Windows 10 Usage Climbing As Windows 7 Share Drops Sharply

By the way, could you tell me how's the legacy hardware compatibility between 7 64 bit and 10?
I'm on a shoe-string budget at work and thus a boatfull of HP Laserjet 1150, 1010 and 1200 units. A canon LBP2900 (HP clone), an old Kyocera 1620 copier with USB support, some older Plustek scanners, older Creative Labs webcams and such.
I even have to keep a VirtualPC with XP on it for some very, very old DOS-based accounting software.
And I do enjoy my Civilization II multiplayer edition - it works on 7 64 bit - will such old things work on 10?
Is there something that won't work on 10 that works on 7 for me?

You shouldn't have any trouble getting USB and networked printers working as there is pretty good universal support for printers in 10. The HP Laserjet 1150 and 1200 have Windows 10 drivers on HP's site. That Kyocera 1620 seems to only have support from Kyocera for Windows XP. Web cams should have some generic support as well.

As for the software, if you got it to work with 7 you should be able to get it to work with 10 the same way, lots of posts out there on older Civ games with 10 where it looks like it should be possible.

As always, when dealing with stuff like this there's trial and error involved so if you setup a test machine that's how you'll know for sure.
 
I just took a second look in my living room where I have a Win7 PC and a widescreen monitor, wired via HDMI. I cannot 'snap' a window to the edge which separates the screens, But it does snap to the second monitor's outer, bottom and top. Is that what you mean?

Exactly. In 10 this does work with a mouse by default but there's option to turn it off.
 
Exactly. In 10 this does work with a mouse by default but there's option to turn it off.

Ha, I even know why I didn't notice before. My MO was to usually overshoot while dragging the windows around and I preferred to snap to top or the outer edge. It is a deal-breaker for people who need side by side windowing. I know how important that is as I used to be a Polish-English translator. So I'd be limited to my main window for main editing and my side monitor for the dictionaries.

You shouldn't have any trouble getting USB and networked printers working as there is pretty good universal support for printers in 10. The HP Laserjet 1150 and 1200 have Windows 10 drivers on HP's site. That Kyocera 1620 seems to only have support from Kyocera for Windows XP. Web cams should have some generic support as well.

As for the software, if you got it to work with 7 you should be able to get it to work with 10 the same way, lots of posts out there on older Civ games with 10 where it looks like it should be possible.

As always, when dealing with stuff like this there's trial and error involved so if you setup a test machine that's how you'll know for sure.



Tanks!

Shame about the Kyocera 1620. It's a friggin' work horse. Plows through 200 000 copies before a little maintenance is needed- like changing the photosensitive drum or the teflon roller in the fuser department. With 3rd party toner it's free printing. I have one of those with over 500 000 printed pages and with under 300$ of total maintenance costs.
So no win 7/8/10 there. Sometimes these things are so important they keep me from upgrading the OS.

So one last question- VirtualPC is still there? Is it seamless like in 7? It's not a dealbreaker for me but some of my users rely on it :<
 
BTW. Kyocera is known as Copystar in the US I believe, if that rings any bells.
 
I upgraded my tablet to Windows 10, but that's mainly because it had Windows 8.1 on it.

My HTPC will never be upgraded past Windows 7, because Windows 10 no longer has the Media center and cable card support available. I'll be sticking with Windows 7 until I no longer need a DVR.

I'll also be sticking with Windows 7 on my home desktops for now, no reason to upgrade.

As for the Office, it will also be Windows 7 until a couple old apps are retired since they won't run on anything after Windows 7.

Could you upgrade a machine to 10 and run 7 in a VM exclusively for DVR?
 
There's really no evidence at all that people will work harder or faster just because they have more than one screen. At most places that I've seen, people will just position one of their two monitors to be harder for other people to see so they can use it to do non-work junk. Multiple monitor support is like the thing clueless people who don't at all understand how a human brain works to have an excuse to put more crap on their desks to impress other people or seem more "executive" than someone else. It's mostly a silly overcompensation penis thing and a screwing off on the job thing.

