Upgrade to Windows 10 yay or nay?

[nakedfrog]

I did experience some intermittent audio issues that may have been it switching outputs (it would randomly cut out for a brief second), earlier this week I did explicitly set my desired output and disabled the other outputs, and it didn't occur at all the following day of heavy gaming.

 

[snoopy7548]

Do it. Windows 10 is nice. It does take a while to customize and get everything the way you want it, but Windows has always been that way.

 

[olds]

Free? I just paid $99 for an OEM copy and now I need another copy for another pc.

 

[pauldun170]

Being able to reset straight from windows and not needing to care about a key is enough for me to never want to go back to Windows 7.
That and dark mode.
All hail dark mode

 

[ultimatebob]

It's time to let go of Windows 7, Zeze.

It's becoming almost impossible to do a fresh install of it anymore thanks to the amount of security updates it needs. Finding driver updates for it is becoming tough as well.

 

[PowerEngineer]

Honestly the mere presence of the games in the Start Menu on a "Professional" operating system is a problem for me...

Funny you should mention this, as one of my gripes about Windows 10 is that it doesn't have the suite of simple games (e.g. solitaire and soft hearts) that were included with Windows 7. I found a download to install them on Windows 10. However, Microsoft sees fit to uninstall them every time there is a major Windows 10 update. And then I reinstall them.

So as far as games go, I think Windows 7 and Windows 10 have the same "problem".

FWIW, I upgraded to Windows 10 as soon as it became available. The differences in user experience between Windows 7 and Windows 10 are pretty insignificant. All my machines are spending too much time connected to the internet for me to feel comfortable with a legacy version of Windows. I do turn off all the data sharing options as others have mentioned, and I only use "local" use accounts (not tying my accounts to Microsoft email accounts).

 

[ponyo]

It's time to let go of Windows 7, and switch to MacOS Zeze.

It's becoming almost impossible to do a fresh install of it anymore thanks to the amount of security updates it needs. Finding driver updates for it is becoming tough as well.

fixed.

 

[bigi]

Just went back to 7x64 after trying 10 three times. It looks like crap. Can't distinguish where windows are. Updates are often bad. Tons of crap people don't need. Can't touch properly customized Win7 box.

So, nay for sure.

 

[mikeymikec]

Just went back to 7x64 after trying 10 three times. It looks like crap. Can't distinguish where windows are. Updates are often bad. Tons of crap people don't need. Can't touch properly customized Win7 box.

So, nay for sure.

Out of the box Win10 is a recipe for depression, it's so very bleak. Change the wallpaper and tick the boxes to colour the taskbar and title bars and things become somewhat more bearable.

Obviously these days in my line of work I'm doing many more Win10 installs than Win7, but I first noticed the bleakness of Win10's default settings when I did my first occasional Win7 install which looks a damn sight better.

 

[KeithP]

Free? I just paid $99 for an OEM copy and now I need another copy for another pc.

When I installed Windows 10 on my iMac about a year ago (via bootcamp) I used a Windows 7 key that had not been upgraded. Win 10 installed and activated fine. While you might not be able to upgrade a Windows 7 machine to Windows 10 for free, I believe a fresh install of Windows 10 using a Windows 7 key still works fine and will probably always work.

Your mileage may vary.

-KeithP

 

[BurnItDwn]

Windows 7 is mostly fine for most people.
I am a stubborn bastard and running 7 on my gaming box/windows box. I might upgrade to Slackware, gentoo, LFS or whatever Distro is popular among the linux elitists and then run windows in a VM for games that dont work right under X, but, for now, I will stick with Win 7.
I installed Win 10 on Wife's PC. I also have Win 10 on a laptop, but, I prefer Win 7. I havent found anything I like "better" with 10, and, Im not used to things.

 

[Red Squirrel]

There's no reason to upgrade from 7 unless you are upgrading to Linux. Either way there will be a big learning curve since 8/10 are completely different systems than previous versions of windows. So if you're going to do that may as well go Linux.

 

[Greenman]

Just went back to 7x64 after trying 10 three times. It looks like crap. Can't distinguish where windows are. Updates are often bad. Tons of crap people don't need. Can't touch properly customized Win7 box.

So, nay for sure.

I did much the same thing. Loaded win 10, screwed with it for hours, gave up and went back to 7.
I'll probably switch to linux in 2020, unless MS dumps all of the garbage and gets the updates straight.

 

[ImpulsE69]

which they won't. Thus the real issue with Win10. If this is the best they got, it's only going to get worse from here.

 

[Chaotic42]

Unfortunately while gaming on Linux has gotten a lot better thanks to Steam, it's still not where it needs to be for most of us gamers to switch.

 

[balloonshark]

Image your Windows 7 install. Disconnect any data drives on the machine. Now do the free upgrade to 10 and make sure it's activated and make a Widows 10 image. Now re-image the drive back to 7 and enjoy the ride. You can go back to 10 with the image you made whenever you'e ready.

Also consider Windows 8.1. It's a perfectly fine OS once you install Classic Start Menu.

