One other thing I’ve found with Windows 10. Although it annoys me to reboot at least once a month (for patches), more and more programs are remembering their pre-boot status and coming back up post-boot.
Internet browsers have had state memory for quite a while, but Word and more recently Excel have started to catch on to the fact that some of us want to see what we last had open. Even MS Paint ‘recovers’ unsaved pictures (largely screenshots of digital jigsaw puzzles 
)!
The Amiga was the same, Commodore mismanaged the whole thing and blew away all the technical advantages the hardware and OS gave them. Instead of growth they managed to keep the scope of applications narrow and then to allow it to shrink until there was nothing left. They were also the recipients of the favour of a user community who were more extreme than many of the Mac or Linux crew in their faithful support of the system, Commodore pissed that advantage away too.
The spotty history of Windows and the fate of these two systems show us that too often marketing and winning the format war (as in Beta vs VHS) is more important than technical excellence.
And for the young’uns out there, HD DVD vs. BluRay.
(Actually, I’m not sure there are too many young’uns on these fora - most of us probably do remember the Beta vs. VHS fight that was won by the lower quality standard.)
Yep. Had a Beta machine, eventually couldnt get tapes to run on it.
“Not Supported” means Microsoft will no longer download endless “security patches”. This is a scare campaign to make you buy new computers. Don’t fall for it. Windows 7 is still the best version of Windows.
Also, despite what Microsoft say, it is still free to upgrade to windows 10. I would only recommend this if you are running Windows 8 which is truely awful.
Those security patches are actually really important. They usually cover known exploits that hackers rapidly jump on. Often you don’t even have to click a virus link. There are even examples of hackers exploiting auto software updaters to download viruses.
Microsoft recently released a security patch for Windows XP (which lost official support in 2014), because of an extremely serious problem that potentially left computers open to remote exploitation without doing a thing.
They don’t release security patches for fun or for profit. Microsoft has probably turned a loss on consumer variants of Windows 10, as they gave it away for quite a long time (and may still be giving it away, according to a report from June 2019).
If you have trouble activating Windows 10, I suspect that several of us in the Choice fora will be able to help with a spare key for Windows 7/8/8.1.
The reason Microsoft issued the patch for Windows XP is that despite saying that they were no longer going to support it (another lie) the Chinese some years ago demanded that Microsoft continue to “support” it.
To say that Microsoft “lost” money on supplying free upgrades to Windows 10 is silly; they just host it and the consumer downloads it and installs it. Remember that Apple are now supplying free updates to their OS.
You are ignoring the legions and legions of software and security programmers and analysts in Microsoft who painstakingly work 24 x 7 to find and fix these bugs and security holes and have meetings with the hackers and security companies that find and report them. They cost $$$$$ to pay and house! 
More seriously, if Microsoft reduced the numbers of programmer/analyst staff it would probably improve the quality of the product.
Distributing the patches is a trivial cost in comparison.
One of Microsoft’s real problems is what to do with the cash flow. If one looks at MSFT they invest or speculate in all sorts of side programs and products to (try to) avoid a seriously embarrassing cash position.
Windows XP POSReady 2009 actually had support end this year in April. They still provided patches for that edition until then and in the case as @postulative noted they took an “once off” step to provide a whole of XP family patch. Some other patches were able to be downloaded by a registry hack for all versions of XP but were not officially supported for the other versions of XP (therefore a small risk they could fail to work or could make your version unworkable). The UK Govt paid in 2014 a further several million pounds to extend support of standard XP versions for a further 12 months so they could finish transitioning their IT stock.
There are fewer AV and security products that still support XP than ever before. See Trend Micro’s advice on some of their Commercial support products:
If you want to take the risk of not being Security patched on whatever version of Windows you use that is your choice to do so and MS are not going to stop you from using it. I know some who still run Win 3.1 and 3.11 on VMs so they can fiddle with the old stuff. MS just warn users they aren’t going to continue to support older versions nor would it be economically in their interest to do so. Do TV companies support their 17 year old TV lines in the way some expect MS to continue to do so on their software?
As is Microsoft. I didn’t pay for Windows 10, and nobody else has to (per my previous post).
If you own an Apple product, it will no longer be able to support the latest OS version after a certain period of time - in the case of a Mac purchased in 2009, you cannot run the latest version ten years later.