Huh? Do you write software? I always use multiple monitors and both are equally visible to whoever wants to see whatever. Now if High DPI support is solid within your apps, then a 4k or 5k display might be better, but desktop space is vital. It's one reason I've always hate Hate HATED laptops. Rarely did they have enough resolution for me to do what I wanted.
 
I am completely and utterly gob smacked! :confused:

What you are saying is you want change, just for changes sake, good luck with that philosophy.

I get so pissed when you go to the supermarket and they've changed the layout with everything to F with your mind so you spend more than you would normally by tempting you with crap you weren't expecting to see when you went looking for what you actually needed.

Sort or like what MS has done to you now

I really really don't want to buy into your world at all, sorry.

Windows 10 is not like a differently grocery store layout. Virtually everything can be found by simply typing what you want in the start menu, which is exactly how it worked in Windows 7 and 8, and possibly Vista too.

Since the beginning of Summer, I've gone from 7, to 8 to 10 without any meaningful change to how I use windows. If i'd gone from 7 to 10, it'd have been no change. I got to my parents (who are still on 7, for now) and I can't think of a single thing that I did differently.
 
Windows 10 is not like a differently grocery store layout. Virtually everything can be found by simply typing what you want in the start menu, which is exactly how it worked in Windows 7 and 8, and possibly Vista too.

Since the beginning of Summer, I've gone from 7, to 8 to 10 without any meaningful change to how I use windows. If i'd gone from 7 to 10, it'd have been no change. I got to my parents (who are still on 7, for now) and I can't think of a single thing that I did differently.
I haven't used 10 enough to judge yet, waiting for it to be less buggy before I dump it on my primary computer, but this is blatantly false when it comes to 8. Windows 8 divided search results into categories, and hid many system tools outright, I assume because they were classified as administrative tools Microsoft didn't think anyone should have easy access to. In 7 you were able to just type and hit enter, in 8 you have to type, select the category, then click again on a lot of stuff, or navigate manually entirely if it was a "classified" management program. It was far less efficient than 7, especially with how poorly organized items were. Nobody cares that it's shiny and new if it takes more effort to use, govern and maintain.

There was a huge gulf between basement users of 8 and enterprise users of 8, which is why the fanboyism over 8 got crushed alive. Armchair admins can parrot about how mom has no problem finding Facebook on the start screen until their blue in the face, it doesn't mean squat to people with 5200 workstations that Microsoft just told has to now rebuild their entire redirected start menu system into something that takes far more time and energy to edit and maintain.
 
I haven't used 10 enough to judge yet, waiting for it to be less buggy before I dump it on my primary computer, but this is blatantly false when it comes to 8. Windows 8 divided search results into categories, and hid many system tools outright, I assume because they were classified as administrative tools Microsoft didn't think anyone should have easy access to. In 7 you were able to just type and hit enter, in 8 you have to type, select the category, then click again on a lot of stuff, or navigate manually entirely if it was a "classified" management program. It was far less efficient than 7, especially with how poorly organized items were. Nobody cares that it's shiny and new if it takes more effort to use, govern and maintain.

There was a huge gulf between basement users of 8 and enterprise users of 8, which is why the fanboyism over 8 got crushed alive. Armchair admins can parrot about how mom has no problem finding Facebook on the start screen until their blue in the face, it doesn't mean squat to people with 5200 workstations that Microsoft just told has to now rebuild their entire redirected start menu system into something that takes far more time and energy to edit and maintain.

I can't say how 8 worked with system tools, since I almost always did it from control panel. I vaguely recall some tools in settings that weren't in Control Panel, but not that many. I think more have moved this time around and I will admit that somethings, like troubleshooting network cards/internet connections are either not in settings or I can't find them, but I generally default to going to control panel.

If i was an Admin, this would probably annoy me more, but as an end user, I don't live in Control panel or settings. Of course end users may not type as much as they should. I know at work, when we went to 7, I constantly told people just type what you want. Once they did that, most XP to 7 issues disappeared (and that also eliminates issues with rebuilding a start menu). IMO, it's pointless to continue using Windows like it's windows XP. It's not and while you can still do it, it's horribly inefficient. OTOH, it wasn't really efficient to constantly reorganize my XP start menu.

