Windows 10 - free upgrade to those with PC using Windows 7 or 8

[WT Sharpe]

I've never liked looking at a cluttered desktop on my PC. Oh, my desktop is cluttered, alright—very much so, in fact—just don't like looking at it. I keep all my icons invisible.

[WillAdams]

Not allowing files on the desktop certainly made NeXTstep far more consistent and visually much cleaner.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by frahse

Windows 10 has to be better than W8 and also W8.1.

I just has to be.

Does...

Let's hope! I had about all of Windows 8.1 I can take. I have my laptop set up to boot directly to desktop so I never use the start screen at all. I have a start menu replacement installed so its look alot like Windows 7.

My main problems have been Jump lists are useless and they get corrupted every few weeks. Computer slowing to crawl after being idle really bad with web browsers crashing or just freezing after being idle. The need to reboot every day. Vista spoiled me where I had only to reboot like once a week. The memory manager in Windows 8.1 is a nightmare. It holds onto programs think you may want then later this is good when playing games with long loading times but not so good with other programs. If a program takes long time to do anything Windows 8.1 thinks the program is frozen and tries to fix it causing crashing.

When I had Vista I never had anything crash but Windows 8.1 likes to crash alot programs, it worse than XP and almost right up there with ME.

There is so much running in a background on Windows 8.1 I can't do much power tasks without it thinking I am idle and then slows to a crawl.

I don't use Metro apps at all. Windows app are too buggy and not very good compare to Android.

[eschwartz]

I doubt any of those features will be removed in future versions of Windoze... well, maybe the jumplists will come back.

The school computers here run Win7, and can duplicate all of those (obviously, not the Metro apps or the jumplists).



Linux FTW, so grateful I don't usually have to deal with these "features".
(Many big business linux servers haven't been rebooted in years.)

[Ripplinger]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

I've never liked looking at a cluttered desktop on my PC. Oh, my desktop is cluttered, alright—very much so, in fact—just don't like looking at it. I keep all my icons invisible.

That's me on all my PCs, I absolutely hate seeing the clutter of any icons on my desktop. Instead I reorganize the Start Menu into only 11 main categories so I can find anything I want quickly.

[Dylrob]

Originally Posted by howyoudoin

Okay, I understand what you mean.

The desktop is still the desktop. You can save your frequently used files to the desktop in Windows 8 too. The start screen in Windows 8 is an expanded version of the start menu in Windows 7.

In 8.1 it's just an expanded start menu. Though it seems clear that their original intention was for it to be much more than that. It was going to be the new Windows interface going forward, with the old one relegated to "program status", much like DOS was many years ago, with the hope that consumers and developers would embrace this "modern" interface and slowly abandon the desktop entirely.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Blossom

Let's hope! I had about all of Windows 8.1 I can take. I have my laptop set up to boot directly to desktop so I never use the start screen at all. I have a start menu replacement installed so its look alot like Windows 7.

My main problems have been Jump lists are useless and they get corrupted every few weeks. Computer slowing to crawl after being idle really bad with web browsers crashing or just freezing after being idle. The need to reboot every day. Vista spoiled me where I had only to reboot like once a week. The memory manager in Windows 8.1 is a nightmare. It holds onto programs think you may want then later this is good when playing games with long loading times but not so good with other programs. If a program takes long time to do anything Windows 8.1 thinks the program is frozen and tries to fix it causing crashing.

When I had Vista I never had anything crash but Windows 8.1 likes to crash alot programs, it worse than XP and almost right up there with ME.

There is so much running in a background on Windows 8.1 I can't do much power tasks without it thinking I am idle and then slows to a crawl.

I don't use Metro apps at all. Windows app are too buggy and not very good compare to Android.

I have a laptop (Lenovo) with Windows 8.1 too. Nothing ever crashes or freezes or slows down. I reboot perhaps once a week, and that I do by choice, not because there's any need to reboot. I don't use Metro apps either, and installed Classic Shell as a start menu.

That said, I had no problems with Vista either. But in my experience, Win 8.1 is certainly not worse than Vista.

[Purple Lady]

For those that have the preview - are you able to change the background color of windows? Like in Windows Explorer? That was one reason I could never get Win8. In Win7 I use the Windows Classic theme because it is the only way to change to a colored background. My eyes are so sensitive to light that my vision goes double with a white background even with brightness way down.

