[Genez]

Warning for those thinking about installing GOM Player. It automatically installs malware on your machine unless your antivirus software catches it and strips it out. I learned this a while ago when AVG popped up as I was installing GOM Player.

Windows 7 will be supported until 2020, Windows 8 until 2023 so you should be fine as is for a while.

Anti-warning.     Make sure you install it from their own website.  And, never install any free ware - no matter what it may be - by choosing the express mode.  Always use the mode where you can choose what is installed. And, when offered?  Do not click on the boxes that offer add-ons.  You will have a choice if you do not choose "express mode" where the installer does the choosing for you. .

That factor involves many software we find online today. Besides all that.. It is a great sounding software.  The video quality is excellent.  It was originally designed and produced for a South Korean TV broadcast system.  Dang!  Its the best sounding and looking I ever tried.  Better than the others that can also include their own list of add-ons that one needs to learn to be careful about installing! lol!   

Its free. Many times sponsors will be offered as a tag on to pay for it.   But,  you have a choice.  Don't be lazy and put it on self pilot when installing any free software.  And, always make sure your system Restore feature is active when installing ANY new software.

Ladies and gentleman...  GOM Player is great for audio and visual for desk top use.   Just learn how to install many of the different free software we find online.  Watch what you are installing. step by step, and always choose the option to control what gets installed.  I once had someone reject CCleaner because it too added on extras.  That person's PC ran slow and was bogged down.   She was afraid of the malware. Its parts of the life of getting freeware.  Just learn how to use it.

 It all depends on who is the one offering the freeware.  You can even get Adobe Flash Player loaded with junkware if you do not get it directly from Adobe.

Enuf said...

[bacobits1]

Just a heads up.
Concerning all this data collection MS Win 10 is doing I found out yesterday "Cortana" is still running in Task Mngr even if you disabled it or turned it off. You just can't quit the process it comes back immediately. All this "free" is being compensated for, so beware.

To remove it you need to do this.
https://superuser.com/questions/949569/can-i-completely-disable-cortana-on-windows-10

I got BS and removed Win10 from that machine. I have it running on my another system and stopped.

[Jon L]

To remove it you need to do this.
https://superuser.com/questions/949569/can-i-completely-disable-cortana-on-windows-10

Eh, there are many different ways different folks suggest in that thread.  Which is the best/safest way 

[SteveFord]

I'm still on the fence about Windows 10 so bailed back to 7 for the time being.
At least it's familiar and I can do simple stuff like schedule scans and delete images from my camera on 7.  I couldn't do either on 10.
I think they've still got some work to do on Windows 10.

[Tone Depth]

I'm running Windows 10 on two desktops so far. The first install went without a hitch. The second install didn't quite make it, and seemed to get stuck in a loop with the icons flashing on and off.  Yesterday my MS help desk tech support phone call came in, and we straightened out the install relatively quickly. We'll probably do a laptop install next, after verifying stability of the two desktop installations with use for a while. So far, it seems to be a great improvement over Windows 7. These desktops started out as Vista OS systems, before 7. These three OS installations on the desktops have each been successive improvements.

[srb]

Previous versions of Windows through XP allowed you to modify the appearance nearly every windows item including title bar color (active & inactive), message box, taskbar, icon size & spacing, etc.  Even Windows Vista and 7 allowed that if you used the non-Aero Basic Theme.  Windows 8 and Windows 10 took away most of the customization.

As installed (upgraded from Windows 8.1), my default accent color was a grey, which meant that links on settings and personalization pages, the "on" status of Action Center buttons and the bar under running programs on the taskbar did not stand out.  Choosing a nice blue accent color remedied those problems - BUT unfortunately the same accent color is also applied to ALL pinned program tile backgrounds other than Microsoft "Metro" programs.

Of my ~ 40 program tiles, only 2 are metro, which means nearly all the tiles would have the same background (accent) color.  It's hard to believe that in Windows 10 you still can't modify individual tile background color.  In Windows 8 I used the program OblyTile to make custom tiles, but that doesn't work in Windows 10.

I ended up using TileCreator (Microsoft Store) in conjunction with TileCreator Proxy to make custom tiles for Windows 10.  However, even though there are dropdowns to select the background color and text color, it's not working (maybe it will in the near future?), so I ended up making custom images by searching the web for transparent .png icons and overlaying them on a background layer in a layer based graphics program like Photoshop or GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program).

The procedure is a probably a bit more than the average person would care to do, but the end result was worth it and once I got rolling it went smoothly - but I still invested several hours total.  I wanted all of my programs to be visible after clicking the Start button without scrolling, so I chose to use the small tile size without labels and used a larger icon size within the small tile than you would get with stock Microsoft small tiles.  If I were to use a medium size tile, I would have made the icon images a bit smaller so the text label wouldn't overlay on top of it.