As for bugs, I really don't see that many (or I don't recognize them. It's not perfect, but neither was 7 or 8). I do recall having problems finding a way to create a restore disk via the start menu in 10, but I think it was easy to find in either Settings or Control Panel. The only reason I searched from there was because some online tutorial said to type it there.

Anyway, you gotta do what works for you. I just don't find much difference between the last 3 versions (aside from the start screen which I didn't like much, but didn't affect me much either)
 
Anyway, you gotta do what works for you. I just don't find much difference between the last 3 versions (aside from the start screen which I didn't like much, but didn't affect me much either)

For most common things, the desktop isn't as different between 7,8.x and 10 as many would make it out to be. Of course there are differences and some of those differences were indeed problematic especially in 8.x with the full screen Start Screen, modern apps and hidden UI controls such as the hot corners. One could adapt to them but many didn't or refused and I've long said that the desktop wasn't as well enough integrated with the modern UI.

The basic UI behind 10 is very much what I was expecting and overall makes sense. Make the new stuff blend in with the old, not a totally separate thing and I think that works fine for most people. There will be the comments about the "Fisher Price" UI because for some reason which ultimately is much more about personal preference than anything to do with ease of use or efficiency, static bitmapped icons that don't scale well are more adult?

Of course things can be improved and need to be but for most people in most situations Windows 10 isn't that big of jump from prior versions. What's new and different is much easier to deal with for desktop users than 8.x.
 
It doesn't appear as convulted as 8 to me at first glance, co there's a chance I will not skip it like I skipped Vista.
However, I have the following issues (collected from some other of my threads):
- Edge messes with people's minds. They seem similar to the layman, but they can't fathom why they can't get some plugins to work.
- Huge performance issues. Probably needs moar updates
- I have to have the ability to 'freeze' my system. I cann't by law have control over my software taken off my hands. Softwere upgrade procedures are written with a certain extent of low-level control you absolutely need.
Calling home could easily lead to a personal info leak. We process medical data of people will illnesses in order to certify their ability to operate or not and decide on a set of means to help each case individually. If MS messes up, I am facing felony charges.
- I need my printers operational. I don;t need a gauntlet of tweaks like disabline 'mopier mode' for multiple copies to work.
- I don't want unnecessary newtork traffic because Windows is looking company-wide for a publicly shared music store or printer. Companies I work for will NOT use the store facility. People want OOBE features for free and they want them consistent among OS'.

I am reading this right now: http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2015/08/05/windows-10-charging/
1. Solitaire - dealbreaker. It's the only game my employees know and enjoy. I had to re-add it to Windows 7 from the install disc!
2. Windows DVD Player also won’t play Blu-ray discs nor DVDs from file backups - booo. I was looking forward to get a Blu-ray r/w for large offsite backups.
3. I have a ~17 Mb down and 1 Mb connection for 25 people. A large windows 10 download party could stop my day.
4. Gadgets gone? fine by me. They couldn't hold a candle to what is available for Plasma KDE 4 screens.
5. Removing OOBE floppy disk support? oh come on. It's cheap to have and it's another vector of access to a broken OS.

