Win10 or Win7 for new PC?

Caporegime
Joined
17 Jul 2010
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25,658
Windows 7 was also fine for me but when I built my new machine I upgraded to 10 and haven't really had any bother. I do run a shell called Open Shell that makes it look more like windows 7 though.

So I got my new PC up and running and went with Win10.

Part of me is enjoying the 'new feeling' of tinkering with something unfamiliar.

Nothing overly terrible has happened yet, but just a few bullet points.

* On multiple monitors, I hate clicking a file explorer on one window and having the window open on another. Still, I think Win7 acted the same?
* Unsure why no matter how many times I click update, it's not giving me the option for 1903 (I'm on 1803), kinda weird.
* Hate how folders look like office docs with all that crap underneath 'file' 'home' 'share' etc etc...
* Still haven't edited my start menu to get rid of those stupid tiles. Is there an easy way?

So far so good I guess :)

Try Openshell as I’ve indicated. Removes the tiles so it looks more like classic windows.
 
Associate
Joined
1 Jul 2011
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I did try the upgrade path when Windows 10 first came out but it just kept getting into an update, failed, revert cycle so I gave up on it.
I have windows 7 on my PCs, but as I want to upgrade my gaming PCs motherboard, processor etc soon, so I suppose I will need Windows 10 Where is the best place to buy it.
On Ebay I have seen bootable USBs with it on, are they OK
I havs a laptop which came with Windows 10 already installed and I havn't had any problems
 
Caporegime
Joined
17 Jul 2010
Posts
25,658
I did try the upgrade path when Windows 10 first came out but it just kept getting into an update, failed, revert cycle so I gave up on it.
I have windows 7 on my PCs, but as I want to upgrade my gaming PCs motherboard, processor etc soon, so I suppose I will need Windows 10 Where is the best place to buy it.
On Ebay I have seen bootable USBs with it on, are they OK
I havs a laptop which came with Windows 10 already installed and I havn't had any problems
I also had major issues trying the upgrade path but when I put together a new PC and did a clean install of Win 10 from the USB installer it's been fine since.
 

V F

V F

Soldato
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UK
Wasn't that due to high requirements? It ate RAM, I remember running it on 1GB, not nice :p

I remember the Longhorn betas, that was fun.

Vista was a hard drive grinder. It was always doing stuff to the hard drive when the computer was idle. It would never shutup.

Performance wise, I never had issues with Vista and 2GB. Copying files was a pain in the ass over network. Or explorer hanging with lots of installers in a folder.
 
Man of Honour
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Vista could be a bit unstable/unresponsive at times doing certain things but the main problem with it for me or rather why Windows 7 was better was some fairly minor changes but with Windows 7 there was some streamlined steps to do common actions or things moved in what in some ways was fairly insignificantly but so they were more intuitively placed, etc. and it made all the difference. That it would sit there chewing the HDD(s) didn't help.

Windows 10 it is like years of experience have been thrown out the window and worse they don't learn from things that go wrong and/or there is a stubbornness or inflexibility that is a barrier to improve on things.
 
Soldato
Joined
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3,324
Vista was never nice, it was the clunky testing bed for what became Windows 7.


Vista was fine after service pack ,problem was a lot users trying to run it on minimum or lower hardware, Microsoft got that part wrong, also Vista was really the first mainstream 64 bit OS ( I don't count XP 64 bit OS) ,so a lot of manufacturers had to play catch up on updating their drivers ie 64 bit support for Vista, I was fine since all my manufacturers had 64 bit drivers for my Vista, by the time Win7 came out 64 bit drivers were more or less fully available for Win7 thanks to Vista.

Win7 was just a tuned up Vista IMHO, both were fine in my personal use back then.
 

