Windows 10 sells itself without my help. There's none as blind as those who will not see and none as deaf as those who will not hear.

You need to try it to believe it - huge improvements under the hood, seamless integration with mobile devices, casting from PC wirelessly to TV. I could fill a page and still not covered the bases. Where is the risk? If it's not for you then you can go back.

If you don't upgrade it's your loss no one else's - simple as that.

Faust...
Wasn't he the fellow who sold his soul to the devil?

Well I do have a Mac too so I suppose you could call it that.

I wouldn't use any of those features. I'm sure for a lot of people they are well worth it but I can't see any loss through not upgrading unless I want the extra features which I don't at the moment. Lots of people have said W10 is much better than W7 and I don't doubt that but the applications I run work fine on W7 and the OS just sits there in the background.

The risk is if something goes wrong, it probably won't but it has happened to a minority. There is also the time taken to upgrade, this may be minor compared to the time spent on the PC but it is still time I could be doing something else.

The real point is 7 is in a technological cul de sac.

It might suit you now but if you decide to buy a new pc, it may not work any more on a new pc.

You can hedge your bets by creating a virtual hard drive (not virtual machine), and installing windows 10 in that free of charge (until end July 28th).

This does not affect current install other than having a large file on one of your drives so is very safe to do.

You can even install it in an external usb drive using www.easyuefi.com

You can have your cake and eat it!

Want to keep on windows 7 or 8 but would like free upgrade at no risk?

Then create a virtual hard drive.

Create a blank directory eg C:\vhd from file explorer (change drive and path as you like)

Boot from a windows 10 usb flash drive or dvd created with media creation tool

Select language etc and click next.

At the install now screen press shift+f10 to go to command prompt.

then type

diskpart
create vdisk file=c:\vhd\w10.vhd maximum=nnnnn type=fixed (where nnnnn = size in MB eg 32000)
select vdisk file=c:\vhd\w10.vhd
attach vdisk
exit
exit

Then click on install, select custom install and install it on the new virtual drive (probably last drive listed), and use 7/8 key to actiate.

You can now boot to windows 7/8 or to windows 10.

Only impact on old OS is a file of nnnnn MB and a dual boot menu.

You can do it other way round as well eg install 7/8 in a vhd when you have windows 10 installed.

Okay, I guess...

Not a problem as when I get a new machine I'll make sure it is W10. My current machine is ageing and will be replaced before W7 support completely runs out.

Sure - but on other forums, you would be amazed at how many 'uninformed (a euphemism)' people buy a new pc with windows 10 and then complain they cannot now run windows 7 and call MS by all sorts of graphical names.

I think the problem is everyone's a computer expert but most folk really haven't a clue what they are doing. Windows 10 also manages memory and CPU far better than W7 so it's a win win on older hardware too. The UI looks so dated now on W7 compared to W10.

Which (going round in circles) is why MS took decision to do forced updates as zillions of "experts" believe they are being clever by not updating.

Those who keep arguing they do not want forced updates have to accept reality - it is one year later now and MS are showing absolutely no signs of changing their stance. It is not going to happen - end of story!

Not updating at all is just being daft. The more updates that get applied, the more secure and faster/smoother your system should run.

The real point is it's these 'experts' not accepting updates that also put the rest of us at risk. They are being selfish - it's not clever, they are not clever. I certainly think if financial institutions can prove that someone lost money because they haven't followed basic safety rules regarding a computers security then they should be on their own. Sometimes tough love is the only way with some people.

You are referring to automatic updates once you're on 10 right? Not forced upgrade from 7/8.1 to 10?

Assuming you mean the latter, MS have provided a solution of sorts - upgrade to Pro, then you can defer "feature" updates for about a year.

Indeed, the blame everything and everyone but themselves brigade.

Maybe people are just worried they downloaded some software off the net and windows 10 disables it because its not a legal copy of the software.

Well, I think I finally found out why the random 1-2 second black screens were happening. When I think about it, they only started happening after I updated the BIOS to the latest one. After going to the earliest one on Asus's website (which is still newer than the one that came with my motherboard), I haven't seen one since. Hopefully I don't either.

Sorry, I'm not understanding what that has to do with question I asked....

For what's it worth, here's MS Privacy Statement

https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement/

But don't let facts get in the way

Which facts getting in the way of what??

Things written in the MS privacy policy, in the way of paranoia and hysteria in the thread. Unless one thinks it's all lies what they write there.

Derr.. Don't you know that all billionaires like Bill Gates are evil megalomaniacs? It says so in movies and stuff.

So what's written there is getting in the way of paranoia and hysteria? Stoking it would be more accurate......
I'm quite happy sharing what I choose to so that I can use the convenience of the services provided. I'm also happy that they have no personal info I wouldn't want them to have, banking, for instance.
I think the term 'Spying' is too emotive and that adds to the paranoia.
But, each to their own and I'm sure others choices will make them happy and that's all that really matters....

I've been going round in circles trying to fix this. I use Windows 10 and Internet Explorer 11, and when I click on a mailto: link on a website I'd like it to open Gmail. At the moment whenever I click on a link it opens Mail, one of the new apps that I don't use.

If I go to Control Panel\Programs\Default Programs\Set Associations and scroll down to the protocols I can see that MAILTO is set to Mail, but when I click on 'Change program...' the only options are to keep using Mail or 'Look for an app in the Store'. There's no option to select Internet Explorer and nothing useful in the Store.

If I got to Control Panel\Programs\Default Programs\Set Default Programs and select Mail, then 'Choose defaults for this program' I'm unable to untick MAILTO. I've already assigned .eml to Internet Explorer, to no avail. If I go back to Set Default Programs and select Internet Explorer, MAILTO is not listed in the default settings, nor is .eml.

In Internet Explorer if I enable the Google toolbar then navigate to the options there's a tickbox for 'Use Gmail for "Mail To" links', which I have already ticked, although I generally have the toolbar disabled. It seems to do nothing either way.

Previous to all of this the problem was that whenever I clicked on an email link in Internet Explorer it wanted to open Chrome, then it did nothing anyway. Email links wouldn't do anything at all when using Chrome. I've now uninstalled Chrome just to disassociate it from Mailto links, but the problem has simply moved to Mail, which can't be uninstalled.

Sorry for the long post. I was trying to anticipate any questions or suggestions. Any ideas what to try next?