Windows 10, should I upgrade?

[novisnick]

Says it all, as of today, there are 13 more days to upgrade for free, should I?

[teaman]

I just upgraded mine last week and so far so good. I am not crazy about the 10 version but if you don't like it I believe the return to 8.1 or whatever is fairly easy.

[Porscheguy]

Get a Mac instead

[novisnick]

Jul 16, 2016 12:06:56 GMT -5 teaman said:

I just upgraded mine last week and so far so good. I am not crazy about the 10 version but if you don't like it I believe the return to 8.1 or whatever is fairly easy.

I believe you only have 30 days to go back to the previous version.

[petew]

Ten is good. Runs well on old crappy hardware (my shop computer is ten years old). I had to replace the video card in the shop computer - no drivers available for the ancient ATI card. That set me back a whopping twenty bucks.

yikes! I need to upgrade five work computers and install it on the mackincrack before the free upgrade goes away!

[brubacca]

My wife's computer was having so many issues that I am in process right now. Says 92% done. Going from 8.1 to 10. I'll tell you later if she likes it or if it works.

I tried before on a Win7 computer of mine and it loaded, but I couldn't get logged in so I reverted to 7.

[DavidR]

It's not much better than 8 and you lose control of somethings; plus it spies on you. Win7 is still the best.

[knucklehead]

Jul 16, 2016 12:09:48 GMT -5 Porscheguy said:

Get a Mac instead

Or go with Linux.

I'm using Ubuntu 16.04 (I think) and will NEVER go back to windows for day to day computer use. I have 2 computers and they are now both dual boot - Ubuntu & Win 7. When I upgraded the older one to Win 10 from Win 7 home ed. it worked fine for about a week. I started having some problems with popup ads and such - and programs not working like they should. I thought it might be the 5 year old gear was beginning to fail so I built a new computer & installed Win 7 - upgraded to Win 10 when the nag popup started asking me if I wanted to get Win 10. Within a week the popup ads were driving me nuts (a short drive for sure!) so I decided to try Linux again since I hadn't given it a go for 7-8 years. I've used ZoneAlarm Extreme on my windows op system for the last 4-5 years without problem on Win 7. Either ZoneAlarm or MS has some holes in their software. I still maintain the ZA Extreme on the windows side of both computers - wouldn't be smart not to.

The Ubuntu op sys is great. There are very few things that I can't do in Linux so I have dual boot. I'm using Linux 99% of the time. You long time windows users should try it - other than the desktop it looks feels & acts very similar to Windows. The only reason I boot into Win 7 any more is to use the 2015 Nero Premium DVD/CD/BR authoring software - and only because Linux has no equivalent. There are a couple of shells that allow you to run software such as Nero inside Linux but its too much of a kludge - it takes only minutes to switch. Best of all there is no anti-virus to have to buy since Linux was built with security in mind. I've had zero problems with it in the 6-7 months I've been using it.

Setting up a dual boot computer is easier than ever these days. Make sure you have your Win operating system set up like you want - find and download the free Ubuntu software and burn it to a DVD. Set you bios to boot from your DVD drive and make sure you select dual boot option. You'll need to tell Ubuntu how much room to allocate for it. There is a minimum size. I have a 480GB SSD drive that Win 7 & Ubuntu is installed on - Win gets 140GB and the rest for Ubuntu. If you find you don't like Linux simply download the formatting tool from the Win side and have it wipe Linux out and reallocate that space to Windows. It really is that easy - you just need to know what the install software is asking you. It's much less 'greek' than it used to be - by far!

Edit: Hey Nick - did you by any chance mean 'Linux' when you typed in 'Lexus'? I'd place a vote for Linux...

[Deleted]

In the last several months I "upgraded"  my Windows 7 computers to the new Windows 10.  I thought I had to.  My son who works for Microsoft said that was not necessary.  I read yesterday that the change over was going quite slowly.

I liked Windows 7 much better!  I'm a low level computer user, e-mail, forums, research, online buying, photos etc, (although I use it several hours per day) and not many files.  I have yet to find anything in #10 that I like better.  I'm old and hate to see upgrades to something I finally get used to only to find that the company has changed to a "new and improved" format.  Apparent;y they have many employees just sitting around drinking Starbucks coffee whose job it is to "to improve things" on a frequent basis.

