I have been using Mac for the last 5 years. Although at first, this was sort of forced on me due to the kind of work I do, I immediately fell in love with it and subsequently with other Apple software and hardware products. At that time I had a Windows 7 laptop that I kept for my personal use that kept my linkage to Windows going. Soon its usage was reduced to tax filing and ...? I guess that's it!. Last year I bought even my tax software for Mac OS. To speed up my break-up with Windows, my Windows 7 laptop was broken a bit (thanks son!) that the cover cannot be closed. So, I had to leave it open all the time. This increased my reluctance to touch it even more. So it stayed lying in a room collecting dust. Even my 11 year old son didn't want to touch it as it was too 'inconvenient' for him to use it in that state. Did I tell you about the slowness that only seemed to get increasing day by day? I guess that probably what he was complaining about :-)
Come to Summer of 2015, its all over the news that Windows 10 is great and it is free! My first thought is to give it a try at zero expense. So, I brought my laptop back from dust and prepare it for its next life (hopefully). First I kicked out Norton 360 and discontinued the subscription. I had zero benefit from it although for some reason I kept renewing it every year. No virus found (even on a full system scan) but the system was getting ridiculously slow. Now, I read about Avast! on Amazon and gave it a try. Wow, it found hundreds of infected files and quarantined them all. I can now see a visible increase in responsiveness. Best of all, Avast! is free for basic usage. That's all I need. I then created a backup image of my hard disk on an external drive. You can never trust an OS upgrade without a backup to go back to.
I opted for automatic notification of Windows 10 availability. Alas, it never notified me. So, I went to download it myself and installed.
I am yet to experience it fully before giving my opinion on it. But the thought that ran through my mind was this. If a 5 year old Mac user was tempted to upgrade, does it take any more effort from Microsoft to influence current Windows users to upgrade? Assuming Windows 10 is great as they claim, it gives a great opportunity for Microsoft to retain its user base and perhaps attract the ones who fled before. Sorry Apple! This is all coming at your expense/ loss of opportunity. If the same happened at both consumer and enterprise level, then Windows 10 will stand as a proof (just like Apple products) that ultimately the product quality is the only thing that companies can rely on for their success. Strategies, plans, pricing power, ability to look into the future, etc, etc. are all good. But if they don't have a quality product, everything else is just a liability on their balance sheet!
Come to Summer of 2015, its all over the news that Windows 10 is great and it is free! My first thought is to give it a try at zero expense. So, I brought my laptop back from dust and prepare it for its next life (hopefully). First I kicked out Norton 360 and discontinued the subscription. I had zero benefit from it although for some reason I kept renewing it every year. No virus found (even on a full system scan) but the system was getting ridiculously slow. Now, I read about Avast! on Amazon and gave it a try. Wow, it found hundreds of infected files and quarantined them all. I can now see a visible increase in responsiveness. Best of all, Avast! is free for basic usage. That's all I need. I then created a backup image of my hard disk on an external drive. You can never trust an OS upgrade without a backup to go back to.
I opted for automatic notification of Windows 10 availability. Alas, it never notified me. So, I went to download it myself and installed.
I am yet to experience it fully before giving my opinion on it. But the thought that ran through my mind was this. If a 5 year old Mac user was tempted to upgrade, does it take any more effort from Microsoft to influence current Windows users to upgrade? Assuming Windows 10 is great as they claim, it gives a great opportunity for Microsoft to retain its user base and perhaps attract the ones who fled before. Sorry Apple! This is all coming at your expense/ loss of opportunity. If the same happened at both consumer and enterprise level, then Windows 10 will stand as a proof (just like Apple products) that ultimately the product quality is the only thing that companies can rely on for their success. Strategies, plans, pricing power, ability to look into the future, etc, etc. are all good. But if they don't have a quality product, everything else is just a liability on their balance sheet!
