Windows 7 or 10?

timwinters

timwinters

Ejection Handle Pulled
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I need a new laptop, mine's 5 years old, running win7 professional and is definitely getting long in the tooth.

Doing some initial shopping, I see that win7 professional is still an option on new laptops. I like 7...have heard horror stories about 10 (but that may just be Luddite talk).

7's extended support is scheduled to end in 2020.
10's extended support is scheduled to end in 2025...not that any laptop will last that long.

What say you tech guys?
 
Get the bonanza of laptops. Get a mac.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Unless you're one of those super paranoid "everyone is trying to steal my info" people, go with 10. It's stable, it's amazing, and even though Windows 7 was great, Windows 10 is even better.
 
If 7 is working, stick with it. Less system surveillance by outsiders. 10 is much better than 8 though.
 
I have both and also recently switched all work computers to 10.
I don't think there is any huge difference but if you are sensitive to change, it might seem there is.
There are some things with 10 that you need to learn to tame to make it tolerable and a few things are still annoying me.
(why, why would they do away with "Recent Documents"????)
It is much better at pushing crap on you (ie promoting purchases) with the Shop Icon, and in the start menu popup 'suggestions'.
There is at least one other thread here on Win10, Tim - with some details on it.
I mainly got it in case programs lose utility on the older platform - I agree with your assessment about 'will computers last as long as the support for the OS'.
 
I'm running Win 7 pro in both my three year old laptop and 9 year old desktop. Both are still performing well. I upgraded my desktop by installing a solid state hard drive. That improved performance considerably.

Tim, Is yours set up to automatically run things like disk defrag and cleanup? Those two should be run on a regular basis.
 
Converted my desktop to Windows 10, hated it and reverted back to Windows 7.

Bought a small laptop last month with Windows 10, and love it. Big difference is that the laptop has a touch screen; much easier to operate.

Ron Wanttaja
 
timwinters said:
I need a new laptop, mine's 5 years old, running win7 professional and is definitely getting long in the tooth.

Doing some initial shopping, I see that win7 professional is still an option on new laptops. I like 7...have heard horror stories about 10 (but that may just be Luddite talk).

7's extended support is scheduled to end in 2020.
10's extended support is scheduled to end in 2025...not that any laptop will last that long.

What say you tech guys?
Click to expand...
Ten, no question.

Bob
 
I prefer Mac but my business software is Windows only. I run Windows 7 on my PCs throughout the offices and also use 7 when I need to on my Mac with the parallels app. My Macbook Pro runs Windows faster and more reliably than my Dell and Lenovo PCs do!

I can run my Mac and Windows programs simultaneously with Parallels. I just toggle can and forth between windows on the screen. Connect it to a dock with a big monitor? Awesome. I'll never buy a desktop again.
 
I'm a Mac guy myself, prefer the OS over Windows.

After using Windows 7 in the past, it was definitely better than 8. My vote goes for 7.
 
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I see no reason to upgrade to 10 at this point unless you have a touch screen.
 
Have had 10 since the week before the free upgrade ended...

No issues, and the computer does boot a bit faster, and run a bit "cleaner". Setting it to look like a Win7 desktop is easy enough.

I will be purchasing a batch of computers for the new call center group I'm forming and will be going with Win10 to make management simpler (since I am the IT guy, and janitor, and purchasing department, and head chaos officer, and .... )
 
Subsea said:
Get the bonanza of laptops. Get a mac.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

I've only owned one iThingy...well three actually...iPads. Only because of foreflight. Hate the closed architecture. I have a training wheel on my airplane, don't need one on my computer! :)

Sounds like 10 professional it is. They're cheaper than 7 anyway.
 
Under the hood, 10 is better, in my opinion, save for the spyware and the forced updates. I also don't care for the GUI, but ClassicShell fixes that nicely.

I suggest going with 10 Professional if you're going to use 10. It allows you to schedule the updates at your convenience and to defer the upgrades. I'd prefer ignoring the upgrades (not updates) altogether if the machine is working to my satisfaction; but that option is available only on Enterprise, which is only available with a volume license last time I checked. But 10 pro at least lets you defer them for a few months, during which time presumably they'll replace the release-time bugs with newer and better bugs.

Depending on your level of paranoia, you can also disable most of the spyware, starting with Cortana. I have pretty much all of it disabled, especially Cortana. I have enough women in my life telling me what to do.

I also use a local login. If I ever decide to download something for which I need a Microsoft account (I never have so far), then I'll enter the information for that purpose only. That does limit functionality a bit; but I don't need to synchronize my data with any other machines and I don't need any "apps" other than the Adobe stuff and an email client, so I don't care about that.

In terms of its essential competence as an OS, however, 10 is superb. 8 was also superb and 7 was also excellent, but 10 is even better. Stability and resource management are near-perfect. They even finally figured out how to get the Sleep state to work properly. It took them a while, but they finally did it.

Rich
 
7. The people that are saying 10 are trolls.
 
Do tell, Mike. How to modify the start menu!
Need Recent Documents!
Groove and Edge: evil and must die!
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
How to kill Edge and Groove....pleease!
Click to expand...

It's risky to uninstall the pre-installed apps, especially the ones that don't include supported uninstallers. Even some of the ones that do include uninstallers can break Explorer when they're uninstalled. The one that have to be uninstalled using PowerShell can cause even more problems when uninstalled. If you choose to try, please make a backup or create a Restore Point first.

