Has anyone gone through the updating process from the Microsoft site to Windows 10?
I hav tried three times now and got the ‘media creation tool’ and also as far as ‘searching for updates’ where the little whirly wheel has now been running for four hours to no avail.
I have a Key but I haven’t got close to being asked for it, plus my computer is a legitimate OEM (Windows 7) one and accepted as such.
Any ideas from the computer whizzes out there?
Simply go for Ubuntu (Linux) instead.
Its free and everything you can do with windoze you can do with Ubuntu.
https://www.ubuntu.com/download
Patience! it took me many hours. A friend of mine recently did the update, It took some 6-8 hours. And he has a new laptop plus decent network speed. Once you have W10 running it might again need many hours to install updates.
Personally I wouldn’t touch Windows 10! More than happy with a Pixelbook / Chromebook.
Pardon an old fart’s ignorance but i have never even heard of these, so please elucidate as I have no great love of Windows, and I DO use Open Office which I find fine (even better) than Publisher and Powerpoint.
Got anything else you could cheer me up with? My laptop is ancient but I don’t have the money to buy a replacement - other than a ‘refurbished’ one, whatever that means. I have improved speeds by tearing out almost ten years of stuff languishing in the digital ‘attic and cellars’ , and I have no business needs to be catered for now, only on a hobby level with Powerpoint and Publisher.
Now I have Open Office which works fine, plus I want access to Youtube, and the internet generally, plus Skype and that’s about it. Unfortunately I have two laptops one HP with Vista and the Acer with 7 - both of which get no further support from Windows, which is why I have thought (tried) updating to 10.
I certainly wouldn’t (read 'couldn’t) buy the programme at €140!!
Norman Hi - Chromebooks, and the top of the range Pixelbooks are the Google, as opposed to Microsoft offering. They’ve been around for some time now and are really pretty decent machines with attractive starting prices - just take a look at Amazon.fr.
The massive benefit (for me) is that they don’t have ‘programs / software’ as you would know it at Microsoft. The are incredibly fast (aka instant!) as they have nothing loaded onto them that can bog them down. Many of them also work with Android (again Google) apps - just the same as the ones on smartphones.
Essentially they use ‘Cloud’ (online) storage for everything - photos, documents, spreadsheets, presentations, shopping lists etc etc etc. They are constantly live (when switched on) and therefore security updates are instantaneous and unnoticable. They do have ‘small’ local storage but no ‘drives’ as such.
Hope this helps 
(PS I lost 2 machines to Windows 10 shortly after it was launched so my views are bound to be pretty biased!!)
(PPS Norman it would be great if you could replace your green ‘N’ with something else - it’s not very nice)
Sorry, if your pc does not have a lot of memory you are in deed dodo. 
There is a site the sells refurbished PC:n fairly cheap. As Simon says any Linux System is to prefer but if you have not used it at all there is a slight(?) learning curve. If you have gmail you have 5GB cloud space that might come handy, make a backup of your stuff.
As Simon says Chromebook is a great thing, I have one that I use daily, I bought it in 2014(or 2015?) works great!
If you go for Chrome you can forget all the ^%$#@ updating that comes with W10. Chrome is updated regularly, updates are downloaded automatically and you need to make a 1-2 minute reboot, comparing that to hours for W10.
Refurbished pc:s, here is one site ( I have not used it) https://www.backmarket.fr/
Thanks Simon. I didn’t notice my picture had disappeared. I din’t do it honest!
I was never a dan of Windows updates after 3.11. Windows10, however, has been stable and reliable, updates are annoying though.
I upgraded from Win7 a long time ago, it took ages then and I can’t see that it would become any quicker. In the background, your machine is downloading a few GB of files, prior to running the upgrade. It will then take a long time to run the upgrade. Give it time, it will get there, eventually.
I tried to find memory requirements for win10.
This does not sound right:
Microsoft recommends 1 gb RAM for 32 bit and 2 gb RAM for 64 bit Windows 10.
…but yes. Windoze and associated software is very memory hungry. It needs that much to run most basic functions.
I can run updates and reboot my Ubuntu PC in the time it takes to close windoze on my OHs 64bit lappie.
I never even notice the updates on my Pixelbook… 
I wouldn’t recommend Windows 10 - it has been a bit more stable lately but initially every time it updated it lost random passwords or links on my laptop and I have yet to find a printer that will work with it and wi fi - I often have to email docs to my iPhone and print from there - which works every time - go figure.
. If Windows 7 works for you then stay with that.emphasized text
By way of balance I am happy with Windows 10, it seems stable to me. I have it on a couple of machines and I can’t really complain. When combined with the latest Office products I think it works well.
It always seems that whichever Windows product is released, it attracts a great deal of negative publicity which influences people perceptions before they have even tried it.
I had no choice, bought a new motherboard with Intel’s latest chipset only to discover that no USB drivers exist for Windows 7 for this hardware so literally no way to have a functioning installation (it’s fine if you don’t mind your mouse and keyboard not working).
If you dig around you can still get the free upgrade (Microsoft didn’t stop it being available, they just stopped telling people about it).
As I had W7 home premium I grabbed a copy of “Anytime Upgrade” for £20 and upgraded to W7 pro, then upgraded that to W10 - way cheaper than a copy of W10 pro and gives a little control over updates (only a little though).
So, I now have two machines with W10 - this laptop (which lives in France) but it rarely gets booted into W10, I mostly use Fedora and “The Windows Machine” at home - again that’s only used if I need something Windows specific. Usually Photoshop, or “real” MS office, generally I use the mail/file/web server as my day-to-day machine (which is running Fedora again).
I wouldn’t rave but it’s not awful either (if that’s not damming with faint praise, I don’t know what is).
I still generally prefer Linux.
But then again that’s not a bad thing is it? Word of mouth is still better than anything else - and I speak as a long-term adman. (But don’t tell anybody I said that!)
Me too 