Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Would You Recommend Updating To Windows 10?
Plenty of users are skeptical about upgrading to Windows 10. While they understand that Microsoft's newest desktop operating system comes with a range of interesting features, they are paranoid about the repeated update fiascos that have spoiled the experience for many users. Reader Quantus347 writes: Whenever I think of Windows 10 these days I, like so many others out there, immediately feel a swell of rage over the heavy-handed way the "upgrade" has been forced on me and so many others. I had to downgrade one of my computers that installed windows 10 over a weekend I was away, and as a result, I have been fending off the update ever since. I find myself wondering if Windows 10 is actually that bad. With the end of the "free" upgrade period quickly coming to an end, my fiscally conservative side is starting to overwhelm my fear and distrust of all things new, and I'm wondering if it's time to take the leap. I've been burned too many times for being an early adopter of something that proved to be an underdeveloped product, but Windows 10 has been around for long enough that I'm wondering if it might have it's kinks worked out.
So I ask you, Slashdot, what are your experiences with Windows 10 itself, aside from the auto-upgrade nonsense? How does it measure up to its predecessors, and is it a worthwhile OS in its own right?
So I ask you, Slashdot, what are your experiences with Windows 10 itself, aside from the auto-upgrade nonsense? How does it measure up to its predecessors, and is it a worthwhile OS in its own right?
Windows 10 has a number of default settings for privacy and security that are too permissive. If you upgrade to Windows 10 you have to know how to change the privacy and security defaults. Also you should be aware that Microsoft tries to force your hand to use a Microsoft Account as your local login. I recommend doing your homework before applying updating to Windows 10. The only reason why I use Windows 10 is because I bought a PC specifically for the purpose of learning how to support Windows 10. I plan to continue to use Windows 7 Professional on my main PC for as long as Microsoft provides support for Windows 7.
I wouldn't. The UI is a mess in many places, and many programs that ran well under Windows 7, don't under 10. Especially games. 10 offers very few benefit at all.
[nt]
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I know a few assholes I would love to have install that thing !!
It hosed my Win7 machine. YMMV
I will never downgrade to Windows 10.
Prepare for chicken little "spyware" comments when describing simple telemetry. Prepare for "concerns" that you can't inspect the telemetry due to the use of *gasp* secured connections.
Oh, and prepare for adware comments because they might dare suggest an app you might install from the store.
In fact, prepare for nothing useful. Only FUD.
Upgrading from Windows 7/8/XP/Vista to 10 is a no brainer. More features, better security, greater cloud integration to save all those files online instead of on some USB you'll end up losing.
Yes the HARDCORE FOLKS will cry "SECURITY! MALWARE! INVASION OF PRIVACY!!11!" and more nonsense. The average person who asks me if they should upgrade I say yes.
AVERAGE.
For the gamer person the addition of integrated video recording of games, nice slick update process, and Xbox syncronization are a win/win. If you are a die hard Playstation person who loves Windows 7, no reason to switch.
Wheel of Time: Book by Book and Sumview (summary review) Bigdady92 style: http://bigdady92.blogspot.com/
While my two main machines are Macs, I manage around 15 Windows VMs and touch every new employee laptop deployed in our environment.
Through this, at least on the hardware we use here and the VMs managed under Hyper-V, I have personally witnessed more BSODs on W10 than any version of Windows after the Windows2000 days.
When Windows is required and when it's up to me, we don't use any W10 images and disable the upgrade paths for the users and based on this experience, I recommend no but YMMV.
It's fine. Better than Win7, and way better than Win8. People should get over their OS obsession and focus on doing some actual work.
i just built a gaming system over the winter. all i do is play games on it. windows 10 has been fine. It's not exactly a critical system.
No problems for me, except occasional driver incompatibility
Appdows 10 is the ONLY apperating app that lets you app apps while apping other apps, unlike LUDDITE systems like Windows 7!
Apps!
I upgraded my home PC to Windows 10 because I support distance learning students at a college and knew they'd be showing up with laptops with Windows 10 preinstalled. The upgrade fiasco was totally unexpected.
From my POV, I'm not even clear what's different from 7 and 8.1. I mean, I *know* the UI has changed considerably in a lot of places but that's just where you find buttons. Similarly, I have no interest in Modern/Metro Apps or whatever they're called. As long as I can use Explorer to manage my files, launch Chrome to get online and my games work and the software I rely on work (Office, some assorted productivity/video editing software), I really don't care. And all of those things have worked fine between 7/8/8.1/10. I've seen no performance decrease in my path from 7 -> 10.
At some point a file versioning tool showed up in Windows, and it still works in 10, so I guess that's good? The Task Manager seems much improved? I like the flat theme just fine?
Really, I can't help but be reminded of this: https://xkcd.com/934/
Absolutely not, for at least 6-8 months and see what shakes out (this is not to bash MS, it's my SOP for all software 'upgrades').
Go ahead and install it to a spare/vm, to see what all the fuss is about.
I would update to Ubuntu.
I've upgraded my PC from win7
I think windows 10 is very nice.
In each new windows version people are crying about something and few years later the majority is on the new version.
It was the same thing in good versions not only in the bad ones (read: vista)
People even complained about XP...
IF WINVER == "Windows 7" GOTO END
IF WINVER == "Windows 8" OR "Windows 8.1" THEN UPGRADE
UPGRADE:
ECHO "Don't choose express settings"
END:
Yes I would - its a much better OS than either Win7 or Win8.
However, my frustrations centre around Windows 10 updates (not upgrades to Windows 10 but updates of Windows 10).
The number of times I have opened my laptop for a quick 5 minute task, only to be greeted by "we are installing a system update" and have the next half hour wasted, or the number of times I have rebooted and run into the same thing - oh, and while MS have added a "restart" option as well as the "install updates and restart" option, it doesnt work, updates are installed anyway.
For all the immediate frustrations I have with Windows 10, I wouldnt go back.
From an end-user perspective, avoid the "Metro" or "Universal" apps (or whatever the full-screen touch-friendly keyboard/mouse-unfriendly apps are called these days). The built-in PDF viewer and Photo Viewer are awful. The Edge browser is clearly a browser for a phone or tablet, with lots of absolutely basic options missing. But this advice applied to Windows 8 as well, and somewhat to prior versions, so this isn't really new.
If you run enterprise multi-monitor laptop-and-dock type stuff... Stick with 7. Otherwise, it's cleaner than 8 and 8.1 for home use and on par with 7. YMMV.
Just drop acid, already, and invent something better... or quit your whining.
At home I have 2 machines running it, both in the Insider Program, one on slow the other on fast rings. I have had only minor issues like my live tiles disappearing. I think for most people for home use it's fine. At the enterprise I am not upgrading anyone and will instead phase in new machines when we buy new ones before the 2020 windows 7 EOL. I tell people if they are running Windows XP or Vista then it's time for a new system. If they are running Windows 7 and intend to replace the machine before 2020 then there is no pressure to upgrade. Block the install of Windows 10 with Never 10 is the easiest way to not get Windows 10 but still get security updates.If they are on Windows 8 then it's worth upgrading.
Well the 2 things I think are worth the upgrade are the BASH Shell (A new way to bash on Windows :) ) and they will also fix the Windows 260 byte path limit.
I bought Windows 10 to go along with my new gaming PC. It takes a bit of effort to turn off all this data collecting but it's doable.
I can't say if performance is better or not, as this was installed on a brand new PC with SSD drive and 32gb of ram and my Windows 7 is a lenovo laptop without SSDs and only 8gb of ram.
But I can say that I don't see a huge amount of difference between 7 and 10 and if you're happy with 7 then the only reason to upgrade is when MS stops supporting 7 altogether.
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
Yes.
But don't enable "insider builds" as they are frequently, as expected, beta-quality.
I upgraded my 87-year-old father to 10, but put Classic Menu on. It runs perfectly, and he still has his XP Start menu, and he has not had any issue adjusting. The Win 7 start was trash - I have 32" monitor, and the start menu only uses the bottom left corner, making me scroll??!! The Win 10 menu is ok - I might use it at some point.
If you have a touchpad, then yes.
If you have a desktop, then no. It's not really suited as a desktop OS.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Let's ignore all the under-the-hood badness of Windows 10. Here are the reasons to stick with Win7:
It's like Microsoft fired their (formerly excellent) user interface and usability personnel, and hired a college grad hell-bent on design. Windows 10 may be good under the hood, but the spyware and shitty UI make everyday use a constant irritation.
When I downgraded my workstation from Win10 to Win7 I felt like I went forward in technology. It's uncanny that Microsoft would screw the pooch so bad.
I went ahead and did the upgrade to Windows 10, then installed a new drive and did a fresh install to get rid of any upgrade leftovers. It seems to be trouble free so far. But... I only use Windows for gaming, all else goes to a Linux boot. I don't trust Windows for security or privacy, or anything.
Does the submitter even read Slashdot?
Over, and over, and over, every time Windows 10 comes up in Slashdot stories, there are multiple, +5 Insightful posts pointing out that Windows 10 comes loaded with telemetry. Just LOADED with it. I can't accept that a person submitting a question to Slashdot would not know this, and also would be okay with this notion of data collection ingrained so deeply in an operating system.
Regardless of the options a user chooses in Win10's Control Panel, the user is not TRULY opted-out of all the data collection. This has been discussed ad nauseam, and I have yet to see someone post a solution to block all telemetry collection while still allowing security updates.
Also, you can't infinitely defer reboots after updates are applied. You are going to be forced to reboot at some point that is not of your choosing, and that's a legitimate problem for many people. (Like, the ones who use computers as productivity tools.)
Windows 10 wrests control away from the user in ways that are unacceptable. I cannot compromise on these things. I will not use Windows 10.
i mean ... it's fine, i guess. it's stable, anyway. it runs all the programs i've tried so far. HOWEVER:
do your research and make sure you disable all the keyloggers and adware and "data sharing" features that come bundled with it, which are turned on by default. make sure you're ok with having an operating system that will basically constantly advertise at you, trying to steer you towards the MS store. be prepared to have the thing constantly try to link you up with your "Microsoft Account" and use that as your desktop login. Oh, and hope you like ads on your Start menu.
the good news is you can remove the advertisements from Windows Solitaire for just $1.50 per month! what a deal!
i could live a little longer in this prison
If you're happy with your current OS don't bother changing it. You've got another 4 years until they stop releasing security updates for windows 7 so there isn't any rush to switch.
I've always found that i generally regret it if i change something for the sake of change.
I recently upgraded my Windows box from XP to 10. I will be downgrading to 7 in the near future. The latest insult was a massive update ending in a screen stating "Your files are where you left them". Never have I been so suspicious of an update. Also, my files had been touched. At least the settings of my audio driver were reset. (By the way, if any engineers responsible for the nahimic drivers are reading this: kill yourself. It took me ages to figure out why I had reverb on my video, but not on my music, never would have suspected the audio driver!).
I miss hotcorners, I miss decent apps (here's looking at you calculator), I hate a notification area which has messages which are cryptic and non-traceable, also seemingly advertising space for Microsoft. Keep in mind, I'm European, the most egregious bullshit of Cortana is disabled over here, doesn't stop them from spamming my start menu and notification area.
Stay at 7, or move to 7, and pray to the old software gods that someone, somewhere will start something decent. OS X sucks, Linux sucks, Windows sucks, and they will use it to end the age of general computers. iOS and Android are our hateful future.
...for most people.
Sure, there are going to be some people who'd be better of with *nix and who could cope with it, but they're not the ones asking. It's my grandma, uncle, cousin, sister, neighbor - all who care NOTHING about the "politics" of OSes, just want something that works.
So my advice is this:
YES, I wholeheartedly advise upgrading to Win10. It is a robust, stable, modern OS. I've been running it on probably a dozen systems since January, and not one BSOD. That's pretty good. It's miles better than XP or 8, and reasonably better than 7. If you're running anything else (shudder, Vista, ME, 2000, etc) it's not even a question.
HOWEVER, *actually* read and attend the install process. TURN OFF shit that you don't need.
As a last resort, I'd rather come over and spend 10 mins cleaning out the Win10 settings cruft and then knowing you're running a decent OS than keep having to try to remember how the hell to do X in XP or Vista when your system goes down, again.
-Styopa
The upgrade to Windows 10 was a big pain for me. Win10 was slow, constantly thrashed the hard drive, took a long time to load, the update system is beyond broken and the settings have all moved around again. I cannot understand why anyone would want to use such a clumbsy and painfully slow operating system. It feels like a big step backward from Win7.
... other than the fact that they are so desperate for people to install it they are resorting to the most amazing levels of subterfuge to basically trick people into installing it?
How good would it need to be to justify looking past that?
Don't fall for their "fear of missing out" deadline.
The only other thing I know about Windows 10 (aside from all the alleged tracking/phone home stuff, which I haven't looked into in great detail but would be a dealbreaker for me) is that it will reboot after running updates without warning (... according to people I know who have suffered from this). I am not sure if this is just some sort of default setting or if it works this way by design. Either way, wtf.
"Samsung is advising customers against succumbing to Microsoft’s nagging and installing Windows 10."
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/05/31/windows_10_samsung_fail/
I had no problem upgrading to Windows 10 on my gaming PC. Then again, my gaming PC was built with Windows Vista-certified components and has beefier specs than the recommended minimum for Windows 7/8/10. As for the few hardware issues I had encountered, all I had to do was manually install the Vista driver.
It's an OS. Each version, point or whole, will bring with it changes to services, telemetry, operations, drivers, etc. You can argue how stable version x is, or how secure, or how libertarian it is (at least compared to the limp-wristed commie version which is next up). In the long run, whatever you are on is going to be unsupported and unless you hold a degree in CS and prefer to spend your nights and weekends working on patches and new security exploits, you're probably better off upgrading with the pack.
I imagine there were people who fought tooth and nail against upgrading their gas lights to electricity, too.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I generally like it, but there are some annoyances. It seems less lenient on the amount of time you can delay a patch, and I am tired of websites asking me to install Windows 10 Apps - akin to mobile websites asking you to install their mobile app.
Whenever I browse, my cookies and everything are totally wiped out, so I'm inundated with these annoying asks.
Would I recommend it? Not without a professional on hand to help you through some potentially devastating problems.
I've upgraded to W10 on a few PCs and have worked in Windows troubleshooting professionally off and on since Win 3.1. W10 has this new thing called WindowsShellExperience.exe which controls many things - most visibly, when you right click things on the desktop, the tray, the start menu, that sort of thing. It's terrible and on virtually all systems I've upgraded on, it refuses to load without crashing. It logs an event which when researched reveals known problems that were discussed in RTM phase but apparently never addressed. You can't even load Task Manager. The only workable solution I've found is to create an entirely new user profile, migrate your stuff and never log into the old one again, which is kind of hard when the whole thing is froze up (but you can still Win+R > control, if I recall). It's a potentially horrible nightmare for many users who will have no idea why the system is just frozen and not responding. Even once repaired the shell integration, like when launching files by double clicking them, can get messed up causing it to freeze again, and Task Manager cannot even be launched to help deal with it. This was my biggest issue upgrading - the privacy settings are kind of annoying, controlling and organizing the start menu is kind of annoying, other than that, it's as good as all the other versions of Windows really. So I'd recommend it as long as there's a geek in your life who loves you, or you have a lot of money to pay troubleshooters.
Let's see: An operating system that forces in sneaky or not so sneaky way in the first place. and Then...has updates that turn out to be ad servers (not security so MS actually LIED about tha tone), updates that change the rules (Windows 10 pro could shut some "telemetry data" off but they removed that feature later so you had to upgrade to enterprise to get it back), data collectors that send all kinds of data frequently, and MS won't disclose what data they collect. It destroys some computers (friend's daughter hard drive burned out after a forced windows 7-10 update). Need I go on? Oh, and latest, Windows 10 wreaks havoc on some samsung laptops/desktops. Everything about it is, collect data from you for their use (that you can't turn off)...plus ads in your face and undisclosed data collection in massive amounts. Oh, and updates no longer have any significant details save "adding enhancements and feature" on the updates so you can't see what MS is doing to your system until it's too late. You really want to "upgrade" to this trojan horse that constantly changes the rules? Better off with MacOS (not iOS, Apple plays similar games there with feature disabling) or Linux. They you can't trust or know what the OS is doing, time to change the game. Too many secrets, game changers (disabling features you once had) and blatant disregard for the users rights to control THEIR computer. (No, MS you do NOT own people's data your EULA needs to be put into government oversight and roasted over the coals for lack of transparency and invasion privacy; Collecting (potentially) data and passwords...come on....) Would I recommend Windows 10 upgrade? (and this goes double for people in the legal/medical profession..) Hell NO!
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
It's not "nonsense. The auto-upgrade is, at best, a breach of trust, at worst an unethical upgrade to a customer's system.
The new multi GPU features of DirectX 12 makes it quite interesting for gamers.
Then you should avoid purchasing any machines with Windows 11 on them.
You don't have any choice
I never upgrade machines; I just wait till a new machine comes with the new OS. That said I went to Windows 10 on new machines at work and home all at the same time, and I have no real complaints, as long as I have:
These are the programs that have made Windows tolerable for me since NT, and as long as I have them, the specific version of Windows has never been too much of a problem.
By the way, I like Windows 10 much more than Windows 8.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
They don't seem to invalidate your Win 7 key ( and if your on 8 it can hardly be worse than 10). So it's easy enough to roll back if you want to.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
My advice, for whatever it's worth, is that if you are running Windows 8 or 8.1, you should go ahead and update. 10 fixes many of the issues that people have with 8, and it will be supported for longer.
As for upgrading from 7, I used to recommend it, but I've changed my mind on that one. The way Microsoft is being extremely pushy about the update is a huge turnoff, and I don't want to support that behavior. If you are running 7, and you are happy with it, then stick with it. Just keep in mind the end of support date for Windows 7 (January 14, 2020) and make sure you migrate from it to something else before then. You still have 3 and a half years, so it's not yet urgent, but it is something you should have in mind.
(On a related token, no machine running XP should be connected to the internet at all, and if you have one you can be certain that it is compromised. Windows Vista support ends in about a year on April 11, 2017, so it is getting to the urgent stage to replace if you are still running that)
Intelligent responses welcome, flames will be met with marshmallows.
We used windows media center for over the air recording and it worked really well.
I guess it wasn't worth their time to keep maintaining it. Especially since it was a free product in Windows 7. I haven't found anything else as easy to setup.
