We’re looking to pick up a work laptop in the BF/CM sales. For a host of reasons (privacy, security, usability, etc.), we’re not going to have a Windows 10 machine in the house and office until LTS runs out on Win 7 in four years.
There are some laptops out there that will ship with Win 7, but the choices are somewhat sparse. Getting a Win 10 machine on sale may offset the cost of buying a Win 7 install disc.
Is there any way to check laptop components/chipsets ahead of time to see if Win 7 drivers are available?
It’s extremely unlikely that the same drivers won’t work on both. The only driver change is in video, and all the video card producers still have Windows 7 drivers available.
There are sometimes problems going the other way, but I’ve never heard of anyone having trouble downgrading. The driver formats haven’t changed–they only have problems on Windows 10 because it’s rather buggy.
Thanks. Kind of makes sense—Win 10 is fairly new, so OS-specific hardware is still in the works.
Has there been any word of marketing-department imposed limitations? As in something like “Hey Dell, if you want a discount on Win 10 preinstalls, you’ll have to add a version check in BIOS (or whatever’s technically feasible) and crap out if any other OS is installed.”
Couple other possible issues–having only experience with building desktops where I have a lot more control, will I be able to format the drive and install Win 7 just as I’m used to? Install with an external DVD drive?
I guess it’s straying into IMHO territory, but will the downgrade process be more trouble than it’s worth (‘worth’ as in not buying a Win-7 machine, not ‘worth’ as in staying with Win 10). Or will it be pretty similar to building a new desktop from scratch?