Is anyone still using Windows 7?

W7Scotty · 1 Week Ago

A Screenshot Is Worth 1000 Words

Is anyone still using Windows 7?-my-wallpaper.jpg

spapakons · 1 Week Ago

Wolfstorm said:

I'm using Windows 7 for 14 years, and currently trying to switch to Windows 11.
I'm experimenting with W11 in a VM, but the interface is really bad. I had to ask ChatGPT in order to locate the control panel, as I could not find anything about it in search engines.
My main concern, though, is Windows 11 updating firmware for the BIOS. The region I live have constant power outages, so a real risk of having my MB bricked if the power goes off during one of these silent updates. I considered a nobreak but they are too noisy.
Some people reported changing the user policies to not update drivers but W11 defaults it after a normal update. I find this very invasive and disrespectful to the user.

Just use Winaero Tweaker to make most modern Settings also work from the "traditional" Control Panel. Also there are customization utilities to make the interface as close as possible to Windows 7. I use Open Shell to get the start button and start menu, 8gadgetpack to get the gadgets and Customizer God to replace all the flat system icons with the respective Windows 7 or 8.1 icons. More details at the Personalization section of Windows 11 Forum which is a great forum for Windows 11 questions. Start by looking at the Tutorials section.

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About your hardware: You can install versions Windows 11 21H2 (2021), 22H2 (2022) and 23H2 (2023) without any hardware change at any 64-bit computer by just bypassing compatibility check. See the respective sticky thread at Setup section of Windows 11 Forum If you have an Intel Core-i3 1st generation or newer or equivalent AMD which supports the SSE4.2 instruction set you can also install the latest 24H2 (2024) version. It's all there in the respective sticky thread.

PS: My main PC is a 3rd generation Intel Core i7 (unsupported CPU) and it runs Windows 11 24H2 in "Legacy BIOS" (MBR) mode, (officially only UEFI mode GPT is supported), without TPM 2.0 (unsupported) with Secure Boot switched off (unsupported). So everything is possible if you just bypass compatibility check. Also the same drivers that work in Windows 7 64-bit will also work in Windows 11, except Intel graphics. For these you need Windows 8 or higher version.

siliconbeaver · 1 Week Ago

Reiterate

siliconbeaver said:

Windows 7/11, both are OS.
Windows 7 is an OS for computer. IMO, it's last version for computer.
Windows 11 is an OS for mobile device. Windows 11/24H2 is the latest version for mobile device.

In tradition, computer user is skillful on keyboard usage, hot-key, combo-key, , , while, on Windows 11, most these features are truncated. you will need at least one more keystroke to do the same thing. Mobile device cares more on security. requests more features on touch-screen. that's what Windows 11 does.

masetheone · 6 Days Ago

I don't know what most of you think about computers today but I think it's sad that they have become very mobile centric as the other user stated. By doing so the advance and interesting machine becomes becomes dumb and also less interactive, it seems each version of windows after 7 becomes more and more locked down. The whole virtue of the computer is how creative it can be with a variety of software and how you can make it your own by customizing it and using it as you wish. As opposed to just a screen you swipe with "apps" from an app store which are all filled with ads and give the user little control.

maxseven · 6 Days Ago

masetheone said:

I don't know what most of you think about computers today...

Pretty sure there is no consensus.

In my observation I sort of admire what Apple is trying to do in re: making iOS and MacOS work in harmony with a similar look-and-feel, but they certainly aren't there yet--I consider my own and Wife's Macintoshes to be mostly just toys, though it IS nice that all of our contacts and email and messaging are available on all of our iPhones, iPads, and Macs.

Windows 7 is my longtime workhorse and does everything I need despite that software mfers are trying to retire it (the latest for me being Dropbox, oh and Authy went-away before that).

What I find most disturbing is to consider that hardware is moving-away from the good OS (this one!).

ssokolow · 5 Days Ago

maxseven said:

In my observation I sort of admire what Apple is trying to do in re: making iOS and MacOS work in harmony with a similar look-and-feel, but they certainly aren't there yet--I consider my own and Wife's Macintoshes to be mostly just toys, though it IS nice that all of our contacts and email and messaging are available on all of our iPhones, iPads, and Macs.