Upgrade to 10, activate, then reinstall whatever you were working on before if you want to wait. You have to decide if the time ti takes to backup, upgrade, and then re-image to pre-upgrade is worth the potential of saving $100-200 (since upgrades will be, if you believe MS, perpetual to future OSes). At some point you'll be faced with a program which won't run under your current OS. Whether that happens before you plan to trash your current machine is the real question.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I've been greatly annoyed by a number of issues which haven't been fixed (a big one for me is the inability to simply delete/free up no longer used com ports using Device Manager). Network set up for laptops which are moved around to different locations (and will be used with different WiFis) is something which doesn't work as well as with Win7 and Win8. And, there is the bullshit with having to install "WIndows 10" versions of software which works fine under WinXP, Win7 & Win8.
The upgrade process for Win10 seems broken at best with some upgrades being put in regardless of the desires of the users while others need to be explicitly allowed - but Microsoft should know this because they're tracking everything done on Win10 anyways.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
It is a great OS:
- PS improvements, with Windows 10 1511, PS, and VS Code the intellisense is amazing. Gives great detail on commandlets and support features, not in 7.
- latest Hyper-V is great. I have used VMware and Virtual Box in past, but latest Hyper-V in Windows 10 is now my default. I run PoC versions of 2016 as well at Ubuntu 16.04 LTS on my laptop.
- Gives you additional Office 365 features/options
- Better with touch screen
- Better task switching
- Edge browser has potential, but not there yet.
Respect the Constitution
I only use it for playing games (I would never do anything "real" in Windows anyway... regardless of security / update issues) and it works fine. It's plenty fast and the user interface is fine.
For reference: I have it as a clean install on my Mac in a Bootcamp partition. My main issue with it is that I have to hack the AMD drivers to get them to work with my Mac graphics card... but that's a particular issue of my situation and not of Windows 10 in general.
Since I only play games in it I don't concern myself with it updating or phoning home or any of that other crap...
Windows 10 runs well on all of my Windows computers which aren't the Media Center. I'll have to revisit my options when that machine dies.
Windows 10, from a purely technical perspective, is great. It's fast, clean, stable, and relatively secure. Heck, it's the first ever Microsoft OS I've seen that is able to upgrade the average computer without turning it into goat vomit. Prior to Windows 10, this was practically a guarantee.
From a policy perspective.... To quote Darth Vader, "I have altered our agreement. Pray I do not alter it further."
That is basically Microsoft's slogan for Windows 10. Unless you are willing to drop $500 for the Enterprise edition of Windows 10, Microsoft has dictated very clearly that you do NOT have control of your machine. They *will* pull telemetry at their pleasure. They *will* force updates onto your machine whether you want them or not. Hell, they even have the power to copy any data you have on your machine. They will not permit you to block them, at least not at the OS level. If you want to block their shenanigans, your only realistic option is to either buy Enterprise or put a hardware router between your computer and the internet, and do your blocking from there. Or just use it as is and hope Microsoft doesn't continue to alter their agreement further. (Fat chance)
And we all know that Microsoft is far from perfect when it comes to releasing stable updates that don't brick people's machines.
Whether you are fine with this, is up to you. As a sysadmin who is ultimately responsible for the productivity of the employees under my charge, this is completely unacceptable, and we're going to be sticking with Windows 7 as our desktop standard.
What pisses me off the most is that Microsoft's obnoxious behaviour is forcing me to set up a WSUS server, because I now need to vet every single update Microsoft release.
Given the antics of MS with respect to this upgrade you're actually asking this question? On Slashdot? Doubtful you'll get a reasonable response but then again even an 'unreasonable response' may be best for you.
I have it installed on a whole bunch of PCs and tablets. I haven't really had any major problems with it.
Do I have any reason to be excited about it? No, not really. I don't think anything significant has been added to the OS since Windows 7, at least not that I've ever found occasion to use much. Since Windows 8, it's pretty much been about getting the new stuff out of my face.
I find the UI to be clunky and inconsistent. The incessant updates can be annoying -- we're told they're "automatic," but when they actually get installed seems to be anybody's guess, except that it usually seems to happen when I've just switched on the machine to take care of some 10-minute task.
Windows Store/Universal apps are generally to be avoided. Few of them seem to have much value, particularly in a desktop computing scenario. They're either a repurposed version of a web page with an inferior UI (eg Wikipedia), or they're just the usual app store cash grab.
Performance-wise everything seems fine, and maybe a little improved from Windows 8.
If it doesn't sound like I'm really selling you on the upgrade, I guess it's because I'm not. But having taken the plunge, it's not like I have any major regrets. If anything, what's done is done and whether to install Windows 10 is one less thing I need to worry about.
Breakfast served all day!
I would also recommend driving into the wilderness, drinking a gallon of aviation fuel, ramming a lit stick of TNT into your rectum and raising your hands aloft in preparation for take-off. It's more out of this world than even the Microsoft user experience. You should try it!
No.
Learning from Apple's success in certain areas, most of the things people complain about in Windows 10 are what OS X does by default. Nearly forced Apple accounts, loads of telemetry, etc. Linux is almost becoming the last refuge!
Expect some potential pitfalls. If you know how and can, backup your pc. And not just your files, but do a clonezilla clone of your drive, in case things get pretty bad, you'll be able to go back to 7. Some things Ive noticed for problems include...
1. Video drivers, especially intel based graphics cards. Expect to have to potentially reinstall them
2. Wifi drivers! Some work out of the box, others don't. Have drivers handy, or an Ethernet port available
3. Some apps that were blacklisted (office starter) may work... may not work, or may work at first and break later
4. Don't use the default antivirus. Kills my CPU, go with Avast, or another well known antivirus
5. There is still a learning curve. I installed it for my grandfather, who was able to pick it up pretty quickly, but some items went "missing"
6. Remove the ads... looking at the install office ad. Just remove the metro app and it should go away. Not hard, but annoying the 5th install time around
7. You CAN skip the "link Microsoft account". Its small text, but there is a skip link... I recommend you do it unless you are a MS based user (many of us are not)
That said, Im switching my sisters pc over now, and my fathers in the near future. I've seen some boxes actually start performing faster with 10... others, not so much, especially if the graphics cards drivers get hosed.
Then the answer should be obvious.
Having been a Windows user ever since my parents got me my very first personal computer some time around 2000 (I've been through Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows 7) I had to make a similar choice when Windows 10 rolled out last summer. After a long, careful consideration and soul-searching I finally decided not to. So, I was left with the two other reasonable choices - Mac and Linux. In the end I went for Linux (chose Fedora, was also considering openSUSE and Ubuntu). I would recommend considering switching to Linux. It's grown a lot since I first tried it on a live CD some 10 years ago.
The following *should* work:
1. Capture full disk image of your existing Windows 7/8.1 system (use Macrium, CloneZilla, Acronis, Ghost, etc.).
2. Perform in-place Windows 10 upgrade. Verify digital entitlement activation
3. Capture full disk image of Windows 10 installation.
4. Restore your Windows 7/8.1 disk image
5. Optionally perform clean install of Windows 10 after July due to digital entitlement
Privacy implications aside, I think Windows 10 works great. I've been running it for almost a year now on my Surface 3 tablet and on two different Dell boxes at home. Since two of those machines had come with Windows 8 on them, it was a big improvement.
My only usability complaint so far is that I had somewhere missed a firmware update on the Surface tablet that resulted in a lot of network and video driver crashes for a while.
Generally, I don't use the Edge browser or Cortana very much. The one feature I really do like is the decent multiple desktop support. I've been using crappy, half-assed apps to do this for years on Windows.
As for the privacy aspects, I've had a long standing disagreement with a friend about whether collecting marketing preferences constitute a privacy "violation" or not. I don't really think so, but even if they do, it is entirely voluntary. I really don't care if someone targets me with advertising or mails me coupons for stuff I might want to buy. If you don't like the privacy 'violations' of Windows, there are ways to turn it off, or you can just use Linux. :)
- Necron69
I run it on most of my machines. It's fast, it's pretty, and it's stable. I've had zero hardware issues and zero software incompatibilities. I also have yet to see a black van circling my neighborhood, nor has Microsoft released my social security number, sexual preferences, or DNA sequence on their website, so I'm not terribly concerned that they're spying on me for the lizard overlords.
Since I noticed that Win 10 was using about 1 MegaByte of Bandwidth every hour , while Win 7 was using less than 10Kilobyte every hour and Linux 10 was using less than 10 kilo byte per hour I just left linux mint on my Quad Core with Time Warner Cable I don't care what M$soft is sending monitoring etc there is no reason to be using this much bandwidth
Fresh install, sure. Everyone I know who had major issues with W10 went the upgrade route. I talked a few into doing a full refresh (basically reinstalls itself fresh) or reinstalling clean from media and the vast majority of times the issues went away.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
I have Windows 10 installed on my Laptop (everything but gaming) and my wife's ageing ThinkPad.
I find it noticeably faster esp. on low end Graphics. You mileage may vary.
In comparison to Win 8 (which I had installed, too and which was horrible) it's fairly consistently done and an easy transition for nontechnical users coming from Win 8.
Yes, you do have to opt out of a bunch of stuff that should be opt in. Sadly, the OS is not the only Software you're using that does it this ways. In Chrome you need to opt out of telemetry, too ( https://www.google.com/intl/en... ), Firefox does it right and lets you opt in ( https://support.mozilla.org/en... ). A lot of iOS and Android apps you probably use are "calling home" a lot without even asking you or giving you the chance to opt out (which is bad manners) etc. pp. Apple OSes are a notable exection.
I think as an educated software users we have to adapt by regularly checking the telemetry settings of the software we use like we did adapt habits like manually looking for software updates with security fixes in past times (or defragmenting the harddrive etc. pp.). Computers were never maintenance-free and will remain so.
Buy a copy of Acronis True Image and mirror your Windows 7 hard drive onto a spare hard drive BEFORE allowing any of the nagging Win10 updates. After doing that you can upgrade to 10 without worrying about it messing anything up and do so in the "free" period. If you want to go back plug in that spare Win7 drive and boot to it.
There's no chance that I'm going to swap over to one of the many Linux distros, and I'm not going to buy a Mac. So as far as I was concerned, I may as well get the OS for free, rather than pay for it later once Win7 is EOL/EOS.
As far as the quality of the upgrade, i thought it sucked (has a Windows upgrade ever been good?). I had so many issues that I blew it up and started over with a fresh Win10 install, which was flawless. One thing i dislike about Win10 (granted i never had Win 8.1) is its designed for a tablet, not a PC. Its really annoying having to go through and disable a ton of crap that i have no interest in ever using, scouring through privacy settings in multiple places to try to keep the chatter to a minimum. I really don't like that it wants to log in using/tied-to my Microsoft account (you can disable this too). I don't need Windows constantly logged in and monitoring a dozen social media apps or email accounts to keep me informed. I have a smart phone that works well for that. I want my PC to just be a PC.
As aheath said, do your homework before you plunge.
Unless you have some VITAL hardware or software that can not be coaxed to run on Win10 is maddness not to take microsoft on their Win10 Offer. I write this with Slashdot readers in mind, so I guess that fiddling with drivers and VMs is not beyond your kung-fu.
Sometimes, is just a question of installing Vista/7/8 drivers for video, and even Win NT 4 drivers for things like printers and scanners will work (yes, I did it! Epson LX-810 Dot matrix over usbcentronics port be damned). Sometimes, is a question of playing with the compatibility settings a little bit. Yes, is a short term hassle with a long term big payoff.
Yes, some privacy settings are too lax, and some apps (Like the Edge Browser) are a work in progress, but this should not be a problem for the readers of slashdot (did you forgot how to install chrome/firefox/vivaldi/opera? What about FoxIT PDF reader?).
On the same (more or less modern) hardware (say, a quadcore with hyperthreading and 8GB), windows 7 performs better than XP, Win8 better than 7 and Win10 Outperforms them both...
Rememeber the beloved XP is being left abandoned by SW makers (even Chrome does not get more updates), and do you really want to get on the same nightmare in 2020 with Win7?
Sometimes is dificult to update your machine (my Old Toshiba Satellite A135-S2386 comes to mind), but the result is well worth it.
If you want to go to linux, be my guest (I did, during my thesis in 1996, and in my server room in 2001), or if you want to go to mac, all the power to you (is where I am now), but if you want/have to stay in microsoft's ecosystem, win10 is the way to go...
For more info on the topic of WinXP/7 ---> Win10 migrations, please see my posting history.
Full disclosure: I am a Mac user nowadays, but both my BootCamp partitions and the old Tosh are on Win10 nowadays.
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
The company who I currently work for used to give us Lenovo SchtinkPads as work machines. Recently, they are now offering Apple stuff, as well. I never thought that I would be forced to leave the Windows platform.
Well, Windows 10 has done it for me. My next box is going to be an Apple.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I updated all my personal machines to windows 10 from windows 7 and it is fine. The default settings typically don't bother me much in that it needs to do updates at unfortunate times or download reams of files. At work on my development box I have had no issues with it though I had to dig in to stop the arbitrary downloads and reboots. My workplace will slowly migrate as machines are replaced in the next 12 months - this is already underway and hasn't caused too many problems as we are sophisticated enough to knock the worst corners off the default setup.
For our less sophisticated business customers, windows 10 is a shining example of a nightmare. Knock on wood - our software runs flawlessly on Win 10 BUT having our customer's machines decide out of the blue when to: 1) saturate slow networks downloading updates 2) lock out the UI and force an update of the OS or 3) just restart on a whim, disrupts business continuity. This default is a nightmare for them. To disable this - making sure you have all the t's crossed and i's dotted is certainly not as easy as Win 7 to secure business continuity - one simple selection in the control panel is SORELY missed. One shouldn't have to mess with the registry or policy settings to keep a machine from performing serious arbitrary actions that prevent business continuity.
As such we are still holding off going ahead recommending win 10 for our customers even though it likely makes the most sense otherwise.
I may be mistaken but as I understand it you can upgrade now for free which then associates your hardware with a Win10 license, do the rollback to whatever OS you had (though anything uninstalled for compatibility may be gone?), and then later if you ever want to install Win10 again then you will still be able to for free because it already has the license associated with your hardware.
How to deal with Windows 10 when you are "accidentally" automatically upgraded (via timed auto upgrade, or false close icon, or...)
I was just dealing with the fallout of a forced win7 to win10 upgrade. Windows 10 is more resource hungry - particularly RAM. The recommended 2GB are a joke. You need 6GB for it to feel usable. It also lacks drivers for ubiquitous hardware modules that are not that fresh. In my case it was NVIDIA G210M card with hybrid engine - this is the setup where the laptop switches between discrete and integrated graphics, depending on the power state. The lack of support was something I could live with - just use the old windows 7 driver. Except I can't, because updates are now mandatory and automatic. Windows 10 insists on updating to the latest and greatest nvidia driver, which fails causing the OS to use the default VGA driver and produce grotesquely distorted picture. So buying new PC with windows 10 is ok. Upgrading an old system, particularly a laptop may be very frustrating. Failed updates sometimes result in unbootable system, which in my case could only be fixed with clean install. Did I mention that you have no control over the updates??? The come the privacy issues, which are discussed at length by others.
Although most hardware will work. There are some specific devices that will just cause you grief.
thing is, you won't know until you try.
Plan ahead, reserve plenty of testing time. July 19th is the deadline for free upgrade.
Windows 10 is a major spyware in itself. Cortana keeps listening to you all the time and this is sent to Microsoft servers, all of it, all the time. I learned to disconnect my webcam and any microphone. (my laptop has an external microphone jack with a blank in it to disable the internal microphone).
Privacy settings do not allow you to disable all the spying. It's not supposed to contain any identifiable items, not supposed to...
It uses your bandwidth behind your back, how much do you pay for internet? Are you metered? Make sure to tell Windows, it might be nicer to you because of it. Might.
The biggest issue, is the hacker style Microsoft is displaying these days, and obfuscation of what is going on. There is a reason new computers have to have TPM (Trusted Platform Module), keeps you out of some processes so you can't tell what's happening, oops no, sorry to protect the user from doing what he might want to do ...
I may be exaggerating, but I don't think so.
Still, eventually, we have little choice. if you need to stay in the windows world. Better upgrade. Otherwise, start learning to speak Linux. Cause Mac OS may not be any better, it's DRM ridden and I hope you like to pay here, there and everywhere.
I hope this helps more than it confuses you.
Good Luck !
I'll upgrade to Windows 10 when...
* The start menu goes back to the Windows 7 style - that was the start menu perfected!
* Windows XP compatibility mode (the free VM) makes a comeback - because yes, I do play older games on occasion. Yes, Virtualbox, blah blah blah but virtualbox doesn't come with the free XP license.
* When you nix advertising from the OS
Until then, I'm happy with Windows 7.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Options: WUX went a) smoothly, no effort b) lots of effort c) c) rolled back d) Avoided and/or what's WUX? e) Waiting for Cowboy Neal to install it. Or something like that...
Yes, if you aren't on a 7" tablet (Windows 8 still works best on a small touchscreen). There are numerous improvements to the kernel under the hood and from a user perspective:
- It boots way faster.
- It uses less battery.
- Command line and powershell are dramatically improved.
- Bash in Windows is incredibly useful.*
- God menu on the start menu through right click to directly go to all of the "deep" settings that are hard to get to in Windows 7 like "network Connections".
- Snap with rescale. If you snap a window to the left. It will automatically ask you what you want to snap to the right. And when you rescale a snapped app of the left it scales the app on the right to fit.
- Most consumer software is targeting it now as the primary OS for bug fixes and QA.
- The new Store deployment and update system is far superior to install/uninstall and when I start up a new system I just hit "Download" instead of tracking down installation media etc. I hope that all of my software migrates to the AppX deployment system. Also cross buy is nice when available. I bought my first game that runs on the Xbox and PC.
- I love being able to get text message notifications on my PC so that I can read texts without getting out my phone. And then even reply.*
- If you have a touchscreen tablet like a Surface it's nice to be able to mix touch apps with mouse/keyboard apps easily.
- Cortana is working well. It sucks in flight and package tracking information automatically which is nice from emails.
- Task bar icons have notifications so my mail app has a little (3) circle right on the taskbar.*
- Native multiple desktops.
- Miracast to PC. You can mirror your desktop to another PC's desktop as a window like teamviewer. Handy for presentations if you want to view on your own computer without huddling over their shoulder. *
- Notification center is just generally nice to finally have on Windows. I look forward though to the summer update when they add universal dismiss so that if I look at an email on my phone it doesn't have the notification at home.
- Lots of new HyperV functionality.
- native Photos app supports animated gifs and mp4s and webm.
- Windows Hello identity management is awesome where it's supported. I only have it on my phone but I want it desperately on my laptop and PC. Death to passwords. You just look at the screen and it unlocks and can (with developer support) even log you into your bank app etc.
- System wide spell checker.
- Vastly improved calculator app.
- Cortana will answer easy questions. "100 cm in inches" right in the task bar.
