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Patch reliability is unclear. Unless you have an immediate, pressing need to install a specific patch, don't do it. |
https://www.zdnet.com/article/poll-why-are-you-still-using-windows-7/ Rather than speculate, I’ve put together a poll. It’s only three questions and w
[See the full post at: Patch Lady – why are you running Windows 7?]
Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher
One problem with the poll is does not access if the W7 boxes have any network access, e.g. completely off line. Mine is completely off and has been for several years. So I can safely use W7 for many more years as it is very difficult for it to get infected and that would serious user stupidity.
I just put in ‘isolated from internet’ in Q1 ‘Other’
As to why I still use it: Win7 is reliable with user friendly navigation and simplicity that goes a long way. When licensed specific hardware fails, it’s a tux machine from there on.
One problem with the poll is does not access if the W7 boxes have any network access, e.g. completely off line.
That may be because the poll is seeking to find out why almost 10% of the machines accessing the ZDNet servers are running Windows 7. Obviously a PC used offline-only doesn’t contribute to that percentage.
In his survey, Ed Bott misses three of the most common reasons I have seen in my travels for not wanting to use Windows 10:
As discussed elsewhere on this forum, it is possible in Windows 10 to undo or at least to tame most of these changes, but the methods for making the necessary modifications are not built into the OS and require considerable jumping through hoops–which few non-techie users will be in a position to know about, let alone to carry out even if they do know about it.
Question selection and framing are two of the biggest issues with public opinion polling, and in this case Ed Bott’s question selection shows either that he remains unaware of common reasons for why people would not want to switch to Win10, or that he is aware of these reasons and chooses not to explicitly include them in the response choices.
Loss of settings, Cortana, everything in “apps”, big feature updates, blablabla. Loss of control and customisation being [EDITED].
Win 7 just…works. There’s nothing I can complain about on it. I’m getting Extended update so it feels secure enough. When I turn my machine on after coming home, it just, works!
I updated when ‘I’ feel like it, I use what ‘I’ want to, I share what data ‘I’ want to. The UI is clean, crisp and customisable (moreso as I’m using Classic Shell). All my programs work, no gargantuan compatibility-destroying updates coming down the line. A quick, easy to access everything Control Panel. Blablabla.
It just feels like MY machine, rather than a tablet terminal I’m renting from Microsoft (W10). Then again W10 is pretty much W7 at it’s base, so if they took all the c*** out from on top (everything mentioned above), I’d happily use it! The biggest issue is Microsoft’s overall “attitude” with it. That it’s THEIR machine, and you will use what THEY say, and like it.
Question selection and framing are two of the biggest issues with public opinion polling, and in this case Ed Bott’s question selection shows either that he remains unaware of common reasons for why people would not want to switch to Win10, or that he is aware of these reasons and chooses not to explicitly include them in the response choices.
I think Bott is trying for “quick and easy”, and perhaps over-simplifying methodology.
You might want to try pinging him privately. His email address is published, and I’ve found him to be responsive on queries. He might be convinced to re-frame his survey.
If you are still running Windows 7 or 8, Ed Bott recently posted an article Here’s how you can still get a free Windows 10 upgrade at https://www.zdnet.com/article/heres-how-you-can-still-get-a-free-windows-10-upgrade/
The article also contains a link to how to upgrade from Windows 10 Home to Professional at no cost.
I upgraded one of my two home desktops in February or so to Win10 version 1909, and intended to do the same with my other one when I had trialed Win10, assuming I was happy with it. In the event, I was happy with it, but Covid intervened and with my local computer repair shop disrupted thereby I thought it a good idea not to mess with the computers while I was myself in lockdown and have the benefit of two different setups so if one went wrong with updates etc I was left with the other. In any event, the remaining Win7 machine is only a secondary one, it’s only used for a couple of hours on a few days of the week.
Then version 2004 came along, and it wasn’t possible to upgrade to version 1909 without jumping through hoops which I’m not interested in doing. Remember, these are both pretty casual home machines, with pretty much nothing of any consequence on them and with the only important things like documents and photos etc backed up in multiple ways. I have nothing to do with online banking or investment management. Any online credit card purchases are covered by the (UK) bank against fraud and the bank has always proved incredibly efficient at putting a hold on transactions that are remotely unusual pending confirmation.
Recently I decided to stick to Win7 on the second machine for now but to subscribe to 0patch Pro, and that has worked out fine. I may upgrade to Win10 when version 2004 is recommended, but that isn’t the case currently, and if 0patch continues to work out well on Win7 (and Office 2010 which hits EOL next month) I may just stick with the present setup for a while yet.
The problem with the poll is that the options don’t really cover all situations. @lurks about mentioned above the question of whether or not there is access to the internet, and additionally there is the point that the question about having bought extended support is I suspect intended to refer to Microsoft, not 0patch which is nonetheless a viable alternative to Microsoft – and arguably less prone to problems.
