8 never functioned well on my mom’s lower end Dell and I ended up having to reinstall 7. My dad’s computer, allegedly built for 8, was slow from the beginning (i5 – 3210, with 8gb and a discreet GPU). It got a little better for a short time, but was never even close to the speed it should have been. Then 8 broke his discreet GPU. At that point I installed 7 and it was everything it should have been, right out of the box. After I installed an SSD, it was that and more…

But when it comes to Windows, I have become the goto for my parent’s elderly friends. One couple in particular had a perfectly usable box with an Athlon II x2, with 4gb. Then they had another perfectly usable box with an A8 APU, with 6gb. They are currently using a box with a 3rd gen i3, which they called to see if I could fix and prevent them having to buy another computer. I now possess their previous boxes, one of which is stress testing Win10 for me, the other of which is refurbed and which may have found it’s forever home with a family that will use it well. (the one that is stress testing 10 will soon be fitted with 7 and also find a new forever home, though I will actually charge someone for that one, because it would actually make a very functional HTPC – I just happen to have a couple of salvage DBrom drives, one of which will go into that box. I will set it up to startup into a media center UI with Netflix, Hulu, etc. preinstalled – it will be fun, given that the last of these I built has an i7, x6, 64gb, 2x titan X, and two Samsung evo pro 1tb SSDs in raid 0. It is the engine for the game/home theater of someone I made some trades with from his store. It runs a 70″ + 2x 40odd” on their sides teevees. The sound includes a riser for the cozy chairs, that also functions as a subwoofer (the guy owns a home theater store)) The thing is, none of their machines needed anything but a reinstall of Windows. And given that they literally only use their computer for checking their email and until I showed them how to use their smart tee vee, looking up news stories, they could easily have kept using their original box. It has *more* than enough power for them. And now that I got them using gmail and Chrome, I expect they won’t be having nearly the issues they have been, given that they will never see the emails that have been giving them diseases.

But that is because Windows + lack of any computer experience. I hate to say it, but given their actual usage needs, they would be better off with Linux. Unfortunately, they are terrified of that sort of thing.

Truth: There has long been an industry (i.e. Woody’s) including countless aftermarket books (now web sites) focused on helping people manage all the problems with Windows as well a Office. That is partly because the user base is so large. But the Linux helper industry is entirely different. You can look at both and find that the worst case scenarios with Linux are always addressed with one or two command line fixes, while the medium case or worse for Windows has traditionally been addressed by a total re-install, often followed by buying a new machine.

I’ve no experience with recent versions of Windows. Maybe they fixed everything.

Greg – I have a HTC one M8 from Bell here in Canada and it has 5.1 on it. It updated a week or so ago.

mike_s – I have never had an Android device update or upgrade without my permission and even under 4, there have been some significant updates that made substantial changes.

And I can’t imagine anyone comparing Windows OS upgrades to Android or Linux upgrades with a straight face. I not only use Windows by default on my PC and laptop, I am currently running Win10 stress tests on a low power, refurbed PC that will soon be running Win7 and go to a good, low income home that needs it. I’ve actually come to appreciate Windows, as I have learned the ins and outs. But OS upgrades are complete crap.

I was running Win7 pre-release and with 7 actually upgraded my primary machine before it was released. Not because it was great, but because *anything* is better than Vista. I was playing with 8 as soon as it was available pre-release and used it for another three months post release, before I finally got irritated enough to dump it and go back to 7. Point being, I used Vista as soon as it was released. I have used every version since, since before they were released. I have a LOT of experience with Windows OS upgrades. And I have friends who have similar experience with literally *every* Windows release.

Every single one has been a nightmare. They have been messy. They “break” hardware functionality that was allegedly built specifically to work with *that* upgrade. Hell, 8 broke the GPU in my dad’s laptop that was entirely built around Win8, *5 months after he bought it!* Yes, they updated 8 so that it wouldn’t function on hardware designed to work with it. And the difference between Windows and Ubuntu breaking something, is that with Ubuntu it takes a matter of minutes to fix it, while with Windows, it can take hours, if it is even possible to fix it without an official update. Android on the other hand, has *never* broken anything of mine, even after major updates and upgrades. If it can be updated/upgraded, it will work on that hardware – period.

Issues with battery life after an upgrade have always been due to third party apps, and how they interact with the new architecture, in my personal experience. While they might not offer significant improvements every time, I have never had major problems. With PCs, problems are almost inevitable, given the much wider range of hardware variance.

I haven’t noticed a great difference in ease of use of Lollipop over the previous Android version, but moving to the Note 4 with its large screen has been a tremendous help.