Win 7 or 10?

[Craig234]

Win 7 is good and more affordable. But does Win 10 offer reasons to use it instead? Is DirectX 12 only Win 10 and a reason to use it for gaming?

 

[ShintaiDK]

Windows 10 is better, slightly faster in gaming, supports DX12 and its a free upgrade.

Windows 7 is history. Mainstream support stopped January 13 2015.

 

[Morbus]

I have Windows 10 at work and Windows 7 at home. My advice is, unless you want that specifically requires Windows 10, go with Windows 7. Never mind the price. Windows 7 is worth it, even if its extended support will end in four years (which is what you want to worry about anyway).
However, if you don't mind Windows 10, it's kind of a moot question.

 

[Denithor]

Windows 7 more affordable? Wut? If 7 is cheaper and you want 10...buy 7, upgrade free to 10.

I have 7 on my HTPC and 10 on my gaming rig (upgraded from 8). Treating the gaming rig as a test, just seeing how usable everything is. I had 8 installed there because I got it basically free, really disliked it until installed Classic Shell. 10 is better although their Start Menu still isn't quite right (I need to play with setup, really liked how 7 and older had the frequently used programs in a list there).

 

[Dahak]

As someone else said in another thread, if you want best of both worlds

(1) Image your current Win 7 install

(2) Upgrade to Win 10 to secure free license

(3) Restore saved image from step 1

(4) Do clean install of Win 10 if/when you feel like it

ninja'ed by Denithor

 

[Stringjam]

Almost every game I own has run better with Windows 10. The upgrade was a positive experience overall.

 

[skipsneeky2]

Buy 7 as its cheaper,run it a bit and it doesn't work just get that free upgrade.

Me myself,i am happy with 7 as the upgrade presented me more issues then its worth atm.

 

[BSim500]

Tried Windows 10. Didn't like it, even with Classic Start Menu. Performance in games benchmarked the same for me (except for the couple of old ones it broke). "Minimalist services" can easily be replicated by disabling a load of stuff anyway (Homegroup xxx, Function Discovery xxx, Distributed xxx, BITS, etc, for the average home user). Went back to Windows 7 and not missing much at all. The only 2 tangible differences I saw were support for DX12 and TRIM for PCI-E SSD's (neither of which I have). Other "new" stuff included features that were in XP, then removed and now being reintroduced (remember the XP Virtual Desktop Powertoy)? Most of the rest was "pretend your PC is a 24-32' touch-less tablet and you want to use mobile apps on a desktop because we want to copy Google & Apple after our traditional business model hit the wall!" UI fluff whose "betterness" is entirely subjective.

Windows 7 "extended" support is actually until Jan 4th 2020, so you've got another 4 years of supported security fixes, etc, and even then Win7 won't stop working on Jan 5th. The so called "end of mainstream support" is laughable anyway given the "missing" features aren't due to end of a support date or driver coder incompetence, but rather Microsoft's usual "vision" based planned obsolescence... :sneaky:

 

[cbrunny]

There is no reason to buy windows 7 right now. There is no reason to still be using 7 in a home environment.

 

[jlee]

Tried Windows 10. Didn't like it, even with Classic Start Menu. Performance in games benchmarked the same for me (except for the couple of old ones it broke). "Minimalist services" can easily be replicated by disabling a load of stuff anyway (Homegroup xxx, Function Discovery xxx, Distributed xxx, BITS, etc, for the average home user). Went back to Windows 7 and not missing much at all. The only 2 tangible differences I saw were support for DX12 and TRIM for PCI-E SSD's (neither of which I have). Other "new" stuff included features that were in XP, then removed and now being reintroduced (remember the XP Virtual Desktop Powertoy)? Most of the rest was "pretend your PC is a 24-32' touch-less tablet and you want to use mobile apps on a desktop because we want to copy Google & Apple after our traditional business model hit the wall!" UI fluff whose "betterness" is entirely subjective.