 

[Paladin3]

Another vote for both Classic Start Menu and turning off all the data collecting crap in Windows 10. I put Windows 10 on the desktop I built in 2016 and have it on the laptop I bought six months ago. I wouldn't run Windows 10 stock, but a quick Google search will tell you what to turn off. I've had absolutely zero problems once I got it decrapified and don't even notice the updates. Runs every game I've thrown at it flawlessly.

I didn't feel any need to upgrade my Win7 or Win8 machines, but no reason to hang on to an older OS if you are building or buying a new computer. And if I did feel the need to upgrade, I would backup my data, make sure I had all my drivers downloaded, and do a clean Win10 full install.

 

[mikeymikec]

Also consider Windows 8.1. It's a perfectly fine OS once you install Classic Start Menu.

What worries me about 8.1 is that I'm sure it's going to get the short end of the wedge like Vista did with regard to long-term support, for example Google supported Chrome on XP all the way to XP's support expiry because it was a popular OS, but Vista wasn't and neither is 8x and so they dropped Vista support at the same time as XP support. It wouldn't surprise me if many third parties drop 8x in 2020.

 

[pmv]

Just install Classic Shell to get that Win7 experience.

Development continues here: https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu

Hmmm. I did use one of those 'start menu replacement' things at first, but W10 has evolved a bit since the beginning and I now find it tolerable so stopped bothering.

There are just minor things to do with the minimalist aesthetic of W10 that still irk me - it seems ever-so-slightly harder to quickly find the edges of windows for resizing, for example, or to sense instantly where one window ends and the one underneath it begins.

It's subtle but I feel I make slightly more mistakes when navigating the desktop with W10, because it stripped away many of the extra visual clues as to where things begin and end. It's harder to grasp things in a 'flat' world.

It still seems to me to be an aesthetic intended for small touch screens rather than large desktop displays.

It also exasperates me the way they keep hiding various settings that used to be easy to find in the control panel. Settings seem to be scattered about all over the place now.

 

[UsandThem]

What worries me about 8.1 is that I'm sure it's going to get the short end of the wedge like Vista did with regard to long-term support, for example Google supported Chrome on XP all the way to XP's support expiry because it was a popular OS, but Vista wasn't and neither is 8x and so they dropped Vista support at the same time as XP support. It wouldn't surprise me if many third parties drop 8x in 2020.

AMD already dropped driver support for 8 a little while back for their GPUs: https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/a...windows-8-1-with-consumer-radeon-drivers.html

Windows 8 has been the only version of Windows that I refused to use at all. I even used the crapfest that was 98ME for a few weeks back in the day.

 

[Iron Woode]

AMD already dropped driver support for 8 a little while back for their GPUs: https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/a...windows-8-1-with-consumer-radeon-drivers.html

Windows 8 has been the only version of Windows that I refused to use at all. I even used the crapfest that was 98ME for a few weeks back in the day.

mine upgraded to 17.7.1 on win 8.1 for my HTPC. I run an R9 280.

 

[DigDog]

I ran XP until ... not sure but either 2012 or 2013.

Tbh my XP was closer to a distro than a regular XP due to the massive amounts of editing that went into it, but it ran *way* better than your typical SP2/3 bloat install.

Im currently running a modded Tiny7 (a mod of a mod). If i ever need to go to WX or whatever W11 will be called, that'll get modded as well. Ill just wait for M$ to start selling keys for peanuts again.

Total cost since 2007: €29 (because, you know, people forget that you have to pay actual money to upgrade; and dont give me any of that "it was free for a time" because that was on first release or near that, im not letting any unneutered M$ junk on my hardware)

 

[frozentundra123456]

Windows 10 is a great OS, probably Microsoft's best ever but it's also the point at which they sold their soul to the Devil and rape personal privacy for profit.

Just be sure to install the anti-spy programs and shutoff all the built in services which annoy everyone.

"Great" and Win 10 are two words I never thought I would see in the same sentence. "Tolerable" is more the way I would describe it. I definitely would not upgrade from Win 7 unless one needs DX12 for gaming. I was using a system recently that was upgraded from win 7, and 10 was filled with bugs. I am now using a new machine with Win 10 Pro installed from the start, and it is much better, but I still see no advantage over Win 7 unless one needs DX12.

 

[PingSpike]

Also consider Windows 8.1. It's a perfectly fine OS once you install Classic Start Menu.

This is worth considering, but it seems manufacturers and Microsoft themselves have started abandoning Windows 8.1 altogether. I bought a copy since it seemed the next best option. You can still control updates and once you install a start menu replacement its worst warts are gone. And since MS has moved on I figured they'd be done screwing with it. But yesterday I found my new x470 motherboard had NO AMD chipset drivers available. It has Windows 7 ones but not 8.1.

 

[PingSpike]

I ran XP until ... not sure but either 2012 or 2013.

Tbh my XP was closer to a distro than a regular XP due to the massive amounts of editing that went into it, but it ran *way* better than your typical SP2/3 bloat install.

For a time I ran XP x64 IIRC. I went to it right from Windows 2000.

I remember the XP installer had insane level of customizations, I have a stripped down one in a VM somewhere that I was using for a specific piece of hardware. You can do some of that in Windows 7 still but not as much. And man, Windows 7 is great at wasting hard drive space.