The end of Windows 7

[Bob Eager]

Mouse button 2 on desktop, select Personalise.

You can do simple desktop colours there, or look for themes (on the right). And font selection on the left.

[Jethro_uk]

yeah, but it's the calendar bit too ...

[John Rumm]

Right click on the desktop and select Personalise to select themes and colours etc. Right click and Display Settings to adjust the font scaling.

(note the scaling options are less granular than before - you can't scale say just a window title, but they also work better if you do tweak font sizes up and down overall.

The colours on a web page are selected by the page designer (somewhat). It may be that you need to tweak the overall gamma or brightness settings being used by your display driver. You can do this either by going to Advanced display settings from the Display settings dialogue, then going to display adaptor properties. That should then let you tweak the actual colour rendering, or you can run the built in win 10 display calibration wizard that will take you through setting up things step by step adjusting both the display as produced by windows and also the monitor settings if required.

Type "Calibrate" into the search box after clicking the start button to find that.

[John Rumm]

You can partly - some of the time. If IMAP / POP access has been enabled on the exchange server[1], then you can access email, but you can't access shared calendars etc.

[1] Big public exchange server offerings like Office 365 will allow this. Some self hosted corporate exchange servers may not though.

There are some workarounds though. Their is a paid for add on for thunderbird that will access exchange servers directly.

You can also use gmail to read a foreign exchange mailbox, and then also enable POP or IMAP access to Gmail. So you can use any[2] modern email client to access exchange mailboxes indirectly. This route also allows you to synch an exchange calendar with gmail, then in turn you can use add ons for thunderbird[3] to sync the non mail bits with that.

[2] Gmail when accessed via POP/IMAP required modern OAUTH security to be implemented - and also on first access you will need to "allow" the access in a verification page from gmail [3] Like "provider for google calendar", and gContactSync - so you can share content with Thunderbird contacts and the integrated Lightening calendar. (that also then plays nice sharing with an Android phone)

[AnthonyL]

I don't know about "sensibily" but I've just run the Media Creation disk from the USB to change SWMBO's 32bit Windows Starter keeping all existing system (ie not a fresh install). Had to reinstall the wireless printer (it wasn't on during the procedure) and change the desktop theme to something nicer than black. Otherwise all appears to be running as was before.

[John Rumm]

Is it running the 32 or 64 bit version now?

(right click on "this PC" and choose properties)

[Tim Lamb]

In message [e-mail]>, AnthonyL [e-mail] writes

That is reassuring. I'm still havering!

[Andy Burns]

An upgrade can't change between 32 and 64 bits

[John Rumm]

That is what I thought was the case, but was just interested to see if it was still true. (I rarely meet a 32 bit system to experiment with these days)

[Bob Eager]

I did a complete reinstall last week to get up to Windows 10.

Worked fairly well, main problems being:

- drivers for the ancient LaserJet 4 - but found the Windows 8 ones are fine.

- driver for the old Samsung SCX-4100 MFP. The scanner doesn't work, but the Samsung scanner driver broke Windows 7 so... time for a new flatbed scanner (I have a Fujitsu ix500 for most work, and that was a doddle).

- a little involved mirroring the disks but I got there in the end.

[T i m]

<snip>

I did a little Shuttle PC earlier, W7 Pro 64 to W10 Pro 64, seemed to go ok.

I just stuck my Multiboot USB stick in (several Lini and W10), went to the W10 install folder and ran Setup and it went from there.

It took a while because it is only a Quad core Atom but the SSD might have offset that a bit.

Cheers, T i m

[AnthonyL]

Windows 10 Home, 32-bit OS, x64-based processor The Netbook is on its limit, 1.67Ghz Atom with max 2Gb installed.

Under Settings->System->About there is an option to Change the product key or upgrade your edition of Windows. Looks as if Upgrading is a paid for option and not worth thinking about on this spec computer.

[John Rumm]

Now its licensed for win 10 with a digital entitlement, you could probably do a clean install of Win 10 x64 if you wanted.

Having said that, there will be little reason for doing so since you have not even reached the 4GB RAM limit for 32 bit.

[John Rumm]

Now its licensed for win 10 with a digital entitlement, you could probably do a clean install of Win 10 x64 if you wanted.

Having said that, there will be little reason for doing so since you have not even reached the 4GB RAM limit for 32 bit.

[Tim Lamb]

My 32 bit desk top has 4GB RAM installed but only 3.24 usable.

2.13 GHz Intel 2

Polite notice this morning! Basically.... you are on your own:-)

[John Rumm]

You may find that you has a graphics controller integrated on the motherboard, and hence the system is "stealing" some of the fitted RAM to use as video memory for the graphics adaptor. (you may be able to tweak the amount allocated in the BIOS - basically trade off memory use against capabilities like maximum RAM available for video memory, and storage of textures for 3D rendering)

Yup, its been interesting how people react to those... Most it seems are ignoring it - but a few have called in a minor panic to know what they have to do "right now" :-)

[The Natural Philosopher]

That is not the only reason to go 64bit. Half the number of memory accesses is a far greater one

[Bob Eager]

Some of that will be PCI space, even if there is no built in graphics. Only way to get that is to go 64 bit - which will probably nullify the small gain!

[John Rumm]

The does not necessarily translate into any net gain in performance though. Much will depend on your data set and the application. You also tend to get larger code sizes generated from a 64 bit compilation which means while you can address more ram, you need more of it to do the same stuff.