Windows 10 - why don't I give it a go?

It installed quickly and painlessly. Presumably as a result of disconnecting from the internet before commencing installation, there was no nagging to use a Microsoft account.

An incredible number of privacy-related settings needed attention, and the default was invariably the least private setting. Still, it got itself installed.

Nice and quick despite just one gig of RAM.

Until it wasn't.

Apart from the privacy concerns, W10 seems to specialise in deciding for itself when it will launch tasks, even resource-heavy ones. It ran an antivirus scan - first I knew of this was its smug announcement that it had done so.

A pop-up demanded that I check my privacy settings (at least one of which now mysteriously favoured lower privacy) so that it could prepare for an update to the Creator Edition (or something like that.) The pop-up wouldn't go away until the user (me) had obediently done Microsoft's bidding.

It's cruising for a bruising...

The browsers were configured (as are all browsers, I suppose) for the least private settings - allowing third party cookies, location reporting and so on. Again - at least these could be configured prior to connecting to the internet.

It was hard to find Internet Explorer. They really want you to use Edge.

An extra half a gig of RAM seemed to ease the slow-down briefly, but not for long. System interrupts and something called Windows Module Installer Worker seemed to be the chief culprits. A bit of a search suggested a restart. I told it to restart.

About twenty minutes ago. It's hanging on, "Getting Windows ready. Don't turn off your computer."

Not just grammatically dodgy, but infuriating, and if it isn't done by bedtime, it's just getting turned off. Why on earth not prompt users on shut down/restart to either let it go ahead with whatever it's planning, or to defer this until a more convenient time, in the meantime shutting down normally?

The whole thing seems designed very much for Microsoft's convenience, and not that of the user. Of course, privacy concerns and the lack of control over such functions as updating remain a real worry, too.

Right at the moment, I see very little prospect of investing in an expensive licence and activating it, though.

How's everybody else getting on with Windows 10? Hopefully, SOMEBODY loves it.

Message 1 of 25
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Windows 10 - why don't I give it a go?

How did you intall it? ie, what did you use?



It's life Jim, but not as WE know it.
Live long and prosper.

Message 2 of 25
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Windows 10 - why don't I give it a go?

How did you intall it? ie, what did you use?

 

I used a substantial level of optimism...

 

More prosaically - a virtual machine (VirtualBox) with a 32GB "hard drive" and allocated 1GB of RAM. A Windows 10 installation iso (I think it was something like the "Anniversary Edition") was mounted as a virtual DVD for the installation.

 

Leading on from my previous post - it finally restarted. I wanted to scan a couple of downloaded installation files (LibreOffice and VLC) with Defender. This has now been going on for over ten minutes - just like the old Microsoft Security Essentials I used to like but came to loathe.

 

Definitely bed-time, I think - might play some more tomorrow. I don't know how long it lasts before it commits sewage-pipe without "activation." XP and W7 used to give you about thirty days trying-out time, IIRC.

Message 3 of 25
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Windows 10 - why don't I give it a go?

So, you're just trying it out and will probably uninstall it before you are forced to activate it OR..... are you gonna let it run to see how long it'll continue to work?



It's life Jim, but not as WE know it.
Live long and prosper.

Message 4 of 25
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Windows 10 - why don't I give it a go?

No question of being forced to activate it, of course. It would be interesting to see how long it lasts before it starts nagging, I suppose.

 

TBH, my real curiosity involved the privacy settings and what they defaulted to (answer : not very private at all) on installation if one didn't act fast, and whether the wretched thing really gave little choice where updating was concerned (frankly, even worse than I expected with its grudging agreement to abide by "Active Hours" for update-related restarts. It only gives the option to make restarts off-limits for up to twelve hours.) As I discovered, if it's found an update it downloads it - and if you try to shut the machine down, it hogs it until the installation is complete. Toughies if you wanted to shut down, put the laptop away and go to bed. At least older versions of Windows gave the option to shut down without installing updates.

 

Needless to say, the "Use Express Settings" button is highlighted on installation. A conscious effort is necessary to "Customise." Following this reveals all sorts of stuff being sent back to the mothership. Telemetry can't be reduced to less than "basic" - for some reason, it doesn't explain exactly what that entails...

