is windows 7 professional really the best windows?

[Yous3f_M]

Is windows 7 professional really the best version of windows till now or there is any competition 

Best for Gaming

Best for productivity

best for security

best for accessibility

etc 

[Sauron]

It depends on what you mean by "best". In regards to what you should be using, windows 7 will be end of life pretty soon so you might want to move on to something newer.

[Danielx64]

I can see windows 7 becoming the new XP - where people just won't let go of it.

[RuffRuffmcgruff]

14 minutes ago, Danielx64 said:

I can see windows 7 becoming the new XP - where people just won't let go of it.

YOU CAN'T TAKE AWAY MY PRECIOUS 7 FROM ME, I'LL DIE BEFORE I LET MICROSOFT STEAL IT

[NelizMastr]

29 minutes ago, Yous3f_M said:

Is windows 7 professional really the best version of windows till now or there is any competition 

Best for Gaming

Best for productivity

best for security

best for accessibility

etc 

It was the best in all categories in 2010, yes. Not anymore, though. It hasn't received any new features since around 2012 and it doesn't support all of the latest APIs and advancements made over the last few years. It's also going out of support in 14 months, after which it becomes a security hole and app support will go down rapidly. 

[GoodBytes]

2 hours ago, Yous3f_M said:

Is windows 7 professional really the best version of windows till now or there is any competition 

IN what regard specifically?

 

2 hours ago, Yous3f_M said:

Best for Gaming

No.

2 hours ago, Yous3f_M said:

Best for productivity

Nope

2 hours ago, Yous3f_M said:

best for security

Nope

2 hours ago, Yous3f_M said:

best for accessibility

Absolutely not

 

 

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

2 hours ago, Danielx64 said:

I can see windows 7 becoming the new XP - where people just won't let go of it.

This is going to be worse.  Much worse. 

 

Back when XP went EoL, people had been moving to Win7 at a steady pace.  That kind of move simply isn't happening now.  According to NetMarketShare Win10 is only now about to overtake Win7.

To put that into perspective: a year before XP went EoL, Win7 already had a 44% market share while XP had a 38% market share.  And that was done without a year of free upgrades to boost the initial numbers.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if MS finds themselves having to do another year of free upgrades in 2020 or having to extend support for Win7 for a couple more years because there's simply too many machines still running it. 

[Sauron]

3 hours ago, Yous3f_M said:

Best for Gaming

Objectively, no.

3 hours ago, Yous3f_M said:

Best for productivity

Arguably, no.

3 hours ago, Yous3f_M said:

best for security

No.

3 hours ago, Yous3f_M said:

best for accessibility

Better than 8, worse than 10. 10 is a UI mess but it's still easier to navigate than 7.

14 minutes ago, Captain Chaos said:

I wouldn't be surprised if MS finds themselves having to do another year of free upgrades in 2020 or having to extend support for Win7 for a couple more years because there's simply too many machines still running it. 

Windows should just be free to be honest, MS makes money with corporate customers and consumers are simply doing them a huge favour by enforcing their monopoly. Plus, they treat their customers like beta testers. In exchange, the least they could do is let you install their system for free.

 

I don't really see them extending support, beyond a certain point they should just be allowed to give the middle finger to people refusing to upgrade - this obsession with sticking to an os for over 10 years is part of the reason windows is so bad to begin with, MS can't take any step forwards when half of their user base will have compatibility problems. If you absolutely refuse to use windows 10, there are plenty of modern and supported linux distributions out there to choose from.

[TechyBen]

1 minute ago, Sauron said:

Better than 8, worse than 10. 10 is a UI mess but it's still easier to navigate than 7.

Hahahahhaha. Wow. Phew. Great. Best joke of 2018. Thanks!

(If you ignore the Metro panel entirely, 8.1 works basically as 10, with 7 like ease of use, and no broken multitude of different control panels and broken GUI lack of information).

The only thing I don't know is 8.1 driver support/gaming as I only used it on a laptop. But compared to 10, my experience with 8.1 was floorless.

[Sauron]

1 minute ago, TechyBen said:

Hahahahhaha. Wow. Phew. Great. Best joke of 2018. Thanks!

(If you ignore the Metro panel entirely, 8.1 works basically as 10, with 7 like ease of use, and no broken multitude of different control panels and broken GUI lack of information).

The only thing I don't know is 8.1 driver support/gaming as I only used it on a laptop. But compared to 10, my experience with 8.1 was floorless.

I said 8, not 8.1.

 

8.1 is fine, but... it's basically windows 10 with missing features. And sorry, 8.1 has exactly the same UI inconsistency issues as 10 - worse if you don't use a third party tool like classic shell.

