Windows 7 End of Life Announcement

[DCBassman]

Windows 10 is like 7 but better. Those that tried early on may have had the more 'tablet' like appearance - Microsoft soon re-introduced the old taskbar and Start Menu

Windows 10 has always had the taskbar and Start - it's why it was released, to replace 8/8.1.
IMHO, Win 10 is as good as anything out there, these days. If you want the 'everything works together' closed ecosystem of Apple, fine, but it has zero other advantages, not even in the software it runs.
I feel I ought to state I've been a Windows Insider since W10 was announced. Still have two machines running the version that isn't out yet - ready end of May, most likely!

 

[KneesUp]

My laptop is ostensibly Windows 7 Pro -it has a sticker and everything. I was about to say it is dual boot with Linux (pop! os currently) and that I hardly ever use Windows - and then I remembered that since I replaced the hard drive with an SSD, it doesn't actually have Windows at all.

Ubuntu is stable, secure, free and fast. If you want to keep using the same laptop I highly recommend it.

 

[mybike]

Disclaimer for Linux Mint using WINE for iTunes - as the OP mentioned using iPad and iPhone - WINE does not support USB with iTunes so you can't sync your iPhone or iPad. I have a small partition on my hard drive for Windows which I use for syncing my iOS devices.

If anyone has a solution for syncing iOS with iTunes on Linux Mint, I'd be interested to know too.

Me too. iTunes is unusable on Mint 19.3 under wine and my desktop with VMware is a bit sick at mo.

 

[yello]

Hmm - if the free update still works then I may try Win 10 on my old laptop to see how well it works with the ancient hardware.

Give it a whirl, it may just work.

I was given a Windows 'something or other' PC that had an upgrade path to 10. Tbh, I was very dubious, I thought 10 would grind the PC to a halt, but I thought 'what the hell' and went for it. I actually, achem, quite liked 10 - it ran really rather well and seemed a decent platform. For a number of months anyway. Then a thunderstorm struck and fried the mother board... oh well. I replaced the motherboard but MSoft would not allow me to reinstall 10... but it was good while it lasted.

Generally speaking, I'm a fan of linux installs because you can run an up-to-date OS on old hardware. The PC's now got Linux Mint 19 on it, my laptop (an old Thinkpad) has Mint 18 (it'd happily run 19 but I don't like what happens to network connectivity under 19). My other computer (a 10 year old nettop) runs Debian 9 quite happily (with the GNOME desktop) I don't miss Windows in the slightest (but do run Windows 2000 in a virtual machine, purely for the Garmin Training Centre software)

 

[DCBassman]

As I mentioned earlier, so much depends on what you are calling 'old' hardware. If it runs 7 well, it should run 10 just as well, as the hardware requirements are near identical. Driver availability can be the trip point, particularly oddball graphics arrangements.
Anything all-Intel with a dual core processor should run fine, so long as you have enough RAM in it.
Linux is always good on old hardware, but again, some PCs can trip it up with odd or unusual hardware. But with so many different flavours, usually one can be found to work well.
I just like my (old) Windows 10 machines!

 

[yello]

You've got me thinking @DCBassman , I'm pretty sure that my 'old' Thinkpad (laptop) came with Win 7 pre-installed. It has 8gB of RAM so I'd fancy its chances of running Windows 10. I have an image of the original Win 7 install... I may just give it a go. What's to lose? As I say, I did quite like Win 10. So long as I back everything up (both data backups and disc images) i should be okay.

Actually, thinking about it, I don't think I have the Windows licence code. Might that be a problem? Or would the upgrade proceed happily without it?

 

[DCBassman]

You've got me thinking @DCBassman , I'm pretty sure that my 'old' Thinkpad (laptop) came with Win 7 pre-installed. It has 8gB of RAM so I'd fancy its chances of running Windows 10. I have an image of the original Win 7 install... I may just give it a go. What's to lose? As I say, I did quite like Win 10. So long as I back everything up (both data backups and disc images) i should be okay.

Actually, thinking about it, I don't think I have the Windows licence code. Might that be a problem? Or would the upgrade proceed happily without it?

It will be possible. But you won't get beyond thirty days' use if it remains un-activated. Should fly with 8GB RAM and a reasonable cpu.

 

[Heltor Chasca]

This has all been useful so thanks to you all.

I have looked at spend, how much I spend on antivirus software etc every year, what it’s worth to my little business and what its worth to me personally. I also have to consider hand me down options for the kids and what devices we all use. I have also considered after sales experience.

Based on all this I will be looking at the offerings from Apple. I won’t be going PC. Microsoft are probably losing a lot of customers like me.