Leave the damn thing the way it was, please!   

[hemster]

I avoided going from win7 to win8. I did upgrade recently to win10. Usually I'm skeptical and this time I was pleasantly surprised. The upgrade went smoothly. It even downloaded the appropriate drivers for my old Brother all-in-one printer/scanner/fax.

So far I like it. The system boot time has improved as has performance.

Try it and if you don't like it revert back.

[monkumonku]

I had Windows 7, then 8.1 and now 10. I'm fine with all of them though I have to say since upgrading to 10 which I believe was not long after it was released last year, I haven't had any problems. It works fine.

[DavidR]

Jul 16, 2016 13:06:07 GMT -5 @tllfkacn said:

In the last several months I "upgraded"  my Windows 7 computers to the new Windows 10.  I thought I had to.  My son who works for Microsoft said that was not necessary.  I read yesterday that the change over was going quite slowly.

I liked Windows 7 much better!  I'm a low level computer user, e-mail, forums, research, online buying, photos etc, (although I use it several hours per day) and not many files.  I have yet to find anything in #10 that I like better.  I'm old and hate to see upgrades to something I finally get used to only to find that the company has changed to a "new and improved" format.  Apparent;y they have many employees just sitting around drinking Starbucks coffee whose job it is to "to improve things" on a frequent basis.

Leave the damn thing the way it was, please!   

There is NEVER any continuity in their OS products which is, IMO, stupid.

[knucklehead]

Linux has support for 10+ year old hardware. There is zero support for old hardware with Windows since its up to the hardware manufacturer to update drivers for the newer windows versions and they aren't going to spend money on software drivers for 10 year old gear. Their stance is "buy a new card/device/etc". I gave away a perfectly good (yes it was old) NEC laser printer I bought off ebay in 1999 that still had about 40% toner left in the drum - all because Win 7 had zero drivers available. My emails to NEC went unanswered. How much difference is there between Win XP (a very good OS IMO) and Win 7? Under Linux there is still support for that old printer I gave away. Linux boots very fast - especially if you use an SSD drive. I have three - a 480gb and a pair of 240gb drives. From the bios to desktop is about 20 seconds. Win 7 is pretty close at 25 seconds so I call that a tie. Shutting down is the real bear in windows - it takes up to 2 minutes for it to shut down. Why?

[novisnick]

Does Windows 10 work will with JRiver and other softwhere similar to it?

[DavidR]

I agree that XP was a winner. Easy to use for just about anyone. That's why so many people are still using it. The new OS built for Tablets and PC just sucks for work use. All that clutter from the Tablet crap.

[teaman]

I still have Vista on my main PC. At first I hated it but now I breeze through everything so it works fine for my needs. At the same time I will probably install 10 on this PC as well since the Vista and all that is no longer supported.

[hemster]

Both bootup and shutdown times drastically reduced with Win10 and these would be further improved if I had an SSD drive. I also believe there are many bugfixes which may explain why I haven't had a single BSOD or a program crash.

Far from being a Microsoft fan, I have to admit they got it right with Win10.

[garbulky]

Yes providing your PC isn't ancient and is runnning fine. Just make sure if you have any niche type of hardware you use that it is compatible with 10. Like it or not 10 is the future and eventually the programs will not support our older operating systems.

[hemster]

Jul 16, 2016 14:16:57 GMT -5 garbulky said:

Yes providing your PC isn't ancient and is runnning fine. Just make sure if you have any niche type of hardware you use that it is compatible with 10. Like it or not 10 is the future and eventually the programs will not support our older operating systems.

If you come across a program that doesn't run natively under Win10, you can always run it in compatibility mode. To set this, right-click on the executable file and select the appropriate mode on the Compatibility tab.

[garbulky]

Jul 16, 2016 14:21:53 GMT -5 hemster said:

Jul 16, 2016 14:16:57 GMT -5 garbulky said:

Yes providing your PC isn't ancient and is runnning fine. Just make sure if you have any niche type of hardware you use that it is compatible with 10. Like it or not 10 is the future and eventually the programs will not support our older operating systems.

If you come across a program that doesn't run natively under Win10, you can always run it in compatibility mode. To set this, right-click on the executable file and select the appropriate mode on the Compatibility tab.

Yeah I'm not too worried about programs. Mainly hardware. Drivers are a pain to find.