Windows 10 - finally time to move?

I wasn't thinking about running ED under wine but under Windoze in a VM. I'm being nagged by a Linux warrior, you know the type, to switch.
I'm also a bit concerned about Win10 as I've been told by another friend that Win10 sends a lot of your data to M$, without asking.

Yes, there is a lot to study about Linux and using VMs, it seems.

A bare-metal hypervisor, or a paravirtualized Linux host, that supports IOMMU SR-IOV would be a good option if you prefer Linux, but want a full performance Windows install on hand without needing to dual boot.

Windows does collect a lot of telemetry by default. You can disable most of this without overt difficulty, but it's often not practical to disable all of it.

@Old Duck - take a look at Software Geeks - you may be able to buy a copy of W10 Pro for silly cheep (I know in the EU their software keys are fine, maybe the same for USA)

You can also use almost any Windows 7 Pro key to get a working Windows 10 Pro install. Microsoft bends their own rules quite heavily in this regard with handing out digital licences as they'd rather give them away than risk losing market share. They officially discontinued their free upgrades from Windows 7 a while ago, but most will still activate Windows 10 automatically.
 
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You can also use almost any Windows 7 Pro key to get a working Windows 10 Pro install. Microsoft bends their own rules quite heavily in this regard with handing out digital licences as they'd rather give them away than risk losing market share. They officially discontinued their free upgrades from Windows 7 a while ago, but most will still activate Windows 10 automatically.
Really.... What about a Windows 8 Pro key? I happen to own one!
 
Really.... What about a Windows 8 Pro key? I happen to own one!

You can try.

If you go to Settings -> System -> About -> Change product key or upgrade your edition of Windows, then put in your Windows 8 pro key, it might work. If it doesn't work automatically, you can still try disconnecting from the internet, putting in the key again and using the phone activation method.
 
Is windows 10 insider sign up, still giving away free windows 10 pro, but then users turns off insider testing once installed so you don't get unstable updates...
Is that still enabled... thats how I got dual boot free windows 10 pro with out any keys Zip..
Junk email address and junk name details... but then I signed in to Xbox app and it then took all my stats any way. lol. O well...
The numbers of Ipeefreely and Ipeefreely???@gmail.com that got free versions of windows 10 pro are likely in very high numbers
 
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Up to build 1703 all windows 7, 8 and 8.1 keys will work with 10 - so install that - then use windows update assistant to update straight to WIn 10 1903.
Also if you have an older key and it doesn't activate for some reason (ie it's been used "too" many times, pirate key etc) - call the microsoft "help" number - they will give you a brand new key for win 10 for the same "SKu" - ie home, or pro (enterprise or education you will have access to a valid current key anyway).
I've never had Microsoft refuse and I upgrade a lot of machines.
 
If you use your machine online then, in my opinion, for security reasons there is no way around updating to a fully supported Windows version, unless you like Russian Roulette.

If you're really that bothered about online security then use the internet through a Linux VM. Ain't nothing getting through that.
 
If you're really that bothered about online security then use the internet through a Linux VM. Ain't nothing getting through that.

That's seems a fine solution if you want to stay on Windows 7. An avid gamer like me will at a certain point have to move to Windows 10 anyway, if he plays latest gen games that specifically demand this OS.
I personally am not bothered about security at all. Have not had problems in 40 years.
 
It maybe worth backing the Windows 7 system up completely with a free program like Macrium reflect. This will give you the option to restore the system back "as is."

Once your completely backed up, using the Windows 10 media creation tool from Microsoft’s website will allow you to create and install Windows 10 from a USB flash drive. I find it best to create a folder on the system drive that Windows 7 is installed on. Call the folder W10 for example. Copy the files from the USB flash drive to the W10 folder and run the setup.exe from the W10 folder. In my experience, this provides the least hassle-free way to upgrade from Win 7 to Win10.

Depending on what hardware you have and version of Windows you have purchased, you may find you can upgrade at no cost, yes, even now. Depending on what antivirus/security solution your using, you may want to uninstall it before the upgrade. I have never had a problem with leaving Webroot or Bitdefender in place however; your mileage may vary.

Ultimately this would give you time to test things out and make a checklist of items that may require attention. Try to plan the test at a time where you can live without the system for a weekend or more. Make sure you have the time to test out the things that are important to you. If your not happy you can roll back using the Macrium reflect backup you made.