It sounds to me that you simply do not like Windows. That’s fine, and it’s an entirely personal choice. People who use Windows and make it the most popular desktop OS also because of that make it the largest target for malware. You are welcome to move to one of many variants of Linux (including MacOS), or FreeBSD for that matter - but your arguments against Windows hold against most other operating systems.
I would be interested to see the source for this claim.
That presumably includes their Vanguard submarines, although the UK Ministry of Defence has (sorta) denied this.
The important point to note about Microsoft’s cash flow is that it largely comes from big customers paying for services, customisation and cloud, not from consumers buying Windows. Some of it also comes from consumer hardware (Surface and X-Box) and from consumer purchases of or subscriptions to Offices. Microsoft wants everyone to use Windows everywhere, and so consumer versions are a loss leader.
On slide 12 of Microsoft’s 2019 Q1 earnings call (from the above link) you will see that earnings from “Windows OEM non-Pro” has fallen in all five of the reported quarters. Unfortunately, it is not clear from this whether the revenue is from commercial or personal customers, and it only represents sales of hardware with Windows pre-installed (for which the hardware provider pays a small licencing fee). Microsoft has not separately reported revenue from Windows sales to consumers.
Yes, but no 
I am obliged to use Windows 10 at work, on two monitors of around 24". They are not touch enabled and this does not bother me in the least because the classic PC environment of screen, keyboard and mouse simply does not cater for that kind of interaction. Attempting to touch the screen would result in serious RSI in my arm.
OTOH, using an iPad (or an iPhone) at home has NO such issues, as the reach to touch the screen is no greater than any other interaction with the device. If you can upgrade your W7 laptops to W10, then you will not experience any unacceptable difference compared to now, especially as you are already accustomed to the W10 differences.
You do not need touch monitors to run Win 10. It works ok in the same way as your win 7. My system is about 7 years old and I have sped it up by using flash drives. I use win 10 on all my computers except for my media centre where I use win 7 because the win 10 has no media centre
Such are the work of the devil unless you need to run a public information kiosk or similar. After a generation trying to deal with posture and repetition injuries from mouse or keyboard bad design or overuse why introduce an interface that is worse than either?
I have used Windows 10 since it was introduced.Have had no issues and i use it on a pc.No touch screen either.Runs great
As others have mentioned, Windows 10 can be set up either for touchscreen or for keyboard and mouse (or both).
From my own experience, when installing Win10 on two old Win7 and WinXP netbooks with very limited RAM and CPU, they ran more snappily under Win10. I think it even automatically disabled a lot of unnecessary features based on system info. It was certainly possible to get a very lean but functional Windows 10 on these old machines that felt, to me, faster than the older OS when running Word etc. and browsing the web.
I did not run any objective bench-marks and get numbers to compare. This was just my subjective experience. Your mileage may vary. 
Rod.
You are either very fortunate, or simply have not noticed the problems and issues. I am obliged to use Win 10 at work and constantly experience failures (often requiring reboot) or inadequacies compared to decent operating systems like Linux or Mac OS. (These issues have lessened over the years as Microsoft has copied capabilities from more effective operating systems. However, there is still a long way to go.) Interestingly, I hear frequent complaints and expletives from my work colleagues who experience even more problems than I do!
NB: at work we run desktops PCs with (non-touchscreen) monitors. Fortunately this is not the limitation it apparently was with Windows Vista and Windows 8. (I can’t comment on that; I didn’t suffer either of those iterations.) Win 10 is OK with non-touchscreen monitors.
OTOH, if you are upgrading from Windows 7 or earlier, Linux (eg Ubuntu) is at least as easy to use and is completely FREE. No more Microsoft tax!
Optional Update KB4512941 should be delayed from installing, you can do this from the Windows Update menu and choose to “Pause updates for seven days”. This is for Win 10 1903 edition (latest version of Win 10) no other versions are affected. Keep an eye out online for any updates to the issue.
It is causing 2 different problems that may be present at the same time or separately (not all machines are having the problem).
Microsoft are looking into the issue but no fix is yet available. If you are having any of the problems listed and have the update installed the current workaround is to remove the update.
The problem also appears to affect KB4511555.