Windows 7 "extended" support is actually until Jan 4th 2020, so you've got another 4 years of supported security fixes, etc, and even then Win7 won't stop working on Jan 5th. The so called "end of mainstream support" is laughable anyway given the "missing" features aren't due to end of a support date or driver coder incompetence, but rather Microsoft's usual "vision" based planned obsolescence... :sneaky:

Windows 95 hasn't "stopped working" either. :hmm:

 

[Raizinman]

Where is the poll?

 

[ImpulsE69]

There is no reason to buy windows 7 right now. There is no reason to still be using 7 in a home environment.

There is very little reason to bother with 10 at this point either...granted on a completely new system I don't see why you wouldn't go with 10 - except that everyone I know who took the plunge hated it and went back.

Obviously those "better performance" reports are few and far between. People said that about 8 as well and general consensus is that it still sucks.

My favorite things about people who say people are dumb for staying on 7 are these:

"7 is so old" --- um...and that matters why? This is an OS, not your 80's hair metal t-shirt.
"Windows 10 is so much more secure!" --- you mean, at the moment right?
"DX12!" --- yea, that isn't actually used by anything yet

 

[jlee]

There is very little reason to bother with 10 at this point either...granted on a completely new system I don't see why you wouldn't go with 10 - except that everyone I know who took the plunge hated it and went back.

Obviously those "better performance" reports are few and far between. People said that about 8 as well and general consensus is that it still sucks.

My favorite things about people who say people are dumb for staying on 7 are these:

"7 is so old" --- um...and that matters why? This is an OS, not your 80's hair metal t-shirt.
"Windows 10 is so much more secure!" --- you mean, at the moment right?
"DX12!" --- yea, that isn't actually used by anything yet

I personally know no one who is running Win7 over Win10 right now. It's ok though, it's cool to hate on new OS's.

 

[ImpulsE69]

I personally know no one who is running Win7 over Win10 right now. It's ok though, it's cool to hate on new OS's.

I'm not hating on it. Common sense says you let it sit before jumping on the bandwagon. It is the foundation of your system, not some app you can just uninstall on a whim. Lately it seems cool to just believe that newer is better because some company says so. (PS. your particular comment is getting to be pretty cliche). Some of us prefer things working as is, not constantly installing and uninstalling an OS just because. That's why I said a new system could go with 10.

Ironically all those I'm talking about (not liking 10) are in IT.

 

[bystander36]

I'm not sure why anyone would hate Win 10. It isn't much different, and for the most part, only made improvements. There are a few things you might need to learn, but that is what search is for. I actually went with the full screen start menu, as the tiles are nice for my common apps. You can right click the start menu for most things I used to use start for. My desktop is now clutter free.

 

[BSim500]

Windows 95 hasn't "stopped working" either. :hmm:

You know exactly what I mean. The modern Windows NT kernel based OS's (Vista, 7, 8, etc) are several orders of magnitude closer to each other in ever depreciating gains per iteration vs the old flaky "sort of 16/32 bit, DirectX 1.0, doesn't even support FAT32, USB 1.0, UDMA for PATA, or AGP graphics out of the box" Windows 95. It's one hell of a straw-man to even begin to make a 7 vs 10 must = 7 vs 95 comparison. MS are "hitting the upgrade reluctance wall" due to year on year hardware stabilizing, the annual prior "upgrade rat race" ending and also hitting the usability peak for general desktop UI stuff. Eg, PCI-E has been around since 2004 - those 11 years under one forwards / backwards compatible bus have been more stable than the previous incompatible ISA -> Vesa-Local-Bus -> PCI-> AGP during 1991-1996. Same with SATA vs PATA DMA 0-7 / PIO, USB vs RS232 Serial / PS2 / parallel ports pre-plug & play, floppy to competing super-floppy non-standards to universal USB flash, etc.

