Windows 10, Yay or Nay?

[Xyro]

I'm not a fan of the subscription stuff for Office either. That said, they do have one version which is a one-off purchase. Specifically: "Microsoft Office 2016 Home + Student" edition, which has: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote.

Although here it costs £120, which isn't exactly cheap to begin with, and you only get half of their Office programs.

 

[AZgl1500]

I was very fortunate to get my Office 2007 Pro from my employer years ago....
it still does everything I need to do, which usually, can be accomplished in NotePad

I use the spreadsheet quite a bit, I have never used the publishing app, my son does every day in his job... me? never had a need for it. Word does all of the Graphics stuff that I have any use for.

my favorite feature of Word 2007 is the macros and AutoCorrect for my dyslexic fingers.... as my fingers get younger , now 73 y/o they do not type in the correct order as faithfully as they did when I was 21 and a 120 wpm keyboard operator on the USAF's ASR128 Teletype machine. the "display" on that machine is a paper tape that punches a row of vertical holes in the paper.

we learned to read that thing as fast as it could come out of the machine, and had to hand write the info and hand it in to the instructor "Commander in a battlefield" within 5 minutes of the machine stopping...

today, with our flat screen displays, the current generation has no clue to how "it used to be".... and even in the '60s when I was punching that ASR128, I did not "have a clue" as to how the Indians had to use Smoke Signals to pass on their information.
each generation is ignorant of what went on before, "today is all they know".

 

[dan330]

I have Office 2010... and not giving that up!

 

[jefboyardee]

I have Kingsoft Office Suite Free 2013... and couldn't care less! But I do prefer it to their newer WPS offerings.

 

[AZgl1500]

I well remember Word Perfect... Was it version 4?

I cried and cried when it was removed from our computers at work, they installed the new glorious king of the hill, Windows 3.0 which was going to be the "real McCoy" to make us forget about our lime green monitors, with WP running on 8" disc platters, I am trying to remember the name of that OS.... it worked great for us at the time... never crashed, just plunked along like Unix... it was of course, tied into the big Unix servers at our IT center... we could press a button and have WP printout anything in the City of Phoenix, if we knew the name of that printer.

we had two applications then, WP and a spreadsheet.

 

[wooky69]

There's only Intel drivers upto Win 7 for that.
http://ark.intel.com/products/36549/Intel-82945GSE-Graphics-and-Memory-Controller#@downloads

BTW it's a good machine for Ubuntu or Linux Mint though, even latest versions fully supported.

It is dual booted with Xubunta I was just wanting to play. I might get rid of the Windows partition eventually the NC10 is just a play box really

 

[jefboyardee]

Putting earrings on a pig...

First major Windows 10 update brings lots of improvements

 

[Dngrsone]

I miss Word Perfect... A truly powerful text-based word processor. If you set the margins or the indents a certain way, the stayed that way until you told it different.

I installed 10 on my mother-in-law's laptop this past Wednesday. It looked nice... Once I convinced it that I wanted 10 installed now, it went smoother than the 8.1 updating process did.

 

[recDNA]

Every one of my students who "upgraded" to Windows 10 regrets it. It may sell more Apple computers than any advertisement ever has.

Biggest complaint is hardware that won't work any more. Keyboards, backlighting, wireless devices, printers etc. however some have os errors too.

 

[jefboyardee]

It may sell more Apple computers than any advertisement ever has.

Being that Win10, while certainly preferable to Win8x, is not preferable to Win7, that means PCers like me/us are stuck in 2009. And given that, Apple is starting to look kinda tempting.

 

[mikedt]

I showed my main choice of laptop a few posts ago.

 

[lunatic59]

The grass is greener on the other side of the fence because they use more fertilizer.

Just sayin'

 

[Dngrsone]

I put 10 on my laptop. I like it so far, but then I haven't used it any.

For my purposes, Linux does the job 99% of the time, do i actually boot into and use Win only about once a month for about half an hour.

 

[recDNA]

Linux is too much work for me. I don't want to go searching for drivers or compatibility. Same reason I don't want W10

 

[Unforgiven]

Since I just fired up two Chromebooks for roughly 2/3 of the price it would have cost to replace my aging Win10 laptop, I'm now firmly in the camp of no more windows period.

Full disclosure, I'm keeping my win 10 laptop alive as I'm sure I'll come across something I need a PC for.

