Windows 10

[emjay]

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?