Windows 10 User Base on Steam Stagnates as Windows 7 Rises

[lilbabycat]

I'm using Windows 10 with more hardware and software than any version of Windows I've ever used and I've been using Windows for nearly three decades now. The things I want and need from PCs aren't as well supported by anything else. I'd lose much more control using something that doesn't do what I want and need.

Its good you mention those other devices which inflate Win10's numbers, plus those other devices and features that you and about a dozen other people care about, or have been killed off by MS themselves. And your mysterious "what I want and need" I'm sure is something ridiculously close to what a marketing person would "want", but I know, I know, you're not an MS shill and I don't want to "threaten your credibility".

Someday you'll admit Win10 is the Juicero of OS's. Perhaps when its time to blindly support Win11?

 

[Dekoth-E-]

I would tend to agree with you in general here. We are seeing more "only annoying, but chaotic for the user base" issues like start menu resets and like a previous poster sleep issues, resolution issues etc... when testing the feature updates.

Though one thing I find interesting and ultimately a good thing... The software industry is following suite and actually fixing their stuff. The compatibility issues we would have during the major upgrades previously are starting to get fixed FASTER by our 3rd party vendors now. Those crazy small niche vendors we were previously slaves to, who would tell us they will support the .net released 6 months ago, next year... are now coming back to us with 3 month time frames for added support.

Just like Vista driver changes, I think 3rd party devs are starting to fix their software, becoming more compliant to Windows "best practices" etc. People tend to forget that 3rd party vendors did some crazy crap to get feature xyz implemented since MS didn't have it yet, now MS is sorta locking down dangerous areas of the OS where vendors abused features to get their "result" , These vendors are are now learning how their duct tap crazy fixes are not worth it anymore.

Similar thing happened with UAC though there are still lots of software that still require admin rights for no good reason.

I think in a year or so more I think software/driver makers (and MS) will figure out how to make agility work better in the MS ecosystem.

Right and I'm certainly not saying win 10 will never get there. I'm just dismissing this absurd notion that all of us who criticize it are anti Microsoft or refusing to adapt. This notion almost universally comes from Tech's who frankly aren't very good or work in extremely basic environments. Meanwhile the rest of the world isn't so black and white.

 

[odditory]

Right and I'm certainly not saying win 10 will never get there. I'm just dismissing this absurd notion that all of us who criticize it are anti Microsoft or refusing to adapt. This notion almost universally comes from Tech's who frankly aren't very good or work in extremely basic environments. Meanwhile the rest of the world isn't so black and white.

Indeed. Trying to frame criticisms about 10 as hating Microsoft is just a lazy way to try to win an argument and discredit the other person. It's much harder to argue against there being some faults that Microsoft needs to look at, especially when its none other than longtime windows users that are pointing it out, not actually Apple or Linux zealots.

The reality is Windows 10 doesn't suck, as its really just a slightly more refined Windows 8.1 at its core, and Microsoft only needs to make a few fixes, like back off on the telemetry and forced updates a bit so Windows 7 users don't feel like they're walking into a trap if they upgrade.

 

[Mohonri]

It's clearly plateaued for now, but this is almost exactly where Windows 7 was 2 years after going gold (and the same was true 2 years after retail release).

https://web.archive.org/web/20110814082225/http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey
https://web.archive.org/web/20111026020431/http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

Maybe there will be a spike at Xmas, but looking at the January 2012, I see little change.
https://web.archive.org/web/20120104095837/http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

If 10 doesn't a big jump by March of next year, then it's fallen behind 7. For now, it's a statistical tie.
March 2012 report: https://web.archive.org/web/20120323122609/http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

Keep in mind, however, that Microsoft literally gave Windows 10 away for a full year on release, not to mention how hard Microsoft worked to trick or force people to install it. Windows 7 was never free--the only way to get it was with a new PC or by buying a license ($100+). If Windows 10 needed a full year of being given away for free to merely match the adoption rate of Windows 7, that means A) Windows 7 really is that good, B) Windows 10 really is that bad, or C) some combination of the two.

