Windows 7 going bye bye

[uncledj]

Let me start by saying I'm not a 'puter guy.....Been running windows 7 for quite a while now.

Windows will no longer be supporting Windows 7 in a week or so. What does that mean to me?

Do I need to update to Windows 10? I hated Windows 8.....Have heard that 10 is intrusive and should be avoided,....I've tinkered with it on a work computer and was able to get around a bit but didn't like it.

SO....Do I just have to suck it up and deal with W 10 or are there any other options...???

[SpencerPJ]

Depends on what you want or need to do on the computer. If just general surfing, banking, and email, I would buy a Chromebook. That said, I have Windows 10, it is intrusive, but what isn't. EVERY single thing you do on the computer is run through apps like Facebook, Chrome, whatever is on your machine. Big Brother knows EVERY single thing you look at. (Unless you are fairly computer savvy and block the stuff).

[Marcarl]

I run with Windows 10 and my wife still uses windows 7. We are both happy campers, but I would not change from 7 if my computer had come with it. As it is, my computer came with 10 and since then I have disabled all the communications that it wants to do on a regular basis. Not sure if I have the first version but it is an earlier version. Works ok for me, but then I don't usually go for new programming, play games etc. I just type some letters, and surf some,watch some youtube... simple stuff,,,now have no problems,,,, yet.

[Freebird]

I have no problem with Windows 10. There are multiple guides about how to disable most of the intrusive features. As mentioned, most systems are intrusive to some extent. I use a MacBook Pro for 99% of my work. I have Windows 10 installed in a partition to use when I need to run some software that I don't have for the Mac.

[Scifiman]

I just upgraded my PC from Windows 7 to 10 due to them dropping support, was reluctant at first as I was comfortable with 7 but seeing as we have been using 10 at work for some time now I wasn't too worried.

 

Couple of nice surprises along the way, first being that you can still download the Windows upgrade from Microsoft for free, Microsoft claims to not offer a free upgrade at this time however they failed to disable the option on their website, the following article link showing you how to upgrade for free was posted back on the second week of December, I performed this free a couple of weeks ago with no issues, you might want to check it out and save yourself some coin.

 

https://www.cnet.com/how-to/upgrade-to-windows-10-free-heres-how/

 

Second surprise was my 12 year old PC, (ancient in the computer world), it had been givings me fits and starts, slowdowns as well as the occasional lockups for sometime now and I was planning on a PC upgrade, however since I switched to 10 the system is running much faster and smoother with no lockups, now it has only been 2 weeks but so far I am impressed, PC upgrade may be on hold for a bit.

[ecbaatz]

I have no problem with Windows 10. There are multiple guides about how to disable most of the intrusive features. As mentioned, most systems are intrusive to some extent. I use a MacBook Pro for 99% of my work. I have Windows 10 installed in a partition to use when I need to run some software that I don't have for the Mac.

 

 

I gave up on windows and went to Apple, best decision I made. Yes I have a few programs that I still need windows but I don’t use them that often and can boot into windows if I need to use them.

[MiCarl]

Ending support just means they won't be issuing updates. It should continue to work just fine for a long time.

 

I use my computer to run some old windows programs, Thunderbird and Firefox. At Windows 7 I had to install XP compatibility mode to continue with one of my old program. I'll keep running 7 until I cannot get Firefox or Thunderbird for it.

 

When I absolutely have to give up Windows 7 I'll go to LINUX and install the WINE libraries so my Windows programs will run. I've already done that with two laptops and my business desktop. The machines performed much better with LINUX than they did with Windows XP of VISTA.

[CaseyJ955]

I still have Windows 7 on my remote gaming machine upstairs, used for LAN gaming. Win 7 is fine, if I could roll back this desktop to 7 from 10 I would do so in a quick second. The first time I heard Cortana chime my blood boiled. It's like having a Google Assistant or Alexa in your computer. There are some great tutorials as mentioned on how to neuter Cortana and many of the snooping and monetizing features. You will never have the level of autonomy of older versions of Windows.

