[Mongoose]

For the record, XP works just dandy as well...

*brofist*

I'd seriously be interested in this if I was currently running one of the OSes in question (anyone know where I can snag a cheap/free legal 7 license? >_>).  As it stands, I'll at least give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt on 10 and reserve judgement until people have done some hands-on with it.

[headdie]

For the record, XP works just dandy as well...

*brofist*

I'd seriously be interested in this if I was currently running one of the OSes in question (anyone know where I can snag a cheap/free legal 7 license? >_>).  As it stands, I'll at least give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt on 10 and reserve judgement until people have done some hands-on with it.

I picked up a cheep unused dell OEM copy with no usage restrictions from amazon, I think about £30-40 pounds sterling, In fact I am using that copy as I type this on my home build PC with no dell components

[jr2]

Cheapest way to get a 7 license might be to buy a broken Dell / HP / whatever you are trying to run it on... not sure if that qualifies (transfer from one computer to another of the same OEM), but it's a thought.  Actually, just a bad HDD will do:


http://www.ebay.com/itm/Microsoft-Windows-7-Home-Premium-32-bit-64-bit-Product-Key-OEM-HP-COA-bad-HDD-/121550622511

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Laptop-2-5-IDE-40GB-Non-Working-Hard-Drive-With-Free-Dell-OEM-Windows-7-Pro-Disk-/231455444677

[Luis Dias]

Really, guys, you should all have a dual-boot Win 10 partition and use it as much as possible, so that you can send your feedback, if nothing else...   be feedback the change you want to see.   

Nah, I'll let you work for Microsoft for free by your own. W7 works perfectly "fine" and I'm in no hurry.

  And I'll leave it to you to ***** and whine about how MS just can't seem to get the OS right no matter what.    I'm not saying to go out and buy it, I'm saying, give them some feedback while they are still in the process of deciding exactly how this OS will behave and present itself to the user.   Not necessarily bug-reports, if you don't feel comfortable "working" for MS (I think I've submitted a total of... 0 of those so far; this thing just works as far as I've seen).  I'm talking about irritations with the OS.  Give them a piece of your mind.  If they don't get it right, well, toss the partition and be done with it.  Win-win.  Right?

For the record, XP works just dandy as well...

XP works "dandy"? I still remember the shudders of having a XP disk, install a pc with it, go to the microsoft page as fast as possible, download the SP packs and just pray I don't get wormed in the process. Is that your definition of dandy?

And for real, there's little feedback to be made at this point. All the design decisions have been made so I would waste my breath quite frankly.

And for what I've seen so far from windows 8 and 10, there's very little of them that I am in major need of. XP to 7 is a sufficient technological and design jump (curiously, the biggest thing I love about 7 is how they copied mac os X's icons at the bottom bar, but in a way that makes a lot more sense than in the mac os, IMO) so that I cringe whenever I come back to XP, but I don't have that feel anymore regarding 10. Perhaps Cortana will smooth me with her chatbotlike manners but I somehow doubt it.


e: ALSO, someone could enlighten me if the "FIRST YEAR" clause to upgrades from 7 means we have access to Windows 10 for a year THEN we have to BUY IT at the end of it, or does it mean that we only have access to Windows updates for the first year? Or that we only have access to 10 IF we upgrade WITHIN the year?

Ah Microsoft, you're so good at marketing you don't even know how to communicate properly, wtf.

[jr2]

XP works "dandy"? I still remember the shudders of having a XP disk, install a pc with it, go to the microsoft page as fast as possible, download the SP packs and just pray I don't get wormed in the process. Is that your definition of dandy?

It's called slipstreaming.  And that would be my definition of dandy.  The only reason I ever installed an XP CD without service packs was if I never intended to put the service packs on (never, to my knowledge). 

Tutorial:

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/slipstreaming-windows-xp-to-create-bootable-cd/#slipstream_service_pack_3

EDIT: If you have an OEM disk (driver pre-installed), I think nLite can still slipstream that (normal slipstream method fails as it's not stock Windows, so MS XPSP3 installer won't integrate with it).

e: ALSO, someone could enlighten me if the "FIRST YEAR" clause to upgrades from 7 means we have access to Windows 10 for a year THEN we have to BUY IT at the end of it, or does it mean that we only have access to Windows updates for the first year? Or that we only have access to 10 IF we upgrade WITHIN the year?

Ah Microsoft, you're so good at marketing you don't even know how to communicate properly, wtf.

If you upgrade for free to Windows 10 in the first year, it's a free upgrade.  If you dawdle until after the first year, you pay for the upgrade.

[tomimaki]

e: ALSO, someone could enlighten me if the "FIRST YEAR" clause to upgrades from 7 means we have access to Windows 10 for a year THEN we have to BUY IT at the end of it, or does it mean that we only have access to Windows updates for the first year? Or that we only have access to 10 IF we upgrade WITHIN the year?

Ah Microsoft, you're so good at marketing you don't even know how to communicate properly, wtf.

Probably it means quarterly, half-year or year subscription after free first year.
Similar to Office 365.

