Windows 10 vs Windows 7

[Voldymort]

I am a bit confused about wether win10 or win 7 is better than the other one since everywhere i look there seem to be two sides to the whole thing, each claiming that one is better than the other because of the claimed reasons. What do you guys think? Should i switch to win10?

Thanks

[SevenSpirits]

(My opinion, moderately informed)

Reasons to not upgrade to 10:

* It's annoying to have to deal with change.
* Sometimes old programs work less well on new systems.

Non-reasons to not upgrade to 10:

* They're gathering data on me! (You can turn that off. Also, Windows 7 has that too.)
* Free? They must be up to something! (Yeah, they're competing with other OSes that are also free and they're tired of supporting a million different versions.)

Reasons to upgrade:

* As far as I can tell, they keep improving Windows. Even its performance.
* You can expect Windows 7 to become less supported over time.

[DaveV]

Microsoft is saying that they'll support Windows 7 until 2020. If you expect to buy a new computer before then, there's no real reason to upgrade. On the other hand, Windows 10 is free through the end of this month, and will then cost more than $100. If you're planning to keep your computer running past 2020, you can save your future self some money by upgrading.

[Jowy]

I've had it for a while now on 3 PC's (2 desktop 1 laptop). Here are some things I've experienced:

- Boot time became WAY faster on my older non-SSD desktop compared to W7.
- My older PC was having BSOD problems which went away after the switch to W10.
- It downloads drivers by itself which could be annoying if something goes wrong, however everything has worked so far.
- You can indeed turn off the "spying" from the settings after you finish the full install (they don't give you all the options while installing!)
- I haven't used any of the integrated stuff like the store. Haven't found a way to uninstall them, but haven't been forced to use them either.
- The OS likes to reset default video/audio programs to its own defaults over VLC. Dunno if that's a W10 problem or VLC problem.
- The upgrade broke two programs I had (Daemon Tools and HWMonitor). Didn't need the first one cause you can mount without a program now, the second had a newer version that worked with W10. Most programs should work on W10 if they did on W7, and it's supposed to warn you if they won't (only warned me about Daemon Tools).
- Note that if you change your PC parts (I don't know the details of what's acceptable and what's not), you might be forced to buy a new copy of W10 because the license is for your current setup. It sucks.
- My laptop had a shit ton of OS related problems with Windows 8, haven't had any after upgrading to W10. We can all probably agree that 8 is the one you really don't want.
- If you're a gamer, some future games are going to be exclusives to Windows 10. The free upgrade will soon go away, after that it'll be expensive and not worth switching imo.

[Voldymort]

- Note that if you change your PC parts (I don't know the details of what's acceptable and what's not), you might be forced to buy a new copy of W10 because the license is for your current setup. It sucks.

what do you mean by that? like... the main ones or the ram/dvd/hard too?

also is the upgrade treated like a normal install ? aka do i need to format a hard drive and save the installer on a stick to run it from?

[Jowy]

- Note that if you change your PC parts (I don't know the details of what's acceptable and what's not), you might be forced to buy a new copy of W10 because the license is for your current setup. It sucks.

what do you mean by that? like... the main ones or the ram/dvd/hard too?

also is the upgrade treated like a normal install ? aka do i need to format a hard drive and save the installer on a stick to run it from?

I would assume the change would have to be something major like changing your motherboard, but that's just my guess. Maybe someone here knows more about the licenses.

The default way to install keeps all your files and programs as they are (at least it's supposed to and for me it did, but I would back up anything important anyway). You start it off from Windows Update and it does its thing. I think it also keeps the old OS so you can convert back to it. There's also a way to clean install W10 if that's what you want to do. Should be easy to find the instructions with a Google search.

[NobleHelium]

* Sometimes old programs work less well on new systems.

Have you personally had issues with this? Or with some not really old programs?

[Voldymort]

The default way to install keeps all your files and programs as they are (at least it's supposed to and for me it did, but I would back up anything important anyway). You start it off from Windows Update and it does its thing. I think it also keeps the old OS so you can convert back to it. There's also a way to clean install W10 if that's what you want to do. Should be easy to find the instructions with a Google search.

The win7 i have right now is a pirated one for which i disabled both the automatic update and the activation. can i move to win10 without any issues or do i need to wipe win7 first?

[Jkaen]

The free thing this month is upgrading licensed windows 7 and 8 machines

[Jowy]

What Jkaen said. Windows 10 itself is not free, only the upgrade from 7 or 8 is free (until the end of this month). Can't help with the piracy stuff.