Win 10 upgrade

ProDave said:
Why did you pay that much?

I paid less that £15 for a W10 install USB stick from ebay, complete with a product key, to rebuild SWMBO's laptop recently. As it happened it did not even ask for the product key so I still have that spare.
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Inquiries I made and media release by Microsoft said that support of Win 7 was coming to an end and I had to upgrade.
I said $240 but maybe it was $140?

" Windows 10 Home costs $139 and is suited for a home computer or gaming. Windows 10 Pro costs $199.99 and is suited for businesses or large enterprises. Windows 10 Pro for Workstations costs $309 and is meant for businesses or enterprises that need an even faster and more powerful operating system.Jul 26, 2019" (BusinessInsider)
 
coopec said:
Inquiries I made and media release by Microsoft said that support of Win 7 was coming to an end and I had to upgrade.
I said $240 but maybe it was $140?

" Windows 10 Home costs $139 and is suited for a home computer or gaming. Windows 10 Pro costs $199.99 and is suited for businesses or large enterprises. Windows 10 Pro for Workstations costs $309 and is meant for businesses or enterprises that need an even faster and more powerful operating system.Jul 26, 2019" (BusinessInsider)
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Usually about a fiver as a download on eBay.
 
coopec said:
You fool! Your problems have just started:rolleyes: What I'm sore about...
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That was blerry prescient!

It emerges that the battery on my ould Sami Notebook has shuffled orf this mortal coil. So I'll need to fork out for another one.... should I risk eBay 'Refurbished'....?
Oh, that reminds me of another important life-lesson I never properly learned... "When in a 'ole, stop digging!"
 
coopec said:
Now that I know how useless Win 10 is they couldn't give it to me with a $100 gift voucher.

I've got Linux arriving any day now for $12 which I bought on eBay. (I know, I know! I could have downloaded it for nothing!)
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Just out of interest, why did you pay for it? I might start selling it myself.
 
coopec said:
Now that I know how useless Win 10 is they couldn't give it to me with a $100 gift voucher.

I've got Linux arriving any day now for $12 which I bought on eBay. (I know, I know! I could have downloaded it for nothing!)
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Yes, Windows is so useless that nearly 90% of the world's desktops and laptops run it.

I hope all your peripherals have got Linux drivers available. Mine haven't.
 
I followed the procedure offered in an online article...
"You can simply download the latest Media Creation Tool from Microsoft’s website and run it to upgrade—it will upgrade your current PC with no actual media creation necessary. You can choose whether you want to keep your files and programs or start fresh. Assuming you started with a genuine, activated Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 system, it will give you an activated Windows 10 system. It will work if the Media Creation Tool is happy to perform the upgrade. (Even if the resulting Windows 10 installation isn’t activated, you could just plug in your old Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 key after the upgrade process finishes.)"
This worked for me on 2 PCs. I did create a recovery drive after the upgrade.
Download link is Download Windows 10
The above link is openly posted on Forbes, CNET, PCWporld and many other sites.
 
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anoccasionalyachtsman said:
Yes, Windows is so useless that nearly 90% of the world's desktops and laptops run it.

I hope all your peripherals have got Linux drivers available. Mine haven't.
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discovered
A lot of big companies have not adopted Windows 10 and most of my friends with it much prefer W7 or even XP and i agree. However I've through Google discovered that you download a windows 7 skin so that it works like Win 7.
 
Win7 looked and functioned a fair bit like XP. Drivers were broadly updated to suit by many hardware manufacturers. Win8* was largely an skin aberration without much further hardware change support. Most Win 7 drivers work.
Win 10 was a more pragmatic bypass of 8 from 7. Many win7 drivers work with Win10 without fuss, even if the hints suggest otherwise.
I haven't changed what I need from a PC very much so Win10 works pretty well. The migration from 7 was quite easy. Win10 works pretty well.
Like XP SP3 but a lot better?
 