 

If given the choice I would stay with 7 in a heartbeat, but I am always very concerned about my privacy and loathe advertisement on devices and software that I OWN. I have a special place in my heart for MS, the VERY darkest part of it. My pulse races and I can feel it in my ears every time I find a feature or area that MS has assumed control and taken it away from me. If you are not concerned with privacy or not having much control over the OS then it might be livable if you follow the tutorials on closing up some of the holes. There are a lot of privacy and security threats you can close up just in the settings and selective startup you can nullify a few things there too. Other startup items you have to go deep in and "take permission" to gain access in several places of the registry. Depends on how concerned you are. I'm quite concerned so I did things that were a little above my pay grade following steps to try and take control of this machine. It's much better BUT once I got to peek at the network traffic in real time I could see it was still a mess of MS making decisions that should be mine, and taking some liberties I'm not comfortable with. IE, you dont choose updates, you can delay them, but you WILL take them sooner or later, not optional. Some of those updates make you have to go back and turn their **** off again and there are plenty of steps. Make a pot of coffee and pull up a chair. There is a lot of reading and doing to try and lock this dumpster fire down.

 

the ONLY reason I'm still with Windows at all is because there is no way to play my favorite games on Linux. I just touched on this on another thread here. It's like an unrooted Android phone, there are things you can disable, sort of, but just cant uninstall. Tons of bloatware, and I mean tons, just like Android. See, crap like that drives me nuts, if your like me than I'm going to recommend sticking with 7. I'm going to highly recommend a Pi-Hole regardless of which path you take.

 

To start, look at walkthroughs on settings and startup items, you CAN go deeper if you want. You will have to jump through flaming hoops to really get it reigned in, even partially. It infuriates me that on software or hardware/devices that I OWN, I cannot take full control. I'm not sure why anyone tolerates it, in fact many dont. If I were not a gamer I would have Linux in a quick second, I would dump Windows immediately.

 

One great way to chop MS off at the knees is a DNS level ad/tracker/domain blocker. I installed a PI-hole, about $60 out of pocket and some time learning Linux and setting it up, really done in one evening and tweaking black and blocklists has been ongoing but it's awesome to have some control. It's just a Raspberry pi computer with Rasbian Linux on an SD card, about the size of a pack of cigarettes and just plugs right into the LAN, with a few settings you have a great deal of control back. Lemme tell ya, it's sobering to see what your devices are doing on the net nice and quiet like.

 

Some reading on Pi-hole, which I cant recommend enough to everyone.

https://www.reddit.com/r/pihole/

https://pi-hole.net

Mine sits quietly next to my modem and runs 24/7. It protects all devices on the network, not just comps. You can also install a VPN in the Pi-hole. It's really quite brilliant. Wait until you see the crap your phone and smart TV are up to in real time! I knew they were terrible offenders but I was still appalled to actually see everything, and elated that I could now selectively block it all out. I've installed some pre-made filters and have virtually EVERYTHING windows or MS wildcard blocked. Also virtually everything Amazon, Google, Samsung and FB. There are many others depending on what your doing and what hardware you have. A quick and necessary move is to get a proper browser, not Edge, and install some tracker/advert/malware protection. Also in your browser settings you can take Google away as your search engine and add DuckDuckGo. I swear by this change, it's my search engine on everything now. My favored browser is Firefox, and Epic Browser for the rare occasions where Firefox breaks a site. I use Ghostery, Umatrix and Ublock Origin and it's very solid at blocking out stuff and allowing customization according to your taste.

 

I know this is long winded but so is trying to secure win10. If you dont care about privacy or monetization, then win10 might be fine with some simple settings and tweaks. If you ARE concerned about those things then I would stick firmly with 7 unless there is some significant reason to go to 10. I, like many others, did sure not find it to be an upgrade. There are some pros with 10 but the cons vastly outweigh them IMHO. I ran an outdated win7 OS and had no viruses or malware issues for years. A lot of that is using browser extensions and some aftermarket virus and malware protection. Keeping things simple has its rewards, Win10 is not simple. It's complex in the favor of MS and very much not leaving the consumer in control of much. There is quite a lot of reading on win10 and I encourage you to spend an evening or two reading what folks that know more than I have written about it.

