Great comments, all. Now I'll weigh in.
First, I've been using and supporting Windows since 3.1. I take a very text book view of an operating system: I want it to efficiently startup and shutdown my system, be modest in terms of overhead (memory/disk/processor), manage hardware and software resources well, and be as steady as a Navy pier. All the other "junK" are nice to haves. If the core underpinnings are bad, it's like building a beautiful mansion on a foundation of sand.
Windows XP, with the exception of the occasional BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) was a solid, reliable operating system. Vista was an ABORTION, plain and simple. Vista was for Microsoft what the IBM PC/AT was for IBM: it was the product that got people to think there was something better. For those of you who aren't that OLD, the IBM PC/AT was the first Intel 80286 based PC to hit the market. It was way faster than the original IBM PC or PC/XT, had "tons" of memory (up to 256K on the motherboard !), and a huge hard disk (30Mb or 60Mb). WOW. This was the PC that was going to be able to run multitasking and make Local Area Networks a reality. OK, a bit over promised ! Problem was one of IBM's suppliers for hard drives and disk controllers was having QA problems. PC/ATs with this particular company's drives were failing at a 60% rate. Rather than admit to the problem and offer remediation IBM denied there was a problem. That allowed a little company in Houston, Texas named COMPAQ to market their 286 based machine with the advertising slogan "It Just Works Better". And it did. RESULT: IBM lost control of the market they helped invent.
The original public release magazine on Vista stated it would run with 512Mb of RAM. I bought a new laptop with 1Gb of RAM and Vista Basic and the OS ate about 60% of the memory and the machine periodically crashed. Recall that Vista Basic was supposedly a "bare bones" version of Vista without the "aero glass" user interface and the big ticket features. Still, it was an overblown monstrosity. Ever wonder why we never saw Vista on portable devices like the kinds that ran Windows CE ? After a memory upgrade, two rebuilds, hacking out of some of the features and two months effort I finally had a workable machine. Before my Vista machine was fried by a huge power spike during Superstorm Sandy I was running Ubuntu on it.
My niece bought a premium HP laptop with Vista and after about three months she trashed it and bought a Mac Book. She has never looked back. Sounds like an Apple commercial I once saw !
I know that individuals who built their machines from the ground up with fast graphics boards and tons of RAM overall have good things to say about Vista. I don't. I spoke to alot of businesses and institutions that kept using XP and passed on any mass rollout of Vista.
Windows 7 was an improvement over Vista, but truth to tell, ANYTHING would be. I only used it regularly at my former employer. I found it to be adequate but with some nagging hardware and software compatibility problems.
I am currently using Windows 8.1. Again, it ain't Vista. But again, it has quirks. I think most people hate it for it's "Live Tile" user interface. I've actually read blog entries where people hate the Live Tiles so much, they'd rather use Vista. I have found the tiles to be not 100% functional, so I just bypass them all together.
After Microsoft claimed on it's website that Office XP Professional was not Windows 8 compatible I was able to install it and use it with no problems. However, the last service pack for Office XP (SP 3) will not install. That basically tells me that certain keys were not written into the registry upon installation that the service pack needs to be able to install. This smells of "forced obsolescence". (FYI, look out, Office 2016 is on the way !). I also have a version 2.0 copy of Adobe Photoshop Elements running as well. Hey, call me cheap but the last few years have been rough financially.
I bought a Hewlett-Packard D110a printer/copier/scanner. It features wireless networking, photo quality printing as well as Internet printing and was an outstanding value at under $70 retail. My laptop was running Windows 8.0 when I bought the printer, and the printer and the supporting software suite installed with no problem. At some point after upgrading to Windows 8.1 the support software failed to function. Forced deinstallation (using an HP supplied tool) as well as cleaning the registry and attempting reinstallation multiple times has not resolved the problem. Fortunately, the printer has on-board applications that allow me to connect to it via a web browser and utilize the functions that I need.
Third, the CD File System (CDFS) support was dropped. Apparently some rocket scientist assumed that we are all using iPods or MP3 players in our cars and no one needs to burn music CDs anymore ! Sure, if we all are driving cars from 2006 or later. I'm not. Delightfully Microsoft makes no mention of the lack of CDFS support or how to fix it. I found this out from an independent tech support web site. I am currently experimenting with the free version of the AShampoo CD Burning app to see if I can work around this problem.
Concerning Windows 10, I note with alarm that Microsoft has not published a Hardware Compatibility List (HCL), as has been the standard practice for all versions of Windows as far back as I can remember. Therefore, there is no affirmative way for me to know if my printers and other hardware will function fully (or at all !) under Windows 10, short of a "try and die". I am also not seeing much traffic concerning software compatibility either. Microsoft claims on it's Windows 10 web page that 10 is designed to be compatible with most current hardware and software. Yeah, sure...... and Vista ran with 512Mb of RAM................
I am not all that interested in Cortana. I think products like Siri or Cortana are great for mobile devices like phones or tablets, but not as useful for laptops and desktops. I am interested in the new browser from a purely clinical point of view. Internet Explorer has well documented vulnerabilities dating from IE 6 to the current version. This is not to be confused with the well publicized "Zero Day" vulnerability that made global headlines in April 2014. I will be curious to see if Microsoft has finally routed out these problems. This is the primary reason why in the Windows XP discussion thread I recommended anyone still using XP to stop using IE since Microsoft will not be supplying any security patches to XP machines. I will look to continue to use Firefox with various add-ins that "harden" it against various web based threats. Thanks to
Greenman for recommending some great add-ins.
SO, I plan to obtain my copy of Windows 10 and park it until I see some critical mass of documented experiences and SOLUTIONS start to build up. History shows that the advice that
Spicoli offered concerning waiting until Windows 10 Service Pack 1 is available is very sound. Also
9876543210 work with Win 10 on a bootable thumb drive also makes complete sense.
I absolutely HATE the blog style "social" support. Most of the time I get the distinct impression that the people responding to the questions really don't have a clue what the solution is and are just throwing out suggestions how to fix things. I've seen too many blogs where the writers contradict each other or where the original problem is never resolved and there is NO follow up. And frankly the last time I was on with Microsoft Support they could not resolve my problem. After breaking off the session I reasoned it out and fixed it myself !
If you are running XP, Vista, or Win 7, I would highly recommend that you get ahold of the Window Annoyances series by David A. Karp (O'Reilly Books). The knowledge in these books will help you keep your machine humming along. Worth their weight in gold !
That's it ! That's enough !