[Closed] Windows 10 - Anyone brave enough using it?

I did. I like it. Everything works a lite more smoothly. Multiple desktop. Multi windows on the same screen. The file systems are all a lot neater too. The main issue seems to be compatibility and stability. Which I didn't have an issue with on a ThinkPad t420.

Check your pc manufacturer website to see if all the drivers are available before you do it.

Only thing I've found is the touchpad occasionally freezes for a few seconds. Can't fix it. Not a massive issue tho.

It's very good, the upgrade process is easy and it's now as stable as Win7 or 8. Fill yer boots.

Can take a few hours to complete though.

I have on my work laptop and it's fine. Remove the links to edge and create links for IE that is still on the system and you'll be fine.

I only had one issue with our VPN client which was fixed installing a different app.

Swapped over in the first week on my work PC. Was running W7 prior.

It's fine.

MS went to far and i bought myself a couple of Macs.
Bring back Vista or at least Win7

I liked 7 and 10 seems like it's basically 8 without the annoying bits.

2 bits I don't like - it reboots itself after updates, and I can't find a way to switch this off permanently (it seems to reenable itself), and the duplication between Settings & Control Panel. Minor points though, it is a good bit of software.

Upgraded a friend's laptop from Windows 8.

All went swimmingly and the result seemed a lot more usable than Windows 8 (which to be fair isn't hard).

OK, sounds like there are any major issues.

From what you've seen what are the main benefits on 10 over 7?

Another satisfied user here. Have it at work with Office 2016, all seems to work. Was using both Win 7 and 8.1 before and it is better than both of them.

Bring back Vista

Ha ha ha, yeah good one!

yes and its great.

Not many TBH, but it was free, and in the future will be better than 7 when they stop supporting 7, which probably won't be long off if they're planning to keep offering free upgrades to keep people off the older systems.

The multi desktop/windows thing is nice.

Downside, the start menu is cluttered mess of default 'apps' and web links (i'm sure you can probably delete them but I can't be arsed). And if there's any grot on my hardrive it seems to delight in swapping out whatever random inoffensive pic it's taken for the photo/video album icon for that.

Can you roll back to your previous OS if you have issues?

I'm a long-time Mac user and I quite like Windows 10 - I didn't even replace my old Mac Mini when it died a few months ago - it's the only version of Windows I've felt I could live with on a daily basis. We just use laptops running Win10 at home now.*

(*still use Macs at work though!).

I've just gone back to Win7 after 2-3 months of trying to get on with 10. It's sort of OK, but had hassles with recognising my DVD drive on upgrade, and most annoyingly, it stopped recognising my keyboard every now and again (it's a P/S2 keyboard, but a nice one, so I don't want to change it for a USB one).

It(W10) doesn't seem to be quite finished - Edge is awful. You can switch to a different browser, but it seems to keep putting Edge back as the default as part of updates; It doesn't handle colour profiles uniformly (some things are OK, some not - the photo viewer being one of them!). Things like device manager are still there with its old, round edged window, but you have to click through an unnecessarily long sequence of square tiles to get to it. The start menu equivalent turns into a mess when you install more than a few programs, and is populated with all manner of "fun" "Apps" (= useless crap) like a cheap phone by default.

...and I don't like how it looks with its pointy-cornered windows/tiles.

The computer felt zippy when I first installed W10. It felt equally zippy going from a "working" version of W10 (with some programs installed, etc. - I refuse to call them "Apps") to a fresh install of W7.

I never switch my computer on to marvel at the operating system - I have some purpose in mind. Having to learn the foibles of a new OS gets in the way of that. I'm familiar with Win7, and it does everything I want it to do in ways that I can understand.

I think I'll cling on to W7 as long as I clung on to XP! YMMV.

In brief: If it ain't broken - don't fix it.

Bushwacked - Member

OK, sounds like there are any major issues.

From what you've seen what are the main benefits on 10 over 7?

Looks nicer, whilst it's called 10, it's really 7.5 - it has the best bits of 8, with the familiar layout of 7.

Your profile roams from device to device.
It runs quicker than 7, but doesn't boot as quickly as 8.
It integrates better with the new cloud based MS products in the way fail management works.
It’s also future-proof. MS say that this is it, there will never be another Windows OS, from now on all future OS will be Windows 10 based and the OS will be updated versions of it (however they’ve said that before) – I haven’t had the chance to check the licensing agreement for Win10, but in theory it’s yours so you could buy OS free PCs from now on if you can find one – try Novatech

I'm on 8.1 for most of ours, with Classic Shell, and Win 7 for one. I can't recall Microsoft even trying to sell Win 10 on any new features. Why would I want it?

