Windows is weird.

Well familiarity with 10 will not improve until you start using it - and you will probably have to at some point. Old hardware does not live forever, and new machines won't be coming with 7 (and it can be quite difficult to install 7 on new hardware). Compatibility is not bad on 10, and is improving with time, in much the same way as its decreasing with time on 7.

I think however you are rather missing my point. By "support" I mean the availability of patched and updates for the OS itself, and also for some applications.

There are now a growing list of apps that won't run on win 7, which by implication means if you are using one of them, then its an out of date version, and that may also have vulnerabilities. So with time the "attack surface" grows.

Now how vulnerable any given unpatched machine will be will depend on many factors. If its a stand alone box say used as a word processing platform, and without internet access - then its as safe as it ever was.

If its an internet connected machine, and you keep on top of patch management for all your applications, then you are still relatively safe

- but less so that you would be on a supported OS (and this applies to all OS platforms, not just windows (even if the mac and linux bods mistakenly believe they are invulnerable! [1]))

Here is a list of known Win 7 vulnerabilities until the end of 2019. Note 250 new ones in that year alone:

and one for Debian Linux:

I think that one of the main problems I have with the wonderful world of operating systems is this whole thing that "making safer" has always to mean "making different". Because making different is not, to my mind at least, in any way synonymous with making better. Why, when I have used and learned and grown accustomed to a particular precise look and feel should I be forced to abandon it completely and accustom myself to something new?

You pay money for full service updates for Windows 7 now. This is tracked with a license key. A license you install each year you continue to use the OS.

Out-of-band security updates (emergency ones), are not tracked by Windows Update. At least one I was interested in, I couldn't find it. And then I found this, suggesting some sort of policy change.

Patching an out of date OS is... tricky.

Maybe the ZDnet article is bang on, in that IE might be getting patched because the patch was added to Windows Update (even though previously, they made casual mention they weren't going to add them like that). It smacks too much of support, to be doing that, and you want to earn your bucks for those MAKs mentioned in the first link. Which are cumulative MAKs, and must be bought for all years up to the current year, at so many bucks per year.

Paul

What you see is, to a considerable extent, the GUI level. There have been many attempts, some very successful, at using a GUI associated with one release on an OS that is another release. Such as, an XP GUI on W8.

But the "better", in terms of security in particular, is very largely not visible to ordinary users. How it handles updates, backup, security, hardware, etc.

My view has always been that, in the end, it is better to use the OS in as nearly-as-possible vanilla, unmodified state. (W8 is an exception. It deserves a I WISH I HAD NEVER SEEN IT rating.)

Most of the documentation available is based on the as-released OS. I have sometimes come to understand why a change which initially seemed horrific did actually make sense. At least, by the time the OS has had a bit of maintenance and you have used it for a while.

Also, you are now facing a W7 to W10 jump. Although I hated it, I had W8 and then W8.1, and all releases of W10 up to now to get used to the changes. Which has largely meant a modest change at each step. The only OS I stuck with was Windows 2000. From pre-release until I really had no choice.

Meant to ask, do you realise how many repeats of Cadfael are on R4 extra at the moment? Wall to wall Shrewsbury.

Some things have to change to allow for the new user interface, most obviously with new touch screens seen with smartphones.

Yes, it's very generous of them, isn't it? A Robert Heinlein book reading I abridged was on a week or so back too.

Fortunately I don't have to use any version of Windows (except fpr testing), but I have to say that after some tweaks to reduce the need for sunglasses, Win7 is not too bad. Win10, OTOH, suffers from the over-modernistic insistence on minimalism in the UI (which is also starting to aflict macOS). So, there are things that only appear (to then be clicked) if you happen to wave the mouse in their vicinity. Otherwise you'd not know that they were there. Then there are others which just look like boxes with some text on, but which are in fact buttons, although there are no visual clues to indicate this. This is all largely irritating.

I'd take these CVE people with a pinch of salt. On the SQLite users forum, there are occasional queries from people asking when CVE1234 is going to be fixed. All such get sent away with a polite flea, when it turns out that the "bug" this CVE refers to, relates to test or unreleased branches of the software. The SQLite devs now have a policy of ignoring CVEs altogether, after having no luck in getting the CVE people to mark some CVE or other as 'solved' or 'not a bug' or 'works as intended'. They have better things to do.

Yes - I heard that as well.

I'm never quite sure how much of what I hear is down to you! But I am happy to say that everything I have knowingly heard of yours has been pleasant on my ears. Some radio is rushed, some is not so well balanced, some is, frankly, very poor. And I do realise that the nature of the material is an important factor.

That's not an absolute requirement - however making things different just happens with ongoing development. So sometimes when you get the "safer" you end up also getting the "different" lumped in as well.

While most OS security patches don't change the user experience much if at all. Many application fixes will just get rolled into later releases rather than issued as standalone patches. So then you do get change with your fix.

Sure many are reluctant to change, but that does not mean all change is necessarily bad. There are some changes made in win 10 that improve on things in win 7.

How are those gas mantles working out for you? :-)

Interesting. Presumably this is something that has to be instituted by the owner? I've certainly never had any messages asking me if I wanted to do it.

As you said, at the moment, quite a bit, it seems. I'm never informed in advance, so these repeats usually come as a complete (but welcome) surprise.

Many thanks for the kind words; much appreciated.

Wonderfully, thanks. I'd certainly miss both the hiss and the smell if I ever changed to that new-fangled electricity.

That was my first reaction, I think. Also that some of the default colours are distinctly pastel-namby-pamby and (to my eyes at least) not terribly practical for everyday use. Most things are adjustable, I know, but even so...

Here are test results, run 7/5/2016 microsoft.public.windowsxp.general

There are two tests.

SuperPI is a test of single-threaded speed. And can gain some benefit from cache. The term XS stands for extremesystems.org, the holder of the download copy of version 1.5.

SuperPI 7ZIP 1T 2T 4T (on 2C 2T E8400 CPU) 1.5XS 9.34

(WinXPx32) 3:19.546 21:32 12:09 11:16

Win7SP1x64 3:18.791 21:01 11:48 10:46 Win81x64 3:19.656 20:59 11:59 10:44 Win10x64 3:21.813 21:08 12:10 10:52

Windows 7 does well on single threads.

The picture is more or less neck in neck for the 7ZIP runs. Within each test set. You don't expect an E8400 to compress files as fast as a 4930K can (different core count, different clock). All tests nominal clock, turbo disabled, cores locked.

Paul

In message snipped-for-privacy@mid.individual.net>, Tim Streater snipped-for-privacy@greenbee.net writes

If you install Classic Shell (or similar) it makes W10 look much more like W7 (almost as good as XP!). As already stated, the upgrade is free, and normally trouble free. You don't need a new licence key, but the one you have gets changed after the upgrade. However, it's probably a good idea to record the present W7 key, 'just in case'.

In message <w62dndpR9MAKuX snipped-for-privacy@brightview.co.uk>, Bert Coules snipped-for-privacy@bertcoules.co.uk> writes

Wouldn't it be great if W7, 8 and 10 had looked and functioned exactly like XP!

I have Win7 and Win10 available in VirtualBox VMs running on my Mac, for when I need them for testing. Otherwise they stay asleep, frozen in time.

Use something like Thunderbird? Didn't notice much change in that between Win7 and Win 10. Not that I use it much.