Do you know why I went from 98 to SE in around 2002? Image thumnbails in internet explorer. Sole reason. 192 megabytes of RAM (92 couldn't cut it) and a Celeron 633 Coppermine core processor.
Do you know why I went from XP to 7? Because I was already proficient with Linux by then while avoiding Vista. I could operate solely in the shell and on any GUI.
Like 8, Vista provided me with no benefits. It took away direct sound, so my cool hi-fi gear became stuttery, hardware DSP utilization was yankes.
However, multi-monitor scaling did work better than on XP.
And I followed some Windows 7 development blog and I loved the no-nonsense performance boosters like providing eatch process with access to shared Window Manager libraries' stack instead of having multiple instanes. I knew I needed something to upgrade Widnows xp to - as soon as in 2009.
Multiple video cards. GPU acceleration in the Desktop. Best of all? Takes only minutes to setup 'how I liked it', while with other MS OS' there was too much hand-holding and confusing messages like 'you're about to sent data ofer a WAN link'. 'people will be able to see you touch yourself'. 'Do you want to keep the defaults or would you prefer the fine-tuning gauntlet of, say, Windows Media Player.
"do you know Windows 7 has a http interpreter, but it has the evil in it and you probably need a half-assed short lived 'for fun' project." Tap shift too much while spacing away and boom - odd 'sticky keys' question.
But overall, this was still better than XP (for me).
8 killed my interest in it after my work grinded to a halt because I kept bumping into some hidden gadget falling off the side off my screen like an old tree in wind. I couldn't turn it off, reboot it, my users were unable to distunguish both approaches and kept looking for tiles on the desktop and looking for icons in Tile-land.
Third party system additions are a no-go for me. I can't risk it. Yes, I realize you can do ctrl+alt+del and launch explorer or another shell and remove or stop some Window features.
I still want to keep one decent set of S755 parts with XP on it for listening to music properly over directsound. I was doing some crazy things in XP, impressing older playes. I would connect their guitars to microphone ports and do stuff like mimic Robert Tripp's soundscapes or make a 30$ electric guitar emit the weiredst of sounds. All on a simple Creative Labs Live! Value.
Right now I use whatever fits. For a headless CCTV storage and camera control device I only need a socket 775 board, a random dual or low-freq quad core (or Xeon? :) ) And I have a headless, network enabled CCTV control panel.
Virtualization server? Ubunbu server.
A friend brings me a XP machine and says: hey, it ran fine 6 months ago. The world clearly hasn't changed since then so why is my machine so they tell me to 'just bring back my pirated XP' - even though I sometimes attempt to switch them to 7. Lowest I have gone was something like an X2 3400+. It was completely viable. They noticed it started up 5 seconds slower - no, delete it! Good luck I come prepared and have a XP install image as well :)


After going to 7 land, I had to retire a few printers. THen some had the 'mopier mode' on. Some had other issues.
I have killed beyond recovery one Windows XP machine - placing a Nvidia driver from WU on top of Nvidia's package.
I have not destroyed any Windows 7 installs.
 
Windows 7 32bit works alright with 2GB, athlon xp 3200+, and a decent video card. Can use it online for basic usage like emails and 480p 360p video. HD stuff works if you got one of the last video cards made for agp. Still have a dfi lanparty nforce2 ultra B running today on windows 7.
 
For most common things, the desktop isn't as different between 7,8.x and 10 as many would make it out to be. Of course there are differences and some of those differences were indeed problematic especially in 8.x with the full screen Start Screen, modern apps and hidden UI controls such as the hot corners. One could adapt to them but many didn't or refused and I've long said that the desktop wasn't as well enough integrated with the modern UI.

The basic UI behind 10 is very much what I was expecting and overall makes sense. Make the new stuff blend in with the old, not a totally separate thing and I think that works fine for most people. There will be the comments about the "Fisher Price" UI because for some reason which ultimately is much more about personal preference than anything to do with ease of use or efficiency, static bitmapped icons that don't scale well are more adult?

Of course things can be improved and need to be but for most people in most situations Windows 10 isn't that big of jump from prior versions. What's new and different is much easier to deal with for desktop users than 8.x.

OK with 8 you had to find the start area (which I assume was the lower left corner), but I rarely used any of the corners in 8.1 and I think the only modern app I used with any regularity was Netflix, which I want to be full screen. No doubt that modern apps are better in 10, but again, I always consdered modern apps optional.

As for the UI look, I won't lie. I liked the old glide ui better, and I think I probably liked the flat look in 8 a bit more than in 10, but the only time I really notice it is when I'm writing these messages.
 
So one last question- VirtualPC is still there? Is it seamless like in 7? It's not a dealbreaker for me but some of my users rely on it :<
VirtualPC isn't there. VirtualPC was deprecated in favor of Hyper-V. I don't know if it's possible to get Windows Virtual PC running on Windows 10. I seem to remember it not working in the Technical Preview. To the end user, Hyper-V isn't as seemless as VirtualPC.

