Mark Pickavance presents the flip-side of sticking with Windows 7, and why you might want to consider upgrading
In a previous issue, I talked about many valid reasons why you might want to stick with Windows 7 instead of accepting Microsoft’s unique offer of a free upgrade to Windows 10. Yet there are a number of aspects to Windows 10 that might convince you to switch over and leave Windows 7 behind. Here are some of them:
1. It’s Free, Stupid!
Yes, this is the very first and possibly only version of Windows that will ever be free.
Given the rarity factor, surely that’s not something you should pass up? Well, if you read my previous ten reasons why you might want to stick with Windows 7, then there are a host of perfectly valid excuses to pass that hat.
However, for most people, if they don’t mind the implied learning curve, a free upgrade to Windows seems like a wonderful deal, and one that you should probably take.
Remember, the offer isn’t open indefinitely, so those wanting to transition at no cost need to do it before 29th July 2016. After that point, a retail version of Windows 10 Home 64-bit is £99.99, and the Professional 64-bit release is £189.99.
You can get it a little cheaper if you get a non-transferable OEM licence, though this pricing does highlight that those with Windows 7 Pro do get an even better offer than those with the Home version.
Obviously, depending what they’re seeing in terms of conversion rates, Microsoft might extend that deadline or blend in the pricing with a discounted retail release. But don’t assume either of those scenarios if you intend to upgrade, because they’re not going to be any more advantageous than what is available now.
Note: the upgrade applies only to Home and Professional versions of the OS. Those with Enterprise installations will be paying for Windows 10 whatever, so if you have one of those licences, then you don’t have the option for free ascendancy.
Given the cost implications of ignoring this deal, you need to be sure you won’t change your mind after July 2016.
2. DX12 Games
For those who came to computing in the last decade, it’s worth noting that when DirectX first appeared, it wasn’t the API method of choice for driving 3D games. Most of the early titles either used proprietary interfaces, like Glide API on Voodoo Graphics, or modified versions of OpenGL.It wasn’t until DX6.1 appeared on Windows 98SE that it began to gain ground, and on Windows XP version 9 became the 3D graphics API that most games used.
Then Microsoft made DX10 a Vista exclusive, and also told the world that since the Xbox 360 arrived, PC gaming was dead, which was odd, given it also used DX9. The mess that refusing to give DX10 to XP caused is still a factor in PC gaming, as many developers just ignored DX10 and subsequently DX11. But the differences between DX9 and the two versions that game after were mostly subtle, so there wasn’t a radical difference between games coded for them.
How does DX12 change all that, being that it is exclusively on Windows 10 and the Xbox One? Rather than being based entirely on the architectural model of previous DirectX versions, DX12 has been configured to work much more like AMD’s experimental API Mantle. If you’ve not seen a demonstration of what Mantle can do, it’s worth checking out some of the examples, because it makes significantly better use of existing video card hardware than DX11 or DX10 ever could.
Therefore, a DX12 title running on the same game should either be able to render more frames per second or offer significantly better detail levels without a GPU upgrade.
It does this by turning the calls to the video card into a less sequential exercise, with the aim to fully occupy the GPU, instead of leaving it waiting for instructions.
In some of the benchmarks, this new approach turns out to be multiple levels of performance better than before, so DX12 could transform PC games and make them seem much more like console titles in respect of consistent frame-rates. In short, without Windows 10, there is no DX12, and therefore no gaming performance bonus.
The only fly in this ointment is that at this time there aren’t really any DX12 titles to speak of, and until the percentage of Windows 10 machines probably exceeds 25% of all PCs, we won’t see many.
DX12 is certainly a ‘jam tomorrow’ promise, though a tempting one for those who’d like to see smooth gameplay with cooler running systems and lower GPU requirements.
3. Support Timescales
For those unaware, Microsoft has lifecycles defined for all its software products and in particular its operating system releases.
