Over 1M Windows 10 Preview Users, New Build Coming Soon

Microsoft announced Windows 10 on September 30, and the next day the company made an early version of the operating system – called the Technical Preview – available to anyone who was interested in signing up, provided they were okay with running a version of Windows that was less than stable. A few weeks later, Microsoft has announced a few milestones for the experimental OS preview, and has hinted at what’s in store for those of us who are now “Windows Insiders.”

According to a post on the Microsoft blog, there are over one million registered users in the “Windows Insider Program,” which is the fancy name for those of us who’ve downloaded the Technical Preview. From there, the company has received “over 200,000 pieces of user-initiated feedback […] via the Windows Feedback app from Windows Insiders.” On top of that, about 64 percent of those Insiders are running the Technical Preview on their actual Windows PCs, while the other 36 percent are only testing the waters on a Virtual Machine. That’s a pretty solid adoption rate considering that this version of Windows isn’t, well, finished.

If nothing else, that speaks to the curiosity and polish of the Technical Preview. It also, I think, signals how ready users were to get the hell away from Windows 8. But maybe that’s just my interpretation.

Finally, Microsoft’s blog post says that they’ll soon be testing out Windows 10’s updater features, as a new build of the Technical Preview will be “coming soon.” While the current version of the Technical Preview – Build 9841 – has been pretty stable overall (with a few hiccups here and there), anything could happen when Microsoft releases the next build of the preview. Here’s hoping it doesn’t break my computer.

Have you given the Technical Preview a try? Every day the build seems to vary in terms of its stability for me, but overall it’s been a pretty pain free experience. No significant crashes or problems over here. How’s everyone else faring?

[Source: Microsoft]