markz said:
Can always use a Virtual Machine with W10 if theres something that needs to be done, but for my usage pattern that is not so. However I do have Steam games that are all from W7, so there is that.
I've actually taken to the opposite, running Windows 7 on the bare iron with a VMWare VM running Ubuntu. The main reason being that I'm what you might call an "avid gamer" (addict) and my favorite games just don't work well or at all under Linux. Most of them are launched with Steam, which does have a Linux version and a fairly decent selection of games, but nowhere near as many as Windows.
Basically what I'm left with on my Windows install is VMWare Workstation, Steam, and whatever else is necessary to make my games run. I've locked Windows down fairly tight, it doesn't even have a user facing web browser left.
The VM starts up fullscreen on boot, incidentally I also have a MacOS install on another VM I can start up when people call me with Mac questions. Performance in the VM is indistinguishable from bare metal at this point, desktop computers are insanely overpowered for most applications.
I've noticed a significant reduction in the amount of housekeeping I need to do to maintain Windows in this configuration, there's basically no applications installed to need manually updating, Steam updates itself and it's games. VMWare isn't something that gets very frequent updates, and when it does it's a pretty smooth process.
No Java, no Flash, no browsers, eliminates a huge portion of the potential security issues you encounter using Windows normally. Most of what's left is handled by Windows Update.
Of course I'd prefer to ditch Windows altogether or at least relegate it to a VM under Linux, but I really loves my games.