I work in company that still uses Windows 7, Xp, and 98 because of compatibility issues with hardware and software. Many of our programs do not work on Windows 10. Developers of these programs are not moving to Windows 10. Some do not run on Windows 7 and use Windows Xp. A couple programs only work Windows 98. All Windows 98, Xp and 7 are connected to the internet and intranet. We have not had and problems with anyone breaking in. We had a good firewall set up and users are trained to understand what is needed. A few users are given admin role since these programs do not work with local users rights. These users are trusted by our IT department.
It’s kind of simple… Win 10 is not as good as Win 7, comes way too bloated, is still a spyware platform, has massive disk drive usage at startup, still comes with cortana and edge, has a pretty poor interface, and control over when and how to update is quite poor at best.
But I do like watching Win 10 come up with new ways not to work. And I especially like the steady stream of unbootable computers we’ve had to fix because the boot manager s****d up and now needs to be repaired. Perhaps this is a Microsoft feature to encourage proper backup procedures!
It would be so much easier if Microsoft just offered an LTSB version of Win 10 Pro. Add Classic Shell or Open Shell, firefox and/or chrome, 7-zip, a PDF viewer, and notepad++ and you’re ready to go. Turn borders back on with one of the 3rd party config tools and things start to look a bit better.
And boy am I looking forward to when the Control Panel has been completely removed. You’ll need an advanced degree in obscurity to get anything configured at that point.
How about only releasing new versions when they are properly finished and ready. Take your time, 24-36 months sounds about right. Put out a legitimate service pack when needed.
Almost forgot – it might be good to actually TEST stuff for real before you release it. I bet the guy that thought, “we’ll just release what we have and fix it as we go” is also stupid enough to just walk out the door of the airplane and then start figuring out what might be a good way to halt the impending “splat” on the way down!
Almost forgot – it might be good to actually TEST stuff for real before you release it.
I agree, but now that MS got rid of the QA people to save money, they have to release it so that it can be tested by the new QA department… consumers.
I don’t use Windows 7, but I can understand why some do. Simply put, MS hasn’t released anything better for them to move to. Windows 8.x can be made pretty decent with fairly substantial modification, but not everyone is interested in doing that. Windows 10… is Windows 10, and is still what I would consider unfit for purpose even after five years, at least in its consumer versions (though enterprise versions outside of LTSB/C seem pretty poor too).
In my case, the decision to use 7, if I did, would be that a worthy OS needs to serve my needs and interests (as defined by myself) to the complete exclusion of all others. Windows 10 does not meet that definition by any stretch of the imagination. (Windows 7 doesn’t really either as first installed, but it’s close enough, and fixable enough, to let it slide.)
One case in point is the recent story about how Chredge was automatically installed, and how users were forced into an uncloseable nag dialog to set it up even if they had no intention of using it (so no need to set it up), and it then ignored their preselected browser choice in order to push their own product. Just more of the same “Windows 10 serving the interests of Microsoft” stuff that we’ve seen all along.
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)
The main reason I keep the Win7 running, other than the obvious for it being the best PC ever, is for software that would not work on Win10. My Chromebook is safe access to the Internet and a lightweight. Would like it to run Windows programs but then it’s a Chromebook. The latter serves its purpose for the use I get out of it, as does the Win7 with minimal internet access. The Win7 will stop when it takes its last breath, and not anytime soon.
MacOS iPadOS and sometimes SOS
Three things, really:
Win7 Pro SP1 64-bit, Dell Latitude E6330 ("The Tank"), Intel CORE i5 "Ivy Bridge", 12GB RAM, Group "0Patch", Multiple Air-Gapped backup drives in different locations. Linux Mint Newbie
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"The more kinks you put in the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the pipes." -Scotty
Dear Patch Lady: In my case, as a home user and a small business telecommuting NASA consultant, I am not running Windows 7 so much as running away from what Windows has become. I still have Win 7 in my old but still peppy PC laptop, because there is a lot of useful stuff, stored there in many files kept in many directories, that I need to get out now and then via USB flash drive (a.k.a pen drive/memory stick/etc.) or else move to the other half of the same machine, the Linux half. This PC now is only used to run Windows 7 unplugged from the Ethernet cable to the router and with the WiFi reception turned off as well. The other half of this PC is Linux and that half is still connected, while in use, to the Internet through the router. My current workhorse is a Mac. And that’s it.
Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).
MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV
I’m running Win7 on a machine that is fairly close to dying, thanks to overheating issues with my CPU. I’ve run the core up to 205 degrees, so it won’t be long. And when I get a new machine, it will have Win10 on it.
But I’ve been running 7 since EOL. I would have gladly paid for extended service, but MS doesn’t want individuals to do that, only biz/enterprise. I did install OPatch, have very good security (Norton) and I have a very tight firewall set to alert me every time something wants in or out of this thing. If there isn’t a reason for access, I simply block it. Whenever I am not sitting at the computer, the ethernet cable to the rig is unplugged, effectively cutting the machine off from the outside world. If anything happens, I want to be sitting here when it does.
