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Windows 10--Good, Bad, or Ugly


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Not being very computer smart, all I can say is seems to work as advertised. The only issue I really do not like is the occasional pop-up add from micro soft telling me I need "Office." I'm sure others with more knowledge will be along soon.

Cheers,

Dave

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Barney,

as one who extremely hates OS upgrades i would suggest you get win 10! Pretty much everything that was a problem in earlier windows releases has been sorted out in win10, more or less. The system is not perfect but i love it, much more minimalistic, not so vibrant and childish, its fast and user interface is the best yet on windows platform. I run both Mac OSX and windows and a lot of things that are great on OSX were missing on Windows, up until now... now in win 10 you have multi desktop option, global search like on Mac and much more.

Cons would be the fact that win 10 gather a lot more data about you but i somehow doubt they didn't do that in the past!? There is an option somewhere to turn off all that stuff though.

Bottom line is, you will not regret it!

cheers,

Alek

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Who wants to guess how many posts there will be in this thread before some numpty says 'Buy a Mac instead'...

But to answer your question - it takes the good bits of Windows 7 and 8, with only a few of the annoying bits of both.

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Who wants to guess how many posts there will be in this thread before some numpty says 'Buy a Mac instead'...

But to answer your question - it takes the good bits of Windows 7 and 8, with only a few of the annoying bits of both.

As someone who uses both OSes (Mac at home, Windows at work and home [virtualized on my iMac, thanks!]), each has its own pluses and minuses. Most of the windows software I use at work isn't compatible with 10 yet, so my employer is sticking with 7 for the foreseeable future, and I'm doing the same at home. Win 10 has a lot going for it, but I'd make sure any of the software you use, especially anything you need to do your job or daily tasks at home, is compatible. Otherwise, you'll be a) buying new software, B) waiting for the developer to upgrade his product or c) up a creek without a paddle. It's situations like this that helped me too decide to figure out how to turn off the upgrade "feature" in my home Windows installation.

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As someone who uses both OSes (Mac at home, Windows at work and home [virtualized on my iMac, thanks!]), each has its own pluses and minuses. Most of the windows software I use at work isn't compatible with 10 yet, so my employer is sticking with 7 for the foreseeable future, and I'm doing the same at home. Win 10 has a lot going for it, but I'd make sure any of the software you use, especially anything you need to do your job or daily tasks at home, is compatible. Otherwise, you'll be a) buying new software, B)/> waiting for the developer to upgrade his product or c) up a creek without a paddle. It's situations like this that helped me too decide to figure out how to turn off the upgrade "feature" in my home Windows installation.

I'm sure there's going to be a few bits of software that throw up something odd, but I have to say I've been running 10 at home and throughout my business for many months and we've not experienced a single issue at all (and no, we're not just running the usual MS suite either). For us it's been a completely seamless transition.

I know what you're saying, but most of the time when a software company says that their product isn't compatible yet they're just covering their backs.

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I have been using it for a couple of months now and overall its OK. It takes a while to go through all the areas to turn off all the information tracking that is built into Windows 10. The biggest detractor for me is that you cannot get rid of Cortana, I am running this on a laptop and have no need for it. You can shut Cortana off but it is always running in the background, using resources. There is no way that I have been able to find to delete it. My old laptop still has Windows 7 on it and I like it better.

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I'm sure there's going to be a few bits of software that throw up something odd, but I have to say I've been running 10 at home and throughout my business for many months and we've not experienced a single issue at all (and no, we're not just running the usual MS suite either). For us it's been a completely seamless transition.

I know what you're saying, but most of the time when a software company says that their product isn't compatible yet they're just covering their backs.

Good point. The vast majority of software out there will just work fine, even if it's supposedly not compatible. There are, though, a few titles out there that do need an upgrade before win 10 is installed (looking at you, Catia!), and if one of those titles is a daily use, then make sure the fix is out there before you upgrade. I usually wait until after the first service pack (Windows) or point roll (Mac OS) to update just because of issues like this - by the time the update to the update is out, most incompatibilities are fixed...

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I got a new laptop with Windows 10, and it's already in the shop having to be repaired (which I partially blame myself for). I turned it on one day and got something about "Critical Error: Start Menu and Cortana not working." Got this every time I booted the damn thing up. So (this is the part where I blame myself for it being in the shop), on my other laptop, I looked up one of those stupid YouTube videos about how to solve the problem, and only ended up making it worse by following those directions. So, needless to say, I'm not overly impressed with it so far...

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Bought a new laptop with Win 8 and four I7 processors a few weeks before 10 came out.

Signed up for the upgrade, which was supposed to be automatic---which it was but a few weeks after the intro.