DipperToo said:
I followed the procedure offered in an online article...
"You can simply download the latest Media Creation Tool from Microsoft’s website and run it to upgrade—it will upgrade your current PC with no actual media creation necessary. You can choose whether you want to keep your files and programs or start fresh. Assuming you started with a genuine, activated Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 system, it will give you an activated Windows 10 system. It will work if the Media Creation Tool is happy to perform the upgrade. (Even if the resulting Windows 10 installation isn’t activated, you could just plug in your old Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 key after the upgrade process finishes.)"
This worked for me on 2 PCs. I did create a recovery drive after the upgrade.
Download link is Download Windows 10
The above link is openly posted on Forbes, CNET, PCWporld and many other sites.
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????

You say it will give you an activated W10 system and then say even if it's not activated..... Does it automatically activate or does it need a new license purchasing, if updating from W7?
 
elton said:
What kind of peripherals do you have, that won't work with Linux?
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An old but excellent Canon A3 photo printer was the main stumbling block, but a Nikon film scanner didn't work properly (can't remember what/why specifically) it was about three years ago and I gave up on Ubuntu for the second time. I'm sure that you can say that I could have just used xyz and all would have been lovely, and I did ask on Linux forums, but I know Win inside out and backwards and didn't want to waste the time.
 
Graham376 said:
????

You say it will give you an activated W10 system and then say even if it's not activated..... Does it automatically activate or does it need a new license purchasing, if updating from W7?
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The various artucles online said that.
In my case, after the Creation tool had downloaded Win10 and created a USB disk, I just ran setup from the usb disk. After the various automatic reboots Win10 was installed and had picked up on my previous licence key.
I think the articles say it may not work in all cases, but it is worth a go.
Just Google the internet for windows 10 upgrade free 2020.
 
anoccasionalyachtsman said:
An old but excellent Canon A3 photo printer was the main stumbling block, but a Nikon film scanner didn't work properly (can't remember what/why specifically) it was about three years ago and I gave up on Ubuntu for the second time. I'm sure that you can say that I could have just used xyz and all would have been lovely, and I did ask on Linux forums, but I know Win inside out and backwards and didn't want to waste the time.
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You could probably get both to work in VirtualBox under Linux. It's not simple to set up though. I run an Epson film scanner under Win 7 in VirtualBox. But firing up VirtualBox - in effect booting up Windows inside Linux, just to scan a document, is not something you'd want to do often. There is a non-free product called VueScan which enables old scanners and printers under Linux. I've used it in the past for a Canon printer.

My wife's Canon flat-bed scanner worked on her Win 7 box and I got it to work when that was converted to Win10; but it was a tremendous faff - I had to install TWAIN software. That scanner will not work under Linux either (nor with VueScan I see) - though it probably would under VirtualBox.

Anything Canon and USB is bad news for Linux. Some of it is bad news in Windows 10 too!
 
DaveRo said:
That's encouraging. Canon actually produce Linux drivers for that. They used not to for the the Pixma printers we had.
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I started having second thoughts about my previous post but I've just added the printer to a new installation of Mint on my spare PC and it worked. It just took a couple of clicks and there it was. It would have printed a test page but (Sod's Law) the printer was out of ink.
 
I just converted a 10-year old Win 10 Thinkpad to Debian, with a new SSD, and had an unusual problem. For years Thinkpads had a physical radio switch, but later ones use Fn-F5 to toggle wifi on and off (and Bluetooth I think). I always install over ethernet, because sometimes the wifi card doesn't work without proprietary drivers, so before closing down Windows I toggled wifi off. This was unfortunate!

In Debian wifi was not enabled, and I could find no way to enable it. RFKILL reported it was 'hard blocked' - which is supposed to mean the wifi switch is 'off'. But there is no switch - and nothing in BIOS to say it's off or switch it on.

The solution was to put the Windows HD back in, toggle Fn-F5, and take it out again. (I later read that somebody fixed it by factory-resetting the BIOS.)

So, if you install Linux on a such a Thinkpad, or a laptop with such a toggle key, make sure wifi is on before you trash Windows.
 
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