Windows 7 End of Life Announcement

[ColinJ]

Colin, I've thought of a solution.
Would you like me to PM it to you?

I nearly found my own very effective solution just now... I went to make a pot of coffee and tripped over the power cable to the laptop! It got dragged off the table and clattered across the floor. I feared the worst but it seems to be unscathed - sorry!

 

[Ming the Merciless]

You can take a full back up of your Windows 7 setup. Then upgrade to Windows 10 sure it'll work just fine. If it doesn't restore the Win 7 backup. Windows XP is still out there running away. Your PC will not suddenly stop working when it goes out of support. It could also be a good time to review what you use your PC for, as up thread it may be that free Linux will do everything you need. Depending on the flavour of Linux it has a very low footprint some variants will run in 5Mb of memory. These are often the variants of Linux running in your Internet router.

 

[DCBassman]

Caveat: I am no I.T. whizz, so be gentle.

January 2020 Windows 7 will cease to be, in that there is no more security or support updates. Upgrading to Windows 10 is not recommended on older laptops. I assume mine is included in this statement.

I have never been happy with PC and this statement saying ‘we recommend you get a new laptop’ just stinks.

I use an iPhone and an iPad and have come to enjoy the whole Apple environment. So when it comes to it, shall I just jump ship and get an Apple laptop? Or is there a cheaper way round this Microsoft bungle? I really think they have shot themselves in the foot and have left a massive opening for Apple to clean up quite nicely.

Details of your laptop, make, model number, etc? I exclusively run Windows 10, exclusively on older hardware. It does not need more anything than Win 7. Only significant problem I've ever encountered with laptops is if they use an old Radeon graphics processor. If that's the case, bin it. But so so long as it has, say, Nvidia or Intel Integrated graphics, it WILL run Windows 10. As I always suggest, and as mentioned above, stick in an SSD, max out the ram, and it will run really well.

 

[Cycleops]

I use an iPhone and an iPad and have come to enjoy the whole Apple environment. So when it comes to it, shall I just jump ship and get an Apple laptop? Or is there a cheaper way round this Microsoft bungle? I really think they have shot themselves in the foot and have left a massive opening for Apple to clean up quite nicely.

Why do you need a laptop? I too like the Apple eco system but when you get embroiled in it its very hard to break free. Macbooks are very powerful but hugely expensive and unless you need advanced photo and video editing and word processing there's very little point in getting one.
I think you'll find a chromebook will do all you want it to. The convertible ones will work like a tablet and because the OS is very light it doesn't need much power. It runs most Android apps. You can use it for word processing and photo editing too. Might be worth some thought.

 

[tom73]

Caveat: I am no I.T. whizz, so be gentle.

January 2020 Windows 7 will cease to be, in that there is no more security or support updates. Upgrading to Windows 10 is not recommended on older laptops. I assume mine is included in this statement.

I have never been happy with PC and this statement saying ‘we recommend you get a new laptop’ just stinks.

I use an iPhone and an iPad and have come to enjoy the whole Apple environment. So when it comes to it, shall I just jump ship and get an Apple laptop? Or is there a cheaper way round this Microsoft bungle? I really think they have shot themselves in the foot and have left a massive opening for Apple to clean up quite nicely.

We left windows behind years ago we went all Apple and never looked back. Yes they cost but in over 10 years we've only updated machines once. More down to was able to not needed to. Plenty of well looked after 2rd hand MacBooks about that will keep going for years a few way to get new a bit cheeper too. Even a mac with a few miles on the clock will be as fast as the day it came out the box.

If you have iPhone and iPad you know what it's about over the next few years OS and iOS will start to come together universal apps are due soon.
Your already set up Apple Id and iCloud side so setting stuff up will take no time not that it's not simple to start with.
So make the jump you know you want to

 

[LeetleGreyCells]

Disclaimer for Linux Mint using WINE for iTunes - as the OP mentioned using iPad and iPhone - WINE does not support USB with iTunes so you can't sync your iPhone or iPad. I have a small partition on my hard drive for Windows which I use for syncing my iOS devices.

If anyone has a solution for syncing iOS with iTunes on Linux Mint, I'd be interested to know too.

 

[classic33]

Disclaimer for Linux Mint using WINE for iTunes - as the OP mentioned using iPad and iPhone - WINE does not support USB with iTunes so you can't sync your iPhone or iPad. I have a small partition on my hard drive for Windows which I use for syncing my iOS devices.

If anyone has a solution for syncing iOS with iTunes on Linux Mint, I'd be interested to know too.

Possible
https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=255183

 

[classic33]

My desk top has windows 7 and it will cost money to upgrade so treating myself to a new one by the end of the year.

Seems someone forgot to tell Microsoft though.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/heres-how-you-can-still-get-a-free-windows-10-upgrade/

 

[DCBassman]

Seems someone forgot to tell Microsoft though.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/heres-how-you-can-still-get-a-free-windows-10-upgrade/

Interesting article! Another bit of it talks about upgrading a Home to Pro Win 10 if you have an old Pro key from, say, Win 8. I did, and now my laptop runs Pro, fully activated.

 

[Milkfloat]

Windows 7 will be well over 10 years old when they stop officially supporting it. As well as that you can have a free upgrade to Windows 10 and yet you are still not happy?

 

[DRM]

https://www.livingsocial.co.uk/search?q=MacBook

Doesn’t have to cost a fortune to stick with Apple, especially as everything just works between iPad/iPhone etc, biggest problem with Linux is getting it to work with other tasks, ok in isolation when I tried it though.

 

[ColinJ]

Hmm - if the free update still works then I may try Win 10 on my old laptop to see how well it works with the ancient hardware.

 

[MontyVeda]

Windows 7 will be well over 10 years old when they stop officially supporting it. As well as that you can have a free upgrade to Windows 10 and yet you are still not happy?

I tried Windows 10 a few years back... didn't get on with it and reverted back to 7... I'm not happy that I'll have to 'upgrade' to an OS that i didn't like last time i tried it.

 

[raleighnut]

I tried Windows 10 a few years back... didn't get on with it and reverted back to 7... I'm not happy that I'll have to 'upgrade' to an OS that i didn't like last time i tried it.

Same here, Windows 10 just wanted to 'help' me when I tried to do anything on the machine and I lost all the games that are in 7 (and they're not even as good as the XP ones) So this machine has had 10 on it and it's probably still there on the hard drive, it may even be a version of the 'make my computer look like an earlier version of Windows' that used to be in XP in the 'Change Appearance' menu.

 

[fossyant]

Windows 10 is like 7 but better. Those that tried early on may have had the more 'tablet' like appearance - Microsoft soon re-introduced the old taskbar and Start Menu