I got this old laptop running Windows 7 for quite some years now and I have been wondering if I should upgrade it to Windows 10 or not. Has someone done it? Is it worth the effort (and the risks)? Is there any chance you can get some kind of driver incompatibility after upgrading?

In my case the laptop has a Intel Core i5-520M processor, 4GB RAM and a very bad Intel HD Graphics integrated graphics chipset, so I'm not sure Windows 10 will run smoothly. Moreover some drivers have been tweaked by Toshiba and are different from the standard versions provided by the companies making the chipsets. I guess this also calls for trouble.

EDIT: Can some mod fix my own incompetence and move this to the tech forum?
Thanks!

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Apr 18 2016, 9:08 am by Clokr_.

Not a great opinion from a technical standpoint, but my brother did this exact same thing and the laptop could not handle it. It was a snail. Looked up what specs he had, look similar and besides... Do not convert over to the Windows 10 cancer.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Apr 18 2016, 7:56 am by LoveLess.

I like Windows 10 and run it on both my desktop and laptop, but there isn't any particular reason to upgrade from 7. If your computer is working fine as-is, don't ruin a good thing.

I converted to Windows 10 and while it does offer some improvements I am pretty annoyed by it. I've had to use a third party program to get a proper windows 7 start bar. I've had to mod all sort of settings in regedit and so on to stop it from restarting my computer without my permission, and on top of all that I'm still getting weird lil glitches of all kinds that I haven't experienced on 7 before.

While I have never had any issues with windows 10 like oh_man (my os does not restart itself) I have upgraded and I rather like it.

It offers some improvements but not so much on functionality but rather on security and graphics-wise.

The updating process is pretty straight foward and if you can do it you probably will not have any incompatibility issues they kinda make sure of that, i could not update my laptop for a few months sfter the release because it was still not supported by win10.

But truth is, everything is kind of annoying. The few functionality added we cannot use. Cortana is available only in the us (dunno if they have expanded it) and probably will not work in spain. The task bar is rather annoying but you get used to it easily. Their "apps" all lag. The calculator takes a ridiculous time to load. And it installs a lot of apps which you do not need and probably will never use. W10 promises like a 10 second start up but it has never been true to me. Only when i was on win7. Even leaving my laptop in sleep mode to return to the sign in to account quickly takes a few minutes of black screen and their "splash image" is irresponsive for quite a while. I have to click several times before it goes away and i can finally log in. And my laptop's pretty good.

Chances are, if your laptop is old and slow as it is, windows 10 has nothing to offer you. You can do it. It is easy and kinda risk free. But speaking from experience, if I had known, even if i rather like it, I would not have upgraded. You can virtually use is as an improved w7 with a few more visual prettyness but it just has a lot of little things that have added up to my frustration that I would not recommend changing into w10.

So it never schedules restarts to apply patches?

What's wrong with the taskbar / start menu? This is what it looks like for me with a little customization:



The technical preview was even more of a wild ride. I still spot a few minor bugs here and there, but nothing that really disrupts me.

Yeah, I do miss the old calc.exe by comparison. The apps you can't remove are all the ones that are associated with a Microsoft account, in the event you want to sync between devices or somesuch. It's part of Microsoft's strategy to unify their OS. Since I just use a local account, they're mostly useless, and they can't be removed.

That sounds awful. Did you upgrade or do a clean install? My $400 laptop runs very quickly on 10, faster than it did with 7.

Enterprise Edition has some extra functions for this sort of thing, but as far as I'm aware, Microsoft doesn't allow you to defer upgrades automatically in home editions. This is one of the major gripes people have with the OS (and I'd go insane without being able to control it, because my laptop has a hardware bug where a restart attempt causes the machine to shutdown instead).

What kind of improvements?

I'm pretty sure I don't want Cortana, not unless they make it local (and that is not going to happen). In fact to disable the start menu search-on-the-internet (which by the way means bing receives anything you type into any search bar in your computer) you have to disable Cortana first anyway.

I thought Microsoft promised an easy downgrade if you were not happy with Windows 10.

Basically all the good parts of Windows 8: better explorer.exe, better task manager, native disc mounting, integrated USB3 drivers, Windows Defender is actually competent, etc.

These aren't things that cannot be overcome in Windows 7; they're just convenient to have out-of-the-box.

Upgrading to 10 creates a system restore point, and you can revert to 7 if necessary. I prefer clean installs whenever I'm setting up an OS, but if you took the upgrade route, you could potentially go back to 7 without a huge hassle.

