For daily work I still prefer Windows 7 (64b ult) above Windows 10. Normally I’m an enthusiastic early adapter of new stuff, having my VM’s ready for testing and don’t quit on the first issue. But from the technical review until now I have some weird experiences with Windows 10 which drive me crazy.
Just one example:
After every few automatic updates, which are not easy to avoid, I end up having the startmenu not working anymore. There are a lot of complaints about this on the internet, from the first technical preview till now not fixed. start menu stopped working
Ok, I am just giving vent to my frustration, but I really don’t understand people accepting a migration from stable to unstable and the once who don’t, they find Microsof frustrating the support and updates for Windows 7.
Thankfully my start menus have not disappeared. I have moved 3 of my main PCs to Win10 and I love it, while I have never been a big fan of Win7. I find Win10 clean and fast, and everything very visible for my feeble eyesight. I have not had any stability issues yet, apart from some zany behaviour trying to install the OS as an upgrade on one machine.
I was annoyed to find the system restore function disabled by default though, and had to go set it on - be careful out there if you haven’t done so.
I had huge issues with wireless on one machine - Realtek drivers of many versions and flavours causing serious flakiness, so I had to get an adapter with a Ralink chip, and now all is good.
this is why i use StartMenu 8, works on also on Win 10.
An best off all. I dislike the Win 10 default Startmenu Style, and with StartMenu 8 i can use the Classic Windows 7 Style Startmenu Really Nice.[/quote]
StartMenu is slow to pop up. I prefer Classic Shell. But I never tried to install either under Windows 10.
While I’ve had my frustrations with Windows 10, for your particular example, I can’t recommend Start 10 enough. It gives you the Windows 7 style menu on Win10. https://www.stardock.com/products/start10/
Given the very important differences between Windows 7 and Windows 10 as far as scaling is concerned, seems to me not very good to keep developing in Windows 7 if one wants to have a good support of HiDPI.
Eating the same food as one customer is always a good idea.
Microsoft has put developers in an uncomfortable position in this regard. The business community had nearly zero adoption of Win8/8.1 and is very slow to adopt Windows 10. The vast majority of business still runs Win7 (some that I work with still run XP!).
IMHO it’s probably best to develop primarily in the latest operating system available, but still have older OS’s in Virtual Machines for testing.
Personally I develop primarily on a MacBook Pro, but have several Windows VM’s in Parallels. At home, I’m running a ridiculously overpowered Windows 10 dual-4K system for development (also video editing, graphic design, music production, 3d rendering etc), but have various OS X and WinXP/7/8 virtual machines in VMWare for testing. I end up moving my Xojo licenses around a lot, which is annoying, but necessary.
The first version of Surface Pro (~2012) and Surface Book (~2015) have been incredible successes from my experience. Having a third party manufacture a computer (lenovo, HP, Dell, ASUS, etc.) have always caused historical issues with outdated/non-existent drivers, poor performance, outdated software, and many other issues when upgrading. When Microsoft began to create their own hardware, these issues seemed to disappear, and the Surface Pro computers with all of the updates ‘simply work’. It has been a joy to work with both hardware and software which are completely compatible. Microsoft must have learned from Mac by creating the computer and the software to make a great product-pair.
I had the exact opposite experience with the Surface Book. I went through 3 of them and had nothing but BSOD’s and issues waking from sleep. Unacceptable for a $2500 machine. Returned it.
Then it would make sense to develop the last mile under Windows 7. I would not go as far as XP
All my apps are usually started on Mac, but I make sure to work under Windows 10 for the last mile, to make absolutely sure there is no wart. As much as some love to hate Windows, customers deserve a minimum of respect. That means at least try to understand the philosophy behind that OS GUI in order to serve them correctly.
Although I still see XP, I don’t know any company using Vista and looking back I realize I skipped it myself either.
[quote=271550:@Michel Bujardet]All my apps are usually started on Mac, but I make sure to work under Windows 10 for the last mile, to make absolutely sure there is no wart.[/quote] - this is the way to do it.
Thinking about it, replacing the native Windows 10 menu is probably nice while developing, but then, one may pass the obvious possibility to add a tile for the app, which Windows 10 users seem to like better than the regular app shortcuts. It also gives a more modern look to the app.
Well “I” could never get myself to like Classic Shell.
And here on my System StartMenu 8 takes 1 Second to show the Menu, i find that acceptable (and the Origianl Starmenu of my Windows 10 (Pro) isn’t really faster - most times it doesn’t react at all (not working StartMenu).
And that is the nice thing about StartMenu 8 - if i wanted to check how the Symbol / Icon look in the new Menu i could change the Menu-Style to Windows 10-Style. with the Tiles.