When you add in the stagnation in the CPU space and the growth of mobile computing, people simply don't have a big reason to buy a new computer or upgrade their OS.

 

[ManofGod]

Keep in mind, however, that Microsoft literally gave Windows 10 away for a full year on release, not to mention how hard Microsoft worked to trick or force people to install it. Windows 7 was never free--the only way to get it was with a new PC or by buying a license ($100+). If Windows 10 needed a full year of being given away for free to merely match the adoption rate of Windows 7, that means A) Windows 7 really is that good, B) Windows 10 really is that bad, or C) some combination of the two.

When you add in the stagnation in the CPU space and the growth of mobile computing, people simply don't have a big reason to buy a new computer or upgrade their OS.

Actually, the upgrade is still free, just not pushed anymore. Also, Windows 7 is most likely either being bought from places like Kingwin or already with a key on the OEM machine that is in use. The idea that it was free as an upgrade and Windows 7 cost money makes Windows 10 bad in anyway is at best a logical fallacy. Otherwise, that would mean that Linux is absolutely terrible because it is free, which we know is not the case at all.

 

[ChadD]

Actually, the upgrade is still free, just not pushed anymore. Also, Windows 7 is most likely either being bought from places like Kingwin or already with a key on the OEM machine that is in use. The idea that it was free as an upgrade and Windows 7 cost money makes Windows 10 bad in anyway is at best a logical fallacy. Otherwise, that would mean that Linux is absolutely terrible because it is free, which we know is not the case at all.

Well I agree with you for once. Regular people don't install operating systems, they simply aren't capable for the most part. What comes with their machine is almost always what is on the machine the day it dies.

IMO Windows 10 adoption sucks because more and more people are making due with older computers then ever before A half decent processor from 10 years ago still surfs the web, will type a letter and let you watch netflix. The case for regular people to upgrade still working machines anymore doesn't exist.

 

[DPI]

Actually, the upgrade is still free, just not pushed anymore. Also, Windows 7 is most likely either being bought from places like Kingwin or already with a key on the OEM machine that is in use. The idea that it was free as an upgrade and Windows 7 cost money makes Windows 10 bad in anyway is at best a logical fallacy. Otherwise, that would mean that Linux is absolutely terrible because it is free, which we know is not the case at all.

I haven't seen anyone try to make the case that Windows 10 is bad from a technical standpoint, but I think there's an assumption that it looks bad when you offer something free and still can't get enough people interested, and then resort to dirty tricks like GWX which used malware tactics to infect unsuspecting users with the Windows 10 installation files. And as soon as they got enough heat and disabled GWX, Windows 10 uptake basically flatlined.

Only a 5% increase in the past year, when 10 is the only option on new PCs, and the increase didn't eat away at Windows 7 share. That's a disaster for a new version of Windows that's been as hyped and marketed as it has.

All I can conclude is that for Microsoft to be so willing to let 10 keep taking on water with a margin-of-error growth rate month after month, quarter after quarter, is that their long-term Big Data and advertising revenue expected from the data collection they refuse to tone down has got to be ginormous.

 

[Krenum]

Windows 10 updates break something new every time, usually something important to gamers. Web cams, OBS, Game Mode working worse instead of better for games. People are right to be tired of it, dig out the old Windows 7 DVD, and install it. Problems go away and don't come back when you do that.

Yeah the last Windows Creator update broke my Riva tuner.

About the Only thing I like about 10, is the news ticker.

 

[Burticus]

I gave up and went all Win 10 during the free upgrade phase. I've purchased a few 10 keys, but those have been rebuilds/motherboard changes.

10 is fine. I don't hate it. I do think their upgrade scheme was really heavy handed though.

Are people seriously afflicted with such a short memory span? I mean Vista was not great. Win 8 and 8.1... not great (mostly metro complaints). 10 is not that bad.

Look, I loved Win 7 too, but that ship has sailed. Move along.

