Windows 10 upgrade

russell · Post by **russell** » Fri 28 Aug 2015 17:54

Having been playing with the Insider Preview for a while I decided a couple of days ago to bite the bullet and upgrade the Windows 7 partition on my laptop to Windows 10.

As a Linux user I had the laptop configured to dual boot with a choice of Linux Mint or Windows 7 pro so I was prepared for problems however I was pleasantly surprised. The upgrade went smoothly, apart from it expecting me to type my password on a US keyboard rather than a French one, and it did not impact on the dual boot setup at all. All my Windows 7 software was retained along with all settings and all seems to work.

So far, very impressed. Far from the disaster of Windows 8.

Russell.

Pearsonb · Post by **Pearsonb** » Sat 29 Aug 2015 08:46

It is a huge improvement for semi-blind me. Everything works just as you expect it to, unlike Win 8.

However, there are reports that it is sending lots of your data back to Microsoft.

Pearson

russell · Post by **russell** » Sat 29 Aug 2015 09:01

Pearsonb wrote: However, there are reports that it is sending lots of your data back to Microsoft.

Yes, if you accept to do an install with recommended settings. If you click on advanced you can choose what is sent back. You can change all the settings later if you wish.

Microsoft are not charging for the upgrade so they have to make their money somehow. It seems that their new business plan is to sell targeted advertising and apps. Lots of apps are free but you have to pay to get rid of advertisements.

Russell.

rhys · Post by **rhys** » Sat 29 Aug 2015 09:16

Is it known how much more of your hard drive capacity Win 10 takes up as compared to Win 7 ?

I am no techy expert, far from, but from what I have read in weekend computer columns in the papers I believe that ( for me at least, an d perhaps for others who stuck to WIN 7 ) best to wait till nearer the expiry date ( about 11 months now ) of the offer for free update to Win 10 ~ reason being that there are apparently some bugs still coming to light, plus potential incompatibility issues arising with other hardware such as printers.

I have read nothing which lists functionality improvements ( vis à vis Win 7 as opposed to Win 8 ) which would benefit WIN 7 users. ( Hate touch screens ~ they just don't work 100% of the time !! ).

( Don't get me started on the pointlessness of TABLETS as compared to laptops / netbooks ).................

martyn94 · Post by **martyn94** » Sat 29 Aug 2015 11:19

[quote="rhys"

( Don't get me started on the pointlessness of TABLETS as compared to laptops / netbooks ).................

[/quote]

What is about "tech" which makes people passionate enough to say things quite so silly as this? I too prefer a laptop to my tablet - about 5% of the time. It's no skin off my nose if you prefer yours 100% of the time. But "pointless"?

russell · Post by **russell** » Sat 29 Aug 2015 12:00

rhys wrote:Is it known how much more of your hard drive capacity Win 10 takes up as compared to Win 7 ?

It depends on your system. In general Windows 10 will use less disk space than Windows 7. During the upgrade process it looks at your system to determine how much compression of system files to use for best performance. Additionally there is no longer need for a separate recovery partition. so it can save disk space while improving performance (at least according to Microsoft).

I didn't check how much disk space Windows 7 was using before the upgrade but now the Windows 10 partition is using 60 GB of disk space including some fairly heavyweight engineering programs that were carried over from Windows 7.

It might be my imagination but it also seems to boot faster than Windows 7. This might be a result of Windows using a fast boot system (a bit like hibernation) when shutting down. It certainly does something funny as I can't mount the Windows partition from Linux except in read only mode.

Russell.
P.S. that 60 GB includes the files needed to downgrade to Windows 7 if necessary.

Santiago · Post by **Santiago** » Sun 30 Aug 2015 11:10

martyn94 wrote:[quote="rhys"

( Don't get me started on the pointlessness of TABLETS as compared to laptops / netbooks ).................

What is about "tech" which makes people passionate enough to say things quite so silly as this? I too prefer a laptop to my tablet - about 5% of the time. It's no skin off my nose if you prefer yours 100% of the time. But "pointless"?[/quote]

Maybe Rhys meant the pointlessness of Windows Tablets, as opposed to Android or Apple ones. In which case I may agree.

martyn94 · Post by **martyn94** » Sun 30 Aug 2015 16:02

russell wrote:
Pearsonb wrote: However, there are reports that it is sending lots of your data back to Microsoft.
Yes, if you accept to do an install with recommended settings. If you click on advanced you can choose what is sent back. You can change all the settings later if you wish.

Microsoft are not charging for the upgrade so they have to make their money somehow. It seems that their new business plan is to sell targeted advertising and apps. Lots of apps are free but you have to pay to get rid of advertisements.

Russell.

And presumably in due course a subscription to keep getting the "continuous improvements" to Windows: they will apparently no longer issue discrete new versions. Even so, I would not hesitate for a second if you have Windows 8, and I have had no problems moving on a Windows 7 machine.

The download size is no issue for me: I haven't come close to filling a hard disk since ca1998, and if anything, as Russell says, the new package is smaller than what it replaces.

And the new Microsoft browser is a great improvement on IE, if you still use it.

russell · Post by **russell** » Sun 30 Aug 2015 21:08

martyn94 wrote: And presumably in due course a subscription to keep getting the "continuous improvements" to Windows: they will apparently no longer issue discrete new versions.

They have said that they will not charge for the updates. However do watch out if you have kids who play games. A lot of the "free" games apps charge a monthly fee to remove adds or charge for enhancements.

I believe that the Office suite will also be charged by subscription. It doesn't bother me as I use LibreOffice instead. If you upgrade from Windows 7 and have Office installed it should continue to work as normal. I can't verify that as I haven't used MS Office for years.

Russell

Allan · Post by **Allan** » Mon 31 Aug 2015 00:54

russell wrote:
martyn94 wrote: And presumably in due course a subscription to keep getting the "continuous improvements" to Windows: they will apparently no longer issue discrete new versions.
They have said that they will not charge for the updates. However do watch out if you have kids who play games. A lot of the "free" games apps charge a monthly fee to remove adds or charge for enhancements.

I believe that the Office suite will also be charged by subscription. It doesn't bother me as I use LibreOffice instead. If you upgrade from Windows 7 and have Office installed it should continue to work as normal. I can't verify that as I haven't used MS Office for years.

Russell

The Office suite has been available on a subscription basis for around 20 years in the business world, just as people lease cars and change them periodically the same has been true of Microsoft Office as well as most other Microsoft Software.

With Office 365 you pay a small subscription each month to use the software which can be either Cloud based or on your local PC the subscription includes upgrade rights.

Existing versions of Office continue to work after upgrading.

Microsoft will not be charging a subscription for Windows 10, instead they will use it as a platform to sell apps, music, games, storage and telephony services in much the same way as Apple do on iPads and iPhones

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