I asked an old contact in the MS MVP program what happened to Windows 9. I warn you ahead of time that this is bad and I should feel bad for sharing.

They responded with, "Yeah, seven eight nine." They did not even have a delay before they replied with that. I informed them that I would no longer be calling them on the telephone and that all future email was to be done via email. They laughed. It was nice to hear an old friend laugh but it sounded more sinister than I remember.

And I read your post backwards... My bad.

Windows ME, ME being Millennium Edition means the home version numbered 2000 but not to be confused with 2k on the NT kernel. I, and five other people - totaling six, actually enjoyed the OS. The rest of the planet, rightfully, thought it was garbage. In my case it worked well on one box, one that came with ME, and did not work well with any other system. It only worked well on that specific hardware but, on that hardware, I even managed to get an uptime of over six months at one point and the disruption for that was due to a power outage. It was even running an OpenNap hub at the time.

Maybe you should not put Windows 10 on a PC that is 20 years old?

That is not a good thing. RAM should be near 100% utilization. That is what RAM is for. Swapping data on/off RAM is speedy. The idea is not to have less RAM usage but full utilization and optimization.

I would give it six months, especially if you have older hardware.

Did you really have to ask that question? Really? Really?

"Well what if I do not want to buy a Ford but want to buy a Honda instead?"

Umm... Buy a Honda...

It is okay, I completely mis-read some reply in a thread about music. I was thinking/reading that they were saying that the people making money without producers are the norm and not the exception. I was really confused. I did not notice until today - when someone actually pointed it out and I clicked on 'parent' and re-read it. I felt like an idiot. *sighs* Then again, I am an idiot and I am an insensitive clod.

If you can't then that is what backups are for. I am not affiliated but I love Acronis. Norton Ghost used to be VERY good but, alas, it was terrible the last time I tried an updated version. Funny though, the old man used to give out his AV on disk and one of its primary features was that it was not resource intensive. It also fit on a floppy.

I have been assuming you can make a repair/restore DVD but, well, I am assuming that and have made absolutely no effort to verify this. Do not take this as authoritative but it seems likely they would want to keep you on 10 so they would provide a means to do so. I am not sure how you would (normally) get your authentication code. Microsoft owns sysinternals now so you can expect to be able to use their keyfinder application in 10 so that should not be an issue.

I recall going to one of the MS MVP get-togethers after XP was out and folks were complaining about "having to register" but they did not have to register - they had to activate and registration was optional. We were called over the PA to register for a talk to be held later in the day, a reminder that open registration was closing, and someone piped up, "Registration is not mandatory, activation is..." We got a good chuckle but it was more of a you had to be there thing and I am not entirely sure why I bothered sharing it.

It is free, there is no need to put quotes around that. It is free as in beer, not free as in liberty though. But you knew that and wanted to whinge. I understand... I am guilty of similar biases at times. It is a bit amusing to see so much vitriol over a future, untried, OS from a company you are obviously enjoying now.

That says more about you than it says about Microsoft. Do not take this as a negative though - it is not meant as such. We are all different, creatures of habit, and with our own needs to fill. What suits you may not suit me and the reverse is almost certainly true given your username. I am a Linux and Windows user. I grew up with UNIX, POSIX, SCO (long before Sun and Oracle), etc... I actually *like* Windows, I like Linux and even Unix too... That is why I use those OSes in various places. I do not like Mac OSX much because I have not used it much. I can live with it but I do not prefer it by any means. I suspect that, with more use, I would like it just as much as I am mostly OS agnostic (I am co-opting that phrase).

The only rational complaint that I have about Windows Update is that after you have installed the updates it will nag you until you reboot. I do not want to reboot now, I am doing something. So I just drag it to the edge and bottom where only the slightest amount is visible and ignore it. You used to be able to switch the shutdown command but that does not seem to work quite right with Vista, 7, or 8. I have not tried it in 10. I have beta tested too many Windows OSes. I am old and tired.

Sane Windows (and Linux, etc) users have something like Acronis to ensure you can back up from anything. It is worth the money.

Honestly, post SP1, Vista was not that bad. Of course I am one of six people, planet wide, that had ME running quite stable and well but it came on a PC that was built for ME, so my judgment is obviously clouded and erroneous. However, as there are no SPs any more, I would wait six months before installing 10 as your main OS.

This is SPARTAN!!!!! *kicks messenger into deep hole*