Well, that was painless - Windows 10

[sid]

Taken the plunge today to upgrade our two laptops to W10. My wife's was running W8.1 which I thought was horrible, mine was on W7.

Both machines converted in about an hour and are running well. W10 has a quite familiar feel if you are a W7 user, and if you are a W8 user, well, it's good to be back in the land of the sane!

[mint]

Thank you, Sid!  I was dithering until someone says something about it first[:D]

[andyh4]

Just a word of warning.

The upload is likely to uninstall any non Microsoft anti-virus programs you have and replace them with Defender. If you are happy with that no problem. If not you will have to manually reinstall your old software.

And of course MS will not actually tell you that it has uninstalled your programs.

[sid]

Hello Mint 

I've found a couple of oddities today, nothing major though. Before you do anything it's worth checking that the software you use currently (they have this really irritating habit of calling them "apps" now Grrrrr) is compatible with W10. You can do that here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/compatibility/CompatCenter/Home

Most recent stuff either will already be OK or you can get updates. It could be a problem for some older software where it's not financially worthwhile (can't be a**ed, in reality; pardon me) for the supplier to upgrade their products.

It's early days but I've never taken to W8 and when I have to do something, anything, on my wife's machine it drives me mad trying to find out how. So I took this decision (risk) to put both machines on the same platform. So far, so good.

Errr.... don't hold me responsible if it doesn't work, I'm just saying that it's OK for me ! [geek]

 

[sid]

[quote user="andyh4"]Just a word of warning. The upload is likely to uninstall any non Microsoft anti-virus programs you have and replace them with Defender. If you are happy with that no problem. If not you will have to manually reinstall your old software. And of course MS will not actually tell you that it has uninstalled your programs.[/quote]

I think it's supposed to warn you. I stopped using AVG a few months ago as it was slowing everything down, and I had switched to MS Security Essentials. Defender is the W10 replacement.

 

 

[Hereford]

Veering slightly off subject a bit (sorry): We had MS security essentials and kept it all updated etc.  Problems with computer left us pulling our hair out. Told son virus checker said "no viruses".  Installed Avira - 7 viruses found and 72 dodgy files. We are pretty sure we know where they came from as we rarely download, always read and send email as "webmail", but are very disappointed that nothing was flagged up by MS S E.

All cleared now but a lot of hassle. We are keeping Avira... Not having Windows 10 until sure that bugs are fixed.

[Gardengirl]

I know several people who have moved seamlessly to W10 from W7 and a few from 8.1.

However, one friend has changed back to 8.1 because of problems with emails, which he can't send or receive; he went on his ISP forum and found 4 pages of posts from others with the same problem. He uses Plusnet; just a word of warning in case anyone uses Plusnet, and of course other ISPs may have problems when changing over.

[mint]

I'm going to do all my banking, shopping and such like before downloading[I]

Sure as hell this W8 is doing my head in.

BTW, any special ritual for turning the computer off with W10?

NOT joking as I still sometimes cannot turn my computer off readily as I cannot get the settings icon to come on and then I have to google and try other ridiculously complicated procedure just to finish my session[:-))]

[andyh4]

Turning off in W10. Click on the window icon bottom left, then click on power and turn off.

In W8 the infallible method for shutting down when all else fails is to turn off all programs and then hold the start button on until the unit shuts down - around 5 seconds.

[AnOther]

[quote user="gardengirl "]one friend has changed back to 8.1 because of problems with emails, which he can't send or receive[/quote]I fail to see how the OS itself could or would prevent the sending and receiving of emails.

What are they using for email ?

[Gardengirl]

He uses Plusnet, as I mentioned in the post.

[AnOther]

Plusnet is an ISP and although I'm sure they have a mail service it does not automatically follow that they use it [;-)]

Not a Widows 10 issue then but Plusnet's

[Gardengirl]

[quote user="AnOther"]Plusnet is an ISP and although I'm sure they have a mail service it does not automatically follow that they use it [;-)]

Not a Widows 10 issue then but Plusnet's

[/quote]

I know I should have had an early night last night - brain failure!

He's on Microsoft Outlook.

Apparently Firefox which we use should be OK, but not changing for a while yet.

[AnOther]

If there were any significant problems with Outlook in W10 you can bet your bottom dollar the world would know about them and they'd be fixed pretty smartish so it sounds more like like a configuration problem on your friends machine.

In any case Outlook is only a mail client which you configure to act as a front end for the actual email service or services whomever it or they are with, of itself it cannot prevent email from working.

Who is their email A/C actually with, Plusnet or somebody else, whomever it is they should always be able to access their mail directly with them.

[dave21478]

I upgraded to 10, but it turned into a pain in the ass.

HP laptop maybe 3 years old, came with 8 as standard. I had similar issues when 8 went to 8.1, but its worse with 10.

Firstly the sound - on the laptop speakers it was ok, but those speakers are rubbish. When connected to the Hifi it sounded terrible with all bass lost, just a treble hiss. Various fannying with settings and instructions from Google found a solution that is better but it doesnt sound as good as previously. The volume is weird now, too. System sounds are normal, but youtube or other web sounds are insanely loud, needing system volume turned down to 5% and the youtube volume down to minimum to be bearable, which then leaves system sounds pretty much inaudible.

Also when I plug into the telly with the HDMI lead, the display edges were lost beyond the edge of the tv screen. Messing with the resolution got it working, but for some reason I need a different setting for each screen (original laptop and big tv) which I didnt need before. As such, it will now only display one or the other, but cant do both at the same time, which is an inconvenience when starting a film on the big screen.

Probably driver problems for this model of laptop rather than a general windows problem, but it chaffs my nut sack that in the year 2015 stuff still doesnt just work.

