Advice on buying Windows 7 retail

[Gurd99]

I'm looking to get a physical copy for a new machine, I have a laptop with win7 & it's alright, very similar to vista. Just want to avoid any nasty surprises like if it's behaviour is in anyway like windows 10, as I understand windows 7 can now behave like 10.

[DB83]

Hmm.

I thought it was Windows 10 that can be made to look like Windows 7.

[El Heggunte]

Just disable the automagic updates, then the problem is solved

And if you happen to prefer usability to eye-candies, then just transform Windows 7 into Windows 2000

[redwudz]

I hate to say it, but I would probably buy Windows 10 and add something like Start 10 to make it work/look like Windows 7.
W7 is getting a bit old now. I will still run W7 on my PCs that have it. But on my laptop I get along with W10. (With Start 10 added. )

Both OS's are about the same price and W10 has updates that W7 may not.

[DB83]

And installing Win 7 now with updates turned on you could well end up with Windows 10.

[El Heggunte]

And installing Win 7 now with updates turned on you could well end up with Windows 10.

Exactly. "The worst of both worlds"

[usually_quiet]

Hmm.

I thought it was Windows 10 that can be made to look like Windows 7.

I'm guessing he means the new telemetry-related updates for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 that Microsoft uses to gather more data on user activities.

win10wiwi can prevent both the Windows 10 updates and unwanted telemetry updates from downloading.

[Gurd99]

I hate to say it, but I would probably buy Windows 10 and add something like Start 10 to make it work/look like Windows 7.
W7 is getting a bit old now. I will still run W7 on my PCs that have it. But on my laptop I get along with W10. (With Start 10 added. )

Both OS's are about the same price and W10 has updates that W7 may not.

This is part of the whole problem of having a PC & wanting to keep it for 10-15years, hell 20 even. that hardware updates so quickly, is unavailable very quickly, & newer hardware doesn't work on older os. All the while newer OS will feature even more spying & limitations.

My old PC can do pretty much everything I want. I think the only sensible thing is to build a high end win7 machine & to stock up on hardware like GPU's, mobo, Monitors etc.

[usually_quiet]

I hate to say it, but I would probably buy Windows 10 and add something like Start 10 to make it work/look like Windows 7.
W7 is getting a bit old now. I will still run W7 on my PCs that have it. But on my laptop I get along with W10. (With Start 10 added. )

Both OS's are about the same price and W10 has updates that W7 may not.

This is part of the whole problem of having a PC & wanting to keep it for 10-15years, hell 20 even. that hardware updates so quickly, is unavailable very quickly, & newer hardware doesn't work on older os. All the while newer OS will feature even more spying & limitations.

My old PC can do pretty much everything I want. I think the only sensible thing is to build a high end win7 machine & to stock up on hardware like GPU's, mobo, Monitors etc.

You can attempt to stay with Windows 7 forever if you want, but at some point, you won't be able to install new software anymore. It is also likely that you will need a newer secondary computing device and OS to use the Internet in less than 10 years. Old browsers eventually stop working properly as websites are updated and the people responsible for writing browsers eventually stop supporting obsolete operating systems. Look at what is happening with Windows XP.

As long as there is money to be made by finding out as much about you as possible, Microsoft, Apple, and Google are going to be in that business.

[ron spencer]

I hate to say it, but I would probably buy Windows 10 and add something like Start 10 to make it work/look like Windows 7.
W7 is getting a bit old now. I will still run W7 on my PCs that have it. But on my laptop I get along with W10. (With Start 10 added. )

Both OS's are about the same price and W10 has updates that W7 may not.

This is part of the whole problem of having a PC & wanting to keep it for 10-15years, hell 20 even. that hardware updates so quickly, is unavailable very quickly, & newer hardware doesn't work on older os. All the while newer OS will feature even more spying & limitations.

My old PC can do pretty much everything I want. I think the only sensible thing is to build a high end win7 machine & to stock up on hardware like GPU's, mobo, Monitors etc.

You can attempt to stay with Windows 7 forever if you want, but at some point, you won't be able to install new software anymore. It is also likely that you will need a newer secondary computing device and OS to use the Internet in less than 10 years. Old browsers eventually stop working properly as websites are updated and the people responsible for writing browsers eventually stop supporting obsolete operating systems. Look at what is happening with Windows XP.

As long as there is money to be made by finding out as much about you as possible, Microsoft, Apple, and Google are going to be in that business.

What's happening with XP? I have kept an XP machine alive for fun and it still does everything....I'm thinking it will last another 10 years.

[El Heggunte]

What's happening with XP? I have kept an XP machine alive for fun and it still does everything....I'm thinking it will last another 10 years.

My XP computer died some weeks ago, after 14 years of activity... OK, technically maybe it was not completely-dead, but... well, it would be impossible to fix the motherboard itself (OR it would not be worth the hassle, anyway). First it was the secondary IDE channel that died, 7 months ago... and now, the AGP port started to die as well. Rest in peace, Dell Dimension 4300.

