WIN 7 VS WIN 8 VS WIN 8.1 VS WIN 10

[Erik LaRuffa]

What are truly some of the "Under The Hood" differences between these Oses?

Thanks

 

[deustroop]

What are truly some of the "Under The Hood" differences between these Oses?

Thanks

wrong thread

 

[corkyg]

Start here and see Microsofts comparison chart. (This the right forum, and the OP created the thread.) https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/compare

 

[Erik LaRuffa]

Thanks, sorry

 

[Ketchup]

A few things I noticed about 10, that might be considered a little more "under the hood."

1. 10 seems to have the fastest startup of any of them. You do pay for it a bit, with a simpler GUI, similar to 8, but if it is I work machine, that may not be a big deal.

2. Microsoft is really trying to get things out of the Control Panel, but they haven't made it there yet, and what we are left with in 10 is a mess, IMO. It doesn't take too long to find most of the things you would use fairly often, but I have wasted far too much time trying to find those one-time-adjustments here and there. Things that had a perfectly fine location in 7 and Vista.

3. The duplication of file listings in the winsxs folder continues to diminish as we move forward, and 10 is the leanest yet. It may be only the appearance of space wasted due the the shortcomings of the NTFS file system, but with more and more of us caring about available space on our SSDs, the leaner numbers in explorer will always be preferred.

4. Microsoft continues to add security measures to their top priorities, and what they have done to Default Programs has turned into a bit of a mess with 10. Now, we have programs installing and asking if the user would like it to be a default, only to then have the OS say it can't do that because you have to go in another way. Fortunately, you can still go into the old control panel and set defaults that way, but now there is yet another location in settings that will do that, but that one only covers a few things (music, internet, pictures, etc).

5. 8 and 10 have many of the most common options I look for placed in a right-click menu off the start button. Combined with moving Cortana to the taskbar, instead of having to open a start menu or start screen, finding what I want in 10 seems the quickest of any OS yet.