As someone who just bought a bunch of UI/UX design books and HIGs with the intent to have citations handy while spare-time designing a HIG for the hypothetical 2025 expression of what Windows 9x, Mac OS 9, GNOME 2.x, KDE, etc. seemed to be converging toward (like how all consumer automobiles have basically the same layout for critical controls), I already know enough to know some of the problems with all this. (I mention those OSes because OSX broke its own HIG for glitz's sake, Windows 7 had The Ribbon, GNOME 3 is a wannabe tablet UI, etc.)

You can't converge mobile UIs and desktop UIs for the same reason you can't converge 2-foot (desktop/laptop) UIs and 10-foot (TV) UIs... because they're designed around different hardware constraints.

For example, the thin little auto-hiding scrollbars you see on mobile devices are objectively worse... except when every pixel on a tiny little, narrow, portrait oriented screen is precious and that trumps other concerns.

Big fat widgets with a ton of whitespace padding and/or big text are objectively worse as functional objects... unless you need to account for comparatively fat fingers on touch screens or humans who want to read the thing from 10 feet away without squinting.

Convergence is the UI equivalent of arguing that all coffee table books and children's books and magazines and so on should be held to the same material and dimensional constraints as pocket-book novels (i.e. cheap paper, black and white printing, 4.25" x 6.87" dimensions) for "consistency with" the portable option based on some fallacious "Mobile devices now outsell PCs massively. Let's try to be more like mobile devices and maybe we can get people to buy more PCs." logic.

It makes about as much sense as saying "Young people are drawn away from car ownership toward living in cities with good public transit and young people play video games. Let's try to attract them back by partnering with Microsoft or Sony to replace steering wheels, foot pedals, and gear-shift levers with XBox or Playstation gamepads."

(Granted, there IS also a strong element of wanting to get away with not having to make and maintain separate desktop and mobile UIs for applications.)

maxseven · 5 Days Ago

Haha there was probably some English in there somewhere--I thought the only other language used in Canada was French?

I dunno what HIG stands for and I'm just a bit too bleary-eyed this morning to want to look it up.

FWIW I do believe Apple has sold more than a few Macs to people with iPhones. Whether they've done anything useful or valuable with their Macs well I sorta doubt it beyond maybe email and surfing.

ssokolow · 4 Days Ago

maxseven said:

Haha there was probably some English in there somewhere--I thought the only other language used in Canada was French?

*chuckle* Technical jargon is a universal language. It's equally opaque to everybody! ;P

maxseven said:

I dunno what HIG stands for and I'm just a bit too bleary-eyed this morning to want to look it up.

It's short for "Human Interface Guidelines" and they're basically "how to design a program that feels good and fits in on our platform" standards guides.

Wikipedia can explain more. (The article also has links to examples of HIGs that various vendors offer. For example, Apple's current HIG.)

maxseven said:

FWIW I do believe Apple has sold more than a few Macs to people with iPhones. Whether they've done anything useful or valuable with their Macs well I sorta doubt it beyond maybe email and surfing.

Yeah, but making a Macbook act more like an iPad isn't really a very useful thing if doing so makes it worse at doing Macbook things well.

If people want an iPad, they'll buy an iPad. If people want something that iPads aren't good at, they'll buy a device that's supposed to be good at non-iPad things.

maxseven · 4 Days Ago

If people want an iPad, they'll buy an iPad. If people want something that iPads aren't good at, they'll buy a device that's supposed to be good at non-iPad things.

Here I have to disagree with you. Most people have no clue at all what they need; they buy instead what their "friends" buy.

And their friends don't know how to use them either.

TeraGotBuns · 4 Days Ago

I've been on Windows 7 since I got my first computer way back in high school. Always used it for gaming as a kid but now that I don't have an insane amount of time like I used to, I still use Windows 7 for my browsing and e-mails. I also play OldSchool RuneScape sometimes which runs as well as it's needed to.

I never liked Windows 10 upwards, they feel like less a product for the end user and more a piece of software that you're just being loaned by Microsoft. Aside from the constant tracking, I just don't like how the new OS's (OSes?) look and I can never be satisfied with a skin or theme that barely gets the vibe back.