I'm currently running Windows 7 and so I'm eligible for a free upgrade to Windows 10. When I got the automatic notification that my PC is compatible, I put myself on the waiting list for it, figuring that I could hold off on a final decision as to whether I should upgrade or not. Well, this evening, I got the actual notification that my upgrade is ready. I am not very knowledgeable about Windows 10 -- the good or the bad. Has anyone upgraded from 7 to 10? What's good? What's bad? What's just different? Anything to avoid? Has anyone had any major compatibility issues? Anyway, thanks for any information you can give me.
Seen it at work. There is a fair amount of claim and counterclaim about what the EULA allows Microsoft to do in terms of data siphoning and whether it constitutes built in spyware (keylogging, reporting which files are opened). Another change is a modification of how much user choice there is in terms of installing updates (seems to be less, and security fixes get merged with behaviour/feature changes). If these things matter to you, I'd suggest investigating further -- but not using Bing to search. More concretely, the new IE doesn't quite seem up to scratch yet; we've seen cases of sites rendering and behaving very differently to intended. If your browser preference isn't for IE, this may not matter to you, but our office consensus is that the browser was released too early. (Regarding the spyware aspect, there are some third party workarounds; one example is on GitHub, user WindowsLies, project BlockWindows. Mileage may vary.)
Do not "Upgrade" to that mess. Windows 7 is better in every way, but like Wolg said, you need to remove the malware "updates" that Microsoft has been forcing on you. Here is the link to the site Wolg mentioned. https://github.com/WindowsLies/BlockWindows/ Grab it and run the batch file to uninstall and block the malware forever. If you think this is paranoia, then check out the "updates" that this removes. They are siphoning keystrokes from everyone. What they do with this information is not something they disclose. But the fact that they are also grabbing your passwords for your wireless networks and every site you log into should tell you it is not playing fair. If this mess continues, then things will get ugly very fast and we will have to leave Windows in favor of Linux fast. I already did.
Totally by coincidence, I got an unsolicited opinion from one of the instructors where I've been taking classes. He complained to me that he had just upgraded to Windows 10 and he hated it because some things were no longer working and was trying to figure out how to undo the upgrade. Our conversation was interrupted, so I never did find out more details. Not by coincidence: after I posted here, I remembered a tech support website that I've used in the past. People there have been recommending that you wait a bit (maybe a year?) before upgrading. Some of the technical issues (if not privacy issues) ought to be taken care of by then. Anyway, the upgrade is on an indefinite hold for now. I'm not anxious to switch to Linux, but I get the sentiment. I may eventually come around, but I'm not ready for the stress of that drastic a change right now. I recently 'broke' my copy of Morrowind with one mod too many, and I was so stressed by the experience, that instead of trying to fix the issue, I set the game aside and moved on to other things. I must be getting old... My tolerance/patience for even mild tinkering has proven to be just about gone.
Do yourself a favor and grab a copy of Linux Mint and either burn a copy of it to a disc, or use this tool to copy the install to a spare flash drive. You can then boot to that and see everything and not have to worry about losing your copy of Windows or anything else. You will likely find that Linux is much more polished than many believe. There is practically zero learning curve. I think I have mentioned before that my elderly mother had a hard drive failure, so I installed Linux Mint and years later she asked me what version of "Windows" she had. I laughed so hard I nearly choked on my Coffee. If you want to play games, there are more and more games made for Linux every day since SteamOS is Linux based. In addition, you can install Wine and PlayOnLinux (It is a Wine Frontend) to make it easy for most games to work on Linux as if you were on Windows. Here are the torrents of the most current Linux Mint flavors. (Meaning different GUIs, but the same stuff otherwise.) http://torrents.linuxmint.com/torrents/linuxmint-17.2-cinnamon-32bit.iso.torrent http://torrents.linuxmint.com/torrents/linuxmint-17.2-cinnamon-64bit.iso.torrent http://torrents.linuxmint.com/torrents/linuxmint-17.2-kde-32bit.iso.torrent http://torrents.linuxmint.com/torrents/linuxmint-17.2-kde-64bit.iso.torrent http://torrents.linuxmint.com/torrents/linuxmint-17.2-mate-32bit.iso.torrent http://torrents.linuxmint.com/torrents/linuxmint-17.2-mate-64bit.iso.torrent http://torrents.linuxmint.com/torrents/linuxmint-17.2-xfce-32bit.iso.torrent http://torrents.linuxmint.com/torrents/linuxmint-17.2-xfce-64bit.iso.torrent The torrents are usually seeded by big universities with plenty of bandwidth, so they will always be faster than the regular downloads. If you want bells and whistles and eye candy, grab Cinnamon. If you want it lean as it can be, grab XFCE. Just make sure you grab the right bit depth. And if you want to use a flash drive, use this. http://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal-usb-installer-easy-as-1-2-3/ Do not fear Linux. Do not think you will screw anything up. You will be fine. It is amazingly stable and will not make it easy for you to mess up anything. And if you are not interested, that is fine. I am just trying to give you another option that really does work amazingly well. I still retain my Windows 7 install. You can too even if you install it.