[TechyBen]

Just now, Sauron said:

I said 8, not 8.1.

 

8.1 is fine, but... it's basically windows 10 with missing features. And sorry, 8.1 has exactly the same UI inconsistency issues as 10 - worse if you don't use a third party tool like classic shell.

TBH I never saw metro when using 8.1. I used it exactly the same as 7. 10 forces me into it's touch screen like settings panel, with no visible scroll/box/edge/continue/listings features so it's a blind search every time unless you know exactly the size and shape of every menu (where as 7 has tabs to show extra buttons, 3d/square outlines for click/tick, and scroll bars to show if you can go to extra panel space).

[iiMaagic]

11 minutes ago, TechyBen said:

TBH I never saw metro when using 8.1. I used it exactly the same as 7. 10 forces me into it's touch screen like settings panel, with no visible scroll/box/edge/continue/listings features so it's a blind search every time unless you know exactly the size and shape of every menu (where as 7 has tabs to show extra buttons, 3d/square outlines for click/tick, and scroll bars to show if you can go to extra panel space).

If you're talking about control panel, it's still there in Windows 10. Just used less often because it's kinda hidden compared to what it used to be and that there isn't really much of a need to use it over the settings menu.

[Sauron]

28 minutes ago, TechyBen said:

TBH I never saw metro when using 8.1. I used it exactly the same as 7. 10 forces me into it's touch screen like settings panel, with no visible scroll/box/edge/continue/listings features so it's a blind search every time unless you know exactly the size and shape of every menu (where as 7 has tabs to show extra buttons, 3d/square outlines for click/tick, and scroll bars to show if you can go to extra panel space).

You can still use control panel in 10, it's pretty much identical to the one in 7 and 8/8.1. Either way none of it is particularly well structured, you just know how to use the control panel because you're used to it.

[TechyBen]

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

You can still use control panel in 10, it's pretty much identical to the one in 7 and 8/8.1. Either way none of it is particularly well structured, you just know how to use the control panel because you're used to it.

No. Objectively the GUI has missing features/icons/info to the user (as said, no scroll bar, so no info to tell you if 1 page or 2 of options). Like, it literally has no GUI signposting, whereas 7 does.

 

As said, not "use to", as 8.1 is different (I mainly used right click instead of start menu, and got to everything through that + search) to 7 and I was fine with it, likewise for Linux Mint.

 

TBH, Android and iOS do better than 10, though also fall for some GUI lacking info at times (is that a dot or an options button, is that a button or just some text, how do I go into extra options, are there any etc).

No scrollbar, buttons/outlines. Minimal "hyperlink" style coloured text... like WTF, how do I know if a colour is just a colour or a button? All buttons are "blank" icons with no spacial awareness on them (is that a 7 icon box, or a 14 one with more if I scroll? Do those icons toggle, or take me into a menu? Do those icons click, drag etc?).

Compared to 7:

Bullet point and highlight on text (though Win10 coloured box is ok I guess). Hyperlinks AND spacers to show seperation. Scrollbar to show separation.

 

10 has cleaner layout, but takes away the needed features. They needed to take out the clutter, but keep in the actual user interface. XD

[GoodBytes]

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

Objectively, no.

Arguably, no.

No.

Better than 8, worse than 10. 10 is a UI mess but it's still easier to navigate than 7.

You better provide serious facts on those.

 

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

Windows should just be free to be honest, MS makes money with corporate customers and consumers are simply doing them a huge favour by enforcing their monopoly.

Off topic.

 

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

Plus, they treat their customers like beta testers. In exchange, the least they could do is let you install their system for free.

That is your opinion. Microsoft has a full QA team. Doesn't mean that people call the end of the world on bugs, that Windows 7 had none. It had plenty. Welcome to the world of software development, everything is "What is critical? From what is critical, how many people we estimate may be affected? What is important? From what is important, how many people we estimate are affected by it?

 

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

I don't really see them extending support, beyond a certain point they should just be allowed to give the middle finger to people refusing to upgrade - this obsession with sticking to an os for over 10 years is part of the reason windows is so bad to begin with,

I wonder too.. could it be the mass number of highly infected XP systems that have full of discovered security holes that have all been fixed via updates and Service Packs, but people like you refuse to update because "it works" in your perspective, and many of those outdated system played big parts in executing DDOS attack and various other attacks on sites/companies, because they are infected to allow remote control execution of tasks (i.e: zombie companies). And the very same people, who are infected complain to Microsoft how shitty their OS is because it slows down to a crawl at times, or all the time.... I wonder.

 

 

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

MS can't take any step forwards when half of their user base will have compatibility problems.