 

In all fairness, navigation is no worse than what I recall from Windows 8. The little tiles representing apps can be irritatingly hyperactive, though, flipping and generally irritating one with their, "Look at me, look at me."

 

A little like W8, it strikes me as an essentially nice operating system which has been made as irritating as possible for some reason. Additionally, I find the whole impression it gives to be one of total untrustworthiness (if that is a word.) I'm really not sure what data is collects nor where it sends it nor what happens to it once it gets there. The arrogant total assumption of control over the update process is very off-putting.

 

A couple of pluses have shown themselves. LibreOffice and VLC installation files were recognised by MS as kosher (same sort of thing as the old Vista/W7 user account control - it tells you whether it recognises the software publisher.) So far, at least, it seems useable without resorting to the Windows Store - with its need for a "Microsoft Account."

 

When I'm bored/irritated beyond belief, deleting the virtual machine takes seconds...

 

 

 

 

Message 5 of 25
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Windows 10 - why don't I give it a go?

I'm not "techie" so what's a virtual machine? What's the difference between an actual set-up and a "virtual" one?

 

Oh, and where did you get/download Win 10 from?

 

If you left your virtual set-up as you've got it now, wouldn't MS nag you for a while before either "forcing" you to activate it properly or they would stop it working?



It's life Jim, but not as WE know it.
Live long and prosper.

Message 6 of 25
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Windows 10 - why don't I give it a go?

I hate this board.

I hate browsers.

I hate my own clumsiness.

Another inadvertent "keyboard shortcut" has launched yet another post into cyber-limbo. I don't even know what I did.

*Ahem*

CD, I ain't "techie" at all - your abilities with these electronic enumerating gadgets invariably leaves me standing. I just like to try stuff out, and I'm fascinated by the way people and computers work (or don't) together.

If you want to try W10, it's on their site. I've a nasty feeling that if you visit it with a Windows machine, it might try to "update" your current system - so be careful. I downloaded it from this page, which was linked to in some online article or other:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10ISO?7d5c905c-2314-414e-8702-8441e26eb0ae=...

(Quote from that page: "You’ve been routed to this page because the operating system you’re using won’t support the Windows 10 media creation tool and we want to make sure you can download Windows 10.")

More about virtual machines from Wikipedia and from Oracle (who came up with VirtualBox):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_machine

https://www.virtualbox.org/

https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Virtualization

Essentially, a virtual machine is simply a piece of software which emulates a hardware computer, and allows an operating system to be run entirely separately from the "host" system on your computer. It's a pretend computer... The virtual computer can be experimented with, snapshots of it can be saved for restoration should you manage to destroy it (useful for virus testing, for instance) and so on.

It works best on computers with CPUs supporting virtualisation. I understand that this applies to most computers made over the past decade. It only works on two of my eight (?) year old Thinkpads - which gives some idea of how ancient my equipment is.

Obviously, resources have to be shared between the host and guest systems. You can choose how much RAM to allocate to the virtual machine (VM) - a modicum of control over CPU use is also available. (You'll have gathered by now that my knowledge of VMs is really very limited. I've done little more than dip my toes in the water.)

Very useful should you want to try, say, Windows 10, or even superior systems on your existing computer. At the moment, it seems to work happily on a computer with 4GB of RAM. Obviously, more would be better, although I suspect limited success could be achieved with even less - especially using some of the super-lightweight Linux distros, for instance.

With Windows 7's doom less than three years away, and 8.1's three years later, Windows users are going to have to make some hard decisions in the next few years.

My current intention is just to have a quick look at W10, and then delete it. I suppose it might be fun to see what happens if it's left. IIRC, the older versions gave you something like four weeks before spitting their dummies out.

Message 7 of 25
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Windows 10 - why don't I give it a go?

ME? With ability with these machines? Heck no, I'm just a user. I wanna use them not fiddle about with them.

 

Like my car, I wanna drive it not be constantly mucking about fixing things that didn't need "fixing" or "tuning".

 

I find these machines incredibly hard work for, what seems to me to be simple tasks. It's not logical.