On the VirtualPC/XPMode side, a category was added for XP Mode Applications in the Start Menu, and aside from user interface differences, a user might not know they're not actually running a native application but a virtual environment presenting the application in a similar fashion to RemoteApp for Remote Desktop Services.

I don't know how to set up the seemless end user experience of VirtualPC + XP Mode using Hyper-V. It wouldn't surprise me if there is a way.

I haven't used this site before, but Download3k posted on "How to add an XP Mode Virtual Machine to Windows 10 (or 8) using Hyper-V". I'm sure this method is out of compliance with license agreements, and you should use your valid Windows XP license and set up your own copy of Windows XP as a Hyper-V VM.

There is no question that Hyper-V is more capable and more reliable than Microsoft Virtual PC, but I don't think it is as seemless. Also, Virtual PC is a type 2 hypervisor (hosted) where Hyper-V is a type 1 hypervisor (bare metal). Alternatives to Windows Virtual PC exist like Oracle VirtualBox, QEMU VMware Workstation/Player.
 
Huh? Do you write software? I always use multiple monitors and both are equally visible to whoever wants to see whatever. Now if High DPI support is solid within your apps, then a 4k or 5k display might be better, but desktop space is vital. It's one reason I've always hate Hate HATED laptops. Rarely did they have enough resolution for me to do what I wanted.

A lot of what I do for workies involves biiiig spreadsheets and complicated database-y stuff these days. I use a 14 inch laptop screen with 1366x768 resolution (Um...Dell Latitude e6440). The nerdy tech support people offered me a docking station and a couple of monitors and I tried it, but it didn't make work more efficient. Prolly the only thing that would make me work faster is to take away my ability to "awwww" at cat pics on the internet.

At home, I use an Asus Eee 1005HAB with a 10.1 inch 1024x60. It's got Linux Mint 17.2, a 2GB memory thing and a 60GB SSD and I do my non-professional on the side stuff like writing and whatever on it. There's another netbook around here, one of those edu-school friendly Dell Latitude 2110s around (same size screen as my Eee), but I haven't turned it on since the whole thing with Microsoft nagging and shoving Windows 10 onto people using Windows 7. And there's a desktop with a 15 inch 1366x768 res screen that I also hardly ever use because I hate sitting at a desk when I can just use my netbook on a couch or in the kitchen at the table.

I've had to use a few ultrabooks and some 24+ inch screens, but I really don't feel like they make any bit of difference at all. Higher resolution screens make stuff so tiny that you're forced to scale it up which just means that the amount of information any given screen displays doesn't really increase with more pixels. And bigger monitors just require being stuck at a desk or having to move your head around to see multiple screens. It's pretty pointlessly non-useful.
 
Now if they would just take a firm stance on privacy that would quell concerns of many Microsoft skeptics, they could increase their adoption rates further.

You can't profit on people's data when you have no personal data to sell.
 
VirtualPC isn't there. VirtualPC was deprecated in favor of Hyper-V. I don't know if it's possible to get Windows Virtual PC running on Windows 10. I seem to remember it not working in the Technical Preview. To the end user, Hyper-V isn't as seemless as VirtualPC.

On the VirtualPC/XPMode side, a category was added for XP Mode Applications in the Start Menu, and aside from user interface differences, a user might not know they're not actually running a native application but a virtual environment presenting the application in a similar fashion to RemoteApp for Remote Desktop Services.

I don't know how to set up the seemless end user experience of VirtualPC + XP Mode using Hyper-V. It wouldn't surprise me if there is a way.

I haven't used this site before, but Download3k posted on "How to add an XP Mode Virtual Machine to Windows 10 (or 8) using Hyper-V". I'm sure this method is out of compliance with license agreements, and you should use your valid Windows XP license and set up your own copy of Windows XP as a Hyper-V VM.

There is no question that Hyper-V is more capable and more reliable than Microsoft Virtual PC, but I don't think it is as seemless. Also, Virtual PC is a type 2 hypervisor (hosted) where Hyper-V is a type 1 hypervisor (bare metal). Alternatives to Windows Virtual PC exist like Oracle VirtualBox, QEMU VMware Workstation/Player.

Thanks for the full picture!
 
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