[sid]

My Outlook is working fine, also Chrome and "Edge" the new browser. This new browser doesn't support plug-ins so ActiveX and Java are out, but you can click to switch the browser window to IE11 so it's not really a problem.

The one annoying thing I've found, and it's not a Microsoft issue, is that my new camera will not connect wirelessly now when it was OK in W7. I'm disappointed that Canon didn't sort this out, it's not as if there hasn't been any warning and this is a new/current model of camera. I can still use the USB cable and to be honest it seems quicker that way.

[AnOther]

Have you tried the Canon compatibility checker:

http://www.canon.co.uk/support/consumer_products/operating_system_information/

[sid]

ANO, Yes, I tried that, but too late! To be honest I assumed that a camera released at the end of last year would be sufficiently high up their list for software compatibility.

As I said, I'm disappointed; Epson have released drivers for my 11-year old RX500 printer already!

 This is what the Canon site says: "Canon has not yet determined if this product will be compatible with the operating system selected. Please refer back to this site in the near future for updates."

The camera has a WiFi function for downloading photos; that's the bit that doesn't work, whereas it was fine under W7. I can live with using the USB until (if !!) an update comes along.

[nomoss]

A few months ago I bought a laptop running W7 to take with us in the camper van, to check email and banks etc. while away. At home I use a PC running XP, and turn on the laptop occasionally to update it and its antivirus.

Some time ago I reserved W10, after the information on "Get W10" informed me that the laptop system is compatible.

After it became available I "unreserved" it, but apparently too late, as after I had turned on the laptop one day I found it was happily installing W10, although I have Update set to download but let me install.  I stopped the download and closed Update, but next time I switched the laptop on it continued the download, so I left it alone and ended up being "upgraded" anyway.

I don't use the laptop, but check its functions occasionally. When I noticed it still had Widows Live Mail 11, which I had thought I'd lose, I checked it was working by sending emails between our two machines, so the WiFi was working at that time.

I switched the laptop on this morning and noticed a little red "x" over the WiFi symbol, with the message "A network cable is unplugged". The available troubleshooting procedures found nothing of any use. I moved the laptop next to the router in case it was out of range, and also turned the router off and on again - no difference. My PC is connected via an ethernet cable, as it doesn't have WiFi capability and I didn't want to mess with WiFi USB adapters to check the WiFi on that machine, as they have caused too many problems in the past.

I tried to Restore, but found it was turned off by default and no Restore Points were available, but found that I could return to W7.

Of the two possibilities - that the Livebox WiFi had stopped working, or that the WiFi adapter in the laptop was incompatible with W10, I decide that the second was more likely, so restored to W7, which took about ten minutes.

The WiFi connection is now working perfectly, and as I did not find anything exciting about W10 nor anything that improved my experience, I will stay with W7 for the forseeable future [:)]

[Gardian]

When over in the UK at Christmas, I splashed out and bought a new PC to replace our 12yo 'banger' that was running under XP. It had become virtually unusable, so this was to be major progress!

Got a new desktop from PC World, with W10 pre-installed. - Well, it isn't actually pre-installed - you come back 2 days later once they've done it !

Anyway, the default browser is (was) Microsoft Edge. Once we got back over here, I left everything in the box for a week or so - I just somehow knew that stress was heading for me like a runaway train. It took me about 3 days to re-load everything from the old PC, largely I'll readily concede due to a certain amount of pilot error. However, got there in the end and have had a week of satisfactory usage.

Then ...... mega problems. This Edge browser started to crash uncontrollably. You'd be in the middle of something and it would just bomb, initially just occasionally, but within the space of 24hrs it wouldn't stay up for longer than 3 seconds.

I've just spent the day researching (via the iPad) the internet chat over the problem and whilst there are solutions to this apparently common problem, most are really quite techy and not for the faint-hearted.

My solution? Set IE as the default browser and from there download Chrome. Conclusion? Avoid Edge.

[AnOther]

Sounds about par for the course.

Long live Windows 7

[DerekJ]

I recently bought a new Dell laptop with W10... no problems and I'm pretty happy with most aspects of it.

I put on Firefox and Thunderbird for my mail... all good and the migration of files and folders and passwords from my old laptop worked well.

I also had a Lenovo mini PC as a file servers/web interface for one of our TVs. This originally came with Windows 8... a truly awful OS. I downloaded W10 and put it on the Lenovo and all good.

[sid]

You'll see that I started this thread last August and I've continued to run W10 since then on both of our laptops without serious problems so I'm quite happy. There have been some minor niggling issues though, and as a result I've gone back to IE11 as the browser of choice. Edge was quick and I liked it at first but it doesn't support add-ons like Java. I haven't bothered to see whether the situation has changed since then. This lack of add-ons makes it difficult to reply to this forum for example, the formatting looks nasty in Edge and there's no longer access to the smiley icons to insert inside a message, but this could be the flakey forum software.

EDIT Actually the icons seem to have disappeared in IE11 too now!!

Microsoft have taken a firmer line with updates which I'm not particularly fond of; you can schedule your W10 update but can't refuse it. I find that after some updates there have been changes made to some of my settings, annoying, unnecessary, but hardly life-threatening.

The Canon problem I mentioned in a previous post is one example. I got the Wi-Fi transfer working last October I think, but now it's stopped again and I have to use the USB cable. Is it W10 or Canon? I have my suspicions.

I think I've made the right decision in sticking with W10; the irritations can be worked around (although we shouldn't have to do this), and the older OS will lose their support eventually. Most or all pcs are now supplied with W10 so it's obvious where the focus for development will lie.

W10 is far easier to use than W8 and I have it set up in the "classic" Windows layout; I don't have a touch screen and I don't need the smartphone "feel". (Nor do I need to refer to programs as "apps", but hey-ho).