 

I said the following a few times down the years:- A computer geek thinks it's cool to swing down the street going from branch to branch, swinging along the phone wires and going hand-over-hand along the the guttering before swinging in through the bathroom window.

 

Me? I just wanna walk down the street, go in the front door and walk up the stairs. Simple is best.

 

Now I could easily rub some folks up the wrong way by saying the next bit but I'm going to anyway. Computers and the accompanying software were developed by young people who were basically quite ignorant, they couldn't spell, their English was appalling and if there were two ways of doing things, the logical way and the convoluted, back-handed way they chose the latter. However with computing they were quite brilliant.

 

Bill Gates said recently that if there was one thing he could go back and do with a single keystroke it would be Ctrl+Alt+delete.............

 

Now I grew up with Valves (not transistors and ICs), you could almost imagine what was going on inside a valve and see all the bits. You could almost visualise what you wanted a valve to do having chosen it's family or type but when these new-fangled Integrated Circuits came along some could be made to do all sorts of things that the chip designer had never thought of. It would go something like "Ah-ha, if I ground pin one, apply a voltage to pin five and inject a 455khz signal in to pin twelve I can make it (the chip) do......................." When asked why on earth you'd want to make it do that you'd get an answer something like "Well it hasn't a use at the moment but it might have one day".

 

Same things with computers (and phones) and software, LOADS of things possible but although "clever", not something the majority of people want to do with them?



It's life Jim, but not as WE know it.
Live long and prosper.

Message 8 of 25
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Windows 10 - why don't I give it a go?

Come on OE, where are ya?

 

Now, this auto restart lark, do you mean that no matter what you're doing, if "it" decides that a restart is needed it'll just launch in to it no matter what else you're doing?

 

Now, I use MS Word (because folks demand it and moan if they have to "convert" what I write because I might have used something else) and it auto saves every so often but.... if this auto-restart lark started before either I'd "saved" or Word had auto saved, would what I'd written in the meantime be lost?

 

Another scenario is that I might be "working" on a photo, I could be cropping, straightening, improving the contast and sharpness along with a few other changes and if it suddenly decides to re-start, all that would be shut down and my workso far is then lost? If that's so, it doesn't sound very user-friendly?

 

OR.... will it ask you to save your work before launching the restart?



It's life Jim, but not as WE know it.
Live long and prosper.

Message 9 of 25
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Windows 10 - why don't I give it a go?

Hi, CD.

If you just want to use stuff and not fiddle about with it, then why not give Linux a try? I'd suggest Mint, but there are hundreds of other options (that being one of the biggest obstacles to widespread Linux adoption...)

Stable, secure, simple and reliable. Not perfect, of course, but neither is anything else in this life.

("Wanna"??? txtspk wns???lol???)

I must say, I have to agree that just because something can be done (eg some clever but unnecessary software trick) doesn't mean that it has to be done.

WRT the update problems - bear in mind I've only played with the OS for a few hours. Do a little research, and you'll find an awful lot of differing experiences on offer. A few examples:

https://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/2/2017/10/18/windows_fall_creators_update_is_here_and_the_new...

(Read on from the chap whose grandmother lost her recipe to a W10 restart - lots of conflicting comments)

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-update/windows-10-does-not-notify-to-sc...

http://www.thewindowsclub.com/turn-off-windows-update-in-windows-10

My impression is that it is supposed to ask you if it's OK to restart, but that this doesn't always happen eg if you happen to be away from the machine when the notification that it is about to restart appears. One would think that it would autosave anything being worked on, but it appears that this is not necessarily the case.

There are, of course, other considerations implicit in the automated updates with no user control to speak of. Imagine finding that your computer has restarted and shows you messages along the lines of, "Your latest update has been installed. Enter payment details to continue," "The following programs have been uninstalled for your protection. Click here to visit the Windows Store to find replacements. From now on, in the interests of your security, only applications installed from the Windows Store will be allowed to run. Make sure you have your credit card ready," "Your hardware is no longer supported in Windows. Click on this link to purchase our latest shiny-shiny starting at just £999" - and so on.

One hopes they wouldn't stoop to any of that but really, there's little to stop MS from trying to force people irreversibly into the MS "ecosystem" - your own reliance on Word shows just how successfully they have managed to make it difficult for folk to avoid using certain programs.