- Clock on multiple screens.*
- Calendar on taskbar has actual events and appointments since it is a real calendar not a generic date/time widget.*
- Screen capture. Integrated screen/video capture is a hotkey away.
- You won't have to worry about it unexpectedly upgrading.
- It's a rather stable development target. I like it as a developer because I know everybody on Windows 10 is on Windows 10 or Windows 10+6months. Mandatory updates means everybody supports the latest APIs within 6 months so it's not horribly fragmented.
- Updates are super easy. The guy who was playing CS:Go and had his system reboot wasn't upgrading from 7 to 10 he was upgrading from 10 to 10.1 and you can see how relatively painless that process was. It usually takes me about 15 minutes to upgrade to the latest OS with new features. Windows used to take 2-3 years to get a new feature, now they regularly add new things (the summer update is pretty substantial and has a lot of things I already miss not having on my "stable-branch" work machine. They've really streamlined the build and release system so that Windows can be iterated on quickly. I know internally how huge of a deal it can be for development to have a great automatic build and deployment system for accelerating feature development, I'm excited that windows has it now so that Microsoft can focus on add features going forward. It's generally just a new k
yes, disable the offending privacy settings and log in locally (although apple have similar remote authentication requirements using an apple id and nobody complained so far) and then get the bleep over it and leave this channel open for other stuff so that we don't discuss the windows 10 upgrade ad nauseam, ne?
do your research and make sure you disable all the keyloggers
There are no keyloggers in Windows...
make sure you're ok with having an operating system that will basically constantly advertise at you, trying to steer you towards the MS store.
Just like Android and iOS. The masses have been pushing for a unified OS, and now they have one, and now they hate it. Funny how things work out for them...
To answer your question - I put Win 10 on one of my machines and ended up taking it off after about 3 weeks. There was no upside to the change, just a lot of annoyances.
If you're doing this to save a few bucks before some phony deadline, remember it's the cheapskate who always ends up paying the most in the longs run.
Some points to consider:
First - Lets agree that Microsoft will make money on this deal. This company makes a lot of money, and not by free giveaways.
Second - Would it bother you that Microsoft could modify parts of the OS without your explicit consent?
Third - Would you be upset to find "free" parts of the OS accompanied with advertising unless you pay for "premium" service.
Fourth - Would you be concerned if it became nearly impossible to move your content to a different OS in the future.
Fifth - Is this a choice that you are freely making after exercising you own good critical judgement. Or are you being bullied into a decision by a marketing ploy.
Good luck!
I would say that you need to go into it knowing that Microsoft isn't making recurring license revenues off the Home and Pro versions of Windows anymore. Therefore, if you're on either one of these editions, the defaults will set you up for maximum data sharing and you should probably reduce this to the lowest level possible. The Enterprise version, which requires recurring revenue paid to Microsoft and is aimed at businesses, is the only edition that you can completely shut off the telemetry on. In Home and Pro, your usage data and eyeballs are what pay the bills. Savvy users should visit the Settings page and start turning that stuff off. If you're really serious about it, you should also configure your home firewall to block known telemetry traffic paths out of your network.
With the privacy restrictions in place, it's a good upgrade and runs well on most older systems as well. I actually like the fact that the Home edition is pretty much locked into updates, because most Home users frankly can't be bothered with keeping their computers up to date. I'd rather have systems like that secure than in a botnet, especially since most home users are running with administrator rights on their everyday account still (and will continue to do so after an upgrade.)
OP, you need some counselling. It's an operating system upgrade for fuck's sakes.
Privacy is non-negotiable. There will be a time, when privacy will be a status symbol.
Voluntarily giving it up is just nuts.
Pros:
Cons:
So yes it's worth upgrading, but no it's not quite ready yet. But you don't have to decide by July 29. You can upgrade to it, and r
I was initially a little wary of Windows 10 but when I started using it I was all right with it - for a while. It seemed to be stable, it ran the applications I needed (Pinnacle Studio and PaintShop Pro) and it seemed to be faster than Windows 7. Seemed like a good move for me.
But then I got a new computer with Windows 10 pre-installed. I thought, "great, now I can move my old computer to Linux like I planned and still run my important applications on the new one." Things were fine, until I realized that I was connected to the network without having entered my network password. And it knew my passwords on various websites that I had accessed with Edge. It knew how to access my bank, my social media - everything. Now, I am not a big fish by any means, but I do not like the idea of my passwords and keys being stashed on a server over which I have zero control.
Do I believe Microsoft will do Bad Things with that information? No, I don't. It's convenient to have it know what I need for me so I don't have to look it up. But, it's unnerving that they harvested that info without my knowledge. It also is unsettling to think that it's on a network computer somewhere.
On this basis alone I hesitate to recommend Windows 10.
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!
The likelihood I'll upgrade is inversely proportional to the urgency with which MS wants me to do so. If they're ramming it down my throat, it can't be for MY benefit, right? Besides, at work I use software which MUST run IE 10.
you won't be an early adopter, as it's been out for a year.
But ultimately you never stated what you use your computer for? For the average person, they shouldn't be using Windows anyways as Ubuntu will do everything they need to do, for free. However, I've been telling most home users to go get a Mac. I truly think for home use non-gamers there is no reason to purchase a windows based machine, none.
For gamers, unless you want to wait for a large system upgrade and buy Windows 10+ at the time, you really do want the update for DirectX. I updated my machine the day Win10 was released, and not once have I wished I hadn't.
I have about 4 or 5 PC's at home running Windows 7 (plus some virtuals and a work laptop) and none of them will ever see Windows 10. So far there is no reason to upgrade and plenty of reasons to stay away. At this point, I don't even want to learn anything more about it. I'll skip over it and scrutinize Windows 11 a bit closer when it comes out. But for now I'm treating Windows 8, 8.1, & 10 like I treated Vista. It's of no concern.
For those who want to keep Win7/8 but want to make sure they won't have to pay for WinX after the end of July, just grab a fresh HD/SSD and perform a WinX clean install instead of an upgrade of your existing system. Remove the HD/SSD and replug your old Win7/8 drive and keep the WinX install until January 14, 2020.
I hope I didn't brain my damage.
Lots of major UI frustration in 8 is now resolved. I've moved every Win machine I manage form 8 to 10 except my wife's machine that's still on 7 and she knows by heart - but that'll go soon too. It's the best touch-windows so far on some Surfaces I manage. Deny every last one of the reporting and sharing options that come up during / after install. Install Malwarebytes and AVG immediately. Spend a half hour removing the fluffware on the home screen and in the programs list. Then install the things that work well for you. It seems like the best unified Win experience since 2000 Pro.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
No way.
Can't remove software e.g. Store, Groove, Phone, XBox, etc. since it will break someone's notion of what a new user experience is.
Can't be sure privacy and other settings aren't changed after every 'system' update.
Can't be sure your telemetry/other encrypted data sent to Microsoft isn't being monetized.
Can't get away from the inevitable ads that are coming, in everything from start menu to stock apps.
Can't turn off Windows Updates.
Can't access C:\Program Files\WindowsApps without jumping security hoops.
Really the only decent thing I've tested lately is Server 2016 Tech Preview 5, but not Windows 10.
Number of Users: -3
Average Time Used Per Day: 27 Hours
Help Requests: Undefined
PC Hardware: 128K RAM, 1.44MB floppy and 6mHz CPU by Zilog
It's a documented fact that Microsoft has paid people to post positive comments about them online, so it must always be considered that any post defending or complimenting them might just be a shill.
Posts relying on over-the-top emotional appeal or random lists of feature that appear to be copy-pasted from promotional material are especially suspect, as they don't require much thought or effort and can be cranked out quickly.
"You have to know how to secure a Windows 10 PC"
Really, so how do you vet the source code when it's never available to you? You can't secure unknowns.
Whenever I think of HIV these days I, like so many others out there, immediately feel a swell of rage over the heavy-handed way the "disease" has been forced on me and so many others. I had to terminate one of my escorts that installed HIV over a weekend I was away, and as a result, I have been fending off the disease ever since. I find myself wondering if HIV is actually that bad. With the end of the "AIDS-free" disease period quickly coming to an end, my fiscally conservative side is starting to overwhelm my fear and distrust of all things new, and I'm wondering if it's time to take the suicidal-leap. I've been burned too many times for being an early adopter of something that proved to be an underdeveloped disease, but HIV has been around for long enough that I'm wondering if it might have it's kinks worked out.
I've been using Windows 10 since a few days after it came out. Now the things I won't even touch on here are any mention of telemetry or ads. Those points have been argued to death, resurrected, killed again, their graves salted, demons re-summoned, and then sprayed with holy water. If you haven't made up your decision about telemetry yet then chances are you don't care. I also won't mention the update policy. I'm not happy with it but I've made my peace with it.
In summary: The system is fast and solid but has some very annoying bugs, some worthless features, and really seems to lack polish.
Now to the system itself: ... I'll leave the but for the bad.
The good:
- It's fast. Seems to be snappier than Windows 7 and 8 on the same hardware.
- It's resource friendly, which kind of ties in to the above given that the machine I use it on has 4GB of RAM.
- It's stable except for the occasional truly bizarre bug. I mean I've never had it crash or bluescreen, but
- Input recognition (you may not care about this) is excellent. This is the first system which can actually quite accurately read my handwriting.
- Metro as the interface is invisible. If you don't enable tablet mode you don't see it. No more of this jarring movement between desktop and tablet mode just for hitting the start menu.
The okay:
- Metro is a bucket of shit. The concept itself was came up by a psychologist who doesn't understand the alphabetical order. The idea of being able to organise start menu items in square icons for maximum density is not compatible with the way our brains search for what to click on, regardless if the mouse movement is less.
- The metroish interfaces are equally buckets of shit. The replacement control panel is still not a replacement. That said the ability to quickly get through to critical parts of your system by a right click on the start item is fantastic.
- Some of the options are completely half-arsed. e.g. you want to hook a bluetooth network device to your laptop? Go to the settings panel, in through networks and bluetooth and pair. Then completely close that window and go find your devices (I say find since it's not longer a start menu option) and then you may find your bluetooth device and get given the option to pair as an access point. Now at this point you may think that it will ask you if you want to set this as a metered connection, but no. That is a feature reserved for WiFi connections as far as I can see.
- The default apps are garbage. While windows picture viewer on Windows 7 was at least able to display a picture, the way it loads the picture on windows 10 completely breaks large images if you zoom in (then it renders a higher res) and then zoom out again (now you have the original view with a aliased high resolution section of whatever you zoomed in on).
- The system is full of stupid bugs. e.g. when used with a tablet which is context aware as to if it's being used as a laptop it automatically locks the screen rotation. Okay makes sense you don't want to type with the screen sideways, but... it locks the screen rotation WITHOUT FIRST CHECKING THE ORIENTATION. This may sound like nothing but it's driving plenty of Surface Pro users mental. Use the tablet in vertical orientation while reading. Pack it away. Unpack it on the desk in a laptop setup and it's now stuck in the vertical orientation.
Basically the entire system is not full of showstoppers, but it really looks like it wasn't tested at all before release.
To the ugly:
- Not since Windows ME have I had a system inexplicably eat itself. Windows 10 has never crashed for me, not once, not across 4 devices, and not even with faulty hardware. However... it did one day just decide it needed to recover something. Tried auto recovery, nope. Tried manual recovery, nope. Tried a system restore (apparently this needs your bitlocker credentials which it was unable to get access too). Since this was a Surface Pro 3 I ended up downloading the system image from MS's website to do a comp
I plan on creating backup drives for my windows 7, 8 and 8.1 machines. That way I will have valid installs when the old OS is no longer supported. I will then continue to run my existing OS fir as long as I can.
If you really don't want to tie up a hard drive for this, make an image spanning DVDs.
No.
Next question...
So, you're angry with M$ and therefore their OS sucks? Sorry, that's not causation. If you're actually someone who should be reading "News for Nerds" you can like or dislike Win10 on it's own merits, not just what the company is doing.
First, privacy issues suck. Horribly. You can turn off many of them. A few others you need to turn of on a MS website. All of that is easy to find documented on the web. That doesn't get them all. Turning off Cortona and keeping it off takes a bit of work.
Upgraded three desktops and one laptop of various powers, purpose and pedigrees. All went easy. All kept my data and software. You need to be aware that buttons that they want you to push (such as setting up a MS account) look like buttons, and buttons they don't want you to push (like setting up a local account) look like links and sometimes take a few extra screens.
None of them had cutting edge hardware, including the laptop. If you are worried about that, flex your nerd-muscles and check it out first. Everything including integrated components on the laptop had drivers from either MS or the vendor.
Haven't blue-screened once on any of the four. I have had an issue where it closed a program because it was running out of memory, which was legitimate but still unexpected.
Performance has been fine including gaming, but I don't run anything ultra-intensive. Multi-monitor support has been fine. Updates can cause reboots overnight, but won't be a surprise unless you don't touch the machine for a week.
Start menu can be made more useful without needing 3rd party, but it's a bit of work to customize it. MUCH better then 8.1, slightly worse than 7.
Edge is better than IE, but who cares because who uses a MS browser?
If you have windows 8.1, upgrade. If you have windows 7 I'd say it's up to you, but your window for free upgrades is closing. Extended support for Win7 ends Jan 24, 2020. So that's 3.5 years. I wouldn't expect that Win10 will be replaced by then, so eventually it's going to be Win10 or a non-Windows OS. Up to you if you want to take the plunge now or in a few years. Considering how hard MS was pushing to get people up to Win10, I wonder how much support the older versions are going to get from 3rd parties for anything new coming out.
LITTLE GIRL: But which cookie will you eat FIRST? C. MONSTER: Me think you have misconception of cookie-eating process.
I recently bought an HP Spectre laptop that came preloaded with Windows 10, and overall I would rate it far above Windows 8, but slightly below Windows 7.
Some pros:
It works pretty well for the Spectre, which is a convertible touch-screen ultrabook - I think the tablet mode of Windows 10 works much better than anything Windows 7 could do. That said, >90% of my usage for the thing has been hooked up to a monitor acting as a desktop, with a minority of the time using it portably and even less time using it as a tablet.
I was pleasantly surprised to find a $50 credit to use in the Microsoft App store (not sure if that was part of the PC purchase or if it comes with Windows 10) and while the store isn't as well established as Android or Apple App stores, I got some pretty neat PDF apps, flowchart tools, drawing apps that use the touch screen, and some circuit-building stuff that would be handy if you're an electronics hobbiest. Many of those apps would be unavailable on Windows 7.
Cons:
The screen is moderately high-resolution, but a number of applications don't seem to handle that well. Something about Cleartext or anti-aliasing just doesn't work quite right, so I find myself forced to choose between text that is too small to read comfortably, or scaled-up text that looks atrocious.
For some reason, sleep and hibernate almost never work like they ought to... if I try to wake the machine up with a keypress, it will give no outward indication of activity for a minute or two, and then suddenly be ready to go. Or sometimes it won't, so I wait for two minutes, and then get irritated and do a hard restart.
Overall assessment: Windows 10 offers a few unique features for a laptop (particularly a convertible one), and if you have that sort of machine you'll probably appreciate that. For a desktop or normal laptop, I'd stick with Windows 7, though. 10 isn't horrible, but it certainly has some downsides and rough edges.
I'm still of the opinion it's too early. Most of the performance issues seem to be fixed (it no longer takes 2-10 seconds to get the notifications sidebar to appear, for example), but the system still crashes more often than Windows 7. There's the forced updates and autorebooting thing. And, of course, there's that security thing...
I would strongly suggest that if you migrate to Windows 10, you do it on a fast, high memory, machine. 8Gb should be considered the minimum.
On the other hand, if you're using a Skylake chipset, remember Microsoft has publicly announced it will only have limited Windows 7 support for that, so you may find yourself stuck with 10 anyway.
If you do install it, I would strongly advise you to install Windows 10 Professional, which is the least crippled "consumer" Windows. By "crippled" here, I mean "least likely to slow down to a crawl installing updates when you don't want it to, followed by an unavoidable-in-practice reboot. The options right now are:
- Insider Windows - free, but regular reboots and the installation of software that may literally never have been properly tested.
- Windows 10 Home - $100 or an existing Windows 7-8.1 Home license - automatically reboots at least once a week, and installs the latest version of everything whether you want it to or not.
- Windows 10 Pro - $200, or an existing 7-8.1 Pro license - only automatically reboots if it installs security updates that requires a reboot. You're not required to install the latest version of everything, only security updates.
I would hold off until late June, then install Windows 10 Pro. Install all updates. Turn off the privacy invading options. Turn off Cortana. Select "Notify to Install" and "Defer upgrades" in Settings -> Update and Security -> Windows Update -> Advanced Options. And remember: you can revert back within a month of the install if it turns out to be a terrible mistake.
10 looks nice, but it was rushed out, and it shows.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I only have to outrun you, not Microsoft.
Windows 10 makes Windows 8 look positively lovely.
but man, is that win 10 update slow, compared to 7. other than that it's still win xp in new clothes with the traditional but completely useless extra layer of ui-complexity.
WinOS 10 is not so much an operating system as it is a thin client designed to control a product.
The product is you.
Twice as crazy as I would be if I was half as crazy as I am.
I have a Dell 11.6" laptop that came with Win10. It's mostly used by my wife to check weather forecasts each morning when we're traveling (she has an iPhone, but for reasons understood only by her she prefers the laptop for this purpose). I did install Mint (dual-boot) on this little system, but I rarely feel the need to boot into it other than to keep it updated.
We also have two Win7 desktops and a Win7 laptop in the house. I have no plans to "upgrade" them to Win10, as they fulfill our needs as they are. Updates are set to "let me see them before they're downloaded" on all of them to avoid an unintended upgrade.
Yes, definitely upgrade to Windows 10.
Windows 10 requires internet, and since you will be paying an internet bill to use your computer, you will also have access to store all your private files, emails, passwords, access points passwords on Microsoft servers for when your current disposable windows 10 computer expires and you pick up another windows 10 computer at your local walmart.
In the pro audio world some device driver are slow to catch up and machines are used in mission critical (live event) situations. These two reasons are why I will not update from Windows 7 until I have too.
1) Auto updating of the system can't be turned off
2) Driver and vendor support for applications
Sorry Microsoft not everyone using your operating systems are desktop jockies.
I did an in-place upgrade soon after it became available. I was impressed with how well it worked. I turned off things like Cortana and I went digging to shut off the notifications tray. Since then I haven't really done any big tinkering with it and it's worked well for my day to day use. I did play with adding a list of MS DNS names to my DNS block list on my router to try to cut down on the stats gathering. No idea how much that has or hasn't helped.
