NikonGear'23

Gear Talk => Other => Topic started by: Tristin on June 19, 2016, 04:40:43

Title: Win 7 or Win 10
Post by: Tristin on June 19, 2016, 04:40:43
I am ordering a new laptop next week, and am curious whether I should give Win 10 a whirl.  I like Win 7, but as this new laptop will have several very recent technologies in it, I am curious if I have reason to try 10. 

The new laptop will have a screen resolution of 3840x2160 on a 15.6" screen.  Scaling issues?  I wasn't looking for such high resolution, but 100% aRGB is just too good to pass up!

Thunderbolt 3, which I will be making great use of.  Any issues with Win 7 here?

NVMe, any differences between 7/10 here?

Any other things I should know between the two?  Stability and power management are both areas I'd be interested to hear of differences in.
Title: Re: Win 7 or Win 10
Post by: Frank Fremerey on June 19, 2016, 08:02:28
I run the insider previews of Win10 on my production machine even in fast track.

As I do not have any interesting data on the system drives ... not even on my laptop ...
it would  be safe for me to do so even if Win10 would not be such a big leap forward
when it comes to stability and dependability. I do not look back to Win7 Win8 Win8.1

Win10 is sure the way to go IMO
Title: Re: Win 7 or Win 10
Post by: Bjørn Rørslett on June 19, 2016, 09:49:46
I'm running Win10 (Insider Preview) and ordinary version in virtual machines and on laptops. Win10 follows the usual Microsoft practice of dumbing down aspects of the OS, plus adding its own idiosyncrasies. Otherwise it functions fine and some of the worst glitches in the user interface have at least partially been remedied during the first year of existence. IE is gone - in principle - and replaced by Edge, which is if possible even less laudable. You can still run IE if you wish, though, although Microsoft won't help you much to find out how. There are "smart" functions such as Cortana, Windows Store etc. that the user community could do without. The Tile interface can be expanded or (nearly) eliminated according to user's taste.

All my programs running under Win7 continue to function under Win10 as far as I can ascertain. The memory footprint is equal to or smaller than a corresponding configuration in Win7, and the OS can handle larger amounts of RAM if you are inclined to RAM overindulgence. True system crashes have been remarkably few and most can be ascribed to hardware issues.

Booting is slightly quicker as well, which could be advantageous for a laptop.
Title: Re: Win 7 or Win 10
Post by: Frank Fremerey on June 19, 2016, 10:01:24
I am running it on

the gaming machine of my son
my production machine with 16 core double heart Xeons and 64 GB RAM
An older Core i3 laptop
Title: Re: Win 7 or Win 10
Post by: Akira on June 19, 2016, 19:36:49
Considering that the mainstream support has been ended in early 2015, it would not be a good idea to choose Win7 at this point of time.

I (finally) replaced my Win7 machine with the current Win10 one at the end of this January.  Word/Excel 2016, Photoshop CC2015 and Cubase 8.0 work without problem.  HP keeps My ten-year-old printer driver compatible with Win10.

Edge is crap and IE still survives in the OS, but I'm using Firefox.
Title: Re: Win 7 or Win 10
Post by: Tristin on June 19, 2016, 19:51:50
Win 10 it is then, thanks for the input.
Title: Re: Win 7 or Win 10
Post by: ColinM on June 19, 2016, 22:19:49
Agreed Tristan.
As mentioned above, I've not had any lockups or crashes that I can remember.

And most importantly, all the software I use has continued to run with no visible differences. I may be seeing this through slightly rose tinted spectacles though as I switched to an SSD at the same time as doing the upgrade :)
Title: Re: Win 7 or Win 10
Post by: Tristin on June 19, 2016, 23:07:57
I'm going from never having faster than a 7.2k straight to m.2 nvme.  Looking forward to it!  Glad to hear Windows 10 is better than 8.  Window's good iterations certainly skips generations.
Title: Re: Win 7 or Win 10
Post by: Jørgen Ramskov on June 29, 2016, 22:13:28
My experience with Windows 10 is positive too, but it does spy on you a lot more than Windows 7, though you can turn much of it off.
Title: Re: Win 7 or Win 10
Post by: Bjørn Rørslett on June 29, 2016, 22:30:04
Apparently in order to gain slightly more control of your machine under Win10, you do have to select certain options when installing the OS the first time. Otherwise you are literally hijacked.

It is bad customer policy for a corporation to gloss over its true intentions like Microsoft has done with Win10. Hopefully there will be acceptable third-party remedial tools available. Or tighten your network firewall.

I will not replace Win7 on the machines  currently using this OS. These are production  machines and their configuration is set by that fact anyway. Thus not a machine for everyone's use or access.
Title: Re: Win 7 or Win 10
Post by: Tristin on June 30, 2016, 00:49:19
Not liking 10.  The interface, while not as egregious as 8, is still dumbed-down, restricted and not at all natural to navigate.  I will spend some more time with 10 to see if I can make it what I want, but I suspect I will be going back to 7.

All the spying stuff is easily turned off and I will give Microsoft credit for being very open with it.  It's the UI that is poor.  I can see that they are trying to homogenize their OS across serveral platforms, but they are going about it in a very non-sensical fashion.
Title: Re: Win 7 or Win 10
Post by: Akira on June 30, 2016, 02:54:24
Tristin, we should not waste our time and energy trying to "like" the UI or anything relating to the "design taste" of any Windows OS.  Just get accustomed to it and let it pass by.  I've been using Windows purely because of the apps I use and need, the customizable hardware optimized for my use and the cost.

