This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this folio. Terms of use.

Windows 10 desktop

I've been using Windows PCs for over 25 years, and DOS for even longer. My outset version of Windows was Windows/286, which I purchased and installed on a (you lot guessed it) 286-12 while I was in high schoolhouse. My favorite version of Windows had been XP until vii came out, and then that became my favorite.

During their times on the market, I also liked Windows 98 and even Windows three.eleven — I always hated the fact that the latter said "for Workgroups" in the title. I used Windows 3.eleven considering I needed to write papers for higher or FTP Doom in a window. Then I'd drib to DOS so I could play Ultima VII: The Blackness Gate and Monkey Island 2: LeChuck'due south Revenge. In my dorm room, no "workgroups" were in sight, unless my friends and I were sitting on the floor working out applied science problem sets with newspaper and pen and eating scallion pancakes at 12:30am.

But getting dorsum to more contempo times, I had been happily using Windows 7 for years. Nosotros regularly, sometimes even nearly daily, run stories on Windows 10 and its various privacy bug and upgrade nags and backhanded, insidious ways to force you lot to install it. Someone even won a judgment confronting Microsoft because of it. Partially as a means of catharsis, we had a great conversation with some of you, our readers, terminal weekend over whether anyone actually loves Windows equally a whole, and it turns out many people do. Still, despite my satisfaction with Windows 7 and access to Windows 10 test machines, I installed Windows x on my main PC some time ago and have been using information technology ever since.

I can't think why.

No, seriously. I can't figure out what I have now that I didn't have when I was running Windows 7. Put bated the fact that Windows 8 and its derivatives were a disaster, and I tried and tried with that and eventually gave upward and went back to Windows seven a couple of years ago. You could fence, as my friend and colleague and sometimes-ET-contributor Matthew Murray does, that Windows 10 was generally nigh righting the wrongs of Windows 8. "The chief reason it'south important is because information technology walks back Windows eight and returns the desktop to primacy on desktop/laptop computers," Matthew said to me today. "It's not so much what it does​, but what information technology undoes. And, for me at to the lowest degree, that's no pocket-size thing."

No, seriously, why am I using this?

No, seriously, why am I using this?

I agree 100 percent with that sentiment. Merely permit's put that Windows viii PTSD stuff bated and get back to why Windows x is better than Windows 7. And I can't get there, fifty-fifty later on using information technology every twenty-four hour period for months. I could give it faster kick times. I could theoretically requite it improved security, although I'm still running Avast and have to worry nearly malware all the time, and so I'm not sure what's such a big bargain there on a consumer level. The PC has besides blueish-screened on me a couple of times, but that'due south happened to me in Windows 7. I just can't figure out why Windows 10 is so important.

If someone swapped my bulldoze out and put one in with Windows vii and all of the same apps, what would happen? I'd see longer boot times with my however-fast SSD. I don't talk to my PC. I don't need DX12. I don't take an Xbox. I still don't accept a touchscreen monitor. I don't use built-in Windows apps for things like e-mail and calendar appointments. While that's all personal preference, I also don't run into anything in that list that seems like a must take for a big majority of people. It'due south… basically the same way I've been using my PC all forth.

On the eve of Microsoft Windows 10 leaving its "complimentary" status and jumping to $119 for consumers, the biggest reason I can recall of for telling someone to upgrade to Windows ten is that it doesn't injure — at to the lowest degree as long as y'all either adapt to or disable its background data collection, and we've got a new how-to on that coming soon. And, oh, that if you upgrade, y'all'll finally dismiss those horrific nag windows, and this is your last chance to get it for gratis. Equally for why that'southward a big deal? I'1000 coming upwardly empty. I experience similar the past 7 years should have brought us further along on the Windows PC desktop, and they really haven't. Seriously, ET readers, what am I missing?