I believe you have a set period of time, like 90 days, where you can downgrade again. After that, it deletes the stored information.

Yeah, that calculator app is shitty and actually has a slight load time. Can you believe it?? A load time on a f*cking calculator! This is what Windows 10 has come to... Luckily you are able to install the old Windows 7 calculator (which is what I did).
http://www.techunboxed.com/2015/09/how-to-get-classic-calculator-back-in.html

My start bar.


See that is true customisation. Yours can only go by 'most used'. And if you try to add things manually it extends the start bar horizontally, not vertically, covering your whole screen and looking ugly AF. Not to mention win 7 start bar has built in search function, one-click to My Computer, control panel, etc.

10 start bar is just *worse* than 7 start bar. It's that simple. They've gone backwards... It's a joke.

Oh, see, I don't really use the mouse for the start menu when typing is way faster, so being able to pin things doesn't interest me.

If you think Windows 10 doesn't have search built in to the start menu, you're mistaken. Just open it and start typing. I rarely need to access my PC or Control Panel directly (I just find whatever thing I need, like "Add or remove programs", with a quick few keystrokes). But I can see the appeal to your customization for people that are used to pure point-and-click interfacing.

There's also Windows+X for common power user things (or if you prefer the mouse, right-click instead of left-click on the start button). You can access the control panel or system info directly from that dialog. In this sense, your criticism is about as valid as people complaining that they only use Ctrl+Alt+Delete to bring up task manager and don't want to have to go through an additional click to bring it up, when in fact they should just be using Ctrl+Shift+Esc.

I think Windows 10's start button is an improvement over 7's from the perspective of someone who likes the efficiency of the keyboard over the friendliness of the mouse, but I will concede that Windows 7 did a better job in the UX department.

TIL...

Which, when talking about an interface that is designed to be used with a mouse, only confirms what Oh Man was saying.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Apr 20 2016, 12:45 am by Lanthanide.

W10 is also designed in mind for tablets (and maybe phones*?).

I quite like it for desktops, ultimately. And I love that finally there are multiple virtual desktops in the Windows realm. Makes gaming and programming that much more convenient.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Apr 20 2016, 11:23 pm by Sand Wraith.

Windows 2000 had that list of options when you press Ctrl+Alt+Del (the UI for it was just redesigned in Vista). They changed this with XP so it goes straight to the task manager, but you could change a setting to go back to the Windows 2000 behavior. When they changed it in Vista, they were just reverting that change they made with XP.

Upgrade.

Not only that. this is just my biggest annoyance of all, really, but on Win7 I used to leave my computer sleeping all the time and then just opened the laptop lid and type my password and done.

Now I have to wait for this "black screen" which shows nothing. Then the Win10 "splash" image shows up, you know, the one before log in that you're supposed to click, or drag, or press a key, I don't really know what you're supposed to do because it is usually irresponsive for a while (a random while between 10 seconds and 2 minutes) so when it does work I don't really know which of my actions worked. AFTER that we're still not done, I have to log in with my real email password! (I know this can be disabled) And I don't mind that, or at least I wouldn't mind if I could just start immediately typing my pass, but no no! God forbid Microsoft doing something smoothly functional! I have to while a few seconds before I start typing. Other wise I could either be typing nothing at all (stuck) or type a few characters just before the log in decides it's time for it to "target" the cursor on to the input box and position it, again, at the beggining of the input box, thus, making me mistake my password and forcing me to wait for it to check it (like 10 seconds) and then forcing me to wait for that screen to be responsive again. (takes a few seconds before I can target the input box again).

Sounds like I am complaining, and I am. I just don't like having to wait to use my laptop. I sleep it for a reason, because I want to be able to open it and instantly work on it, not do this tedious process that takes me like 5 minutes to complete in order so I can start working...

I upgraded mine from W8 to W10, and it boots way faster than my desktop with W7. I mean, my desktop is like 5 years old, but this is a $200 laptop with shit parts, and it can still boot up relatively quickly.

It is 30 days. After that you need to reinstall if you want your old version of Windows. Also, if you upgrade to a newer Windows 10 build in the meantime (like when version 1511 was released, for example), you can no longer revert to the old version of Windows, as the files have been replaced with the ones to revert to the previous build of Windows 10 instead.

I like Windows 10. I like how they connect the Xbox One with Windows 10.