Issue 5.16
Regular readers of this column know that I have been advocating not upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 10 in the past. I do believe that anyone with Windows 8 will benefit from the upgrade, but moving from 7 to 10 creates a few problems that may or may not affect you. For that reason I am still hesitant to recommend it.
Windows 10 still has some bugs and it still is incompatible with some things. It is for these reasons that I am recommending caution if you are running Windows 7. If you are pretty confident you will be happy with the move after reading the possible issues below, then I would say it is okay to go ahead with the upgrade.
The first thing I recommend is to try out Windows 10 on a different computer – either with a friend who has it or at a store. If you find you can get around fairly smoothly and do the things you want to do, then Windows 10 might be for you. Many of my customers just decide it is too difficult to learn and want to go back to 7. Going back is very hard and expensive if you have already upgraded.
It is a little bit scary, but Microsoft runs a compatibility test on your computer when it installs the “Get Windows 10” app. It will appear as a windows logo (all white) in the bottom right hand corner of your screen. Clicking on it will not automatically install Windows 10, but you need to be careful what you click next. If you click Upgrade now or Start download, it may be difficult to stop the install. There should be a button that indicates that your pc is compatible or asks if you want to run the test. I have not been able to find an easy way to run the compatibility test outside of this process. There are ways to do it, but they are complicated.
If possible, view the report. It will tell you if you have enough speed, memory and power to run Windows 10, but it will not tell you if it will run quickly or not. We recommend that you have at least 4 Gigabytes of memory, a dual core processor and 100 Gigabytes of free hard drive space. At that level the computer will run fairly slowly, but will work. I have seen it work on older systems with Pentium or Celeron processors, but the speed is poor. Better speed is achieved if you have a quad core processor or better with 8 Gigs or more memory. It is not comprehensive, but the test does try to let you know if there are printers, scanners, cameras, or other peripherals that are not compatible. It should also let you know if there are incompatible programs.
If you have older programs (installed or created before 2012) that are important to you, you may want to contact the manufacturer to see if the program is compatible. The test doesn’t check all older programs – only the ones in their database. For example if you are running Quicken 2006, there is a good chance that you will have to update (at your cost) to a newer version to make it work on Windows 10. The same goes for old versions of PhotoShop or FloorPlan 3D, etc.
Once you have checked things out and are pretty sure you will be happy, you can go ahead with the upgrade. Upgrading is free until the end of July. I will probably keep at least one or two of my computers on Windows 7 even after that just to be sure I can do things I need to. Windows 7 will be supported until 2020 – but remember – make sure you always have a backup of anything important.
Shaun McCausland has worked in the computer industry for over 33 years, 26 years of it locally with Bits ‘N’ Bytes and Musicomp and currently works as a computer consultant. If you have questions you can reach him at 435-668-7118 or shaun@musicomp.net.
Shaun… I enjoyed your column on upgrading to Win 10 (Feb 5?). I go back to the old Commodore computers and IBM single floppy PC of the 1980s (?). And like you, I have waited for MS to work out the bugs in Win 10 before upgrading. Oddly I had just upgraded to win 10 from win 7 a few days before I first read your column mentioned above. The upgrade, although a 3 hour endurance test, went well on my Dell laptop. After a couple of days I felt comfortable enough with win 10 to upgrade my desktop computer. Had a few network/sharing problems which neither I nor my IP could not resolve so called MS tech support and was pleasantly surprised to connect with a real live person who resolved the issue in an hour. So far, so good. For the most part, I like win 10 BUT it has so many features it is burdensome. I ordered the book “Win 10 (All in One) for Dummies” by Leonhard — 952 pages including the index. The first major task was to determine what features I would need — which so far amounts to about 10% of the features available. For those of us who USE a computer primarily for communication rather than entertainment we would be just as well off with win 7. So far I have found few, if any, advantages of using Windows Edge or the cumbersome (but improved)search function or the apps window or One Drive, etc etc. Being a somewhat private person, I resent Cortana although it is easy enough to disable (which was the first thing I did). If I knew that MS would continue supporting Win 7 I feel that most people, certainly I, would be equally well off using the older version.