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

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Laptop prices are not quite as you think. The problem is that because the most common scree used is 15.6" at at poor resolution of 1366x768, only laptops with those screens will be cheap. And if you go 17.3", most are 1600x900. So a laptop with a 17.3" screen at 1920x1080 (full HD) is going to cost more than $500.

Then you have the hassle of having to start over. That means moving all your data, installing all of your programs, configuring the OS and the programs how you want them. Overall, it's a hassle you can avoid if you buy a really good laptop now that will last for longer than 3 years before no longer being good enough. a $500 laptop will maybe last 3 years if you are lucky. A 15.6" with 1366x768 resolution isn't even going to last 1 week here. if I'm going to bother to spend the money, I might as well get something I want be complaining about how lousy it is.

You might be right, if the single qualifying factor for how worthy a laptop is, was the quality of the screen.

Screen resolution can go shove itself -- I hardly do anything that requires any sort of good resolution in the slightest, and am quite contented with whatever-is-considered-reasonably-good-at-the-time.

Honestly -- I have no idea what the resolution of my laptop is, but given it is ~11 yrs old, probably not very good.
I would definitely consider upgrading (it is a bit of an experiment for me, that is why I keep it) -- for an improved CPU and suchlike. It would help me run things faster, and multitask better...

[kacir]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

... The problem is that because the most common screen used is 15.6" at at poor resolution of 1366x768, only laptops with those screens will be cheap.

That is what I purchased during Black Friday 2013. Toshiba with Core i7.
Recently I have upgraded HD to SSD and installed the old disk instead of DVD ROM in a drive caddy and the beast is screaming fast.
The screen is good enough - most of the time it is used as a secondary screen to my large monitor anyway.
The combo of that I7 notebook, large monitor and large SSD is still cheaper than what you might pay for your machine.

Not that I plan to buy a new computer any time soon ;-)

[ApK]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

You might be right, if the single qualifying factor for how worthy a laptop is, was the quality of the screen.

Screen resolution can go shove itself -- I hardly do anything that requires any sort of good resolution in the slightest, and am quite contented with whatever-is-considered-reasonably-good-at-the-time.

Honestly -- I have no idea what the resolution of my laptop is, but given it is ~11 yrs old, probably not very good.
I would definitely consider upgrading (it is a bit of an experiment for me, that is why I keep it) -- for an improved CPU and suchlike. It would help me run things faster, and multitask better...

I'm with you. I didn't know what resolution the laptop I just got was until I just looked it up. It's 1366x768 and looks fine to me.*
I use it with a large monitor any way. I thought about the "get the absolute best so it'll last longer" philosophy when I was shopping, but along with other counterarguments, I decided that I could not predict WHAT factor was going to be important to me in 3 years, never mind 10: USB 4? Foldable display? Holographic crystal storage?
I expect when the time comes, my new laptop will still serve as a fine kid's machine, or server or something, just like most of my old machines still are.

I'll stick by the "If you need it, buy it. If you don't, don't, because it's only going to get cheaper" school.

* An aside: What's with the craze for Quad HD displays on a smartphone? Who needs that kind of resolution on a <6" portable? I wish my G3 had a normal HD screen, so the power used to drive the crazy-high-def could be put to better use.

Originally Posted by ApK

I'll stick by the "If you need it, buy it. If you don't, don't, because it's only going to get cheaper" school.

I tend to look at where the bottlenecks are, given my usage patterns, and spend a bit more to beef up those areas. For example: RAM size and bandwidth tend to be limiting factors in my use, so I will spend a bit extra in those areas even if it exceeds my current needs. On the other hand, CPU speed has not been an issue for many years, so I will not spend extra for a CPU that exceeds my current needs. Overall this approach seems to have worked for me. When I haven't followed it, I have found myself displeased by the computer very soon after its purchase.

[fjtorres]

How the free upgrade process will work:

http://www.zdnet.com/article/get-win...tag=TREc64629f

There's actually a road map hidden in plain sight, included with a recent optional update for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1. An XML file installed with that update contains important clues about a program called GWX: Get Windows 10.

KB3035583 describes itself innocuously enough: "This update enables additional capabilities for Windows Update notifications when new updates are available to the user. It applies to a computer that is running Windows 8.1 or Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1)."

That's it. No, seriously, that's the entire description. But the KB article does go on to describe the files included with this update, most of them containing the acronym GWX.

The first salvo is the "Anticipation UX." A pop-up advertisement in one of three predefined sizes will appear, presumably saying something like "Windows 10 is coming. Get excited!"

The next phase is labeled the Reservation Page. I suspect that's an opt-in page, where someone seeing this sequence of ads can read about the process and then say yes, they're ready to upgrade.

The whole process is similar to the flow of events that members of the Windows Insider program are already familiar with: opting into an update that enables delivery of the upgrade files, which are downloaded in the background and then installed with minimal user intervention.

More at the source.

[Jack Torrance]

I stopped playing with a week or so back when 10049 was so broken that for the most part it wouldn't work at all.

