Windows 7 end of life.

[Joe Bob]

W7 end of life with MS support. Looks like my ThinkPad is also circling the drain.

Does W10 still suck? What USA reasonably priced robust tablet or notebook run nowadays?

[beatnavy]

I've got the same issue with my laptop.

Win 10 doesn't suck nearly as bad as Win 8. Which did suck. Hard.

What is a good 3rd party support option?

[stevej37]

My Dell had Win 7 and was struggling to do anything.
I loaded Win 10 a couple years back and it's been better than new since...very happy here.

[rusnak]

Win 10 email sucks donkey balls

[Bob Kontak]

Originally Posted by stevej37

My Dell had Win 7 and was struggling to do anything.
I loaded Win 10 a couple years back and it's been better than new since...very happy here.

Good to hear. Been running Windows 7 64 bit I5 on this machine since 2009-ish.

Still kind of peppy.

[MRM]

I hate Windows 10 with a passion I reserve for few of the world's greatest abominations. I have a long policy of buying the latest proven technology and holding on to it until it won't work anymore, and then leapfrogging generations to the next newest, proven technology. I learned never to go with the newest cutting edge technology until the bugs are worked out and the technology is proven. I've been running Windows 7 Professional for as long as I can remember. It's intuitive, stable, has all the features I want. Overall it's simply an easy package to use and has enterprise power and flexibility.

I "upgraded' to Windows 10 in April so i wouldn't be dealing with it at the end of the year. I hate it with the intensity of 10,000 suns. My keyboard-based trackpad was the easiest way to navigate, now it's so flighty that I can't use it. Half the time it won't move, the other half it jumps off the page. Double tapping on the track pad results in one of three or four functions, which means it does what I want about a quarter of the time. The menu is all changed and I can't simply go to the Windows icon at the lower left of the screen and scroll through my programs and files. Going directly to desktop search requires some sort of alchemy. I could go on and on. I just want my Windows 7 back. Now get off my lawn. That is all

[VincentVega]

Work machine upgraded to win10 a while ago, much better perf. No issues and with a little use you'll find at least a few things are better/easier.

[island911]

Windows 10 is all about Microsoft owning your device. Yeah, they are late to that game, but they did show up.

[JackDidley]

I put W10 on one of my laptops. Works well. No complaints other than it is MS . I do not use it much because I hate all the updating and anti virus stuff that it needs. 90% of my computer time is on linux. If I want to update it takes 10 seconds. No virus scans or disc clean ups needed. I can reformat and install in a couple minutes and it is all free.

[berettafan]

Forced to upgrade my office. Friggin expensive and the network co wants crazy hours to set it all up.

I hate this tech ****.

[dafischer]

^^^Same here. Server and 3 desktops. This year's tax software and Quickbooks won't work on Win 7, so gun to the head, and we're "upgrading" to Win 10. Our network guy shows up Wednesday.

[john70t]

Win7 programs don't work on Win10. There is MS Hyper-V which I'm struggling with. Also Oracle VirtualBox which was recommended by the techies here (thx) and might try in the future. That might give access back to your software investments. YMMV.

The first thing you probably want to do is go through Apps permissions and turn off sharing microphone/camera/etc which are all on by default. That's a basic start.

All installed programs need to be certified by MS. User Account Control (UAC) doesn't allow anything else and might have to be turned off. That is not a bad thing necessarily actually. There is also Windows Defender antivirus built in, but would be redundant when using other AV programs. The 'security' seems to be one of the good things done right.

The "Search Windows" box has been replaced by "Cortana Assistant". It works about half the time. The other half is a blank for me. It also doesn't know the difference between searching your own computer files and being an internet search engine when you're online. Oh jeez give me a break. This breaks normal functions. If you push "Enter" it opens up useless Microsoft Edge browser and there doesn't seem to be a way to change that.

Speaking of search, Edge is always present and can't be deleted just like Cortana. The browser is basic and apparently doesn't have any normal menu functions. I would consider using if it actually worked. CCleaner finds trackers and stored data in both Edge and IE even though they haven't been used.

There are a lot of customization functions which seem to have disappeared completely or are hidden in other menus. I know I have installed programs which are not even listed. Some shortcuts you are able to pin to the Start menu or Taskbar and some you can't. It's a bit chaotic, like removing the door handles on the right side of a car and the trunk only opens from inside. Why? Just why? Same for making the scroll bar into a pop-up feature you have to wait for when there is plenty of room.

Other things now broken in Win10 are the Folder Options Menu. Simple things like "Select All" is now hidden under one small tab. You'll have to keep switching back and forth to view/move files when it was previously so simple and fast.

I noticed my "set as default" Apps switched themselves back a few times at first, like Microsoft is running a social experiment to convince the frustrated customer to give up and go to the Microsoft Store. (btw use free VLC player which does everything) Some MP4 videos won't play sound in Media Player and need to be opened in Movies and TV. Yet there is no "Open with M&TV" under right-click options. Sometimes. But not all the time. Depending. Opening that program there is no "Open File on Computer" option, just a one-way path to your exciting new life spent entirely inside of Microsoft Online World Of Purchased Media.

Constant pop-up advertisement prompt you to sign-in to MS Accounts, or go to X-Box, or MS Store are constant like some cheap third-world street hawker who won't let you simply walk-by on the sidewalk. You can't escape them. It really is low class.
[/rant]

[LakeCleElum]

After MS stopped supporting XP, I used it for several years with good virus protection programs. Still have XP on one old laptop and never an issue.