Microsoft has the best backward compatibility support among all OS. Properly developed software from Windows 2000 even 95 still works today. Under Linux, a simple Software update can break lots, hence why so many Linux based servers, including at the company I work for, are NEVER updated once everything has been tested. And despite all the fans we have in this company on Linux OS, they all, without exception agree, that Open Source releases are Beta releases, because if a project is not officially released, then very few people will work on it. When you release a new version a official, and things don't work, you'll have developer who want to get their stuff working, are forced to pitch in and fix the bugs, and add missing features that should be there (many times you have functional calls, documented, but in them, you they just return a static value, with a comment "// Todo".

 

And from a end user perspective, you can easily, almost constantly, have conflicts to deal with from updates, the moment you deviate from the official release. Say you need a program from the outside and it need its own stuff in a more or less specific way.

 

 

[williamcll]

I'm wiling to say 7 is more bug free than 8 or 10

[GoodBytes]

6 minutes ago, TechyBen said:

No. Objectively the GUI has missing features/icons/info to the user (as said, no scroll bar, so no info to tell you if 1 page or 2 of options). Like, it literally has no GUI signposting, whereas 7 does.

Correct. Windows 10 has options in its Settings panel that the Control Panel does not have. Control Panel is being phased out. Every new version of Windows, you have decent to good progress on this, and added features, like multi-GPU  per app control, Per application Audio source output, managing apps, multitasking settings, touchpad configuration, pen configuration, and lots and lots more.

 

6 minutes ago, TechyBen said:

TBH, Android and iOS do better than 10, though also fall for some GUI lacking info at times (is that a dot or an options button, is that a button or just some text, how do I go into extra options, are there any etc).

Nice to show a super old Windows 10 screenshot to show you point.

 

 

6 minutes ago, TechyBen said:

No scrollbar, buttons/outlines. Minimal "hyperlink" style coloured text... like WTF, how do I know if a colour is just a colour or a button? All buttons are "blank" icons with no spacial awareness on them (is that a 7 icon box, or a 14 one with more if I scroll? Do those icons toggle, or take me into a menu? Do those icons click, drag etc?).

What? Have you used Windows 10?

 

 

6 minutes ago, TechyBen said:

Compared to 7:

Bullet point and highlight on text (though Win10 coloured box is ok I guess). Hyperlinks AND spacers to show seperation. Scrollbar to show separation.

Am I dreaming..,. people HATED this layout and preferred the icon layout. Now you saying its good? Maybe for you like it, and that is great! But the general consensus is a big no. People where saying how hard it is to find things and some options were not available through the Category view.

 

[TechyBen]

39 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

 

Nice to show a super old Windows 10 screenshot to show you point.

 

Wait what? I could get you a new one, but it would require booting my laptop. You know what. Bye. 

[Sauron]

23 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

You better provide serious facts on those.

Which one in particular? Also it seems to me your previous post pretty much mirrored my answers...

24 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Off topic.

Fair enough, I didn't think it would be a big deal considering I already gave an answer to the main question.

25 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

That is your opinion. Microsoft has a full QA team. Doesn't mean that people call the end of the world on bugs, that Windows 7 had none. It had plenty. Welcome to the world of software development, everything is "What is critical? From what is critical, how many people we estimate may be affected? What is important? From what is important, how many people we estimate are affected by it?

Sure, I never said windows 7 was better. I'm arguing the opposite generally speaking. I would argue MS is a bit too trigger happy on features and could use a bit more thoroughness in their QA before a major release - at least as long as the product costs over $100.

34 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

I wonder too.. could it be the mass number of highly infected XP systems that have full of discovered security holes that have all been fixed via updates and Service Packs, but people like you refuse to update because "it works" in your perspective, and many of those outdated system played big parts in executing DDOS attack and various other attacks on sites/companies, because they are infected to allow remote control execution of tasks (i.e: zombie companies). And the very same people, who are infected complain to Microsoft how shitty their OS is because it slows down to a crawl at times, or all the time.... I wonder.

Man, that's... literally what I'm saying are you sure you quoted the right person?

37 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Microsoft has the best backward compatibility support among all OS. Properly developed software from Windows 2000 even 95 still works today. Under Linux, a simple Software update can break lots, hence why so many Linux based servers, including at the company I work for, are NEVER updated once everything has been tested. And despite all the fans we have in this company on Linux OS, they all, without exception agree, that Open Source releases are Beta releases, because if a project is not officially released, then very few people will work on it. When you release a new version a official, and things don't work, you'll have developer who want to get their stuff working, are forced to pitch in and fix the bugs, and add missing features that should be there (many times you have functional calls, documented, but in them, you they just return a static value, with a comment "// Todo".

