I just got windows 10 and, so far, I’m not impressed with it. Some of the games that worked with windows 7 do not work with windows 10.
It’s different, but not better, for me.
I’m going to hang on to it and see what it’s all about, but I was wondering, if I don’t choose to keep it. Can I go back to windows 7.
I have windows 7 on an external hard drive. The hard drive is disconnected and put away for an emergency.
I think you have a limited window of opportunity to roll back the upgrade - a month, if I recall correctly.
How do you mean that you have win7 on an external drive? Is this a disk snapshot of your system prior to the upgrade? If so, I wonder if you might have license/activation problems if you go back to that, but not by backing out the update.
Win 10 has, IMHO, hopped on board with the subscription movement for software. Everything seems tied via the internet to Microsoft. You want to play a game like solitaire, you need to access it via Xbox to do so. Corina is a little spy sharing all you do with her Redmond bosses. I suppose all this is the wave of the future, and PLEASE world someone come along and create an operating system for PCs to replace Microsoft. I’ll be there in a minute.
Some Linux distros are pretty consumer friendly these days, if you really want to jump ship.
The OS is only as important as the software which runs on it.
I wanna rollback to 8.1 myself. 10 blows chunks. But I have a small SSD, so being the idiot that I am, I deleted windows.old. Am I officially hosed?
I have a “my passport” external hard drive with my computer on it. I was going to use it if I picked up a virus or had another problem that would call for me to re-load everything.
I copied it from windows 7 quite awhile ago.
I’ve been on Windows 10 for a month now, and I like it just fine. After a bit of tinkering, I got rid of some of the “spyware” components that keep phoning home to Microsoft and changed a few settings to conform with my preferences. Basically, it’s not really much different, in terms of day-to-day use, than my previous Windows 7 box.
Precisely, which means that, for a wide variety of non-specialist, non-proprietary home uses, a Linux distro like Ubuntu is just fine.
If your main purpose, in having a computer, is to use email and social media sites, watch funny cat videos and play on internet message boards, do online shopping, listen to your music collection, and maybe produce some documents for printing or for your college studies, Ubuntu works just fine right out of the box.
After I built a new computer recently, I cleaned out the insides of the old one (dust everywhere! it was disgusting) and whacked the latest long-term version of Ubuntu on it, just for fun. I’ve been playing around with it a bit in my spare time, using it for things like the SDMB, email, video, and music.
Part of my reason for doing this is to see how many regular, everyday things I can do without needing any more expertise or special knowledge than my mother (who is a computer novice). So far, looking at the ways my mother uses a computer, there is literally nothing that she does on her Windows computer that she couldn’t do on Ubuntu.
Actually, if I didn’t need Adobe software like Lightroom and Photoshop and Premiere Pro, there’s basically no reason that I couldn’t switch. I happen to have MS Office, and I use it a lot, but most of my uses for Office programs are not complex enough that I would suffer unduly from switching to the LibreOffice software that comes pre-installed with Ubuntu.
There was a time when Ubuntu users who wanted to play various audio and video formats had to do an few extra steps to install proprietary codecs and direct show filters, but now you can tick a box during the OS installation and all that is installed for you.
Do you have a physical media disc for 8.1? You would probably have to back all your documents up first, and then reinstall all your programs, but you could do a fresh install.
I don’t see any reason to rollback to 8.1. If you’re gonna rollback, go back to 7.
I have the .iso file. But that’s what I meant by ‘hosed,’ as I’m still looking at a three to four hour project, even installing everything from USB. Next time I’ll buy a bigger SSD. 
I would support this too, as a general proposition, but if he only has an activation code for 8 or 8.1, i’m not sure if that’s possible. I know you can roll back from 10, but if you came from 8.1, i’m not sure if you can go back to 7 unless you have an activation code specifically for a 7 installation.
When i put my new computer together last month, i actually ordered a Windows 7 disk with it (rather than 8.1 or 10) because i knew that all of my old programs worked nicely with 7, and i wanted to have that option if 10 turned out to be no good for me.
