Our Position on Windows 10
If you’re running most versions of Windows 7 or Windows 8, chances are good you’ve received an invitation to upgrade to Windows 10. You’ll find a new icon in your System Tray that says as much, but is it a good idea to be an early adopter?
The short answer, in our opinion, is unless you require Windows 10 for work, you should hold off on upgrading.
Windows 10 is changing the way we receive updates. Up until now we’ve been able to schedule, postpone or refuse Windows updates, but moving forward, consumers will automatically receive the latest revisions. Automatic updates are not a bad thing. The new approach could make for more secure and stable systems.
Nevertheless, at this early stage it is not unreasonable to find accessibility glitches for screen reader users. It would be worth considering allowing early adopters find major issues, accessibility or otherwise, and let Microsoft iron them out before jumping in so as not to impact your productivity.
For Serotek’s part, we are actively developing for Windows 10. We’ve always updated System Access as needed. If you were to run Windows 10 on Day 1, there are aspects of the new operating system that will work just fine with our screen reader, but you may encounter other components that we are either on our way toward fixing or waiting on Microsoft to meet assistive technology halfway. At this point, no one can fully guarantee the same level of access that you may have experienced in previous versions.
What we can say is that we will be following a similar approach we used with the recent launch of DocuScan Plus V3. You will be able to file bug reports and see them addressed in the same rapid release cycle that should soon result in a solid experience. It’s very unlikely that everyone will be using Windows 10 on July 29. For some consumers it could take a few weeks to be able to download the new upgrade, and under this new update model, every update counts. You may very well see fixes to some of the issues we’re seeing now, but we thought we’d tell you up front what our position was on the matter.
To sum up, if you can wait a little while for Windows 10 to work out the kinks, we’d encourage you to do so. The experience is not so dramatically different that you’ll be missing out for long. If you are committed to living on the bleeding edge, or if you absolutely require the new OS for work, prepare to experience a few hiccups. If you upgrade and later change your mind, it will be possible to roll back to your previous version, but if you think you might go that route, we strongly advise you to create your own backup in case something happens with the roll back utility.
Regardless of whether or not you jump to Windows 10, we plan on continuing support for Windows 7 and Windows 8 for the foreseeable future. We remain committed to giving you the best possible performance and experience no matter your choice of Windows version. As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out to us.