January 2, 2016 — A few days ago, after being tempted for several months by the frequent pop-ups from Microsoft urging me to take advantage of their offer of a free Windows 10 upgrade, which assured me my PC was compatible, I decided to upgrade. Rather than take Microsoft's word for compatibility, I proceeded to Google all the apps on my PC I can't live without and determined they were all Windows 10-compatible. The pop-ups offer the options of upgrading immediately or downloading for later upgrade. I chose the download, but was then given the option again of updating immediately or choosing from three dates, the latest three days from the current date, with no other option and seemingly no way to opt out. So having already determined my important programs were compatible, I decided to upgrade immediately.I was upgrading from Windows 7, the only version ever to run on my 4-year-old HP Touch-Smart desktop PC. I had never installed Windows 8 because of all the bad press it had gotten. The Windows 10 upgrade went smoothly and took about 90 minutes. It's loaded with features, most of which I have no use for and disabled during the upgrade.The familiar Explorer still looks the same, and all my folders and files remained in the same order as before.
I haven't run into any serious problems, but I've encountered a few bugs of the annoying variety, and I just don't like some of the changes to system settings. Screen background doesn't seem to work properly, I can't figure out how to enable sounds for program events, the start menu sometimes fails to open and I have to restart Windows to recover it, and my administrator login has disappeared.
Internet Explorer has been replaced by Internet Edge. I transferred my bookmarks from Firefox, but now when I click on Bookmarks in Edge, it causes Edge to close, so I can't use bookmarks, severely limiting Edge's usefulness. But it doesn't matter. I had planned to stick with Firefox anyway. All my applications work as before, no problem with internet or email access, and I can network with my Macbook Pro as I always have.
Overall, I can't find much reason to recommend Windows 10. I can't comment on Windows 8 because I've never used it, but if you're running Windows 7 with no problems, I suggest sticking with it. Windows 10 is no improvement over 7, or Vista for that matter, at least for my purposes.
