Hi Vic,

On 2/21/2016 6:53 AM, Vic Smith wrote:

[[I'm sorely tempted to install a FOSS OS but figure that
would leave them even farther out on a limb...]]

Win10 is fine. They are being spied on constantly by all the apps
they are using on their smart phones. I can't believe the hysteria
that has been created over win10 "spying".

I have no problem with Win10. I can't imagine the so-called "spying"
affecting me. You can easily make it "look like" Win7. So you don't
see any effect of it "spying."
I see zero ads. That's zip, zilch, nada ads.

Do they guarantee you won't see them in the future? Or, that they
won't gleefully share whatever they collect (odd that they are
so unwilling to share the details of that, eh?) with the spooks,
other marketeers?

Win10 is more robust than Win7 in my experience. Fewer hangs
and hard resets.

I found XP to be more robust than 7even or Vista (never played with
the 8's). E.g., *this* machine is "up" for months at a time,
toggling between "user1" and "user2" without ever logging off either
of them. I tried 7even on one of my workstations and found that it
was noticeably more "sluggish" (not in terms of getting work *done*
but, rather, getting work *started*).

[I don't upgrade just for the sake of upgrading -- as it invariably
costs me some *capability*, in addition to lots of TIME! So, for
me, it's always a question of "What is this going to GIVE me that
I don't already *have*?" I've not seen anything in that column that
has been sufficient to pull me off the XP platform (and W2KS before
that)]

I have a desktop publishing program installed on a 7even laptop and
it regularly "hangs" (shows a "busy" cursor and becomes unresponsive).
Hard to imagine what would be "confusing" it in a program that
just processes text and illustrations! Esp when that program
NEVER hangs in years of use under XP/W2KS!

It also installs faster and has a smaller footprint.

I don't really care about how long it takes to install -- as
that's a one-time task (and, hopefully, I can clone the disk
like I've been able to do previously for additional machines
of the same make/model). Smaller footprint would be nice as
it would lessen the demands on the donated hardware (I've
got a dozen full-size towers that will be scrapped because
they don't meet 7even's minimum requirements; pull disks and
RAM and scrap the rest! Unfortunate but they'd be bad
candidates for the students simply because of their size)