I haven’t had the chance to check the licensing agreement for Win10, but in theory it’s yours so you could buy OS free PCs from now on if you can find one – try Novatech

Good luck with that, W10 is activated against the hardware.

The only part I do not like is the pushed updates which, if using anything below Windows 10 Pro edition cannot be stopped or deferred. This can mean that you turn on your pc and you simply cannot use it for a few minutes while the update is installed.
Oh and some (particularly graphics) drivers seem a bit flaky - you occasionally on older machines have to revert to the manufacturers drivers as Windows thinks it knows better.

So my recommendation would be:
1. if on relatively new hardware, go for it
2. If you can upgrade to Windows 10 Pro or above, go for it
3. Otherwise, I'd probably stay on Windows 7, which was in all honesty rock solid. Microsoft are supporting it until 14/01/2020 and if you are on an older pc you will probably have replaced it by then anyhow.

Oh, and the black screen you get when upgrades are being installed. You start your pc, get the loading screen and then it all goes black - you can only see your mouse and nothing else - it led to me rebooting halfway through an update a few times until I worked out what was going on - you just have to be patient and wait for the process to finish.

Installed straight away on an 8.1 laptop I bought last year, it's been good, has some small problems but nothing that has bothered me. I did buy a well specced machine though i7, ssd and plenty of ram, couldn't be bothered with a budget version as they seem to slow down far too quickly these days.

I quite like it, but would have preferred they kept the interface closer to 2012r2.

It is getting quite annoying now at work having to go between xp, win7 2003, 2008 and 2012r2 then coming home to win10.

I like it (W10), but it doesn't work properly on our 'home' laptop.

Something to do with the graphics processor drivers, or something. Much clevererer people than me have looked at it, and told me to go back to W7.

Can you roll back to your previous OS if you have issues?

You can within the first 30 days, IIRC.

No issues here. Took my main machine from 7 to 10 a bit back and it's been fine.

I like our W10 PCs. Everything works well, no niggles, basically Win8 as it should have been.

MS went to far and i bought myself a couple of Macs.
Bring back Vista or at least Win7

POSTED 1 HOUR AGO #

I went the other way after El Capitan / OS X Photos .. on Win 10 after about a decade of Macs and more than happy.

Yep. My only problems were a very old application (from 98!) that had to be installed [i]before[/i] the upgrade but would then work afterwards and eSet AV which needed reinstalling. Otherwise it's fab and wouldn't go back

I like our W10 PCs. Everything works well, no niggles, basically Win8 as it should have been.

Yeah, it's a no-brainer upgrade from Windows 8.

You can set your internet connection to "metered connection" apparently this stops updates automaticly up dating.
But any updates change this setting back to defaults which is annoying.

Its fine. the user interface is not irritating in the way that win8 was. think of it as win7 with some decent new features

I had some issues with my wireless driver after the latest win10 updates but was able to roll back to a previous win10 build.

Nice feature which I didn't know was there.

Still on Windows 7 ... 😛

Ain't broken don't fix it but I might buy a Microsoft Windows 10 Linx tablet with Office pre-installed.

Using 10 but Windows 7 is the best version I've used.

I've been using it since August. No real issues. Have also set up a lot of machines with it at work. Don't use Edge ... just set IE as the default browser.

TBH I've not seen anything that says upgrade, to me- that might be different if you're on 8, but I'm on 7 and it's really very good. TBH the spammy/malwarey nature of the upgrade prompts alone have put me off.

A few minor driver issues and our av software has lost some (previously unused) functionality, other than that all good as far as I can tell on the home machine although it's only really used for web surfing, email and a bit of light picture manipulating and stuff for the kids so it could be worse than I think...

I upgraded from 7 - I can see Microsoft dropping support for 7 as soon as they can as their whole aim is to get people onto one platform, so I wanted up get it while it was free.

It's generally good, has some good features, but I've spent a lot of time finding and turning off all the anti-privacy bits. A recent upgrade decided that there was a 'problem' with some of the apps like Irfanview that I've installed, and so it sets the file associations back to the defaults every time I change them.