 

[Deleted member 88301]

I really liked XP a lot, I also liked 7 a lot. I skipped 8/8.1 totally, because of the obvious reasons. But I just don't really have anything against 10. It has been very stable for me. I know that it could break at any time, especially after what we used to call "Service Packs" are applied, so I keep my shit backed up on an external drive. Really important stuff gets burned to DVDs, remember burning stuff? I hate everything about "the cloud," so I don't use it. Win 10 has some very intrusive BS going on, we all know that, but I have taken as many steps as I can to, at least lessen, the telemetry shenanigans. I don't like the path that MS has taken, but I can deal with it. For now.

 

[Mohonri]

I haven't seen anyone try to make the case that Windows 10 is bad from a technical standpoint, but I think there's an assumption that it looks bad when you offer something free and still can't get enough people interested, and then resort to dirty tricks like GWX which used malware tactics to infect unsuspecting users with the Windows 10 installation files. And as soon as they got enough heat and disabled GWX, Windows 10 uptake basically flatlined.

Thank you for more eloquently stating what I was trying to communicate.

If you're looking for faulty logic, comparing Windows 10's free upgrade to Linux being free is definitely a false equivalence. Linux is out there, waiting for you to try it. Windows 10 got splattered in every user's face, was downloaded and in many cases installed automatically, and got lots of publicity from the 28th largest company in the US and every tech site in the world.

Put another way, when you ask the question "How is Windows 10 better than Windows 7?" there's not a whole lot of convincing* reasons to make the switch. And there are lots of convincing* arguments not to switch. For a typical user, Windows 10 doesn't offer any improvements in the user experience. You still run the same programs in the same way.

* When I say "convincing," that doesn't mean the points are necessarily logical or valid. Just that they are persuasive. There are technical reasons why Windows 10 is^H can be superior as an operating system. I don't think anyone is arguing that point. But there are lots of user-experience-related reasons why Win10 is markedly inferior to Win7, or at least has the perception of being inferior. We've heard them hashed and re-hashed countless times: Control Panel, forced updates, useful things removed and useless "features" added at Microsoft's whim, unavoidable telemetry, trying to force the Windows App store on everything, un-removable OneDrive, etc. Give me the functionality of Windows 7 on top of the Windows 10 codebase, and you wipe out all the negative things about Windows 10. Then you can start promoting it as being more secure, supported longer, supports newer hardware, etc, rather than trying to defend the indefensible things Microsoft have done with it.

 

[tetris42]

Give me the functionality of Windows 7 on top of the Windows 10 codebase

NEVER!

 

[craigdt]

I would have to agree for the most part. Windows is dug in pretty deep. Having said that.... as I see it there is one major player who has a huge interest in seeing that end.

Google has been watching MS eat into their advertising business pretty hard since windows 10 hit. MS has leveraged windows data collection to refine bings value proposition to advertisers... on top of the force feeding of ads through the OS itself. Google has chrome OS and its done alright in areas where a cloud os made sense. Now they are making a pretty strong enterprise play and I fully expect them to show some pretty surprising penetration numbers fairly quickly. Still having said that... the majority of that sweet sweet ad revenue is coming from regular end users. I wouldn't expect google to sit back and be happy with MS going from 1/4 the revenue of end of life yahoo to 5+ billion a quarter in revenue in 2 years time. The market has grown a bit for sure but a good chunk of that came at googles expense. They have launched Chrome Enterprise already with a nice big list of things for enterprise including active directory support to ensure they can wiggle in. My bet is before windows 7s end of life date hits... Google launches Chrome OEM. No sub price, zero cost... I believe a more fully aimed desktop chromeos is on the way. I would expect Google to announce some sort of deal with Valve likely. If google is serious they may well go all out and even through major marketing money behind it.... it may make a lot of sense spent a few handfuls of billions pushing oems and marketing the crap out of a OS to put a damper on Bing creeping into their back yard.

Now I'm not saying the new master is better then the old master for the masses. However if that all shakes out and google does go the Valve deal route. Those of us running Linux will reap the rewards... unless Google does their own thing or signs some crazy strange deal to bring PS4 games to chromeos or something. lol

I bet you are right about the Chrome OS.
I can't imagine why they would let that market segment slip away.

I would make the switch in a heartbeat.

 

[craigdt]

Oh, and my biggest pet peeve about Windows 10:
The infernal loading screen/icon thing when you open something.

