Windows 7 End of Life Announcement

[Pale Rider]

My MacBook Air died recently and I wanted to buy something for surfing the internet, writing emails etc leaving the heavy grunt work for my desktop.

What put me off buying a Chromebook was the fact (I was told) that the only browser on them is Chrome. Sometimes I find that a particular website doesn't work well with Chrome so I need an alternative.

I've ended up with a refurbished small Lenovo 2-in1 laptop converted from Windows 8 to Ubuntu. I'm enjoying tinkering with something new, keeping out of the grasp of Microsoft and Apple as well as keeping my total spend to £149.99.

Yes, only Chrome browser on a Chromebook.

I've not come across any problems yet, but in the past when a website has acted up, opening it in a different browser is my first option.

Firefox and Safari on my MacBook, so I can still do that.

I'm not sure that getting rid of Microsoft monitoring your life by ditching its software and using a Chromebook instead, where Google is doing much the same, is any better. That depends how bothered you are by companies flogging your data profile, of course.

I regard Microsoft and Google the same in respect of big, bad, companies tracking me.

The reason to use a Chromebook is ease of use, they are all but seamless.

Close to instant switch on and shut down, although mine is always on standby.

Genuine 10 or 12 hour battery life whatever you are doing, including playing vids, next to no power used on standby.

time... two hours.
trouble... seamless upgrade = no trouble at all.

Pleased to hear it.

I've had too many pointless upgrades, laptops hanging, laptops self-clogging over time even if they aren't clogged from new, and goodness knows how many other snags to ever go back to Microsoft.


There is far, far better out there, better and cheaper in the case of Chromebooks.

 

[Wobblers]

Blimey, what a load of time and trouble some of you are put to.

It would be simpler to buy a £200 Chromebook and leave all that amateur computer geekery behind.

I'm typing this on a machine that has more memory, storage, and is faster than a chromebook - but cost me less than £100 (a second hand Dell e7240). It can run far more software, I can change the operating system, the components can be upgraded and Google won't end support for it after 3 years (a nice gotcha that Google oddly enough forget to mention when they boast about how chromebooks are always supported with the most recent updates).

In other words, I get a machine that is far more useful, cheaper and won't become landfill in a couple of years time. Besides, some of us like all this amateur geekery!

 

[fossyant]

Win 10 on 3 laptops and 5 desktops at home. Most upgraded from previous Win 7 licences. No issues, and Win10 very stable.

 

[Pale Rider]

I'm typing this on a machine that has more memory, storage, and is faster than a chromebook - but cost me less than £100 (a second hand Dell e7240). It can run far more software, I can change the operating system, the components can be upgraded and Google won't end support for it after 3 years (a nice gotcha that Google oddly enough forget to mention when they boast about how chromebooks are always supported with the most recent updates).

In other words, I get a machine that is far more useful, cheaper and won't become landfill in a couple of years time. Besides, some of us like all this amateur geekery!

Oh, will my Chromebook conk out in a year or two?

The home screen did change when I switched it off and restarted it a couple of months ago.

Storage is an individual thing, but I can't be the only one who only uses a small proportion of what's available.

My 10-year-old Macbook has 180gb free on its clonky 250gb hard drive.

The only file I have of any size is all my CDs on iTunes, and I rarely add to that these days.

 

[Wobblers]

Oh, will my Chromebook conk out in a year or two?

The home screen did change when I switched it off and restarted it a couple of months ago.

Storage is an individual thing, but I can't be the only one who only uses a small proportion of what's available.

My 10-year-old Macbook has 180gb free on it's clonky 250gb hard drive.

The only file I have of any size is all my CDs on iTunes, and I rarely add to that these days.

Google has a policy of deeming older hardware as end of life and ending any further updates. The old Google Nexus phones and tablets were limited to 3 years of updates. For chromebooks, it's actually 6.5 years - but there's a catch. It's not from when you buy it, it's from when the "hardware platform" was first made, so you're likely to have considerably less time. Your chromebook won't stop working after this, but you won't get any security fixes so it would be wise not to use it for banking or anything important. The only solution to this is to install a version of Linux (Crouton IIRC). Unfortunately a rather geeky solution!

It does rather irritate me when companies impose these sort of artificial limitations onto what are perfectly sound products. Making it difficult to actually find out how long something will work for is adding insult to injury. This, as well as the privacy issues, make me unwilling to recommend a chromebook , even though it is ideal for most uses and doesn't need much in the way of technical knowledge.

 

[Mike_P]

There are a number of articles kicking around the web on how to restrict MSs snooping plus some freeware programs that claim to stop that. Search "stop MS snooping"in Google etc

 

[Pale Rider]

it would be wise not to use it for banking or anything important

Not a problem for me especially the important bit, although it might be for some.

My employers have just bought a heap of Chromebooks, I have one but rarely use it because mine is smaller and handier.

They won't like the lack of security, but I suppose the hardware might be replaced within five or six years.

 

[Mike Ayling]

Have just upgraded our 10yo desktop to a new desktop with Windows 10.
We try to avoid google and use Firefox and Duck Duck go.
Might try the Linux suggestion at the start of the thread for the old PC

Mike

 

[Levo-Lon]

Step son is sorting laptop at work. I,T company
Free W10 upgrade as 7 is over.

My lappy is a 2011 model and is rarely used but still handy for odd tasks.
Everything takes an age on a lap top.

 

[Mike_P]

Eyerthing takes an age on a lap top.

Depends on its spec, a lot of laptops incredibly IMO get sold with just 2 or 4MB of memory whereas at least 8 and preferably 16MB is essential IMO and my laptop certainly does not take an age with everything.

 

[ColinJ]

Depends on its spec, a lot of laptops incredibly IMO get sold with just 2 or 4MB of memory whereas at least 8 and preferably 16MB is essential IMO and my laptop certainly does not take an age with everything.

You are going back a couple of decades there... you mean GB!

PS I paid £2,000 for a PC with 8 MB of memory in the early 1990s!

 

[Mike_P]

You are going back a couple of decades there... you mean GB!

Apologies, yes GB. Was amazed at the about of low spec laptops being churned out being claimed as being W10 compatible when W10 was being launched. Okay W10 might go on them but a fat chance of anything running very well on them. If you do have a laptop that's limited in memory do not bother increasing the memory if it has the facility to do so, done it twice and in both instances shortly after the laptops circuits went up the creek as if the extra memory was too much for some of the now elderly components.

 

[Mart44]

I have a laptop computer running Windows 7. I'll be keeping it this way so I can play a game that I like called 'Bejeweled Twist'. It won't work on Windows 10 no matter what is tried as regards compatibility modes.

I'm going to set up a dual boot system with Linux Mint on this computer because I reckon that's a pretty good OS too and I like to use it sometimes. A free and fairly easy system to adapt to for those who don't like MS Windows.

My main computer is on Windows 10.

 

[presta]

Trying to find out whether my laptop will work with W10.

Microsoft: "Not our problem, ask Samsung"
Samsung: "Not our problem, ask Microsoft"

I'm losing the will to live, I've spent hours reading about this, and just get more confused.

 

[Grant Fondo]

Trying to find out whether my laptop will work with W10.

Microsoft: "Not our problem, ask Samsung"
Samsung: "Not our problem, ask Microsoft"

I'm losing the will to live, I've spent hours reading about this, and just get more confused.

This any use?
Microsoft lists the Windows 10 minimum hardware requirements as: Processor: 1gigahertz (GHz) or faster processor or SoC. RAM: 1 gigabyte (GB) for 32-bit or 2 GB for 64-bit. Hard disk space: 16 GB for 32-bit OS 20 GB for 64-bit OS.