[usually_quiet]

What's happening with XP? I have kept an XP machine alive for fun and it still does everything....I'm thinking it will last another 10 years.

I assume that you know that hardware support is dwindling. Chrome has already ended development for XP. Firefox doesn't support all versions of XP anymore. Internet Explorer 8 does not work properly with a number of popular websites. Some software I'm currently running on Windows 7 doesn't list XP as supported.

[DB83]

It was reported recently that M$ have changed the notification window regards the 'Free' upgrade to Win 10. The upgrade gets scheduled and goes ahead even if the user closes the window in the traditional way ie click the 'X'

I am on Win7 and will remain so until it really is necessary to change. All updates are turned off. Ok that may leave me open to issues but I will live with that.

NOTHING is FREE. Everything must be paid for some way or another. So, as explained above, I have not fallen for the generous offer by M$ who will hardly spend $$$ on developing a new OS and then proceed to give it away albeit for a period of time which itself is due to expire soon.

So what is going to happen to all these Win10 systems after that ? Some form of subscription model to let users keep using it ? I hardly see these being still free at the point of service. Why after all were M$ so keen that people took up their 'generous' offer ?

[Constant Gardener]

Who knows what the future holds? Meanwhile, one of my favorite programs has evolved into something subscription-based, so I am trying something else.

[Cornucopia]

Just installed a fresh, clean, full Win 7 Pro 64bit SP1 (with all updates current, except "get 10"), dual-booting with a fresh, clean, full Win 10 Pro 64bit (with all updates current), no shared space (yet), on separate partitions of the same drive. The Win 10 fills up 16GB and runs faster (on the same machine, obviously) than the Win 7, which fills up 34GB (and that's after I've done a clean sweep of the update/installer temp files, etc.).

Works for me. This way, I've got the best of both worlds.

If you don't like the get 10 upgrade business, run Never10 and GWX Control Panel (and make sure you aren't automatically installing ALL update options), and you should be just fine with 7 for a while. And if I ever need something older (odd game, VCD creator app, etc), I've got VMs for them (all the way back to DOS 5/6/7 and Win3.1/Wfwg and Win95/98SE/ME and NT4/2k/XP). But I find the sky isn't falling with 10 after all...

Scott

[jagabo]

So what is going to happen to all these Win10 systems after that ? Some form of subscription model to let users keep using it ?

Microsoft has said that those who upgraded would not be required to pay a subscription fee for the lifetime of the computer. But Microsoft is gathering marketing information about all those users and using it. And ads are starting to appear on the start menu. Those are the real reason for the "free" upgrades. MS' goal of 1 billion users in the first year is so they can tell advertisers "For $X you can have your ad appear on a billion desktops tomorrow morning." Or "For $Y you can have your ad appear on the desktops of users with a household income over $100,000." In the long run that's worth a lot more to them than whatever you might have paid for the OS. And in the past when you bought third party software Microsoft got nothing. Now when you purchase software through the MS Store they get a ~30 percent cut.

[KarMa]

I'll probably just stick with Win7 until something better comes along.

[october262]

Soon I'll be switching my operating system to LINUX �� ☺ ��
I don't really care for Mac and Microsoft is getting stale.

[aedipuss]

personally i just don't like the ads and un-asked for notifications in win10. it may be free but crap is always popping up for something or other. with win7 there are no ads or other pop-ups.

[johns0]

Win7=winxp,win8/8.1=vista,win10=.

[jimdagys]

No ads on my desktop.

[El Heggunte]

From IE4 thru IE6: "Active Desktop" and its "channels"

With Vista: "Sidebar Gadgets"

With 7: "Desktop Gadgets"

With H8: "dead tiles"

With 10: shameless ads

[Gurd99]

I hate to say it, but I would probably buy Windows 10 and add something like Start 10 to make it work/look like Windows 7.
W7 is getting a bit old now. I will still run W7 on my PCs that have it. But on my laptop I get along with W10. (With Start 10 added. )

Both OS's are about the same price and W10 has updates that W7 may not.

This is part of the whole problem of having a PC & wanting to keep it for 10-15years, hell 20 even. that hardware updates so quickly, is unavailable very quickly, & newer hardware doesn't work on older os. All the while newer OS will feature even more spying & limitations.

My old PC can do pretty much everything I want. I think the only sensible thing is to build a high end win7 machine & to stock up on hardware like GPU's, mobo, Monitors etc.

You can attempt to stay with Windows 7 forever if you want, but at some point, you won't be able to install new software anymore. It is also likely that you will need a newer secondary computing device and OS to use the Internet in less than 10 years. Old browsers eventually stop working properly as websites are updated and the people responsible for writing browsers eventually stop supporting obsolete operating systems. Look at what is happening with Windows XP.

