Windows Thinking of going back to Windows 7 - what do I need?

I've been using Windows 10 on my laptop and 7 on my desktop, and although 10 is less annoying than I remember it being, it's still a pain in the arse in certain respects. Do like that Win 10 Task Manager though, it's much better than the 7 equivalent

 

I lose count of how many times I've had to set/re-set this and it still wants to do automatic updates at the most inappropriate times. We've disabled it via group policy in work but the other day my manager's laptop chose to reboot itself in the middle of a VoIP conference call because there were updates to install and he'd run out of chances to postpone it.

Not only that, but constantly adjusting my preferences every time there's an update. If I have to re-set my default application preferences one more time I'm going to lose it.

Oh and shoving Cortana in my face at every opportunity. Despite following all the guides/links/articles/etc on disabling the damn thing, it still seems to pop back up every time anything more than a cursory update gets installed.

There are many reasons to dislike Windows 10. But I would not recommend sticking to Windows 7; it's going to go out of support at some point, and newer features (see: support for newer CPUs) will not get back-ported. I think the last thing that any of us wants is to have what happened to Windows XP to happen to Windows 7.

 

I've never had my computer try to restart on me during the day. Updates are set at night and I've never had to reset this setting.
I disabled Cortana on install and have not seen it since.

perhaps you followed an outdated guide or missed a step?

 

The point is, I shouldn't have to keep looking for guides and tutorials to disable all the **** I don't want - especially when I already disabled it all on the day I installed the OS.

 

My experience is that with the most recent version of Windows 10:
Disabling Cortana requires a few fairly intuitive clicks from the start menu and I've never seen it again. No guides required.
Updates that require a restart won't automatically happen if you are using the PC at the time. They have a little popup in the notification bar that allows you to choose when they happen in that case.

 

That's what I was thinking. That the guy accidentally clicked OK to make the window go away and wanted to blame someone for the restart during the call.

 

**** wait - yep, you got me, that's exactly what happened. I'm sorry, I bow to the superior wisdom on display here - my recollection of of all my frustrations with Windows 10 are clearly wrong.

Context is often in text-based discussions on the internet, so let me be clear: I am being highly sarcastic.

 

I think @Byron C's point is that Windows 10 is in point of fact shite and rather than go for a generic interface for phones and tablets as with Windows 10 they should have improved apon an already phenomenal OS aka Windows 7 (or at least tried to) and lose the stupid idea that they could compete against Apple in the phone and tablet market with a multi platform OS/UI that no one f*cking wanted.

Please note I only tolerate Win 10 as I have a Ryzen based system and as such was pretty much forced into it, were I still rocking my previous 6600K/Z170 platform I would have stuck with Win 7.

 

I'm glad that I made the switch back to Windows 7 on the 'sim' rig - things stay as they're supposed to. I think I'll reinstall Win 7 on my laptop for work to avoid running into issues with that.

The lounge rig I'll keep on Windows 10, though I must get around to a fresh install. The tablet can stay Win 10 too, because I don't really care as long as it works.