Previous to Windows 10, after a product is released, it goes through a series of modifications, partly in the form of service packs and also through mandatory updates. These end when the OS reaches the ‘end of mainstream support’ date, where the software enters extended support mode, and it gets no new features or developments from this point.
During this final support phase Microsoft will only fix major problems or significant security holes as they become apparent. And when that ends the OS is on its own, as it hasn’t been available to purchase for some time, and usually Microsoft has released subsequent versions to replace it.
The next OS to fall off that conveyor will be Windows Vista. Launched to the public in early 2007 it hit the end of mainstream support in April 2012, and is due to exit extended support in April 2017.
But the one that interests most people, because hardly anyone is still using Vista, is Windows 7. The critical dates there are that it entered extended support in January 2015, and that period will end in January 2020.
Therefore, Windows 7 has just five years of life left before Microsoft no longer supports it at all. The only reason to believe that date might get pushed back is that Windows XP got 13 years between launch and the final support axe, so Windows 7 might yet get some wiggle room on that specific date.
The other important epoch to note is 31st October 2016, as that is the date from which you won’t be able to buy Windows 7. Comparing all this to the Windows 10 upgrade, that won’t hit extended support until October 2020, and support will end entirely in 2025.
Ten years in computing is a very long time, and you’re unlikely to still be using the computer that you upgraded by then. If you think that in five years you’ll still be using it for whatever reason, when Windows 7 support ends, then the choice is obvious.
Here is an overview grid to show you all the relevant dates for all the most recent Windows releases.
4. Security
According to the blurb, Windows 10 has more built-in security protections to combat viruses, phishing and malware, and Microsoft claims it’s the most secure Windows ever! Well, it would say that, wouldn’t it?
But Windows 8 and 10 were built on the knowledge that Microsoft gained through Windows 7, Vista and XP. So the idea that it’s built to be more robust should be more than just marketing hype.
Indeed, Windows 10 has few weak points overall, allowing the avenues of attack to be narrowed, and therefore in theory better protected.
But it also has a few other twists that help it stay more secure. One of these is multi-factor authentication, something that’s migrated from the mobile universe to the desktop one. Being able to use your phone or tablet as part of an interconnected security web to protect your desktop PC or laptop makes them all more secure.
You can even specify that a device must be connected by Bluetooth or wi-fi to allow access, restricting where it can be used and how.
Some of that thinking also coloured how the Enterprise functionality is being handled in Windows 10, with the ability to segment personal and corporate data stores entirely under a single login.
Once an email account or data is stamped as ‘corporate’, it is automatically encrypted, providing an extra layer of protection.
In addition to trusted data, Microsoft also extended the concept of trusted applications, where corporate machines can be templated to only run specific tools and even specific versions. This negates the ability for malware to run on the computer and modify an existing tool to do its bidding.
Some of the full capabilities of Windows 10, especially in respect of the Enterprise functionality, has yet to be deployed, but as time goes by, this will be the most secure version of Windows by some considerable degree.
Factor in biometric features, and they could be the icing on this security cake.
5. Universal Apps
It’s worth accepting from the outset that full-screen apps designed for the tablet touch environment haven’t been a huge success story for Window 8.x. People just don’t use them, mostly because the desktop equivalents are significantly better, almost without exception.
However, the Universal Application model as presented in Windows 10 does have some new tweaks that might make it more attractive to the few people who have so far developed for this platform.
One of these is the ability to install and maintain desktop Windows 32-bit applications through the Microsoft Store, like it was a Universal App. That might seem a really unimportant change, but once companies start using this mechanism, it brings with it the possibility of a rapid reinstall and data transfer that we’ve all dreamed of over the past 25 years.
Already it’s possible when installing a new Windows 10 PC or reinstalling to have it put back all the Universal Apps from a previous installation. Once Win-32 tools are included in that, then as long as the data is secured correctly, rebuilding a PC from a bare-metal scenario could be much less challenging.
