Posted on 05/03/2015 9:02:01 PM PDT by dayglored
Wow! That really worries me! They want everyone to get onto their latest system for a reason maybe?
Maybe has a backdoor for government snooping?
But due to those complaints, when Microsoft developed Windows 7, they cleaned up a lot of the operating system code so even with 2 GB of RAM, it could still run in 64-bit memory addressing mode if your CPU supported x86-64 instructions. In many ways, Windows 7 is essentially the fixed version of Windows Vista.
I have a copy of Windows 10 Technical Preview on this here SSD. I ran it, and I compared it to Win7 and Win8.
The result: Win10 is faster, but, boy, is it ugly. It's just as ugly as Win8. Weird flat colors, no Aero Glass, no visual hints on where the decorations are, dull color schemes... it is a bad idea just for that reason alone. You don't have a spare set of eyes. Save what you have, don't run Win8 and Win10.
I read that MS intentionally limits theming support in Win8/10. If that remains true, that's bad news. Aero Glass was very well received. MS dumped it only to save a few mW of GPU power on weak tablets. Flat decorations do not require complex 3D transforms. But a desktop GPU has no difficulty with this - so Aero is just a collateral damage in the ill-advised Microsoft's bid for domination on tablets. MS should bring it back, all of it. Are they going to listen to the customer this time, or it will be hubris of Win8 proportions all over again? We shall see.
Based on what I have seen, Win10 does not win over Win7. Basically there is not a single compelling reason to "upgrade." As others already mentioned, any upgrade is a complex affair - you usually have a few 3rd party software packages, some of them are licensed, some of those licenses have been lost or misplaced, some of them simply won't work on Win10... do you want to take this plunge? For what benefit? To lose the familiar GUI? I cannot imagine *anyone* moving away from Win7.
There is also the issue with media codecs that other people mentioned. Win7 has that all out of the box. On Win8 and Win10 (presumably) you have to purchase this functionality separately.
At the same time the free upgrade from Win8 to Win10 is pretty much a certainty. But that only shows how bad Win8 is - even Win10 is better :-) Of course the best would be to downgrade to Win7 and live happily ever after. I do not recall anything in Win8/Win10 that would compel a common man to move to those OSes. Sure, a programmer could name a couple of "under the hood" functions that are improved - but none of them matter. It's not like these releases sport artificial intelligence. That would be big. What they have, like automated repair procedures, does not even register on people's radar.
Windows 10 is little more than Windows 8.10, and the primary purpose of Windows 8.10 has almost nothing to do with the needs of actual PC users, but again, just like Windows 8.x, is all about what Microsoft wants in an OS, which appears (once again) to be oriented towards mobile, a market Microsoft lost years ago and will never gain back, given that their current worldwide smartphone share is less than 3% and shrinking.
Just as with Windows 8.x, almost no enterprise, SMB, government or industrial users will abandon Windows 7, many of whom just converted from Windows XP.
And just like Windows 8.x, mostly it will be hapless consumers who buy their PCs at retail stores like Best Buy who will be stuck with Windows 8.10. That is, those few consumer Windows PC users who haven’t already permanently fled Microsoft because of Windows 8.x.
No one in industry, manufacturing, government, military, business, or the enterprise will care one whit about Windows 10 unless it’s a more productive operating system for the vast majority of their PC users.
That really will be the sole metric of the success of Windows 10: is it compatible with the hundreds of millions of current PC applications and users, and is it substantially more productive than Windows 7? If not, then there’s no business case for “upgrading” from Windows 7 as there will be no positive return on investment.
PC productivity should have been Microsoft’s primary focus for Windows 10. However, Microsoft has persisted in making an operating system that meets Microsoft’s needs and not the needs of its industrial and business users. As a consequence, Windows 10 will be another flop like Windows 8, and never before has Microsoft had two major OS flops in a row. Now that Microsoft has all but lost the war for mobile, they can’t afford to lose their one remaining monopoly.
The bottom line is that Microsoft is facing a headwind of skepticism (and alternatives) like never before in their history of introducing new operating systems, and I wonder if they know that Windows 10 is not just another OS to be introduced to a naive and adoring audience with their typically lame publicity barrage, but may be in fact be the last OS they ever introduce that anyone will actually give a hoot about if turns out to be as bad a bomb as Windows 8.xxx.
Microsoft’s top task should be maintaining it’s near-monopoly on the desktop in the enterprise world, and windows 10 is no more capable of doing that than windows 8 was. Microsoft’s exclusive focus with W10 has been on mobile, a war it already lost nearly a decade ago when it didn’t even know it was in a battle.
