Lap Tops

[Alex Zeller]

I still have a laptop with 7 on it. It was a company laptop (large blue tech company) so it can't be upgraded without paying. I like 7. I leave that one at work now and had one with 10 on it. You can make 10 look a lot like 7 (which s what I did). That laptop the lighting behind the LCD died so I just replaced it with one that has 11. Again I made it look like 7. While trying to customize 11 (like turning off two, three, and four finger actions on the touch pad) it started acting funny. While trying to fix it I found there was an option to roll back to 10, 8, or 7. I'm no longer a tech guy so it would take me some time to find it but it's there. I didn't try it so I can't say it works but I was temped.

One of my biggest beefs is that sleep is no longer the option you want to use when closing the lid. The computer stays running and kills the battery in a day. You have to use hibernate. Yet hibernate was closing all the programs and it takes much longer to come back to life than 7. One thing I do like is that (both 10 and 11 do it) is you can wirelessly connect to a smart TV. 10 is much quicker but both work just fine. Before that I was using a long HDMI cable.


I needed a laptop with a graphics processor and ended up with a gaming laptop that has a few keys that are clear. That makes them hard to see with the keyboard backlighting turned on. I couldn't find a laptop that had everything I wanted and nothing I didn't. In the past it seemed like there were lots of options. I don't look forward to replacing this one down the road.

[Bill Howatt]

I'm not really clear on what just how much effort entails making it "look like" Windows 7.
Apart from W8 which introduced the tiles style interface and various commands and options in the corners if IIRC, W8,10,11 all present a desktop screen that looks like W7. To switch back and forth from the tiled Start screen is a simple press of the Windows key.
Commonly used apps can be pinned to the Task Bar and Shortcut icons can be placed on the non-tiled desktop although this isn't as easy as it once was because there often isn't an option to put it there without finding the executable in Program Files or Program Files (x86) and pasting a shortcut. Sure there a few other differences such as how the Settings are laid out or accessed but it is pretty minor. A right click on the Windows icon in W10, 11 quickly brings up just about anything you need from the computer management perspective.