First off, telemetry and tracking are not the same thing. Many applications do telemetry, and it's primarily around improving quality. I know this because as a consultant I see a lot of codebases, and no, they rarely ask for permission. Railing against reality is a bit Quixotic; take a deep breath and move on.
And yes I would recommend a Win 7 -> Win 10 upgrade. The Ctrl-Esc experience is simply superior overall, faster boot, storage spaces for the techies, better multi-monitor experience, and obviously my Surface Pro (8.1 -> 10 is a no-brainer) would be nigh unusable without touch support. Also, since I use a lot of VMs, I like my settings and and apps following me around. Given the imminent release of proper long file name support, the upgrade becomes even more compelling to the javascript crowd.
Let's see...
- Start menu won't open from time to time, or it waits a couple of seconds before it opens.
- Sometimes it boots quickly TO THE DESKTOP, other times it takes forever. BUT, when the desktop is there, it's by no means done thrashing. It does that for about 5 minutes, all the while the system is very unresponsive.
- Doesn't give a damn about my privacy.
- Forces a one, true, buggy way of doing things on you.
- No driver support for my 5 year old laptop. Which results in such wonderful things like:
- black lines flying over my screen.
- and if that wasn't enough, it varies the lines with an occasional crash.
Here's the one, ONE good thing of windows: notepad++, and that isn't even Microsoft's work.
I'm going to move to Linux and get rid of Windows. I'm sure Linux is a lot better for my aging system.
Since I have upgraded to Windows 10 I find myself saying this was working in Windows 7, why did they break it. Here is a a brief list of what does not seem to be working in Windows 10:
* WiFi - I had to buy a USB to Ethernet adapter because the WiFi connection on my Surface Book was so unreliable. It just doesn't connect like it used to on any wireless device.
* It used to be that what you saw was what you got. Now, especially in photographs, it is not! Microsoft seems to feel this is a feature!?!
* Security is a nightmare. You never know if you are sharing or not. You also don't know what you are sharing
* The requirement that you use your Microsoft e-mail leads to confusion on upgraded systems. Additionally you can't (easily) install apps across all computer ID's.
* Wallpaper used to be poor, now it is worse. You have to have all your photos in ONE directory! In the old days you could recurse through subdirectories.
* No clear easy way to reorder programs (it used to be a directory folder structure now I can't find it)
* "At a glance" and "Play and explore" are not all that user friendly nor easily modified and changed.
* "Most used" is too small by a factor or two or more.
This is just off the top of my head. I am sure if I thought about it I could double this list.
I tried everything. Reinstalled driver, searched via Google, and so on and so forth. Nothing helps. Ethernet card keeps disconnecting about four - five times per day. I did not have this problem with Windows 8.
Settings windows on W10 are kind of touch-screen, but it is a notebook where I cannot touch screen at all. Besides W10 is slow. I stopped indexing but it is still slow.
The only good thing is the return of Start button, but again for some reason Search&Run is not in the Start, but nearby, and it does not memorize previous entries.
In my opinion, Bill Gates has to return back to Microsoft and put Windows back on the right track.
More fool, you.
I use it on my work laptop, which I also take home and sometimes use if I want to do something in Windows. Saves having to go hide away from the family on my bootcamped Mac Pro.
I think the main reason people go nuts over the data collection is because it's Microsoft....nevermind the fact that they probably have Facebook and Google accounts - for the record, I don't have an issue with either of these companies either and use services from both.
In this day and age, there is no privacy online. Don't kid yourself. What you can control is what you make available. And there's always a choice, if you don't like the terms, don't use the service.
For me....Windows 10 is fast, stable and has a few extra enhancements that I like over older versions of Windows. The store is also being cleaned up and expanding, and universal apps are interesting to me. It came bundled with the laptop....and I have one other PC that's eligible for a free upgrade before the end of July which I'll be taking advantage of too.
Door #1: perfectly fine Windows 7 + somewhat tolerable EULA
Door #2: barely improved Windows 10 + "improved" EULA
Microsoft's Windows 10 is a privacy nightmare
First there is the hit to your TCO to have to read and digest this. Then there's the hit to your TCO to research defense against the dark arts (which usually proves to be a moving target). Then there's the hit to your TCO when someone tells you that Microsoft subsequently softened this language, but you're doubtful they softened it all that much, only it's too painful to contemplate having to check it out again so you wallow in rational ignorance until the end of time, a mononucleosis of self-determination.
Don't go there. You deserve better.
No.
W10 fails to offer sufficiently useful functionality improvements over previous versions of windows.
W10 is indistinguishable from malware.
Microsoft has proven it is not a trustworthy software vendor having successfully demonstrated to the world it will do anything it can possibly get away with to deliberately force, mislead and cow people into doing what it wants.
I don't trust Microsoft.
win10 is a better OS than 8.. but not 7
GWX is the first in a long line of insults and privacy breaches. I no longer trust MacroShit.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
... you work in I.T. as many here do if not the vast majority. Windows 10 offers much better:
1. power usage,
2. security,
3. mobile features like Netflix and Pandora apps which are nice on a thin tablet or netbooks like my MS Surface. I hate using a browser for these. Even my desktop I use these to watch Star Trek TOS while I work on something on another monitor.
4. virtual desktops
5. run javascript better (even Google's and Firefoxes) better than 7
6. VIsual Studio 2015 community edition offers Android SDK, Linux development with Apache Cordova and other features only on 10.
7. You get 10 more years free OS support as 7 will join XP soon in the after light with win98SE
8. Fast updates to bug fixes with more agile development
9. Hyper-V is free with the professional edition if you are still on 7. Yes you can run Linux Vm's too on it without the nasty type-2 hypervisor VMware Workstaiton which is $$$ (nice for linux geeks like us)
There are downsides too which I will get to next.
First off let me summarize slashdot's view of anti WIndows 10:
1. Slashdot HATES Microsoft and views them as a competitor. Nothing can ever come good from many comments
2. Windows 10 hate ala SystemD style hate started here because it was fashionable and moderators selected the most anti Windows 10 comments
3. Other sites like Neowin.net have the exact opposite views
4. Most IT folks here after 40 HATE CHANGE. Read anything about systemD, WIndows 7 (fpre 2014), or anything else?
5. Tinfoil hat folks who think Cortana means MS must be privately reading all their documents and giving it to competitors and advertisers while they use Google Chrome and Google Android phones and think nothing of it at the same time
6. Updates must break 100% of all components 100% of the time and you will turn them off and with mcAffee you will never ever get infected even with java and flash installed?!
All these things combined together give the evolution of the worst disaster in OS history is upon un!!
If you have the professional edition of Windows 7/8.1 you will get the professional edition of WIndows 10 which you can control updates.Wind
Reasons Windows 10 may not be the best yet:
1. Windows 10 was a HORRIBLY buggy OS last August and still has some flaky issues. It is nowhere near WIndows 7, 8.1 and feels like Vista SP 1 as of current right now. The April update fixes lots of bugs on my desktop and made it usable.
2. You NEED updates to get the bug fixes. Build 2400 was terrible at launch.
3. SOme of the updates had issues. I never experienced them. As more hardware is out that must support 10 the problem seems to be going away
4. The GUI is Schzophrenic. Do you click ok? Or not. Is this a hamburger menu or a win32 control panel app?
5. Privacy concerns as does this stuff get transmitted even with Cortana off (I have it turned off)
6. Ugly white title bars. You have to turn this off
7. Some hardware and software not supported
Anyone want to feel free to reply?
http://saveie6.com/
http://bit.ly/1spoAwT
...so Windows 10 would be a downgrade. Thanks, but no thanks.
It does not matter that "I do not like the idea of my passwords and keys being stashed on a server over which I have zero control." Various levels of law enforcement find it extremely convenient that the credentials to access your computer, other devices, and online services are now stored by an entity that they can gag with NSLs. The Black Hats like it too.
Have fun with that.
Look Microsoft is not giving Windows 10 away for free and foisting it on everyone for no good reason. You are the product in Windows 10. They are going to collect your data and use it to serve you ads and possibly sell it to third parties. If you try and disable some of the services that do this they will rename the service and re-enable it with a non optional automatic update see here if you think I am joking http://bgr.com/2015/12/01/windows-10-privacy-preferences/ It's not your computer anymore and you exist at Microsoft's whim. Go ahead and update. Their main goal is to be able to tell advertisers they have a billion devices on which they can serve ads. By the way live tiles ar ads in case you have not figured that out.
See subject: BOTH Windows & closed source? No. You ALL know why (look @ what MS does via telemetry & "forced" update (deceitful bs based on desperation imo))... you have your answer WHY I said this.
* I absolutely KNOW MS is 'dropping the ball' - only REAL question is, is why...
APK
P.S.=> They're breaking a fundamental successful tenet of sales, & that is giving folks what they WANT (heck, need is even better) - they're NOT doing that... & that = dumb (on the surface). I suspect & yes, maybe I am "paranoid" or being a "conspiracy nut" here, but, knowing how SHIFTY business types are (no soul heartless killers)? I truly suspect they are DEVALUING MS STOCK just to get it to drop, do MORE "corporate buyback" (not just to artificially inflate stock value temporarily & in tiny amounts only), but to FINALLY release a GOOD VERSION again (to clean up, BIGTIME, once they floor stock value enough & they "re-own" all the dumped stock... call it a 'hunch' based on the nature of the beasts (& I do mean mindless beasts) in control called "MBA's")... apk
Are you running Windows 7?
Yes - Goto A
No - Upgrade to Windows 10 (Honestly in all ways Windows 10 is better than Windows 8/8.1)
A) Do you need DirectX 12?
Yes - Upgrade to Windows 10
No - Goto B
B) Do you need to test in Edge?
Yes - I guess you better install Windows 10, but maybe after a installing, install Windows 7 in a dual boot for actual work
No - Stay on Windows 7
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
I was thinking about updating one of my machines to Win 10. A machine that usually only the kids used for browsing and other simple stuff. Then I realized that for my situation at hand, a Chromebook would be a much better option.
Why go into all that Win 10 nonsense if the machine is only going to be used to watch Netflix, go on Instagram or pull up homework for school?
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
I'd agree with the "dozen qualifiers" analysis, FWIW. The main reason to "update" to Windows 10, such as it is, is that the support period will be longer than that of Windows 7.
(I'm assuming OP is considering an update from Windows 7, the last good version of Windows... if you have Windows 8.x for some reason, the by all means, go ahead and go to 10.)
Be ware that virtually everything new in Windows 10 is a downgrade from Windows 7, though, and you'll need to do a lot of unchecking defaults and turning off things to get it into a reasonable state. You may also find yourself annoyed, as I was, with the extra click-throughs and confusing UI with control panel items before you can get to the actual controls, the non-intuitive and frustrating behavior of UAC, and the extra advertising spam in the OS. Also, most of the touted new features will be inaccessible without giving all your data to MS (eg: no MS account login, no integrated anything).
Chrome and MS office started to crash periodically after forced upgrade from Windows 7.
Both of these were rock solid on Windows 7.
Chrome does something similar between machines once you log into chrome...
I use my home desktop primarily for leisure.
I have disabled or blocked the telemetry. This costs me a few features like Cortana and predictive text entry. If you like those features enough on your phone to send similar data to Apple or Google, it might be worth leaving it enabled on your PC. With a full keyboard and mouse, I don't see the point.
Games are going to benefit tremendously by moving from Direct X 10/11 to Direct X 12, and Windows 10 is the only OS that will support it. I would like to see UWP applications take off since it's based on better security model than Win32, so hopefully that will happen but it's not guaranteed. Technically, the Windows Store is also available on 8/8.1, but I'm skeptical about how much longer those versions will see new features.
If you're into those features, the upgrade is a no-brainer. If not, then it's not terribly important aside from end-of-life concerns for your current OS.
My upgrades went smoothly on a home-built PC and a laptop. There is a pre-installation compatibility wizard, though, so pay attention to it. All of my apps and hardware scanned green, so I expected smooth sailing. I don't use resident antivirus software, however, and I might suggest removing it temporarily if you do decide to upgrade---this used to be a major cause of problems.
On the enterprise side, the new security features make Windows 10 an absolute necessity if you have a functioning brain---but most of these "under the hood" changes offer little to home users. Still, Bitlocker and SecureBoot should be enabled if you are not dual-booting to another OS on that machine.
---
According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
What the... ? Did Microsoft ask your permission before hoovering your sensitive (and potentially expensive) credentials? I've already decided never to near Windows 10, but this reinforces my decision a hundredfold.
It all comes down to CHOICE, and how Microsoft is unilaterally deciding that you don't get one anymore, with hardware YOU OWN.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
With a bit of changing permission to get rid of a lot of the features that Microsoft uses to collect data. Turned off Cortana. Now my Windows 10 looks like 8.1 with a better start menu. Of course I don't have any documents that i need to worry about Microsoft snooping. For home I think its a win. For bushiness its a risk so the recommendation id make is different for each scenario
Hold off on switching to Windows 10 until you build a PC for some future game with a graphics card where DirectX 12 matters.
Hopefully by then fixing all the security issues that Microsoft has intentionally introduced will be easier. The time to do this depends on the sort of gamer you are, maybe you will do such an upgrade a year from now.
My hope is that eventually the SteamOS platform will be a viable option for most gamers as Vulkan support becomes more widespread. Then perhaps game engines will spend their time trying to squeeze performance out of Vulkan instead of DX12. If that fantasy ever becomes reality, then Windows 7 will be the last version of Windows I use.
(disclaimer: if you have different requirements and constraints than I do, your answers to these questions will obviously be different)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Why would you trust someone (i.e., Microsoft), who's already so forceful, aggressive, and down-right bullying for the upgrade to be any less forceful, aggressive, and down-right bullying in the product they are trying to give you the upgrade for?
Like a former manager said, "You can't fix stupid," meaning - in this context - that what Microsoft has already accomplished in terms of insulting, bullying, and acting disrespectful towards its patrons is a mentality and practice that it can't go back on because its already ingrained into its company culture, its worst [not "best"] practices, and its mode of operating.
Good rule-of-thumb: shun and get away from the bully. There's Linux, there's Mac,... you've got options.
Upgrade to OS X. Or to Linux.
Microsoft treats you like shit. Wake the fuck up.
Love it.
Do it.
When installing/upgrading, make sure to click customize settings and look at all the privacy settings.
I'll admit it, I'm a Microsoft fan. I actually like Windows 10 (with classic shell). I really loved Windows Phone 8 and 8.1. Really great, snappy, easy to use interfaces with default settings that made sense.
But stay away from Windows Phone 10. On both the phones I updated it basically ruined them. They are incredibly slow, have trouble keeping a data connection, and use the battery up quickly. We're not talking budget phones, either, one Lumia 735 and another an 820. It might be different on devices with OEM installs, but don't update.
I loaded Win 10 on my system when it first came out, no problems. I didn't like the aero display was gone, but there was a registry hack to put it back.
About 3 months ago my SSD died, so I replaced it with a new one (same size, same brand) and a new video card (from a gtx 660 to a gtx 960), and now it won't install, the exact message is vague...but I googled it and it doesn't like one of my sata drives. I'm not unplugging all of my drives just to install windows 10...forget that.
Here is what I tell the clients I support (most of whom are older and definitely not gamers):
If you have Windows 7, you already have the most reliable version of Windows ever made. It will keep getting security updates until 2020, so there's really no need to upgrade to Windows 10, especially if you have any privacy concerns. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
If you have Windows 8 or 8.1, you should upgrade to Windows 10 because it's way more reliable, and also gets rid of the user interface problems that most users seem to hate. The Windows 10 kernel is based on Windows 7, which is why it's so much more stable than 8 / 8.1.
In either case, you may need Classic Shell if you want a Start menu that still has the Control Panel on it. But even without Classic Shell, the Windows 10 Start menu is a huge improvement over the horribly infuriating "Start screen" from Windows 8 / 8.1.
I just upgraded from 8.1 a few days ago, b/c I decided it was way better for me to take the time and do it myself, so I could turn off page after page of things I didn't want - not just snooping stuff but Edge and Photo installed by default - then wake up one morning and have it installed. Basically they scared me into doing it myself. But at least it was done during my leisure time, after I backed up everything I wanted backed up to an external HDD. And I paid very close attention to everything it was doing. So far, knock on wood, no problems. Now it's just a home PC for my kids to mess around on, it's not a business machine, so I wan't too worried, but I do feel a weight has been lifted by it being done. That was the biggest thing for me, it's done.
All those years my first thing on a fresh Windows machine was to turn off Windows mf Update. I turn WU once a month when I have time for this laggy shit. In Windows 10 you have no control over WU. This is F**KED UP, people. Windows 7 til EOL.
If you like bugs, viruses, and wear a tinfoil hat then stick with Windows 7, on the other hand if you don't like those things and don't believe Microsoft to be the Grand Poobah of the Illuminati then definitely upgrade to Windows 10. The only actual downside to Windows 10 are the forced system updates which can reboot your system without your consent if you don't pay close attention to the update settings.
-==- Buy a Mac and leave me alone!
Don't tell them to install classic crap, teach them to right-click the Start menu to open the Control Panel.
New machine new OS, old machine old OS.
Having done windows 10 upgrades on all 6 PC's I have say that it doesn't always work out of the box so to speak. The last PC I upgraded didn't go as planned.
Windows 10 decided not to install drivers for my GFX card and the sound card would hang making loud annoying sounds.
But a visit to the nvidia website fixed the graphics problem and re-installing the sound drivers using the windows 8.1 driver worked a treat.
Saying no to 90% of the questions is always a good idea (those are the questions that you get if you choose not to go with the express defaults)
I had to re-install the win8.1 webcam driver too. But then everything worked.
Startup is about 3 seconds faster 10 seconds as apposed to 13 seconds to boot (from grub boot screen to windows) - My PC is dual boot and is running an SSD.
Copying from SDcard to my NAS (windows 8.1) 1.2MB/s (Windows 10) 56MB/s (linux 4.6) 48MB/s So that is well fast in windows 10.
Games seem to work as well as on windows 8.1.
It its annoying how microsoft do all they can to make you sign in with a micrsoft account. You can get round it by choosing Create account, then choosing don't use a microsoft account.
... when they were offering a 'free' beta trial over the internet, which would secretly send a full file listing of your hard disk back to Microsoft. At the time, this did not get a lot of coverage. I have always been amazed that such things are so easily forgotten.
Use the professional edition. At least.
I've used Microsoft products since DOS Shell. Helped administrate Windows 3.11 in high school. What most people forget: Windows 98 was fine for usability, but larger concerns like security weren't addressed until 2000. Windows 2000 was built on NT's architecture, NT being their business platform -- server and client.
