anyone else sticking to windows 7?
- Thread starter Cyber-Mav
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Soldato
2.7GB? 
That was huge final Windows 7 update. Probably same size as Windows 8.1 final update.
On Windows 11 yesterday 2 updates was only tiny 348MB.
That was huge final Windows 7 update. Probably same size as Windows 8.1 final update.On Windows 11 yesterday 2 updates was only tiny 348MB.
Soldato
Unless you have a specific bit of software that really prevents you from updating, why would you want to stick on an out of support OS that doesn't get security patches anymore?
Associate
Because sometimes it just works … and lets you get on with things without pestering you for this that and the next thing like MS accounts, adverts, pushes towards certain products … oh and the taskbar works properly too !
I digress, but sometimes there is a lot to be said for being more productive on something which you are very familiar with. I would argue that I find windows 11 less productive than prior versions because its works in ways I’m not used to and/or doesn’t behave in ways i expect it ought to. right click menus are an example. I’m so ingrained into the older menu layouts that every time I right click I have to pause and figure it out … which drops me out of focusing on what I’m doing.
I know it sound petty, but if I’m at a machine and noticing that when using it I’m having to pause, stop and figure out a menu then that is not efficient for me. Sure, if you are new to windows and jump straight into 11, then it’s a good OS.
But for old (ish) sods like me who remembers the first PC in the house slowly counting up to 256kb for the memory check, and learning through dos, all the versions of windows, OS/2 Warp (favourite OS) and now windows 11 …. Without doubt Windows 11 has been the change which I’ve found the most frustrating in its divergence away from what I’m used to.
I digress, but sometimes there is a lot to be said for being more productive on something which you are very familiar with. I would argue that I find windows 11 less productive than prior versions because its works in ways I’m not used to and/or doesn’t behave in ways i expect it ought to. right click menus are an example. I’m so ingrained into the older menu layouts that every time I right click I have to pause and figure it out … which drops me out of focusing on what I’m doing.
I know it sound petty, but if I’m at a machine and noticing that when using it I’m having to pause, stop and figure out a menu then that is not efficient for me. Sure, if you are new to windows and jump straight into 11, then it’s a good OS.
But for old (ish) sods like me who remembers the first PC in the house slowly counting up to 256kb for the memory check, and learning through dos, all the versions of windows, OS/2 Warp (favourite OS) and now windows 11 …. Without doubt Windows 11 has been the change which I’ve found the most frustrating in its divergence away from what I’m used to.
Soldato
You don't need to jump to 11, 10 is still fine I think, I still use it. I use the Enterprise version though so no MS account required for signing in, I just have a local one.
7 may work but it's riskier from a security perspective which was my main point really.
7 may work but it's riskier from a security perspective which was my main point really.
Man of Honour
You only need to faff about setting up Windows 11 once, long as you''re accustomed to where things are then there's no need to faff about again with anything really. I set up the core of 11 back when it came out and I in-place upgraded from 10 to 11. Never had to deal with any faff since and there's no pestering. Windows updates and forced restarts existed on 10 too. My local account converted to merge with my MS account as I make use of the synchronisation features and tying my product key to my digital main MS account - It just makes logical sense going forwards in the 21st century, and this is from someone who did and still does pretty much everything old skool and manually with local storage rather than cloud and the like.
Taskbar, well Start11 brings back the old way, and adds features on top to give you even more power on how you want to use your taskbar and start menu and file explorer. It is a few quid after the free trial, but it is invaluable and as you use it every day and will be for years and years, is basically free as it pays for itself in features alone:
The more important under the hood gains in 11 are stuff that happened more recently, like system wide application power states which you can see in task manager. Anything that in the past would have sat in the background consuming resources is now in complete suspension, you can basically game without having to close browsers down etc because they will sit in efficiency mode in the background, so other than RAM consumption, no adverse CPU or GPU cycles will be seen. Lot of other stuff too that you just end up appreciating and realising that 11 is actually more powerful and convenient than 7 or 10.
Start11 brings back the old right click menu, if you want it.
Like with every version of Windows, lots of things change, menus, options etc. It takes time to adjust memory to adapt. For me the adaption happened quickly, and things that I didn't like were instantly solved by using stuff like Start11.
We can only be stuck in the past for so long really. New hardware will always push software forwards, and vice versa. Windows 10 and below have an old legacy CPU scheduler, do not support DX 12 Ultimate for gaming performance enhancements nor do they have a modern storage stack which 11 does have and is able to fully utilise new storage tech that is now available. Device manufacturers will no doubt stop creating drivers for older Windows versions too which are not optimum for their new hardware at some point so it's better to adapt and be ahead of the curve, rather than wait until the last minute and have to deal with everything all at once which would be even more of a faff that slowly weaning into it and finding out that actually, it's not so bad after all because you still have control to do things as you mostly wish.
I'm still using Windows 7 on my Xeon 1650 V2 rig and older laptop Samsung 700G7C - when I actually need a system for productivity purposes I always come back to them as Windows 10/11 are trash in that respect, utterly obnoxious. I've also an older tablet on Windows 8 which I end up using a lot as it is more dependable than those on 10 (and posting from right now).
I've got newer systems including a 10870H laptop dual-booting 10/11 and 11th gen desktop on 10 as well as a variety of laptops and tablets on 10 and several low powered mini PCs on 10 pro - at the minimum I have to use a cocktail of programs including Shutup 10 and Windows Update Blocker to make them useful - but then it is a pain having to periodically update them, then update the software like Shutup 10, etc. and make sure all tweaks are reapplied correctly.
