Why would you think that asking about anything the evil empire does is crazy?
There’s a little thingie in my system tray telling me I can upgrade to Windoze 10 for absolutely freely nothing.
Here's what I have gathered so far. The 'free' thing is true and good for a year, so you don't need to run over the cliff with the lemmings right away. Also it seems that it will stay free meaning that they won't come back in a year and want you to pay for it. I think the 'Get WinX' thing that you are seeing looks at your machine to see if it can run WinX before it starts nagging you to take the leap but I'm not sure of that. I have at least one machine here that runs Win7 fine but the processor is incompatible with WinX. Since I knew it wouldn't run WinX I didn't let WinUpdate install any of the Get WinX 'important' updates. If I had I would know for sure about that. I suppose I could go to Win Update and let it install the Get WinX stuff and see what happens...
I have a machine here that I am seriously thinking of allowing the update on but as with anything Windoze, I'm not going to rush into it. Reports for the most part say that they have fixed most of the egregious crap they foisted off in WinhAte, and WinX is supposedly faster than Win7.
One down side is that it seems you cannot 'deselect' any updates, although I did read somewhere that there's a way around that. I saved a link to that article in my email for my future reference so I should be able to find it for you should you want it. Supposedly the install routine figures out what kind of device it is being installed on and configures WinX accordingly for either a touch screen or a desktop.
My take for now? Sit tight and wait for the reports of the earlybird lemmings. Since you have that year, and since you have Win7 which I guess is running fine you can afford to hang back and let others play guinea pig. Presumably if your machine runs Win7 it should have no problems with WinX although earlier configurations might not. For instance, AMD PhenomII socket AM3 stuff should run WinX, but earlier AthlonII socket AM2 stuff might not. Don't know the cutoff point with Intel chips since I don't build machines with Intel stuff. That's an economic decision - I can get more processor for a given price with AMD - if someone wanted a screaming gamer machine and cost was no object I could be coerced into using an Intel chip.;-)
Most programs should run on WinX if they run in Win7. I don't know if WinX has a compatibility mode like Win7 Pro does (you know - 'run as Win 98' or whatever). WinX no longer has Win Media Player so if you use that, you'll need something to replace it (like VLC media player).
If you are seriously considering doing that I'll feed you info as I hear it, and since the machine I'm talking about on this end is a 'sacrificial lamb' (meaning not my main box) I have the luxury of experimenting with it. Maybe you can wait until I do this machine and give you a report so you don't leave yourself dead in the water?? (Unless you are really really in a rush - my time frame is going to be somewhere between now and when I get a roundtuit.. ;-)
The only reason I MIGHT rush is I got my F-I-L a computer with Win Hate and he would probably like 10 better. But it would be a change for him and I wouldn’t recommend it without trying it first.
I will say that the stupid YouTube I watched with the guy showing each feature and saying, “Which is great!” drove me bananas. None of it was great. Most of it was barely useful. And that personal assitant, Cablooma or whatever her name is, is the LAST thing I want on a PC.
Just more proof that they’re more focused on mobile than the desktop.