Been playing with it for a week now on my spare laptop.

IT SUCKS!

The tremendous amount of overhead (CPU and HDD) makes it consistently unresponsive. I am sure a large part is all those fucking popups and commercials every time I click something. AND it does not like my RADIUS server, which makes it completely useless for me. (XP and WIN7 had no problem).

Anyway, back to WIN7. I expected nothing less from microsoft, but it was a fun ride. (not really!)

(September 7, 2015 at 6:53 am)bennyboy Wrote:

(September 6, 2015 at 9:42 pm)Cthulhu Dreaming Wrote: Well, when you activate a product key, it's tied to a "fingerprint" of your installed hardware at Microsoft (AFAIK this has been done since XP).  Apparently when activation occurs on the new install, it finds the product key based on that stored fingerprint.

So your MAC gets sent up to the mothership.  Not scary at all.

This doesn't bode well for pirated copies, obviously, or people who reuse their old Windows CD on new computers.

It doesn't use the MAC, but it does send "something" to the mother ship. It has since activation started being a thing.

Despite my bias against it, I'm actually quite tempted to give Windows 10 a try after reading this very informative article:

http://www.howtogeek.com/220957/no-windo...y-instead/

I particularly like the idea of it being a rolling release - the last version of Windows, ever - so that five, ten years from now everyone has the same OS, as up to date as it can be. It's not that different from the distro of Linux I use, which is also a rolling release.

Of course there are privacy concerns with it but I can't see any major difference between what they're doing and what Google already does with gmail and Android - privacy invasion for the sake of providing targeted ads. It's not a good thing in any case, but I'm perfectly used to it with Android and Google and it doesn't hugely bother me, so this would just be seeing the M$ side of it, and frankly if M$ didn't do something like this I think they'd be phased out by Google, so from a business perspective it makes perfect sense for M$.

I love Android and the Play store way of doing things. I think it makes perfect sense for users and developers alike to have a centralised place to create, sell, and buy software. And just as the Kindle store allows new and unbacked authors to self-publish, the Play store allows newbie developers to have a crack at app development (as I did) and have just as many opportunities as everyone else to make it big (or get bored and give up ). And I'm perfectly happy with apps being ad-funded as well, and in a way I think it's a very good thing because it encourages developer's to offer fully or near fully working software and users to have the opportunity to fully test that software before committing to paying to remove the ads and/or get extra features. The ads are no huge inconvenience and I'm perfectly happy to stick with the free version of some of my apps because I don't need the extra features... I get free software and they get paid, in the overall scheme of things, by the ads... everybody wins.

So, since it seems that Windows 10 is just like this, with its own Windows Store and centralised platform for development, it doesn't seem that different from what I'm already used to with Android and Linux to a lesser but freer extent (in Linux you get your software, which is all free (but no ads in sight) and open source, from 'repositories' which are not that different from the concept of appstores; a centralised location). Of course it means buying into the M$ ecosystem but I've already done that with Android and don't feel tied to it in any major sense. I'll still keep my Linux installation but there's no harm in trying this out as well, and it's quite exciting just to have another appstore to play with.

At the moment I use Windows 7 and Linux. Apparently Windows 7 mainstream support ended in January this year and its extended support (i.e. security updates only) will end five years later in January 2020 (and for Windows 8 it's 2018 and 2023 respectively). So just one quick question to anyone, is it possible to revert back to a Win 7 installation if it doesn't work out and if so, how would you do it? I have backup an image of the drive with Windows 7 to restore back to but would that be enough or would M$ have something on their end saying I'd already upgraded and not allow it?

(September 21, 2015 at 8:23 am)emjay Wrote: So just one quick question to anyone, is it possible to revert back to a Win 7 installation if it doesn't work out and if so, how would you do it? I have backup an image of the drive with Windows 7 to restore back to but would that be enough or would M$ have something on their end saying I'd already upgraded and not allow it?

Did it.

(September 21, 2015 at 6:19 pm)IATIA Wrote:

(September 21, 2015 at 8:23 am)emjay Wrote: So just one quick question to anyone, is it possible to revert back to a Win 7 installation if it doesn't work out and if so, how would you do it? I have backup an image of the drive with Windows 7 to restore back to but would that be enough or would M$ have something on their end saying I'd already upgraded and not allow it?

Did it.

Yep, you can absolutely do this, as long as you have installation media and an appropriate product key.

(September 21, 2015 at 6:19 pm)IATIA Wrote:

(September 21, 2015 at 8:23 am)emjay Wrote: So just one quick question to anyone, is it possible to revert back to a Win 7 installation if it doesn't work out and if so, how would you do it? I have backup an image of the drive with Windows 7 to restore back to but would that be enough or would M$ have something on their end saying I'd already upgraded and not allow it?

Did it.

Cool   I saw your post above - you really really didn't like it? I do think I need to try it, see for myself, because I've never seen anything of Microsoft's answer to Google Play and all that. But good to know that I can revert, cheers.

(September 21, 2015 at 6:28 pm)Cthulhu Dreaming Wrote:

(September 21, 2015 at 6:19 pm)IATIA Wrote: Did it.

Yep, you can absolutely do this, as long as you have installation media and an appropriate product key.

Well it came installed on the laptop when I bought it but no disc. And the product key... it's gotta be somewhere, probably on the bottom of the laptop or I might have to email the vendor. But I do have a backup image I could restore to but are you saying that wouldn't work?

ETA: Yeah, I've got the product key in control panel>system. But I think I'll write that down just in case I need it separately.

Not sure, haven't tried to restore an image. I just did a bare install (and I didn't use an OEM product key). There's enough variability in how product keys are handled that I can't say "yep, that'll work" until I see it happen, or someone who's in a position to know says so.

No need for any of that.
With win 10 the revert back to win 7 is a one click automatic solution.

(September 21, 2015 at 6:46 pm)Cthulhu Dreaming Wrote: Not sure, haven't tried to restore an image.   I just did a bare install (and I didn't use an OEM product key).   There's enough variability in how product keys are handled that I can't say "yep, that'll work" until I see it happen, or someone who's in a position to know says so.  

In other words, you want me to be the guinea pig?  Anyway, would you recommend giving it a go? Do you like it? (as opposed to Win 7 or Linux)