Windows 10

[DownSouth]

... not Windows Media Player. It's certainly still alive and well here.

How unfortunate for you. Kill it with fire.

All in all, as it's a free upgrade from Windows 7 or 8, I'm definitely going to upgrade come July the 29th.

I certainly won't be installing Win10 over my last remaining Win7 install until Win10 gets to at least SP2.

Win7 is perfectly stable and still has five years of support still to come, it's not worth taking a punt on the "upgrade" being a downgrade - as early adopters of Vista and Win8 found out to their detriment.

 

[ainsworth74]

Win7 is perfectly stable and still has five years of support still to come, it's not worth taking a punt on the "upgrade" being a downgrade - as early adopters of Vista and Win8 found out to their detriment.

Exactly. I probably will take advantage of the free upgrade but I will not be doing that until only a few weeks before the deadline to do so and after it's clear that any serious launch issues have been resolved. If there is any suggestion that Windows 10 still has issues I'll be sticking to Windows 7 free or not.

 

[CharlieSpotted]

Does anyone know if you'll be able to upgrade for free if you've been "a victim of software counterfeiting" with your Windows 7 installation? Asking for a friend.

 

[dgl]

been mostly happy here with win 8 the only problem being is that certain things that work in 8 don't work anymore in 8.1 (My roland SH-201 being an example) so my desktop will never see 8.1 or 10. floppy disk support is also needed here (for the s550/50 sample library) and while that can be added in 10 would rather have it supported from the start.
I am also a wmp user (I even use IE aswell) as I use it for creating lossless WMA's from cd's for listening on my windows phone

 

[TheNewNo2]

That sounds like a bit of a win to me, WMP is an atrocity!

A completely free combined replacement for Windows Media Player and DVD support is VLC Player.

I've used it for years, and it's excellent - it also supports several more formats than WMP and tends to have fewer issues; it's also updated often.

VLC is excellent for playing videos, but for music? No way. Its library/playlist interface is abysmal, and thus is suitable for playing only one thing at a time, as you would when watching TV or DVD.

Win7 is perfectly stable and still has five years of support still to come, it's not worth taking a punt on the "upgrade" being a downgrade - as early adopters of Vista and Win8 found out to their detriment.

Vista was ok, and I actually got a Win ME PC to 8 days of uptime once. Then a spare mouse fell on the power switch.

Windows 7 though is by far the best OS Microsoft has ever produced. I really struggle to find anything I don't like about it. Oh wait, yes, the new-look Minesweeper is stupid, and it doesn't delete old system images automatically. That is about it. I had the choice of OS when I bought this PC, and I chose 7 over 8. I had 7 on my previous PC as well, which I got around when 7 came out, and it worked right from the start.

I wouldn't mind if Microsoft just kept selling Win 7 until 128bit PCs come along.

 

[CharlieSpotted]

Windows 7 though is by far the best OS Microsoft has ever produced.

I concur. As someone who uses both PC and Mac, I think Windows 7 was the moment Microsoft finally caught up with Apple in the OS department, and the two platforms became equal. And that's quite a feat.

 

[ainsworth74]

Personally I think the one significant issue with Windows 7 is the lack of Space Cadet Pinball. Unforgivable lapse in my view

 

[JoeGJ1984]

Exactly. I probably will take advantage of the free upgrade but I will not be doing that until only a few weeks before the deadline to do so and after it's clear that any serious launch issues have been resolved. If there is any suggestion that Windows 10 still has issues I'll be sticking to Windows 7 free or not.

Anyone know what that deadline is?

 

[ainsworth74]

I would assume a year from July 29th.

 

[HilversumNS]

Anyone know what Microsoft will charge for an annual fee once your free year is up?

Having worked on many OS upgrade projects within large companies, I doubt there will be any huge rush for them to roll this out within the business sector.

OS upgrades are usually done when needed, not when released, and in my experience NEVER before service pack 1 is produced. Win10 won't get service packs from what I read, just on-going updates.

Don't forget to make a nice full backup if you do plan to upgrade, cos you just never know what it's going to do with your machine.

 

[CharlieSpotted]

Anyone know what Microsoft will charge for an annual fee once your free year is up?

As I understand it, it's not a free year, it's that you've got a year to take advantage of the free upgrade. I don't think there will be any annual fee. They're moving more to the OSX way of doing things - free OS upgrades, delivered at regular intervals.

 

[HilversumNS]

Does anyone know if you'll be able to upgrade for free if you've been "a victim of software counterfeiting" with your Windows 7 installation? Asking for a friend.