I do daily backups, but only because the computer itself is a time bomb. And I keep all of my most important and sensitive files on an encrypted thumb drive and work with those when I need to, then pluck out the drive. I figure I’m taking all the possible security precautions I can, and will continue to do until ‘bessie’ kicks the bucket and/or throws a BSOD.
"War is the remedy our enemies have chosen. And I say let us give them all they want" ----- William T. Sherman
Like Cybertooth mentioned, it could be the thermal interface material between the CPU and heat sink. It could also be a failed CPU fan or that the heat sink is clogged with dust (or pet hair, if you have those). CPU overheating is usually fixed quite easily, so I’d really suggest looking into it. No reason to let decent hardware die from a fixable problem!
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)
I’ve been forced to upgrade to a Windows 10 laptop for a similar issue, in my case the graphics card on my old laptop has gone bad and there is no one who can fix it. I bought one new Windows 10 laptop and had to return it due to constant issues with blue screen of death and freezing, right out of the box! I have now bought a different one and I am so sorry to have to be switching to Windows 10. There is so much I don’t like about it.
I’m running Win7 on a machine that is fairly close to dying, thanks to overheating issues with my CPU. I’ve run the core up to 205 degrees, so it won’t be long.
Not to go off-topic, but it sounds like the thermal paste that sits between the CPU and the heat sink may need replacing. Last year I had a PC that was overheating; I removed the heat sink, wiped off the old paste, dropped in new paste, put the PC back together and it’s been running like a champ ever since.
Granted, disassembling a computer isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, so getting a whole new machine may be your most practical choice.
@Cybertooth, you are spot-on. That is exactly what the CPU issue is; the thermal paste has cracked around the CPU. The fan runs fine … about 800 rpm and 140-145 degrees at idle. I downloaded a CPU/GPU monitor from MoO that turns red when the temp exceeds 175, which is quite often. Two local repair shops have told me, in so many words, that it isn’t worth the labor to fix a 7 year old machine with an outdated O/S. And I don’t monkey around the inside of computers. However, if you lived next door, I’d gladly pay you to fix it. 
Nobody around here seems interested.
What I have never understood is why MS changes the interface every time they ‘upgrade’ an operating system. An O/S change is an internal thing. The GUI doesn’t have to change at all. So why do they do it? It just defies logic.
"War is the remedy our enemies have chosen. And I say let us give them all they want" ----- William T. Sherman
However, if you lived next door, I’d gladly pay you to fix it.
LOL
What I have never understood is why MS changes the interface every time they ‘upgrade’ an operating system. An O/S change is an internal thing. The GUI doesn’t have to change at all. So why do they do it? It just defies logic.
I’m with you. IMHO, GUI perfection was attained in the days of Vista and 7. But when you start messing with perfection, there’s only one direction to go…
Two local repair shops have told me, in so many words, that it isn’t worth the labor to fix a 7 year old machine with an outdated O/S.
I really detest that attitude (planned obsolescence and disposable durable goods). For one thing, it’s up to you, the customer, to say whether it is worth the labor. And how much are they charging anyway? It’s not difficult or time consuming, unless there is something weird about the PC in question. I have no idea what they would charge, but for something I could do before a guy at Jiffy Lube could do a $20 (or whatever they cost) oil change, it shouldn’t be a small fortune.
My Sandy Bridge desktop has a motherboard that’s about 7 or 8 years old, FWIW, and I have no plans to upgrade at present. I like upgrading and playing with tech stuff just for the fun of it, but I don’t upgrade until the old gear can’t do what I need anymore. Still waiting for the Sandy to get to that point! I expect to use it for years to come.
And the thing about the OS being obsolete… Windows 7 is not obsolete if the 0Patch updates do what they are meant to, and if the software you wish to use still works with it. In time, it may well fall behind as various programs no longer work with it, but that’s not the same as being outdated now.
Beyond that, they do know an OS can easily be changed, yes? It’s not like an Android or iOS device that either gets updates from its manufacturer (or from the cellular carrier) or not at all. You could buy Windows 10 for less than it would cost for a new PC, or if the free upgrade still works, you could do that, or you could install Linux for free.
What I have never understood is why MS changes the interface every time they ‘upgrade’ an operating system. An O/S change is an internal thing. The GUI doesn’t have to change at all. So why do they do it?
It’s their version of car model year changes. They want to keep selling you what you already have (Windows) over and over, so they have to make it look like it is something truly new, not just a rebadged model from last year.
Windows 2000 (or XP with themes turned off and with the classic start menu) remains the high-water mark for MS user interfaces in my book, and it’s not much different than the Windows 95 interface from 5 years prior. Every OS I have had since then is as close as I can get it to that ideal. These days, I can get that more easily (without using aftermarket addons like Classic/Open Shell and OldNewExplorer) from outside of Windows than from within!