XP to 7 was the last big "hardware related OS jump" for many which included : driver-less SATA, mainstream SSD (TRIM) support, GPT (larger than 2TB discs), proper 4K partition alignment, ExFAT, UDF 2.5 (Blu-Ray), DirectCompute, DirectWrite, DX11, Tessellation, Bluetooth +2.1, 1394b, mobile broadband, AVCHD, DXVA2, Bitlocker, Kernel Patch Protection, horizontal tilt-wheels, libraries, jump lists, mainstream 64-bit, biometrics, MP3 tags shown in Explorer, and a dozen other useful things supported. Since then, unless you use NVM SSD's, it's been a very "slow" decade indeed as far as "needing" every single incremental OS version to avoid hardware "obsolescence".

As for the UI, once you reach single click launches (Quick Launch bar shortcuts, shortcut keys, taskbar pinning), all you can do is shuffle stuff around with different skins and sell it as "Pretty like Google". 'Stuff' doesn't launch any faster today vs 2005 in terms of UI input speed (human time from deciding to open an app to finding and clicking on it), yet both are obviously a massive upgrade from navigating directory trees with "cd" commands in MS-DOS 2.0 after editing config.sys & autoexec.bat files to get the right amount of expanded memory to get a game to run in 4MB RAM all those years ago...

This "upgrade hesitance" isn't an OS-specific issue either - MS Office & Adobe have also been "stuck in a rut" for the same reason. Once you reach a certain usability baseline, a large chunk of the population don't care about upgrading for relatively minor new features, "to keep up with the Joneses" or because a marketing guy preys on the hyper-consumerists / technophiles emotional insecurity of "being left behind".

I personally know no one who is running Win7 over Win10 right now.

Seems odd considering that's what the vast majority of people are still using... Same goes for Office 2003-2010 versions, which is what I see far more of than 365 in various sized businesses during the week as part of my job.

 

[jlee]

I'm not hating on it. Common sense says you let it sit before jumping on the bandwagon. It is the foundation of your system, not some app you can just uninstall on a whim. Lately it seems cool to just believe that newer is better because some company says so. (PS. your particular comment is getting to be pretty cliche). Some of us prefer things working as is, not constantly installing and uninstalling an OS just because. That's why I said a new system could go with 10.

Ironically all those I'm talking about (not liking 10) are in IT.

I haven't constantly installed/uninstalled an OS since Windows 98. I ran 7, 8, 8.1, and 10 on release. A lot of people in IT are incredibly dumb, FWIW...so I really don't take the "X is in IT and doesn't like Y" argument seriously at all.

Seems odd considering that's what the vast majority of people are still using... Same goes for Office 2003-2010 versions, which is what I see far more of than 365 in various sized businesses during the week as part of my job.

I thought it was obvious, but apparently I need to rephrase: I don't personally know anyone who has upgraded to Win10 and has then been displeased and reverted back to Win7. I have been running Win10 since release day. I still have Win7 at work because..well, they haven't given me Win10 yet. Hell at my last employer, we supported customers who were still running Server 2000. There are businesses out there still running XP, but it's not because they upgraded to 10 and hated it. Of course you're going to find businesses running old software - they're cheap and don't want to spend the money/time to upgrade anything.

 

[Mem]

I am using win 7 and I will use it until all the issues are gone with win 10. This will probably take long time. About mainstream support, it's not a big deal.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2452...ream-support-but-it-isnt-being-abandoned.html

Win10 for sure, any issues are so minor, in fact I've had none and I'm a serious gamer and use Win10 every day, Win7 is on limited life span any ways ie on extended support now and EOL is Jan 2020 which is not that far away.
DX12, improved security, speed, plus mainstream support in its early days are some of the advantages of Win10 so no-brainer IMHO.


I'll say some people here like to over blow any Win10 issues, but then that always happens with any new OS.

As to pricing well you heard what the others have stated, you get a free upgrade to Win10 from 7/8, so don't cost you anything more.


I forgot to say stability on Win10 is excellent.

For the record ex-Win7,8 user myself, in fact can go right back to the DOS days, so have experience with them all.