[Luis Dias]

It's called slipstreaming.  And that would be my definition of dandy.  The only reason I ever installed an XP CD without service packs was if I never intended to put the service packs on (never, to my knowledge). 

Tutorial:

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/slipstreaming-windows-xp-to-create-bootable-cd/#slipstream_service_pack_3

I'm not sure how this 2009 article will help 2004/2008 Luis' troubles, but I take your word for it. My point was that XP was a rough ride, and I'll always remember it as painful.

If you upgrade for free to Windows 10 in the first year, it's a free upgrade.  If you dawdle until after the first year, you pay for the upgrade.

Citation needed. Sorry for being so skeptical, but all the tech news I've seen about this are unclear about the program. You might have some insider information on this, but I definitely didn't get that assurance from anything I've read so far on the subject, much to the contrary. For instance, Ars says in this article that "The company "hasn't decided" how it will handle upgrades from Windows 7 or 8.1 after the first year of Windows 10 availability ends"*, so what gives jr2?

*http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/01/windows-10-free-for-all-windows-8-1-and-windows-7-users-for-first-year/

Probably it means quarterly, half-year or year subscription after free first year.
Similar to Office 365.

IF that were to be the case, then, bye bye W10, it would have been nice to meet you, I'll stick to W7 kthanksbye

[The E]

A subscription-based OS is probably not going to be acceptable to most private users.

[jr2]

http://www.pcgamer.com/microsoft-windows-10-will-not-be-sold-as-a-subscription/

[Luis Dias]

That PC Gamer article is good news. Very good news. I'll believe it 100% when Microsoft itself announces it, but you have slayed my fears. Thanks.

[jr2]

I'm not sure how this 2009 article will help 2004/2008 Luis' troubles, but I take your word for it. My point was that XP was a rough ride, and I'll always remember it as painful.

2004 / 2008 Luis should have Googled harder:

http://www.theeldergeek.com/slipstreamed_xpsp1_cd.htm    <- article from 2002 or 2003 (Google search date range)

Now we just need to find Doc and Marty so we can help 2004 & 2008 Luis with his troubles...

[Luis Dias]

For a myriad reasons I could tell you why those articles would not have helped me, but this is belaboring a point that I thought was already over. Today, googling for answers on how you can reinstall your OS is captain obvious, but it just wasn't ten years ago, at least for me. The shenanigans I had to deal with versus the shenanigans I had dealt before with w98 and MSDOS skyrocketed by orders of magnitude. Enough already, this is not the thread of Luis misadventures with Microsoft, ok? Thanks.

[jr2]

Hmm.  alright, it wasn't personal, :/

I thought MS-DOS was a lot worse as far as having to configure everything (IRQs, DMA channels, loading drivers in config.sys in the right order and passing the correct argument {files=30 etc}, and Win '98 was worse as far as having to reinstall more often and restart at least once or twice a day.

But I digress again.  Glad I could at least ease your fears about subscription OS for now. 

[Klaustrophobia]

Slipstreaming aside, you'd have to have the worst computer habits possible to infect yourself between a fresh install and applying service packs/updates.

[The E]

No, not really. At least not with an unpatched Xp install back in 2008.
See: http://blog.chron.com/techblog/2008/07/average-time-to-infection-4-minutes/ or see this from 2004: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/08/19/infected_in20_minutes/

[jr2]

Yeah, there was a case of a modified XP that I was using that had the homepage set to the enthusiast's page that had made it.  Nifty, right?  Until like 2 years later... the site had been let go and taken over by rogues who injected a virus into it.  So if you fired up your browser before patching, it would become instantly infected with no user action required. 

[CP5670]

I'm pretty conservative with OS upgrades and will probably wait a long time to use this, even though it's free to upgrade from 8.1. At this point, I have everything set up correctly in 8.1 and it does everything I want well.

As for XP, you can't just get viruses from nowhere (and converjsely, security updates are no guarantee against them). A hardware firewall, browser script blocker and some common sense will prevent the vast majority of issues. However, slipstreaming is useful for things like preloading AHCI drivers, which are tricky to install otherwise. The main problem with XP at this point is modern hardware and driver support, but it's currently still usable with a little work and choosing the right hardware. I keep XP around for a few old games that don't work properly in 8.1 or in an XP VM.

[jr2]

Just discovered Windows might not want to extend that partition because it's the boot/system partition.  So you might have to use GParted.  Could have sworn I did this once before with 7 though.  Must be my imagination or it was another partition besides the system partition.  Maybe I used another install of 7 I had at the time (on a different partition).

[An4ximandros]

For the record, XP works just dandy as well...

*brofist*

I'd seriously be interested in this if I was currently running one of the OSes in question (anyone know where I can snag a cheap/free legal 7 license? >_>).  As it stands, I'll at least give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt on 10 and reserve judgement until people have done some hands-on with it.

Might as well just jump to a Linux distro and dual boot with XP for offline stuff. I have been honestly thinking about it even though I have Seven.

[jr2]

If you do, I'd go Mint.  If not that, then maybe some other flavor of Ubuntu.