Also annoying that you can't remove stuff you don't use, such as Cortana - even though I've turned it off, it's still used 17min of processor time in the last week, and sent 4Mb of network traffic - I don't what, or to whom.

I can see Microsoft dropping support for 7 as soon as they can

It's been out of mainstream support for a month or so already. Extended support (ie, still getting security updates) runs until the start of 2020.

Cougar - Moderator

I can see Microsoft dropping support for 7 as soon as they can

It's been out of mainstream support for a month or so already. Extended support (ie, still getting security updates) runs until the start of 2020.

4 more years to go so I guess I better start saving now for a new desktop PC system. Maximum budget £500 all inclusive. I bet PC will be dirt cheap when we get to 2020. 😀

We're still on XP at work, the company are paying MS for extended support (rumoured to be in the 10's of millions), due to move to W7 around May but the project isn't going too well.

As for updates, I don't really see what the problem is. I [i]want [/i]security updates ASAP, they're there for a reason. The XP way of leaving users in charge of updates is what led to outbreaks of things like Conficker, that was still running rampant months after the patch was issued.

The only issue I had with Windows Update under W10 is it rebooting overnight under its own steam, and that's a setting you can disable.

We're still on XP at work, the company are paying MS for extended support (rumoured to be in the 10's of millions), due to move to W7 around May but the project isn't going too well.

Public sector?

I boggle at stuff like this. You're migrating from a 14 year old operating system to a seven year old operating system, did it catch them by surprise?

Umpteen times better than W8 but not as easy to use as XP. Too cluttered as mentioned in the start menu, way to many offerings of clever ways to do something but no obvious way of switching that off and to my mind anything new must always be backward compatible. Surely computer geeks are not really so stupid that they can't do that. Was at the point that the crap old W7 was coming back out, glitches and all when my new one came with 8. Now I am nearly happy.

"Windows Update under W10 is it rebooting overnight under its own steam, and that's a setting you can disable"
How FFS?

[quote=jb72 ]Don't use Edge ... just set [s]IE[/s] Chrome or Firefox as the default browser.

Fixed

Long time Linux desktop user at home here, god I hate using windows at work. Having to move a window by moving the mouse to the title bar is so tedious. Having to resize a window by grabbing the corner of the window is a bit crap also. Doesn't sound like much of a deal, but when you can't have proper virtual desktops to flick between or flick an application to, it makes drag and drop are right barrel load of donkey cock when organizing windows on the desktop.

Sorry, no, haven't used Win 10. It doesn't have a decent virtual desktop implementation does it? Thinking about upgrading work desktop to it, but not got round to it yet.

I have used it - I had a (piece of crap) HP ENVY 15 I've just sent back for refund and I went from Win 8.1 to 10. I'd say W10 has a slightly updated 8.1 kernel (pretty fast) and a new graphical interface which isn't horrific but has a few foibles of its own:

The start button doesn't give you an hierarchical list of programs but an 'a to z' listing which can be a little confusing.

New tech in W10 (not MS's fault really) is display scaling. As a result if you have a 1080p display or higher some programs (including MS's own, such as device manager) will appear fuzzy as they don't understand it, or appear much smaller as they are pixel based.

I'd say a mixed bag. If you could get W7 interface on a W10 kernel then that would be nice. Classic shell still works, so I hear.

Overall - better than W8 but not as usable as W7. I can't comment on reliability as my ENVY 15 was a bag of poo and kept crashing, regardless of OS. 🙂

How FFS?

Um. I don't mean to be facetious, but it's in Windows Update Settings...?

Having to move a window by moving the mouse to the title bar is so tedious.

Alt-Space-M and the arrow keys (or same keystroke and then move the mouse) will do that.

Doesn't sound like much of a deal, but when you can't have proper virtual desktops to flick between or flick an application to, it makes drag and drop are right barrel load of donkey cock when organizing windows on the desktop.

Window-Left / Right will snap a window to half of the screen (or you can drag it), which can be handy for C&P duties. Never use it myself though; what I do to copy to an inactive window with the mouse is drag to the window's icon in the taskbar; wait a second and the mouse-overed tab will pop to the front with focus, then you can drop it in. Though most often I'll use Control-C/X/V to copy and paste, with Alt-Tab to switch between windows. Way faster than any of this 'dragging' malarky.

It's easy to blame tools you're not used to; before you'd posted this I'd probably have bemoaned Linux's inability to do things in a way I'm familiar with, it wouldn't have even crossed my mind to me to use the multi-desktop.