For my uses I don't see much difference between 8 and 10 and am not sure what improvements in performance are Win and which are the PC.

I went from a desktop XP.

About 6 months later I had the same situation as TomcatFanatic123.

Took it to Best Buy (where I bought it) Geek Squad.

They had to reload Windows and warned that data may be lost.

I had already saved my critical data still on the laptop (have an external HDD also) but had to use DOS to do that---the only thing I could get to run on the laptop.

They saved the data on a thumb drive (had to pay for that--the saving and the drive) and were able to save the data on the PC.

All but 4 of the icons on my desktop are gone.

Cost over $100 not counting the thumb.

They told me that this is common and (at the time) Geek Squad as a whole (not just that store) had yet to find a common reason.

My Google research showed the same thing happening with 8 over a year ago.

Overall, I like the new systems though they took some getting used to.

But some of my old stuff is unusable, including MDI files---good thing I kept the desktop.

Except for online apps (most of my time) my other work (Word, Excel mostly) is not any better or faster with these new systems (but I don't have large files or many/complex computations) and the XP is fine for stand-alone (got way too slow for online).

So, as usual, decide what you need it for, find out what the new systems will do, find out what they won't do for your needs, find out where they are not compatible with your existing files, and beware of the known problems.

One good thing that came out of this is that the failure was at a bad time (programeed that way?) and I had no online access (for some unk reason the desktop would not connect) so I bought a tablet which is working out really well for Wi-Fi at about 2/3 the size of the laptop.

Also, a NOOK that I got for Christmas has a lot of online capability so I'm in much better shape.

Rich

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I did the free update from W7 to W10. The update went smoothly and without any issues. I have had zero issues with W10 since updating, now a few months, and have been extremely happy with the update. A couple of things I would suggest. If you do the update from an earlier Windows edition I would create an image backup of the previous OS to a second hard drive or thumb drive prior as a precaution to the update in case you decide you don't like W10, (highly unlikely though, they are pretty similar in many respects). After the install, I would also suggest doing an image backup for W10, again on a separate drive. You'll need at least 4gb's of space. Next, importantly, I would download the W10 ISO from the Microsoft website. Burn it to a DVD or to a flash drive for a potential failure or corruption of your primary drive. Again you'll need 4gb's of space. You would then have a fresh bootable copy of W10 to install as if you bought it retail in the store. You can only do this if you have a valid, authenticated copy of W10 on your machine and the MS website will approve that when you go to download the ISO. Obviously, if you saved the ISO to a bootable flash drive, you will need to go into your bios to designate the appropriate boot drive for install if you have a future HD drive failure. Lastly, bookmark in your browser "Windows 10 Forums" easily found with any search engine. It is a website where you can find answers to your questions with W10.

Also, the update can take a few hours to download depending on your connection speed. Be patient.

Hope this helps.

Edited by jpk
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Excellent replies here, giving some good info, but I'll go ahead and throw my 2 cents worth in here.

With Microsoft systems, most come from a variety of manufacturers and have a variety of equipment in them, and I think that will result in different experiences for different people with different hardware. Overall, Windows 10 is generally considered a good OS. I have put it on 3 systems and for two, it's been running without a hitch, and one it's generally pretty good, but seems to need a reboot every few days or the audio has issues and it bogs down. Strangely enough, the one with the issues is the only one made by MS.

As has been mentioned, application compatibility is something that will need to looked at very carefully, as there are a few that don't run under Windows 10. One killer for me is the WebEx version my company uses, which means I can't attend a WebEx meeting from any systems running Windows 10.

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As has been mentioned, application compatibility is something that will need to looked at very carefully, as there are a few that don't run under Windows 10.

My wife's computer is running W7 at the moment and she really doesn't want to upgrade to 10. All of her graphics programs are not Windows 10 compatable which means, of course, if we were to upgrade to 10, we'd also have to upgrade all of her graphics software packages. :(/>/> If Windows could send us a check to cover all that, then I wouldn't mind so much. But I don't think they'll be doing that anytime soon, soooo.....

My point is that if you're going to pull the trigger and go through the upgrade, check to see what, if any, of your existing programs will be compatible and which won't BEFORE you do it. Evaluate if it's worth it to you to lose those programs and what it's worth to upgrade/replace them.

Eric

Edited by echolmberg
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Not being very computer smart, all I can say is seems to work as advertised. The only issue I really do not like is the occasional pop-up add from micro soft telling me I need "Office." I'm sure others with more knowledge will be along soon.

Cheers,

Dave

I get at least one a day telling me I need to upgrade from 8 to Windows 10.

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You say that like it's a bad thing...