10 is also quite obnoxious in the respect that if a system is idle for >15 minutes all kinds of background maintenance tasks will kick in causing elevated fan use on the laptops which is just annoying and the mini PCs will sit there using ~7 watt for prolonged periods instead of the sub 2 watts they'd normally use idle.
If it wasn't for security, driver compatibility and feature support I'd stick 7 on everything, but 10/11 are hardly a paragon of security - severe new vulnerabilities are being found all the time, many of them don't exist in 7 and should never have existed in 10/11! and there are almost certainly bad ones still to be found many of which again shouldn't exist in the first place - if I'm that worried about security I jump over to Debian or a mobile OS.
I've got newer systems including a 10870H laptop dual-booting 10/11 and 11th gen desktop on 10 as well as a variety of laptops and tablets on 10 and several low powered mini PCs on 10 pro - at the minimum I have to use a cocktail of programs including Shutup 10 and Windows Update Blocker to make them useful - but then it is a pain having to periodically update them, then update the software like Shutup 10, etc. and make sure all tweaks are reapplied correctly.
10 is also quite obnoxious in the respect that if a system is idle for >15 minutes all kinds of background maintenance tasks will kick in causing elevated fan use on the laptops which is just annoying and the mini PCs will sit there using ~7 watt for prolonged periods instead of the sub 2 watts they'd normally use idle.
If it wasn't for security, driver compatibility and feature support I'd stick 7 on everything, but 10/11 are hardly a paragon of security - severe new vulnerabilities are being found all the time, many of them don't exist in 7 and should never have existed in 10/11! and there are almost certainly bad ones still to be found many of which again shouldn't exist in the first place - if I'm that worried about security I jump over to Debian or a mobile OS.
I never have a problem gaming on my 7 systems - as long as you have sufficient cores and RAM the impact of background processes and things like web browsers idle in the background is less than 10/11 - while not a perfect comparison due to hardware differences/features I get lower system latency gaming on the Xeon w/ 3070 with 7 than a 10th or 11th gen Intel CPU w/ 3070 on Windows 10/11.
I find 10/11 get far too busy in the background periodically despite having superior features in terms of managing idle background processes due to the pants on head approach MS devs have taken and while relatively rare there are times in 10/11 where stuff updates or does maintenance tasks in the background even when gaming resulting in slight stutter, sometimes the blue circle cursor appearing or even loss of focus from the foreground game - that never happens, ever, on a normally working 7 system.
While I've not had it happen lately, possibly due to not gaming as much, I've even had instances where I've left a game idling i.e. MMO type games such as Eve Online, when I used to play it, where I might be waiting in in game events, etc. where older builds of Windows 10 have decided to reboot for updates.
To be honest I've never once with 11 thought it more convenient than 7 - 10 onwards do have more advanced file copy dialogues (also exist in 8) which I miss in 7 and in theory the Start Menu in 10 is more useful, but let down by poor implementation/execution - there aren't even proper group management features yet! in pretty much all other regards I find 11 a step backwards from 7 for usefulness or convenience, often for no good reason. Which is a shame as the UI in 11 in concept is what a modern OS should be, in practise murdered by poor understanding of the design language and stupid developers.
This is one of the problems with 10/11 - you end up tweaking it to something useful but then always at the mercy of potential changes in later updates which break that, sometimes having to update the tweak software and making sure changes are re-applied, etc. which might not seem a big issue if you just have say 1 desktop system but is an utter pain in the behind when you run a dozen systems.
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Don’t change until you are forced too. If it works, it works.
I had Win 7 on a VM for testing as some of the software I create needs to work on XP/Win7. The last time I needed to use it, it said it was not a valid key and refused to activate, been using it years! I ended up rage deleting the VM
Hate MS!
Hate MS!
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Don
I still have a couple of physical and virtual machines running 7, as need something dependable to run scheduled tasks without randomly rebooting to install updates.
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I remember upgrading to windows 7 and removing it a day after it come out. No games would work properly and I primarly used windows to play command and conquer. Once this game worked correctly I moved over. I think it was once 2 years come around and it matured a bit then it was very usable.
Have to say personally I found most games ran fine on 7 on release - there were some older ones which I kept a second system on XP for though.
Personally not married to 7 - there are several areas it is quite dated now - but it works as an OS should, for the most part, enabling the end user as its primary function which is what an OS should do, unlike 10/11 where the end user comes second place. Sadly takes some people a long time to see the bigger picture with this stuff, sometimes even support it, and by the time they do it is far too late.
It is amusing to read some of the caustic comments I got in the Windows 10 thread early on complaining about things like updates and their defensive posts about how it would improve, etc. - most of those people have gone very quiet now without any apology.
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Every time a new OS comes out it's always the same until the OS matures.
I make my own mind up about tech and not listening to opinions until I use it myself.
I don't play around with tech like I used to, I just like it to work without problems.
10/11 are sure taking their time "maturing"
the whole culture behind developing the OS is rotten to its core, I don't see any potential for improvement without a good house cleaning.I used to spend quite a bit of time on the feedback hub but it became apparent they only wanted to see the things they wanted to see and it was only ever after high profile pressure such as streamers with millions of followers being impacted and complaining that anything else would change and even then it was an awkward specific case fix rather than tackling the whole problem - hence ending up with the stupid active hours implementation as if everyone lived very rigid lives.