 

Your priorities should dictate your next move. Just my .06c (you cant have all this for only .02 haha).

 

Either way best of luck, I hope whatever you choose meets your needs.

Edited January 4, 2020 by CaseyJ955

[CaseyJ955]

Depends on what you want or need to do on the computer. If just general surfing, banking, and email, I would buy a Chromebook. That said, I have Windows 10, it is intrusive, but what isn't. EVERY single thing you do on the computer is run through apps like Facebook, Chrome, whatever is on your machine. Big Brother knows EVERY single thing you look at. (Unless you are fairly computer savvy and block the stuff).

 

So true, but it's not really that bad.

 

I'm barely Jr. level of savvy, and only that because I felt strongly enough about it to spend a little time reading and trying some stuff out. It does take a little reading and in my case, a small piece of hardware for my network. Having ones privacy invaded is not an inevitability, there are others out there that have outlined steps that most folks can do with a little guidance found online. I've gone through this with both my Android phone and computers. I have not seen a single targeted advert for as long as I can remember. It's really not that tricky now in the age of plug-n-play stuff. A little research can go a long ways to ridding ones self of all the clutter and privacy invasions. Win10 (or any MS products) is not a good start but it can be worked around with a little effort.

[grubsie]

I had 4 computers that I had setup running windows 7 for years that I had running like clock work. Then the announcement about no more support for windows 7 around the middle of Jan 2020 came about. I have been slowly converting everything over to windows 10 and I have not found it overly difficult to set things up the way I want and Like Freebird stated, there are several websites and documentation available to disable most of the intrusive features.

 

The biggest problem I am having is the fact that the current version of some design software I run on windows 7 that for my business will not run properly on windows 10. I have since installed the newest version of the design software that runs fine. The problem now is that this new version of the design software has a steep learning curve. It's basically the same as the earlier version I was using except they basically put lipstick on a pig to make things look prettier without any real benefits. So now there is a whole new learning curve just figuring out where they put all the features from the previous version. This is proving to be somewhat of a nightmare as my business volume requiring this design software has just gone into overdrive along with me coordinating everything else in my business because I am going on vacation for 4 weeks starting a week from now. This increase in business is a blindside and I really shouldn't be going away at all but I committed to my wife last October after she lost her mother that we would take this vacation with her.

 

Looks like I am going to be spending quite a bit of time figuring out more about windows 7 and the new design software in between sharing time of fun and sun with my wife.

 

Iam calling it the perfect storm.

Edited January 5, 2020 by grubsie

[WRIDR]

We're running 7, at 77 yrs old, and will stick with it. Chances are good we'll go before it does.~

 

Wish we HAD Time and Tolerance to go 10, BUT Learning Curves are not something we handle well at this point.

 

Rgds. Wordpecker

[djh3]

I ran XP rite up until I couldnt get on the net with it. Chrome and Firefox just simply quit supporting it. So that was the final straw. I am in an online race league and our server access made upgrades and you just couldnt get on it with XP anymore. I would guess I have a year or more before there just is no way to do anything with 7. Dont know as I really want to go to 10 even if its free. My wifes lap top has 10 and I cant find my way around it worth crap. If I must upgrade, I would rather stick it out until the next best mouse trap windows makes than upgrade now and then in a year they say "Oh windows 10 is done you have to go to..."

[Flyinfool]

If it ain't broke don't fix it. I am still using a 20 year old laptop running XP Pro SP 2, and Firefox. It still works fine. There are a few websites that will not work with it, but not many. I wont get rid of it till something I need will no longer function. If this one stops working I will "upgrade" to the wife's old win 7 laptop if this one dies and I will run that till it wont run no mo.

