Win7 End Times…

Windows 10 or bust??

  • What's the big deal? Windows 10 all the way baby!

    Votes: 16 61.5%
  • They'll pry Windows 7 from my cold dead hands..

    Votes: 5 19.2%
  • A little of both: I'll boot as necessary

    Votes: 3 11.5%
  • I think you're overthinking this. Who cares

    Votes: 2 7.7%

  • Total voters
    26

xSamhainx

Paws of Doom
Original Sin Donor
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So, yeah it's finally happening.

Microsoft is killing support for Windows 7, as we all know. Jan 14.
On the work front, we are undergoing a company-wide update to windows 10 on all systems. If the machine dies, it dies. It will be replaced.

However, on the gaming and personal computing front, I'm not seeing a whole lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth. I thought there'd be more, and personally, I'm quite torn on whether I am going to take the leap or not, and how. It's a free upgrade, for now.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

I have 2 windows 7 gaming systems: My big rig, which has recently underwent a full W7 reformat, and is running better than ever. Strictly games. I also have an Alienware laptop hooked up to my television, which basically serves as stereo/streaming/gaming unit. I just upgraded to a 1TB SSD on that, full win7 reformat.

I've always said "they'll pry win7 from my cold, dead hands" (the same thing I said about XP :) )

There's a lot of games that are not Win10 friendly. Part of me is thinking of getting a couple more SSDs, cloning, then upgrading to Win10 on the clones, then booting as I see fit. Want to play a win7 game? Boot to the 7 drive. Going to hit the internet? Boot to Win10.

7 will be vulnerable, very soon. Our IT Support that help me out at work, of course, are putting the fear in everybody concerning this.

Thoughts?
 
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You may always wait for win11. :p

Now seriously. On my home PC I've upgraded 7 to 10 the very first day it was possible. Why? I wanted to inspect and break it before it gets live at my work. Many of us in my team did it with win8 and the result was: win8 was never adopted.
While the first release had it's share of quirks (and some "irrelevant" ones remained to this day), over time win10 IMO became a respectable OS. To me it's so good now I'd never return to win7.
In other words, I suggest you to switch to it.

Two things though. Win10 is still riddled with metadata spying bullshit, either drop it to so called "basic" during installation or later in settings. And another, if you're into music industry and using cubase, keep win7 and do not switch to win10 as it's still problematic.

You menion a videogame what works on win7 and doesn't work on win10? Which one is that? Some Rockstar's game I bet. Do we care about Rockstar's mediocrities really? :)

Finally, if you still refuse to go for win10, ignore security doomsayers. Because win7 is retired and rapidly dropping with # of installations, malware creators won't care about it. Just as you haven't spotted a new virus attacking win3.11.
 
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I was recently thinking of getting the eComStation, which would have the benefot of being able to run DOS and Win 3.x games.
Asking a distributor about hardware compatibility lists, i got the answer to rather wait for ArcaOS.
Okay, waiting ?

My current ideas are those :

- getting Win10, but run exclusively Win 7 on it, virtualized (very likely to be slow)
- getting a completsly new PC and install several OSses on it, next to Win 7
- installing Linux on my Win 7 PC, and use Linux for internet, and Win 7 for offline work (will be difficult, of course, because Win 7 just would refuse to go offline when a network cable is plugged in …)

So, so far, I'm a bit clueless. Especially because I don't really know whether a separate Linux system on the same machine would be tolerated by Microsoft (read : the Win 7 booting system).
 
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I’ve not had any issues with win 10 and I switched over when it was still in early release.

I Build my own PC , keep current hardware and haven’t really been playing any older games. I also install windows on it’s own SSD, have separate SSD’s for each game client and do a fresh install every 6-9 months. So YMMV.
 
- installing Linux on my Win 7 PC, and use Linux for internet, and Win 7 for offline work (will be difficult, of course, because Win 7 just would refuse to go offline when a network cable is plugged in …)

I don't think it would be difficult. Just go to your network settings in Windows and disable the Ethernet device. Unless you want the machine to be on your local network but not have access to the internet. I'm not sure how to achieve that, but I think you'll find something about it on google.
 
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I already switched a few years back.

Just use the LTSB version if you hate the metadata spying.

As for games I have a bunch of older RTS games that are pain in the ass to install and play. I usually have to download third party files just to get them to run.
 
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I've been using Win 10 for a long while at home / for gaming, never had any major issues. Recently also updated to Win 10 with my work laptop, no issues there either.

I mean, sure, I'd love to switch to Linux if it were a realistic option for gaming. But for now, the switch from Win 7 to Win 10 will probably solve more problems than it creates.

Also, it could be worse.

It could be macOS.
 