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)
1 I can’t be bothered having to learn Yet Another OS. W7 does what I want, when I want and without fuss, bother or nagging.
It’s all about Comfort Zone. I’m comfortable where I am, thank you.
2 Cost. M$oft has had a lot of money out of me over the years. It’s a gravy train. I’m not keen on giving them even more for another OS I don’t want.
3 Some programs I use regularly won’t run under W10. I’ve tried on a PC I borrowed for that test.
4 That’ll do. There’s more but I’m running out of ink!
I work for a company that still use COBOL from 1960’s with machines. These are indestructible machines built to last. Our current IBM and Dell computers, usually break in 6-7 years. One of our IT person mentioned that companies built self destruct into current machine since IBM and Dell wants people to replace them and spend money. Just like washing machine last 40+ years and now new machines break in less than 5 years. The machines built in the 1960s were built by people that had pride in their work and want it to last long time. The plan is to use Windows 7 until they break in 3-4 years from now. After that, will see if company will by Windows 10 from Dell.
“running away from what Windows has become.” You hit the nail on the head with that comment.
If MS ends twice yearly new versions and gets a better handle on patching, I might consider moving away from Windows 7. Until then, I’d rather use my computer than spend time reading about if/when it is safe to patch and have a low risk of something breaking.
Got coffee?
Quite frankly, because Windows 7 is the pinnacle version of Windows.
Windows 10 is definitely NOT an upgrade.
I have 3 machines running 7 unpatch since December 2017 (when the january patch borked old cpus), I have had great stability since then, the risk on line is not that high with good internet hygiene, AV and a correctly configured browser. When these machines go down to fatigue, I will dual boot Mint and Win10, Win10 will be there for the odd game dev (Epic) that doesn’t support non-MS gaming on PC. If you back up there is nothing on a PC that is irreplacable, why get rid of something that works very well.
The main reason I’ve stuck with Windows 7 is that I’m happy with the way it works and I don’t have the time to install a new operating system, to learn how the new system works, to work out the bugs in the system, to reset my settings the way they were, and to check to see whether my software works with the new system. Ten years ago (in 2010), I had been using Windows XP, but I then bought a new computer that has Windows 7 on it, and I had to spend a huge amount of time doing those sort of things. But over the past 10 years I’ve grown accustomed to Windows 7, and I hate to think of going through all that work again. Another reason I’ve stayed with Windows 7 is that I’ve read a lot about problems that people have been having with Windows 10. And finally, another reason is that I purchased Extended Security Updates (ESUs) for Windows 7 and those will help keep my computer secure for another couple of years, and so there’s no urgency for me to switch away from Windows 7, assuming that I continue renewing the payments for the ESUs for each of the next two years.
or if the free upgrade still works
The free upgrade from 7 to 10 still works.
Once upon a time in a land far far away, I wrote this post … It goes like this folks
Win7 ‘Afterlife’ – borrow Webster’s definition – … ”a period of continued or renewed use, existence, or popularity beyond what is normal, primary, or expected”
MacOS iPadOS and sometimes SOS
It is the most stable Windows I’ve used, including my usage of 10.
Most customizable.
Most control.
A few things I hove don’t even work on 10.
I also like to push back against planned obsolescence.
It’ll be even more fun when MS goes with a monthly subscription to use their OS, one of these days. It’s inevitable.
Group B for WIN7 w/ ESU, plus trying out Linux builds in dual boot.
I’m stuck with W10Pro. Four years ago, my two W7Pro devices would no longer update; each stopped functioning; thus MS forced me to replace them with one new laptop.
BobT’s reply (“The biggest issue is Microsoft’s overall attitude with it. That it’s THEIR machine, and you will use what THEY say, and like it.”) also describes the attitude Apple has had since its inception and, as well, the business orientation of much of modern technology.
Maybe give MS a little credit? The rickety Rube Goldberg phenomena one experiences with updates and “improvements” to W10 are due, in part, (correct me if I’m wrong) to its universality and, at the same time, to MS’s questionable business plans?
As other replies mentioned, I agree the incessant telemetry and the increasing lack of personal control over one’s PC are loathsome. Who does MS aim to please–the citizens at keyboards and touchscreens, or the relentlessly intrusive data manipulators and profiteers who want to control our lives?
Last, am I right to worry about MS’s slick integration of Linux distros into the Windowsphere? Is Linux a commercial threat to Window’s universality; therefore does MS aim to corrupt it? It’s been recently reported that an ultimate Windows OS may be built on top of Linux, relieving MS of the cost of future development, focusing on its current moneymaker, Azure Cloud Services.
Who does MS aim to please–
Microsoft.
Last, am I right to worry about MS’s slick integration of Linux distros into the Windowsphere? Is Linux a commercial threat to Window’s universality; therefore does MS aim to corrupt it? It’s been recently reported that an ultimate Windows OS may be built on top of Linux, relieving MS of the cost of future development, focusing on its current moneymaker, Azure Cloud Services.