Home users are treated poorly, business users, not so much. Windows 10 Group Policy Editor fixes most of the annoyances. Home Edition Users... good luck with that.
What's wrong with my current XP setup?
(running sand-boxed in VM Ware)
Maybe upping to 7 or 8 off of ebay might be wise...
I'm expecting to have to support it, so I went the Insider route on a tablet PC I have that didn't work for me with Windows 8. Happy enough with the results. I haven't yet found a program that doesn't work. I even got a Windows Phone (Lumia 640) a year ago, because I was bored of Android. That's running W10 too, and I haven't regretted it. (The "no apps" whining is largely bogus: half or more of the apps people complain about Windows Phone not having are basically websites in app form: just use the mobile website instead.)
I've supported Windows Server systems for years, and long wondered when someone was going to do an Internet-based Single Sign-On (SSO) service like a Windows Domain. That's basically what M$ did, though understandably feature-limited. No "roaming profiles": too bandwidth-intensive, and it might not be necessary in a "cloud" world.
I consider Microsoft to be on "probation", how they behave will determine whether I stick with Windows. From a career point of view, I might even go for W10 certification, just to be ahead of the curve - it wouldn't be a major pain to do, in my opinion. If they screw it up, I can still get work done on Linux. I'm not so "invested" in Windows that I would get upset either way.
(this is not a
Blame Apple for this shit!
This is just "me too" shenanigans and should not be supported.
Any tax avoiders should pay for infrastructure.
It's the best OS they've made yet for tablets, laptops, and desktops. There's lots of fud on here about why it's evil but there's really very few real reasons not to just get it as long as your hardware supports it.
None of that shit happened to me. I bought a digital download version off Microsoft's own store, fresh install.
Where is Windows 10 advertising at you? Mine just annoys me with updates every few weeks.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
I actually like Win10 (privacy/telemetry issues aside), and it's the first MS OS I've actually been (mostly) impressed with since NT 3.51 (which was solid as a rock.)
But the main reason I would want to upgrade any machine I can is that once installed and activated, you can re-install Windows with the download ISO image from Microsoft. That means you can take a crapware laden OEM piece of shit, upgrade to Windows 10, wipe it and reinstall a virgin Windows 10 with no further activation issues, no OEM crapware.
Posting anonymously. Microsoft (Windows division) fired some testers and made the rest work on internal tools rather than actually testing. Also, updates are now being shipped to 10% of the userbase untested (you read that right), and telemetry is the only way MSFT can tell which updates are good and which hose machines so they don't push them to the rest of their beta testers... ahem... users. It used to be that a service pack underwent 6 months of rigorous testing, including for compatibility with various software and hardware, but now the testing is being done by the users themselves. Statistically, all Windows 10 users will be patch beta testers at some point or another, and that's the reason why updates and telemetry are mandatory.
This is what happens when you give your workstation OS to a guy who considers it a "client" and has only worked on the server side before.
So your complaint with Windows 10 is that it makes setting up a new computer too easy? Interesting.
- It is stable.
- Receives most developer attention at Redmond.
IMHO there are actually three reasons, but the two main ones are:
* Bitlocker (nearly everyone can use this now, not just Enterprise licenced users)
* Getting rid of the Get Windows 10 annoyances
Once you have Windows 10 activated on a system it is easier to re-install it* (as long as the Motherboard and CPU are the same), but for most users this doesn't matter. For those who upgrade components this restriction could really come back to bite MS.
The third reason is potentially longer update / support lifetime. However many users that are upgrading probably need to replace their computer before Windows 7/8 die off anyway.
Schill.
Sorry, I don't know enough different ways to say "NO" to fill an interesting post.
I had an Asus netbook I'd bought for my daughter that had Windows 8 on it. It was so slow it was hardly usable. I upgraded it to Win10 and it became pleasantly usable. The UI is responsive and HD video runs fine.
If you're on Win7, it may not be compelling, but for the travesty that Win8 was, it's definitely better.
Where can I buy a barge pole?
Just.. no.
Which part of "No" does MicroSoft require further clarrfication ?
I upgraded my seldom-used gaming and occasional-windows-tasks rig from Win 7 to Win 10. I've not signed up to any MS accounts. I've uninstalled all the MS stuff that I could. I opted out of everything I could find. The only annoying thing that's happened was a suggestion today on the Start Menu that I install the Facebook App. I disabled suggestions (either suggestions are a new feature, or it re-enabled itself). Some snooping stuff appears to be have been backported from 10 to 7 so I don't know if sticking to 7 will save you that much in that department.
So is there any point to Win 10? Have the virtual desktops built into the OS with a cludgy add-on program is nice. For some reason Cygwin install always failed for me on Win 10. I gave up because it's not worth the hassle right now. However, it seems that a native Bash terminal is about to appear in Windows 10, which is pretty awesome. The UI is oddly ugly. Other than that, I don't really notice any major differences between 7 and 10. But then, I don't use Windows heavily.
soylentnews.org
It works fine for almost everything I do
Definitely turn off all of the "Metro" crap, and uninstall as much of it as possible
Turn off cortana and as much tracking as possible. Usability telemetry is fine with me, as long as it doesn't lead to crappy spam ads
I only had one problem..Solidworks 2013 doesn't run reliably. So, I have a win 8.1 bootable drive for it, (with grc "never10")..bit of a pain
This discussion will eventually become moot, as MS more and more aggressively forces win 10
First off I recommend upgrading to 10. It runs better especially on lower ram systems, and there is definitely improvements in app performance and startup.
That being said, these are the issues I've run into upgrading users to 10
1) Update your BIOS! Especially if its a Laptop: There are issues with the screen going black after updating to 10 that are caused by an outdated BIOS, especially on older Dell Vostro and some ASUS systems. If you forget chances are you can get a screen by plugging in a monitor but update the BIOS to avoid it in the first place.
2) if you have IDT audio installed on your PC, remove the driver NOW from programs and features!: Older Versions of this driver is FUBARed and will cause explorer to crash infinitely while it is migrating your profile, which will screw it up to the point where you will have to rollback to 7. Cheap Dells, HP's and Toshiba's usually have this sound card. 10 Will detect it as a HD audio codec and will work fine without the crashing, or use the latest 8.1 driver if your manufacturer actually has one. Not sure why MS doesn't detect this as incompatible during its check.
3) Windows update on windows 7 will screw you out of time: Windows update is so FUBARed on 7. it alone is a reason to upgrade to 10. I've found the best way to update from 7 is to install windows 10 setup to a flash drive, keep the upgrading system off the network until you see the installing windows circle, and open a administrative command prompt and "net stop wuauserv" about every 5 minutes during install. This will cut load times down significantly cause the install process will start a windows update session every 5 minutes and with win7 taking about 2 hours a checkin the above will get 10 installed in minutes rather than hours
4) Profiles may not migrate on first run and run temporary profile: Seems to happen to a lot of 2010-2011 HP units for some reason. Boot with safe mode and the profile should fix itself although the start menu will be clean of Squares.
5) Wifi card goes AWOL after Shutdown/Sleep: See this one constantly with 2013-2015 Dell laptops with a dell customized broadcom driver. Some people say removing the Dell driver altogether and using the 10 driver works but YMMV also the latest Dell driver does not fix this issue. I typically disable fast startup and Wifi Power saving options to get around this one but it will still happen from time to time.
6) Start menu and/or Windows store/control panel disappears or will not load: running tweaking.com all in one repair with all checks enabled and leave the system on overnight seems to fix this one. also reseting default apps may get this one fixed. if it doesn't fix after doing the above than use your win10 Stick to reinstall Win10 as an upgrade install.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
The only and I mean only reason to upgrade to Windows 10. Just like every other Windows upgrade, ever. Is due to games and the artificial restricted ability to use whatever latest DirectX API they force on you and the dumbass developers that continue to use this shit .
Literally, the only reason to upgrade Windows. Ever. To continue child's play.
Bad enough I have to use adblock to browse the web, But needing an ad block for using your operating system...
What most people forget when upgrading:
Are all their favorite programs or Apps "Fully Compatible" with the new Windows?
Do a little research before you commit, and you should be OK.
Also worth the thought and effort:
Make a comprehensive Backup of your system before you start, and have an Escape Plan in place if you want/need to roll back to your previous version.
Finally, if you pull that trigger, be prepared for a learning curve.
There are a lot of articles about the new Windows out there. Look them up! Things to enable, things to disable, things to just plain be aware of, features you may want to access and things you will want to uninstall completely.
Here are a few (hopefully) useful links:
http://lifehacker.com/what-win...
http://lifehacker.com/the-best...
http://lifehacker.com/how-to-c...
And something you might also want to consider: Buy a new HD (or even that SSD you've been wanting, and do a Clean Install of Windows 10. Here's a URL for the How-To:
http://lifehacker.com/how-to-d...
Sorry for all the Plain Text stuff. Anyone that has a bit of tech savvy will still be able to use these easily. After all, this is SlashDot.
And, yes, these are all from Lifehacker. As you can see, that source alone has a lot to reference. The internet itself is a huge resource. I have every confidence that the folks here can access even more if they put their minds to it. Just remember the basics of System Safety, have more than a few grains of salt ready and Play Nice out there, and you should be more than ready to upgrade when you actually feel the increasing pressure from Uncle Bill's minions!
Enjoy!
The best thing you can do to Microsoft is adopt their new OS and then use a decrapify script (easilly found on pastebin via google) and run the script in powershell. The script adds the telemetry and callhome servers to your hosts file as well as strips Onedrive and removes adds from your start bar. I'm a gamer and I will end up needing DX12, and like having the XBone streaming and such, but fuck me if I'm going to let Microsoft collect my data as a revenue stream. This way I get their product that they so desperately wanted me to have for free, and don't have to spend a fortnight removing stuff and tinkering with the OS in order for it to work how I want it.
I won't upgrade because I don't like the way it looks. It's aesthetically unappealing.
If you are running 7, 8, 8.1 and don't care about Media Center (you know who you are) and don't depend on the parental controls, knock yourself out and install 10 if you want too. I'm no windows fan (actually quite the opposite) but if you are running an older version of windows and won't loose support for some necessary application by moving up, by all means go for it, if for no other reason than to stay with the OS which will be supported the longest. I will warn you that a couple of things change in the UI and a number of things have moved around (to varying degrees) since 7, but it's not that hard to make the change.
However, be warned that they took away a couple of things that I've noticed. Windows Media Center is gone after 8.1, if you use it, there are no other fully compatible replacements which can record and play protected content that I know of (yet). Also, I was upset to find out that they ripped out a lot of the parental controls which used to come standard and which where useful for limiting access times for my kids. There may be other solutions for this now if you really needed it but my kids where getting old enough it didn't matter.
Stay up with the times, let it install....
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
The start menu
the store
Edge
Calculator
Account administration
In these cases the only solution is either create a new account or reinstall windows. (Which creates a new account.) The standard advice (sfc /scannow and dism) did not fix it.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
I dont consider this program is valid at all and could be breaking some laws.
I purchased a specific Windows 8 licence for a VMware Fusion virtual machine. Free 'upgrade' promotion starts, I create a backup clone and upgrade it. What do I see? Microsoft Windows 10 does not support VMware video cards and therefore you cannot receive this upgrade.
So, fast forward 9 months and the same error message is still present. VMware has been around for 16 years, if not longer. And Microsoft still does not support vmware virtual video cards and wont provide a free upgrade to your VM.
So why is this an upgrade policy?
My other beef with Win10 is there is a nice "enterprise" bug I keep hitting where I add a fresh win10 device to a win2012r2 domain and M$ .net applications stop working. The exact steps look like: add to domain, reboot, login with any account, Windows10 then runs its first desktop launch step, which fails to finish successfully and leaves you on a Win10 desktop that you cannot use the new .NET applications with. Click any .net app and receive a old looking error message dialogue box complaining that .net is corrupted.
Right now the safe bet is buy a mac. They live longer than other laptops.
It is called "putting lipstick on a pig". When you get down to it all M$ ever does is put new window dressing on the same rotten core, move things around a bit, and resell it. Very little ever actually improves. In fact, just as often things get worse instead, e.g a feature is removed. The only real exception is probably DirectX, and of course drivers which have to be constantly updated b/c there are too few good standards and peripheral makes can't stand using the same part for more the three months b/c it might cost them a penny more.
:T:R:A:N:S:
If I do my latop will die about 4 days after install. Frerezes and everything else it can do to not boot.
I have attempoted to use it 4 times. All 4 times, about the 4rd or 4th day freezes and lag and evetually I can no longer boot into windows.
F windows 10.
ALT F4 them.
Had Win 8.1 on this laptop for a good year and a half before I got tricked into the Win10 update. Win 8.1 was solid has hell once I de-metro'd it. Win10 is flakey as hell. Move a window, release the wrong button first, window goes full screen. My taskbar currently shows I'm in airplane mode even though my wifi works fine (it also shows airplane mode when I put it in airplane mode). Sometimes I have to disable the firewall to print wirelessly. The fingerprint reader takes a dump every 2-3 days, requiring a reboot to get it back. Uptime is less than a week due to either an update or something important like explorer crashes. It will update/reboot in the middle of the night, when the laptop is closed.
PS 1: Not I never mentioned the telemetry BS. It's a lot of work keeping that crap turned off.
PS 2: The update/reboot in the middle of the night with the laptop closed is the real deal killer for me. Microsoft. You don't know what the fuck I'm doing. You do not reboot my machine without an explicit "Yeah, you can reboot now" from me. None of this scheduling bullshit. When you want to reboot put an icon in my taskbar to remind me, I'll reboot when I'm not running something that takes 3 days to finish, or am not in the middle of having 4 tabs in a web browser, a spreadsheet open, and an editor open where I'm actually writing something.
PS 3: Yes, I mean I got tricked into the upgrade. I clicked on a "Yes" box, but between the time my brain said "Yes" and my finger clicked the mouse button the dreaded "Pssst, hey bud. Wanna try Win10?", with that nasty window grabbing my mouse focus. Once it started I was afraid to stop it.
Of course that's his complaint. You did notice he said he was using pinnacle and psp? What year is it? 1998? That right there is an old dog not wanting to learn new tricks and instead is chasing you whippersnappers off his goddamned lawn.
Aside from having specific requirements - like using a tool or playing a game that only runs on Windows - I'd recommend moving away from Windows. There is nothing Windows can offer that other systems can't offer better or cheaper or both at the same time. Chromebooks, Macs or a Linux PC are very often the better choice in a given area of usage.
Windows 2000 was the last Windows Version I used personally. I run into Windows every day at work and I honestly see no point. It's proprietary, costs money and exists for the sole purpose of attaching an expiration date to all your digital stuff. ... Perhaps the new Microsoft Hardware, like those neat Surface Laptops might be an additional reason to stick to or "upgrade" your Windows. But then again, with my Lenovo Tablet I get 18 hrs. of battery life and it costs a fraction of those shiny new MS portables.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
If you're currently running Win 8, probably yes to the upgrade. No real downside, some upside.
Upgrading from Windows 7 is a more complex question. I did upgrade one of my Win 7 machines and have not had any issues, but that machine is configured pretty simply. Specifically, no games, just Office and Visual Studio, etc.
My other Win 7 machines are used mostly for game playing by family members and are more in the "it ain't broke, so don't fix it" category.
If you're not ready to commit to Windows 10 yet, I would recommend getting your machine registered within the free period, then revert to the previous version.
There are 2 ways to do this:
1. Upgrade your existing OS, then roll back. Obviously this has some risks in terms of drivers, etc.
2. Clean install Win 10 on a different partition/drive, using the product key from your existing Windows install (not sure if this will work for OEM systems after extracting the product key). Then you can either dual-boot, or simply go back to using the previous OS.
It's spelled "shill", you ignorant fuck!
sounds like a similar tale with Vista.
I was fine with vista, but I knew the limitations, and how to get around them. For example, MS approved the intel embedded graphics card, but with all the bling, vista would be totally slow. My system was fine on vista, I had a dedicated graphics card, and disabled all MS features that would slow me down, unless it had a useful purpose, such as font smoothing. Now there were some big issues with vista "beta" that I had on my Desktop at work (worked for MS at the time, you just PXE booted and selected the OS you wanted (XP, Vista beta, etc), and it installed over the MS internal network), such with vista beta, if you printed a document that went off the margins, then your computer would kernel panic. The issue was with a printer driver integration issue with a specific vendor, I think it was Xerox.
Arch gets a mention purely because of the high quality of their documentation. I know you know how important good documentation is. Otherwise Debian Stable is very good, or maybe Ubuntu 16.04 (LTS) if you do Steam gaming. Ubuntu has a really easy way to set up private software distribution channels (PPAs), which is both a good and bad thing. Good, in that you can almost always find some sort of niche repository for addressing some system issue, and bad in that too much messing with software sources tends to result in shall we say unpredictable performance. Also, if you really like to "go fast and break things," Fedora is the headwaters of a huge part of the Linux ecosystem.
Cinnamon is a good desktop environment, but not worth installing Linux Mint. Otherwise, KDE will probably be the easiest to pick up. XFCE/LXDE are fast and customizable, but will probably require that you do some customization. Use zsh in preference to bash, and use ssh whenever possible. Cheers!
Please install some linux / bsd before it is too late.
Android doesn't advertise towards me all the time. I've only seen one ad in the last month that I recall. Of course I'm not loading up hundreds of apps either and have disabled a lot of features.
Who wants a unified OS where the same applications on the desktop are on the phone? What masses? It's a stupid idea and I've rarely heard anyone say that they want it (ok, they want to see Word or PDF docs on the phone, but they don't say they want exactly the same application to do it as on the desktop). Reminds me of when a boss of mine was bragging that he had a new HP PDA that ran Office and was showing it around and telling us that we should dump our palm pilots. Then a month later he recanted and called the PDA a waste of money because it was so painful to use Office on it. A desktop application is not at all suitable for a hand held device. And besides The Microsoft "universal" applications are not universal as they won't run on anything that's not Microsoft, and their Windows phone business is essentially dead.
Don't use a Microsoft account, uninstall all the junk like Cortana, disable as much of the anti-privacy stuff as you can (MS have ditched the wi-fi contact stuff), install Chrome and a version Spider and you have a computer that looks like Windows 7, except it runs a bit faster, and has a large start bar with some handy apps pre-installed.
Windows 10 was free, it will be supported for the life of this laptop for free, it comes with Defender set up, runs the 1 windows program I use fine, it doesn't update any more than it did under Window 7 (and you can schedule reboots), and from July it will have Bash.
Stopping Windows 10 from installing is more of a hassle. The only harm reported from all Microsoft's data collecting and advertising is that people have had to put up with ads in Spider if they are too lazy to install another version or pay $1.50. If you don't like Windows 10, or it won't run on an old computer, the roll-back works fairly well. Your next Windows device is going to come with it anyway. The only reason not to update is if you hate Microsoft. In which case why aren't you running Linux anyway?