Hopefully I'm totally mistaken. but I have very real worries. And for my "real computing," I sincerely hope that I can continue to rely on whatever "flavour" of Linux best suits my needs.

Message 10 of 25
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Windows 10 - why don't I give it a go?

Right OE, you've had a few days to play with it now, any signs of those auto updates and restarts?



It's life Jim, but not as WE know it.
Live long and prosper.

Message 11 of 25
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Windows 10 - why don't I give it a go?

Not ignoring you, CD - one or two other things going on. I'll probably be back in a day or two with more gen.

 

Briefly - I sparked it up earlier, and it seemed awfully busy. A pop-up requested a restart. It had, at that stage, downloaded 2GB of something.

 

I was on my way out, so simply killed the "computer" - half expecting the "turn it off" approach to murder it.

 

When I returned, I started it. It worked - and with no further information (so far), slowly downloaded another 3.9GB - 5.9GB in all.

 

Mildly concerned, I looked up my user name and password to get into my broadband account (probably for the first time in two or three years.) It seems that my old account has a limit of 60 GB a month - and I'm already over 40. Most seems to have arrived since I started messing about with W10.

 

I don't think it's going to squat on my hard drive much longer...

Message 12 of 25
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Windows 10 - why don't I give it a go?

A bit restrictive to be on a limited download?

 

Surely MS should have thought of such users when committing them to such updates. What the heck was it doing with a near 6Gb D/L?

 

It's not more of those "improvements" that didn't need doing?

 

Reason for all my questions is that I'm wondering what I'd let myself in for if I went for Win 10.



It's life Jim, but not as WE know it.
Live long and prosper.

Message 13 of 25
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Windows 10 - why don't I give it a go?


@cee-dee wrote:

 

Now I could easily rub some folks up the wrong way by saying the next bit but I'm going to anyway. Computers and the accompanying software were developed by young people who were basically quite ignorant, they couldn't spell, their English was appalling and if there were two ways of doing things, the logical way and the convoluted, back-handed way they chose the latter. However with computing they were quite brilliant.

 


You've just reminded me of Chris Packham's TV programme "Asperger's and Me" (or similar)... where it was revealed that Silicone Valley goes out of its way to recruit staff from the autism spectrum.  I thought at the time "That explains a lot!", especially re post-Win7 Windows and smartphones.

 

I have Win10 on all my laptops, but they all have Start10 on them, it's a third-party "app" (yuk) costing $4.99* that gives you the Win7 interface.  The only problem with that is that I can't exactly follow instructions when I'm troubleshooting, but I manage.

 

*There is a free equivalent but when I tried it the font looked ragged.

 

 

Message 14 of 25
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Windows 10 - why don't I give it a go?

Hiya, thanks for that.

 

Now, over time I've briefly looked at Win 10 (then looked away quickly) and I didn't care for those desktop tiles. Is it true that you can change the desktop to have the same desktop icons of old?

 

Does Win 10 have it's own AV so that you don't "need" a separate AV program?

 

What do you mean "The front looked ragged"?

 

I use tabbed browsing, is that still on Win 10 or have you got to use a window for everything you have open?

 

Browsers? Are you forced in to Edge or Internet Explorer? Can I use other browsers? (I've never tried Chrome).



It's life Jim, but not as WE know it.
Live long and prosper.

Message 15 of 25
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Windows 10 - why don't I give it a go?

You can right-click on the "tiles" (one at a time) and "disappear" them - they all then lurk, alphabetically, in a menu which appears when you click on the Windows icon. (Probably still worth installing third party software to provide the sort of thing you're accustomed to, though.)

W10 has its own antivirus. It is the old Microsoft Security Essentials, as far as I can see, relabelled "Defender" (and quite different from the "Defender" found on W7 and earlier.) As for its efficacy relative to third party offerings - you'd need to look around.

You can use other browsers. It really, really tries hard to get you to use "Edge." I see no reason tabbed browsing would disappear, but honestly haven't tried IE or Edge in any depth.


CD, it looks horribly as though MS has already pretty much locked you in via "Word".