After playing with a bit I managed to revert back to 10041 (I think) and 10051 wasn't quite ready yet.

The big question is how many consumers and small businesses will say yes to the free Windows 10 upgrade, and how quickly. Several recent data points suggest that close to nine in 10 PCs running Windows 8 have updated to Windows 8.1. Getting Windows 7 holdouts to upgrade might not be as easy a sell.

Though even its beta form, using 10041 I found it to be more user friendly than 8/8.1. I was playing with a laptop at the store (8.1) that the Mrs was looking at just ended up walking away from it after 10 min.

I will probably jump on board but only after loading 7 on to a second hard drive and upgrading it, kind of like how I am running 10 now and just jump back forth to see how it goes. I wouldn't want the Mrs getting a laptop with 8/8.1 if I could help it and would want to convince her to wait until 10 was out and rolling.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by BWinmill

I tend to look at where the bottlenecks are, given my usage patterns, and spend a bit more to beef up those areas. For example: RAM size and bandwidth tend to be limiting factors in my use, so I will spend a bit extra in those areas even if it exceeds my current needs. On the other hand, CPU speed has not been an issue for many years, so I will not spend extra for a CPU that exceeds my current needs. Overall this approach seems to have worked for me. When I haven't followed it, I have found myself displeased by the computer very soon after its purchase.

I went for a model with a numberpad on the right (got a wide screen for free )

[harriska2]

Originally Posted by Blossom

The need to reboot every day. Vista spoiled me where I had only to reboot like once a week.

Holy cows! I have Windows 7 and open gobs of programs at a time. I reboot about once every blue moon. This is on my intel board, Kathy put it together, machine - which I haven't done for decades. I just didn't like any of Dells machines. Plus it only cost $550. If I had to reboot everyday, I would throw the thing out the window. Seriously.

[Ripplinger]

Originally Posted by harriska2

Holy cows! I have Windows 7 and open gobs of programs at a time. I reboot about once every blue moon. This is on my intel board, Kathy put it together, machine - which I haven't done for decades. I just didn't like any of Dells machines. Plus it only cost $550. If I had to reboot everyday, I would throw the thing out the window. Seriously.

I agree there had to be something wrong with Blossom's installation. I also reboot very rarely, leaving my 2 PCs on 24/7 (one still has WinXP, but the newer one I use most often has Windows 7 64 bit), and I always have a lot of programs open at the same time... Photoshop, Lightroom, PaintShop Pro, Firefox with dozens of tabs, Thunderbird, Trillian, Foxit Phantom usually with many tabs open for various documents, Calibre, TightVNC to the other PC and WordTabs with at least a dozen rtf files open, are the most common going at once. There might be more though at times. I can go for weeks without having to reboot, until there are some Microsoft updates that keep nagging me to reboot to finish installation.

[harriska2]

Deleted.

[harriska2]

Still sort of makes me wonder if we should replace our 9 year old Dell laptop with a macbook. Although that Dell still works with the original hard drive and 1600x1200 screen.

"However, I installed Classic Shell, and that has taken the vast majority of the stupid away, so I'm good with it now."

Sounds like something off of Firefly. But good to know. Thanks.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by theducks

I went for a model with a numberpad on the right (got a wide screen for free )

Funny, for my previous laptop I looked for one that didn't have the keypad because I hate typing off center of the screen. Takes all kinds.

Originally Posted by harriska2

Sounds like something off of Firefly.

Does it? Shiny!

[Dopedangel]

I really like the ability to reset windows gives a very easy system to remove all the crapware from my non tech relatives PC that I have to manage. Although some I have already successfully transfered over to chrome books as they use computers for email, Facebook, Google and news so Chromebooks are good enough for them.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by Blossom

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 got Windows 8.1 running on a media center (runs 24/7), on an Atom tablet (runs 24/7) and on an i5 tablet (runs 24/7). I've seen a blue screen twice now (once on my atom and once on my i5 tablet, the i5 I can even explain as not OS related but rather hardware related). I've never had an application or app crashing, and I only reboot when windows update wants me to.

Having said that, I still don't want Windows 8 on my desktop, because it's not made for desktops. And the only reason I'd go to Windows 8 would be because of the way OneDrive is included. And that's being destroyed in Windows 10 so, no reason to update at all.

[murg]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

I got Windows 8.1 running on a media center (runs 24/7), on an Atom tablet (runs 24/7) and on an i5 tablet (runs 24/7). I've seen a blue screen twice now (once on my atom and once on my i5 tablet, the i5 I can even explain as not OS related but rather hardware related). I've never had an application or app crashing, and I only reboot when windows update wants me to.

Having said that, I still don't want Windows 8 on my desktop, because it's not made for desktops. And the only reason I'd go to Windows 8 would be because of the way OneDrive is included. And that's being destroyed in Windows 10 so, no reason to update at all.

I'm running 8.1 as my main desktop, and for the most part is indistinguishable from Windows 7 (at least as far as being a desktop is).