Very helpful article, Woody.

I really like the ability to turn off driver updates. A Windows update won’t be able to break printing or scanning on my computer if I turn off driver updates for my printer/scanner.

The Active Hours feature is another favorite of mine. If I’m going to be working for a while, and I need to be able to use the computer all that time, I can make sure that all of that time is listed as “active hours”, so that the computer won’t reboot on me while I’m in the middle of a critical task.

These two features eliminate two of the key objections I have had to Windows 10.

It sounds like Microsoft has been listening to user concerns, at least a little.

Another good article and I actually love the “slide format” it loads a whole lot quicker than the usual full page article on my old Win7 machine that is probably way past retirement but hey it still works quite well so better than heading off to the Recycling with it.
Slide 18 was a bit of an eye opener on there, the image says Microsoft in the corner, so I guess its from them originally. However when you look at the potential list of offered search engines it lists the “PirateBay” so is this now endorsed by the good folks in Redmond or merely a good indication of what they really get up to in M$ central?
Hey I know they gave Win10 away but isnt that taking it a bit too far? lol
But Joking appart this should be of some use in allaying fears to all those who have yet to “take the leap of faith” when Win7 finally has had its day. After all, over the years every new version of Windows has had its “perils & pitfalls” and we all learned to get over the various new quirks that occured and I dont think Win10 will be much different, although some times I get the feeling this time its taking a bit longer.

“Windows 10. But in a couple of years, it’ll be the only viable Win game in town” – will it then look and feel at least similar to what Windows 10 is now?

At this point the only thing keeping me on Windows is DirectX otherwise I’d be in Ubuntu 100% of the time.

My plan is Win7 for the Steam games that haven’t been ported over by 2020, and Ubuntu MATE for everything else, especially anything that has to be online. Dual booting with an SSD is no longer an inconvenience, when you can swap OS’s and be at a working desktop in 10 seconds or less.

The Active Hours maximum is 18 hours for the majority of Windows 10 users who are now using 1703.

You are absolutely correct, sadly so. In a few years WinX build 6,468,432,123.1563.432 will be the only ‘supported’ show in town. What an opportunity for some young entrepreneur to form a company and start a new OS, call it Sliding Glass Doors. I’d pay $ for an OS that was only an OS – not an ‘Information gathering platform that also runs programs that only we approve of and profit from and kinda rips off the smartphone interface that either Google or Apple make billions from but that we can’t get right or make money from so we’ll just kill the desktop paradigm trying’. Maybe it would look like Win 286 – or even 3.1, or…XP…7 (before it was mutated into the former).

I have a cat.  I feed and care for her, which is much less work than these newer  MS computer “Operating Systems”.

Woody, as always an excellent summary article from you. I use Version 1607. I realize that you are not responsible for Computer World’s html, but I found your article impossible to copy/paste text from.

Slide2:     I disabled Cortana for security reasons, using AskWoody techniques. As a result, I don’t have a Search Box. Classic Shell does not restore search box. There is an app called “Search” but does not work.

Slide 4: I don’t have Task View app but can get it by Ctrl-Alt-Del.

What turns me off is how Computer World does slide shows. I already have to click for each suggestion. Then I also have to click a down arrow to read what I want to read, instead of seeing the basically useless image. And, what’s more, it always takes two clicks, one that just scrolls my browser back up the top, and a second one that moves it up to the top and actually expands so I can read the text. So then I have to scroll back down twice before I can even read it. For every slide.

The entire experience just sucks. If you want to put one tip per page, fine. But leave the rest of the stuff alone. Just have text that is visible when you get to the next page.