You’re not unjustified in having a lack of trust in Microsoft given their record, certainly, but unlike a lot of my Linux-using compatriots, I don’t think MS is trying to corrupt Linux. MS never tried that back when Windows was at the center of the Microsoft universe, back when Ballmer was calling it (and more properly its GPL license) a cancer, and now times have changed. Windows is not the focus of MS anymore, but the cloud is, and the cloud (as you noted) runs in large part on Linux. Linux isn’t really a competitor for MS anymore as much as a source of revenue, so I don’t think this recent interest is about corrupting Linux as much as using it to make money, and that could be beneficial to Linux as a whole too. IMO, it’s not time to sound the alarm yet, and I am cautiously optimistic.
The recent story about MS maybe moving to a Linux kernel was speculation from ESR (Eric S. Raymond), and I’ve been pondering the same thing for some time too if you look at some of my past posts. It’s not based on any concrete plans that MS has, but is more of an educated guess based on what MS did with Chromium, how they’re integrating the Linux kernel as part of WSL rather than continuing to develop a compatibility layer, how they’ve joined the Linux Foundation as a Platinum member, and other such things.
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)
The “cancer” comment was from Ballmer, presumably before MS had realized that having people being able to see and use your code is not death to your company. Google’s shown that… Chromium is developed by Google and on their dime, largely as they would if it were not open source, with a few proprietary Chrome-only bits on top.
While the MS of old would apparently have thought that releasing even a small bit of their secret source code would lead to their demise as surely as it did to the Soup Nazi on Seinfeld when Elaine got ahold of his recipes, Google has shown that this doesn’t have to be the case. Even though anyone in the world can come along and make their own Chrome with their own features (and lots have, resulting in products like Brave, Vivaldi, Opera, and even Edge), most of them use Chrome itself, even though there are less Googly alternatives available. If given a choice between something that’s seen as “the original” and “the standard by which others have judged” and a product seen as a knock-off, they will take the original.
I think that part of the change that has happened within MS during Nadella’s time as CEO has been to recognize this, that open-source can be used to make money. The attitude Ballmer and Gates seemed to have was that open source was the opposite of making money, but it certainly is not.
I don’t have any inside knowledge of what MS may be planning, but I would not expect them to license everything under the GPL as much as using a GPL base upon which proprietary bits are run. On Linux, the line that divides the UI and the desktop environment is much clearer than in Windows, and my thought is that they would use a base consisting of many GNU bits and the Linux kernel, with a proprietary desktop environment and an open but MS-controlled fork of WINE as the compatibility layer (the same way that Google develops Chromium for use by themselves).
The GPL is clear that if you use any GPL code in a project, the rest of the code in the same program has to be released under GPL also, but in this case, the desktop environment that made it “Windows” would be completely proprietary and would contain no GPL code (but it would run on top of GPL code). The GPL is thorny about those kinds of things too, not permitting distribution of compiled proprietary binaries bundled with GPL code, which is why it has usually been necessary for Linux install media to download any proprietary bits desired by the user at the time of installation rather than to have those bits included on the install media. For small things like drivers, the user doesn’t notice much of a difference, but would that work for a whole desktop? It would depend on how lean MS can make it.
This kind of arrangement could easily lead to conflicts around the fringes of the GPL, and that’s where a platinum membership has, in the past, served as a tool for other members to have GPL allegations smoothed over if they’re not big, obvious violations of the sort that the GPL was meant to prevent.
Chromium was easier, as much of it is licensed under the more permissive kinds of licenses that don’t require the developers of derivative products to open-source the code for those things, which is also the case with the BSD-derived base for MacOS.
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)
in this case Ed Bott’s question selection shows either that he remains unaware of common reasons for why people would not want to switch to Win10, or that he is aware of these reasons and chooses not to explicitly include them in the response choices.
I don’t think that’s the case. Ed is a Windows expert of some repute and he is a noted data hound, with a nose for stats. I also think it’s fair to say, as has already been noted here, that he was only interested in connected PCs. I sent him a personal note in which I explained that I did have a Win 7 machine so I could play older games but that all my production work was being done on Win 10, connected.
At this point I believe that most of the reasons for not wanting to migrate to Windows 10 are somewhat hollow. I think Windows 10 is safer and more private than my Google-driven Android phone. Ed has a good article about that, too.
At this point I believe that most of the reasons for not wanting to migrate to Windows 10 are somewhat hollow. I think Windows 10 is safer and more private than my Google-driven Android phone.
But is it more private than Windows 7? The question was why people didn’t want to move off of 7, and I am not really sure how Android fits into that.
