Windows 10

niemeyjt

There are about 10 or 12 KBs to uninstall on Windows 7 to stop Microsoft spying - they are fairly well documented.

I was not aware that MS could force an upgrade - having said that I distrust them so much I check every KB before applying it and none are now automatically applied.

As for mail - I use Thunderbird which works well enough - even with multiple accounts and multiple encryption technologies - so no need to rely on MS for that!

Photobug

'Mandatory upgrade'? They can't do that can they? As I understand it 7 is being supported until nearly 2020 which would not be necessary if they forced everybody into an upgrade.

That is what I thought but a friend discovered they will stop support in 2016. I moved to 8.1 and love it. No issues.

Hammie

I have been quite happy with Windows 10. However, I built a new photo editing desktop from scratch. The only thing that has been reused is an old graphics card (Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti 2G). I am hoping to either get the Nvidia Quadro K2200, GTX 980, or GTX 970 as its replacement. Still trying to decide which one would be best for a non-gaming machine that basically only runs Lightroom and DxO OpticsPro 10.

bald_eagle

'Mandatory upgrade'? They can't do that can they? As I understand it 7 is being supported until nearly 2020 which would not be necessary if they forced everybody into an upgrade.

That is what I thought but a friend discovered they will stop support in 2016. I moved to 8.1 and love it. No issues.

I'm not sure where your friend heard/discovered that from, Photobug... the official stance from Microsoft is that Windows 7 "extended" support ends in 2020. ("mainstream" support ended in January this year)..

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/search/default.aspx?alpha=windows%207

It is well documented in IT circles..

The issues I have with 8/8.1 have for the most part been resolved in 10, but sadly some not (e.g. desktop mode should really BE desktop mode - no Metro Apps IMHO!!)..
Things that stops me upgrading are: no support for older hardware (including my flatbed scanner and printer!!) and also the well known included Microsoft "spyware" - I think that the only reason (maybe) M$ want people to "in-place" Upgrade is to keep the historic data of our computing and browsing habits!! Then after the upgrade Win 10 sends it all to M$

I'm also pretty sure the upgrade isn't/won't be mandatory... again, the official stance is that the upgrade is available for 1 year from July for existing Win 7/8/8.1 systems and for 1 year after purchase for computers bought later with win7/8/8.1. After that the free upgrade will no longer be available for that computer..

Cheers,
Baldy

Photocell

Im running windows 10 pro on 4 computers at home & I love it.
It's what windows 8 should've been from launch, One thing to note is that
win10 forces the windows updates to download and install. But this can be corrected
within the registry to give you an option you can find those instructions via this link.

http://www.howtogeek.com/224471/how-to-prevent-windows-10-from-automatically-downloading-updates/