At this time, Universal Apps have yet to set the world on fire, but the infrastructure built to deliver them still might be very useful, even if the apps are less so.
6. Biometrics
Passwords and key codes are the bane of most people’s computer usage, because they more often stop you getting into your own computer than anyone else.
We’ve seen fingerprint readers on some systems, though they can be fooled, allegedly. And Google deployed a form of face recognition that could be equally circumvented by creative individuals. How has Microsoft improved on these options? Windows 10 has a biometric system, called ‘Windows Hello’, which includes numerous ways to identify a user account including fingerprint, iris and face recognition. The visual recognition methods are based on the work that was done with the Xbox Kinect, and it’s put them not only in the desktop version of Windows 10, but also its latest Lumia mobile phones.
With these solutions it isn’t necessary to press a key to initiate a login. You simply place yourself in front of the computer or hold the phone up to your face, and you’re almost immediately recognised and allowed access to your account.
Previous facia recognition software usually fell down in that it couldn’t distinguish between a person and a photograph of them. In order to stop that Windows Hello needs an Intel’s RealSense 3D camera, because it can see you in infra-red and therefore determine if you’ve alive and not just a stick with a picture glued on it.
And while that solves one problem, it immediately introduces another, because not every laptop will come with an Intel RealSense camera. Also, at this time, buying one for your desktop computer appears to be really challenging, unless you signed up for the Intel RealSense Developer Kit. If you get one of these and at least a Haswell-class CPU, or if you’re lucky enough to have a laptop with Intel’s special camera in it, then you can have your PC recognise you.
But once this technology becomes commonplace, if it does, then Microsoft intends to expand the usage beyond just being a replacement for passwords. One of these is as a means to sign off on payments, using a secure system called ‘Passport’.
According to Microsoft ‘Passport’ will enable you to “access a growing set of websites and services across a range of industries – favourite commerce sites, email and social networking services, financial institutions, business networks and more.”
For those who have used Windows Hello, the only complaint I’ve seen is that it recognises you so quickly, many people weren’t sure if their PC was secure at the point it was activated. There are also some security concerns, given that the camera is on all the time when the system is locked.
Hopefully, the RealSense cameras won’t just be a developer toy, and we can all just assume our computer knows us by our appearance alone.
7. Family Friendly
One of the major changes that Windows 10 introduced (though it was road tested in Windows 8.x) was the use of a Microsoft account to push settings to the cloud, where they can be influential when you have more than one PC or Windows device.
A demonstration of how this can be an advantage is well presented by the family-friendly aspects of this connection, because it enables a parent to control their children wherever they log into a Windows system.
It works like this: add your offspring to the home PC using a Microsoft account, and then apply whatever family restrictions you’ve decided are appropriate. Once this is done, those limitations will be inherent to those account logins, regardless of where they’re used.
Microsoft has promised that it will be extending this functionality so you can register a payment system that a parent can control, but the kids have access for budgeted purchases through the Microsoft Store.
It doesn’t stop them using someone else’s account or setting up a PC with a local account, but for those who feel inclined to exercise more control, it certainly has advantages over previous Windows releases.
8. Hybrid Mode
When Microsoft launched Windows 8, it obviously imagined a future where every desktop PC would have a touch-screen. This was a future that never happened. As a result, desktop users and all those on laptops without touch were damned with a tiled interface that was perfect for less than 5% of the installed user base.
It was probably one of the critical factors in the failure of Windows 8, and in Windows 10, Microsoft decided to go back to actually supporting the vast majority of its customers.
However, it does still have tablet ambitions, and introduced ‘Hybrid’ mode, where an interface more like Windows 8 could replace the normal Start menu interface, should the user be operating exclusively with touch.
For those machines that have detachable keyboards, the switch can be made automatic, in both directions, allowing you to get the best of both worlds and making the system touch-aware.
