switching desktops. Added an animation to make switching clear.

Aul said Microsoft has received more than 250,000 items of feedback from users through the Windows Feedback tool, another 25,381 community forum posts and 641 suggestions in the Windows Suggestion box.

“Every day we work through the latest round of feedback and incorporate that into our engineering process,” he wrote.

Aul also explained Microsoft’s “ring progression” process for making changes and moving new builds out to a wider audience. In the first step, the latest changes engineers make are compiled daily into a new build and sent to Microsoft’s “Canary Ring,” or people inside OSG who intially test the new code. Once that group has validated the changes and the build is stable enough for more users to try out, it gets sent to all of OSG, which again validates it. The next step is to send it to “tens of thousands of people” at Microsoft, and only if the build proves stable after that is it sent out to the public.

With the new build, Aul cautioned that some functionality temporarily has “gone backwards.” For example, with the new build “it’s harder to join a Wi-Fi network,” which will be fixed later, he said. And, Start Menu items may disappear and some computers may wake up and not go back to sleep properly.

Microsoft also included an option in this build to enable users to choose how often they receive new builds—fast with more bugs or slow with some of the kinks worked out already.