In practical terms, you can pin about a dozen or so apps to the Windows 7 start menu. It's pretty basic. You can't even do a web search or basic sums in the search box.
But you can run W7 if you like. I like having more performance on the same hardware.
(My work laptop has 7 on it, lest you think I'm some kind of mixed-version masochist at home)
Every piece of annoyance in W10 is 100% mitigated by the menu you get when you right-click the start button.
What's that? Sorry. Can't hear you over the sound of me starting an admin PowerShell prompt in 2 clicks.
On a more serious note, older versions of Windows will slide into irrelevance as high-DPI displays become mainstream. I dunno if you've used one, but this here XPS has a 3200x1800 display at 13"; this means I run Windows at 250% scaling. Text basically looks like print; images are deliciously crisp. And, ironically, at these resolutions and scales, the whole MacOS vs Windows font smoothing question basically goes out of the window.
Windows early than 8 is a bit of a shitshow at these high resolutions; you can dial things up to about 150%, but that's not nearly enough, and many apps end up looking like complete disasters - Windows 10 is much better at dealing with legacy and ill-behaving apps that don't obey the scaling rules.
But you can run W7 if you like. I like having more performance on the same hardware.
(My work laptop has 7 on it, lest you think I'm some kind of mixed-version masochist at home)
Every piece of annoyance in W10 is 100% mitigated by the menu you get when you right-click the start button.
What's that? Sorry. Can't hear you over the sound of me starting an admin PowerShell prompt in 2 clicks.
On a more serious note, older versions of Windows will slide into irrelevance as high-DPI displays become mainstream. I dunno if you've used one, but this here XPS has a 3200x1800 display at 13"; this means I run Windows at 250% scaling. Text basically looks like print; images are deliciously crisp. And, ironically, at these resolutions and scales, the whole MacOS vs Windows font smoothing question basically goes out of the window.
Windows early than 8 is a bit of a shitshow at these high resolutions; you can dial things up to about 150%, but that's not nearly enough, and many apps end up looking like complete disasters - Windows 10 is much better at dealing with legacy and ill-behaving apps that don't obey the scaling rules.