LOL! Yeah, attending the WebEx meetings isn't fun, but don't have much choice. However, if I can use my home systems, it saves me from having to drive into the office for those 5:00am and 6:00am conference calls (being on the west coast causes some scheduling issues).

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Probably a dumb question but here goes - I've got a pretty old (~ 4 years) PC, running WIN 7 that of late has started to really run slowly. I keep current with virus scans and maint (Avast!, Malware Bytes and CC Cleaner), nothing is improving the situation. I've got the free WIN 10 upgrade offer, any thoughts on whether going with the upgrade would resolve my performance issues or is it more like putting lipstick on a pig?

If the latter, anyone suggest another approach to getting this thing back in shape? After going into sleep mode, it can take close to 3-4 minutes to load Google Chrome. It's getting annoying but I really don't feel like going with a new PC quite yet.

The built-in WIN7 system tools don't have much impact. I tried a system restore back a few months to when this thing was running faster, the program crashes. Thoughts?

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I'm currently running Windows 7 with the option to up grade to 10 and I would appreciate any comments on the W10 OS. Let me know both Pros and Cons

Barney

One of the things NOT mentioned by other responders is hardware compatibility and software drivers. You may find that some item of hardware on your current system that worked with Win7/8 doesn't work with 10 because it's old and the manufacturer has not issued a new driver for that. Also, some of your old software may not work due to the exact same reason - lack of updated drivers.

I've upgraded to Win 10 on 3 systems so far. Two of the updates were problematic due to the actual updater itself, which did not work properly. In the two cases the update supposedly started but there was no indication that anything was actually updating, i.e. no progress bar. I had to kill the process, go to the MS site, download the standalone updater from there, and when I ran that it worked properly. MS does not make it easy to find - as usual there are multiple versions with multiple links on multiple MS sites.

John Hairell (tpn18@yahoo.com)

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Probably a dumb question but here goes - I've got a pretty old (~ 4 years) PC, running WIN 7 that of late has started to really run slowly. I keep current with virus scans and maint (Avast!, Malware Bytes and CC Cleaner), nothing is improving the situation. I've got the free WIN 10 upgrade offer, any thoughts on whether going with the upgrade would resolve my performance issues or is it more like putting lipstick on a pig?

If the latter, anyone suggest another approach to getting this thing back in shape? After going into sleep mode, it can take close to 3-4 minutes to load Google Chrome. It's getting annoying but I really don't feel like going with a new PC quite yet.

The built-in WIN7 system tools don't have much impact. I tried a system restore back a few months to when this thing was running faster, the program crashes. Thoughts?

My missus had an old-ish Win7 laptop that was really, really, slow. Like you, I tried all the built-in diagnostic and repair programs, pretty much to no avail.

There wasn't anything wrong with it, and all anti-virus and anti-malware sweeps showed clean. We put Win10 on it, and it was instantly transformed into a speedster.

In a case like this (i.e. nothing to lose) I would recommend it. Only CCleaner quit working as incompatible, and the VPN software needed a newer version, otherwise it was a winning decision.

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I got a Sony Duo 11 that came with Windows 8 and it was ok, 8.1 made it usable and WIndows 10 made it amazing.

I only use it for photo editing in Photoshop and LightRoom which meant there were no problems until I came to do some more things with it.

Compatibility is an issue, in that there is a distict lack of support for it right now because its quite new. things like my MZ-RH1 which work with my desktop on Windows 7 will not work on Windows 10, it just flat out has no driver support.

But the digitizer pen seems to work much better in Windows 10 than it did in 8.1, it feels more accurate when I use it in Photoshop.

The bottom line to an upgrade is compatibility, on my desktop I use a lot more than is supported so I will not be upgrading any time soon, if at all because of lack of legacy support in it. but for my UltraBook it works like a dream and Im glad I upgraded... for free too. Which was nice.

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Adding to the points on older PCs:

Even if things run faster with a W10 upgrade you may have limits based on available memory and disk space (for virtual memory).

Even if the computer has no problems you may still find some things slow, especially web.

Web links seem to have made substantial increase in the last year or so for resource requirements with lots of graphics, animations, and videos.

That's part of what made it better to get a new PC for me---the old XP desktop runs fine and stand-alone apps are just as good as always but it's pushing 10 years old and back then there just wasn't the horsepower except on graphics machines.

Also, rule of thumb has been 5 year lifetime for a PC before it starts hiccups and coughing and smoking (sometimes literally).

My experience (including maintaining up to 70 at a time) is that most last longer but in that large a population many will be uneconomically repairable (cost more to fix, ie replace components) than buy a new one.

So usefulness and age are related.

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