Windows 10: Can someone point me in the direction of the 'real' upgrade benefits

I have a 6 year-old Athlon QL62 (dual core) laptop that originally came with Vista, and it's run both 32 bit and 64 bit Win 10 with a wide range of programs (and formerly Win 7 and Win 8.1). It has an Nvidia 8200M graphics card. Definitely not high spec!

But I surely have to think much more about OS issues than I did with Win 8.1.

 

As I previously posted, the two things I was most disappointed by with Win10 compared to 8.1 were the the fuzzy fonts issue and that the Lenovo Password Manager was no longer supported. Well I found a workaround that works *Dinesh

https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkVa...0/td-p/2209223

All that's left on my 'Win 10 disappointment list' is the fuzzy font thing for which there's also a workaround. So there's not much left to complain about

 

There is no "keystroke logger" (at least not in the traditional meaning of the word). What there is, is what's been in windows for quite some time, and that's live spell-checking. live spell-checking sends things you type in IE or Edge and some other apps to MS to verify the spellings of words, so you get the red squiggly under misspelled words.

Because what you type is sent to MS, that means it's possible to be caught up in standard telemetry logging. The sentences in the EULA are there to cover their rears in case something typed is actually captured.

It's also possible (and again, this has been the case since, well, almost forever) that what you've typed is sitting in memory, and flushed to disk during an application crash, or BSOD and these crashdumps can be sent to MS for analysis as well. Again, this is nothing new that MS and Windows hasn't been doing for at least a decade, they're just now putting legalese in the license to prevent them from being sued over it.

In the strictest literal interpretation, can a keystroke be captured and logged? Yes. It is not, however, something that intentionally gathers information and logs it with the intended purpose of retaining and/or utilizing your typed data from everything in the OS, particularly for sensitive reasons.

 

I wouldn't say most of them have high end systems at all, to be honest. Very few (percentage-wise) of all computers are high-end. Given the number of installs on record, the vast majority wouldn't be high-end. As an example, my best friend recently upgraded his Pentium D 820 system to Windows 10 by himself. It has 4 GB of memory and an old Nvidia card. His update went through flawlessly, and he has, by his own admission, zero tech skills. He's a CPA.

 

High End???
Pffffft.....

Of the 6 systems I have running windows 10, the biggest suprise was the successful install and running on a HP Pav ZE 2000, which came out in 2005

AMD Sempron processor @ 1.6ghz, 32 bit OS and maxed out @ 2gb ram

 

Yes, and my Windows 7 installs all became 32 bit versions of 10. I had to choose the 32-bit install package from the Windows 10 update page, there were 32 and 64 bit selections, and I created an ISO image. Since both Home and Pro versions were available on the install disk, I chose "Pro" and it gave me the free update. I did however have Windows 7 Ultimate installed. And I chose to do an In Place update rather than the OTA update, OTA updates always get fouled up, same with Apple Devices, it's always better to update through iTunes than from the device itself. Doing OTA messes up the OS somehow, this is as true with Windows as it has been for iOS.

However, this machine was a fresh install of Windows 10, I just used the 32 bit installer disk, I did have to obtain a license for it though.

After the 3rd or so reboot after installing Windows 10, It detected my USB devices, an old HP Scanner, and a very old Brother HD-1230 Laser Printer. The Hardware Wizard asked be to activate 16-bit support for both devices - Which is "NTVDM" under "Legacy Components" In the Programs and Features area of Control Panel. I don't know if that selection is available for 64-bit OSes, but since it has not been available for all 64 bit OSes from Windows XP x64, it probably isn't available for Windows 10 either.

 

There are viruses that send a log of keystrokes to the person who implanted it, but I don't know how they are implemented.

 

NTVDM only works for 32 bit systems from my understanding. Wine for windows is still in the early development stages at the moment, and that would work on 64 bit as well as 32 bit operating systems.

 

Under Windows XP, it's simply called "16-bit support", I think for Vista and 7 too.

It would be nice to have 16-bit support for 64-bit systems, if that is ever developed and released, it would solve a lot of my problems. If that happens, can you track me down? Haha.

 

And? What does that have to do with the claim of a built-in keylogger in Windows 10?

 

Oh, is that what it was? Is someone claiming there is a keylogger built in?

It might be some system log file that logs input, actually I had heard Logs for certain browsers keep info on what keys are used. I know this has been done on Apple devices too, a certain log file shows what keys were used. I heard about this last summer, so maybe there is some way to dredge keyboard input from Windows 10. I doubt if it is an actual keylogger though.

I wouldnt worry about it though, all you need is a good AV program that halts web activity, and both Malwarebytes and ESET check for things like that.

 

I agree with that sentiment. If Windows 7 or 8.1 is working for don't upgrade. But realize that MS is pushing Windows 10 very hard. If you have automatic updates turn them off immediately. The Windows 10 upgrade will be offered anyway - just use the handy X in the upper right to close the dialog box. Unfortunately you can no longer say "No Thanks" to the upgrade - only Upgrade now or Upgrade Later., My wife has Windows 7 with about 150 programs. You can be sure I'm not even advise to upgrade (even though I'm an Insider) because for sure the upgrade will brick some of the apps. I've told her if she wants to see Windows 10 she can use VMware to access a VM on mly ESXi server. Otherwise she needs to image her own machine and I'll attempt to upgrade. Fortunately she doesn't seem inclined to upgrade

 

Actually you can delete the ms update that implants "GWX", its KB303 something, 5585 I think. Google GWX and you'll find posts on how to remove it, then you can stick with win 7 with impunity.

 

It's inevitable MS will "Lover the guard" on W7 and despite expiration date being far away there will be nothing new for it. Even the rate bug and security fixes and updates get more rare as termination data approaches, that's how was in the past anyway. That's one of the reasons MS is pushing W10 as unified system, to have less of everything else to worry abut and support big way. W7, being so popular, may fare better but still...

 

Thanks all.

It seems all the sensible people have answered my question in that there is no real reason to upgrade, not yet anyway.

A lot of the things MS are pushing I really don't care about such as Cortana and Edge.

and features such as the always on updates is a major, huge problem in my opinion. No long ago I took my backup laptop, which had automatic backups switched on to a site to meet a client. Logged into their wifi and was immediately told Windows was installing updates and forced me to reboot. I sat there like a lemon for 50 minutes unable to work whilst windows did its stuff. Two days ago an update on my tablet took about 2 hours to configure, stopping me working on that system. Luckily that system is on manual updates and I chose to update at a quiet time.

One specific question of interest. How is explorer or file explorer in windows 10? Do MS still push you to their cloud and libraries? and have all the expanding tree faults been fixed?