Joined
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From an IT perspective, Windows 10 has been one of the most hassle-free OSes. The biggest issue for people is privacy and forced updates. For the privacy issue: How many people here have experienced identity theft from the data Microsoft has “stolen”? For the forced updates: For those who don’t like them, you’re statistically the ones who are running Home edition and the ones who need the updates most, because of most users naivety of the importance of regular security updates. That along with the push to unify all users to one OS have made it one of the most stable consumer Windows OSes to date. Yep some will bring up incidents of data loss during an update, yet the actual people affected was a similar percentage of allowed margin of error for any OS. Compatibility? Sure SIM Tower isn’t going to work... use an emulator. Most of the old GOG games are using emulation layers through DoeBox anyways. Someone out there might care about their obscure copy of Dungeon Lords, but it’s too bad. Microsoft isn’t going to cater to the 0.0001 percent at the expense of the 99.9999

So the main question is, what is the “good and valid” reason to NOT upgrade?
 
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I had a few issues with Win10 playing Skyrim but that was resolved with the fall creator's patch. Outside of that I have had no problems with win10 overall for games.
 
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I am quite busy atm, I installed windows 10 three days ago, so I am busy with the SW that I used on windows 7, installing it on windows 10. One of the first things I did: ‘O&O Shutup 10’, a free antispy tool for windows. The only downside is that every now and then Windows 10 puts the privacy invading settings back thereby making it necessary to run O&O Shutup 10 after each update.

Windows 10 will be just for gaming and stuff that Linux can not handle.
I am fed up with MIcrosoft, as soon as I have the time somewhere in spring I hope to make the transition.
 
I would update to win10 but I don't want Bill Gates watching me shower.

Can't you get dx12 on Win7 now, anyway? I think it was added just for World of Warcraft?
 
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I am one of those guys who adored Win XP and then grumbled when, eventually, I was forced to Windows 7 but then in time, fell in love with it as well, (though not with the same ardor I had of Win XP)

I really really hate Win 10. Almost everything about it, that I have seen, is inferior and I almost hate it instantly. I'm also now being forced to use it at work and I'm not happy the more time I spend with it. I see even more things that suck and so on.

So, my plan is when I eventually (hopefully this year) get a new gaming computer, I will then dual boot both Win 7 and Win 10, just as you were describing. It's the perfect solution for someone like me.

The only time I will have to use Win 10 is when I want to fire up a new game that requires it, otherwise I will be using Win 7. And I'm not scared about security issues, that is a very minor threat, IMHO. I use a top anti virus and I will also probably switch to using a VPN connection only when I'm using Win 7 as further protection and defense.

There are guys on ancient Windows operating systems still using them and they haven'
t had updates in years. I have seen this sentiment in technical forums and just on the internet in general when browsing various forums and Windows related places, and I occasionally will see a thread from someone like that.

In other words, just like Global warming/Climate Change, I think the potential threat of using Windows 7 past Jan. 2020, is wayyyy overblown and hyped up for various agendas (like convincing people (hold-outs) to switch to the dreaded Win 10). Just my 2 cents.
 
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Almost everything about it, that I have seen, is inferior and I almost hate it instantly. I'm also now being forced to use it at work and I'm not happy the more time I spend with it. I see even more things that suck and so on.

Being forced to use it at work is not a unique problem to you as an individual. Any halfway decent IT department will now be upgraded to Windows 10, meaning everyone in North America.

If you're giving your "2 cents" be more specific. What you are considering inferior?

We just finished upgrading 5000 people in an enterprise environment, and the biggest "problem" they had with Windows 10, is "that's not how I did it in Windows 7".

There are guys on ancient Windows operating systems still using them and they haven'
t had updates in years. I have seen this sentiment in technical forums and just on the internet in general when browsing various forums and Windows related places, and I occasionally will see a thread from someone like that.

Yeah, those "guys" are these types of people:



Otherwise they wouldn't be on the technical forums...
 
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Thanks for putting me into a near-infinite loop of watching scences from the IT crowd on youtube.
 