What I meant is that by forcing MS to support their operating systems for over a decade people are preventing them from making large progress. Note that I'm not talking about old programs working on modern windows - I'm talking about modern programs that must work on old windows systems or risk missing out on half of the market. If most people were using 10, MS could focus more on adding features and restructuring things that don't make sense without worrying too much about breaking everything for 8 and 7 users.

 

Open source software certainly has compatibility problems, but because it is open source the lifetime of a given piece of software is not tied to the whims of the corp that made it. Besides, much of this is slowly going away as containers gain popularity. With that said, since they don't really care about backwards compatibility linux developers are free to change pretty much whatever they like. This has downsides, but in return you get a far more modern system with a cleaner structure and as many security updates as you're willing to pay someone to implement.

 

Either way, whether you prefer the windows or linux approach is a matter of use case and preference - either way, I think we can agree that sticking to an older version of windows for 10 years is a problem.

[Delicieuxz]

7 hours ago, Yous3f_M said:

Is windows 7 professional really the best version of windows till now or there is any competition 

Best for Gaming

In some ways:

 

Quote

Best for productivity

Depends if you count being able to control your PC and not have it restart on its own or obstruct your productivity to be 'better for productivity'. Coz Windows 7 has that advantage over Windows 10

 

Quote

best for security

Statistically, Windows 7 is a more secure OS than Windows 10:

 

 

Quote

best for accessibility

It depends what that means to a person, I guess. Being able to control an OS more easily means that the OS is more accessible, to me. Windows 7 is more easy to control than Windows 10 is and in a lot of cases requires going through fewer menus to get to the setting you want to change.

 

Windows 10 has some additional features that might include something you want to make use of - so, for that thing or things Windows 10 would have more accessibility.

 

6 hours ago, Sauron said:

It depends on what you mean by "best". In regards to what you should be using, windows 7 will be end of life pretty soon so you might want to move on to something newer.

Windows XP's security updates were supposed to end in 2014 but Microsoft chose to continue offering them until 2019 for companies that were willing to pay for them - jue like Microsoft is now doing with Windows 7 security updates until 2023. With Windows XP, it's easy to set up any PC running the OS to keep receiving security updates until 2019 even without being a company paying for them. My guess is that it would also be possible to continue receiving Windows 7's security updates meant for paying companies until 2023.

[Sauron]

Just now, Delicieuxz said:

Windows XP's security updates were supposed to end in 2014 but Microsoft chose to continue offering them until 2019 for companies that were willing to pay for them - jue like Microsoft is now doing with Windows 7 security updates until 2023. With Windows XP, it's easy to set up any PC running the OS to keep receiving security updates until 2019 even without being a company paying for them. My guess is that it would also be possible to continue receiving Windows 7's security updates meant for paying companies until 2023.

Sure, if delaying the inevitable for 3 more years makes things better for you...

[Delicieuxz]

1 minute ago, Sauron said:

Sure, if delaying the inevitable for 3 more years makes things better for you...

I think it would for everybody, since that would mean that Windows 7 doesn't have to be updated from for the next 5 years - which is a Windows version's full mainstream support lifespan.

 

Meanwhile, there's only 6 months of time between each Windows 10 version's release, and something like only 18 months of support for each Windows 10 version. So, whenever each next new version releases, there's only about 1 year left of support compared to Windows 7's 5 years left of support. Does that mean that everybody should immediately update to the latest version of Windows 10 as soon as it becomes available? Only if they don't like their data.

[Sauron]

2 minutes ago, Delicieuxz said:

I think it would for everybody, since that would mean that Windows 7 doesn't have to be updated from for the next 5 years - which is a Windows version's full mainstream support lifespan.

And what next? The more you delay the upgrade, the more painful it will be. There won't be a windows major release after 10 that will allow you to skip it. Furthermore, just because it will get security updates doesn't mean everyone else will support it. Steam, for instance, doesn't support xp any more.

7 minutes ago, Delicieuxz said:

Meanwhile, there's only 6 months of time between each Windows 10 version's release, and something like only 18 months of support for each Windows 10 version. So, whenever each next new version releases, there's only about 1 year left of support compared to Windows 7's 5 years left of support. Does that mean that everybody should immediately update to the latest version of Windows 10 as soon as it becomes available? Only if they don't like their data.

That's how windows 10 works. If you're running windows 10 on something like a production server, you're doing it wrong, but the same goes for windows 7. Windows Server exists for a reason. Sure, updates deleting your data is not acceptable, but that's not a problem inherent to the update model. On a consumer pc you should strive to be as up to date as possible.