...Classic shell still works, so I hear.

"Works" as in functions, yes, but not particularly helpful at restoring the W7 look and feel, IME.

The start button doesn't give you an hierarchical list of programs but an 'a to z' listing which can be a little confusing.

Why use the Start menu at all? Hit the Windows key, start typing what you want. If I want Notepad I hit Windows, by the time I've got as far as typing 'not' it's popped up in the apps list.

Why use the Start menu at all? Hit the Windows key, start typing what you want

How hard is to navigate an A to Z list of programmes? You don't even have to, you can search, put popular programs on the start pop up or have them as traditional icons.

I don't get the Win7 love, Win10 does it all but better IME. As for people thinking XP is still acceptable you clearly don't use computers much.

Switched both my PCs from W7 to W10 when W10 was released. No issues so far. Boots in about 15-20s on the machine with the SSD. Has never crashed on me. The only criticism I have is that visually its a bit sparse with no texture but I guess that's because its got to work across multiple platforms.

Having to move a window by moving the mouse to the title bar is so tedious.

Alt-Space-M and the arrow keys (or same keystroke and then move the mouse) will do that.

Thanks for that, will have to try, but it sounds like a game of twister for my fingers.

It's easy to blame tools you're not used to; before you'd posted this I'd probably have bemoaned Linux's inability to do things in a way I'm familiar with, it wouldn't have even crossed my mind to me to use the multi-desktop.

Does Win10 have virtual desktops without having seperate displays? It's nice to have just a few windows on each desktop grouped by common task, lessens the clutter a bit.

This is the best bit of Win10 - not having to know where any settings are any more.

It's done it since Vista (arguably since XP with a third-party app called Launchy).

Does Win10 have virtual desktops without having seperate displays?

Even with a myriad of windows open, Alt-Tab and Alt-Shift-Tab (to go backwards) keeps it under control for me. But yes, it does; if you use Windows-Tab you get a 'new desktop' icon in the bottom right corner.

Thanks for that, will have to try, but it sounds like a game of twister for my fingers.

The other thing I've just thought of, the first ten pins on your taskbar are mapped to Windows-numberkey. So if you want to drag and drop to an app that's in the third position on your bar, pick it up, press Win-3 and it'll pull that app to the fore, launching it if necessary.

Like I said though, I rarely use drag & drop; keyboard shortcuts are where it's at for me.

If Win10 is registered to the hardware what happens if the hard drive or motherboard go wrong and need changing, will I have to buy a new OS as well?

Like I said though, I rarely use drag & drop; keyboard shortcuts are where it's at for me.

Which are shit when you need to start going through some layered security and have to nest RDP sessions.

The main thing that's stopped me upgrading to Win 10 is the lack of control over updates.

The prospect of a forced driver update gubbing something that's worked fine for months doesn't appeal.
Also I don't fancy having to wait on boot for 10mins while it applies the 30 patches inevitably released since I last switched on, when I only booted up to quickly check something...

The other area I'd like my mind putting at rest about before I do, is all the chatter back to base that's been mentioned.

Hit the Windows key, start typing what you want. If I want Notepad I hit Windows, by the time I've got as far as typing 'not' it's popped up in the apps list.

Things like device manager are still there with its old, round edged window, but you have to click through an unnecessarily long sequence of square tiles to get to it.

Think your doing it wrong.

For control freaks, I got this via makeuseof :

create a new folder on your desktop: Right-click > New > Folder and name it the following string:

AllSettings.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

("AllSettings" is what mine's called - he calls it GodMode which made me kill a kitten when I first read it)

Once that new window opens you canb create shortcuts to any you really like and shove them onto the desktop or probably the taskbar too

Bloody hell, does that still work? That dates back to like Windows 95 days IIRC.

It does indeed. Here endeth the lesson as to why Windows is a lame donkey.

No I haven't tried 10 yet, it will be turning my machine into a massive spying device when i get an internet connection and I'll probably delete it after that.

Unless DX12 is genuinely awesome with 6/8 cores. Even then...

using win 10 for a while now. IE doesn't like running sharepoint on win10. OK on win7, but keeps cashing after a minute or so. none of the fixes posted online seem to work.

not just my PC either.

otherwise, it's fairly quick and works well for me.

I've been on it at home for a few months, it just works and works well so no reason not to go for it. Big improvement over 8.

