Who's sticking with Windows 7?

strollin said:

Both Win 8.1 and Win 10 work perfectly fine with either touch or keyboard/mouse. Both OSes are far more usable with keyboard/mouse than touch, IMO. The use of apps is completely optional.

Not when parts of the OS are, in fact, Metro/Modern apps. You can avoid things like the Groove music app (I think that's what it is called) by installing third party solutions, but if you were happy with WMP, having to go find something else to do its job is annoying. If it were just that one thing, it would be relatively trivial, but it's not (as far as I know; I only used 10 for a few hours before I got fed up and went back to 7). They have some of the system settings done via "app" rather than natively, and I have read that eventually the entire control panel will be in an "app." You can download stuff (like media players) to minimize the "app" crapp, but you can't get away from it completely. This is by design, of course... shades of how MS embedded IE in Windows 98 and beyond so they could claim it was actually one integrated product, and leverage their OS dominance to gain a foothold in another market.

Then there's the design compromises made to put tablet/phone apps into a desktop OS. 8 and 10 no longer have Classic or Basic themes, supposedly because they don't play well with the "app" stuff (and MS is not willing to put in the effort to make it work). If you're one of the many people who can't stand white backgrounds, you'd better get used to using your PC with sunglasses on, because the ability to change your colors in the "classic" way is no longer there.

The same "it doesn't play well with apps" reason is supposed to be behind the elimination of the Aero glass themes that a lot of people liked (and that was a major feature of Vista and 7). Since 8, we just get dull, flat UI with oversize (touch friendly on small screens) buttons (and retina-searingly white backgrounds), because that's what works with tablets and phones.

Microsoft wants us to run phone apps on our PCs, and they want to run the same OS on phones, tablets, and desktops, even though they're different devices with different needs. Even Apple (not a company I laud very often) gets this! But then, they HAVE an established phone app market, so they don't need to force people into their "ecosystem" the way MS thinks it has to.

The only feature in 10 I am interested in (besides more years of updates) at all is DirectX 12. The rest of it (Cortana, Action Center, Windows Store and anything else 'apps', OneDrive integration, Xbox integration, tablet features, Edge, Virtual Desktop, etc.), not only don't appeal to me, but are all things I would actively seek to uninstall, if that were possible. The new start menu is only good by comparison to Windows 8; it still isn't good enough (although Classic Shell, which I currently use with 7 to bring back the Classic menu, takes care of that). Tiles are something I walk on, not click on.

If I could get 10 with the UI as close as possible to Windows 2000, that would be ideal. That'd be even better than 7 as it is now! Win 2000 UI with 10 (less the features in the preceding paragraph). That I could go for. Just as an option, of course; I know not everyone agrees (though a lot do).

I'm not completely giving up on ever going to 10. In the five years before Windows 7 updates are stopped, there will be a lot of changes, not to mention third-party extensions like Classic Shell. I remember how despised Vista was on release, but it evolved into a pretty good OS-- and the much-loved 7 is just a slight evolution of Vista.

I tend to overuse parentheticals, I know. I'm too tired to revise the post, though, so I'll just document it and call it a feature.

Who is sticking with 7 - The Enterprise, that's who.

The argument that was made for a PC versus a Tablet or Smartphone was that the PC was more suited to the Enterprise. PC hardware accessories were designed to compliment the needs of the Enterprise and the OS was designed to support a bevy of business and government service based applications. The laptop turned out to be an extension of the office, so the hardware and the OS needed to be the same as the desktop - with the advantage of mobility. Smartphones and tablets tapped into the entertainment and social aspect of our lives and have been widely accepted by the Enterprise as an adjunct to doing business, but not as a replacement. The Smartphone and tablet introduced the touch screen, accessories were not part of the original design and the OS supported internet connectivity. Home users who did not need the Enterprise aspect of computing gravitated to this platform in droves and continue to do so.

