To win10, or not to win10?

[Orcvader]

For the sake of security updates it's best to go with 10, as mentioned before 7 will be EOL, followed by 8 and 8.1 later. 10 will be constantly updated as well so it will have the latest APIs when avaliable (DX13 and beyond).

I really want Vulkan to be on top, but honestly DX12 seems to have a lot more marketing at the moment. Guess that shows you how much power Microsoft has with game developers.

 

[Woden]

We had a bespoke system (hardware and software) that ran on ME and only on ME - someone signed a really long contract back in the day (which gave the vendor no incentive to update the platform) :S

Two servers running bespoke Hardware and software in my department are running on NT4. The hardware is so old people are scared of rebooting it. Might not come back up.

 

[Rroff]

That must have been painful. Millennium would spit up the black screen with white centred rectangular band over the smallest thing.

Fortunately I had little to do with them - other than sometimes boot them up at the start of the day if they'd been turned off for whatever reason - with a bit of luck they were loaded to the desktop when the shift that would use them came in 2 hours later.

 

[SoildSnake]

What happens when i need to reformat my system again, particularly when i move my OS onto a new machine when i can afford it? I have the genuine windows 7 disk so would i be able to get windows 10 on my current and new machine?

 

[Skeeter]

Ah yeah the extra tile was a good move - shame they haven't done more stuff of that nature. Still needs some actual group management functionality and the option to hide that **** all apps list that they've randomly decided to make permanently show (I know there are some people who requested it but there are just as many who don't want it so goodness knows why they didn't make it toggleable - then again they could have implemented a system to granularly manage privacy policies from a slider)

Windows 7 was an evolution of the prevailing trend at the time which was based on people's usage - if people had requested alternative systems during its development maybe things would have been different who knows. These days people's usage habits and requirements have changed and are more diverse so it would make sense to implement something a bit more flexible than try and force through one narrow vision of the ideal user.

I remember there being quite a vocal push back against the Windows 7 'Superbar', with the pinned icons, stacked windows, deep bar height and removal of Quick Launch.

Loads of people promptly turned all that off or installed Classic Windows Start Menu mods that removed the Document, Music, Control Panel, etc options and took it back to a pop out menu structure.

Then in Windows 8 there was the massive push back against the change to no Start button and the Start Screen.

People just don't like change. Windows 7 was not the glorious holy grail of OS design happily embraced by people all over the world. There was loads of push back against it, just like there is in 10.

The difference was 7 arrived on the back of Vista being **** and XP being really really old. 10 has arrived in a similar position of 8/8.1 being poorly recieved and 7 being old, but 7 is not quite old enough for age alone to push people to 10.

7 was not the wonder you think it is. It had some big changes in it that people didn't like. Just like 10.

 

[JanxSpirit]

The difference was 7 arrived on the back of Vista being **** and XP being really really old.

In Vista's defence, it was an amazingly good OS when Service Pack 2 arrived. Windows 7 was effectively Vista SP3. I saw zero difference in performance or reliability and only very minor cosmetic changes anyway.

 

[Rroff]

7 was not the wonder you think it is. It had some big changes in it that people didn't like. Just like 10.

I've never claimed 7 to be some wonder, ever, infact plenty of posts where I've mentioned its failings. But for all its faults the UI is atleast polished and relatively easy to theme, etc. to taste.

RE "deep bar height" 2 menu clicks and you could completely customise that and with a couple more clicks you could turn off the entire aero thing and look like XP so dunno why people moaned about that. If you don't like something like that in 10 well tough its either live with it or install 3rd party modifications (which opens up a whole world of potential future incompatibility or viruses/malware from potentially untrusted 3rd party sources).

As an aside - quick launch was never removed - it just wasn't enabled by default, most people complaining about the superbar didn't realise that it had options for changing how the pinned icons worked and looked and changed their stance once it became more apparent and the stuff with stacked and arranged/edge snapping windows could also be fully configured. People seem to invent problems with 7 that never actually existed they just never took the time to look in the settings/options and find that infact you could usually disable or reconfigure something either to go back to the old style or to suit taste - albeit sometimes it wasn't very obvious how to do it.

In Vista's defence, it was an amazingly good OS when Service Pack 2 arrived. Windows 7 was effectively Vista SP3. I saw zero difference in performance or reliability and only very minor cosmetic changes anyway.