I didn’t participate in the survey, as I did not stick with Windows 7, but as a hardcore Never-10-er, I do understand and share the Windows 7 holdouts’ reasons for avoiding it. If I had a choice only between Win 7 and 10, I would take 7 without a moment’s hesitation, but fortunately, those were not the only choices. By the time Windows 7 went EOL, I had already migrated to 8.1, so that would have bought me a few more years, but then I would have the same dilemma. Ultimately, I opted to leave the OS platform I had used for 25 years (1990 to 2015) behind rather than swallow the bitter Windows 10 pill.
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)
#1 reason: it works, and works well, and all my essential software runs perfectly on Win7.
#2 reason: I hate the cartoon-like interface of Win10, I think it is a resource hog, and since I’ve never suffered any on-line attack on my unit, I see no reason to upgrade.
#3 reason: Win10 runs like a pig. We recently bought an Acer Laptop for my wife, it has Win10, 6Gb RAM, an Intel5 processor and it runs so slowly it is difficult to use. I am a retired computer consultant and I know a slow computer when I see on. I ‘downgraded’ the Acer to Win7Pro and it runs 300% faster, despite warnings from I’m not sure where that the hardware wasn’t qualified for Win7. My wife is very happy at how her laptop runs now.
#4 reason: Microsoft is a marketing company, not a technology company. Win10 is just another excuse for them to milk more money out of you by having to upgrade software that otherwise ran fine on Win7. They can do without my money.
Win7Pro, I5 CPU, 8Gb RAM, SSD boot drive, external 4Tb SSD storage
it works, and works well
A lot of people said the same thing about Windows XP when Vista and then 7 appeared.
…since I’ve never suffered any on-line attack on my unit, I see no reason to upgrade.
Moats worked well, too, until artillery appeared. Security requires being one step ahead, not behind.
Win10 runs like a pig.
I’ve upgraded one Vista PC and one Win7 PC to Win10. They all run faster. These were older PCs with what anyone would consider limited resources. It’s easy to clear out things that you would not have had with Win7 (like OneDrive, etc.) that could be causing slowdowns. I have one Win7 laptop to go and I have no doubt the result will be the same.
The same was true of Vista and Win7 over XP – both were faster after the upgrades.
I hate the cartoon-like interface of Win10
Yes, I don’t like flatland, either. I think it’s the first UI mistake Microsoft has made in a long time and I know it was related to small devices (phones) and touch. But, adapt or die.
I’ve upgraded one Vista PC and one Win7 PC to Win10. They all run faster.
…
The same was true of Vista and Win7 over XP – both were faster after the upgrades.
I would bet that a lot of the speed increases people see when upgrading would probably be seen just as much if the same version of Windows had been reinstalled. Windows can accumulate a lot of cruft if you let it, and “Windows rot” is the result. I’ve gone to great lengths to prevent having that on my own PCs, and it seems to have been effective.
I’ve upgraded a lot of Windows PCs, and usually the newer versions have been the same or slower than the older ones. The one exception that springs to mind is when I went from 7 to 8.1 on two of my PCs. I do think that 8.1 felt more responsive, but otherwise, 95 was slower than 3.1, 98SE was about the same as 95, XP was slower than 98SE and ME, Win 7 was about the same or a little slower than XP, and so on.
I never really compared 10 to other Windows versions, as I have never used 10 as an actual OS (I’ve tested stuff on it, mainly, and the only PCs that have 10 on them are the ones that have hardware upon which MS has sabotaged the earlier versions of Windows, so I never tried them). I know that 10 on my Swift laptop (which is anything but) feels sluggish compared to Linux, but I have no idea how any other Windows would be on it.
Yes, I don’t like flatland, either. I think it’s the first UI mistake Microsoft has made in a long time
They’ve made a lot of UI mistakes in recent memory, by my way of thinking. The Luna theme in Windows XP (which a lot of people liken to a Fisher-Price UI) was a mistake, and the replacement of the Win2k icons (that were clear and easily identifiable) with the pastel blotches of color in XP was another.
The removal of the File, Menu… menubar by default from Vista and beyond was a mistake. The classic menu bar remains (IMO) to this day the best mouse-based menu system, and back then, the change wasn’t about touch.
When Vista was reworked into Windows 7, MS announced that the “Classic” cascading start menu (optional since XP) was going away. Some users begged them to leave it, but MS just said that the Classic start menu was over ten years old and it was time to move on. (They’d given up on listening to customers, and decided that customers needed to listen to them instead, a trend that continues to this day.)
When the new composited Aero themes arrived with Vista, MS removed the ability to set each UI element color. You could set the accent color, but most colors would remain hardcoded to retina-searing white. If you didn’t like that, you could still use the Classic or basic themes, but they were no longer hardware accelerated as they had been in XP, so the visual tearing was horrendous. That continued with Windows 7, but when 8 rolled around, the basic and Classic GDI themes were gone. The user had to either use one of the truly awful high-contrast themes or accept the colors that MS had dictated for you, which meant “white” when it came to backgrounds. If that hurt your eyes, I guess you were supposed to turn the monitor brightness down (which made darker images into black blobs) or wear sunglasses when using the PC.
