How bad is Win 10? Options

[pandy]

My computer has broken down. Yeah, again. I just bought a very slightly used one with a lot better components that I would otherwise afford.


It comes with Win 10 (Pro), I think. The guy hated it himself and recommended me to install 7 or 8 instead. 7 seems the least annoying, but support ends in less than 3 years. 8 seems pretty horrid too. So maybe I should just go with 10?

I've read about the murder of the start menu, that updates are forced and that you have no control of what and when. Is it as bad as I've heard?

[CharlesEF]

Is there a chance the 2 drives have spun down (power saver mode), from not being used? If yes, then it would take some time to spin back up to save a file

[pandy]

Is there a chance the 2 drives have spun down (power saver mode), from not being used? If yes, then it would take some time to spin back up to save a file

Yes, that could be the case sometimes, but not always. Or maybe, if it happens faster than I'm used to. I'm not very productive on this machine as you may have understood, so I don't save that often. Is there a setting for that, for individual drives I mean? I'll try to search the peculiar settings app (is it an app?)
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[Christian J]

Is there a setting for that, for individual drives I mean? I'll try to search the peculiar settings app (is it an app?)

I don't know, I only have one HDD. Go to Settings > Power > Additional settings (top right) > Change plan settings > Change advanced power settings, and there you can't find the settings for turning off the HDD. I use the High Performance preset, and in there the HDD is set to turn off after 0 minutes (=never). IIRC it's healthier for HDDs to run all time.

BTW I have been contemplating to get a new drive as you suggested, a second SSD. I have room for that. And sort of divide documents between drives. Keep the more active stuff on the SSD and have the current D more for storage. But they are pricy those things and the computer alone was a setback. Alternatively get a new HDD.

When it comes to speed, SSD is not worth it for document or even movies, IMO. Maybe it's more reliable than HDD though, time will tell.

I can always use the current D for storage outside the computer. I have one of those USB racks, don't remember what they are called.

Run chkdsk on it just in case, even though it usually takes hours. If it's starting making errors maybe it's not reliable anymore. My old PC's HDD started getting more errors the last couple of years, I recall it messed up the .ini file for my Opera browser.

Talking about that, Win10 still doesn't let me get access to the occasional folder of file.

Can't remember any such problems, except that XAMPP was not allowed access to the Documents folder for security reasons.

Imagine I actually hated XP too at first.

Seems we found the common denominator! I liked both XP and Vista. Win95 was terrible due to the slow hardware at the time, other than that I can't remember much about it.