There's no easy way around it. You need to do some research, and decide for yourself. A lot of people are perfectly happy with W10. I suspect a lot of those have no idea (or interest in) the fact that they are using Windows 10.

A worrying number of folk have given up on privacy. "Privacy is dead - deal with it." Defeatist, or what? There are still huge question marks hovering over Windows 10 and Microsoft's attitude towards users' privacy, or  exploitation of their data.

It's a nice, lightweight operating system. However, it tries to "encourage" users to use certain features (its new browser, for instance, or the "Cortana" app, which relies heavily on learning a lot about user.) Nobody can say what Microsoft might make it do via a future update.

Default privacy settings do not reassure me.

The lack of control over updates (and I really - sorry - just don't trust Microsoft to have my best interests in mind as opposed to theirs) remains a serious turn-off. I tried the "Pro" version. I gather the "Home" edition is even less configurable.

After several attempts to apply a proffered update to a newer (feature-wise) version, and running up close to my monthly download limit, I think I'll give up for a while.

I keep ending up with a screen with a W10 logo (a sort of flat arrangement of four blue squares), 100% CPU use for three hours plus and nothing else.

Why on earth it has to download everything again on subsequent attempts, I know not.

Why don't I trust Windows 10?

Lack of control over updates. Goodness knows what a new update might bring. The most one can do is defer the wretched things. I'm not sure that even that is possible with the Home version.

Privacy/Data slurping. As far as I can see (much internet searching), Microsoft still hasn't said exactly what data are sent back to the Mothership, nor what they might do with those data.

What are their future intentions? I've no idea, and that worries me. There's nothing to stop them deciding that only approved applications will work on W10, for instance. The lack of control over the update process gives users little choice in this matter.

How long will they support my hardware? Again, I don't know - they originally said something along the lines of "for the supported lifetime of the hardware." How do they know how long my hardware is supported for, and by whom? Do they mean that when they decide they no longer want to support my CPU, that's it?

It would be nice if @antipasta were still around. He liked and knew W10, and would offer compelling counter arguments.

Meantime, if you've not already done much internet searching, here are a few articles to get you started:

https://www.computerworld.com/article/3219835/microsoft-windows/10-reasons-you-shouldnt-upgrade-to-w...

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/windows-10-five-reasons-to-avoid-microsofts-flagship-os/

http://www.itpro.co.uk/operating-systems/25802/17-windows-10-problems-and-how-to-fix-them-1/page/0/1

https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3016575/two-years-after-windows-10-windows-7-is-still-thre...

PS - Firefox installed and worked fine.

FWIW, I, personally, consider both W10 and Chrome inherently inimical to user privacy. One really needs to look closely into the privacy settings (assuming one cares about that sort of thing) on both.

W10 plus Chrome? Gargling scream of horror from yours truly...

Message 16 of 25
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Windows 10 - why don't I give it a go?


@cee-dee wrote:

Hiya, thanks for that.

 

Now, over time I've briefly looked at Win 10 (then looked away quickly) and I didn't care for those desktop tiles. Is it true that you can change the desktop to have the same desktop icons of old?

 

Does Win 10 have it's own AV so that you don't "need" a separate AV program?

 

What do you mean "The front looked ragged"?

 

I use tabbed browsing, is that still on Win 10 or have you got to use a window for everything you have open?

 

Browsers? Are you forced in to Edge or Internet Explorer? Can I use other browsers? (I've never tried Chrome).


I just did you a detailed, numbered reply and the system lost it because I wasn't signed in *wail*.

 

So here's a quicker version.

 

Start10 (or an alternative) give you a Win7 desktop, or you can do it manually as instructed by OE.

 

Windows Media Player and a picture program are built-in.  I use VLC for all AV, and IrfanView for pictures.  There may be an additional snapper besides Snipping Tool (which I've never used), I use Greenshot for screenshots, which I do a lot of.

 

The freebie's font looked very low-resolution, it was quite distracting.  I only tried it the once, maybe I was unlucky?

 

Tabbed browsing is no different on Win10 from Win7, all browsers including Edge.

 

Browsers installed here = Edge, IE11, Waterfox(FF), Chrome, Opera.  IE is hidden in Windows Accessories, but can be pinned to taskbar so it doesn't look like a poor relation.