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Windows 10 suck because microsoft uses it as a marketing tool to force user to use the 'cloud' which is their new business direction. The fact that many home users would prefer to not be forced to use the cloud is not relevant to micro-soft business objective.
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Mind you there are work around the experience users can use and 'force' is fairly light at this time though there is much emphasis. What a lot people in this thread fail to under-stand is the mass of people out there truly do not understand that data is being collected or they are putting personal data in the cloud and when all works they don't really care - but when the internet goes down or they get hit by spammers or data is leaked then they care and then it is 'too late'. I care because i don't feel like dealing with the fallout if the later happens.
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There is a secondary problem that microsoft has the B team (really the C team) working on windows 10 since the A team now works on cloud infrastructure updates have been massively buggy. Anyway windows 7 was pretty decent and good upgrade from xp but windows 10 adds little benefits other than marketing pitches. It does not appear to be more stable; better use or machine resources or significantly more secure but it does seem to have a lot of prolematic updates. Having said that in the future nearly everyone will have to drop windows 7 since support for newer hardware has been killed (again a marketing decision - and yes experience users can use some of the drivers from windows 10 to live a little longer on windows 7). For my personal use windows 10 is game system only and as a 30 year unix user - i've use freebsd at home for 10 years and linux the past 15 years for everything but game playing. I had a linux game playing machine i kept at work for during off hours play and it worked well on select games but some games just didn't make the linux cut (dos:1 and borderlands 2 ran well on linux but at the time witcher 3 for example was best on windows - that might have changed today don't know haven' tested).
 
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Windows 10 suck because microsoft uses it as a marketing tool to force user to use the 'cloud' which is their new business direction.
What the frak are you talking about? It's got OneDrive but it's trivial to turn off and, even if you don't, it's trivial to ignore.

The fact that many home users would prefer to not be forced to use the cloud is not relevant to micro-soft business objective.
From what I've seen, most users are VERY happy to have somebody else take care of their data instead of having to worry about handling it themselves. They have no desire at all to deal with backing up data. I expect they would be very happy if their computer was actually a dumb terminal and their actual OS and data was all stored up in the cloud.

There is a secondary problem that microsoft has the B team (really the C team) working on windows 10 since the A team now works on cloud infrastructure updates have been massively buggy.
"Massively buggy" is massively overstated but there I agree. They've got close enough to a monopoly now so I don't think Windows is as high a priority as it once was. Plus the market is no longer a big growth area. Meanwhile, Azure is earning them mountains of cash with strong competition from Amazon and the like. Of course they are going to throw more resources that way.
 
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Not so sure about monopoly. At least not a secure one, they are slowly loosing market shares to Apple (in terms of desktop OS).
 
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Funny you should make your post the very day i let windows 10 update itself. Horrible mistake on my part - after 2 1/2 hours (why the freak it needs to 2 1/2 hours to do an update i have no clue) it screws itself up and totally fails. No error messages other than update is flaw so we will attempt ot roll back. How far did it roll back - way back and now it tells me it is running an out of date update. Anytihng special about my computer - not really haswel refresh, nvidia graphic card and a couple of ssd. Oh yea it is running some shitty software from microsoft.

What the frak are you talking about? It's got OneDrive but it's trivial to turn off and, even if you don't, it's trivial to ignore.


From what I've seen, most users are VERY happy to have somebody else take care of their data instead of having to worry about handling it themselves. They have no desire at all to deal with backing up data. I expect they would be very happy if their computer was actually a dumb terminal and their actual OS and data was all stored up in the cloud.


"Massively buggy" is massively overstated but there I agree. They've got close enough to a monopoly now so I don't think Windows is as high a priority as it once was. Plus the market is no longer a big growth area. Meanwhile, Azure is earning them mountains of cash with strong competition from Amazon and the like. Of course they are going to throw more resources that way.
 
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Funny you should make your post the very day i let windows 10 update itself. Horrible mistake on my part - after 2 1/2 hours (why the freak it needs to 2 1/2 hours to do an update i have no clue) it screws itself up and totally fails. No error messages other than update is flaw so we will attempt ot roll back. How far did it roll back - way back and now it tells me it is running an out of date update. Anytihng special about my computer - not really haswel refresh, nvidia graphic card and a couple of ssd. Oh yea it is running some shitty software from microsoft.

And I never, ever had any problems with Windows update, from Windows 7, through 8 and 8.1, to 10. I actually had Linux break many, many times after an update (mostly graphics drivers but also DEs and once X broke). And I'll be the first to tell you that the way Linux does updates is way better than Windows. It's not as apocalyptic as you and other people having problems make it out to be. There were some pretty stupid bugs due to updates last year, but it was fixed. It always gets fixed.
 
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I suppose it all comes down to what do you want to run on your PC. For me its games from 2000 onwards, Firefox for web browsing, video/TV streaming and some household jobs using Open Office. I usually upgrade when it becomes available. So did the Win 7 to Win 8 to 8.1 and then 10 when it was available. In every case I thought the new version was an improvement with booting much faster than previously. The old "switch it on and go and get a coffee" stopped being true with Win 8. I also play with the Settings.

The only time this didn't work was my wife's old ACER laptop (2011 vintage) did not like any system other than Win 7.

The only other problem I had was my wife did not like the Windows 10 user interface. So we rolled her PC back to Win 7. I got around that problem by buying her a new PC with Win 10 installed. She got use to it.
 
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