Any ideas on Apple? I only need a laptop style device. Desktop doesn’t suit my lifestyle.

 

[LeetleGreyCells]

This has all been useful so thanks to you all.

I have looked at spend, how much I spend on antivirus software etc every year, what it’s worth to my little business and what its worth to me personally. I also have to consider hand me down options for the kids and what devices we all use. I have also considered after sales experience.

Based on all this I will be looking at the offerings from Apple. I won’t be going PC. Microsoft are probably losing a lot of customers like me.

Any ideas on Apple? I only need a laptop style device. Desktop doesn’t suit my lifestyle.

I have a 2015 MacBook and love it. There's no DVD drive and only a USB-C, but then that doesn't matter to me as I use Dropbox and very, very, very rarely a USB stick, which I have an adapter for. It is important to note that on my MacBook there is only 1 USB-C port which is also used for charging the laptop i.e. you can't use a memory stick when you're charging the laptop. There are no other ports at all. Think carefully about what ports you need, how much hard drive space you need and how fast you want it to run (RAM). MacBook's tend to run pretty quickly though as they come with Solid State Disc Drives rather than mechanical Hard Disc Drives.

 

[the_mikey]

I really think they have shot themselves in the foot and have left a massive opening for Apple to clean up quite nicely.

Apple aren't exactly saints when it comes to making old products obsolete or pulling the rug of support from users feet, if anything they're more ruthless than Microsoft.

 

[the_mikey]

My laptop is ostensibly Windows 7 Pro -it has a sticker and everything. I was about to say it is dual boot with Linux (pop! os currently) and that I hardly ever use Windows - and then I remembered that since I replaced the hard drive with an SSD, it doesn't actually have Windows at all.

Ubuntu is stable, secure, free and fast. If you want to keep using the same laptop I highly recommend it.

I have done this with old laptops many times, I find Ubuntu by far the easiest to learn to use, I've tried Mint also, which works well but frequently get frustrated waiting for software updates (especially critical updates) which forces you into learning to update software manually, until you become aware you're spending more time tapping in text commands than actually using the software you want to use!

 

[DCBassman]

This has all been useful so thanks to you all.

I have looked at spend, how much I spend on antivirus software etc every year, what it’s worth to my little business and what its worth to me personally. I also have to consider hand me down options for the kids and what devices we all use. I have also considered after sales experience.

Based on all this I will be looking at the offerings from Apple. I won’t be going PC. Microsoft are probably losing a lot of customers like me.

Any ideas on Apple? I only need a laptop style device. Desktop doesn’t suit my lifestyle.

Despite what is marketed, 3rd party antivirus is not needed on Windows, and hasn't been for some time. I rely on the OS itself to cover that, on four machines, and give each a run over with Malwarebytes free once a fortnight, purely for overkill.
If you like the Apple machines and ecosystems, it may well be worth it. It's the only advantage Apple has left, if you can call it that. The hardware and software itself has long been at least equalled. Only in syncing its own machines does it still have the edge, and probably even that not for much longer.

 

[Lee_M]

My laptop is ostensibly Windows 7 Pro -it has a sticker and everything. I was about to say it is dual boot with Linux (pop! os currently) and that I hardly ever use Windows - and then I remembered that since I replaced the hard drive with an SSD, it doesn't actually have Windows at all.

Ubuntu is stable, secure, free and fast. If you want to keep using the same laptop I highly recommend it.

In my experience Ubuntu was a pain to run as it wouldn't keep external drives mapped, and half the things I wanted to do needed command line instructions and batch commands.

It's all very well IT bods and geeks saying use it but 95% of computer users would be lost.

 

[Smokin Joe]

In my experience Ubuntu was a pain to run as it wouldn't keep external drives mapped, and half the things I wanted to do needed command line instructions and batch commands.

It's all very well IT bods and geeks saying use it but 95% of computer users would be lost.

Linux is like Marmite, you either love it or hate it. I tried it for a couple of months but it wasn't for me at all, I found it far too fussy. It was like going back to W95 with constant tinkering under the bonnet needed.

 

[tyred]

I'm on Win 8.1. It's what came installed on the laptop when bought it a few years ago.

Perhaps I've been lucky but it has just worked from day 1 and gave no problems so far. I did use Linux on past PCs but have felt no need or desire to mess about with this one.

As a long term Microsoft critic I was just saying to someone the other day how good modern computers are and how good Microsoft have become compared to the endless messing about that was required to keep Win95 or 98 running sweetly.

I am happy to continue using Microsoft products and I never thought the day would come when I would be saying that.!