[Dano]

I will keep my 7 with Firefox and Moziller till it quits, then I'll go back to keepin' sh*t on paper. Oh yeah, still got my ol' laptop from 93 and W3.2 that still runs the AB500 PLC program that's still in use around the globe...

[Marcarl]

I will keep my 7 with Firefox and Moziller till it quits, then I'll go back to keepin' sh*t on paper. Oh yeah, still got my ol' laptop from 93 and W3.2 that still runs the AB500 PLC program that's still in use around the globe...

i would go with 3.2. A lot less aggravation than later editions.

[saddlebum]

I had 4 computers that I had setup running windows 7 for years that I had running like clock work. Then the announcement about no more support for windows 7 around the middle of Jan 2020 came about. I have been slowly converting everything over to windows 10 and I have not found it overly difficult to set things up the way I want and Like Freebird stated, there are several websites and documentation available to disable most of the intrusive features.

 

The biggest problem I am having is the fact that the current version of some design software I run on windows 7 that for my business will not run properly on windows 10. I have since installed the newest version of the design software that runs fine. The problem now is that this new version of the design software has a steep learning curve. It's basically the same as the earlier version I was using except they basically put lipstick on a pig to make things look prettier without any real benefits. So now there is a whole new learning curve just figuring out where they put all the features from the previous version. This is proving to be somewhat of a nightmare as my business volume requiring this design software has just gone into overdrive along with me coordinating everything else in my business because I am going on vacation for 4 weeks starting a week from now. This increase in business is a blindside and I really shouldn't be going away at all but I committed to my wife last October after she lost her mother that we would take this vacation with her.

 

Looks like I am going to be spending quite a bit of time figuring out more about windows 7 and the new design software in between sharing time of fun and sun with my wife.

 

Iam calling it the perfect storm.

This is my biggest issue with all this software crap. back in 1967 We had a teacher tell our class that some day computers will become a major part of life and will make life so much easier. Well I can't say I see it that way as even though a lot of programs are very useful time saving and helpful, they can never leave well enough alone and continue to make software more complicated and user unfriendly. Plus there is the issue that even though the programs themselves may be time saving all that saved time is lost every time they upgrade and no sooner do you finally figure out how to use something they change it and you have to start all over relearning it again. So much for your so called more free time for yourself. We use a program at work that replaces our paper scheduling book thatis so intense and requires so much input much of which is so repetitive that I no longer have time to actually be on the floor and asist techs when they need it making me feel more like a clerk than a hands on shop foreman. I really miss the 60's and 70's way of life.

 

Now having said that I do have to admit that I agree there are some benefits brought forth such as Venturerider and the great group we have which would not be possible were it not for the computer age and often times the usful info derived from the internet. But to have our lives controlled by the internet and computers scares me and leaves me feeling very disadvantaged and venerable.

[saddlebum]

i would go with 3.2. A lot less aggravation than later editions.

I was quite happy with windows 95 to me it was the best of both worlds between 3.2 format and the modern windows format. I was also very fond of windows 2000 but after that I just feel it all became overkill.

[venturesome]

Give Linux Mint 19.x a try. I've used it exclusively for several years with no problems. I use Firefox browser, and the office programs provided free (word processor, spread sheet, etc) are completely compatible with Microsoft products. It is very easy to install and you can run it along with Windows until you feel comfortable enough to switch. Just google Linux Mint, and find the files to download, follow the directions carefully and you are on your way! I like it because it's FREE and doesn't have all the baggage that Windows has.

 

Just be sure to backup your computer before loading another operating system. (You should do this often anyway!)

Edited January 10, 2020 by venturesome

[BlueSky]

I just upgraded my PC from Windows 7 to 10 due to them dropping support, was reluctant at first as I was comfortable with 7 but seeing as we have been using 10 at work for some time now I wasn't too worried.

