TO UPGRADE OR NOT TO UPGRADE: THAT IS THE QUESTION

If you still have Windows 7 or 8/8.1 on your computer, you have just a few weeks to get a free upgrade to Windows 10. You will still be able to upgrade after the July 29, but it will cost you $110. I bought my laptop with Windows 8. Like almost everyone else, I hated it, and I upgraded it to Windows 10 as soon as it became available last summer. I have Windows 7 on my desktop, and I am keeping it.

Windows 8 is a monstrosity. When it came out, Microsoft was seeing a decline in PC sales. More and more people were connecting to the internet with smart phones and tablets. That was the wave of the future, and the geniuses at Redmond, WA, decided to grab the future by the tail and created a new system that would combine PCs with mobile devices. Their new system (Windows 8) would have tiles that you could touch and move around the screen to open programs, just like the icons on your smart phone. Neat, huh?

No, it wasn’t. People were used to operating their computers through a mouse and keyboard. Further, most new computers did not have a touch screen, so the touch feature was useless to most users. Not only that, but a lot of familiar features were gone. There was no start button. How do you shut the damned thing off except by holding the power button, something we had been told not to do? While, we’re at it, where’s the control panel? A lot of features once reached through the control panel were now done through the control button, more like a smart phone.

Experienced computer users suddenly didn’t know how to do some of the most basic things on their new computers. It was like getting into a new car and finding all the controls had been moved or modified or both.

Computer users were very unhappy. A week after Windows 8 came out in October 2012, Steve Sinofsky, head of the Windows Division at Microsoft, was gone. Early in 2013 Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced that he too was leaving as soon as they found a new CEO, which they did the following summer.

The new boss, Satya Nadella, was faced with a mess. The first improvement that came out was a new version of the operating system, Windows 8.1. This came out a year after the original Windows 8. The new version fixed some of the problems with Windows 8, like restoring the start button that people had been used to for two decades. Also Microsoft started right away on a new system. The new system, Windows 10, came out July 2015, less than three years after Windows 8’s disastrous debut.

Windows 10 is not a terrible operating system. It moved back closer to Windows 7. It also had a couple of entirely new features, the Edge browser and the Cortana, the digital assistant. Using Edge is not like using Chrome or Firefox for the first time. An experienced computer user could just go to Chrome or Firefox and start using them. With Edge you have to figure some things out before you use it, like: Where are my favorites? Edge has some new features. For example, you can write on a web page and save it that way. However, when I use my Windows 10 laptop, if I go on the internet, I use
Chrome rather than Edge. I don’t use Cortana much. However, I do use another digital assistant, Google Now, on my Android phone.

Windows 10 is not and could not be a well-designed system. That is because it had to be build on top of Windows 8.  Otherwise people who had Windows 8 or 8.1 would be shut out. Some people like 8.1 and don’t want to upgrade to 10. If Windows 8 had been an extention/improvement on 7, instead of an attempt to redesign the whole thing, it would have been much better. One thing I don’t like about Windows 10 is that it still has the tiles from Windows 8. That is not a big problem, though, because you can get rid of them if you want.

Shortly after I loaded Windows 10 onto my laptop, I downloaded a program called Start 10. This program makes the user interface in Windows 10 function very much like that of Windows 7. I am happy with that.

Ironically the Windows 10/Windows phone thing didn’t work out for Microsoft. A year after Windows 8’s debut Microsoft bought cell phone maker Nokia for $7.2 billion. Part of the plan was for Microsoft to emulate Apple and make its own mobile devices. Nokia was to make Windows phones. Windows phones never really got off the ground. They had to compete with iPhones and Android phones, which together hold about 95 percent of the smart phone market. Last year Microsoft wrote off a loss of $7.6 billion on its investment in Nokia.