 

[bystander36]

I haven't constantly installed/uninstalled an OS since Windows 98. I ran 7, 8, 8.1, and 10 on release. A lot of people in IT are incredibly dumb, FWIW...so I really don't take the "X is in IT and doesn't like Y" argument seriously at all.

It's understandable that an IT guy wouldn't like a new OS of any kind, no matter how good it is. They have to learn a ton of new things to do all the things they need to do for their networks.

For the average home user, Win 10 is a great OS and easy to use. IT guys just don't want to relearn all the other stuff they need to learn about a new OS.

 

[Mem]

It's understandable that an IT guy wouldn't like a new OS of any kind, no matter how good it is. They have to learn a ton of new things to do all the things they need to do for their networks.

For the average home user, Win 10 is a great OS and easy to use. IT guys just don't want to relearn all the other stuff they need to learn about a new OS.

IT guys, a lot of them are clueless anyway, they resist change more then the average home user let alone manage a simple Windows OS(why some of them get hired in the first place is beyond me).

Regardless here it's about home user and gaming being it's in PC gaming forum so Win10 for sure.

 

[BSim500]

I thought it was obvious, but apparently I need to rephrase: I don't personally know anyone who has upgraded to Win10 and has then been displeased and reverted back to Win7.

Well when it comes to swapping personal anecdotes, I know several friends & family who've hated the "feel" of it and asked for help reverting, even with Classic Start Menu installed. One described it as a "advertising billboard with an OS tacked on..." I laughed at his 'exaggeration', then saw this and understood exactly what he (and millions of others) don't like about it...

 

[ImpulsE69]

Win10 for sure, any issues are so minor, in fact I've had none and I'm a serious gamer and use Win10 every day, Win7 is on limited life span any ways ie on extended support now and EOL is Jan 2020 which is not that far away.
DX12, improved security, speed, plus mainstream support in its early days are some of the advantages of Win10 so no-brainer IMHO.

Sorry, but I have to just laugh at this paragraph.

 

[Mem]

Well when it comes to swapping personal anecdotes, I know several friends & family who've hated the "feel" of it and asked for help reverting, even with Classic Start Menu installed. One described it as a "advertising billboard with an OS tacked on..." I laughed at his 'exaggeration', then saw this and understood exactly what he (and millions of others) don't like about it...

You can find happy users on both sides, my brother upgraded from 7 to 10 and is happy with it. I upgraded two PCs to 10(from 8.1) and very happy with it.

I do feel sometimes what is the average IQ nowadays when it comes to using Windows, nothing hard to use on Win10, you use it virtually same way as every other Windows going back to Win95, now if they were using DOS and had to learn all the DOS commands and memory remapping to get a program or game to work I could understand, but nowadays even a ten year old can handle even Win10 just fine.

So goes to show how the average user skills has changed(in most ways for the worst) since the DOS days.


Sidenote: I dread to think how they will handle Windows in five years time.

I also forgot to say my mum got a new laptop with Win10(she was on Win7 before) and is happy with it at 73 years old, now if she can handle it anybody can.

 

[Mem]

Sorry, but I have to just laugh at this paragraph.

I could of phrased it better, but point being I would not use Win10 if it gave me issues in or out of gaming.


I will say it don't get much easier then using modern Windows like 10 so jump right it .

 

[Nashemon]

I don't like that you can't personalize much of anything on Windows 10. I work part time at a computer repair place so I've had plenty of experiences with it. Didn't really mind it at all so I decided to install it on my computer at home. I'm not an early adopter. I always wait to see what things look like after the initial hype dies down. But I immediately became very frustrated with the new Start menu. The straw that broke the camels back and sent me back to Windows 7 was the fact that Microsoft has decided for me that the entire alphabet needs to be in the Programs list in gigantic font making scrolling required. I know it's for making jumping to letters "easier", but it literally creates the problem it attempts to solve. I wouldn't have to scroll if those letters weren't there, and I don't need a giant letter telling me what letter a word starts with.