Oh, and if your Win 10 edition is less than Pro, you lose a lot of control over when it decides to reboot to install updates. I’ve literally gone to the bathroom and come back to find my machine rebooting. I have one last machine to get over to Linux and then I can just forget about the gong show.
It has happened to me before and I lost a lot of progress because I had everything open but didn’t save anything for a week 
. I know there is a way to prevent that, at least in win7. I will have to remember to revisit this.
I agree with Patdavid (leave the defaults and let Windows handle things). I upgraded my own Win8.1 to WIn10 without any issues; helped two of my friends update there own Win7 machines to Win10 (free at that time) without any issues either. Win10’s been pretty stable after their first equivalent to service pack release. Of course, I jumped in from day one and, well, had some issues that since have been addressed. Once you upgrade, you’ll like it too. You can then disable Cortana and location if you feel like you have to. 
I looked into the reboot issue. There is something called “active hours”, period when auto-reboots (supposedly) aren’t allowed to happen. However, I cannot set it to 24 hrs, only 18. (Sometimes, I use the laptop at odd hours.) There is also an option to super-nag, like what win7 did. I turned that on so that at the very least I get ample warning — as long as I don’t
@Jacal Looks like you customized the start menu and the file explorer, and I don’t see the taskbar.
My start menu
I only use the start menu for quick searches (by typing when active) and for the Power button. My desktop is hidden; I place the shortcuts on the taskbar instead.
The start menu is tweaked with a third party tool. The taskbar is on the left, hidden currently by the start menu. The file explorer is Q-Dir, there are many other available.
The taskbar:
The taskbar is at the bottom. I only see the icons. What I have so far in my new install:
I don’t truncate my task tray icons because I don’t want them changing on me. I like them in a certain order and remove those I don’t need.
Originally the “active hours” setting allowed a maximum of 12 hours, which was ridiculous. I didn’t notice the change to 18 hours until you pointed it out. Thanks! 
Agree with @lylejk the current versions are stable and, except for the privacy issues, it’s my favorite version.
Also, if you have a network of Win 10 machines, beware the big updates, because they will simply grab all you’re network bandwidth. At work, first time, all users lost internet connection because of this. Lessons learned, we implemented some group policies to throttle updates bandwidth usage and now everything is fine.
I don’t use windows at home.
Hey, gadolf. I believe there’s a way to just have to download updates and then you can use one machine to push them to the rest of the machines saving bandwidth. Not that big anymore with this stuff, but your IT folks should find out how to do this.
@lylejk you’re right, we tried that but it didn’t work - at least it didn’t at the time of that update. I recall having read some stuff on the Internet about it not working, but, unfortunately, don’t have any reference now.
Btw, I’m the IT folks … anyway, provided the whole set of workstations doesn’t completely fill up the bandwidth, it’s ok, because we’re on an unlimited dedicated link.
But you’re right, that feature is working, sure it’s the way to go.
UPDATE: if I correctly recall, it would only work on the Enterprise version but… not completely sure…
Believe it is only for Enterprise license. I suppose small businesses have to do it the hard way. That should not be. I wonder if Linux has a way to patch using a similar method?
It might have to do with the clean install but it looks like win10 is running better than win7. In particular, I noticed that the colour is more consistent, perhaps due to better drivers and colour management.
The calculator isn’t as good though. I used to be able to edit values and expressions by clicking in the number field or history. I can’t do that anymore.
Calculator is much more powerful than you realize, afre. Click the triple horizontal bars and you’ll see for yourself. Basic calc (standard) is quite simple and, for most tasks, good enough.
Not being able to edit valuesa is a deal breaker for me. I can however install an older version. The problem is that I can’t make this the default calculator in Windows 10. It won’t let me select this one and associate it with what is called the URL:calculator protocol. If anyone knows how, please let me know.
a ↓
I have been encountering a problem for a while now where the system stalls at the login screen when I wake it up from sleep. I couldn’t figure out why and had to reboot each time.
Later, I found out that it had to do with activating one of the circle messages. When the login screen is normal and I click on one of them, it stalls. I can move the mouse but nothing else works besides the power button. Sometimes I still see the login screen. Other times it is just a blue hue.
Now, I found out that I could ctrl+alt+del to force the password field to show up. I type the ps and I am in but sometimes the frozen login screen is back on all of the sudden. Sometimes staying there and at times only a flicker. This is maddening!
I wonder if any of you have encountered this problem and / or have a solution. I know you could turn off some things here:
I found out why my fans are whirling at max. It has to do with Windows Defender, which I cannot disable1. Turns out I have to do two things:
- Add an exception to all of my executables.
- Add an exception to Windows Defender.
Both are silly. The latter is nonsensical 
.
1Alternatively, if I install another AV, Defender would supposedly turn off. Even then, people have reported that it may not happen.
I have Linux VMs; haven’t reinstalled Cygwin yet. I don’t like using Wine. 
Purpose of this thread is to convince people that Linux is the way to go.