I also use a high contrast theme sometimes, but that messes up a lot of stuff. In an Excel spreadsheet you can't see if someone set a special color font, and in IE a lot of things go missing on most web pages.

As far as I know Win8 could only use high contrast themes to change background colors - is that still true for Win10?

[dwig]

Windows 8.1 has been very solid for me, on both my big desktop machine and my 8" tablet. I use a mix of traditional Desktop apps and Modern apps on both machines, though the mix on the desktop box is very dominantly classic Desktop apps and the tablet's mix is mostly Modern apps. Both have been very stable in general

The desktop box gets rebooted once every month or two, usually because of some major update from MS. The tablet is shutdown and restarted almost daily for power reasons.

Personally, I find the new Start screen in 8.1 (but not 8.0) to be an improvement over the legacy Start menu. It's easier to customize, and once done, it is easier to navigate than the tree of cascading menus that was the old start. True, in Desktop mode I use the icons pinned to the taskbar as my main access for my frequently used apps and have since QuickLaunch was introduced long ago.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

I have a laptop (Lenovo) with Windows 8.1 too. Nothing ever crashes or freezes or slows down. I reboot perhaps once a week, and that I do by choice, not because there's any need to reboot. I don't use Metro apps either, and installed Classic Shell as a start menu.

That said, I had no problems with Vista either. But in my experience, Win 8.1 is certainly not worse than Vista.

Do you use Chrome and FireFox at the same time with like 10 or more tabs open on each? Windows 8.1 chokes when my laptop has been idle for more than a few minutes or it will crash the browsers. No problem on my Desktop with less specs running this but it has Vista.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

For those that have the preview - are you able to change the background color of windows? Like in Windows Explorer? That was one reason I could never get Win8. In Win7 I use the Windows Classic theme because it is the only way to change to a colored background. My eyes are so sensitive to light that my vision goes double with a white background even with brightness way down.

I also use a high contrast theme sometimes, but that messes up a lot of stuff. In an Excel spreadsheet you can't see if someone set a special color font, and in IE a lot of things go missing on most web pages.

As far as I know Win8 could only use high contrast themes to change background colors - is that still true for Win10?

Actually I have notice no difference in Windows 8 in that matter it's the same as Vista or XP. You can run classic theme even.

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by Blossom

Actually I have notice no difference in Windows 8 in that matter it's the same as Vista or XP. You can run classic theme even.

Everything I've seen says you can't get the classic theme, only the high contrast theme is available. Even Microsoft says so when people with vision problems complain. When the Aero theme started is when the ability to change background colors went away.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

Everything I've seen says you can't get the classic theme, only the high contrast theme is available. Even Microsoft says so when people with vision problems complain. When the Aero theme started is when the ability to change background colors went away.

Have you tried this?

[AnotherCat]

Originally Posted by Blossom

Let's hope! I had about all of Windows 8.1 I can take. I have my laptop set up to boot directly to desktop so I never use the start screen at all. I have a start menu replacement installed so its look alot like Windows 7.

My main problems have been Jump lists are useless and they get corrupted every few weeks. Computer slowing to crawl after being idle really bad with web browsers crashing or just freezing after being idle. The need to reboot every day. Vista spoiled me where I had only to reboot like once a week. The memory manager in Windows 8.1 is a nightmare. It holds onto programs think you may want then later this is good when playing games with long loading times but not so good with other programs. If a program takes long time to do anything Windows 8.1 thinks the program is frozen and tries to fix it causing crashing.

When I had Vista I never had anything crash but Windows 8.1 likes to crash alot programs, it worse than XP and almost right up there with ME.

There is so much running in a background on Windows 8.1 I can't do much power tasks without it thinking I am idle and then slows to a crawl.

I don't use Metro apps at all. Windows app are too buggy and not very good compare to Android.

Echoing what others have already responded with I can say that based on my experience with many installations of Windows 8.x, all of which have been stable and faster than Windows 7, it is safe to say that you have some problem of your own in your local environment rather than it being a Windows problem.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by AnotherCat

Echoing what others have already responded with I can say that based on my experience with many installations of Windows 8.x, all of which have been stable and faster than Windows 7, it is safe to say that you have some problem of your own in your local environment rather than it being a Windows problem.

There are alot of people who have Windows 8.1 problems like I do just go looks at the Windows 8 forum.