V F

V F

Soldato
Joined
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Location
UK
Vista was fine after service pack ,problem was a lot users trying to run it on minimum or lower hardware, Microsoft got that part wrong, also Vista was really the first mainstream 64 bit OS ( I don't count XP 64 bit OS) ,so a lot of manufacturers had to play catch up on updating their drivers ie 64 bit support for Vista, I was fine since all my manufacturers had 64 bit drivers for my Vista, by the time Win7 came out 64 bit drivers were more or less fully available for Win7 thanks to Vista.

Win7 was just a tuned up Vista IMHO, both were fine in my personal use back then.

It did start to shine with Service Pack 2 but it still felt tainted. I remember the famous driver crashing problem threads on multiple forums that ran for years for both Nvidia and ATi.
 
Soldato
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It did start to shine with Service Pack 2 but it still felt tainted. I remember the famous driver crashing problem threads on multiple forums that ran for years for both Nvidia and ATi.

Drivers are down to the manufacturer in question, we all remember how bad Creative drivers and Via 4 in 1 were on XP, end of the day they finally sorted the drivers out (especially 64 bit) by time Win7 was released , so it had better drivers to start with, which is not Vista's fault.
 
Man of Honour
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90,815
It's all about organising the stock start properly.

I've completely minimised what is on the Start Menu on my 10 installs and have a layout that lets me get to my most used stuff very quickly - it is one of the few features I actually like in 10 over 7 though still short of what it could be - they should have made the Start Menu both more scalable so you could have anything from a simple search prompt or plain text menu through to a full screen start menu with simple configuration as desired and the approach should be to make it more like the Android home screen so that people can properly have widgets, etc. in there if desired.

And lastly an option for transparent icon backgrounds! those plain tiles look nasty.
 

mrk

mrk

Man of Honour
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I used to have a minimal one but realised in general there's no point in organising the start menu at all really at least not the apps list anyway. I just have done because that's the way I roll. Realistically you can just tap start and begin typing anything you are looking for and Win's indexer will pull it out. That's how I load docs/apps/folders etc now. Everything is indexed. SSD's are rather great for this convenience :p
 
Soldato
Joined
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8,696
It all depends if windows 10 plays nice with your hardware and doesn't throw its toys out of the pram. For me windows had been flawless for the last 3-4 yrs on 2 different pc's. I can say win10 has been as solid as win7 or better, also to my amazement win10 even detected my scsi pcie card and a LTO scsi drive.

The main thing that put me off win10 at the beginning was the looks, its like going backwards 10+ years lookswise, its horrid. But if you can get over that and win10 gets along with your hardware, its a real good stable OS. I would recommend disabling windows update from the "group policy editor", changing the window border colour from the boring old white and install "classic shell" if you prefer the win7 startmenu..... Also slowly go through all the settings disabling/enabling all the options.

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Man of Honour
Joined
13 Oct 2006
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90,815
Realistically you can just tap start and begin typing anything you are looking for and Win's indexer will pull it out.

For me personally that is a less efficient way to work for my main usage. The annoying thing is after some updates when Windows 10 moves around, adds, removes or just generally ***** with the start menu :|

The main thing that put me off win10 at the beginning was the looks, its like going backwards 10+ years lookswise

It is something I never get used to :( my Windows 7 setup is a nice mix of subtle dark transparency and gradients and everything UI wise meshes together nicely - Windows 10 is a horrid clashing mix of plain icons and blocky areas of colour that a lot of the time makes Windows 3 look more modern and better put together!
 
Soldato
Joined
17 Dec 2004
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8,696
Windows 7 is a superior OS in many respects and I still run it on the systems I use the most because it is far less disruptive and less likely to try and take control out of the user's hands at the times you need it most, etc. part of the reason I've not hurried to move on from my 4820K.

As I have said before, if you disable the windows update, you dont get no disruptions. I only restart my pc once a week and thats done automatically early in the morning, as I use my pc to stream media around the house aswel.. So I always use sleep so other devices can wake the pc up and access the media straight away. I also do 3d printing so I need windows not to restart and do its own thing, because printing a 3d object can take a few days... Also a good quality UPS is a good idea if you do 3d printing and have unreliable mains power.
 
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