[Delicieuxz]

2 minutes ago, Sauron said:

And what next? The more you delay the upgrade, the more painful it will be. There won't be a windows major release after 10 that will allow you to skip it. Furthermore, just because it will get security updates doesn't mean everyone else will support it. Steam, for instance, doesn't support xp any more.

I don't think that there is a correlation between how long a person waits to update and how difficult it is to do so. Each update is a hassle, so the fewer of them a person has to do, the better.

 

Microsoft said Windows 10 will be the last version of Windows, but then Microsoft lies as policy. I wouldn't take their claim about Windows 10 being the last version seriously. Besides, a CEO after Satya Nadella could have an entirely different opinion on that matter.

 

So long as a person isn't planning to upgrade their PC with new hardware, I don't think they need any new support from 3rd parties right now. And if they do upgrade their PC with new hardware requiring new support, then that would be the ideal time to install a new OS and they've have to do so at that point anyway if they change motherboard and CPU.

 

Steam recently stopped supporting Windows XP (a major mistake, IMO, that I hope they backtrack on), but it will be a lot more than 5 years out before there's any talk of such of Windows 7.

 

2 minutes ago, Sauron said:

That's how windows 10 works. If you're running windows 10 on something like a production server, you're doing it wrong, but the same goes for windows 7. Windows Server exists for a reason. Sure, updates deleting your data is not acceptable, but that's not a problem inherent to the update model. On a consumer pc you should strive to be as up to date as possible.

I don't see any need to have newer Windows 10 features on a consumer PC that doesn't use them. If Microsoft chooses to condition security updates on also getting feature updates, then that's a bad and unacceptable situation that Microsoft is responsible for creating that puts consumers between a rock and a hard place. It can't be said that not updating in that situation is wrong or that updating is right. Microsoft has created a situation where the real variables cannot be accurately acted upon to choose whether to update or not, as updating comes with major risks that go beyond losing personal data.

[Sauron]

1 minute ago, Delicieuxz said:

I don't think that there is a correlation between how long a person waits to update and how difficult it is to do so. Each update is a hassle, so the fewer of them a person has to do, the better.

In my experience, the more things change at once the harder it is to get back to normal.

2 minutes ago, Delicieuxz said:

Microsoft said Windows 10 will be the last version of Windows, but then Microsoft lies as policy. I wouldn't take their claim about Windows 10 being the last version seriously. Besides, a CEO after Satya Nadella could have an entirely different opinion on that matter.

All right, let's bet our user experience on pure speculation for basically no reason. Even if the next CEO is nominated tomorrow and decides there will be a windows 11, it will still take years for it to be ready to ship and when it does ship, it will be a buggy mess as per usual. Plus, it could very well be another vista or 8. I don't see the benefit.

5 minutes ago, Delicieuxz said:

Steam recently stopped supporting Windows XP (a major mistake, IMO, that I hope they backtrack on)

They can't backtrack and still add features to their platform. Expecting them to support Xp is like expecting them to support DOS.

6 minutes ago, Delicieuxz said:

but it will be a lot more than 5 years out before there's any talk of such of Windows 7.

Says you, it took about 3 years from the official EOL for them to stop supporting Xp so it's perfectly possible it will be the same for 7.

10 minutes ago, Delicieuxz said:

So long as a person isn't planning to upgrade their PC with new hardware, I don't think they need any new support from 3rd parties right now. And if they do upgrade their PC with new hardware requiring new support, then that would be the ideal time to install a new OS and they've have to do so at that point anyway if they change motherboard and CPU.

Sure, and if you want to stick to a pentium 3 for eternity you can still use windows 98. I don't think everyone should instantly upgrade to 10 if they have a laptop from 2008 - they can upgrade when they inevitably will need to buy new hardware - the ones who should are those buying a brand new custom desktop and then installing w7 on it.

 

So going back to the actual point of the conversation - you should not install windows 7 instead of 10 if you want to use windows at all.

16 minutes ago, Delicieuxz said:

If Microsoft chooses to condition security updates on also getting feature updates, then that's a bad and unacceptable situation that Microsoft is responsible for creating that puts consumers between a rock and a hard place.

Nonsense - NOBODY supports a fixed feature release for eternity, and quite frankly MS has been supporting old releases longer than pretty much anyone else. The rock and the hard place are the product of the customer insisting on using the same system forever.

19 minutes ago, Delicieuxz said:

Microsoft has created a situation where the real variables cannot be accurately acted upon to choose whether to update or not, as updating comes with major risks that go beyond losing personal data.

...for example? If you say spying I'm going to laugh my ass off... you can't tell me with a straight face that you expect privacy from a windows OS.