A lot of the criticism of Windows 8 focused on its lack of support for enterprise users. Most notably, the new user interface was spectacularly unsuited to business use. Enterprises stayed away from Windows 8, preferring to upgrade to – or stay with – Windows 7.

Microsoft seems to have given up on Windows 8. Although the Start menu was scheduled to reappear in Windows 8, plans for that change were later scrapped. Microsoft’s efforts are now firmly centered on Windows 10, where the Start menu will once again appear.

There’s more good news for enterprise users in Windows 10. According to a recent report from Ars Technica, the update process will have some new options that allow system administrators to control which updates are distributed to enterprise computers. This is already possible with Windows Server Update Services, but the new options promise to simplify things greatly.

Anyone interested in looking at an early version of Windows 10 can sign up to the ‘Windows Insider Program’ at preview.windows.com. Signing up is free, but you are encouraged to think of this software in terms of short term testing only.

The accompanying preview document (ed: no longer available) describes some important features of the upcoming O/S, including the new Start menu, window snapping and multiple desktops. Interestingly, it also steers clear of calling the next version ‘Windows 10’.

Microsoft has a long history of naming things strangely, and they’re showing no signs of stopping. Despite it being a) logical; and b) already announced, “Windows 9” will not be the name of the next version of Windows. No, it will be “Windows 10”, because 10 is better than 9.

That aside, Windows 9 10 is apparently going to be a lot like Windows 7, at least according to some early prototype reviewers.

On a positive note, it looks like Microsoft is finally starting to realize that they can make users really happy by fixing things that should have worked properly in Windows 95. A good example of this is the file copy/move dialog in Windows 8.x, which is vastly better than in any previous version of Windows. And now the creaky old command window is finally going to be improved in Windows 10.

Update 2014Oct02: According to some sources, the reason ’10’ was chosen over ‘9’ is that a lot of software currently includes code that determines whether a computer is running Windows 95 and 98 by looking at the Windows version and comparing it to “Windows 9”. However, while such code does exist, this is not the recommended method for determining Windows version. If Microsoft is going to make decisions like this based on sloppy, ancient coding practices, we’re in serious trouble.