Goodbye Windows 7 - You were the best

Forced to upgrade to Windows 10 to run modern hardware (Win 7 drivers not supported by Ryzen 2). Sad to move on from what was a working, fast, efficient operating system. I had and liked Vista, as I tweaked it, so when I took the plunge to Win7, it was pretty much the same.

Just a quick screenie of my tweaked system, showing how easy it is to get the most from your system RAM. Suffice it to say, Windows Defender taking 20% really bugged me.

https://ibb.co/fQPodV

For what it's worth, Win10 clean install + Nvidia and other hardware drivers was clocking in at 1.6GB used. So far, I've got it down to 1.2GB and I'm not even trying hard yet, and I have 16GB of RAM to play with this time.

i had to change from windows 8 to windows 10 when I updated to the Ryzen, while in theory windows 8 and 7 will work on ryzen, there are people who are still using then, for some reason my machine would not stay stable.

I have changed a fair bit on Windows 10, got rid of Cortana, got rid of the telemetry, changed the start menu to a decent one, using start is back, I used that on windows 8 anyway. Disabled defender and use comodo, which I have been using for years.

The main problem with Windows 10 for me are the updates, they add nothing of interest to me and the small bits of software that Ms supplies that I use like sticky notes are getting larger and offering stuff I do not require, so getting bloated.

I am still using the original photo viewer that came with Windows 7/8 as I hate the one that comes with windows 10. Need to change the reg for it mind you.

Pretty much disabled everything in sight. Cortana (including searchUI), telemetry, most of the apps, and pulled them out of the wider start menu. Looks like you can't add things to said menu without it becoming a big square, rather than just a simple line. Probably easy to change. Anyway, I have a keyboard with 18 'G' keys, with the option to have three levels, so 54 'G' keys in total. I'll get all my regular websites, apps and whatnot programmed into that, so no need for taskbar shortcuts and start menu for the most part. It's far easier to hit a single key to load a website than browse a start menu, taskbar, or a speed dial.

It's coming along not too bad. Updates are as disabled as possible, in the sense that Windows does nothing until told to. Notifications for them are gone too, unless I go into the notify or 'things to be done' areas.

Still hemming and hawing over Defender. As with browsers, I'm getting to the point that one's as good or as bad as most of the others, with the only differences being how intrusive or customisable they are. I tend to double up with Malwarebytes (free) for periodic system scans anyway, leaving MWB disabled the rest of the time.

Must remember to pull an older version of MS Paint across. The 3D paint that came with Win 10 is probably wonderful if you have the patience and time to fiddle with all the new gizmos. I tend just to use paint for painty stuff, and mostly use Irfanview for most image stuff.

The Paint that came with Win7 (and Vista?) was silly. They shifted the 0,0 line pixel so you had to focus on a different part of the pixel to be accurate, and swapped the page up/down zooms around. Pointless, and to this day I press the wrong way after 15 years of being tuned to the older way. Stupid, pointless changes in the name of re-inventing the wheel.

Every new release of Windows seem to mean a new way to all the same stuff a different (not an easier) way. By all means supply 'New 3D Paint' and 'Old Paint' together, but that would be silly, wouldn't it.

I read on a forum recently,

"The desktop is an outdated concept, and should be retired"

No mention whatsoever of what should replace it, but presumably the twit uses a mobile device. The desktop is a simple concept. This is where I put the things I will work on now. I pull things from 'x' and 'y' to the desktop and work on them. A central place to focus on the work. What it's called can change every week, if that's what people want, but its concept will remain the same, because people are lazy clever enough to gather their work around them, rather than move around from place to place and waste time.

We're getting there - https://ibb.co/drr3tV

Whilst Paint 3D is easy to see, Paint 'hides' in 'Windows Accessories' which IIRC it always has done.

Yep. I still use the old (almost) original Paint. It is quite well hidden, as you say. I just hit either the screen or keyboard button/key and type Paint.

It isn't quite the original as it now has two more links in the top icons. One to Paint 3D and the second a "Product alert" which when clicked says Paint will soon be moving to Windows Store but still free to download.

Well who'da thunkit? Cheers for that. Thought it was gone.

It happens the same to me, but I had to do it. In my opinion, XP has been the fastest Windows ever

In reply to a post by canadianbee:

It happens the same to me, but I had to do it. In my opinion, XP has been the fastest Windows ever

XP had its problems, it was not so bad when hardware started to catch up, and that was the main problem with vista, hardware was too slow for it.

I am not a fan of Windows 10, MS keeps adding stuff I do not want or change the rules to suit them, like with drivers.

My favourite version of Windows was windows 98SE.