Nobody likes being watched and we all agree that it's gone too far by both authorities and private organizations. But regarding the specific point of leaving 10 for this exclusive reason, I merely point out that after some recent "critical updates", 7 and 8 have been "enriched" with much the same monitoring mechanisms, possibly even without 10's possibilities to reduce some of them.
I've thought about leaving windows 10 a lot in the past. But now that I know how to greatly reduce telemetry, replace the start menu, kill the store and cortana, control updates, kill the lock screen, and lots of other tweaks that make it act like the OS I'd like it to be, I'm sticking with it. It's really a pain in the ass though. I don't see the point in hacking windows 7 to reduce telemetry since it's dying a slow death like XP did anyway. No future in that in my opinion. With all of its many faults, especially with certain older hardware and driver issues, 10 is a cleaner leaner OS that has a lot of potential. Also, after close to a year of running the same install on 4 of my machines, it hasn't slowed down (windows rot) anything like 7 does and I've got a lot of programs installed. I always keep it updated and I'm not an insider since I'm not interested in being an alpha tester. Being an RTM beta tester is bad enough for me. But since I've tweaked it the way I like it, and after I got the RS1 issues straightened out, I haven't had to do anything to it since. It just works.
I tried 10 out for a couple months and with the adware, telemetry and forced updates..... I'm sticking with 7. If M$ could fix those things, 10 could be a very good beta O.S.
I have a few virtual computers running for Windows Vista and Windows 8. But for some things I'd much rather have it running fully dedicated (games for example). Of course I also use VM's for security testing
Ha ha ha I think that is one of the reasons why I find myself using Windows 7. Yes, my hardware supports Windows 10 just fine and I have no problem with drivers or programs running on Windows 10 either. But somehow it always feels as though I'm beta testing, even when I'm using the latest stable release. Windows 10 never feels "complete" to me. If I use Home or Pro I feel like I need to take out all the junk and hacking away feels cheap. If I use Windows LTSB, (which is the closest to my liking) I have to add in some of the things that are missing and have to self-support it. In the end; I just feel like what I'm looking for out of Windows 10 is not truly there.
here actualy running Windows 8.1 PRO x64 tweaked til your root works fast, with Aeroglass, my own themes etc without bsod's this O.S. make your job as true desktop; but all in this world is one challenge then now working with windows Server 2016 RTM for future use and with all tweaks that I deserve of course
I "technically" left Windows 10, but not leave as in go back to 8.1 or 7, I just left the consumer version of 10 (Pro) and went with the business version of 10 (Enterprise). I still haven't paid for an OS since I foolishly bought Windows 8 for $9.99 (or whatever that sale deal was), so M$ has got nothing from me since.
Well I don't see a lump of coal in my stocking this Christmas. Maybe Santa ain't real after all. Or maybe I'm Santa, and I give gifts out- to myself. EDIT: More or less, I'm looking at a few hundred of dollars in savings if I use Enterprise & Office 2016. That, and I didn't even mention the fact I've got Server 2016 Database. I'm evil incarnate!
I was always back to Windows one way or another, I went to Linux but always came back, I dual booted but back 100% to Windows I came. I just got so tired of fighting with the damn thing to do what I wanted it to do, so I came back to Windows where everything actually works the way it should.
I used to do this a lot back around when 7 came out. Would switch to Linux every now and then, and find some reason (mostly related to gaming) to come back to Windows. Windows 10's launch made me stick with Linux as hard as I could and now I'm pretty comfortable with it as a primary OS (Fedora Workstation specifically). Now I flip to Windows every now and then, and then find some reason to switch back to Linux
I'm just not really sure. Our two primary computers are Macs which I guess we use 99% of the time, we have two iPads, one iPhone, one dumb phone (mine), One XP Netbook (runs old ham radio programming software very well), one Windows 10 netbook, one low end Windows 10 laptop, one "high end" Windows 10 gaming laptop, one old Windows 10 dual core desktop and one rather high end Dell Windows 10 desktop dedicated to embroidery tasks. I have Windows 10, 7 and XP virtual machines and one Linux Mint 17.3 virtual machine. We believe in spreading the misery around.
I haven't deleted the W7 acronis back up file yet, just incase. It sleeps in D drive incase I need it one day. It takes only 15 minutes to shift from W10 to W7 or visa versa.
I've been running a tri boot setup with WIN10-WIN8.1-Kali Linux ever since WIN10 was available. I also have numerous Macrium images of XP and WIN7 stored away on a spare drive. Plus messing with a few VM's when I'm curious about something new. I don't really feel tied to any of them particularly. Depends on what kind of mood I'm in on any given day.