Laptop with Win 7 Pro

[alldodge]

Wife's desktop HD crashed and now I'm looking for a laptop with docking station to replace it. I want to stick with Win 7 so all of her old software can be installed. Stated looking at Dell XPS 9360 and Levono and others, but then thought about the Win 10 issue.

Computers keep changing and I'm not keeping up. Mine is a Dell Insprion 7110 inch with win 7 and 64 bit. These laptops no longer come with a DVD drive so everything is add on. I'm ok with that, but just trying to figure out if it will work with the laptop is getting to me.

She doesn't need a power house (same as me), does FB, email, is president of quilt club and secretary for 3 other clubs. She uses MS word, Adobe and some other stuff I install. I do want it to be faster then what she has.

Need some suggestions

 

[82rude]

I bought a dell latitude 5420.It came with win pro 7 which I upgraded to win10 with zero issues when they had the free upgrade.The only mod I did was a bigger battery and a 1 tb hybred harddrive.Reliable fairly fast inexpensive computer that was actually made for business people back in the day .(2012?).

 

[jimmbo]

The free upgrade is still available from Microsoft, it just takes little sleuthing to find it. However Win 10 has so much spyware built in, it takes a bit of time and effort to disable it, then constant vigilance is required as a lot of the stuff you turned off get sturned back on when Windows does an update. In Win 10 you really no control what Updates are installed.
I have 4 licences for Win 7, and since they are Retail versions, not OEM versions I can move them to new machines, and they will be activated, as long as I don't have more than one machine on each licence(Windows UpDate catches that). Another sorry thing, the Intel i7700 series and newer processors will not run Win 7. Well you can install it but since it will not accept upgrades you are kind of pooched
Check Kajiji, Craigs List, or BackPage, there are probably oodles of 6 and 7 year old machines that with a reinstall of the OEM will do the job

 

[jbuote]

As for the update in Win 10 (I think earlier versions too)..
They are automatic and you can't stop them...

UNLESS!!
It's a laptop and you use a wifi internet connection or a desktop with a wireless card in it using wifi...
Then go to your wifi settings, find your connection (router ssid) go to properties...
Check off that it's a metered connection...

Now it won't update automatically...
Saying it's a metered connection tells the OS you're PAYING for the bandwidth, so it won't download updates and cause you a big bill..

I do that on my laptops at home... Can't stand it when the OS decides to update even if I didn't want it to..

 

[jimmbo]

In Win 7 you still have control on almost all updates, I think the disaster started with the Mess called Win 8, then 8.1. Truly horrible GUI. Win 10 still looks like Win 8 but in an hour or two you can get rid of the worst of the ugliness and it vaguely resembles Win 7

 

[tpenfield]

I’d go with Win 10. The software should be fine.

We did the upgrade to Win 10 at work a couple of years ago and never looked back.

I also got a Win 10 laptop for the Admiral a couple years ago, and she has been fine. I offered to get her a Mac, but she did not want to go through a learning curve.

As far as software and data recovery, I’d go with OneDrive in the cloud. Did your Admiral lose data because of the HD crash?

 

[alldodge]

Didn't know Win 10 does automatic updates, don't like that. There are still a couple things that I won't install. Have one computer that stopped updating due to something. Its the home business one and only use it for taxes and other such. Have a Raid drive setup and an external backup HD, won't use a cloud. Symantec works good so I'm good.

She lost a lot of stuff, but it was mostly all her local group stuff. I like win 7 because its stable and I can control things. She can use win 10 but just need to know all the old win 7 software will load. Don't see ever renting SW until I have to. I'm using Quicken 2007 still and it works just fine (no online banking)

 

[alldodge]

Did find some write ups about Levono stating folks have removed some software and the computer will reinstall it later. That is just over the top for me, There are a lot of write ups about Levono being so great, but that would be a show stopper.

I also have 2 copies of Win 7 pro and they are OEM.

Good to know about the Intel processor

have found new (guess new left over) laptops with Win 7, but also found a couple that would come with Win 7 or 10 but if it was bought with win 7 there was something else evolved. Need to find it again to see what it said

 

[fishrdan]

Win 7 is going end of extended support by MS in 2020, so if I were buying a new laptop, I'd want Win 10. Classic Shell can be installed to make Win10 look and feel like Win 7.

I'm not a Win 10 fan due to it's intrusiveness, and don't see anything useful in it "for me" over Win7, but I'd want Win 10 for a new PC/laptop.

 

[dolluper]

You could download a Knoppix live cd , about 700mgb. And recover all lost on hard drive even if computer doesn't run operating system .