Mallette Posted February 28, 2015 Share Posted February 28, 2015 Security updates for Windows 7 continues until 1/14/2020. I've had no problems running Office 2013 with Windows 7 at home or work It has never been wise to be more than one release behind. Mainstream support for 7 ended in January, it's only extended (i.e., only things when it breaks) that will continue to 2020. Drivers and improvements are done. Only patches and egregious security issues will be addressed an those not with a great deal of enthusiasm. When 2020 gets here, that will end and you have to pay full price and the odds are 50/50 that you will have to do a complete re-install if history is an indicator. It's been enterprise, and many users like me, practice for 20 years to skip every other release as they either don't do much or are outright awful like ME, Vista, and 8. However, most enterprises and savvy users will install 10. I HATE MS and believe they retarded PC development by 20 years with their monopoly and archiac architecture. But I make my living with computers and have to be a realist. Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wvu80 Posted February 28, 2015 Share Posted February 28, 2015 (edited) I suggest Heresy. No, not the speaker. If you have a copy of Win 7, just go ahead and install it. After 30 days or so it will complain your copy is not legal or not registered or something; ignore it. Win 7 will run 100% of all your applications, and it will still do updates. It is a fully functional version. There will be a little message in the lower right hand part of the screen that says "Windows 7, Build 7601, This copy of Windows is not genuine." That's it. You are up and running. Edited February 28, 2015 by wvu80 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Matthews Posted February 28, 2015 Share Posted February 28, 2015 FWIW: I have set up a couple of laptops for friends of friends with Ubuntu and Open Office. Not to say that everyone is in their situation but they are down at the poverty level and have old laptops from the XT times. In these two cases the laptop was a hand me down or found in a dumpster with very messed up OS or worse. They certainly cannot afford legit MS software. Ubuntu and Open Office work well for them. OTOH: I tried Open Office to work with a docx. file. Yeah, it opened the file but line spacing changed enough to alter a very carefully formatted document in ways which made a problem. Therefore I just have to use MS Word. A good buddy swears by Open Office and it is difficult to explain that it can't be used in a business setting where everyone else is using MS Word and files are traded. But that is my experience. On a related matter, I held on to using WordPerfect until there were gripes from others and I was forced to convert to MS Word, kicking and screaming. Smile. Win 7 has support until 2020. WMcD Yes. A lot of the soft-core document people out there are all into open office and libre office, but they have no clue that Word is THE standard and must be adhered to. If you are needing to create serious documents that the rest of the civilized world can seamlessly use, there is only one choice: MS Word. Not to mention it is extremely powerful if you know what you are doing. The problem is that 90% of the people don't know what they are doing and as a result, they have a hard time and blame MS. RTFM! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marvel Posted February 28, 2015 Share Posted February 28, 2015 Windows 8 isn't awful, but 10 will address many of the user interface issues. We're still working to kill off the remaining few XP machines at work. You can actually do a registry hack on XP that will cause Microsoft to continue sending updates for a while longer. The hack makes the OS look like a kiosk (think ATMs...) I do think 7 is more stable and easy to manage, though. We are getting new laptops with v8, because they don't have as many Win 7 drivers for new devices. Bruce Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eth2 Posted February 28, 2015 Share Posted February 28, 2015 (edited) I detest Windows 8. I do not have a touch screen computer and it confuses the hell out of me. Things pop up and disappear as if my computers are haunted. I finally bought a program that makes 8 work like 7. Now I have to be further bumfuzzled by 10! Edited February 28, 2015 by eth2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mallette Posted February 28, 2015 Share Posted February 28, 2015 Gil, I hung on to WP until resistance was futile. It was WAY ahead of Word even at the end. Jeff, the legal industry held out with WP even longer than most of us for it's legal features. Word STILL can handle independent columns worth a dam. Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mallette Posted February 28, 2015 Share Posted February 28, 2015 Well, 8 boots and shuts down faster than 7. BSODs about the same... Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Matthews Posted February 28, 2015 Share Posted February 28, 2015 Gil, I hung on to WP until resistance was futile. It was WAY ahead of Word even at the end. Jeff, the legal industry held out with WP even longer than most of us for it's legal features. Word STILL can handle independent columns worth a dam. Dave Word has tables, and that's how you do columns. If you don't want borders. Turn them off. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marvel Posted February 28, 2015 Share Posted February 28, 2015 (edited) 10 has a Win 7 style start menu with the tiles further to the right. You can bring the tiles up full screen if you want. I have Win 8 running on a Core 2 Duo, mid 2007 Dell Optiplex. Bruce Edited February 28, 2015 by Marvel 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Matthews Posted February 28, 2015 Share Posted February 28, 2015 The one thing that drives me batty with Win 8 is that when I am mousing around along the right edge, sometimes that context menu over on the right pops-up and throws me into the Win 8 tile desktop. Then, I get aggravated and have to click on the Desktop tile to get back to working in the traditional desktop environment. I wish I could do something about that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tigerwoodKhorns Posted February 28, 2015 Author Share Posted February 28, 2015 Security updates for Windows 7 continues until 1/14/2020. I've had no problems running Office 2013 with