 

Couple of nice surprises along the way, first being that you can still download the Windows upgrade from Microsoft for free, Microsoft claims to not offer a free upgrade at this time however they failed to disable the option on their website, the following article link showing you how to upgrade for free was posted back on the second week of December, I performed this free a couple of weeks ago with no issues, you might want to check it out and save yourself some coin.

 

https://www.cnet.com/how-to/upgrade-to-windows-10-free-heres-how/

 

Second surprise was my 12 year old PC, (ancient in the computer world), it had been givings me fits and starts, slowdowns as well as the occasional lockups for sometime now and I was planning on a PC upgrade, however since I switched to 10 the system is running much faster and smoother with no lockups, now it has only been 2 weeks but so far I am impressed, PC upgrade may be on hold for a bit.

 

Thanks to Scifiman I was able to successfully download Windows 10 for free. It took at least a couple of hours to complete but seems to work okay. My computer is 7 or more years old but it has the I7 chip and had Windows 7 on it. It gave me the option of turning off many of the intrusive features. Thanks!

It was easy to do. I just followed directions and had to do very little. One thing I did have to do was to uninstall Microsoft Security Essentials that I had been using for security. It appears that 10 has its own security but you do have to turn on some of it.

Edited January 11, 2020 by BlueSky

[Scifiman]

Thanks to Scifiman I was able to successfully download Windows 10 for free. It took at least a couple of hours to complete but seems to work okay. My computer is 7 or more years old but it has the I7 chip and had Windows 7 on it. It gave me the option of turning off many of the intrusive features. Thanks!

It was easy to do. I just followed directions and had to do very little. One thing I did have to do was to uninstall Microsoft Security Essentials that I had been using for security. It appears that 10 has its own security but you do have to turn on some of it.

 

Nice!

 

Glad to hear it worked out.

[uncledj]

I've two laptops, one goes back to 2012 and a newer one that I'd picked up last year but not used much.

I took 'em both to my 'puter savvy nephew who loaded up W10 on the older one and left the newer one with W7, so I could play with them both to help get through W10, and I'll say, it's not as bad as I thought. If all goes well, I'll end up having him put W10 on the newer one as well. So far so good.

[BlueSky]

My wife successfully upgraded her laptop from 7 to 10 using the link last night. Her laptop is about 10 years old but it does have the I7 chip. It has some extra stuff that she likes such as a high def screen. I paid about $2300 for that Lenovo laptop for her son to use in college. He was a gamer and wanted lots of extra stuff. I don't know why. Perhaps it was the age of the computer or whether it was done on Saturday evening when there are lots of folks on the web but it took over 8 hours to download W10 for her laptop. But it appears to be working well. Her son graduated with a degree in computer science and a few years after graduating bought a new laptop for himself and gave his old one to his Mom. Thank again Scifiman! We would not have paid for the upgrade and bought new computers instead so you saved us over $2k!!!

[Sampor]

It would be a good idea to let Windows 10 replace Windows 7,this has already happened on my computer,both my father and brother's computers are working on Windows 10.There are two ways to get Windows 10 on your Windows 7 computer.

Method 1 is to upgrade to Windows 10. As early as 2019, Microsoft called on people to do so. It provides a free upgrade method.
Method 2 is to back up everything important and useful on the computer, and then directly do a clean Winodws 10 installation,everything will be a new beginning.

[BlueSky]

The only negative thing I've noticed since I downloaded W10 on my old laptop is that it will freeze up about once a week.  I have to turn it off with the off switch, wait a minute, and turn it back on.  It did not freeze up before.  

[bpate4home]

5 minutes ago, BlueSky said:

The only negative thing I've noticed since I downloaded W10 on my old laptop is that it will freeze up about once a week.  I have to turn it off with the off switch, wait a minute, and turn it back on.  It did not freeze up before.  

That's normally a driver issue. If you want to dig through logs to identify well. . . . . .  That can be annoying. I would just check the Video adapter mfg web site, motherboard chipset and the subset for the hard drive.  Most mfgrs have tools on their web sites to help with this.