Microsoft, making good on its promise to regularly push out new versions of Windows 10 Technical Preview, has released build 9879 — and there’s a surprising number of changes under the hood. Most notably, Windows 10 is now starting to look like a new (or at least different) operating system — but there’s also some nice tweaks, such as the ability to remove the new Search and Task View buttons from the taskbar, and an early look at the new “Continuum” Start menu.

Just like the previous update to Windows 10 Technical Preview, build 9879 installed without a hitch: You just head along to PC Settings, download a new Preview build, and then it takes about 10 minutes to install. (In my case, I actually forgot I’d downloaded the new build until I turned my PC on one morning and had to sit through the “setting up your PC” stuff.)
Windows 10, new open and closed folder icons

Windows 10, new open and closed folder icons

Visually, there are quite a few changes in build 9879, most of which are just a continuation towards a “flat” aesthetic. Most notably, the Windows folder icon has changed! Both the closed and open folder icons have been made very flat, and slightly more angular. This tallies with the flattened horizontal folder icon that you see on the Windows 10 taskbar (which has an odd blue “n” emblazoned on it that I still haven’t worked out).

A lot of the Windows 10 icons have now been flattened, but lots of old-style icons remain, as you can see in the image below:
Windows 10, build 9879

Windows 10, build 9879 – some icons have been flattened, some haven’t

The window open/close/minimize animations, which were introduced in the previous build, have been reworked so that they’re a little less annoying. Now, in addition to gradually expanding or minimizing, they also fade in and out. I think there’s also a new animation when you right click a taskbar icon; the jump list kind of slides out now, rather than just instantly appearing.
Windows 10 PC Settings, showing the Metro menu button

Windows 10 PC Settings, showing the Metro menu button. It’s now three lines, instead of three dots.

The new menu button, which replaces the Charms bar on the Desktop and allows you to access the settings for Metro apps, has changed appearance — it used to be three dots; now it’s three lines, which makes it stand out a bit more, I guess.
Windows 10, Network flyout (now in PC Settings)

Windows 10, Network flyout (now in PC Settings)

The Network menu, which used to fly in from the right side of the screen, is now just a page in the PC Settings app. It’s still a bit weird how clicking the network icon pops up PC Settings, but right clicking gives you access to the normal “Network and Sharing” control panel applet.
Windows 10: Now you can remove the Search and Task View buttons from the taskbar

Windows 10: Now you can remove the Search and Task View buttons from the taskbar. You can also see the “blue n” folder icon that I mentioned earlier.

And, perhaps most importantly, you can now remove the Search and Task View icons from the taskbar (previously there was no way of moving or removing them).

Moving into the new-features-and-functionality-changes category, OneDrive’s functionality was altered quite significantly in build 9879. Basically, it now tries to sync everything that you have stored in OneDrive, rather than just pulling files down when you need them. As a result, some users have found themselves waking up to a full hard drive, or a sync process that uses up a lot of bandwidth (and your data allowance, if you have one). This will probably be fixed/tweaked in the next Windows 10 Technical Preview build.

Disk Cleanup in Windows 10, now with System Compression

Disk Cleanup in Windows 10, now with System Compression [Image credit: ZDNet]
Disk Cleanup also received a very interesting new feature: System compression. This apparently compresses binary and program files on your PC, freeing up a huge amount of disk space. I don’t know what tech is behind this feature, but presumably it’s just some kind of NTFS compression, or something along those lines. For devices with limited hard drive space (Surface tablets with 32GB of flash storage), this could be a huge deal. It might be a bit of a performance hit, though (the files probably have to be decompressed before they’re executed, which takes time and battery power).


As with previous builds of the Windows 10 Technical Preview, there are some very odd features that are hidden in the code, unless you go looking for them. For example, in build 9879, there’s a very early version of (what I believe to be) the Continuum Start screen — the Metro Start screen for touchscreen Windows 10 devices, which changes layout depending on whether you’re using it as a laptop or a tablet.

Overall, Windows 10 seems to be coming together rather nicely. Some users are reporting that build 9879 is less stable than 9860, but I haven’t had any issues yet. Clearly, Microsoft is trying to make Windows 10 a must-have upgrade for Windows 7 users — and while it’s not quite there yet, I get the feeling that Microsoft still has quite a lot of new features to add, tweaks to make, and bugs to fix. It’s all rather exciting.