Anyway, once i got 7 installed, i upgraded to 10 and installed all of my programs. I thought Windows 7 was a really great operating system, and i was perfectly willing to roll back to 7 if 10 didn’t cut the mustard. But 10 works fine, and i’m perfectly happy with it.
Of course, but if someone has an overwhelming rage about Microsoft, there’s been options for a long time.
options, but the basic Microsoft monopoly is unchanged, as it has been for 25 years. If you need to do productive tasks with the widest variety of tools, you gotta use windows. Older windows, likes 7 or even XP.
You can only rollback to whatever version of Windows was on the machine before the Win 10 upgrade, as the upgrade dumps all the older system files into a temp folder.
Agree absolutely, and I do. The poster I was responding to seemed unaware that there was an alternative, that’s all.
Its not your opinion, that is what they have done. I think ‘store’ model is probably more accurate than ‘subscription’ model as a lot of software isn’t necessarily subscription but they are trying to get you to manage it through a central Microsoft store, like Apple and Android and in a way Linux. In all fairness it is probably a necessary long term survival strategy; and so far it is optional. You can still go to the website of software providers and download any non Microsoft product directly. I still have not set up a Microsoft id and windows 10 is functioning just fine. I have my games in a games folder. I am not interested in consoles or console games and am never, ever going to be using xbox anything if I can avoid it. I already have steam and occasionally buy a GOG game and they serve me well.
Which brings up another point. Microsoft is late to this party. I already am well integrated into Google’s spiderweb using Android, Drive etc. It serves me well and I really don’t want or need to duplicate it with Microsoft. I suspect a lot of others are also in this position with apple, dropbox, facebook etc.
Installing Windows 10 on my laptop I had to update my printer driver, which sent me to the microsoft store and asked for me to set up an id again. As I was vocalizing f-bombs some stupid Windows 10 ‘tells us what you think so far!’ crap popped up. Wrong time to ask me, and I gave them my completely pointless negative feedback. A few minutes later I realized I had managed to install the driver from HP fine on two other windows 10 machines without gong through any MS hoops and my rant was more than pointless.
Truth be told, for me Windows 10 is pretty damn good. It has an excellent level of control for a power user, seems pretty stable, so far all my software works fine with it. Its made up for all the ‘new coke’ fuck ups of windows 8 as far as I can tell. As long as I am not forced to use a Microsoft id and manage software through a store front I will be fine with it. When that day comes I will move over to Linux.
You couldn’t pay me to go back to 7. Honestly, 8 (and now 10) are so much leaner and faster. I like the flat design too. Haven’t found any incompatibilities in programs either. That’s my experience, anyway.
I’ll just throw this in here, so as not to start a new thread, but…
I was reading somewhere that Windows 10 will upload your Wi-Fi passwords to their servers and then when anyone running Windows 10 comes within range of said Wi-Fi, it will allow them to access your Wi-Fi. Anyone know if this is true? It can’t be, right? I don’t see how that’s not theft of utilities.
Not exactly, you would need to be a ‘friend’ (such as a outlook contact) to someone who has the password for it to allow you access. It also is suppose to block access to your LAN and just allow web access. I don’t know if a friend of a friend could also access it.
It is a feature, or a bug, you can turn off, but is on by default as I read it.
I was actually making the opposite point from you. Smug geeks love to believe that the average PC user only needs web, email, and Facebook, but that’s a hilariously myopic viewpoint. People have been buying software which runs on Windows for 20+ years. and a lot of it is obscure, niche stuff like Patternmaker (create patterns for sewing clothes) or language learning software, or what the hell have you. A lot of these people are used to using these programs, and they either don’t exist on Linux or if they do, the available options suck ass. seriously, I use Ubuntu on my laptop because I don’t need it for anything important, and a metric fuckton of the software available out there for it is insanely narrowly-focused and was clearly written only to solve a problem for the program’s author. and given the attitudes of a lot of the people in the FOSS community, I’d say high-functioning autism is extremely well represented among their ranks.
microsoft has bent over backwards and in so many other directions to try to make sure these software programs still run on later OSes. It’s not your job to tell these users that they need to throw their shit out and deal with missing or shitty replacements.