Get a Mac

how many versions of windows will it take to convince you?

I made the "leap" last June.......what a relief!

Can't unfortunately [or fortunately depending upon your outlook] download free as we have Vista here, or so the techie adjacant to me informs me [er......Him Indoors that is]

Yeah you may be right Epicure...!! just depends on the finance minister's approval....

Sheila - can't see where that makes a difference....I may be wrong

but check here in case.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/preview-faq

Sorry, sorry J

Apparently it is Windows 7

Well you are set to go !!!! Let me know how it goes....just joking...bit of a leap of faith I know..

There is a descent review by Techradar available here:

http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/software/operating-systems/windows-10-1267364/review

my humble opinion.... is overloaded with useless applications just to attract people to buy Windows phones....

so as with other previous versions, it will just kill the PC you have and you will end up begging for a hardware upgrade :D

Sadly Linux (even Ubuntu) is still a bit more difficult to use than a Mac for normal users...

Thanks Gabriel - now a little more confused...the blog following the article makes interesting reading...it seems people are either for or against !! Not much middle gorund and mainly points made on emotion rather than fact I reckon..

Well is Windows.... so this is common..

remember that Windows XP was common on the enterprise sector until recently. Some business replaced them for Windows 7 just a few weeks before Microsoft stopped the support (ie: security updates)....

Windows 8, 8.1 and this 10 they all more or less look the same (8.1 was just release to perform some minor cosmetic changes... including the return of the start button...)

10 looks OK, but i guess you will not find any important change (you will still have to have an antivirus and a lot of extra stuff to protect yourself). Probably as with every version of windows, you will have many problems to find drivers for your current hardware

As long as it is as stable as the previous versions (besides Vista :P ) is ok, it wil take some time to get used to the interface (if you are coming from anything up to windows 7) and you will have some crazy initial months just trying to find the drivers you need to make it work properly (web cams, network , video and sound cards might not work properly until the manufacturers start to release updated drivers...)

Cheers.

g

this page is giving some links to the latest build:

http://getintopc.com/softwares/operating-systems/windows-10-pro-iso-build-10051-64-bit-free-download/

I downloaded windows ten a month or two ago so can give you my appraisal so far.  And just to preface this, I've been using a mac since 2008 having got utterly demoralised with windows, so i'm most definitely biased.  If you will permit me a little whine, the reason i ended up with windows ten at all shows you a little bit about how ridiculous microsoft continues to act - I built a pc and wanted to put *a* windows operating system on it, presumably windows 8.  It actually was totally impossible to buy a copy online without already owning a windows operating system pc, which completely made me laugh.  Microsoft wouldnt allow me to buy windows 8 since I only owned a mac as their sole installer requires windows in order to even be able to download it.  Hilarious.  But anyway I digress. 

They would allow me to download windows ten without any silly restrictions, and so my intention originally was to download windows 10 and then buy a legit copy of windows 8 but in actual fact windows ten is pretty good so i have stuck with it.  I can't compare it with previous windows OS since the last i used was Vista and i daren't even think about that without my tummy getting upset but actually windows ten is stable, it kinda just works on its own and doesnt give kernel panics and produces a completely usable computer.  I haven't experienced it crash once.  Don't get me wrong, this is still definitely a beta product and you should treat it as such.  Things are liable to change at any time without warning as an update comes out.  For example, on the latest build that was installed a week ago the actual possibility of child accounts miraculously disappeared altogether and existing child accounts just became standard accounts.  No warning, no notification, but basically its a beta and they are still working out how everything comes together.  The current system seems to have disabled windows defender also.  But in general i have no problems, just little niggles.  Most software works on windows ten exactly as it should.  There are a few that don't, for example I have proprietary software expanding the settings on mouse and keyboard and neither actually recognise their hardware devices plugged in under windows ten, but all these little wrinkles will be ironed out with time as suppliers update their software drivers and basically it does work as it should.  My major complaint, which i've always had with windows, is that *still* the menus are entirely un-intuitive, similar settings are found on disparate menus which don't link together, there seem to be three or four different ways to reach your settings goals but only one of them will actually get where you want to go.  It's a bit like driving in London and needing to know which lane to be in half a km before you arrive at a junction.  So the guts of windows still needs it's developers to just watch an idiot try to use it in front of them so they can just see how counter-intuitive it is - repeatedly.  But if you've been using windows for ages you already know this and will probably find it fine.  Anyway long story short, I was pleasantly surprised.  It's stable, pretty, smooth, colourful and given its a beta not bad at all.  Which for someone who has used a mac for ages I guess has to be a compliment.

Actually to just be a bit clearer specifically, the following works without any human intervention except making sure you download the latest software:

nvidia graphics cards to at least two displays, keyboard, mouse, sound outputs analogue and digital, ethernet, wifi, virus scan, firewall, games software such as steam, windows update, office products, firefox and chrome, usb 1,2 and 3 pretty much everything that you can plug in.  Kinda everything.

And the location is here.  Frankly i wouldn't trust downloading from anywhere other than the legitimate source.

But only download it if you are happy with this being a surplus computer to play with: the fact is one day you may find everything on your hard drive wiped or that it simply doesnt work at all and you have a blank screen, you never know with beta. 

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/preview-iso

Thanks Hucklewoo for such an great reply. I have always used Windows with few problems until a week ago when beginning the day Windows would not start - suffice to say I had to reinstall Win 7 which prompted my original question.-  in fact I am loath to use anything to do with Apple since a problem with my Ipad (but as you say 'that is another story!!").

I have all my files on Onedrive so I imagine this still works ok under 10 ? At least I can still access them from another device this way. (actually via an Ipad but don't tell anyone.!!)

Yes onedrive does work on it as far as I know. I don't use it but it certainly is installed. But honestly if this is your main computer don't take the risk yet on windows 10, an update could mess all your settings at any given moment. 

Yes I hear what you are saying...thnx again.

Hello Jeffery,

The operating system (Windows, GNU/Linux,MAC-OS) you want to use depends on your need. 

You need to do some works with some softwares and these are only on windows, so windows (for example).

I use bot GNU/Linux and windows according my needs. No MAC-OS because according my needs, MAC computer are more expensive than PC and I'm facing some issues with peripheral connxion etc...

Regarding windows 10 : currently, it's a test version (thus not too stable, etc...). If you are curious and you want to try it, do :) . But if you have one computer, maybe it's too risky. You can virtualize it if your computer is powerfull enough (by using vmware). The final version will be available this summer. If you have windows 7 or 8.1 you can made an update to update 10 for free.

GNU/Linux are not so complicated than in the past. Some distrib are more user friendly but you need anyway minor time investment to discover it.

MAC are maybe the more user friendly OS. Maybe I am wrong because I never used it.

So, again it depends on your needs.

If you want to talk a little bit more about that or if you have some question, tell me :)