Aside from some underlying performance things the big difference from Vista to 7 was some really tiny quality of life things - it is amazing how some really minor changes to the way you carry out repetitive actions can completely transform the experience of an OS.

 

[Leeroy Jenkins]

So whats the general opinion here? I have a pretty meh computer and only do casual gaming on it.

I upgraded my laptop to Win 10 and it kept crashing when I was running a game which has really put me off upgrading to Win 10 on the desktop.

 

[Elevon]

Aside from some underlying performance things the big difference from Vista to 7 was some really tiny quality of life things - it is amazing how some really minor changes to the way you carry out repetitive actions can completely transform the experience of an OS.

I went from Vista to Win7 and was no difference for me, sure you could argue some performance increase but general use of the OS with mouse clicks was the same, stability for me was still good on both, lets be honest it's not rocket science to use any Windows OS, from Win95 it became very easy to use once DOS OS went the way of the dodo, end of the day all I see is people debating(being polite here) about really non important things.

I do scratch my head at some of the issues some people bring up, almost wants to make me shout and say stick to a simple tablet, but then nothing is really an issue with modern Windows, just accept some things will never be perfect and what you dislike somebody else will like.

I could argue how amazing it is with minor changes and some users fall to pieces, I guess this is the sign of what's to come for some of the 21st century users out there, very said indeed.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think Win10, 8 ,7 or any OS you can name is perfect but they are all simple and easy to use(Windows wise), I don't lose time on any of them.

 

[Orcvader]

So whats the general opinion here? I have a pretty meh computer and only do casual gaming on it.

I upgraded my laptop to Win 10 and it kept crashing when I was running a game which has really put me off upgrading to Win 10 on the desktop.

Did you try a clean install to see if that helps?

 

[Elevon]

So whats the general opinion here? I have a pretty meh computer and only do casual gaming on it.

I upgraded my laptop to Win 10 and it kept crashing when I was running a game which has really put me off upgrading to Win 10 on the desktop.

I'm curious what game was it?

 

[Rezident]

Not! Well, not yet anyway. Still too many issues with Windows 10. W7 just works.

I want to spend my free time gaming, not searching for fixes and bug testing for MS and trying to find drivers that work etc. etc. for the next six months.

I'll check back in six months, but W7 is more stable than W10.

 

[JanxSpirit]

Not! Well, not yet anyway. Still too many issues with Windows 10. W7 just works.

So does Win10 for the vast majority of people on the vast majority of hardware. I wouldn't deter anyone from trying it as the chances are very high that it won't be problematic. There is, of course, always the slim possibility that it will, but the 30-day rollback period should be long enough to discover whether or not it's going to work properly.

 

[Rroff]

I do scratch my head at some of the issues some people bring up, almost wants to make me shout and say stick to a simple tablet, but then nothing is really an issue with modern Windows, just accept some things will never be perfect and what you dislike somebody else will like.

I don't think you are really appreciating it from my perspective - its not just a case of things being not perfect but in some cases things actually being detrimental to the usage of the system. Sure many of my complaints stem from forced updates/restarts which I could (via unsupported methods) disable but (A) MS seem to be stealth pushing more stuff around the common ways to disable that (B) there are side effects - i.e. GPEdit can cause issues on systems it isn't designed to run on and it makes extra hassle for when I do want to update and/or staying upto speed on critical security updates which I want to be aware of in a timely fashion.

I'll check back in six months, but W7 is more stable than W10.

The kernel layer in 10 is actually pretty stable and in some cases a decent performance update on 7 - a lot of the instability and related issues come from the shell layer (edit: atleast in my experience anyhow).

 

[Elevon]

I don't think you are really appreciating it from my perspective - its not just a case of things being not perfect but in some cases things actually being detrimental to the usage of the system. Sure many of my complaints stem from forced updates/restarts which I could (via unsupported methods) disable but (A) MS seem to be stealth pushing more stuff around the common ways to disable that (B) there are side effects - i.e. GPEdit can cause issues on systems it isn't designed to run on and it makes extra hassle for when I do want to update and/or staying upto speed on critical security updates which I want to be aware of in a timely fashion.



The kernel layer in 10 is actually pretty stable and in some cases a decent performance update on 7 - a lot of the instability and related issues come from the shell layer (edit: atleast in my experience anyhow).