It is completely different from, say, the musical instrument that will sound better and better as you play, will become part of your body and will be cherished more and more.
Title: Re: Win 7 or Win 10
Post by: Airy on June 30, 2016, 06:36:19
Good point, Akira. Anyway I'm working with apps much more than I'm interacting with the OS, so the latter is not really my main concern, except dependability. Since using Win 8 (then 8.1, now 10), I had only one serious crash (the PC won't boot anymore, consequence of a botched auto update), and the easy, quick, and full recovery was to me reason enough to stick with those newer versions.

My main rant is limited to lack of responsiveness, even for simple operations like file viewing, selection, and copy. Apparently this occurs when being online and working with cloud-synchronized files. Not everything takes place in background threads.
Title: Re: Win 7 or Win 10
Post by: Akira on June 30, 2016, 07:02:17
My main rant is limited to lack of responsiveness, even for simple operations like file viewing, selection, and copy. Apparently this occurs when being online and working with cloud-synchronized files. Not everything takes place in background threads.

Yup, I share your frustration, Airy.  :(
Title: Re: Win 7 or Win 10
Post by: Tristin on July 01, 2016, 01:00:23
My issue is that things I like access got buried more.  They are still there, and I hope to find a way to un-bury them so the OS can be less in the way.  It'd be nice if "Pro" versions of Windows didn't come cluttered with consumer level stuff. 

Is it a huge deal to have to go through extra steps to do the same thing? Not really.  Certainly a time waster though.
Title: Re: Win 7 or Win 10
Post by: zuglufttier on July 01, 2016, 10:14:25
Windows interface dumbed down? It used to be that way since forever :D

If you want something else, use some linux derivate and install a window manager of your liking and use the shell to configure literally everything on your system. By the way, the command line now is an integral part of the windows operating system and let's you configure pretty much everything. Actually, newer windows versions are less dumbed down than windows xp and the likes.

If I ever need something special in windows 10, I just fire up the control panel which looks and feels the same as with windows 7. To open programs, I just hit the windows key and start typing: It doesn't get much more comfortable and faster (using an SSD) than that.
Title: Re: Win 7 or Win 10
Post by: Frank Fremerey on July 01, 2016, 11:13:34
Tristin:

I use the command line for shortcuts.

Just right click on the new "Start" button on the lower left corner and hit "run" or "cmd" for things that are not in the path and in cmd you still got the option to run it as Administrator.
Title: Re: Win 7 or Win 10
Post by: Bjørn Rørslett on July 01, 2016, 11:14:47
Put a link to the .exe on the desktop and assign a hot key to it. Much much faster.
Title: Re: Win 7 or Win 10
Post by: JJChan on July 01, 2016, 18:48:45
Yup, I share your frustration, Airy.  :(

Airy/Akira
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2971725/windows/how-to-reclaim-your-privacy-in-windows-10-piece-by-piece.html

I did some of these suggestions and my Win10 is much much more responsive. I also found logging in as local user rather than as online user sped things up too. Seems that Microsoft does report home a lot.

Akira - my old DAS (original Sonar) and input Boss GS10 (has nice fat analogue sounding ADC) is not supported with Win 10. What do you use with Cubase?

JJ
Title: Re: Win 7 or Win 10
Post by: Akira on July 01, 2016, 19:34:41
Airy/Akira
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2971725/windows/how-to-reclaim-your-privacy-in-windows-10-piece-by-piece.html

I did some of these suggestions and my Win10 is much much more responsive. I also found logging in as local user rather than as online user sped things up too. Seems that Microsoft does report home a lot.

Akira - my old DAS (original Sonar) and input Boss GS10 (has nice fat analogue sounding ADC) is not supported with Win 10. What do you use with Cubase?

JJ, thanks for the advice.  I don't use OneDrive, but make sure of my settings.

As for the audio interface, I use MOTU Audio Express which also functions as the preamp for my audio system.  I'm going to use Cubase Pro (now the current 8.5) on my Mac Book Air, too.  The driver of Audio Express for Windows sucks (creates burst noises occasionally), but I don't use it in the critical situations (like the live recording or aurdio recording in the studio) and can live with it.

Sorry to know that neither the original Sonor and GS-10 don't work with Windows 10.  As with any software, they stop supporting it eventually.  I found GS-10 driver for 64bit Windows 7.  Doesn't it work on Windows 10?
Title: Re: Win 7 or Win 10
Post by: Tristin on July 01, 2016, 21:22:24
I always used Lexicon interfaces with Win and have had no issues.  Giving Focusrite a spin, they will be releasing Win drivers for their Thunderbolt interface soon, which I eagerly await!
Title: Re: Win 7 or Win 10
Post by: JJChan on July 02, 2016, 18:48:50
JJ, thanks for the advice.  I don't use OneDrive, but make sure of my settings.

Sorry to know that neither the original Sonor and GS-10 don't work with Windows 10.  As with any software, they stop supporting it eventually.  I found GS-10 driver for 64bit Windows 7.  Doesn't it work on Windows 10?

Akira you're right! I hadn't looked as it wasn't around when I first went Windows 7!
Now which DAW....
Title: Re: Win 7 or Win 10
Post by: Ron Scubadiver on July 03, 2016, 20:59:23
I am very happy with Win 10 here.  For a high resolution screen, the display will scale much better.   On newer hardware Win 10 supports secure boot which prevents many types of malware attacks.   
Title: Re: Win 7 or Win 10
Post by: ColinM on July 04, 2016, 17:32:56
Win 10 supports secure boot which prevents many types of malware attacks.

Hi Ron, can you advise how you find this useful in practice?