Windows 10 free version

[Ink stained Fingers]

that's an interesting option indeed, but the re-installation of W 10 at a later time is limited to that same hardware on which you did the first installation.

 

[mikling]

OK, so I held off after trying it last July 2015 on other than my main PC. Lack of drivers back then. I did transition my Laptop back then and the experience frankly was great.
So beginning about 6 weeks ago, i transitioned one at a time. In the end I have transitioned 8 computers amongst 3 households to Windows 10. The span of hardware ranged from a 10 year old Asus M2AVM running an old 690 chipset....which reeceived a Phenom X3 720 all the way to a new Intel based Celeron N3150 in a Zotac MiniPC. I have two HTPCs running Win10 as well. In the last three days, I finally transitioned my main PC to Win 10....the final holdout.

Win 10 takes getting used to. But amazingly the 10 year old Asus MB runs faster on Win10 than Win 7. I have to be happy when a 10 year old PC runs perfectly fine and is not slow by any stretch but it is running an SSD and only 4 GB of ram.

I have discovered a few quirks of Windows 10. First the Edge browser is supposed to be color managed BUT it is appears to be running like Gamma 1.8 like the old Macs. Whereas Firefox color engine is correct..images appear just as they should in photo apps.
The other thing is that using the same browser in Win7 and Win 10 does not always produce the same display. I noticed this when streaming CBS news. Nothing major but I think CBS will eventually change the coding..or Firefox needs updating down the road.

One thing that bothered me of Windows 7 is the time it took to check and perform updates. When it is fresh, the process appears fast BUT the longer the Win 7 is used the process takes forever. On my laptop which I used sporadically spanning months between uses...it is quick with Win 10. I can live with that...when I used to bring out my laptop, it would take forever to check and download any updates. Requring that I leave it on when I was done using it or it had to sit overnight waiting for an update. When I researched the aspect of this. it apparently is due to how the need for updates is checked. Win 7 update process is indeed very weak...and Microsoft has updated this aspect.

So there, I held out with Win7, dipped my toes with the laptop for about a year and now have transitioned fully. Win 10 anniversary edition promises to be better. I will be good for another 5-7 years before I think about what OS to use. Again...getting a 10 year old PC to run and run faster than the previous OS is great. I'm in.

OK for SSDs. My 10 year old computer is running an SSD now as well. Yes, for those holding off on SSDs, the time has come. On my main PC, I use two. One for an OS and apps and another for Data. I can tell you that after running a decent SSD for data, I will NEVER go back to spinning rust on a regular basis. Why? errors. On my outlook files, when spinning rust, I would get data errors every three to six months and then would have to run a recovery and fix routine...that Microsoft puts out ( ScanPST). With the SSD I have never had to do this as yet. ( I am running a Seagate 600 SSD for this using MLC nand for durability). That is a big plus. Then there is the speed. I cannot comment on the newest and lower tier SSDs but they are so inexpensive due to using TLC nand as well as competition. Recently I got a Samsung 850 SSD...because I wanted to see what the 3D TLC nand would do. Was it a big plus? Over running a 120GB 3 year old SSD, yes, it was definitely faster. But do note that because of the parallelism possible in large capacity SSDs over small ones, larger SSDs will always be generally faster than the lower capacity ones. So if you're considering an SSD do think of getting a 240GB one as a minimum today. The speed difference between that and a 480gb is not really noticeable but you will notice a difference between a 120GB and a 240 GB. But if the budget is tight,do realize the difference between a 120GB is huge over a hard drive so don't worry about it too much.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

You got quite well through with the Windows 10 transitions - gratulations. I can wholeheartedly suppport your recommendation to move the system drive to a SSD for a good speed gain. And yes, the Win 7 updates take looong, Win 8.1 updates are already very much faster.
I got quite easy Win 10 upgrades with a few systems, older hardware as well, but got into unsolvable problems with others - one problem was a Hasp security driver for an USB dongle, that blocked already any upgrade attempt to Win 8.0, the orginal software provider for the package using this dongle does not exist anymore and there is no support, no update to new drivers etc. The removal of the Hasp software took 3 days , with tricks to remove keys in the Registry which are protected in the core system section against removal normally etc. That old software would start on W 8.1, but only in demo mode, and the internal calls to the Hasp driver, a newer version - won't work, and that software, the USB dongle would not work either in a virtual Win 7 system under Win 8. . Other problems are drivers which are unsigned, and quite tricky to activate in Win10, or not at all, or just work partially , and fail with strange errors. So my experience is pretty mixed overall, and by 2023 I probably will decommission some old hardware anyway - or earlier.

 

[Roy Sletcher]

Good to hear these positive reviews. I guess it is time to throw off my dinosaur yoke and contemplate the upgrade before the deadline. Only a few weeks left to take the plunge on the free ride.

rs

 

[Slagathor]

Also check out OO software's Shut up 10,
https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10

 

[martin0reg]

I'm using XP. As long as it will drive my hardware
And whenever there comes up the message "no more support" - I'm feeling privileged, because there are no annoying updates anymore

 

[mikling]

Eventually, there will be no more vulnerabilities for XP! So no need for updates!!!!!!

But remember this .... seen any printers with parallel ports lately?

 

[mikling]

Eventually, there will be no more vulnerabilities for XP! So no need for updates!!!!!!

But remember this .... seen any printers with parallel ports lately?

A better analogy. I can run DOS 3.1, and I will feel like a king but the kingdom will be small indeed. Updates....none exists. What hackers target DOS nowadays. That would be completely safe today. But what printers can I use with these computers???
I actually threw out my Win XP disks a few months maybe a year ago. I reassessed the hardware and thought would I "ever" go back. No way! Out they go. I will keep Win 7 and they're as an image on my NAS in case I need to go back one day. Disks take up too much space. I like to own my own music and that's an antiquated thought nowadays. They take up so little space after I rip them to my NAS as a FLAC. Newer computers don't use optical drives anymore and a couple of my PCs do without. I readily admit, the landscape has changed and for the better computationally. Two years ago, I did not believe in WiFi reliability in a network and now I see it can work with the newer routers and communication protocols.
We gotta move on. Times change.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Times change.

Everybody runs his own mix of (good) old stuff and new equipment- software-hardware etc - you are used to it - you know all the menues , functions and sliders, and you get a new camera, you try to process the images with your older software, you have many more pixels, your computer gets slow or reports a memory problem, you get a new release which does not work anymore under XP, the disk gets full, the memory card in the camera is bigger than your system partition.....

 

[Slagathor]

Times change.

NO NO NO NO NO!!!!!!!

( I got a still sealed box of IBM DOS 6.3 if your interested)....