What's everyone doing for "End of Life" for Windows 7 et al?

We advise our customers to replace the computer, they could spend the money on a Windows 10 licence and our labour cost to upgrade the computer, but at the end of the day they will end up with a slower PC than they started with. Most Windows 7 PC we see do not have SSD's in them and are atleast 5-7 years old. The only thing that differs to this, would be PC's we sold ourselves, that came with windows 8 pro, but at the time of sale we downgraded to windows 7. These we can would be able to istall windows 8 and use the free upgrade to 10 that still works, so the customer would not need to pay for the licence fee, making it an afordable option.

All out busness customers (here in the UK) have to replace windows 7 due to GDPR laws, as any PC running windows 7 will be over 3 years old they are all going for the option of new PC's.

I have also started to see some older windows 7 PC's that the customer had taken the option of the free upgrade when it was available, these are starting to have hardware conflicts with the latest windows 10 versions, this I can see causing more problems in the future.
 
Phillip Manning said:
We advise our customers to replace the computer, they could spend the money on a Windows 10 licence and our labour cost to upgrade the computer, but at the end of the day they will end up with a slower PC than they started with. Most Windows 7 PC we see do not have SSD's in them and are atleast 5-7 years old. The only thing that differs to this, would be PC's we sold ourselves, that came with windows 8 pro, but at the time of sale we downgraded to windows 7. These we can would be able to istall windows 8 and use the free upgrade to 10 that still works, so the customer would not need to pay for the licence fee, making it an afordable option.

All out busness customers (here in the UK) have to replace windows 7 due to GDPR laws, as any PC running windows 7 will be over 3 years old they are all going for the option of new PC's.

I have also started to see some older windows 7 PC's that the customer had taken the option of the free upgrade when it was available, these are starting to have hardware conflicts with the latest windows 10 versions, this I can see causing more problems in the future.
Click to expand...
I like your Windows 7 to 8 to 10 upgrade path.

I did see a Win 10 laptop that hadn't been used in 2 years because it was slow after a Win 7 to 10 upgrade. I found an upgrade from HDD to SSD did the trick for $70 US for 1/2 tb. I can upgrade memory later if needed, but it was plenty fast for now.

Am very interested in 7 to 10 options along w hardware upgrades including main chips, SSDs and RAM.
 
I do see a lot of desktops and laptops (Non SSD) that come in for running slowly, the main cause is always a featured windows 10 update in the background. I see it a lot where the customer only turns their computer on for 10-15 min at a time to check emails or buy something on line. The computers are just not on long enough for the big windows 10 updates to download. While they are downloading the HDD is maxed out at 100%.

Installing all the updates sorts the problem, but a 2 or 3 year old computer with out a SSD is noticably slower than one with an SSD of the same age. I have stopped selling deaktops and laptops without them having SSD's. Unless the use case requires the extra storage, at which point, where possible we always go for a seperate storage HDD and the OS on a SSD.
 
Phillip Manning said:
I do see a lot of desktops and laptops (Non SSD) that come in for running slowly, the main cause is always a featured windows 10 update in the background. I see it a lot where the customer only turns their computer on for 10-15 min at a time to check emails or buy something on line. The computers are just not on long enough for the big windows 10 updates to download. While they are downloading the HDD is maxed out at 100%.

Installing all the updates sorts the problem, but a 2 or 3 year old computer with out a SSD is noticably slower than one with an SSD of the same age. I have stopped selling deaktops and laptops without them having SSD's. Unless the use case requires the extra storage, at which point, where possible we always go for a seperate storage HDD and the OS on a SSD.
Click to expand...
What SSDs are you using? I've used WesternDigital Blue and Samsung. Samsung was easier to install.
 
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The 6 PC's I have just finished building today all have Crucial Mx500 250gb SSD's, Business PC's with data stored on their server.

Have recently used WD and Samsung, just depends on the price I can get them at at the time I need to order them. Not a fan of Kingston, had some early Kingston SSD that gave me some problems, had 3 or 4 of them just die, when they were 3 - 4 month old, so stopped using them.
 
Phillip Manning said:
The 6 PC's I have just finished building today all have Crucial Mx500 250gb SSD's, Business PC's with data stored on their server.

Have recently used WD and Samsung, just depends on the price I can get them at at the time I need to order them. Not a fan of Kingston, had some early Kingston SSD that gave me some problems, had 3 or 4 of them just die, when they were 3 - 4 month old, so stopped using them.
Click to expand...

I've had a similar experience with Kingston. Anecdotal evidence but I've only ever seen 2 SSD's fail and they were both Kingston A400. Performance isn't great either compared to other SSD's but at £25 for a 250GB model so I guess you get what you pay for.

These days we use mostly Western Digital Blue. Good price point, good performance and so far they seem reliable.
 
callthatgirl said:
I had 2 people email me after the newsletter saying "Why not just upgrade".
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My answer to that would be "Why spend time and money upgrading an old computer that is out of warranty (and might fail or require a costly repair in the near future)?"

Of course it depends on the age and specification of the computer, and what it's used for. In some cases an upgrade might make good economic sense.
 
fincoder said:
There is no Windows 10 license cost to upgrade from Windows 7 or 8.
Click to expand...

I have had problems upgrading Windows 7 PC to Windows 10, Windows 8 works every time. It could be a difference between pre build PC's and PC's we have built ourselves. I have had 4 or 5 that will not activate after trying to upgrade from Windows 7 to 10. Have not had the time or the PC's worth upgrading for resale to do to much testing.

An example of one I was working on today, I had a PC we had sold some years back, left with us after the customer upgraded to a new PC, had a 8.0 Key on the motherboard, when we had sold it the PC we had downgraded it to Windows 7 for the customer. Setting it up as a Second User PC for resale today, it would not activate when I did a straight upgrade to 10 from 7, I had to install 8.0 (key would not work with 8.1 install media) then upgrade it from 8.0 to to 10 to get it to activate.

* Windows 8.0 key was not on the mobo, it was on a sticker on the case (almost midnight here in the UK, its been a long day)
 
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Let's not forget that some users, especially business, may have apps they use that can't be reinstalled. The reason doesn't matter as long as it's properly licensed. That's been an issue for many years. Since one can still do a upgrade from legit licensed W7 or 8 machines to W10 that works as long as the new target is an SSD.

On marketing. For my customers simply telling them about the sundown on W7 and Server '08 is usually enough. I wish I was talented with graphics, animation, etc. Been thinking about some kind of chicken little theme. The sky isn't falling, yet.
 
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