Click on Control Panel- wait 2 seconds for the solid color screen with the white icon to go away.
Open the Weather app, wait for the loading screen to go away. Ugh.
I don't have time for that.

 

[nilepez]

You, as well as many others wouldn't notice advertisements built into their computer's operating system, but I would so your point is moot.

I hear ya. For 20 years, MS hasn't put the icons I want by default on the desktop.
I had 2 choices.

1. Bitch about how windows sucks because it's not configured for me
2. Go into settings and add the icons I wanted.

Guess which option I chose?

 

[nilepez]

MS uses their OS data to enhance the targeting abilities of their Bing ads. Google does demographic targeting... but bing does it better.

Why do you think MS AD revenue has went from a 150 million or so a quarter to north of 5 billion now... in the 2 years since Windows 10 launched.

If you don't know I'll tell you its because the large fish in the advertising industry have realised that bing is actually a good platform to use with the old guard advertisers that are finding less value in traditional media. If for instance you want to advertise Always Teen Pads... Bing can target women 18-24 very specifically. MS is clearly using their install base data to target customers. If you don't believe me do a little bit of research... pretend your looking to place a large very targeted online ad blitz and read up on what the industry thinks about MS right now. Their ad revenue is exploding with good reason.

And this is bad why? FB ads are the most annoying ads in the world, because they're almost always irrelevant and no matter how often you tell them I'm not interested in T-shirts about not underestimating a man that is over <insert some age> that likes <insert some band name>.

If I get a bunch of ads about computer gear, GOOD. That said, I doubt this affects me, because I only use Edge for very specific tasks (mostly for 1 email account and the occasional website that doesn't work correctly on FF). Bing itself only gets used if I get a lock screen image that interests me and there's an option to go to a link about the place/thing that that image is of.

 

[nilepez]

Keep in mind, however, that Microsoft literally gave Windows 10 away for a full year on release, not to mention how hard Microsoft worked to trick or force people to install it. Windows 7 was never free--the only way to get it was with a new PC or by buying a license ($100+). If Windows 10 needed a full year of being given away for free to merely match the adoption rate of Windows 7, that means A) Windows 7 really is that good, B) Windows 10 really is that bad, or C) some combination of the two.

When you add in the stagnation in the CPU space and the growth of mobile computing, people simply don't have a big reason to buy a new computer or upgrade their OS.

It's 2 years later and it's still on track with 7. So that's really a red herring. If I hadn't forced my parents to upgrade, they'd still be on 7. Where their issues? I guess. I recall my mom asking something about doing 1 thing. Told her how to do it and that was it.

No doubt 7 is good. I don't think anyone here has argued it wasn't. But I will say there are apps I use regularly that aren't on 7. News, a Calculator that's High DPI aware and Netflix are things I use daily. I also like the email app for web mail, but I'm jsut as comfortable using the website or my phone.

 

[M76]

This is nonsense, windows 10 can be annoying after updates, but it's actually faster than vista or 7. I've had no issues running any games on it all. Game mode defaulting to being on is my biggest gripe because it can hinder performance but that's easy to turn off.

Who said anything about not being able to run games on it? That's a whole new level of strawman. Strawminator.
About it being faster citation needed.

 

[DeathFromBelow]

I'd like to add my random two cents about people comparing win7 release to win10 release.

Win 7 = "Flawed, it has changes people won't like, but there are huge improvements over Vista"
Win10 release = fake news. Every major website talking about it has a glowing review, touting it as "the next big thing" like its a new Samsung phone. It couldn't be more obvious how shill it is.

This reflects the decline in tech 'journalism' in general. Everything is native advertising.

Now we have a proliferation of brand bots like the Windows 10 bots in this thread or Intel bots trolling the CPU subforums. There's dedicated software for autoposting and replying with limited intervention and you can hire people overseas to do it for you. Kinda sad.

 

[HoffY]

Indeed.

we will have none of this common sense logical and mature responses please! Out i say... out!

 

[HoffY]

This reflects the decline in tech 'journalism' in general. Everything is native advertising.

