Thanks to deoetdoctrinae and fireman15 for the pings!
Posted on 02/23/2025 9:59:57 AM PST by fireman15
It’s official: after 10 years of noble service, Windows 10 will reach its end on October 14, 2025, and what a great decade it’s been. For many users, Microsoft redeemed itself after a run of disappointing operating systems – the mere mention of Windows 8 still sends some people into a rage – but Windows 10 got it right.
That’s why the announcement of Windows 11 came as a shock. It felt too soon, too rushed – and unnecessary. Many believed that Windows 10 deserved more time to marinate. At least until it finally managed to migrate the whole Control Panel to Settings.
Jokes aside, Windows 10 made its mark with its support of legacy software, flexibility and its introduction of enhanced cloud integration in the form of OneDrive, which made accessing your files from any internet-connected PC a breeze. Its regular security updates and long-term servicing channels (LTSC) made it especially popular with businesses. (If you want to see the good stuff you will have to follow the link above.)
(Excerpt) Read more at techradar.com ...
Absolutely nothing wrong with it, but MS does not make money on already installed and working operating systems.
Not giving up $$$ in software for their profits.
Thanks to deoetdoctrinae and fireman15 for the pings!
Windows 7 is now 15 years old, and 5 years past its "End of Life". Does it still "work"? Yes, of course it does...
... with a couple of caveats and warnings.
Just great (not) my computer won’t except the upgrade now I have to be stuck to get another one.
The problem is that nearly every business distributing Linux is as bad or nearly as bad as Microsoft and Apple when it comes to DEI and hating conservatives.
Watch a little of the following Youtube video if you want the answer to the following question... “With Red Hat pulling their DEI garbage, Ubuntu going all in on Snap, and SUSE... lol... it's seeming like Debian or Arch might be the only way to go? Let's exclude the “New User Distros” (like Mint or Pop) — what would you recommend for a technically savvy Linux user in 2024?”
OpenMandriva - a non-Woke Open Source project is the most obvious answer.
Mandriva (not Open) was the first Linux distro I ever used... 25 years ago? Then it seemed like they disbanded or something...
“My upgrading to 11 made my desktop nearly useless because I can’t print off of it.”
An old printer? If so uninstall it. Then when you reinstall drivers. Do as administrator in ‘virtual” windows 7 or 10 mode............. meaning running the installer in *compatibility mode* (a feature in Windows that lets older software run as if it’s on an earlier version like Windows 7 or 10).
The other thing you can do is nothing... And just see where this all ends up. Microsoft is basically going to be making software security companies relevant again.
My guess is that computer security software businesses are completely up to the task and will be offering all sorts of products to protect your Windows 10 system. I am sure that there will be lots of threads here and other places that will recommend products designed to keep your current system safe and secure.
People with a quad core 7th Gen CPU should not have to dump their computer just to get windows 11.
Many thanks. I guess any printer will work with them. I do not print that much. I scan as much as print.
Excellent! Thank you!
Make a real upgrade to Linux.
Who needs laptops when you can buy micro size Dell OptiPlex. 7 by 1.4 by 7.2 inches....With 2x DisplayPorts for dual monitors. Forget HDMI.
But I prefer SFF HP or OptiPlex. With 2-3 DisplayPorts. As far as Intel desktop CPUs go, the 12th generation i5-i7 onward have best onboard Intel graphics 770, for highest refresh rates (HZ) on QHD and 4K monitors. Via DisplayPort.
For what I do, I do not need or want graphics cards.
This guy sells lots of used laptops eBay -— That are “eBay refurbished”
Thing is the DEI and woke is not what bothers me. The whole tech industry is like that, there is absolutely no way to escape that aspect. My complaints come from years and years of MS business policies and practices that outright create hardships and abuse their customers. Their arrogant attitude is “if you want to compute you have to let us stomp on you any way we like because we own you and your computer”.
Nope... Not going to grovel to that arrogant attitude from ANYONE or ANY product. I’ll change my whole lifestyle and live without it before I kiss anyone’s feet like that. I’m sick of corporations who think they own you just because you bought their product. Especially when there are indeed options that are just as good or better. I can live just fine without Turbotax or “that one game” to be rid of them.