 

=======

 

You need to go thru Settings, it's surprising what you can change/enable/disable.  (One essential was to turn off what suddenly brings out a sidebar if your mouse strays to the right, there are others.)

 

I expect that you can still roll back to your old OS if you can't abide Win10, it used to be achievable in the first 30 days, after that you were lumbered.

 

Another thing to mention - I was dreading being unable to use my freebie video editor - not only was it built for Win7 only, but it's a very out-of-date version of the Win7 version, if you see what I mean, because "they" ruined it with updates.  However, as with other "old" progs (eg my paid-for supplementary video editor, which I was assured would not work in Win10 and I'd have to pay for a new version), I installed by right-clicking on the exe file and selecting Compatibility mode, it works fine.

 

I do very little correspondence outside of email and have no call for Microsoft Office, I'm happy with WordPad.  However, my best friend complained about my WordPad shopping lists, so recently I took a nothing-to-lose chance and bought "Office Professional Plus 2016- W/scrap, Genuine & lifetime keys"  from eBay for under £3, and it's legit Microsoft.  Don't like it tho, compared to how I remember it from many years ago.  Was hoping to be able to send you a link but the seller hasn't traded for several months.

 

Now I've gone on and on and probably missed answering something you asked !!!

 

😘 

 

 

 

 

Message 17 of 25
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Windows 10 - why don't I give it a go?

Evening All, thanks or remembering me OE!

Still happy with win 10. I limit MS data access a bit ,dont bother with siritana; the utility given half a poor brain seems much more for MS than me.

I still use FF most, then chrome, IE, then edge, more seems overkill.

Like Si8llabub I find 10 great for old progs snd rarely fail - other thann scanner progs serving a 30 year old xerox

 

Raise a small glass

Cheers

Message 18 of 25
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Windows 10 - why don't I give it a go?

Hi, anti - good to see you back in these parts!

 

When you've a moment, would you be able to give CD a bit more of a run-down? (His queries show the sort of thing he needs.)

 

The lack of control over what it's doing, and the fact that I just don't know what it's sending back to the mothership, continue to put me off. CD might be less concerned about that, though, and more concerned about things like reliability, ease of use, lack of glitches and so on.

 

I've given up on it for the time being. There's still a week to run on my present "billing period," and thanks to this little experiment, I'd used 48GB of my 60GB data allowance by Thursday. The highest I've managed in the past three months other than that is 22 GB - which included downloading and trying out a few Linux distros.

 

For some reason, its attempts to perform a feature update result in a sustained simple splash screen and 100% CPU useage. A bit of searching suggests that this might be rectifiable, depending on what's causing it - but it always restarts by downloading a whole lot more stuff. Why it can't just stash its downloads until the update is successful, goodness knows.

Message 19 of 25
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Windows 10 - why don't I give it a go?

Thank you for that OE.

 

As mentioned before, I use MS Word for WP and I switched to that from MS Works because people I sent magazine articles to complained that they had to convert my Works files to Word.

 

My Works program is 20 years old (!!!!!) and I've had it on several computers during that time. I managed to convert my Works files to Word on this and my previous (Vista) computer but I exclusively use Word for writing and use Works for letters etc.

 

Now, Word is expensive.... I used a "Student" version but I believe it will only "work" on one computer. If I tried to install it on another computer using my existing Product Key I don't suppose it'd load?

 

Another thing is, Word uses a file extension and when I last installed Word the file extension was different to the previous version and I forget what I had to do to "convert". The current file extension is .docx so if I took the plunge and went for (shock, horror) Win 10 I'd have to get another copy of Word (with a different Product Key) so would MS have changed the file extension again for a newer version?

 

PS, I've been meaning to say this for a while but keep forgetting..... With regard to Win 10 "sending back data to the mother-ship"..... won't they be getting sooooooo much "data" that no-one will see it unless "someone" specifically looks for it from a particular user?

 

As no-one knows exactly what's "sent back", no-one can fathom out what actual use is all this stuff to MS?



It's life Jim, but not as WE know it.
Live long and prosper.

Message 20 of 25
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