Fuck Windows 10
As installed, W10 is a privacy nightmare, that being said, most of the settings can be turned off and made more private.
Personally, I upgraded from 7 and 8 on my laptop and desktop respectively. The laptop boots up faster, runs better, holds a charge longer, and overall is simply superior to itself on 7. I skipped 8 on it because it was a nuisance on my desktop.
The format is much more like traditional windows, gone is that pain in the royal ass "squares" start button and app selection, though you do have some on the start menu, you aren't forced to use those at all (I don't) in favor of the traditional way of files and folders. Cortana comes installed, but I have her deactivated for my privacy (she is quite a nosy little app)
If you know how to fix the privacy settings, I personally recommend updating, security updates not even considered.
I work in it periodically during the day and then I'm back on CentOS/Ubuntu/Mint, and then on crappy days - OSX.
If I couldn't use Linux, I'd use Windows 10 over OSX any day. Sounds weird, but I'm just being honest.
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Windows says my machine is "Windows 10 Ready" Dell says it's not supported. Tried update twice - black screen unbootable, have had to roll back twice.
I would not recommend windows 10. I don't trust or approve of the telemetry and the lack of control allowed to the user. I do not trust Microsoft with the assorted settings with documentation informing the user it will revert if changed. I don't trust Microsoft's judgement after they implemented and made default the feature to sent wireless password to all contacts. I do not trust Windows 10 and I will not allow it on any network for which I am responsible.
You mean there is a choice?
There are a few reasons. Its not very polished, one screen is classic windows small font, the next screen sometimes even in the same app is the large baby font touch screen interface. It's extremely inconsistent, switching between visual contexts that are glaringly different.
Microsoft have broken the right click context rule. Right click your current wireless connection and you get nothing. You have to left click it. Yet other UI elements are right clickable.
A lot of shit breaks, especially printers. Holy crap adding printers to Windows 10 is a nightmare. Windows 10 tries to be intelligent and ignores your suggestions for drivers and names. Set up a new printer, and you give it a custom name, it comes as something different. This is a bit issue with WSD devices.
The printing subsystem is broken as hell starting in 8 and still a problem. An example is one company i do work for has "department IDs" for tracking printing.
Print from an office program you are fine. Print from edge or any other native windows 10 app, and windows totally ignores the department ID, and gives you no way to add it. It simply doesn't print at all. No error. Just wont print.
Removal of safe mode?? you cant press F8 to change boot options like get into safe mode? What the fuck of all things would they remove that?
Lack of choices. At lot of screens just have "ok" on them. You cant cancel, you cant close, you will DO what microsoft says you will DO, or you stop work. Its that simple. Windows is.. was a multitasking operating system, yet your entire workflow comes to a halt because of something like a windows update, "microsoft is adding features" or a variety of other un-admissible bullshit that just stops you using your computer.
Lets break things. Lets totally break the guest account, so you can no longer share files or your printers. What are you going to do, go to a different OS? hah. its microsoft or broke for 90 percent of the world.
And that comes to the crux of the situation. Its no longer your computer. You have to fight to stop ads, suggestions, get your privacy back, you have no choice on which updates and when to install them, or to cancel them because you are running something that absolutely cant be rebooted at 3am, much less all those open files you had with critical information that are now gone because microsoft released a patch that decided to break outlook. (this happened 2 days ago)
Its not your PC anymore. You have no idea what information microsoft is gleaning from you, what they are using it for, what income, what privacy or rights they have to your information because you clicked yes on everything just so you can get back to fucking work so you can pay rent and buy food.
No. Lets install windows 10 with a popup box that treats being closed as ACCEPTANCE after teaching users for over 20 years that clicking close will close the program.
Lets take the goodwill, the muscle memory, the training, the ability to do your job and throw it out the window for a clunky hacked up GUI that any designer would scoff at, while laughing that the irony that microsoft breaks their own GUI design rules at every single turn, then waiting to continue working because the OS decided to reboot while you were working.
I would rather use Windows Vista then 10. Hell windows 8 itself was semi decent with classic shell.
Windows 10 is an abomination of glaring design, privacy and usability issues.
No big deal. Been screwing with computers for 35 years. For my elderly parents? NOPE. I used the grc.com app to lock the update off their windows 7 computers. It was easier to do that, then to dump/lock/change the settings to make their computers look like windows 7.
I would not recommend that you upgrade, because it is not in my opinion an "up" but a "downgrade". Windows 10 has changed the "Master/Servant" relationship between me and my computer. Sure the OS was always "in charge" before, but at least it had the courtesy not to tell me. Now I have been told "you are the servant and don't forget it, Servant" in spades! Let me explain. Prior to the upgrade I found Windows served me well. For example, I could schedule defragmentation and, if the time the program operated was inconvenient, I could change it. Now I cannot schedule a time that the defrag the computer, so have to put up with it. Sure, I can turn off the defrag program, or change the frequency with which it is done, but I don't want to have to investigate work-arounds. There are other subroutines happening as and when my new boss (Windows 10) determines and these slow down my computer whilst I am try to get my work done. Given that interrupting my work to delve into what might be happening turns slowed-down work into a stop-work, I tolerate it. In addition, I have found problems with Apple products. For instance, when I plugged in my iPhone, I received a message asking me what action I wanted Windows 10 to take on plugging in this device. Helpful? Not when "open iTunes" is not on the list of actions. It would appear that an upgrade to Windows 10 has degraded my iPhone and my iPad, as well as ensuring that I do not get full use of the subscription-applications that I use on those devices, but not on my laptop (e.g. Audible). These devices used to work well with the previous version of Windows that I used. The support for dealing with these problems is [expletive deleted], so no help there. All in all, Windows 10 [expletive deleted] [expletive deleted]!
I would say that rather than Win10, this is a complaint with Edge. I personally am pretty happy with Win10 (aside from it blocking installers for older software that I know to work), but Edge is horrible.
The thing is, this isn't new to 10. Explorer was just as flawed (in other ways), and also should be avoided on a Win7 computer. As a rule of thumb, use Firefox on all PCs.
If you need your gaming or DVR recording to never be interrupted by updates, prepare to do hairy registry hacks. Even then I get momentary notifications during full screen games that new updates are available.
If you need the level of privacy where even (generally responsible and well audited) Microsoft employees or (somewhat restrained, depending on your religion and country of origin) US government can not discover what you are doing without spending major money, you should be really using Linux on hardware with minimum number of binary driver blobs or enterprise remote administration features.
If you do basic word processing, legal web browsing and e-mail to family, Windows 10 is most likely an improvement from Windows 7/8 in terms of usability and security from non-government hackers. Game performance is also improved and the difference is likely to get bigger as time goes by.
From what I understand, you can install Windows 10 and immediately downgrade to permanently make a given computer eligible to install Windows 10 in future.
To satisfy your fiscally conservative side, why not backup your current Win7/8 system, do the free upgrade so you get your free Win10 license, and then restore back to Win7/8? That way, if you decide you really want Win10 in the future, you'll at least have acquired the license while it was free.
I have a Win 7 netbook from when Win 7 was young. It was crufted up and running slow, and I did the thing and went to Win 10. I was impressed that nothing much broke and in fact the way the Win 10 install was sort of overlaid on top of Win 7 meant I had no issues with having to recopy or reinstall data and/or applications. Obscure stuff like an old 8-bit microcomputer emulator still worked.
So on that front I found the migration to Win 10 was fine.
But.
My prepaid wireless mobile started to get chewed up faster. I am pretty sure even after I burrowed down and set updates to being manual it forced some on me. I wanted to remove some processes to speed the thing up, but you can't get rid of Cortana, for example. It just feels crufty. I should add the netbook is not exactly modern, with 1GB RAM and an atom N550, so I did not expect miracles.
And on Win 10 the machine was not any slower, but was still slow. Hardly a shock.
After about 6 months on Win 10 -- It was perfectly usable but thrashed a bit if I had too many programs running -- I decided last week to toast the HD and install Debian 8.4. The only real tweak it needed was installation of non-free firmware, and now it feels much snappier, web traffic is down, and battery life is longer. All the hardware (webcam, card reader, wireless etc) works, so I am pretty happy. But, then, I don't use much Win-specific software...
Just my two cents thrown into the void.
I've had experiences with Windows 10, most of them negative. Some of them are:
* Settings for the same items in two different locations
* Search bar, which I never use, taking up most of the task bar until you figure out how to turn it off
* Links to other Microsoft products (XBox, Get Office) which are in effect ads loaded as icons into the programs menu
* Said links are tricky to remove and required the use of a power shell command line
* Insistence on linking to my OneDrive account
* "My Computer" hard to find and to create a link on the desktop for
* No Media Centre at all
* It's possible to put Windows 10 into tablet mode when on a PC, which makes it close to unusable.
* Start menu looks like a bastard child of the Windows 7 menu and the Windows 8 panels
* Features I'll never use such as news and inaccurate weather in that panel thing - all of which are links to Microsoft or it's partners
* As has been mentioned way too much reporting back to Microsoft about how you using your PC
* Things that I do every day with ease suddenly becoming complex and hidden
Also aesthetically I find the default colour schemes to be almost unreadable.
But what infuriates me most of all is the way it's been rolled out. I have four PCs at home, and I'm the only guy in my large extended family who understands computers. I can't count the number of times I've had people asking me to remove the annoying upgrade pop-up. And the update is so persistent that despite hiding it multiple times, MS has simply overridden that and tried to reinstall again. I've come to know the KB number off by heart.
And the way it downloads in the background without your permission has used up the preciously tiny amount of data some people have. I was on holiday using 3G data on my phone to get my laptop online, only to find a large chunk of my data had gone, used up by that background download.
Upgrading an OS is a big deal. I'm a software developer with some hundreds of programs installed on my work PC. We have to develop in a controlled software environment otherwise things may simply not work.
I'm sticking to Windows 7 till I am compelled to upgrade.
I have been fending off the update
I find myself wondering if Windows 10 is actually that bad.
I'm wondering if it's time to take the leap
You have just proven to Microsoft that their strategy is working. Just keep wearing people down with update notifications.
There are other operating systems, by the way.
The only bad thing I've seen about Win10 is the way MS is pimping it out.
Win7 was extremely successful on its own merits despite being visually very similar to the justly maligned Vista. Actually, the one thing I do miss in 10 is Aero Glass. 10's desktop is much better than 8 but hasn't quite caught back up to 7. Aero is basically the only reason I would stay on an older OS now. Adobe CS2 doesn't play very nice with 10, but I don't fault MS for that.
Everyone should upgrade just to get the rights to run it while it's still free. Once the upgrade is done you can revert back to 7 in a matter of minutes and stay on it for as long as you like.
An 6Mhz Z80,bank switched memory and a HUGE media for that time? not bad, not bad at all.
I would suggest not to.
Commercial PCs are usually built for the bare minimum or slightly above the specs required by the software installed, which means Windows 10 will significantly slow it down, like it did for me twice, and for many others.
I spent about five minutes reading the comments here and didn't bother searching earlier posts to see if this had been mentioned before, but maybe it will help someone:
Take a look at this article(https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3080351) and open your group policy editor ( run gpedit.msc in Win81 Pro) to follow the 7 steps in the instructions from Computer Configuration section of the article.
Same thing is mentioned here: https://www.maketecheasier.com/stop-windows-downloading-windows-10/
Correct. The telemetry issue can be partly handled (until an update changes it).
/v AllowTelemetry /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f
/v BingSearchEnabled /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f
:: Set Telemetry to Zero
reg add HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\DataCollection\
:: Disable Telemetry Services
powershell -noprofile -command "Get-Service DiagTrack | Set-Service -StartupType Disabled"
powershell -noprofile -command "Get-Service dmwappushservice | Set-Service -StartupType Disabled"
:: Disable Web Search In Menu Search
reg add HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search\
:: Add Telemetry Sites to HOSTS file (too long for slashdot)
The updates can be disabled by pointing the system to a non-existent WSUS server (GPO in Pro version) which works for a system on an assembly line controlling a motor.
Running your own WSUS alleviates headaches if you want updates but not at the whim of a corporate overlord.
The average user is fully exposed to updates that can brick. I see where this originated. Millions of PCs running amok because everyone turned updates off. Massive botnets blamed squarely at Redmond. What are they to do? A corporate meeting took place and someone said "Fuck our SMB demographic. Think of grandma getting her PC hacked because she didn't have the update. If the techs want real tech, let them pay for Enterprise".
I like Windows 10. A PDF creator that does one job well. Enhanced snipping tool. Fantastic PowerShell. More customizable menus. Run's all the old crap and the new crap. Handles as many monitors as you can plug in. But forced updates are a deal breaker. I run my own WSUS and I can always select the "check for updates from Microsoft" radio button, but who knows all this stuff? And for the people who do know it, why do I have to jump over fire to get it done? You would think buying the Pro version would be enough. Do this crap to the home version and give us some fucking credit.
The problem is, historically Microsoft's customers (both business and individuals) have had the bad habit of ignoring updates leaving security holes in the OS and making support a nightmare because you never know what state the OS is in.
Apple can get away with merely prompting users to update because the Apple community is very good at updating their hardware - just look at how quickly everyone upgrades to the latest Mac OS or iOS release.
So, given the world we live in - we now have bad people holding systems hostage - Microsoft has to do something about getting users to keep their systems up to date.
Can't Kodi cover those needs?
--
The world is divided in two categories:
those with a loaded gun and those who dig. You dig.
it's great, better than all the previous versions
you're probably asking the wrong crowd by coming to a linux fanboy website
I upgraded in October, but my Thinkpad's battery controls are not supported under Windows 10 (and more Lenovo software broke with a normal Windows 10 upgrade pack sometime in between).
Windows 10 isn't bad, updates feel faster, window borders are less humongous (though you can configure frame width on Windows 7), but it doesn't seem to be as stable, also API-wise.
If I could revert to Windows 7, I would do that (but anyway, I'm running Linux Mint now, so doesn't really matter).
My laptop updated to Win10. This is a Dell Latitude e6530 which is allegedly well supported with 10.
It was difficult to get my speakers making sound again, but after a lot of work they do now.
I have not yet got my webcam/microphone to work again. Were fine in Win7.
My Canon MP530 printer/scanner/fax combo is not supported in Win10. Canon says NO drivers for Win10, buy a new printer instead. I myself would think that if users are being pushed so hard to update to 10, that it would be mandatory for peripheral vendors to support any device from Win7 and Win8 also in Win10, but this does not appear to be the case. So Microsoft has effectively stolen my printer/scanner from me, as I can no longer make use of it.
I am taking an online university course this summer, the last course for my MS degree. But my webcam, speakers, printer and scanner all went AWOL, and I've only been able to get one of those important items back. And my kid can't video chat with distant grandparents.
Consider me disappointed with 10...
Sounds like what you need is a Linux box with MythTV (my setup uses Fedora). Plenty of front end clients for it as well - Kodi is nice especially in a media centre appliance OS like OpenELEC that will run very happily on a Raspberry Pi.
i mean ... it's fine, i guess.
Bloody shame about the keyboard though.
Random capitalization, never at the beginning of sentences, but always on Microsoft (TM) words.
Total garbage, would not use, would be ashamed of such output posted under my name.
I prefer my 16-bit 8086 @ 8MHz (turbo mode), 1MB RAM, dual 360KB floppy drives, CGA display and 300 baud modem. All in 1984.
I now have 2 windows 10 PC.
-a surface 3 pro Tablet. I don't like the way Windows 10 doesn't reliably handle the transition tablet/laptop mode when you snap the keyboard on or doesn't always switch from portrait to landscape when needed. Likewise with the 'limited connection' recurrent wifi problem.
Disappointing for an OS that market itself for tablet.
For most task except Netflix and a couple games, I actually run the Surface under Linux.
Otherwise, see my comments below.
-my gaming/home PC.
It was in desperate need of a re imaging after a couple year of cruft gathering, so I decided to give windows 10 a try.
Upgrade was smooth. (I wanted a clean start, so I removed every software and data before, and reinstalled what was needed after. It obviously helped a lot).
New install (after removal of the Win 7 backup) is leaner, more room on the SSD is nice. We will of course see what happen over the years.
Lots of privacy switch to toggle, tiles to unpin and other configurations to set or reset, but in the end, I am actually (mostly) impressed. ... apps)
(I do not use Edge, cortana, Bing, windows search, any of the default photo, calendar, mail,
cons: ... Annoying but manageable.
-less color and appearance customization available. (I prefer dark themes, I haven't find a suitable configuration yet)
-lots of clutter to clean/remove/disable at the beginning.
-non-cancelable automatic upgrades happening at the worst time possible are a ****** pain.
-a couple bugs (or features ? It's ms) about accessing network shares and remote access
pro: :) ... soon it will be a proper OS :)
-Games run very well, so does office, so does adobe CS (Indesign and Acrobat). This is what I use on that computer, so all is well
-multiple monitor handling is superb. (Once the Nvidia driver are uptodate. default driver did not recognize one of the video cards and attached monitors...)
-same with UI scaling.
-fast (boot and running),
-so far, rock stable.
-multiple desktop, better command line
All in all, I am actually reluctantly impressed.
For some time I have contemplated converting to Mac and this episode about converting to windows 10 finally pushed me over the edge. I am posting this from a MacBook Pro, which I totally love. I had a laptop that needs a few older drivers for whatever reason and I could not get Windows 10 to stop updating to the latest every time I fixed something. Then during a security update the update did not complete and froze my drive in an un-usable condition - I couldn't boot, couldn't complete the update, couldn't use the drive. I ended up getting a new drive, installing a new windows 10 instance and mounting the old drive in a drive box just to recover my files. That was going on during a critical time when I had some work deadlines in connection with a presentation to a national meeting of a surgical association and I just could not believe I had to deal with all this at such a critical time. Calling Microsoft and working with one of their techs did me no good. The other thing that drove me nuts was that from my perspective Windows 10 really became a platform for pushing more stuff at me to buy, with adware built into the operating system and constant reminders to upgrade or update office, etc., it was now really an OS for MS, not for getting stuff done for me. It was too much.
Out of 10. Come on. It's like complaining about a hammer. Days of complaining about OSes is over. Use 'em. Done.
I am so interested in win10 that i have never installed it, nor even looked at a machine which is running it. Well done microsoft, thats the first one since win 3.1 that i didn't even look at. Surely they win a prize for that. To be honest, i am bored of even reading about it.
It's good.
The updates can be disabled by pointing the system to a non-existent WSUS server
Couldn't you just disable the windows update service till you want to update?