We haven't used any anti-virus in years and years, anyway. A couple of gaffes from my bride's computer were easily overcome by her tech support -- me.
Don't do stupid things online, be skeptical and remember, all scams come from WORDS. The first Windows 95 virus was nothing more than an email warning to delete a necessary "dll" and people dutifully believed "advice."
My reason for avoiding any more updates are two fold. 1) Windows upgrades have done more damage than some scammer. 2) I like the legacy software I sue, and will not buy new to please "new." Nor would we buy a $30/year service from Microsoft at this juncture. The most damage we have experienced came "courtesy" of Microsoft.
I too love little micro and mini sized computers. We are currently using one with each of our 4K large screen televisions as entertainment centers. They are older and we are currently running windows 10 Pro on them and they are together the same PLEX network. Next fall I may switch them over to a Linux based network.
This is creating some trepidation however. Right now, we are using Audials one software to capture streams we are watching and saving the video to our Plex network. There is no Linux video capture utility with the same capabilities as Audials so it will create some problems for the way we do things. Currently anything we capture can be watched almost instantly on either television using the PLEX app. Audials also has some unique and easy to use editing capabilities. The ultra version can take out all commercials by itself and improve the looks of the video using an AI editing scheme.
But back to the discussion of integrated AMD GPUs vs Intel... in my experience if you have a machine without a discrete GPU... Ryzen APUs outperform Intel by a large margin in every corresponding generation.
My “gaming laptop” has a 13th Gen Intel Core i7-13700HX with a GeForce RTX 4060... I am very happy with the performance it gives me with Microsoft Flight Simulator. However, if I disable the GeForce GPU and use the integrated Intel® UHD Graphics for 13th Gen Intel® Processors... it performs worse than my wife's new laptop with AMD Ryzen 7 8840U with the integrated AMD Radeon™ 780M. This is actually unexpected considering the published benchmarks for the two APUs all give the Intel chip a huge advantage, but the Ryzen’s integrated GPU is much better than the Intel.
The following link shows that the Ryzen’s integrated Radeon™ 780M is 196% more powerful than Intel's UHD graphics 770.
https://technical.city/en/video/UHD-Graphics-770-vs-Radeon-780M
This has been going on for years and I am not sure why Intel has not taken care of this shortfall that makes a huge difference in laptops and little micro sized computers.
I normally do not buy Apple products, but one of my best friends purchased a Mac-Mini at Costco when they went on sale a couple of months ago and the thing is so amazing that it tempts me to go that direction for once.
Over the years I have purchased quite a few used and refurbished laptops and other types of computers through eBay. I have had almost all good experiences, but you really have to do your research on both the seller and the computer.
“The most damage we have experienced came “courtesy” of Microsoft.”
ABSOLUTELY. I discovered that back in the very beginning. I caught on to MS greed back when CPUs and bus speed started to get faster. As soon as MS realized hardware was getting faster they purposely stole all that extra speed for themselves with unneeded bloat. Almost as if it was on purpose. Still windows loads almost as slow as it did back when we were using 386 processors. And they have been doing it all along.
Nope, not doing it for any reason or need. I can live without a computer before I ever do that again.
This actually gets worse as time goes on. The clean install I did on my wife's old laptop loads Windows 10 in 30 seconds or so. She put very few programs on it outside of Office and a few solitaire and “fishdom” type games and it was still taking minutes to start up.
The experience of upgrading to Windows 11, scrapping that and then putting fresh installs of Windows 11 and then finally a fresh install of Windows 10 was a hellish experience. I have been through these many times before, but it keeps getting worse. Windows 10 now installs about 50 updates after a fresh install from the latest iso from their website. It takes multiple restarts and often the updates get stuck and after an hour or so you have to shut things down and go through much of it over again. Windows 11 is not quite as bad as Windows 10 since it is only about 3 years old.
Either way, installing Linux is typically much less of a pain... until you decide to try and make some type of modifications which can involve a bunch of command line scripts and commands.
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