nearly decision time: Windows 10 or Windows 7?

Any reason not to simply stay with Windows 7?  Windows 7 seems to "just work," and that's really all I want from a Windows OS.
 
Also, Amazon is selling Windows 7 for pretty cheap these days: as little as $45 with Amazon Prime.

The only advantage that I'm aware of (and not 100% on because I just haven't really looked to hard) is that W10 comes with some pretty good built-in AV software. I've had MILD interaction with 10 so far, but have a laptop being delivered tomorrow that has W10 on it... It's certainly moving hard in the direction of a "cloud-based" OS.
 
Here's a guide of things you might want to consider turning off with W10:
http://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-secure-windows-10-the-paranoids-guide

Personally while W10 can look like an old desktop; it is more like a tablet to me and does have it's teeth in to the cloud.  (or the other way around).   It does expect the user to be connected to MS OneDrive whether you are using your cell phone, tablet or desktop.    (same with all of those chit chat things and lately the "care to share?" stuff is annoying).
 
I have switched back to MS Mobile now and missed it a bit from the way different MS Mobile of yesteryear.
 
It is useful for my touchscreen consoles stripped to the bare bones nub.  I take only what I want from it.
I can run Kodi, HSTouch, Kinect, Alexa, Netflix, Amazonia et all all at the same time on a larger LCD monitor which I like.
 
Here utilize only Kodi Buntu running on Intel for my media boxes.  Many years ago it was only MS media center.
 
I have now gone to Ubuntu desktop for my laptop and run VMs of W7 (skipping 8) and W10 taking what I want from it then shutting it down when I am not using it.  I currently still run Microsoft SAPI voice fonts in a VM talking to the Homeseer 3 running in Ubuntu.  They work fine together; well and I can continue to utilize my collection of MS Voice fonts. 
 

I noticed a nice speed improvement on and old HP dual core laptop when I installed WIN 10 over WIN Vista.
 
Mike.

Windows 7 with a Haswell CPU will be supported till 2020. Newer procs (Skylake) will lose W7/W8 support next year, because Microsoft is doing whatever they can to get people into W10 for some reason. 
 
Nothing wrong with Win 7.

I have a five year old motherboard with onboard video that the mfg will not support with win 10 drivers. As a result I have to purchase a video card or throw the mobo out.
 
Win 10 continually turns off my laptop PC. There doesn't seem to be anything that can be done despite every power saving switch being turned off. Win 10 still has some quirky problem with the desktop GUI on some machines.
 
Win 10 looks like something out of the 80's again with it's square cornered graphics and mostly grey toned windows. They did eliminate a lot of the fancy fluff that was just pretty junk on the screen. It still offers online help for network cards not working, though.

What are you using it for?
 
To me, W10 rocks for my surface pro 4, switching between tablet mode & PC mode is key.
 
But for my desktop & laptop, i'm quite content with W7 on one, W8 on the other. Like you said, it just works.  And at $45, i'd save the $$.

I have a Mac and run W7 in a VirtualBox VM for the one W-only program I have to reprogram my Elk M1G. A 6 yo Core2 Quad machine runs Linux for TimeMachine backups and ZoneMinder NVR.

Interesting thread... I need to get a new laptop (old ones keyboard is getting a bit flaky) and was trying to decide between W7 and W10. My desktop is a dual boot W7 and Ubuntu machine. I use W7 mostly just cause I am used to it but have done enough in Ubuntu to be comfortable with it as well. Laptop is for my wife and she needs windows.

I don't want cloud based stuff although I am using one cloud based CAD/CAM program (Fusion 360 - great free program BTW for companies under $100k).

Thinking I will just stick with W7 for the new laptop. Doesn't sound like any good reason for W10 for me except possible end of support. I need to check the processors and possible quick end of W7 support for them.

My desktop is a dual boot W7 and Ubuntu machine.
 
I was doing this for a long time with my laptop.  Noticed more and more would use Ubuntu.
 
Now it's just Ubuntu with portable (sort of) Wintel OS flavors running in VMs.  Been able to install a some older wintel software in wine which suits me fine here. 
 
Here very much still using the Office suite for this or for that....and just testing the waters of the Ubuntu office stuff...
 
Across the OS's the internet browser preference here is Firefox configured identically so it doesn't matter.  I do keep my browsing stuff in sync; but not to the cloud.
 
Utilize a multi monitor wide screen display today on the desktop such that I can run multiple multiple OS's separately vmwise.

I had a number of machines, some running Win 7 Pro, some Win 8.1 Pro.
 
I recently upgraded all to Win 10 Pro and am very pleased.
 
I did install StarDock Start10 and StarDock Fences on all machines.
 
YMMV.

This is the easiest question of all....
 
Get Windows 7 then get your free upgrade to Windows 10. Wipe it out and install Windows 10 as a clean install and take an image of it. Now, either go back to Win7 or stay on 10. If you ever need to reinstall you have an activated clean install of 10 as an image and media of 7.

video321 said:

This is the easiest question of all....
 
Get Windows 7 then get your free upgrade to Windows 10. Wipe it out and install Windows 10 as a clean install and take an image of it. Now, either go back to Win7 or stay on 10. If you ever need to reinstall you have an activated clean install of 10 as an image and media of 7.

Click to expand...

 
I've been wondering about this...  and if I use a 7 installation to upgrade to 10, if there would be issues using an OEM installation disc and going back to 7 if I ever wanted to. My concern wasn't if it would install - surely it would, but rather if the Windows activation would work with 7 again. I wasn't sure if Microsoft would somehow ear-mark the key for 10 use. I currently have (2) bare metal machines that are running W7, and both of them have W7 VMs. Wanted to maintain the 7 flexibility if I have issues with 10 in the future.

The part that always gets me about Windows upgrades is that an OS like Win 7 has had every module upgraded probably a dozen times so why is a new version number needed?
 
Anybody actually use the new half-baked Win 10 browser? I used it for about 4 or 5 conned trials and then went looking for a way to lock it out. and declare it to virus status. as fast as I could.  If I was forced into using that mystic PoS  I would have reinstalled Win 7 or XP and bought a faster processor.

I decided to update most of the computers to Windows 10.  I'm keeping one as Windows 7 only because Windows 10 uses a vastly inferior driver for its particular graphics card.  I'm also keeping another one as Windows 7 for the free Media Center (no annual fees for the TV guide) to use for SiliconDust, though I've read Microsoft has "obsoleted" Media Center and hence I suppose the free updates will stop some day (not sure when).  I guess when that happens I'll flip it over to Linux, or perhaps replace it altogether as hardware continues to become smaller, more power efficient, and almost dirt cheap (well, if trends continue anyway).