Some years ago – how many ? – I took advantage of some well priced laptops on the BT Shop web site, and for various good reasons at the time, bought three of them.
It turns out that I have had them 6 years – must have bought them in 2015 it seems. Thy are all made by Lenovo and have performed well and reliably. I have upgraded the RAM to 16 GB, and fitted them with 500 GB SSDs which improved their performance noticeably. But now, Microsoft have brought out Windows 11 and have made it clear that many computers will not have the necessary components or apps to enable them to run it. Mine fall short in various ways, the most obvious being that the Intel i3 chip is not (at the moment) supported. There is talk in Computeractive that this might yet be amended, but the other factors will still be there. PC Magazine has this to say . . .
“The bottom line? The terms closely follow Microsoft’s pattern for other recent operating systems, continuing the policy of five years of mainstream support and 10 years of extended support. Mainstream support for Windows 10 will continue until Oct. 13, 2020, and extended support ends on Oct. 14, 2025. But both levels could well go beyond those dates, since previous OS versions have had their support end dates moved forward after service packs. Windows 10 will constantly receive automatic updates, which at some point could be considered a service pack.”
Two of my laptops I have already switched to Linux Mint and they run this very well, and I find it easier than Windows in some ways. Most of he programmes that I use can be found in the Linux distros. I DO miss Family Historian, but Gramps is quite good and I have been getting a bit more adventurous with it and finding it better than I at first thought. This laptop, still running Windows 10 I shall keep in use for as long as Windows updates continue to appear, but bearing in mind that I am approaching 88 years of age I might well cease to exist before Windows 10 does.
