Microsoft uses malware tactics to foist Windows 10 on more PCs

Your experience is true, but only up to windows 7 (probably because you haven't got any experience upgrading to above OS's)

With windows vista, they pretty much rewrote the kernel of windows which needed completely new drivers and broke a lot of the API. It also used hardware accelerated desktop composition so it required a more capable graphics card. The release was such a shitfest because 1) Lots of people had hardware where the drivers were broken or not even present and 2) OEM's and microsoft fucked with the minimum specs for "Vista Compatibility" which made a whole bunch of systems (especially laptops) which should never run vista come with it pre-installed, giving users a complete garbage experience.

But from there on, pretty much every version of windows is just vista with bugfixes/added features (it's no wonder that the internal version number for windows vista, 7, 8, 8.1 and 10 is all "6.*") and in most cases, actually runs faster. If you have a PC that was mid-range in 2011 and runs windows 7 fine, expect the same or even slightly better performance with 8, 8.1 or 10. Of course, if you have some obscure hardware you can always have some driver issues.

With W8 & W10, windows changed its core, and fucked up a great amount of software.

That has more to do with how windows manages security, and what an application is allowed to do in various levels of "trust". Vista broke a gazillion applications because it introduced the UAC (User Account Control), which required certain operations to be elevated to administrator role, which a lot of applications weren't designed around. Of course spamming modals on the screen every time you try to run an application is pretty garbage, especially on hardware that has difficulty even rendering that stuff so your pc would freeze for a second every time that popup came up.

What is there even to upgrade? W7 is a fully functionnal OS, with years of corrective patches. Also, like everytime with windows, it most likely is filled with exploits and bugs. There's no way I'm installing that shit before at least it is 3 years old.

And I couldn't agree with you more on this. Along with the "stop what you're doing and install this update now!" bullshit, the added crap that gets installed, this is my number one reason not to upgrade. My home system runs windows 7, my work system runs windows 10. Aside from some minor differences (and a beefier graphics card) the specs are identical and both operating systems work just as fast, with windows 10 booting quite a bit faster but for the rest it's pretty much the same.

But then when you have a fresh install, you have a billion applications all running in the background pulling shit from the internet to display on my start menu, this dumb "edge-snap" feature which makes it annoying to drag windows between multiple monitors, the constant pestering on updates while I'm trying to do some actual work and god knows how many new security holes they introduced with all these "new and improved features" means I'll stay on windows 7 for a while. As you said, windows 7 is a capable OS and there is nothing inherently wrong with it.

If you're really concerned about windows 10's performance, you shouldn't be. But there are a million valid reasons why you would stick to windows 7 and I really can't find any fault with that, at least until security update support stops in like 2020.

/r/technology Thread Parent Link - smh.com.au