I don't see the issue, sure Microsoft have made some changes that some people don't like, well nothing new there, end of the day does not make Windows hard to use, all the feedback I've had from family and friends is Win10 is ok, they seem to be dealing with it fine in general use.

I can understand gives us more options or preference to turn some things off.

As always Microsoft will do what they want.

 

[Hotwired]

Yeah but come on... 17 years behind is beyond taking the biscuit. Even XP.

What OS do you think the major supermarkets use on their till computers.

Tends to be XP

It's not cutting edge stuff to run a till computer and when it works no one cares.

 

[Leeroy Jenkins]

Did you try a clean install to see if that helps?

No I did not. I'm quite useless with that sort of stuff tbh.

I'm curious what game was it?

It was Hearthstone.

 

[Rroff]

I don't see the issue, sure Microsoft have made some changes that some people don't like, well nothing new there, end of the day does not make Windows hard to use, all the feedback I've had from family and friends is Win10 is ok, they seem to be dealing with it fine in general use.

I can understand gives us more options or preference to turn some things off.

As always Microsoft will do what they want.

It is nothing to do with hard to use or some minor inconvenience. My experience with my Windows 10 tablet has been an actual nightmare with the decisions MS have made i.e. very hard to manage your data use on metered connections - even assuming your connection is one that Windows will allow you to set as metered - it isn't uncommon for dongles/tethering to use 3rd party software/custom device drivers that don't identify to the OS as a common type of wifi. One of the big reasons for a tablet is being able to pick it up anywhere, any time and quickly be up and running with whatever you want to do - but with the way Windows update has been implemented it is quite ruinous on the experience:

Quite often between the time you last used it and wake it up an update has popped up - this often means the tablet will come out of sleep and shortly after spend some time gathering system information, etc. which hammers the CPU/RAM on what is already a low performance platform making it crawl to a halt and chew battery as well. Randomly it will then launch into applying that update and restarting which invariably tends to happen at the most inconvenient moments and then you have the issue there that updates can have all kinds of implications for battery power*.


*One caveat here I'm not sure if this is intended behaviour/oversight or the fact that the dual battery setup in my tablet is somehow causing Windows to be confused if it does have some kind of consideration for battery use when choosing to apply updates.

That is before we get onto say the systems (if I was to update them to 10) I've setup for my electronics hobby (digital oscilloscope, simulations**, etc.) where automatic restarts are highly inconvenient and likewise the system I use for hosting game servers from time to time where unmanaged restarts are far far from ideal - sure they happen from time to time naturally (though I have a UPS, etc. to reduce that) but via updates that happens far more often and again you don't want a system sitting there chewing CPU when it is doing update stuff when you are hosting a game server(s) on it.

Again this is predominately based around the forced updates policy but there are many other areas of the OS that have been implemented with the same narrow vision and are a poor experience if your usage doesn't match a highly idealised user.

Sadly Windows 10 is an OS for the facebook generation and not for people who actually do some more advanced stuff.

** In my testing Windows 10 doesn't necessarily see this as activity and will quite happily reboot losing hours of work.

 

[titaniumx3]

Apart from the retarded windows/driver update system and the new horrendously disjointed UI menus, it does it's job and it is hard to not recommend it over Win 7 unless you have a specific use that doesn't require the continued support of W10. So yes, I recommend you go with W10, but only because Win7 won't be supported anymore.

Windows 7 was the best OS and always will be in my books, but all good things must come to an end.

 

[Rroff]

Apart from the retarded windows/driver update system and the new horrendously disjointed UI menus, it does it's job and it is hard to not recommend it over Win 7 unless you have a specific use that doesn't require the continued support of W10. So yes, I recommend you go with W10, but only because Win7 won't be supported anymore.

Windows 7 was the best OS and always will be in my books, but all good things must come to an end.

Those are the main hang ups for me - if they polished up the UI and/or added some additional themes for those of us who don't like blocky, almost monochrome looks, gave better control back over some aspects like the update stuff and fixed the start menu and explorer so it was more stable and better performing I'd have a lot less reason to not use it/not recommend it.

Being able to yank all the privacy stuff out in one go and/or having a slider so you could set what level you were happy with and everything including new additions used that slider setting by default for what they should use it would be nice as well.