For those who didn’t hate the Windows 8 interface, you can also force it to be the norm even on a desktop computer, should you be that keen on it.
9. Auto Activation
Activation is, to this writer, possibly the worst thing that Microsoft ever came up with, with the possible exception of Clippy. They’re silly codes that can be easily mistyped or lost, or they can be right but won’t activate for some unknown reason.
Far too late, Microsoft realised what a royal pain they were, and in Windows 10 it’s introduced a new model, which retains the control it likes but hides most of it from the user.
The means by which it does this is the Microsoft account, because once a PC is activated with an account, the identifying codes from that machine and the licence are stored away in the cloud. Should that machine need entirely rebuilding at some point, once you log into Windows 10 using that account, it will be automatically activated. No code, no annoying messages; it should just work.
Exactly how seamless this actually is in reality we’ve yet to see, though so far I’ve noticed that it appears to work as advertised. This still leaves the rather grey area of how much your PC hardware is allowed to change before it isn’t considered the same computer, but I’ll leave you to debate that with Microsoft technical support.
In theory, Windows 10 offers activation without the aggravation.
10. No More Nagging
Have you ever been stuck with a small child on a long road journey, where five minutes after you set out, they ask ‘Are we there yet?’, and they do that repeatedly for the next four hours?
That’s what being a Windows 7 user is becoming a little like, because from the point of Windows 10 becoming available, we’ve been under assault in a way that really turns most people off.
The latest attempt to make us upgrade is a panel that pops up every time you log into your PC, giving you two options. One is ‘Upgrade Now’ and the other is ‘Start download, upgrade later’.
There are two points that need making about these options, the first being that there obviously isn’t a third ‘go away and leave me alone’ choice. The other is that the second button is largely superfluous, because Microsoft decided to download the installation files to my PC a few weeks ago, without any choice or consultation whatsoever.
It’s already warned that it’s not going to give up, and it will escalate these annoyances and change the upgrade routine so that it runs automatically, depending on how your upgrades are configured in the spring.
While you can remove some of its systematic user abuse tools, there appear to be only one way to end them permanently, and that’s to upgrade. I’m not sure about my position on giving in to this type of systematic abuse, but it is one of the advantages of saying yes.
Final Thoughts
Having presented ten good reasons to stick with Windows 7 and now another ten to make the leap to Windows 10, you might wonder what I will do.
My choices are limited, because to do my job I need to keep moving forward with technology, so I’ve already upgraded one machine. However, that was a laptop, and it had Windows 8.x on it. And 8.x is a version of Windows that I unreservedly hated.
I’m not sure that it’s any better with Windows 10 on it, but I can test out anything that needs the latest version of the OS on it. I’ve also got a couple of test platforms that have it, though they also have Windows 7 on them too, for good measure.
Critically the PC that I’m using to type this up is on Windows 7, and it will probably stay on that, because I can’t afford to have any working problems with it. Maybe in the next six months that position will change and I’ll become confident enough to make the transition. But we’re not yet there, and I’m beginning to wonder if the initial steam in Windows 10’s step is fading away. What’s really odd, and I can’t explain, is that the numbers of Windows 8.x installations doesn’t appear to be dropping like one would reasonably expect. And given the boost that having all new systems come with Windows 10 should give it, the numbers aren’t that impressive.
I’m drawn to conclude that giving away Windows 10 for free might have come a little too late to actually stop this ecosystem sliding into oblivion, or at best being a sideshow to what else is happening in the computing space.
There is a fine irony in that when Microsoft launched Windows 10, ig kept saying that this would be the last version of the OS ever, though it actually meant something other than the obvious way to interpret that.
What I’m doing doesn’t really matter, because choosing to upgrade or not is a personal decision, and it’s not one that I or Microsoft can make for you.
But don’t fret over it, because given the shifting sands of the computing topology, it might well be that whatever you do won’t be the wrong choice in the longer term.