Yep. Very predictable. I knew it would happen when the internet became "cool". As son as something is mainstream and the Useful idiots get on it... it goes to shit because it brings the scum in due to the sniff and allure of sheep herding.

I loved the 'net more before it was cool.

 

[Pongo]

Chap I get paid to fix, upgrade and support.

I don't get paid to whine and bitch about petty OS politics or how something isn't fair.

You just have to man up and get on with it. Life is too short. The world isn't stopping for you or me. So go with it or quit.

I also get paid to support these things. One thing I've noticed is slight resistance to subscriptions. Our clients don't want office 365 and are confused why they need to pay a subscription for Meraki. I think there will be major push back if Windows as Service becomes a reality.

If we don't complain now, we'll be stuck supporting this hot turd. Microsoft has done nothing but make things more difficult for me. Try sysprepping windows 10, its a nightmare. Office 2010 was cake, just plop a CD key in and your activated. Conversely Office 2013/16 with the online account activation has been a headache in the MSP/VAR world.

Don't get me started on how much SSD usage this damn OS is using. Every 6mo its chewing up 10-20GB of disk writes. I miss the old service packs. And now we get monthly patches as bundles so you get to pick; be secure or possibly having broken 3rd party software.

 

[odditory]

If I hadn't forced my parents to upgrade, they'd still be on 7.

You must really hate your parents.

 

[tetris42]

I also get paid to support these things. One thing I've noticed is slight resistance to subscriptions. Our clients don't want office 365 and are confused why they need to pay a subscription for Meraki. I think there will be major push back if Windows as Service becomes a reality.

If we don't complain now, we'll be stuck supporting this hot turd. Microsoft has done nothing but make things more difficult for me. Try sysprepping windows 10, its a nightmare. Office 2010 was cake, just plop a CD key in and your activated. Conversely Office 2013/16 with the online account activation has been a headache in the MSP/VAR world.

Don't get me started on how much SSD usage this damn OS is using. Every 6mo its chewing up 10-20GB of disk writes. I miss the old service packs. And now we get monthly patches as bundles so you get to pick; be secure or possibly having broken 3rd party software.

Is the increased SSD usage from more frequent updates / their sizes or just the OS itself hitting more files for telemetry or who knows what?

 

[Aireoth]

Actually, the upgrade is still free, just not pushed anymore. Also, Windows 7 is most likely either being bought from places like Kingwin or already with a key on the OEM machine that is in use. The idea that it was free as an upgrade and Windows 7 cost money makes Windows 10 bad in anyway is at best a logical fallacy. Otherwise, that would mean that Linux is absolutely terrible because it is free, which we know is not the case at all.

1. You earlier require proof, but your a man of God, there is a real logical fallacy for you.

2. Linux v. Windows is a false equivalency if I ever saw one, one is an open source free os, the other is a for profit corporation that is almost a monopoly.

 

[M76]

You must really hate your parents.

And now they hate him back.

 

[FlawleZ]

My opinion is that Windows 10 is doing exactly what its designed to do very well. However, it really doesn't offer me anything of any usefulness on my gaming PC that Windows 7 does. In fact, its inferior to Windows 7 in gaming for the games I play. The adoption rate of Windows 10 also needs to be heavily scrutinized as never in the past has there ever been such a desperate grab for market share on a particular product from MS that they literally give it away for over a year for free. Even illegal copies of Win7/8 were given Win10 for free. Windows 7 wasn't free for XP or Vista users. Windows 7 didn't also automatically update without consent to XP/Vista users like Windows 10 did for 7/8 users. So, even if there's ~50% of gamers on Windows 10 from the steam polls, to say that's due to their personal preference, I take with a huge grain of salt.

Slightly off topic, but is anyone else very irritated with how much Windows 10 tries to push just searching for what you want in windows search/Cortana?

 

[odditory]

Slightly off topic, but is anyone else very irritated with how much Windows 10 tries to push just searching for what you want in windows search/Cortana?

