Been win7 for a while. Ive done some research on win10 and many people have a ton of complains on it, including telemtry, bugs, bloatware, searching, etc.
Was the switch worth it in your opinion ? Is there anything I should do to improve quality of life immediately upon install?
Telemetry - this is not a concern in my opinion. Trying to suppress this can break Windows or cause undesirable effects. Have a look at your internet traffic. How much evidence is there?
Bloatware- well, MS is delivering more and more universal apps with builds. The good thing, apparently, is that from the Creator's build on if you uninstall one of MS's apps, it stays uninstalled. Personally, I leave them and Cortana alone most of the time.
Bugs - yes, some people experience difficulties, and MS has at times given us an erratic experience with updates. I've got one problem I know about having just upgraded to the Creator's edition, and it may be one I can't solve - restart to System restore or Command Prompt or Startup repair (advanced recovery options) don't work. Very odd.
1. Coming from Win 7, use Classic Shell as your start menu. The Win 10 start menu will NOT properly support more deeply nested start menus, and strips out the shortcuts and lists them alphabetically. Think Help Help Help Help - all for different progs from different folders. Etc.
C Shell has better and more configurable search features, supports drag 'n drop, and is configurable in many ways. Win 10's lets you see tiles. You can use both with CS installed.
2. Turn off distribution of updates to other PCs in Settings
3. Use disk imaging routinely. (Wise with any Windows OS)
4. Get control of your updates.
Set updates to Notify (see the Tutorial on disabling Windows update, or use Winaero's free tweaker), and set Active Hours (in Settings) to ward off restarts when you're normally using the PC.
If Pro, use the Defer Feature updates option so you've control of when you upgrade to the next build.
6. Appearance
Make sure your title bars are coloured (there's a tutorial here) so you can easily distinguish in focus and background windows.
People have done some customisation by various means- the Advanced Display dialogue is no more. Superfly's SMACC utility helps there (from this forum). See examples in the Customisation section. Options are far more limited than with Win 7.
Example: my file explorer, using Aeroglass & Quizo's Qttabbar and Actual Window Manager for very useful titlebar buttons (on apps and programs). (I've used other changes to colour backgrounds elsewhere). I've still to reapply changes to imageres.dll to restore many Win 7 icons since the upgrade - I use one program to do that + manual replacement of the file.
There will be other points - that's a starter.
Advantages? Well, security, using UEFI + GPT - more robust. The apps - when you find one you like- can give a smooth feel graphically- but you can of course continue to use desktop programs which are usually more feature rich.
It's interesting that there is probably a switch from searching the internet for freeware to using the Store, particularly for people coming new to Win 10. Universal apps do NOT use exe's or dll's or the registry. Securing their data and keeping it off C: may not be possible or practicable.
You can still use Win 10 very similarly to Win 7 in practice, if you choose.
Note there are 4 partitions for a UEFI Win 10 installation.
Absolutely not worth, it can be if you like the "store interface and tecnology" (cloud service).
If you plan to use it "as windows 7" win 7 is of course better.
If you ned a "classic OS", not a network OS like chrome OS / android, win 10 is
simply getting in you way with bloatware, less control, bugs etc. (see the list of
dalchina workarounds, not exaustive) at least use win 10 pro that let you regain
some control.
I think all the store app are garbage/bloatware; they where so hated in win 8,
not so different in win 10.
I do not think someone ever thought to remove "paint" or "notepad" from win 7,
yet the internet is "full" of tutorials on how to uninstall APP from windows 10
with "obscure" powershell commands, annoying ads (candy crash, empire etc.
several dumb games displayed in your start menu)
Sadly there basically is a monopoly and win 7 is really getting old.
Make an image backup of your Windows 7. Upgrade to Windows 10 and see what you think. If you don't like it, then restore your Windows 7 from the backup.
I was on W7 until june 2016 when I bought a new computer with W10 on it. I have no complaints. In fact I like it and find it easty to use (and I used to have a Mac until 2 1/2 years ago). It does what I want (although I am a light user). All it's screens look messy and inelegant compared to a Mac, but it works (for me).
I used to use Windows XP, because of how simple it was, and then I upgraded to Windows 10 once Microsoft announced that they will no longer be making security patches for Windows XP.
Windows 10 is a visually nice operating system. I have managed to find many different apps to customize my Windows 10 to make it look simple with a simple Start button (like in XP). Sometimes when new updates are released, yes, Windows 10 kinda loses some "quality" to it, but then eventually it somehow gets fixed on its own over time.
The only thing that matters is once you customize your Windows 10 to make it most productive and effective for you, then it is a wonderful operating system. I will attach a few screen shots of what I've done to customize Windows 10.
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