How to transform Windows 11 into 10

spapakons · Mar 15, 2023

cereberus said:
What - I have not seen W7 for years!

I cannot tell of other countries, but here in Greece many public services still use Windows 7 or even Windows XP computers.

Bree · Mar 15, 2023

cereberus said:
What - I have not seen W7 for years!

spapakons said:
I cannot tell of other countries, but here in Greece many public services still use Windows 7 or even Windows XP computers.

My local NHS health authority was on Windows 7 for all their hospitals and GP surgeries until about abut 18 months ago. Then they upgraded all their systems to Windows 10.

cereberus · Mar 15, 2023

Bree said:
My local NHS health authority was on Windows 7 for all their hospitals and GP surgeries until about abut 18 months ago. Then they upgraded all their systems to Windows 10.

Yeah - probably the last bunch to move. Governments are always last to change due to cash constraints.

All major UK engineering contractors have moved - indeed most major companies have moved to comply with ISO 9001 and cyber-terrorism certification requirements. Windows 7 does not meet the requirements for cyber-terrorism certification for sure.

Of course, I cannot speak for small companies but I have not seen W7 on any publicly visible pcs for a long time.

In fact, my company has now locked down access to company infrastructure from non company approved devices in pursuit of cyber-terrorism lockdown. I used to be able to connect to email and Teams via my android phone but not anymore since a few days ago.

I have to have an iphone and be prepared to put company restrictions on it (long passwords, encryption etc.). I just said no, and as I am contract, I said people will have to call me and forward emails to my personal email from now on.

I did a test trying to connect to my company email from my personal pc with Office 365 (requires MS Authenticator) from a Windows 7 vm, and it was rejected saying my system did not meet company requirements. No problem from a Windows 10/11 device.

However, I do not think it will be long before I cannot use a personal pc either, like android, at least not without connecting to a domain, and giving them control of my pc - no way! I can join via a domain actually and I have a vm setup like that which seems to work ok at the moment.

Haydon · Mar 15, 2023

Bree said:
My thoughts exactly. I embrace the new and make no changes except those that the new GUI allows, like organising my apps in named groups on Start. I count that as a major contributing factor in my never having had any Windows Update failures or issues.

Yeah, the more you personalize the more trouble you will get. The trouble may not manifest right away, but at the next WU, or the second WU after that, or the third ... Yeah, I am a believer of 'leave everything you can live with' at their defaults

Hazel123 · Mar 16, 2023

Stepson's school is still using W7!

OrthodoxWin32 · Mar 18, 2023

cereberus said:
Isn't it funny - when Vista came out, many people wanted pc to look like XP, Windows 7 to look like Vista (or XP), W8 to look like W7, W10 (mostly to look like W7, some like W8 (I do not like round corners - practically an oxymoron)), W11 to look like W10 etc.

Do people not see a sort of pattern - some people just seem to refuse to accept change.

How many posts do we see of tools that emulate older versions that keep inconveniently breaking as W11 gets updates?

In the end, is it worth it?

Look at the example of GNU/Linux. Everything is more customizable, and that's not a problem for anyone.
The problem with the change is absolutely not user-created, but Microsoft policy.
The problem is not I want like this version, now like this one... No, the problem is that inevitably, when there is no choice, there are unhappy people. It's totally logical.

And if not, of course it's worth it. Your final remark on stability is wrong, because very often, stability problems are not related to third-party tools. Personally, I have a more stable and faster system than most people. Yet most people don't even guess it's Windows, so much I modify my installation. And besides, you just need to know a little about how Windows works to realize that it's almost never a DLL injection, an additional menu, a disabled service or a modification in the registry that causes the problem. What slows down and destabilizes Windows in general are the enormous antiviruses (Avast...), the large proprietary software (iTunes, Adobe, CyberLink) and of course certain tools included natively in Windows (Microsoft account, SuperFetch, UWP plat-forme, ...).
The only instability problems I encounter concern the Microsoft account (Microsoft store in particular). Yet this is exactly what Microsoft has been proud of for several years. Like what.