What should we do after January 2020

[nord899]

Nord899,
I love your angel in a snow storm Avatar! Very creative!

If for some totally weird reason, I had to give up my fabulous Windows 7 OS, I would certainly NOT turn to Linux, Linus, Ubuntu, or some other NON-MS compatible OS. And, I don't understand the rush from Win-7 to Win-10.... totally skipping over a perfectly good OS, called Windows 8.1.
Granted, Windows 8 was not all it was cracked up to be. Many problems. Enter the fix....Windows 8.1.

As an Administrator on the OLD Windows 8 forum, I'm very much aware of all the failures expressed by the users of Win-8. But, as a retired Computer Tech, I go all the way back to DOS 2.0, and I remember all the hate and discontent involved with putting a new OS on a computer, when you don't have all the hardware drivers on disks, ready to install.

Windows 7 is famous, for not having a very detailed Driver Package. Like right here on my five year old PC.... when I install any version of Windows 7 on this PC, I have to dig out the drivers disk that came with my Gigabyte Motherboard. And, I have to install the Sound Driver, LAN Driver, and Video driver from that CD, as well as the USB 2.0 drivers.

Now, just for fun, I've installed Windows 8.1 on this machine, using a scratch HD, and I've never had to pull out the Motherboard Drivers disk to load drivers. Windows 8.1 has almost as good of a Driver Pack, as Windows 10. At least for my PC, it's 100% complete.

So, if I'm ever forced to give up Windows 7, and I can't imagine why I'd ever do that, Windows 8.1/Pro/x86 will be running on my PC. With an install of the "Classic Shell", it looks just like Windows 7 and is just as easy to use.*

* A new software group has taken over the continuing development of the "Classic Shell".
It looks like, and runs just like the Original.

Cheers Mates,

FYI, this is the latest from Opatch about what they will and will not do for free:

Will post-EOS Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 micropatches also be available to home/personal users? – Help Center

Nick

 

[Marie SWE]

When I started having problems with the spectre/meltdown updates March 2018, then I started thinking about win7EOL 2020. So I started looking at Linux Mint and Fedora as a possible solution before EOL

Today my laptops run dual boot with Linux Mint LMDE3 xfce and win7 on one, and LMDE3 xfce and win8.1 on my other two laptops.
On my desktop I have dual boot win7 and Linux Fedora.
So that day my win8.1 updates alert about a major security risk, then all my win7 computers will go offline and I will reinstall them to a clean win7SP1 and without any updates. As offline, no security updates are needed, so why should they take up space and lower the performance.

Today I use Linux to 99%... only 1% of what I do requires a windows platform. So I tried to buy myself another 3 years with win8.1 to solve the last percentage I need windows to.

 

[feetand nches]

Wow, you are a Power User Marie! Good for you, I also use linux for stuff but need Windows and like Windows better for my day to day. But I love using Linux to fix or test windows issues and just the ease of use and quick and efficient updates.

 

[townsbg]

So that day my win8.1 updates alert about a major security risk, then all my win7 computers will go offline and I will reinstall them to a clean win7SP1 and without any updates. As offline, no security updates are needed, so why should they take up space and lower the performance.

I considered 8.1 but that would only delay the inevitable switch to linux and would take time. Considering that and the customizations that I was never able to get quite right I decided to just go straight to Linux. If you decide to reinstall I would suggest at least adding Sp1.

 

[Marie SWE]

I considered 8.1 but that would only delay the inevitable switch to linux and would take time. Considering that and the customizations that I was never able to get quite right I decided to just go straight to Linux. If you decide to reinstall I would suggest at least adding Sp1.

I didn't have to pay for my win8.1. It is OEM installs with win8.1 on two of my laptops, so I just took advantage of the opportunity.
My win7 computers also have OEM's, and they all it is SP1 on the recovery partitions. However, I will install KB982018 and some other good to have KBupdates.

KB982018 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...he-compatibility-of-windows-7-and-windows-ser
Supports 4KB physical sector size.

i need to go through all the updates i have installed and make a list of all good to have KB's and then download them for offline storage for future reinstalls.

In my collection I have hardware from intel 8088 up to intel dual core and software from MS-Dos2.0 to 7.0 and windows from win3.1 up to winXP as retro offline computers. (except winME and vista)
A Win7 desktop computer and a Win7 laptop will end up in the collection.. and eventually one of my Win8.1 laptop as well. Then there will be no more retro Microsoft editions.
on my wish list I search for the first three editions of windows. 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0

Here is a picture of my 286 laptop