I still have 7 at work though and if I'm honest I'd struggle to think of any compelling reason to upgrade from a functionality point of view. That said, since there are no real downsides I reckon it's generally better to be more up to date than a generation or 2 behind.

I seem to be having no end of problems since upgrading a couple of days ago, am I the only one?

Main issue is around the network connection....
I seem to be able to connect to Wi-Fi for no longer than 10 minutes at a time before one of a number of errors happen.
- Wireless adapter is disabled when starting up, so doesn't connect in the first place.
- "Default Gateway is not available".
- "One or more network protocols is missing".

On each occasion the problem can be fixed either using windows troubleshooter or just through fixes I've googled (drivers updated, ivp6 is disabled, 3rd party anti virus disabled, using netsh in a command prompt, restarting routers etc. etc).

Getting to the end of my tether with it, have spent the last 2 evenings trying without success for a fix. Any suggestions before I go back to 8?

I've pretty much well decided to stay W7 and nothing here has persuaded me otherwise.
This laptop came with Vista and a free W7 upgrade, which on installing caused problems with drivers. An old laptop I put Linux Mint on (Vista had ground to a halt) doesn't play video smoothly and I haven't been able to sort that. I'd fully expect the same driver issues upgrading to W10 and I just can't be arsed with potential troubleshooting when it all currently works fine on W7.

Question. Do you have to create a Microsoft account to use W10?

OK so I b0rked my W7 install and tried W10.

Seems to work OK on my X58 board. Spying and prompting and returning settings I have overridden is happening as advertised.

Quite frankly it's usable, but sets a dangerous precedent.

[url= https://tech.slashdot.org/story/16/03/16/1522250/microsoft-denies-rogue-windows-10-upgrades-says-users-remain-fully-in-control ]Microsoft really doesn't give a tiny hint of a shit about users any more[/url], we're in for a rougher ride than ever in that respect.

I cannot be arsed to benchmark it. Seems the same, and certainly makes no difference to CPU bound tasks. Under the hood, it's a rotten cludge in some respects, especially the control panel. Looks like a joke. When Mint XFCE looks more finished than Windows, we're through the looking glass.

@BA - No, but as is the wont of Microsoft at the moment, you'll be bullied to set one up in several ways. FFS it tried to force that on me when I set up the user accounts, and again when I added another.

I use Windows 7 on my laptop and have been happy with that but was contemplating the free upgrade to W10. However, I bought a new laptop for the wife recently which came with W8.1 which I'd heard was a piece of crap so I upgraded her machine to W10 to see what it was like.

First impresions were very good with the basic interface being quite nice and some of the new add-ons like multiple desktops could be useful. However, when I read that updates were going to be automatic I read around about W10 and started to get an uneasy feeling.

Basically anyone using or thinking of upgrading to W10 should watch this:

I basically did everything he suggested to my wife's machine and I don't think I'll bother upgrading my W7 laptop.

Public sector?

I boggle at stuff like this. You're migrating from a 14 year old operating system to a seven year old operating system, did it catch them by surprise?

If the user is who I think he is, no, we're not.

[IMG] [/IMG]

Had to reset my privacy settings after noting a lot of outgoing traffic at idle.

I also didn't install Twitter, which has shown up by itself.

The fear is real.

EDIT - This helps:

I was a bit peeved off on Saturday evening when my laptop basically said "I'm about to update, no option to defer it, you've 15 minutes to save and close everything".

If I'd been working, or in a meeting, making a cup of tea etc, I'd have been stuffed if I'd not saved.

And it took about an hour to do.

First thing that really peeved me off.

Well I'm glad my concerns from a few weeks ago weren't fear-mongering over nothing...

verses - Member

The main thing that's stopped me upgrading to Win 10 is the lack of control over updates.

The prospect of a forced driver update gubbing something that's worked fine for months doesn't appeal.
Also I don't fancy having to wait on boot for 10mins while it applies the 30 patches inevitably released since I last switched on, when I only booted up to quickly check something...

The other area I'd like my mind putting at rest about before I do, is all the chatter back to base that's been mentioned.

If I'd been working, or in a meeting, making a cup of tea etc, I'd have been stuffed if I'd not saved.

One would assume that if it were a work laptop they'd have taken control over the update process. And that they [i]could[/i] take control of it...

[IMG] [/IMG]

I also can't get this ^^^ to go away, and search is really, really slow. Even for installed programs etc :/