 

[lunatic59]

I guess it's all a matter of what you need. I snagged a Dell 3000 laptop for $200 when they were doing their specials. Granted it was only 2GB with a crappy 5400 RPM hard drive, but I bumped it up to 4 GB (it's max, BTW) and threw an SSD in there all for under $100 and I have a very decent machine for ~$300.00 I am happily dual booting Win10 and Mint 17.2, but I do spent most of my time on that machine in Mint.

 

[bcrichster]

Linux is too much work for me. I don't want to go searching for drivers or compatibility. Same reason I don't want W10

Umm.. Linux doesn't use or need drivers. Ever. That's strictly a Windows handicap. [emoji41]

 

[lunatic59]

Umm.. Linux doesn't use or need drivers. Ever.

Umm Umm, yes it does. But, for the last 10 years or so there is no need to search or install them unless you've got some really oddball hardware.

And @recDNA , Linux is much less work than Windows. If you can use Android, you can use Linux ... in fact, you already are.

 

[bcrichster]

I've got and used a copy of the original OG Linux Mint Cinnamon #1 many times and it didn't need any drivers, all the way up to Mint Cinnamon #17.2 ..were the driver necessity deals on a Linux before OG Cinnamon #1? It was my understanding that drivers weren't needed due to Linux being so basic that it flawlessly interacted with hardware due to the binary code or something I don't know much more about.. The only real problems (I had) were the MTP capability that didn't finally get introduced in Mint 15.. Plz educate me (cuz I do need it) if I'm still incorrect.

I agree with @lunatic59 about Linux being way lees work than Wynn-Doze, Lol. I only use my Windows when absolutely necessary

 

[lunatic59]

Any OS needs drivers to communicate with the hardware, it's just that external libraries aren't a requirement in Linux, although you can still use them. They tend to be compiled into a monolithic kernel.

Interesting that you use Cinnamon ... it's generally considered the closest UI to Windows. (Yeah, I use it, too. I detest Gnome 3)

 

[Dngrsone]

As noted, most of the necessary hardware drivers are baked into the kernel. There are occasions when an update will break things, or a manufacturer requires proprietary software which one might have to download, but for the past five years every one of my laptops has worked from the get-go.

If anything, Windows has been leaning toward the linux model with their App store.

Plus there are things that Linux (for me, Mint KDE) has that Win does not: multiple desktops and the ability to change desktop environments at log-in.

I had a Linux-based firewall server that moved between four different motherboards without having to change anything on the hard drive. I've moved an Ubuntu drive between machines to get data off of it, and it booted without a problem. Can you say the same for any Windows installation?

 

[lunatic59]

Can you say the same for any Windows installation?

Sure. It just wouldn't be true.

Windows did have multiple workspaces/desktops possible and I used it for a while (sorry, I don't remember what it was called.) But most users couldn't grasp the concept. It never became part of the OS.

 

[AZgl1500]

Every one of my students who "upgraded" to Windows 10 regrets it. It may sell more Apple computers than any advertisement ever has.

Biggest complaint is hardware that won't work any more. Keyboards, backlighting, wireless devices, printers etc. however some have os errors too.

My daughter's 4 year old Sony laptop that she uses for her business just kept slowing down so bad, she can't get her work done.
It had Win7 on it... I cleaned it up, and it was okay for a few weeks, then it slowed down again.

I installed Win10 on it, and whoa! did that ever slow it down.... just not enough resources for that hog of an OS.

So, I have just now successfully installed PCLinuxOS on her 7 year old Sony laptop... she thinks it might do the job for her... so on Turkey day, I will install that on her work laptop....

I always make a clone image of PCs before I start messing with them. Insurance for that big "uh, oh" statement

 

[bcrichster]

Interesting that you use Cinnamon ... it's generally considered the closest UI to Windows. (Yeah, I use it, too. I detest Gnome 3)

I had almost no choice, coming from Win 98 & XP! It was all I knew at the time Lmao.. @SuperR was kind enough to point me in the right direction for my particular needs and he was spot on.

Oh! I know this isn't exactly a Windows specific issue but I'm posting this since Windows is on virtually all new PC's anyways..
http://www.zdnet.com/article/dell-in-hot-water-again-as-second-superfish-root-certificate-surfaces/

 

[jefboyardee]

Interesting that you use Cinnamon ... it's generally considered the closest UI to Windows.

I crazily tried about fifty distros and always went back to Mint. Now, even though I hardly ever use Linux, it's still Mint, don't even try the others.