If I want to redo any tiles most of the work is already done.  The only caveat is that there is a momentary flash of the full size TileCreator splash screen when launching a program.  But I'm still happy with the result overall, and now that I'm content with the Start Menu I can now move on to evaluate the operation and feature set of Windows 10 while no longer being annoyed by almost all of the tiles being the same color.

One of the major features I had hoped for since the elimination of desktop widgets in Windows 8 and perhaps the most requested feature that they should have implemented would be the ability to pin live tiles to the Desktop (right?).  It's hard to believe this still hasn't happened.

Here's a screenshot:

[WGH]

Just out today - How to clean-install a Windows 10 upgrade
http://windowssecrets.com/top-story/how-to-clean-install-a-windows-10-upgrade/

Lots of good info with step-by-step directions.

[bacobits1]

Windows Secrets is an excellent source of info. Subscribe full version for buck a month.

[martinr]

Heres a couple of links to articles with good windows 10 advice for privatization and speeding up windows 10 on computers that are older (like my AMD quad core): 
http://money.cnn.com/2015/08/17/technology/windows-10-privacy/index.html?iid=ob_homepage_tech_pool&iid=obnetwork

http://www.windowscentral.com/windows-10-preview-speed-it-up

 

- Martin

[Odal3]

While I like windows 10 over 8, it is giving me soooo much headache. Every update that are pushed out makes my otherwise decent Lenovo yoga i5 laptop to a machine that barely opens up a browser, it freezes up, plus weird display glitches, losing touchpad and keyboard and similar things. I normally get it back up working again after some frustrating hours of manually updating drivers, and the likes. All hardware and memory tests checks out fine, and I'm pretty good with IT stuff. It shouldn't be this hard - if it wouldn't be the family computer with a touch screen, I would move back in time to windows 7 or one of the very nice linux solutions. ARgggh. You can probably guess what I'm doing right now...

[Doublej]

While I like windows 10 over 8, it is giving me soooo much headache. Every update that are pushed out makes my otherwise decent Lenovo yoga i5 laptop to a machine that barely opens up a browser, it freezes up, plus weird display glitches, losing touchpad and keyboard and similar things. I normally get it back up working again after some frustrating hours of manually updating drivers, and the likes. All hardware and memory tests checks out fine, and I'm pretty good with IT stuff. It shouldn't be this hard - if it wouldn't be the family computer with a touch screen, I would move back in time to windows 7 or one of the very nice linux solutions. ARgggh. You can probably guess what I'm doing right now...

Buying a Mac?

[SteveFord]

Real good tip about speeding up 10!
http://www.windowscentral.com/windows-10-preview-speed-it-up

I still have to use Chrome to upload pics to this site for whatever reason. 

[wushuliu]

While I like windows 10 over 8, it is giving me soooo much headache. Every update that are pushed out makes my otherwise decent Lenovo yoga i5 laptop to a machine that barely opens up a browser, it freezes up, plus weird display glitches, losing touchpad and keyboard and similar things. I normally get it back up working again after some frustrating hours of manually updating drivers, and the likes. All hardware and memory tests checks out fine, and I'm pretty good with IT stuff. It shouldn't be this hard - if it wouldn't be the family computer with a touch screen, I would move back in time to windows 7 or one of the very nice linux solutions. ARgggh. You can probably guess what I'm doing right now...

my w10 crashed and froze.randomly because of my Radeon video card. this appears to be a common problem.

[THROWBACK]

And ... (Windows 10) it's harder to find stuff (hides and takes more key strokes), plus now I can't just print from email pages, I have to copy to Word and then print. You guys are right: it shouldn't be this hard.

[srb]

..... plus now I can't just print from email pages, I have to copy to Word and then print.

I've never seen a mail app, local client or web-based, that you couldn't print from.  Which mail app are you using?

Steve

[krikor]

And ... (Windows 10) it's harder to find stuff (hides and takes more key strokes), plus now I can't just print from email pages, I have to copy to Word and then print. You guys are right: it shouldn't be this hard.

If you are talking about the Windows 10 Mail "app", unless mine is different, just click the three dots at the top right above the message and select "Print".

[THROWBACK]

Just any old email coming to me on AOL.

[bacobits1]

I use this it is very good.
http://www.emclient.com

Win 10 does make you look for things. The biggest thing is disabling all the snoop stuff.
Google it lot of info how to do it.

[audio.bill]

I strongly recommend ShutUp10, free software that lets you control all of your Windows 10 privacy settings. https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10

[jonbee]

Just any old email coming to me on AOL.

If you're accessing emails using the Edge browser, there is a known bug for printing web pages, emails or attachments. Just when MS will get around to fixing it, I don't know. My wife prints a lot of stuff and I just get her to use Chrome to open her Hotmail account on Win10. The browser is the problem, not Win 10 itself, which is why the built email client doesn't have the issue.
Personally, I like Windows 10 pretty well.