WINDOWS 10

The iPhone Changed Everything

The launch of the Apple iPhone on June 29, 2007, changed everything. Up to that time the Windows operating system (OS) was on 90 percent of computers worldwide. The iPhone was soon followed by the iPad, also by Apple. People could get mobile computers, computers that they could carry with them and get on the internet. In October 2008, the first android phone was released. Android phones and tablets used open-source software, and any manufacturer could make them. Soon there were a lot more Apple and android devices than Windows machines connecting to the internet.

Microsoft Losing Ground

Microsoft realized it was losing ground. They decided to emulate Apple. Like Apple, Microsoft was going to manufacture its own devices (Surface) and phones (Windows phone) and a brand-spanking new OS (Windows 8). Furthermore, since so many people were getting on the internet with mobile devices, Microsoft would make the interface of the new OS like the interface of Apple and android devices. They would create tiles that users could move around on a touch screen, just the iPhone.

Except, it wasn’t like the iPhone or the android phone. It was brand new. It wasn’t like previous editions of Windows either, so users had to research how to do simple, everyday things like find the control panel or even shut the damned thing off. The launch of Windows 8 was greeted with a huge Boo! For the next year, most people who bought new computers wanted them to run on Windows 7, rather than 8.

Windows 8 was thrust onto the public on October 26, 2012. A month later Steve Sinofsky, head of the Windows Division of Microsoft, was gone. A little over a month after that, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO, announced that he would be leaving as soon as the company could find a new CEO.

A year later Satya Nadella was appointed CEO of the giant software company. He was faced with the huge job of cleaning up the mess that Sinofsky and Ballmer had left. By that time Windows 8.1 had been launched. 8.1 nudged the system back toward the Windows 7 interface. For example, the start button was restored. It was a free upgrade for anyone who had Windows 8.

Windows 10

In October 2014, Microsoft began releasing beta (trial) versions of the new OS, Windows 10. Anyone who wanted could download it and try it out. By July it was released to the public at large. Best of all, it was free. Microsoft was giving something away for free? Yes, they wanted people to get away from the disaster that was Windows 8. The new system was not free to everyone, but if you had Windows 8 or 8.1, you could download 10 free. Not only that, but if you had Windows 7 in your computer, you could also download 10 for free. Not only could you get Windows 10 free, but Microsoft kept sending messages to Windows 7 users, urging them to download 10 before it was too late. Actually users had a year to make up their mind. If you download Windows 10 on your 7, 8, or 8.1 machine before July 29, 2016, it will be free. If you download it after that, you will have to pay for it.

What is it like?

Windows 10 has some of the same problems that are found in Windows 8. The start button is back, and the irritating charms menu is gone. I still had to search around to find the control panel. The desktop is full of tiles, which seem useless to me if you don’t have a touch screen. You can get rid of them if you want, though. The new browser, Edge, is supposed to be pretty good, but I had a lot of trouble finding my favorites. Other people have told me the same thing. Instead of using Edge, I still use the chrome browser. There is a digital assistant, Cortana. You can speak to her when you want to find information rather than typing it. However, you can do the same with Chrome. Cortana will coordinate your schedule and stuff like that, but you would have to use Outlook for your calendar. I use Google calendar and don’t want to change that.

What to do?

I have a desktop with Windows 7 and a laptop with Windows 10. I really disliked Windows 8, so as soon as I could, I downloaded 10 onto my laptop. It’s okay, but I prefer Windows 7. I keep fighting off Microsoft’s efforts to download Windows 10 on my desktop. For me the only drawback to Windows 7 is that a certain point (January 2020) Microsoft will stop supporting Windows 7 with security updates. That computer will be seven or eight years old by then. I don’t know whether it will still be alive, but if I am still using it, it will not be safe to use it to go on the internet.

But I found something new recently. It’s product called Start 10, from Stardock. It changes the interface of a Windows 10 computer to something very much like Windows 7. It costs $5. I loaded it only my laptop a couple of days ago. I’m going to try it for a few weeks. If I continue to like it, I will download Windows 7 onto my desktop and then put Start 10 on it, so that if I have the computer in 2020, Microsoft will continue to provide security updates.