Mine has come up saying I am entitled to a free upgrade as I have a pukka version of 7. Perhaps your 'friend' will get this message too, perhaps not.
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As I understand it, it's not a free year, it's that you've got a year to take advantage of the free upgrade. I don't think there will be any annual fee. They're moving more to the OSX way of doing things - free OS upgrades, delivered at regular intervals.

Ah, right. I thought I read somewhere that they wanted to charge an annual fee with ongoing upgrades, much like Office 365. My bad.

 

[yorksrob]

He *should* use the number, where available, but not all programmers are good programmers... The following example has been doing the rounds demonstrating the type of code that causes a problem:

https://issues.jenkins-ci.org/secure/attachment/18777/PlatformDetailsTask.java

(Java... eugh)
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---


I wonder if you're thinking of Microsoft Works? This used to be bundled with a lot of brand-name PCs and there's a common misconception that it was therefore part of Windows, but it really wasn't. It was discontinued some years ago.

I don't particularly care who it belonged to, but it was on my old PC with XP and isn't on my current laptop with 7. I regard that as a decline in product.

 

[HilversumNS]

I don't particularly care who it belonged to, but it was on my old PC with XP and isn't on my current laptop with 7. I regard that as a decline in product.

Your old XP machine had an extra product bundled with it, MS Works. Your laptop didn't. So no decline in product from Microsoft, only by the laptop manufacturer who decides what software to sell with the machine.

 

[DownSouth]

I don't particularly care who it belonged to, but it was on my old PC with XP and isn't on my current laptop with 7. I regard that as a decline in product.

That's not by any stretch of imagination a decline in the Windows product because it wasn't a part of either version of Windows.

It's more like complaining that your new laptop doesn't have (for example) a VGA display output. If you want it you should check that it has it before purchasing.

Having worked on many OS upgrade projects within large companies, I doubt there will be any huge rush for them to roll this out within the business sector.

OS upgrades are usually done when needed, not when released, and in my experience NEVER before service pack 1 is produced. Win10 won't get service packs from what I read, just on-going updates.

+1

The South Australian state government has a rigid policy across all departments and agencies of being 1-2 full versions behind the current version of Windows. It works well for them, I've never had any occasion to access state government services where I've been told to go away because the computers didn't feel like working today or the staff didn't know how to use them because the Start menu had disappeared.

 

[Kite159]

Anyone know what Microsoft will charge for an annual fee once your free year is up?

Having worked on many OS upgrade projects within large companies, I doubt there will be any huge rush for them to roll this out within the business sector.

OS upgrades are usually done when needed, not when released, and in my experience NEVER before service pack 1 is produced. Win10 won't get service packs from what I read, just on-going updates.

Don't forget to make a nice full backup if you do plan to upgrade, cos you just never know what it's going to do with your machine.

For my company, all laptops (which could handle it) were upgraded to Windows 7 a few months ago, with the IT department focusing on the desktops to upgrade (or replace) to windows 7.

Sadly it means my rubbish 9 year old Dell is due to get replaced with a Lenovo whose failure rate is high.

----

As for home, I will probably keep Windows 8.1 for a few months before upgrading to Windows 10.

 

[HilversumNS]

For my company, all laptops (which could handle it) were upgraded to Windows 7 a few months ago, with the IT department focusing on the desktops to upgrade (or replace) to windows 7.

I got about a years worth of work by companies panicking over Microsoft stopping XP support.

Quite a few end-users asked why we were upgrading to Win7 not 8. My standard reply was "It's a proven platform, 8 offers no additional functionality for your job role. Also costs as most people would be able to cope with 7 already."

I don't like the bottom left CTRL key on Lenovos, as I tend to use Dells.

 

[Crossover]

Is Java not meant to be the future? I use Fortran or C and am frequently told to switch to a more modern language by colleagues.

I hope to goodness not - kill it with fire too!

I don't particularly care who it belonged to, but it was on my old PC with XP and isn't on my current laptop with 7. I regard that as a decline in product.

As others have said, sounds like MS Works. There are alternatives out there though - I run LibreOffice on a couple of PC's it satisfies the need for the likes of a spreadsheet package whilst being able to open and save as Microsoft file types

For my company, all laptops (which could handle it) were upgraded to Windows 7 a few months ago, with the IT department focusing on the desktops to upgrade (or replace) to windows 7.

Sadly it means my rubbish 9 year old Dell is due to get replaced with a Lenovo whose failure rate is high.