I've used every windows OS and was a long time Linux user as well. I switch back and forth between Linux and Windows depending on my task - I'm a gamer so I could never get rid of Windows even when I tried. But I was never a hardcore Linux guy where my scripts played too much of a role in my work. If you are using any Windows aside from 7 switch to 10, like today. 7 is harder, because IMO it was the most stable (sorry XP). 10 has some weird issues when multitasking if you have switchable graphics so be aware. But I like the UI and I actually do like the search feature. Other than that the switchable desktops are the best thing from 7 as I relied on it for my work on Linux. With a few tweaks it has been pretty stable for my VMs and mobile work - which is one of the main things I use Linux for. I know I'm kind of an idiot for saying this but I'm actually kind of excited about the possibility to integrate Cortana with the android app but haven't tested it yet. My hesitations on outright recommending it are the security concerns raised and the privacy issues. But so far aside from the occasional issues with the graphic hiccups it has been good. A lot of other things that were wonky on older windows like installing printers, apps, connecting phones, etc. I haven't had any major issues with. The only other thing I would ask you to think about is whether you got plans for a new PC soon or want to switch to Linux. Remember the free 10 offer will expire like next month so consider that as well. If you are heading to a new PC soon, you might want to just sit it out or a better option would be to try out Linux for a while and see if it suits you. Nothing like a couple of months the on Linux to make you reconsider OS options. I would have stood on Linux but some of my development work needed Windows. Right now ive been been cool with a 10 desktop for a couple months without having to switch back. Eventually I will probably go back to Linux as windows starts to get bloated with updates again but right now it's cool.
That is a problem for those users who never update. It should not mean that updates are forced out to everyone and machines forcibly restarted with no possibility for the user to postpone, potentially destroying their work.
This is analogous to a government realizing one of its territories has a petty theft problem, so they decide to universally cut everyone's arms off to solve the issue.
If you have no other choice, then upgrade to windows 10 and install the linux runtime thing.
Seriously, why are people asking these questions? Upgrade to the latest thing, it's better and more future proof.
Do you expect the next windows release to be better and remove the things you don't like about win10? Who are you kidding?
If win10 is so horrible you can't/won't use it, then it's time to move to another OS (which you probably should have done a long time ago).
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
It's the future. Embrace it instead of clinging to the past. Personal computing has been superseded by appliance computing and having a seamless experience across devices is the way forward.
Every time I hear about this I think of how pissed off people got at U2. Whatever reason they're doing this for must outweigh the detriment caused to their name, because by now it's very clear what a PR nightmare forcing a free surprise on someone is.
OK, it's time everyone for a little honesty:
I switched to OSX in 2010 and honestly I've never looked back. I used to enjoy tinkering with my machines, installing Linux, etc. We are past these playful, schoolyard days in IT, in general.
Unless you are on the cutting edge, and I applaud you if you are, our computers have become appliances. For those of us who have been in IT for a while, we know what we like to use our PCs for, how to get them to do more for us, and the trend is UI simplification: the simpler the interface, the better. In 10 years we will all be talking to our machines routinely. Many of us do this now.
So I personally have no use for Windows 10: I performed the upgrade, was disgusted by the flagrant violation of UI standards, lost work when the machine decided to shutdown, but this is all beside the point. The point is that Windows 10 does not offer anything new, and it does not do anything better, more simply, more efficiently. Apple has the market cornered on that. And don't pester me about MS word, I find Google docs to be far superior for any kind of writing (not publishing, mind you).
If MS wants to stay relevant it needs to "think differently" too and figure out how to leapfrog ahead. I no longer want to have to think about my PC, whether I need to change its' diaper, feed it, and I don't want it to bother me. It needs to work, silently, speaking when spoken to, following commands, like an AI assistant/secretary/time manager/stenographer. Every five minutes I spend with Windows 10 I get pissed off again about how it is unable to perform these jobs properly.
Look, there is still a wild frontier out there, and plenty of room to play. However, when I buy Microsoft, I expect quality and functional excellence, or I go somewhere else. "Free upgrade" indeed... when is anything worthwhile that comes free of charge? Or to quote Heinlein's maxim properly: "There's no such thing as a free lunch".
it's the being forced to run updates before you can get on with whatever you wanted to do aspect of win10 that I don't like. I only fire my home laptop up once a week, which means there's always a few minutes worth of HDD and CPU activity before it calms down and lets me do what I want to do.
sag
So not only do I usually recommend upgrading to individuals, we've been upgrading our entire corporation.
Yes, just install Classic start with ninite and enjoy ! I prefer fresh install than upgrade. I expected a lot of problems after upgrade from 7 or 8.1...
Like Vista, there is nothing wrong with Windows 10, however it's still just Windows 8/8.1 series. If you have 8 or 8.1 and you hate it, you're not going to like 10 either.
Microsoft's perfect OS was Windows 2000, before they jumped on the "skin the desktop" bandwagon. Everyone version since has made the system requirements go up needlessly. Every version after that has been worse, from both compatibility and user friendliness.
Likewise Apple's OS is fundamentally unchanged since OS 6. X is a new OS but it didn't make drastic changes to how you did things. Windows 95/98/98SE/ME even made stupid changes among the minor updates. You were lucky if you had the OS work after any update.
And that's Microsoft's problem. It meddles in things it should leave alone. It subscribes to the Linux/GPL's communities "everything is better if you abstract the hell out of every API and invent your own wrappers and bindings for software that doesn't need it", like you can tell which developers come from a Microsoft background because of how much obsessive unnecessary C++ OOP crap is used.
Now I understand there are kids today that grew up during Windows XP's heyday and hence they don't get why us older people have such a spaz over upgrading Windows.
Let me tell you young-ins... Back in my day It was MS-DOS 3.2 on 5.25" floppy disks, and computers took minutes to boot. Now compare that today when we use Windows 10 on a SSD and it boots in about 15 seconds if you have no USB crap plugged in. Things always get "better" but nothing has really changed in Windows to justify upgrading Windows.
So upgrade to Windows and enjoy the ride. There is stuff that has broken in Windows 10 (eg the Microsoft Store installed software) and I don't use those features anyway.
In windows 10's case it's on a wintendo behind a iptables firewall and a squid proxy. This took a few weekends to research and setup properly, sadly 90% of the population won't put near this much thought in to it. They'll just put the baby to sleep, heat up a can of chicken noodle soup, upgrade that computer thing that's been nagging them, and go back to watching game of thrones. For these people it's absolutely worth the upgrade because who cares, they still get can get to facebook and amazon and cat videos so all is well in their world. Oh and the privacy thing, not even a fleeting thought. No money is mysteriously missing from their bank accounts, their credit score is stable, privacy pfft who cares. That's the problem, 90% of the population doesn't give a crap. This site represents the informed minority.
http://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/22322-upgrade-windows-10-update-enable-disable-windows-7-8-1-a.html
https://www.grc.com/never10.htm
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/yumi-multiboot-usb-creator/
http://distrowatch.com/
https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Download_Old_Builds
https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/UserManual.html
Windows 10 Global Mother Fucking Spyware makes it game-only. You can multi-boot Linux a lot of ways and you have access to way more and way better software. You can also boot Android x86 on your PC/laptop. See distrowatch.com
Avoid Ubuntu/Redhat/Fedora unless you like Microsoft-like dickmoves. Wise guru types ditched Redhat after 7.3. Cunts.
http://portableapps.com/news/new
If you use anything on Windows you should look for portable versions. They don't mess up your "precious fragile registry". No install, just shortcut to executable. For the most part those portable apps are all available on Linux/BSD. Most are ported from Linux world. If you haven't started using Linux already you are very slow minded. Android is Linux too.
Apple is also punk shit. There is no such thing as a trustworthy homosexual.
http://i.imgur.com/oll9Cp6.jpg
It's the "right" blend of tiles and desktop, finally, and it's not the most terrible offering - as usual every other MS release is a paid beta, I guess Windows 8 was no exception.
I agree that the first thing you have to do is restrict the privacy settings, Cortana and the Microsoft advertising ID other than that it actually works pretty well until you download some random security update that didn't get applied properly.
1) The first upgrade I had someone do was fairly early in the adoption timeframe. Norton AV got stuck in a loop where it would constantly log on, crash the desktop and log on again..repeat. Uninstalling Norton, then reinstalling it after being able to log on successfully solved that problem.
2) I helped someone use system restore to roll back an update that made the keyboard power down once you had entered your password and logged on successfully. We held our breath as the update reinstalled but it was fine after that.
3) One of the user profiles on a machine has lost its access to Mail and Calendar apps, it is also laboring under the delusion that Windows needs to be updated to Windows 10, which of course fails. The other profile is just fine, I've tried removing the offending profile but no luck. Easy enough to reload windows except they are 2,000 miles away from me. I tried SFC and DISM repairs, for hours..
Upgraded all the Windows machines I have to Win 10. Every app I use worked without issue, no problems with games, and Cygwin still works fine.
It is undeniably harder to get to 'the guts' than it was with Win 7 (I skipped 8), but I've found that Windows 7 and 10 have stabilised to the point where I rarely need to get to the guts any more. Some parts of Win 10 still feel split-personality, there are two kinds of dialogs for a lot of stuff, the new Win 10 look (or the Win 8/8.1 look) and the old Win 7 look, but for the most part it's tolerable.
Hardware support, multiple monitors, etc. much more stable under 10 than it was under 7.
Performance under 10 is better than it was under 7.
I primarily use the machines for Lightroom / PS / Video editing, web based stuff and office document stuff.
If you hate Windows, you'll hate Windows 10 as much as you hated Windows 7 / 8 / 8.1. However, if you're comfortable with Windows, or you use a range of different OSes and accept there's no perfect solution, then Windows 10 is better than the previous versions of Windows, IMO.
If you're comparing Win7 to Win10, there ARE some benefits to go along with the added adware and reduced end-user control, often features added for Win 8. A couple examples off the top of my head: -System refresh tools are MUCH better. Windows still craps out from time to time, but refreshing the OS, either in place or as a clean install, is much easier. -POWERCFG give you more useful info to help diagnose why your laptop runs hot or kills your battery But really, if you're happy with Win7 the only critical reason to upgrade is if you expect your computer to last beyond the end-of-life date for the OS in 2020. OTOH, buying a new computer with Win7 just to avoid Win10 is dumb.
I've been using it for a while. Overall a positive experience but with mixed feelings. Like anything - there are somethings to like and dislike. I have an "old" laptop (quad-core i7, 8 GB, ~5 years old). Visual Studio runs really nice (I'm a software developer).
Interestingly - under Windows 7 my machine would randomly reboot - just go black and reboot. For years I thought it was a hardware gone bad (it was fine when I bought it). One day the eSATA port started to report errors after long backups. Wifi throughput was unreliable - I figured the USB had gone bad. I had updated every driver I could find - searched error logs etc. Swapped RAM chips around. Thankfully & strangely - this problem has *not* occurred under Windows 10 (although I haven't tried eSATA yet).
Live Tiles - don't work on a laptop. I find them useless. Great idea for a mobile device - but sucker of pixel space on the big screen. They did solve the problem regarding non-touch UI split-brain that Win8 had. As a mouse/keyboard person Win10 works very similarly to Win7.
The "search" bar - having BING results (or Google) is less than useful. Since Win10 lacks a useful All-Programs menu, search is the only way to find programs (or scroll through 1000 live tiles). I want to launch Calculator... not BUY a calculator.
Overall I have a positive experience --- BUT in the back of my mind I am concerned that this is now an advertising platform. I worry what the future could be - and how to I buy my way out of it? So far it hasn't been a problem - so maybe I'm paranoid.
So while I like it - I have concerns. My next computer might actually be a Mac to go along with my growing iDevice farm. And with "Code" available on MacOS along with Xarmin/MS - my desktop OS may not be important.
Linux Mint would be an upgrade - Windows 10 is a vote to support nasty marketing people and destroying engineering talent.
Microsoft are pure garbage company now... I bet you most of their top engineering talent has left or is seeking new employment now.
After Bill Gates, Microsoft don't respect engineering and don't give a toss about what the customers want.
Linux Mint and Vulkan 3D is the right path for me...
Nope. I do not recommend it. It may be 'free', but that is not good enough to make it worth my while. I find that the whole system is kludgey, it is harder to navigate/find things and the default method injects ads into every search (of my own hard drive!) that I ask it to make. I haven't taken the time to find all the settings to turn that crapware off, if such exist, because I need to actually use the thing, not fuckabout with it.
My not responding to your flame is in no way indicative of my submission to your statement, it just means I don't have t
I use Windows 10 at work and on my mom's PC. Personally though I have an Android phone and a old HP running LM17.2 at home as my primary devices. At work there is alot of tweaking we do with Enterprise Windows 10 which has made it overall a great tool that is already being deployed even if it hasn't gotten the royal seal of approval. Most users will have Windows 10 Home which is what my mom has, I actually cloned Windows 7 to a new hard drive and stuck it in a newer Dell(I'm running the old HP) and with very little effort got it running. I'm a little foggy since this was around October or so. A couple weeks after the transfer I ran the Windows 10 upgrade over night. There were no hiccups, I think I was asked for a Microsoft login but there was a camouflaged skip icon in the corner. After that all the files showed up were they were suppose to be, the account was configured properly. The main difference was missing launchers in the task bar and what at the time was an oversized but relatively ad free menu. Everything went smooth except Cisco Anyconnect which broke like a couple weeks later. It took a combined 3-4 hours of work over a week to work it out but ultimately it was just cleaning the system out with CCleaner, a reinstall of the newest client, and the special settings of her IT group. I had some complaints the first couple days about how it looked but after that she found it easy and comfortable to use, which is really what counts. I installed one of my copies of Office365 from work and she has loved how smooth office is. All of her work is in Chrome, Outlook, Office, and RDP through her VPN and all of those work great so from a regular user standpoint it's a success. In my experience with Windows 10 Home I'm overall impressed. My complaints are the features missing in Home Edition(can't really fix that for free) and junk ads for apps in the start Menu. In the Enterprise version I use at work I honestly have no complaints other then missing features for the Virtual Desktop. I'm not going to go out and buy a new PC with Windows 10 but I still have to say it's intuitive and easy to use if you have to have Windows. Features I love are: The overall theme which is in my opinion smooth and colorful, Virtual Desktops(Finally!), and the way they integrated the look of Windows 8 with the intuitiveness of Windows 7 and even made things easier to use. Yes I still don't care for PowerShell and CMD but for me it's the End-user Experience I'm concerned about. Windows 10 still has alot of features and power under the hood for Admins and I like that since I use it to do tech support but the only thing it did was make the tools flashier. For most scenarios and most End-users I think the upgrade is worth it overall and is an easy transition for the non-tech savvy
Older hardware? I don't see anyone commenting about W10 installed on a 7 or 10 year old pc, one with just 1 gig of ram and running a dual core processor. I have some like that the just barely run Win7, but I use them for older software (that I must maintain). Some stuff still has to run on XP, other stuff does run a little better on Win7. Makes me remember which is which, usually when I'm in a hurry.
Why must we 'reduce' Win10 to running without the M$ web stuff? Hasn't M$ heard of 'opt-in' instead of 'opt-out if you can figure out how and when'? One click on installation to make W10 use anonymous? If not, why start charging a fee to use after July? I guess free isn't free after all.
When M$ stops supporting an OS, it means they finally fixed it.
In a year or so MS will start charging for software updates. They want windows 10 to be a subscription model. Just watch windows 11 when it comes around.
On 100+ separate machines?
I upgraded to Win10 from Win7 about 2 months ago - over that month I had a combination update that would not install. There are posts all over about this issue on how allot of people had this issue. The only thing that appears to work is to format and do a clean install of 10. .02.
I ended up rolling back to Win 7 after that month and I am still reading posts on technet about that update issue.
I liked allot of the features except I had to install classic shell so I could navigate the way I was used to.
Anyway - that's my
The worst thing I've found about Windows 10 is the Edge browser. I can't believe they set it as the default browser without addons supported. It's slow, crashes, absolutely drives me crazy.
It was cool to hate on vista and windows 8 because they were shit. When Windows 8 came out I planned to make a full move to Linux. I was skeptical about Windows 10, but there are many small features that just work a little better in Windows 10 like the task manager. When my new job gave me a machine with Windows 8 installed the first thing I did was upgrading to 10. I still have a Sony Vaio at home that has to stay on Windows 7 because the internet tells me stuff will break, I notice that I miss Windows 10. Which is funny because I always thought that Windows was pretty shit but I couldn't leave because of the games.
The answer for most people MUST be yes. You cannot tell your friends and family to stick with XP or 7 or 8, OSes that Microsoft wants to stop supporting as soon as possible. You cannot tell them to forego a free upgrade when, in all likelihood, they will simply have to pay for it later. You cannot seriously suggest any Linux distro as a real alternative. And you cannot continue spreading FUD regarding data collection and "spyware" when, in reality, Windows 10 does nothing more than that Google, Facebook, really any popular software/service does these days. It's pretty reckless to suggest otherwise.
hi
I had to make an MS account just to log into HealthVault, and get my LabCorp test results. They claim they also take OpenID, but they only accept OpenID accounts created by MS, and they're not accepting new accounts...
All your privacies belong to us.
Or pirate it. Again, the pirate version is Better Than Original.
20 year PC/Mac technician, In Windows 10's present state, I would NOT recommend it even for beta testing. It's horrible, slow, always connected and sending your info back to Microsoft. Drivers don't work with it yet, Edge doesn't work, and in general, it's a piece of sh*t!
To all the people on slashdot recommending windows 10, you're either a payed MS bot or crazy.
Would NOT ever use Windows 10 in it's current state, stick with Windows 7 for now.
NO! Resist! Fight!
I consider Windows 10 to be the evil child spawned from a back-alley tryst between the worst aspects of Windows Vista and Facebook.
Privacy Issues are a thing of the past... since you will have none.
Control over your own environment? Don't make me laugh!!
Case 1: Solitaire was part of Windows since before 3.1.1. For free. Now, you have ads. Ads after EVERY GAME. To make this go away, it costs $5 PER MONTH. In addition to the ads, it wants to post something to Facebook, Twitter, etc. EVERY time you play. And if you deny W10 this data; it ASKS every single time.
Case 2: The active tiles? Way, WAY to difficult to disable. Back when I installed it clean from a DVD, I disabled the tiles for my daughter's account as an admin. Then again from within the account. M10 was having NONE of THAT. I am not sure which was more difficult, explaining to a 7 year old what adultery is or explaining who Gene Simons is. [M10 popped up a (highly unwanted) news item about Gene Simons being accused of committing adultery.]