Depending on how much data you have, the time to backup completely and restore completely may take many hours, in some cases days. If you can operate from the other computer you mentioned, for critical tasks, over that time you should be in an okay place. Take the time to consider what critical tasks you would need to perform on the other computer and confirm it will be able to handle those tasks.

If you're not comfortable with trying the processes above you can research the backup and restore processes at Macrium's website. They have excellent documentation. Ultimately you may wish to rely on a technically proficient friend to assist. If you’re thinking of contacting a professional, try to agree on a fixed price as this could become expensive.

Security update support ends for Windows 7 on the 14th of Jan 2020 save for very special cases. It would be prudent to ensure your on Windows 10 before this date. You have plenty of time between now and then to plan and test. Whatever you decide, make sure your completely backed up and you have confidence with your ability or that of software you choose to restore from that backup.

Clean installs are almost always better than inplace upgrades but that said Windows 10 handles in place upgrades far better than any previous version of Windows.
 
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*

Yall remember when windows 7 came out and everyone said it was utter trash and we should stick to Vista?

And when Vista came out and everyone said it was utter trash and we should stick to XP?

And when XP came out and everyone said it was utter trash and we should stick to 98?

And when 98 came out and everyone said it was utter trash and we should stick to 95?

And when 95 came out and everyone said it was utter trash and we should stick to 3.1?

*Windows 8 was legitimately never good though.


Point is, 10 is fine. The people who don't like it are usually both:

A: Doing something its not really intended to do, and
B: Don't know how it works and are trying to do things the old way.

Rarely do you have option C which is an actual professional who says its bad, and even in those cases most of them are really just B, or just don't want to upgrade everything else to work with it.
 
Currently upgrading 2 of my 3 work pcs to windows 10. They are quite weak machines with 2GB, 4GB and 6GB RAM repsectively. The 4GB sony vaio has been already been upgraded to 10 about a year and ahalf ago. The SSD upgrade on the vaio really helped a lot as it mitigates the low performance due to the low RAM to a certain extent. The 6GB Core2Quad one has just finished upgrading with minimal issues. The 2GB Core2Dupo is struggling though. This is by far the weakest one. Not only it has very low RAM for todays standards, it has 80GB conventional HDD (SATA I..) which is low and slow together. And the CPU is a Core2Duo & 2.4 GHz. Fortunately this is used as a client and the program that runs on it requires minimal hardware specs to run. I am looking forward to see how the 3 will work together in my works network environment..

But the real issue is not the low performance or privacy or upgrade ability. I am afraid M$ is not going to keep windows 10 free for ever. More specifically I am afraid they will use something like office 365 policy for windows 10 once windows 7 goes officially unsupported. There may be a transition period that might last until win 8.1 dies as well in ~2023 and then that's it guys. We will need to pay per (put your desired time period here) to use our PCs. What a wonderful digital-prison-world it will be..
 
...... The 2GB Core2Dupo is struggling though. This is by far the weakest one. Not only it has very low RAM for todays standards, it has 80GB conventional HDD (SATA I..) which is low and slow together. And the CPU is a Core2Duo & 2.4 GHz. ........

Coincidentally I found an old PC in my junk room and threw it in the trash yesterday - Core2Duo - RIP you 32 bit computer, you served C&C Tiiberian Sun for years....
 
Core2Duo is 64-bit. I ran 64-bit Windows 7 and Ubuntu on such machine for a long time.

To OP, clean install is a thing, once I had upgraded from Win7 Win10 installation it had all kinds of weird permission issues. Clean install removed those worries for good.
 
I still have a pentium-mmx in my junkroom. Can't through it away - had so many memories with it..
I also have a socket 4xx something (I think its socket 478??) pentium-4 @ 3.2GHz with HT. This is idead 32bit and will be recycled promptly.
 
Y'all mad about 10 but my mother has windows 10 running on a dual core celeron I built for $400 a decade ago and it works fine. I'll never be convinced 10 is a problem in and of itself, but rather that the hardware and driver configuration is likely the source of most issues.
 
windows 10 is a resource hog and in my opinion hasn't reached a point of stability yet. stick with windows 7pro for now. consider migrating when the software and games you use demand it and you can see real program degradation.
 
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