Windows 7 at home or work It has never been wise to be more than one release behind. Mainstream support for 7 ended in January, it's only extended (i.e., only things when it breaks) that will continue to 2020. Drivers and improvements are done. Only patches and egregious security issues will be addressed an those not with a great deal of enthusiasm. When 2020 gets here, that will end and you have to pay full price and the odds are 50/50 that you will have to do a complete re-install if history is an indicator. It's been enterprise, and many users like me, practice for 20 years to skip every other release as they either don't do much or are outright awful like ME, Vista, and 8. However, most enterprises and savvy users will install 10. I HATE MS and believe they retarded PC development by 20 years with their monopoly and archiac architecture. But I make my living with computers and have to be a realist. Dave The problem is the design goal. Linux is designed to be friendly and work well long term. Windows is designed to be nice at first, then get slow and clunky so that you have to "upgrade" not to mention releasing things before they are ready for prime time. My favorite laptop did not have enough power to run Vista. I runs Mint beautifully. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mallette Posted February 28, 2015 Share Posted February 28, 2015 Word has tables, Yep. Perfectly awful way to do columns. WP did snaking columns natively and smoothly. Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mallette Posted February 28, 2015 Share Posted February 28, 2015 Linux is designed to be friendly and work well long term. For sure...but it shares a lot of Windows baggage like paging to disc and less than solid multi-tasking. MMUs are something nobody has really had for nearly 20 years now. OK, I'll get the usual reasons of the "why" of these things but they don't wash and only hold up because so few have used OS without them. Here's my rubric: An OS is well written and stable when you can pull the plug without fear. The minute MS implemented the soft shutdown I knew they had no intention of ever delivery a decent OS. Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eth2 Posted February 28, 2015 Share Posted February 28, 2015 I am not a "power user" but I LOVE WordPerfect Legal. It is far more intuitive than Word. Perhaps those of you that need to do more complex operations have a reason to use Word, but not me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
muel Posted February 28, 2015 Share Posted February 28, 2015 Security updates for Windows 7 continues until 1/14/2020. I've had no problems running Office 2013 with Windows 7 at home or work It has never been wise to be more than one release behind. Mainstream support for 7 ended in January, it's only extended (i.e., only things when it breaks) that will continue to 2020. Drivers and improvements are done. Only patches and egregious security issues will be addressed an those not with a great deal of enthusiasm. When 2020 gets here, that will end and you have to pay full price and the odds are 50/50 that you will have to do a complete re-install if history is an indicator. It's been enterprise, and many users like me, practice for 20 years to skip every other release as they either don't do much or are outright awful like ME, Vista, and 8. However, most enterprises and savvy users will install 10. I HATE MS and believe they retarded PC development by 20 years with their monopoly and archiac architecture. But I make my living with computers and have to be a realist. Dave Not really here to debate operating systems but help a guy get his systems going. Drivers and improvements? ...who cares if not adding or changing hardware? In 5 years most of us are ready for new hardware and would not consider loading a new OS on the old. Windows 10 isn't here. I'm well aware of what enterprises do and massive rollouts of new operating systems takes years of planning, testing, and rolling out... Usually long after employees have the OS in their homes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marvel Posted February 28, 2015 Share Posted February 28, 2015 Usually long after employees have the OS in their homes. That's the truth! Earl, The last place I worked, over 18 years ago, was a small government contractor. He had me go do computer support for his attorney. They all ran the DOS version of WP, because all the documents they did were in Courier, for legal briefs, etc. The staff (and program) were lightning fast. My boss kept trying to get them to switch to WP for Windows, which at the time was absolutely terrible. Our office had just switched to MS Word from WP. What a pain for long documents. We eventually switched to FrameMaker, for multiple users and long, long document creation and management. Bruce Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OO1 Posted February 28, 2015 Share Posted February 28, 2015 (edited) I detest Windows 8. I do not have a touch screen computer and it confuses the hell out of me. Things pop up and disappear as if my computers are haunted. I finally bought a program that makes 8 work like 7. Now I have to be further bumfuzzled by 10! windows 8.1 is a phenomenal software - and pretty hard to beat - it takes a bit of time to get used to it - plus it has a lot of win7 in it already as win 8 or 8.1 are upgrades win 7 software - win 7 being the one that changed it all - Edited February 28, 2015 by Randyh 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marvel Posted February 28, 2015 Share Posted February 28, 2015 An OS is well written and stable when you can pull the plug without fear. What OS will allow that? Certainly not MS, Apple of most Unix/Unix clone systems. Bruce Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mallette Posted February 28, 2015 Share Posted February 28, 2015 AmigaDOS was the last that would allow that, Bruce. Operated entirely in memory with every program in a separate space. In fact, I wrote a script to load the OS to to a RAM drive so that if a reboot were needed during the day it took about 3 seconds. AmigaDOS RAM drives would survive all but a cold boot. Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JJkizak Posted February 28, 2015 Share Posted February 28, 2015 I have Windows 7 in all three computers. 2020? I might be stone cold dead by then. JJK Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.