Is my office ready for Windows 10?
December 9, 2015 9:50 PM   Subscribe

I ended up with the responsibility of managing the computers at our office. For a ten person staff with fairly simple computer needs -- only a couple of us routinely use anything more complex than Microsoft Office -- is Windows 10 the right choice yet?

Our computers are several years old and it's time for new ones. Most are running Windows 7, with the exception of a couple that were bought within the last year and are on 8.1.

We do have an external vendor who would take care of the setup, but the majority of the simple troubleshooting and "how do I do this" will fall to me...and this isn't really part of my job, you know?

If we shouldn't upgrade to Windows 10 yet, should we wait a few months, or should we just buy new machines with 8.1 and get on with the upgrade? (Bonus: if Windows 10 is the answer, are the less tech savvy members of our staff likely to have some upgrade shock coming from Windows 7?)
posted by chimpsonfilm to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)
 
Best answer: I've just been through this recently, going from 7 to 8.1 (about 8 months ago) to 10. 7 to 8 would be a far greater change than 7 to 10-- 8 had a lot of excesses that were aimed at touchscreen users (guess who uses touchscreens? tablet users and almost nobody else) that don't make sense for desktop/laptop users. Sure, some laptops have touchscreens, but people mostly still use the kbd/mouse (or mouse-equivalent).

There are some things that the vendor will want to turn off-- Win10 has some privacy risks in the default settings (google Windows 10 privacy; it's no secret) and you'll want to disable a lot of that crap (which is mainly data reporting to MS and whatever nameless partners).

Workflow-wise, my Win10 use is very much like my Win7 use. Someday I'll get around to setting up the tiles in the start menu, but for the moment, I stick with the taskbar which works just like it did in 7. I think I'm a tech-savvy guy, but the new features are too out of my routine for me to bother with right now, and I imagine your less savvy workers will feel that even moreso. But the routine really is there. The look of UI things (the minimize and close buttons in the upper right corner of a window, e.g.) is different, and maybe for some you'll want to get a theme that makes it look more like 7. Window management and multiple-monitor handling are waaay better, though. 10 is a nice set up. 8 had some improvements, but more annoyances.

I'd say upgrade to 10 before it stops being free, and skip 8 altogether. Get your vendor to disable the parts of Win10 that report your users' behaviors to MS, and that only make sense if 10 is running on a tablet. (Stylus settings, e.g.)

Win10 has "apps," though, which will be taking the place of some basic functions like image viewing, sound/music playout, editing, etc. Basic functions exist in Win10, but free apps allow you to expand those functions. But, you know, free apps mean you're paying in data and privacy sometimes, so be judicious. Identify where the defaults fall short, see if you can use something you were using before, and if that isn't going to work, you'll find a replacement in the app store.

Hopefully you can transfer your Office forward. New office is subscription model, but as long as you have the old licenses and your workers know the Office UI, why mess with that? (I'm sure someone in Redmond gets flogged every time business users fail to migrate, but that's not our problem.)
posted by Sunburnt at 10:37 PM on December 9, 2015 [3 favorites]


And when you are done put Classic Shell on the machine and you will see the good old Start Menu again. Unless you love blinking tiles, that is.
posted by nostrada at 8:56 PM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: Thank you!
posted by chimpsonfilm at 7:26 AM on December 11, 2015


Response by poster: The transition went well and as Sunburnt described. Only one person in the office had any trouble -- he seemed to have some mental block against browses other than IE. That was it, even for the least tech-savvy staff members. No issues with our older copies of Office, either.
posted by chimpsonfilm at 3:19 PM on March 19, 2016 [1 favorite]


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