XP and W7 were designed for the Enterprise platform and the W8 look and feel was incredibly impractical. As having been an Enterprise user for decades, but also a Home user for the same time, I can see a separation of the two as being essential. MS believes the opposite and W10 is designed to combine both on multiple platforms. There are some protections being built into W10 for the Enterprise (though not available to the Home User), but so far they are not widely tested. Enterprise Users are very reluctant to be beta testers so the larger corporations and governments will not budge until MS can prove that W10 is indeed an Enterprise OS. No doubt the Enterprise will want to turn off a lot of the entertainment features and the MS Store. They can delay windows updates and turn off the more invasive data collection. The more that gets turned off, the more it looks like, feels like and behaves like W7.

MS has already stated that they will not support W7 for the Enterprise way past its EOL like they did for XP. Costs for Enterprise Clients that buy ongoing support for XP is exorbitant. W7 may just get nuked by MS on the last day of extended support; time will tell if MS will go that far. Apple and Linux are watching this like vultures on the Serengeti. The leftovers from the kill may be quite substantial.

I just prefer Windows 7 - for the same reasons Ascaris says - if it aint broke, don't fix it. I've had a good play with Windows 10 and it's ok and Cortana is quite good - for a bit of fun and saves typing and clicking a bit. I said "download Supertuxkart" to see what would happen and it opened the browser on a page of download links. But it makes simple tasks slightly more long winded and less simple, at the expense of apps and being cool. I also think it needs some ironing out. Apart from anything else, none of our laptops seem upgradeable. Two aren't. One had the upgrade icon but it didn't work properly and I went back to Windows 7. One I just upgraded anyway and graphics driver wasn't available (and never will be apparently).

Ascaris said:

If I could get 10 with the UI as close as possible to Windows 2000, that would be ideal. That'd be even better than 7 as it is now! Win 2000 UI with 10 (less the features in the preceding paragraph). That I could go for. Just as an option, of course; ...... (though a lot do).
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That goes for me as well.

I just discovered a Windows 10 quirk that ensures I'll keep my primary machine on Windows 7 until at least the first year. I have a second computer, an HP Streambook. It's a crappy little device, perfect for vacations when you want to check and reply to email and you don't care if someone takes it, or something gets cracked because the thing is cheaper than many external accessories.

Anyway, it doesn't have a lot of CPU power, but it has enough. I've had a heck of a time with performance, even for its specs. I started checking things and found I was getting a runaway CPU on something as simple as installing a device driver. Closer inspection showed it was Windows Defender running a real time scan on the files while the installer was running. For giggles I loaded in Norton Internet Security and ran the same test. Lo and behold, problem went away and CPU now runs at 50 to 60 percent consistently whether I'm doing a device install or running some other simple thing like the browser. Which is what it is designed to do.

This tells me that despite the change in model, or marketing, or whatever I think Microsoft is remaining consistent. It takes 12 to 18 months for their new OS's to stabilize. Windows 10 is a sizeable change from 7, and to a lesser extent 8.x. I think in 12 months it will be rock solid. If they stick with their change model then yes, we will be better off moving forward from the 12 month date because they will be making smaller changes more frequently which should improve the stability. However, they still need to catch up from this one last big bang.

If they let me .

As I wrote elsewhere, I still like to think that I am in charge of this laptop, that I bought 5 years ago with Windows 7 Home Premium, service pack 1 on it, because THAT IS WHAT I WANTED !

They say they will support windows 7 till 2020 ?

Will see

Seven is the last MS OS for me.

In addition to the personal & private data MS mines from 10 users in trade for a free OS, you get Win10 Start Menu advertising now.

A while back when MS came out with Windows 10 I clicked on the "Reserve" button. Now, I continually get a page informing me that Windows 10 is ready for upgrading. After reading posts in several forums and Google, I've decided against Windows 10. Is there some way I can prevent the Windows 10 nag messages that continually pop up?

One day, in the future, if I decide to go to Windows 10 - I'll purchase the disc and do a clean install.