Case 3: Sticky keys (no, not that type). W10 causes keys that are held down to "auto repeat" (more 'hep' from your 'Microsoft pal who is fun to be with'). A key that "sticks" of its own accord is going to get you in-game killed. Might just as well stop playing games on you PC and use an XBOX ONE instead.
The OS eats up WAY too much bandwidth AND processor time to do things that you did not ask for. It does not allow the user to make them STOP. (Not easily anyway). This is great if you suffer from Social Media induced "popcorn brain", but severely handicapping if you want to work or play a game without being interrupted constantly.
Bleh.
The technical reasons for me are: 1) less stable than Win 7 (Pro), as many anomalous things happen, which are likely a result of #2; 2) Lots of things are done by default w/ Win10 - things that are generally NOT recommended, including settings best left to ME, not MS's heavy-handed way of stealing not only mkt share yet also #3; 3) privacy is compromised in a LOT of places: passwords, computing habits, where you browse and where you go. Win10 is an offensive attempt by MS to force users to upgrade so they can then boast how popular it then becomes - twisting, of course, actual statistics in their favor. HOWEVER, when deeply correctly configured, Win10 CAN be a stable upgrade. One just needs to pay VERY CLOSE attention to updates. And Do NOT do any version lower than Pro. Win 10 Home is totally closed to easy proper configuration. Even better, take the time to get a decent Linux OS installed. There may be fewer apps for it right now, yet Linux is on the rise! LibreOffice can easily replace MSOffice. And, it is much cheaper!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
As another poster said, the OS will slow down over time. As far as speed goes the biggest difference between 7 and 10 is how they use hybernation to restore a powered down computer. The computer loads the hybernation file and powers on much more quickly in Windows 10.
The problem is that in my experience hybernation doesn't work any better in 10 than it has since Windows Vista. The hybernation file sometimes gets corrupted. When it's powered up you get a message that "Star menu and Cortana aren't working. We'll try to fix it the next time you sign in". It then forces a reboot which tries to load the corrupted same hybernation file. Rinse and repeat.
The easiest way out of the loop is to deliberately cause an "unscheduled shutdown". The next boot will start without using the hybernation file. The only permanent solution I've found is to disable hybernation. This problem was reported at least as far back as June of 2015. To my knowledge Microsoft has not yet found a fix.
I do not block ads. I do block third party scripts.
1. Do you have a camera and microphone on your monitor or attached via USB?
A. If Yes, don't upgrade, no matter what MSFT says, they use those. Even when they say they don't.
2. Do you care about privacy?
A. If Yes, don't upgrade. Even when you alter all settings, it's like bailing out a leaky boat made of bubble wrap. It will still float, but water gets in.
3. Do you play games and only use it for that, and like Big Brother spying on your every move?
A. If yes, upgrade. But don't run anything "secure" on that machine. Because it's not.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Regular people: No
Business: Hell NO
Gamers: Yes
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
The answer is "NO"!
Slow news day, is it?
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
If not, give it a few more minutes!
My experience: Win10 on 2 laptops (5-year-old i5, 2-year-old i7) and an older desktop. No problem on the laptops. Mostly OK on the desktop except for a likely driver issue causing audio dropouts, clicks, etc. Since audio editing is a significant use for the desktop, rollback to 7 is likely. Would I recommend 10? It depends...
Is it being supplied with a new computer? Take it, unless you have peripherals (like an older HP printer, especially) that won't be compatible, then proceed to the lockdown process. Newer hardware should have drivers that work properly in 10. If an older Windows version (especially 7) is legitimately available, take it if the computer does not have a touch screen, and especially if you have hardware issues as noted, then proceed to the process (GWX Control Panel, etc.) for preventing Windows 10 from installing.
Is the computer proposed for upgrade a recent (Intel i-series cpu or similar-age AMD) laptop or other all-in-one type of machine, with at least 4GB RAM (8+ preferred for 64-bit systems) and ordinary, well-integrated hardware? Consider Windows 10. It will probably work OK; as an o/s (after turning off and blocking the spyware stuff) it's generally good. But check peripheral support - if you have an older HP printer, for instance, it probably won't be fully, or possibly at all, supported in 10.
So far, I haven't found any software that worked in 7 or 8 but doesn't in 10. But I haven't checked all the corner cases yet, even among the things I have, so older games not being run through Steam, for instance, could be a problem. If you need to keep using something out of the ordinary, surf the net a bit and look for problems before considering 10. As a backup plan for rarely-used old stuff, note that VirtualBox and DOSBox work fine in Win10.
Is the computer old (pre-i-series cpu), homebuilt, or has it been modified/upgraded with extra hardware? Does it have a traditional BIOS and no TPM chip? Windows 10 will probably have problems, especially drivers and especially if you're starting from 7 instead of 8. Might be better not to upgrade.
If you're currently using a computer without a touch screen in Windows 8 and don't have one of those classic start menu apps, upgrade is probably a good idea; the Win10 start menu works reasonably well. If you have a start menu app in 8 and are happy with the experience, there isn't much interface-wise that argues for 10, and 8 remains somewhat less spying-intensive. If you're using a non-touch-screen computer in Windows 7, there's little to argue in favor of 10, period, unless you have some alpha software requiring DX12 or you do Universal App development, or your an IT type who needs to test 10 for support of new machines that come with it.
System startup under normal conditions is much faster in 10 than in 7; for some people, that's important, for most, it's "that's nice."
The crucial points: as noted above, 10 is a personal-information-collection nightmare if the defaults are accepted. It can be brought mostly (not entirely) under control by aggressive use of the Settings (in several places), aided by 3rd-party stuff like W10Privacy. For individuals, that has to be done for each user on the machine; few Settings can be done once by the admin and flow through to the users. BE SURE TO SET UP WITH LOCAL ACCOUNTS (the choice for that is in small print) not a Microsoft account; the MS-account logon is the gateway for much of the spyware, and even worse it sets up automatically as the system admin. In a group using all or mostly Pro and Enterprise versions, Group Policy and occasionally registry hacks can help. Once it's adequately locked down, though, it looks and runs pretty much like W7 with a dark theme and a funny start menu. So why (for Win7) change? And the extra background stuff and network activity does affect power consumption - while power management seems to work well in the laptops, the desktop idles at 5-10W more (according to the UPS) in 10 than in 7 with the same power
I have found the OS runs faster, the interface is clean and functional, less error prone than previous OS's. The privacy issues are alarming, but research and a quick run through the settings resolves most of those issues. I am running 10 on my gaming/general use system, my creative system still uses windows 7 (mostly because I can't be arsed to research where incompatibilities might still lie with my specialized hardware). I wouldn't be too worried about upgrading unless you are running specialized hardware or need compatibility for specific software.
I have 3 laptops with Windows 10 on them: 1 works fine, 1 works ... slowly, 1 has just died.
All three are dual-boot with either Xubuntu or Lubuntu.
The 1 working laptop is a HP Compaq CQ45 with 6GB RAM and a fast Quad core Celeron chip. I use it to demo Windows 10 which I "voluntarily teach" at the City Library. Whether I boot it to Windows 10, or Lubuntu 14.04.4 LTS it works well.
The 1 that works slowly is a ASUS Ultrabook with a slow Celeron chip (1.1 or 1.2 ghz) and 2GB RAM. It's as slow as it sounds. When I boot it to Xubuntu 14.04.4 LTS however, it works much better.
The 1 that has just died on it's Windows 10 install is a ASUS Ultrabook FS502C with a Pentium Dual Core 2117U and 4GB RAM. Xubuntu 14.04.4 LTS is running fine on this one too: that's how I identified the chip, with "System Profiler and Benchmark". I have to confess the Windows 10 install is probably a hodge-podge mess, as I had used it for the preview editions, and it took booting with a Win10 1511 DVD to restore it last time it died.
As a volunteer at the City Library, I've encountered many people having problems because their laptop upgraded without them having particularly intended to. :-)
Even experienced people have been caught out, and I've taken great delight in sharing GWX Control Panel with those who are horrified by the possibility it will happen "behind their back". I've also made careful note of the mention of Never10 in discussions here
My advice to people is, if you like Windows 7 or 8.1, don't upgrade to 10. The earlier versions will be supported for what will probably by the life of the average laptop (another 4 years or so), and if they then buy a new one, they get Windows 10 by default ... hopefully a mature product by then. I have one laptop that has Windows 7 and the afore-mentioned Xubuntu 14.04.4 LTS ... and I'm guarding Windows 7 like my life depends on it. I have a desktop PC with Windows 8.1: ditto.
Microsoft might be pushing Windows 10 because it will make life easier for them, but the way they're doing it is not making life easier for customers.
I acknowledge that ongoing development and security issues change things, which is why I accept the eventual upgrading of my Linux installations from one LTS version to the next, but if I've paid good money for an operating system, I expect to keep it as long as I want to!
Don't blame me, it's usually 2 in the morning when I post
Sounds like another Microsoft product to avoid. If they can't accept basic username and password distinct from other accounts then they're never going to get lots of people to use it, except younger generation who don't see any problems with security of privacy, probably using Facebook login to log in everywhere they go. When it comes to Windows, third party applications are the way to go.
I upgraded pretty much as soon as it was available (I should probably at some point do a full format and reinstall to get rid of all the windows 8/8.1 baggage), and can really say that there's nothing too special about it. I don't see ads. It has a start menu, but I very rarely use it. The Windows app style media player is pretty crappy, so I still use Media Player Classic. I don't use cortana, and haven't bothered to turn off any of the privacy features. I HAVE had to uninstall a few errant windows store apps, but it's as easy as right clicking the start menu -> remove. All in all, I'm totally fine with it.
I have been using windows since it v 3.0, and have never considered the UI/UX to be excellent.
Any changes to the MS UI have been poorly implemented copies of features used by other operating systems for years, or just useless eye candy that actually makes using the OS more difficult by hogging system resources, eating display-real estate, and obfuscating functionality.
The only thing windows UI/UX ever had going for it was familiarity. It was easy to manage once you had been using it for 10 years and mostly knew where things were, but even then, individual applications never had much consistency, so finding settings or functions in a new app was always a fun game.
With each new version, MS added new layers of obfuscation, especially to the "control panel" which just became a dog's-breakfast of meta-panels and created a click-maze for the actual settings you were trying to find, but would eventually just take you back to the old windows 95 .cpi anyway.
"It knew how to access my bank, my social media - everything."
You mean your social networks.
Don't confuse social networks - the service with which you have an account on with social media - the content on the network.
OK, so this is a bit OT. I bought a laptop (ASUS 15" Zenbook UX51VZ) a couple of years ago that came with Win 8. I fully intended to reformat it and install Win 7 but I got a bit lazy and thought I'd give Win 8 a try for a couple of weeks. No surprise, the tiled "Metro" side of Win 8 was as bad, or worse, than I expected it to be, so I tried a couple of the utilities that restore the Win 7 style start menu, finally settling Start 8 from Stardock which was well worth $5. Once I had that installed and configured, it thoroughly changed my experience of Windows 8. I had fully functioning Start menu and the desktop worked just like Win 7. The result: I NEVER have to even look at the Metro UI - it effectively doesn't exist.
The best part is that Win 8 is considerably faster that 7, boots from a cold start in about 6 sec. and it's light years more stable than 7. I work it pretty hard: everything from coding and dev environments to 32 track music production and live DJing and it hasn't hiccuped once .How much of this experience could be replicated in Win 10? Hard to say. the telemetry reporting to MS and their desperate push for the Windows Store are major concerns. If all of that and the other issues with win 10 can be dealt with (with or without help from MS), it could be worth a look but I'm with those that don't find any compelling reason to to upgrade and for now I'm very content with Win 8.1
I don't understand why otherwise seemingly intelligent people continue to put up with the MS fiasco and then pay to do it. Just wait until the "free" upgrade period to Win10 runs out and see what comes next from Redmond. A decade-and-a-half ago I switched all my computers to Linux, learned how it works, learned how to administer it, trained its users, and I haven't looked back (to Win) since. Life in my shop is so-o-o-o much easier for me, and way less expensive, than for my colleagues who still insist on buying and using MS products in their shops. My recommendation is to install either Mint or Ubuntu and stop the pain. It's like going to dentist when you need to and getting all the continuous pain over with.
IMHO, Windows 10 is far and away the best Windows ever. I have had zero problems with it. The installation went perfectly. The UX is way better than Windows 8.1 or Windows 7. Win 10 is also less consumptive of hardware resources than either of the predecessors.
Arthur
Go into Edge settings, then into Security and Passwords and delete the ones you don't want saved. They won't be spread around
I work for a developer. We are a LAMP shop. I am no programmer. I help build out our KB and help customer implement our cloud based Print MIS system that we bill customer monthly. Just wanted to share that my opinion comes with absolutely no claim of expertise. I used to love the stability of XP. When Vista came out, I wanted to murder any and all involved with building and deploying that. Later, I was quite happy to live with Windows 7. Life went on, then, my laptop became old and prone to problems that any 5 year old computer might have. So, when we purchased a new laptop for me, we installed windows 10 so "someone in the company could test issues". I am VERY happy with Windows 10, miserable that Skype got all messed up since Microsoft changed things, and no matter what version of windows, still hate Microsoft Dynamics but use it every day. So, in summary - as a work-a-day user, it is a worthwhile OS in its own right. Of course, I spend my entire day within a Google Chrome browser, so, truth be told - I suppose my opinion is worthless as I am hardly experiencing the OS in any meaningful way. . Runs Adobe Photoshop version 6, even though folks warned me that it wouldn't
is its inability to update now. Edge is terrible; keep FF or Chrome. as well as the new music player. otherwise the update was seamless. my .02
alive to the universe, dead to the world
A lot of the response to Windows 10 has bordered on hysteria. Really, it has. "OH NOES, TELEMETRY!!!111oneone!" Here are some factors to consider:
1. Much of the data that is sent to Microsoft has been sent for a long time before Windows 10 came along.
2. Much of the data that is sent can be turned off when you install it or after.
3. Much of the data that is sent is not unique to Microsoft. How much data does OS X, Ubuntu, Google Chrome browser, Firefox browser, and other application software send to their vendors? If you're going to be paranoid about data that your machine is sending out, you should be paranoid about ALL vendors, and be regularly monitoring your network traffic to see what is going out.
4. Much of the data that is sent is genuinely useful. For instance preferences that replicate across machines, backups of vital data, data to improve performance, etc.
5. Much of the data that is sent is now also sent by Windows 7 and 8.x. They have supposedly back-ported much of the "telemetry" to those OSes, so you would have to play wack-a-mole with updates on those OSes to prevent it.
6. I feel that there's little data that they send that is not covered by items 1-5. I have yet to see anything truly nefarious that they are supposedly sending, but I could be wrong, of course.
7. You're going to have to upgrade eventually anyway, unless you plan to move away from Windows completely. See item 3.
8. It has a lot of improvements in usability and performance. It's nothing revolutionary, but it does add up to a significantly improved OS experience.
9. It's the current OS version. Running the current version of any software typically comes with a variety of advantages (and sometimes, some disadvantages).
10. It's a free upgrade, for a little while longer. See item 7.
In conclusion, there's very little advantage to staying with Windows 7 or 8.x, unless you have software that doesn't support 10 yet. It's perfectly valid to want to move to another OS altogether, but for your own sake, make your decision based on an objective analysis of the pros and cons, not hysteria.
Average Joe-Sickpack user who doesn't understand computers and probably shouldn't actually be using one in the first place probably should upgrade.
Anyone with the slightest concern for privacy or technical / advanced use should avoid it like the plague.
Just yesterday, in announcing our upgrade plans here at work, I stated that yes, we would be installing Windows 10 (along with Start10 for any user who wants it) before the upgrade deadline. But I will personally not be installing the upgrade on any of my machines at home, and intend to continue my plan to work towards becoming completely Microsoft-free. Others mileage may vary, my experience shouldn't dictate what others should do, and I'm happy to discuss it with any of our employees.
Microsoft has done with its malware nagging reminders caused me to have to do a Windows 8 reinstall while I was trying to prevent the nagware.
What Microsoft has done is inexcusable, indefensible, and I am doing everything in my power to avoid using Microsoft products in the future because of it.
I did a win 7 machine and a win 8 machine. Both were HP products, one a desktop, the other a laptop. Took a while to suck down all the stuff and do it. However the win 7 machine actually fixed some problems with 10. It's running like a champ. The 8 machine, well it's way better than 8 IMHO. I have recommended just doing it. Nobody I know has had a problem.
Sounds like the whining I used to hear about going to XP, some other versions. So far no BSOD, or other problems. Sometimes I don't appreciate how it'll reboot to update itself, however. Probably a setting.
Also, the external USB keyboard needs to be unplugged and plugged back in frequently.
These problems weren't present on Windows 7, which ran on similar hardware (same display, same keyboard, different laptop and dock).
Basically, I'm pretty amazed that Windows 10 actually shipped in this state. But I walked away from MSFT's stuff in 2010, when I asked a friend who worked for MSFT what they did about the frequent virus infections that hit Windows (XP at the time, I think), and he replied that they just "reimaged" their systems every week.
Using it with a television to play games, right?
Without the NTSC glitch,CGA is quite horrid.
What NTSC glitch? You mean using a composite monitor, which was a fully documented and supported output method?
... it would not need to force itself on users or be given away.
The insistence of MS that people upgrade pretty much speaks for itself.
No. It is not worth it. We wait for windows 11... even numbered OS's appear to be cursed.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I upgraded from Win 7 and I'm happy with it. But I did find that I had better performance only after doing a clean install of Win10 as opposed to simply upgrading Win7.
Not just using the composite, but abusing the "slow" ntsc encoder to produce 16 colors from the original 4.
I fix computers for money. This will mean more money for me!
Upgrade to Linux
aaaaaaa
At some point the offer get a free upgrade to windows 10 will likely go away requiring you to purchase it for an upgrade. In addition like all versions of windows everything older than windows will become unsupported at some point. Because of this I recommend getting the free upgrade then using a 3rd party tool to get your windows 10 product key and try it out. If you don't like it you can always go back to your old OS until your forced to upgrade.
I think it depends. If you're on Windows 8 or 8.1, the Windows 10 upgrade is a no-brainer for me. Windows 10 is infinitely better than 8 and if your software and hardware work on 8 they work on 10. Windows 7, the question is a bit trickier. Myself personally, I've never had any issues with Windows 10 and it runs fine for me. I would not willingly downgrade to 7 or 8 again. Mind you, I am using Windows almost exclusively for gaming -- most of my time in my PC is in development and for that Im using Ubuntu more and more.
You're asking /. users if you should upgrade to 10? Isn't this like asking Bernie supporters if they're gonna vote for Trump? Sheesh....Why don't you ask a group that doesn't think the root of all evil is Microsoft - you'd get better answers.