"I'm among the millions of users who have not upgraded to 10 with any of my devices."
I saw reports this morning that almost 50% of users are still on Windows 7 vs. 10 with 21%.
"Since my first Windows machine (Windows ME), I have noticed that slowly and then not so slowly, Microsoft has taken abilities from us and/or hidden those abilities. That has not changed at all with Windows 10."
Yes. Lots of stuff has been moved into Settings, with what seems to me to be a somewhat dumbed down version of the controls you can still for the time being access in Control Panel -- there has been talk that Control Panel itself is going away, but so far it's still there. More apps & controls are accessed by searching rather than a shortcut somewhere, including Control Panel applets, though you can add your own shortcuts. Besides not being able to decline individual updates, the number of things you can't turn off seems to be increasing, e.g. you can now choose to have Cortana not sign into your account, but there's no longer an off switch. They also use the amount of control you have in a given version of Windows 10 to nudge you into different versions.
Microsoft apparently prefers subscription services rather than outright sales -- they're going to start pushing Windows 10 subscriptions [even hardware subscriptions] for the Enterprise version of 10. But many small to mid-sized businesses use consumer versions of Windows, because it's cheaper in their situation. To *nudge* them towards the Enterprise versions of 10, with the Anniversary Update Microsoft is again removing stuff from 10 Pro, this time notably the ability to turn off the store, which you often don't want employees accessing. Microsoft also has 2 Education versions now, though I haven't seen anything written about what they want to accomplish there.
"However, Windows has got its feelers so deep into the hardware and the hardware drivers that I do not like to fuss with it."
Don't blame you. With my Windows tablet one camera will no longer work, & the other doesn't work properly since upgrading it to 10. As it is I have to somewhat force 10 to use the old win8.1 driver, going through Device Mgr., selecting the let me choose the device driver dialog, then browsing to the folder with the old driver. The cameras, like the particular Realtek Wi-Fi/Bluetooth chip the tablet uses aren't super common [so weren't presumably tested], and the way 10 starts up all sorts of Wi-Fi stuff as Windows itself is starting up bricked the tablet for several builds.
Intel graphics drivers have been problematic. There's the full-on version if you download them from Intel's site, & some subset of those drivers from Windows Update, the version number of the drivers may not be the same [Windows Update might have newer], and only the one from Intel or the one from Microsoft may work.
Windows Update often does not include available driver updates with 10, and for less common components, Windows Update may be the only source -- that means going to the individual devices in Device Mgr., & selecting update drivers via searching online. Now That Is A Drudge, though when newer drivers are available it's sometimes made a noticeable improvement.
More-or-less All things USB have in my experience been trouble prone. A couple of the more common problems I've had are: I like the Logitech K520 wireless keyboard, being very picky about the feel [most everything can hurt with FMS]. The keyboard doesn't have a Numlock LED. Windows 10 is prone to turning off Numlock [the earlier fix doesn't always work nowadays]. I have more than one copy of 10 installed, plus a few VMs. One of the reasons I got a new keyboard was I'd have to enter the first number of my sign-in PIN and see if it registered or not, just so I knew whether to hit the Numlock key.
Windows 10 is also somewhat prone to disconnect or lose the keyboard &/or mouse when it starts, to some extent depending on the brand & model. It's happened often enough that I plug the mouse [& my old keyboard] into a hub I can easily reach to unplug & plug it back in -- I later switched the mouse that I use, & with the miniPC I went to Bluetooth.
To me it's been mostly on the annoyance level -- even when it bricked my tablet since I don't use it that much -- but when it came to our oldest son, who has little interest in fooling around with Windows to get things working, I was actually relieved a couple months ago when he said he would stick with 7. For a PC he uses an older hand-me-down from his younger brother, & he has a cheaper laptop. Both would likely have hardware compatibility problems, the laptop because cheaper devices often have less common components because of the focus on low cost, the PC because some older components are no longer fully supported.
As it turns out, at the last minute [Wednesday evening] he had his brother install 10 using a new hard drive on the PC. And he had [has] problems with the AMD graphics [& maybe chipset] drivers -- his brother couldn't get the latest drivers for that card to install, so the graphics card's running much slower using the drivers from 10 than it should be. There **might** be an issue with AMD changing their drivers for the Anniversary update [that was the version of 10 installed], so right now it's a waiting game to see if they come out with something new for his older hardware.
"Windows 7 is barely different than Vista."