----

As for home, I will probably keep Windows 8.1 for a few months before upgrading to Windows 10.

We have a handful of Windows XP desktops still knocking about at work - they'll get sorted eventually but other things keep taking priority. We have a couple of Surface Pro's that come with 8.1 natively - come July I would like to look to upgrade those if possible and effectively skip Windows 8.1 therein

There is extended support for Windows 7 until 2020 I believe, so a reasonable time frame to go yet!

I got about a years worth of work by companies panicking over Microsoft stopping XP support.

Quite a few end-users asked why we were upgrading to Win7 not 8. My standard reply was "It's a proven platform, 8 offers no additional functionality for your job role. Also costs as most people would be able to cope with 7 already."

I don't like the bottom left CTRL key on Lenovos, as I tend to use Dells.

Agreed on the Fn key being in the Ctrl key location on Lenovos - I have no idea what has possessed them to do that!

 

[Strathclyder]

I have no plans to switch from Windows 8.1 to 10. 8.1 has been a solid, reliable performer for as long as I've had it with no major crashes so far. Switching to 10 would just cause more trouble than it's worth...

 

[DaleCooper]

Does anyone remember Windows 3.11? Things were ao much simpler then (sigh).

 

[HilversumNS]

Does anyone remember Windows 3.11? Things were ao much simpler then (sigh).

My 1st Windows experience was 3.1. I hated it after I'd mastered all you could do in DOS (from version 3.3 onwards) and having started on CP/M as well as a ZX Spectrum.

 

[SpacePhoenix]

Does anyone remember Windows 3.11? Things were ao much simpler then (sigh).

I think I've still got my old Windows 98 disc lurking around somewhere

 

[D6975]

Yes, I remember 3.1, and I remember how much better 95 was when it came out.
Since then I've used all the versions except Vista, currently using 7 at work, 7, 8.1 and Linux at home.

 

[Seacook]

Does anyone remember Windows 3.11? Things were ao much simpler then (sigh).

3.11? Luxury! I remember Windows 2.

I will replace Windows 8.1 with 10 within a week or two of release on my latest desktop. My other desktop - the one I use every day - will stay with Windows 7 until it or I falls apart, probably.

 

[dgl]

3.11? Luxury! I remember Windows 2.

I will replace Windows 8.1 with 10 within a week or two of release on my latest desktop. My other desktop - the one I use every day - will stay with Windows 7 until it or I falls apart, probably.

When I was at college in about 2006/7 we found an IBM PS/2 in a cupboard, it booted into dos and on doing a DIR and typing in win.com low and behold windows 1.1 loaded

 

[yorkie]

Is Java not meant to be the future? I use Fortran or C and am frequently told to switch to a more modern language by colleagues.

This is off-topic but Java is awful and is infamous for multiple vulnerabilities. Hardly anything uses Java anyway so you can safely get rid of it. If you must use Java, then do so from the safety of a virtual machine.

 

[TheNewNo2]

Does anyone remember Windows 3.11? Things were ao much simpler then (sigh).

Yep, I remember 3.1, that was the first proper PC we had (we had a Spectrum, but it was for games). I remember the Cars.jpg background you could get, and making massive car parks in paint with different colours. Also setting a picture of the cursor as the background...

I also used Win 95, ME, XP, Vista and 7, and done 8 a bit on a laptop.

I will replace Windows 8.1 with 10 within a week or two of release on my latest desktop. My other desktop - the one I use every day - will stay with Windows 7 until it or I falls apart, probably.

Amen to that. Why upgrade when 7 works perfectly? If I bought a new PC I'd try and get 7 on it!

 

[Strathclyder]

I think I've still got my old Windows 98 disc lurking around somewhere

Ah, Windows 98. Things were so much simpler back then. Memories of the 'Pipes', 'Maze' & the 'Starfield' screensavers come flooding back...

Things also sounded a lot better back then, too:
[youtube]?v=W7O6whaPWYA[/youtube]

 

[DaleCooper]

As far as I'm concerned the last significant improvement to Windows was plug and play, before that getting any peripheral to work could be a nightmare for the average user.

 

[mbonwick]

Does anyone know if you'll be able to upgrade for free if you've been "a victim of software counterfeiting" with your Windows 7 installation? Asking for a friend.

The Microsoft take on this last time I heard anything was that yes, you could get the upgrade - but it would still be "fake" but they would be offering cheap "genuine" product keys to those affected.

Remains to be seen whether that is still the case though.