Therefore there is no compelling reason to change from W7 TO W10 on PCs, and W10 won’t significantly advance Microsoft’s currently 3% and shrinking worldwide smartphone market share.
I’m just now converting the majority of my business clients from XP to W7. I’ll keep them on W7 if/until MS produces something that is compatible with the hundreds of millions of current PC applications and user interfaces, and is substantially more productive for their users than Windows 7. Should that case not arise from MS, then there’s no business case for “upgrading” from Windows 7, even if it is “free”, as there will be no positive investment return from the costs of the change.
And based on working extensively with W10 TP releases, I can tell you W10 is NOT better than W7. W10 is nothing but a gussied up W8.x with nothing new in it that’s needed on enterprise or SMB PCs. There’s nothing new in W10 that’s not being put there solely to foster MS’s vain hope of growing their currently shrinking 3% worldwide smartphone market share. Cortana, Spartan, APIs for universal device applications, slightly improved (but still bereft) MS App Store, integrated MS cloud, integrated MS Bing, and all the rest are things for cell phones and/or things MS wants to try to trick people into paying extra money for. And not a single one of these things is truly useful for enterprise and SMB PCs.
Fundamentally, W10 is what Microsoft management is selling to its ignorant board of directors as the great mobile savior that will make Microsoft relevant in mobile. The problem is that Microsoft will never be relevant in mobile. That war was fought and lost years ago before Microsoft even understood they were in a battle, much less in a war for survival. W10’s sole purpose is really to keep the post-Ballmerites in their jobs for the few years that it will take the board to realize that the post-Ballmerites are equally as clueless and impotent as the recently departed Ballmerites.
Before it was released to the public, I predicted W8.x was going to be a massive disaster for both Microsoft and the entire PC industry, and I predict that W10 will be little better. W10 is going to be almost as big a bomb on the PC for MS as was W8.x.
I have no doubt that they developed Windows 7 to fix Vista problems. I also have little doubt that Vista worked better with 4 or 8GB of memory. It just did not work well with less memory and of course that meant that most systems in the public had problems (poor planning).
That made it essentially incompatible with most of the systems in the real world...that was the problem! Poor planning and poor execution was the problem with that Microsoft release and why it was a failure.
If they had tested it with gamers at least they would have had a good idea about how it worked with different amounts of memory and different processor speed...but somewhere that test failed them or escaped their attention. I’d bet that they never thought of testing with lower spec systems.
Dingdingdingding...
We have a winner!!
Hey, good review and about what I expected when comparing Windows 7 and 10. Thanks very much!
Thank you for your review. Seems very realistic. Of course maybe I am thanking you because your review sounds like something I would write..heh.
Good thoughts, thank you.
Yet another eyeopener. Thank you.
lived with Vista briefly. there is a reason one does not talk about bad relationships.
Sorry, but I totally disagree with you.
Sent from my Nokia 1520 running Windows 10
Windows 10 is the convergence of desktop, gaming and mobile that is coming, whether you like it or not. The success of the Microsoft Surface Pro Tablet-PCs also shows the direction we are heading.
When consumers realize that they can have the same apps at home, at work and on mobile...all with familiar menus and controls to each other, the game will have changed again.
I liked it once I got used to it. Funny how we hate change unless its doing something we’re not supposed to do.
Within the Start Menu of Windows 10 is an item called Windows Feedback, but you've got to be registered as a Windows Insider to see it.
After you open it, it looks like this:
Then, please add all the comments about the colors and layout in the Personalization and Ease of Access area!
One important thing about the Technical Preview is that thousands of Insiders are using the Feedback app and Microsoft is listening this time (I know, I know, so they say...).
Still running XP SP3. Still satisfied. Am slowly going towards 7.
Will skip 8 and go straight to 10 in 2018 :)
Our large company is in the process of replacing all our Windows XP computers with Windows 7 PCs. Could be part of the trend.
I’m hoping that 10 will be good enough I don’t have to agonize or go to extremes to keep a running version of 7. My 7 machine is a few years old and while I have had excellent luck in having machines last without hard drive crashes, it is always difficult to have to change, especially with so many newer machines changing the BIOS/boot methods that it can be difficult to transfer an older OS to a newer machine.
I struggled with the decision to upgrade from 7 to 8.1, but really glad I did. The bootup time is so much faster and it is very stable. With the classic shell installed, I have no complaints at all.
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