O/T - should I upgrade to Windows 10? (Free upgrade offer expires tomorrow 29th July)

[clippedgull]

i upgraded earlier this month and it was seamless. Nice operating system.

As said above , nothing to lose if you dont like it then you can roll back to your previous OS within 30 days of installation.

 

[binky]

I have upgraded 3 machines to Windows 10.

1) A 4 core 3.8Ghz desktop (8GB RAM) (From Win8.1)
2) A dual core 1.8Ghz Lenovo X61 laptop (3MB RAM) (From Win7)
3) A single core 1.6 Ghz Lenovo X60 laptop (3MB RAM) (From Win7)

All took a looong time to complete the upgrade process. The desktop PC was quickest at circa 4 hours.
The laptops took over 28 hours.

One of the laptops, the single core X60, was running like a dog under Win7. There is a problem which afflicts Window Update (svchost hogging 100% of CPU) on some Win7 machines, which after a lot of research, appears to be unfixable without a bare metal install, after which it's 50/50 whether the problem comes back.
MS have no interest in fixing this Win7 problem, so an upgrade to Win10 seemed to be worth a gamble.

On all 3 machines Win10 is running fine, and fast.
Drivers, even for the ancient laptops were all found with no issues.
Older software, which took a lot of registry hacking in Windows 8, just worked under Win 10.

However, apart from Directx 12 support, (for the gaming desktop), I have not yet found a good reason to upgrade from either Win7 or Win8.1.

Performance is similar, there are no "must have" new OS functions...

The downside to Win 10, is that you lose a bit o control over your PC.
Specifically, the patches and updates, which are now mandatory, in that you cannot choose not to install any given patch or update.
This, alongside the "spyware" built into the operating system, may give you cause for concern.
Particularly, if you have spent some time, as I did, ensuring that all of the user configurable items "reporting home" to Microsoft were turned OFF, and then after a patch was installed automatically, they mysteriously turned themselves back ON, and resumed reporting my browsing habits, amongst other things, back to Seattle.
As the old adage goes... If you are not paying for it, then YOU are the product.

I hate the new "Start panel/button", but installing Classic Shell means you can configure the start button behaviour to something that resembles Win7, and works the way you want it to.
I also hate the new "flat" window design, which makes it difficult to discern whare a windows top bar is on a cluttered screen, but I'm getting used to that.

TLDR
Win10 works fine, but unless you must have DirectX12, then there is no compelling reason to upgrade from Win7 or 8.1. (...and MS spy on you, and you cant turn it off).

 

[Grizz]

Won't let me do it from 7 to 10. A load of Samsung bloatware stops it. Remove that and it still says you can't upgrade due to the bloatware, so sticking with 7 no matter what