Updating to Windows 10 - Finally a painless process

Microsoft recently placed Windows 10 on the "recommended" updates category on Windows Update for Windows 8.1 and 7 machines.  This to me meant that MS is pretty confident now that you can safely update a pretty large percentage of the existing Windows 8/7 population without issue.

 So I decided to put it to the test.  In my household - all but one of my PCs, laptops and tablets have been updated to Windows 10 and if your a regular reader of this blog - you also know I have most on the Fast Ring Insider path.  

 So that one PC I have been delaying was my wife's HP Smarttouch IQ527 All-in-One that I bought for her nearly 8 years ago now.  I've upgraded the hardware over the years putting an Intel AGN 5300 WiFi Card and Intel SSD into it and with 4GB of RAM it was certainly capable of running Windows 10.

 I delayed upgrading from Windows 8.1 for several reasons.  The first was stability issues with the early Windows 10 builds.  As I've stated in earlier posts Windows 10 wasn't real in my opinion until the 10586 "November" release.

 The second reason was video drivers.  Nvidia was late getting a proper Windows 10 compatible driver out the door and so early testing was causing me to back off to the default Windows VGA driver which made the user experience horrible.

 Finally MS has not really gotten their act together recognizing your existing Windows Key and accurately validating it.   

 Well - I am happy to report that all of those issues are now gone.   Today - I walked up to my wife's PC - launched Windows Update and saw Windows 10.  I click on update and followed the on-screen instructions.  MS checked for compatibility of the hardware and software, validated by Windows Key - downloaded and installed Windows 10 with no issues.  

 Once the upgrade was complete - her desktop showed up with the exact same icons in the same place as she had with Windows 8.1 and all apps worked perfectly.  

 I only had to make 2 changes.  First was to make Chrome the default browser and make Adobe Acrobat DC the default PDF reader.  

 Considering the fact that the IQ527 is nearly 8 years old running a Celeron processor - IRQ9 disk controller and an Nvidia 9600 GS video card designed for Windows Vista - it's actually pretty amazing that it runs Windows 10 at all. 

 Now sure my wife is no power user - her world is Chrome, Office, Adobe, Facebook, Box etc - but what I was just able to accomplish is about an hour was to probably add 3 or more years to the life of her PC.  The only risks are hardware failures now - so power supply, and built in components like video cards, etc.  But for her use case it worked perfectly..

 One thing is does reinforce - and that is the slow down in PC sales.  Why buy a new one when you can in most cases get a modern experience on your existing device.  

While I pound on MS pretty heavily in this blog - especially around mobile - I have to applaud MS for getting Windows 10 for PCs, Laptops and All-in-Ones to run on such a large portfolio of devices.  

 Bottom line is that it is completely possible to have a modern Windows experience including Office 2016 running very well thank you on what to many would consider to be antique gear.   

 Good Job MS..  

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