Yeah, a stock 10 installation is a bit much in terms of unremovable crapware and nanny features, so I had to use MSMG Toolkit to rip it all out by the roots from the installation ISO - Cortana, Store, Edge, all the default mobile apps, Xbox Game mode, telemetry, etc. It's a decent OS now (10 Pro) with all that stuff gone and ClassicShell installed.

Going to de-bloat Windows Server 2016 next - I don't need a server OS with toys, games and mobile apps, but I don't quite want to run Core (non-GUI) mode for home lab.

 

[daglesj]

I also get paid to support these things. One thing I've noticed is slight resistance to subscriptions. Our clients don't want office 365 and are confused why they need to pay a subscription for Meraki. I think there will be major push back if Windows as Service becomes a reality.

The folks I look after are mostly the reverse. They tolerate the subscription model as all staff then stay on the same version. That's a big benefit. Often at a lot of companies in the past, you would have staff on all sorts of different versions and sometimes several different versions on the same machines like Office 2003 Small Business plus Outlook 2007 and Access 2010. Then if in 2015 Alice in accounts wanted another copy of Access 2010...oops ether impossible or £500 on Amazon. A real mess! If a business cannot afford £120 a year per staff member for the software that helps them make the money then no point being in business. Plus you can write the cost off against tax. If in the corp arena then you can negotiate a better deal.

Different strokes...

 

[nilepez]

You must really hate your parents.

Nah. Mom's had no issues since then and Dad likes the netflix app...and other for his use, it's no different than 7. Besides, unless they die in the next couple of years, they were going to 10 anyway. That said, I force ALL upgrades on them. I use to trust my mom to install her updates, but midway through 7 I started noticing she wasn't patching all the time and I changed the settings. I guess that's what happens with age. Truth is I have mine set to install by default too, thoughsometimes I delay it for a few days and I've definitely delayed the big updates long enough to see what issues pop up, but haven't really had any since the fall of 2015.

These days my only problem is this dell 5k monitor not always turning on when i start up/come out of sleep and sometimes doing the wrong resolutoin. Pretty sure it's the monitor (I know some of those are), but I haven't contacted dell about a replacement yet. Maybe in a month or 2.

 

[zero2dash]

Ever supported an enterprise environment with more than 50 clients? Because it sure as shit doesn't sound like it. There are things I like about 10 and things I don't. It is installed on all my personal laptops and my wifes machine, but not my personal desktop or work laptop. Why? because for basic users and basic use it is fine in a home environment. I'm not a basic user and I used it up until they took away features I actively used and then it got removed. However home and small business are an entirely different animal than large enterprise and in that environment 10 is a nightmare. It isn't about os politics or anything so silly as that. It is strictly about performance, cost, legacy support and domain reliability. All of those things win 10 does exceptionally poorly at this stage. Now if you have an extremely basic domain that doesn't deal with legacy anything, well lucky you and 10 might be fine in that unique use case. However for everyone else it is a giant pain in the ass.

QFT.
We have no plan in place to upgrade every PC in our domain from 7 to 10, and no desire to do so either.
If and when it happens, it'll fall on someone else's shoulders in 2020.
If that was tomorrow, we'd upgrade everything to 8.1 with Classic Shell and wait another 2 years to see where the chips fall with 10.

If accounting wanted to allocate the funds for an Enterprise LTSB agreement, we'd roll that out.
If not, we'd have some decisions to make. I can tell you though with certainty that neither me nor my boss have any desire to babysit 10 in our organization.

If people have to deal with something new, we'd rather spend a few hours teaching them their way around Ubuntu or Mint.

Now we have a proliferation of brand bots like the Windows 10 bots in the [H]ardForum ... Kinda sad.

Tweaked (because they post everywhere) and agreed. Thank God for the ignore list.

 

[SmokeRngs]

The onus is on you to provide proof, not the other way around. Until you can do that, you are giving us nothing more than whatever it is you are selling. Also, we already know why they gave it away as a free upgrade and it was not for ad revenue and selling information and if you want the answer, that is what the search function in these forums are for.

Your logic basically says that Linux is free then because they are harvesting your data. You see, logical fallacies do not quite work they way you thought they did, eh? I am capable of actually thinking things through and do not simply take things by blind faith because some internet dude says it is so. Proof please, I require proof.