As long as there is money to be made by finding out as much about you as possible, Microsoft, Apple, and Google are going to be in that business.

But XP was limited & vista/win7 does everything I want. For a full time music listening rig & HD movies there is absolutely no need to upgrade. Another problem is many older things don't run on newer OS. If the hardware is always available the machine will be useful for decades no matter how obsolete it becomes. Which is why I'm considering stocking up on much hardware.

M$ truly are evil & are the biggest threat to obsolete. The future versions of windows will be what you would find the citizens of Equilibrium using.

[usually_quiet]

You can attempt to stay with Windows 7 forever if you want, but at some point, you won't be able to install new software anymore. It is also likely that you will need a newer secondary computing device and OS to use the Internet in less than 10 years. Old browsers eventually stop working properly as websites are updated and the people responsible for writing browsers eventually stop supporting obsolete operating systems. Look at what is happening with Windows XP.

As long as there is money to be made by finding out as much about you as possible, Microsoft, Apple, and Google are going to be in that business.

But XP was limited & vista/win7 does everything I want. For a full time music listening rig & HD movies there is absolutely no need to upgrade. Another problem is many older things don't run on newer OS. If the hardware is always available the machine will be useful for decades no matter how obsolete it becomes. Which is why I'm considering stocking up on much hardware.

M$ truly are evil & are the biggest threat to obsolete. The future versions of windows will be what you would find the citizens of Equilibrium using.

Certainly you don't have to change to Windows 10 now. I'm not planning to do that yet either, but when I build my next PC, it will run Windows 10. At some point it is likely that you too will want something new that you can't have if you are using Windows 7. ..and there is the problem of using the Internet, as I have already mentioned.

A VM works for running most software that requires an older OS. It is the old hardware that is more likely to require a using an old computer and an older OS. Lots of people keep old machines and old operating systems around to use hardware or software that their newer machines don't support, but these old machines are mostly isolated from the Internet.

[hudsonf]

I have three desktops, three laptops, one tablet and my phone running Windows 10. I don't any ads. I think the "Occasionally Show suggestions in Start" setting in "Personalization - Start" turns on or off the ads. I have it set to off on my computers. The free upgrade to Win 10 is coming to a end soon. Hopefully MS will stop trying to force Win 10 on users who are happy with the OS they are using.

[hudsonf]

This is a suggestion for anyone who thinks they may want to upgrade their computer to Windows 10 at a later date. Make a image of you computer. Then upgrade to Windows 10. This will register your computer with MS so you can clean install Windows 10 on that computer anytime you want. After that use your image to go back the OS you were using. This way if one does decide to upgrade their computer after the free upgrade offer you be able to still upgrade for free.

[davejavu]

This is a suggestion for anyone who thinks they may want to upgrade their computer to Windows 10 at a later date. Make a image of you computer. Then upgrade to Windows 10. This will register your computer with MS so you can clean install Windows 10 on that computer anytime you want. After that use your image to go back the OS you were using. This way if one does decide to upgrade their computer after the free upgrade offer you be able to still upgrade for free.

This is exactly what I have done with all my machines. Just tried another clean install of W10 to see if it is any better, but could only tolerate it for 1 day before putting W8.1 back.

Also, the clean install onto an OEM machine with an embedded BIOS key only installed the W10 Home instead of the Pro that I was expecting as that machine had W8.1 Pro on it when I did the initial in-place upgrade. I will have to do another in-place upgrade and note down the new W10 key to use for any future clean installs I do!

[hudsonf]

ShowKeyPlus is a great little program to show what keys are being used. http://www.tenforums.com/software-apps/2577-showkey.html You should be able to upgrade to Win 10 Pro by using the Win 8 Pro key.

[davejavu]

ShowKeyPlus is a great little program to show what keys are being used. http://www.tenforums.com/software-apps/2577-showkey.html You should be able to upgrade to Win 10 Pro by using the Win 8 Pro key.

I use Jellybean Keyfinder. I couldn't use the W8.1 key during the W10 install as it wouldn't accept it so I skipped key entry, which is still supposed to activate after the install, but in the OEM machine it seems to have used the BIOS key and not the Pro key I had previously upgraded and activated. The other PC I have installed without any problems to the correct version.

I have now done another in-place upgrade on the OEM machine from W8.1 Pro to W10 Pro, made sure it was the Pro version, and recorded the key W10 activated with. I should now be able to enter this key during any future installs to ensure it doesn't default to the BIOS key.

[Gurd99]

Since most retail full copies are on ebay. I have two questions:

1 - Are copies in USA able to run outside? Just in case there is some region restriction.
2 - Should I call MS to confirm that the Key is legit? As if it's fake windows might not stop functioning for months later.

edit: 3 - what does "allows installation on the Microsoft Windows XP" mean?