I plan to do the same with Win 7 and always have Linux loaded as a backup.

I tried the first FREE Win 10 and hated it so badly, I gave away that laptop......I'm sure it's better now, but just hate the path MS has gone..........I'll never pay an annual fee for an Office Pak when my Office 2007 does everything I need.........

[pmax]

Upgraded the old laptop to Win 10 for free last year and never looked back... faster, better and stronger.

Yes, it is still free.

[DanielDudley]

Originally Posted by Joe Bob

W7 end of life with MS support. Looks like my ThinkPad is also circling the drain.

Does W10 still suck? What USA reasonably priced robust tablet or notebook run nowadays?

I had a lot of trouble installing windows 10 to update my 7. in the end I wiped my computer, reloaded 7, and loaded the 10 update on a clean blank 7.

Never had a problem after that, and I was sure I would need a new computer. I think my 10 is configured to look like 7 to the operator.

Again, I loaded 10 over clean, blank 7. It locked up my computer trying to load it over years of junk and upgrades. I had to pay someone to tell me to do that.

[sc_rufctr]

I've never understood the universal loyalty to Microsoft.

At home I use Linux Mint. It has everything I need and it works well.
I've been running the current version for about 9 months and it hasn't skipped a beat.

If you have an older laptop that is collecting dust because it's not Windows 10 compatible then what have you got to loose?

https://linuxmint.com

[tabs]

I am using Vista...

[Jims5543]

Originally Posted by MRM

I hate Windows 10 with a passion I reserve for few of the world's greatest abominations. I have a long policy of buying the latest proven technology and holding on to it until it won't work anymore, and then leapfrogging generations to the next newest, proven technology. I learned never to go with the newest cutting edge technology until the bugs are worked out and the technology is proven. I've been running Windows 7 Professional for as long as I can remember. It's intuitive, stable, has all the features I want. Overall it's simply an easy package to use and has enterprise power and flexibility.

I "upgraded' to Windows 10 in April so i wouldn't be dealing with it at the end of the year. I hate it with the intensity of 10,000 suns. My keyboard-based trackpad was the easiest way to navigate, now it's so flighty that I can't use it. Half the time it won't move, the other half it jumps off the page. Double tapping on the track pad results in one of three or four functions, which means it does what I want about a quarter of the time. The menu is all changed and I can't simply go to the Windows icon at the lower left of the screen and scroll through my programs and files. Going directly to desktop search requires some sort of alchemy. I could go on and on. I just want my Windows 7 back. Now get off my lawn. That is all

I hate it too.

It forced itself onto my receptionists work computer one Thursday during the day, she is not computer literate and let it install.

Once installed my job tracking software was not compatible. That software is subscription based, seems "they forgot" to send my a patch to fix it. I learned this after I rolled her machine back to 7 then installed software to lock 7 in place and then installed the same software on all my machines in my office. It was free and I am sure it was just changing some settings on my machine to stop certain updates. Our machines still update to new patches of 7. That forced update knocked her machine down for 2 days while I figured out how to get back to Win7 and get her station set back up. I neded up spending a Sunday in the office fixing it.

We were set to build all new machines in October and shop for new Cadd software* which was going to be subscription based. Which I hate!

Lamenting about that, we decided to just leave it all alone, we will run these cadd stations on 7 for as long as we can stand it. Possibly keeping them after the fateful day we finally have to update our Win version. (we are going to explore Linux)

* For whatever reason my cadd software (Autodesk Civil Cadd) hates Win10 + Servers. If you work across a server you WILL have 2-3 crashes a day, when it crashes it corrupts the cadd file so bad it cannot be recovered. Therefore we do not use it. If I load a cadd file onto the machine and use it locally, no crashing. As soon as you go across the server, unstable.

I am not a software engineer not a IT person, my fix to the problem was to just not create the problem.

[red-beard]

There is program for extending Win 7 to 2023.

Honestly, I dont understand the obsession with Win 7. I have Win 10 on all machines and no issues

[GH85Carrera]

More and more programs are going to the subscription mode.

I built my home computer in 2013, and it was Win 7. I did the upgrade to 10, accepting that fact that Microsoft will march on, and 7 would die, and 10 would replace it. I figured I would learn it back then. I just built a new mega computer, and after 30 year of promises, plug and play is finally working. The components don't even come with CD or DVDs anymore, or even a manual. Plug in the part, and Windows takes care of it.

The one "feature" I HATE the most with Win10 is local networking. Virtually every update will break the local network sharing. I have 4 computers, and it is just me. I don't want no stinking passwords or log ins to share files on the computers all in my home office. I will get it all working smooth, and Win10 updates, and each computer turns off the file sharing. I cuss, and turn it all back on.

The other pain with Win 10 is the stupid bloatware. Microsoft thinks everyone is a college student playing games on the laptop. My new computer is is a monster, and weighs a ton. It has 5 drive running as a 15TB RAID 5, and two M.2 drives that are 2 TB each. It has two huge video cards, and 256 Gig of RAM. It would be a killer game machine, but I had to work hard to remove all the silly games Microsoft installs as default. And no, I don't want and social media or the phone app, or the people app.