No, it's up to Microsoft to prove what is being taken and Microsoft has not and will not tell anyone. Even worse is the fact that the EULA and whatnot basically states that just about any info from the system can be grabbed. It flat out said that webcam images/video can be taken, that microphone samples can be taken and that keystrokes could also be taken. How you can brush all of this off as "nothing" makes me wonder about your critical thinking skills.

 

[ManofGod]

I hear ya. For 20 years, MS hasn't put the icons I want by default on the desktop.
I had 2 choices.

1. Bitch about how windows sucks because it's not configured for me
2. Go into settings and add the icons I wanted.

Guess which option I chose?

Exactly, I grew tired of bitching because, strange as it may seem to others, it made no difference at all and did not increase my enjoyment with computers at all either.

 

[ManofGod]

Oh, and my biggest pet peeve about Windows 10:
The infernal loading screen/icon thing when you open something.

Click on Control Panel- wait 2 seconds for the solid color screen with the white icon to go away.
Open the Weather app, wait for the loading screen to go away. Ugh.
I don't have time for that.

I suggest you check your antivirus software or if you are running Malwarebytes in the background or have it installed. Those things open instantly on my computer and the only time I had the issue you describe was when Malwarebytes version 3 was causing a major slowdown and two brand new builds.

 

[chenw]

Half expected result, none of the games (or an extreme minority of it) requires Win 10 to run, those games require Windows Store, and they are not exactly universally popular.

For those games that do offer DX12 mode, only AMD GPUs gain benefit from it, nVidia does not require W10 to run at max performance.

With the advent of Vulkan, perhaps even DX12 adoption will slow to a crawl.

 

[ManofGod]

Half expected result, none of the games (or an extreme minority of it) requires Win 10 to run, those games require Windows Store, and they are not exactly universally popular.

For those games that do offer DX12 mode, only AMD GPUs gain benefit from it, nVidia does not require W10 to run at max performance.

With the advent of Vulkan, perhaps even DX12 adoption will slow to a crawl.

Yep, except that Vulkan runs faster on AMD hardware over Nvidia hardware.

 

[Todd Walter]

Interesting outlook on XP. I was a beta tester for XP in the day (got it sent to me on disk, still have the cover!) and even in beta I found the same thing. People crap on about how good Windows 98 was and how bad Windows Me was, TBH they were both shit, it's just that people's memories of how shit they both were have faded.

That's because everybody forgets there were two versions, the initial run which would BSOD after 47 days of uptime and 98SE where they bundled all the needed fixes. There was no downloading service packs at home,unless you had ISDN, either!

 

[chenw]

I can definitely say I am one of those 98 haters.

I already didn't have a very high opinion of windows 98 when it crashed during Bill Gate's demonstration, and the first version was definitely a hot steaming pile of turd.

I stuck with windows 95 until I got Windows ME, which was another PoS, but I didn't have a choice back then. I never gave windows 98SE a chance mainly because the VERY sour taste 98 left in my mouth.

It seems like every other version of windows I used was an unholy PoS, started with 98, then Me, then Windows Vista, then Windows 8...

 

[ManofGod]

I can definitely say I am one of those 98 haters.

I already didn't have a very high opinion of windows 98 when it crashed during Bill Gate's demonstration, and the first version was definitely a hot steaming pile of turd.

I stuck with windows 95 until I got Windows ME, which was another PoS, but I didn't have a choice back then. I never gave windows 98SE a chance mainly because the VERY sour taste 98 left in my mouth.

It seems like every other version of windows I used was an unholy PoS, started with 98, then Me, then Windows Vista, then Windows 8...

Oh great, now we are going to have all the fake charts of every other Windows version sucked, fake crap.

 

[chenw]

Personal experience, nothing more. Those were the versions I deliberately downgraded to a previous version because how bad my experiences were, with exception of Windows ME, but I was between rock and a hard place with that one, since downgrading that would bring me to 98 XD.

But yeah, those versions were the only versions where I wiped the OS, reinstalled an older OS, never went back and leap frogged it when new version came out.