Edge can't be uninstalled in any supported way. There are several unsupported ways to disable it, but they can cause bigger problems than they solve. You're better off undoing its associations in Default Programs. You must assign the file types to other programs to do this. For example, you could assign PDF files to Acrobat, HTML files to IE or Firefox, etc.

Groove Music and Groove Video can be uninstalled using PowerShell. However, this also has been reported to cause problems in some cases, including the inability to click the Start button once in a while. But as with Edge, it's really not necessary to uninstall Groove. You can remove the programs' file associations by assigning them to other programs such as Windows Media Player or VLC Media Player.

If you want the Groove programs completely gone, then use the search engine of your choice to search for "uninstall groove using powershell."

Rich
 
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Let'sgoflying! said:
Do tell, Mike. How to modify the start menu!
Need Recent Documents!
Groove and Edge: evil and must die!
Click to expand...
Mostly it was removing tiles I didn't want, inserting ones I did, and a resizing many of them.

But much of the time, I'm just hitting the windows key and typing to find the app or doc I want.
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
Do tell, Mike. How to modify the start menu!
Need Recent Documents!
Groove and Edge: evil and must die!
Click to expand...
Pin File Explorer to the taskbar and right click on it and you'll have your recent folders. Left click File Explorer and it displays recent folders and files when Quick Access is selected on the left.
 
Well, I just ordered a new laptop and I ordered...

...both!!!

The machine I ordered has win7 pro loaded up and includes a license for win10 pro. I really don't have time to screw with learning/tweaking a new system right now and the following two comments caused me to take pause since I'm not getting a touch-screen laptop:

avongil said:
I see no reason to upgrade to 10 at this point unless you have a touch screen.
Click to expand...

wanttaja said:
Converted my desktop to Windows 10, hated it and reverted back to Windows 7.

Bought a small laptop last month with Windows 10, and love it. Big difference is that the laptop has a touch screen; much easier to operate.
Click to expand...

With the license I can play with 10 sometime in the future when the dust settles, right now it's not settled at all.

Thanks to all for the input and I will definitely reference this thread when I do decide to set up 10...which I will...
 
This thread will be useful for me too. I put the free upgrade on a spare notebook that I'm not currently using, and on a slide-out hard drive of one of my higher-performance desktop systems. I'll bookmark this thread for when I'm ready to get familiar with 10.
 
I'm still using 7 and have no plans to upgrade to 10. Count me in as one of the paranoid ones.
 
SkyHog said:
Unless you're one of those super paranoid "everyone is trying to steal my info" people, go with 10. It's stable, it's amazing, and even though Windows 7 was great, Windows 10 is even better.
Click to expand...

What does 10 do for me that 7 didn't?
 
kgruber said:
Just click on the Cortana mic and say "list of recent files."
Click to expand...
"I'd be happy to help you with that. Just as soon as you sign in, we'll get started."
(No mic so I typed it)
"Recent docs" should have been left alone, imo. Very helpful and powerful tool. Can't believe these OS designers, who are probably using the software in their work everyday do not notice the same thing.
 
With Win7 being a preferred system, 8 being crap, then we have Win10.

Ever wonder about why no 9 (and screw the real tech reason)???

Because Seven Eight Nine! (Seven ate Nine)
 
Both, in virtual machines, on a mac.
 
Ten is fine. We had a forced upgrade of the entire company to get a ten-only feature, and even though most of us techies thought we'd have our butts handed to us by something evil, it's turned out to be just fine. Users seem to "get it" after a few days, and we haven't had any major problems.

One oddity we had was with certain laptops and video cards, if you have Bitlocker enabled with a password (or biometrics if the machines have that), once in a while the Bitlocker screen will simply not show up and the monitor will be blank.

Turns out, it's there and waiting for input, but some video chipsets play badly with it. So just type the password or do the biometric thing or whatever and it'll boot and fire up the video.
 
I just returned a $2400.00 Dell XPS Laptop I bought to run Lightroom from Bestbuy with Win 10. It worked great(crazy fast) for 4 days then it did a update that added a windows live password (I dont have or want windows live).The friendly East Indian Tech support rep I got to know for 2 hours couldnt get rid off it and said I needed to reinstall entire op system. Umm no thanks I spent 2 days setting it up now you want to completely blow out a brand new system! Thank god for Bestbuys 14 day return period. Thats what I get for trying to save a buck now I will go to my usual shop to custom build me one without any crap software I don't need.

Seems Microsoft is trying to do their usual force you to use their software for everything bit.
 
Also it took me 2 hours to get chrome as my default browser as it kept trying to force me to use the new Microsoft browser.
 
The key elements to buying a new PC laptop are:

1. Microsoft signature edition...................crucial!!
2. Windows 10.
3. SSD hard drive.
4. backlit keyboard.
5. touchscreen, if you like that feature.

6. Install "Classic Shell" first off.
 
kgruber said:
The key elements to buying a new PC laptop are:

1. Microsoft signature edition...................crucial!!
2. Windows 10.
3. SSD hard drive.
4. backlit keyboard.
5. touchscreen, if you like that feature.

6. Install "Classic Shell" first off.
Click to expand...

The biggest difference in "Signature Edition" is that they contain less crapware, save for Microsoft's own. But HP's (and probably most other manufacturers') business-class computers don't include any crapware, either, or at least very little. There was none at all all on the computer I'm using now (HP ProDesk 400 G3 MT), not even a trial antivirus.

Rich
 
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