I use the retina-searing background as my go-to example because it’s an issue I’ve had personally, and it’s as good as any example of how MS put their own branding ahead of basic usability. I’ve been using a light grey background since I got my first decent CRT monitor (the first one that had enough contrast to make the white really painful). Prior to that I just turned down the brightness on the knob that monitors used to have, which made flipping the brightness up and down easier. That was only necessary at the time when using MS Word for Windows, where the expanse of white became overwhelming.
When I moved on to LCDs, the gray background became a must. The glare of a LCD is so much worse than even my Princeton monitor at full brightness… it’s just painful to use a LCD with white.
It would ordinarily have been possible to change the theme to get new colors, but Microsoft had thought of that. They programmed the theme UI to ignore any themes that were not signed by Microsoft, and since they didn’t offer theme signing as a service, it ensured that only their own themes would be usable.
Not even kernel drivers require an unattainable Microsoft signature… they merely have to have a signature from a recognized CA. Why would it be that the most dangerous kinds of executables in the system have less stringent signature requirements than harmless, non-executable themes?
Of course, the aftermarket came to the rescue, figuring out ways to hack the OS to use non-MS themes, but the point is that MS tried to block people from having any control over how their own PCs look.
All of these things, from the Luna theme to the locked colors and themes, were meant to make Windows look “cool” in Microsoft’s view. It was all about branding. Every Windows PC had to “look like Windows,” whatever that happened to be at the time (and it was a moving target). There was no other reason for them to be worried about any of this nonsense. If it’s my computer, and only I will be using it, what concern is it of Microsoft’s how my UI looks?
Windows 8 also did away with the optional menu bar in the File/Windows Explorer and replaced it with the oft-hated Ribbon, which was yet another mistake, IMO. Of course, Win 8 also had the bizarre interface where you’d boot to the Metro screen, and it was the first half and half (MS calls it “zebra”) UI that didn’t know whether it wanted to be a phone or a PC.
Windows 8 had the first flat interface in a Windows release, since that was, by 2012, “cool,” while concerns about usability were not. The tiled Start screen (which Windows would boot to rather than the desktop) was really confusing to a lot of people who didn’t grasp that it was just the start menu taking up the whole screen instead of a piece of it. If they inadvertently invoked it during a desktop session, they wondered where their programs went, and if they were still open, or if they’d lost their data. MS knew, or should have known, that this would be the case, given their extensive research into UI design that produced the UI masterpiece of Windows 95.
All of those UI blunders were before Windows 10. The one saving grace was that most of the mistakes were correctible, though the effort required to do so increased with each successive Windows release. It’s at the point with 10 that it’s no longer possible to bring it to a fully sensible state in terms of UI, and the lack of control over updates and other things in the OS only makes it worse.
and I know it was related to small devices (phones) and touch. But, adapt or die.
“Adapt or die” was probably one of the motivations, but now that they’ve given up on the phone market, what is it to which they wish to adapt? I don’t agree with their decision to phone-ize the PC starting with Windows 8, but I could see the point in it. MS wanted to break into the mobile market in a big way, but the lack of a well-stocked app repository meant that most users (who were using Android or iOS) would not want to switch. The idea was that if the entire OS on a desktop could be a stand-in mobile platform, app devs might be persuaded to start developing mobile apps for Windows now rather than waiting to see if the Windows Store for mobile actually caught on.
It didn’t work in 8.x, of course, and MS seemed to conclude that a probable reason for this was that users (who were almost exclusively using regular PCs, not touch devices) chose not to migrate to 8.x, and that ready-made market for mobile apps never appeared. That certainly explains Microsoft’s unwillingness to let people choose to not migrate to 10.
I had hoped the lesson Microsoft would learn from the failures of Vista and 8.x would be that if people are offered an upgrade to a version of Windows they don’t want, they won’t accept it, so don’t offer versions of Windows people don’t want. The actual lesson they learned was that if people are offered an upgrade to a version of Windows they don’t want, they won’t accept it, so don’t give them a choice.
So Windows mobile died, and I’d hoped that MS would recalculate and recognize that the one market they do have is the PC market, where the vast majority of users are on non-touch devices, but they just kept going as if the old plan of using the PC as a stepping stone to Windows Mobile was the main goal. It makes no sense to “adapt or die” if that adaptation is to accommodate a platform that they do not and will not have a presence on, at the expense of the platform that they have a monopoly-level market share.
I’ve seen the comments to the effect that “touch is the future,” but that’s a slogan more than a reality. Touch doesn’t really work for non-handheld devices, and non-handhelds is Microsoft’s domain. If you plan on doing something more complicated than checking in at an airport kiosk or taking out some cash at an ATM, you need a pointing device you can use without gravity working against your outstretched arm. A mouse works for that, and so does a laptop’s touchpad, but a touchscreen that’s vertically oriented at about arm’s length away (or more) is an ergonomic nightmare, and to cater an entire desktop OS to that usage scheme because of baseless slogans instead of the reality of how people use PCs is inane.