Windows 10 has a new boot loader, puts more emphasis on the recovery image, has the store & touch screen interface add-ons, and of course there's its Start Menu. I've never found documentation whenever I've searched, but the file system is different -- you do not want to run 7's disk check on a win10 partition, though the reverse works fine. 10 does a lot more registry thrashing, & the way it's stored is different. The latest Windows 10 Disk Cleanup now works much better -- removing Windows Update leftovers in 7 means the next time you run Windows Update on the 2nd Tuesday of the month takes longer, I *think* because data on past updates has to be rebuilt. And Windows 10 adds better memory handling [regular & for graphics], allegedly works better with multiple GPUs of different brands &/or models, and from all reports speeds up graphics performance in general. There's more integration of things like Secure Boot & TPM, plus Windows Hello for biometrics [which doesn't matter that much until compatible hardware is more common]. Some versions [Enterprise & I *think* education] can be more locked down.
The boot loader can give some problems when/if dual booting or upgrading. The recovery image can waste space, & is only a poor substitute for image backups IMHO. Other than that most of the other stuff mentioned isn't apparent to many people, &/or like the tablet [touch screen] interface & Cortana, can be ignored. The majority of the code & underpinnings of 10 are 7, & thus to a great extent, Vista -- poking around 10 with Windows Explorer, it's hard to tell you're not looking at 7 [or Vista]. Not too long ago there were a few articles in the news when a Microsoft engineer confirmed there were parts of Windows 95 I think still used in 10.
"I already have a few graphics issues with 8.1 and as long as it works otherwise, I'm not about to try 10!"
Not a bad decision... If you were curious, enjoyed that sort of thing, & had a bunch of time you wouldn't mind wasting, you could try it & see, but AFAIK the people that are happiest with 10 are gamers pushing a mid to high end graphics card [or cards] hard, or those with devices with very little disk space. With 10's Compact feature turned on, it takes up ~8GB of the ~29GB that's usable on my tablet, & since I stuck a small, old 60GB SSD I already had in the miniPC, 10's smaller footprint is much appreciated.
I added 10 on my wife's PC mainly to make sure it worked with the hardware & to secure the free licenses. I had her try some of her games in the old version of 10, just to see if it was a complete waste of time, & she felt that they ran better, but only by a very small, almost imperceptible amount, & that was running an older mid-range [roughly $200+] graphics card. I would be both more cautious & skeptical if her PC was using a GPU that was part of the CPU package, since the CPU isn't current. I was already nervous since AMD doesn't fully support that graphics card any longer.
Intel & AMD have been developing their built in GPUs a Lot, along with the software & drivers to get them to perform closer to discrete graphics card performance. They've also tended to move on to new tech, abandoning the old rather than improving upon it. While 10 *may* work well enough with CPUs/GPUs that aren't the latest, current generation, IMHO support for older technologies that improved performance for built in GPUs in 7 or 8 is a bit iffy in 10, & the same could be said about prior generation CPUs/GPUs supporting the latest performance oriented technologies that Intel & AMD are using & will use.
Long story short, you might be going through a lot of work to get your games working in 10, only to find out that when you did, they don't run as well. Or, because 10 is under constant, rapid development, you might find that while the current build, & *hopefully* the Anniversary Update build works well enough, the next update due next spring may not. Before manufacturers only had to make a decision on continuing support for older products [like the GPU] once every so many years -- now those decisions must be made once or twice a year.
You could make the argument that if you take the figures on how many new Windows devices are being sold currently, & subtract that from Microsoft's stated goal, there has to be an increase in sales of Windows devices to meet that goal -- realistically you're not going to make up the difference in sales of new or upgrade copies of 10. Remember that Microsoft said that it would take longer -- not that they wouldn't meet that number. So how could Microsoft increase sales of products it doesn't make? One way is to encourage new products that are not on the market now, e.g. IoT, &/or HP's new phones for biz, or maybe if VR takes off.
Another would be to encourage people to upgrade their existing PCs & laptops with new products. How would you encourage people to do that? In the past people would upgrade if the new PC/laptop had a big boost in performance [not that likely today], or because the old one wouldn't work any longer. Microsoft can definitely have an effect on the 2nd. Not saying they will -- not saying they won't -- just pointing out they might have an incentive [one that I'm sure has occurred to them].
"BTW - did they ever get that 512 shortcut limit fixed for the start menu?"
In September 2015 they raised it to 2048 for the Insider builds, & I assume that was included in the general update last November.