The mouse-oriented Windows 7 interface remains better than anything Microsoft has produced to date for mouse-based PCs, which is essentially all of them. Nearly all of the people who own touch-enabled PCs that I have talked to say that they seldom or never use the touchscreen, and that they use the touchpad or mouse instead.
About the only sensible use case for touchscreens on general-use PCs is in convertible devices, and even then the only time the touchscreen is used is typically when the keyboard is undocked and it is essentially a tablet. It makes little sense to force all of the UI compromises that are inherent within a touch UI on the mouse-using customers just because a handful of people sometimes use Windows in touch mode.
If MS wants to have a parallel UI that has a discrete tablet UI for use when undocked and a mouse UI that is in use the rest of the time, and for the large majority of PCs that have no touchscreen, I would certainly be okay with that, but the idea that one UI can work for all devices has, I think, been soundly disproven by now. “Responsive design” web pages that were primarily desktop pages that scaled down to mobiles were still reportedly klunky and bad on the mobiles, and the newer trend of web pages that are primarily mobile pages that scale up for desktops are still vastly inferior to those designed-for-desktop pages that used to be the norm.
Windows 8, 10, Ubuntu Unity, and GNOME 3 are more examples of “one UI to rule them all” that are less optimal on both the touch platform and the mouse platform than UIs dedicated to each. Apple at first was the adult in the room, saying essentially this, but they seem to be hearing the siren’s call too these days. I only hope we can keep KDE from going down the same rabbit hole.
If MS had not tried to adapt quite as much as they had, many of the Windows 7 holdouts would have migrated already, and those disgruntled “I didn’t have a choice” upgraders might be, erm, a bit more gruntled. I might still be using Windows, for that matter, rather than leaving behind the platform that I used for more than 25 years. I am not one who likes change, and to me, moving to Linux was less of a change than staying with what Windows had become. As the tired old aphorism goes, “I didn’t leave Windows. Windows left me.”
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)
A lot of people said the same thing about Windows XP when Vista and then 7 appeared.
So increased telemetry, more processes running at idle, blocked programs, forced upgrades, large and numerous (real-world untested) updates, fisher price GUI, CrApps, bi-annual ‘Creature Updates’, buried settings et al, justifies moving from a stable and reliable OS to W10?
ESU or 0Patch are there for folks/ businesses who wish to stick with a time tried and tested OS that simply just works.
I’m not concerned with telemetry, just privacy.
Privacy concerns – MSFT will say one thing but are they doing another, something that the home user isn’t aware of in the way of data collection via telemetry. This has been a long standing question of concern for users like myself. Why give enterprise an option to disable telemetry and not do the same for non enterprise?
I have my Win7 secure and tightened up at the seams. And I can sleep at night without the worry of the next update messing with my machine. I don’t engage in banking or financial activities online and most of my internet usage is put to work on the Chromebook or iPad, both running their latest updates. Win10 free and a happy camper. 
MacOS iPadOS and sometimes SOS
Will Fastie wrote: “At this point I believe that most of the reasons for not wanting to migrate to Windows 10 are somewhat hollow. I think Windows 10 is safer and more private than my Google-driven Android phone. Ed has a good article about that, too.”
My own principal reason for not switching to Windows 10 is less a loss of privacy (although it is up there) and more the relentlessly frequent cadence of “upgrades.” An occasional upgrade, years apart from the last, is necessary to keep up with advances and changes in computing and communications technology, but one OS “upgrade” every several months makes no sense from my point of view as user of the OS. I am not sure if Ed Bott’s statistics showed that only an insignificant number of people share my concern with too frequent “upgrades” (some, I hear, bringing pretty trivial changes), or he simply finds this reason to dislike Windows 10 not to his own liking, as some commenting here already have suggested might have guided his choice of the results that he decided to report.
Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).
MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV
Since the debate about topics like “Why would people stick with Win7” circles around people complaining about “updates” cadence and “upgrades” causing issues, for me the reason is clear – people want their PC work as they want and they want to have full control of it. People dont want not change things so quickly, when Microsoft thinks of changing something. I went to Windows 10, because I felt like its avoiding the unavoidable, if you get my point. In the end I installed Fedora to my home PC. Its unescessarilly hard work to maintain Win10 and it eats your resources on the background.
Refusing to admit this feedback and betatesting amongst public is proof for me, that MSFT does not care about users.
EDIT: Does not care about HOME users. Enterprise is quite fine so far.
Dell Latitude 3420, Intel Core i7 @ 2.8 GHz, 16GB RAM, W10 22H2 Enterprise
HAL3000, AMD Athlon 200GE @ 3,4 GHz, 8GB RAM, Fedora 29
PRUSA i3 MK3S+
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