Well the Windows 7 computer has been set up and is doing a great job of running Windows 7 instead of 10. Of course MS will try to phase out Win 7 support as soon as they can so when that happens I will have to try to work out what I am going to do with it because of my very strong feelings about subsequent versions. I may be pushed onto 8 or 8.1 but it may well be the case that the support for these versions doesn’t last a whole lot longer. I also support on a voluntary basis a Win7 computer next door so I am not sure how well this computer can transition to Win10 or later in the future. A big issue for that computer is that it has Intel Skylake architecture, which while being a great advance on its predecessor for speed and so forth, only has support from MS on Win7 for a limited period. MS naturally wants to push everyone using such a late architecture onto 10. But then there are the other issues with 10 that make it less suitable for a projection computer for example. At least on Win7 Enterprise you don’t get the annoying “Install Windows 10” popups and enticements that people have been scammed with by MS on other editions of 7. People in the IT industry I know or work with seem to get asked quite often how to uninstall Windows 10 because they have been tricked into installing it without awareness of its differences.
In the phone area I am about to purchase my second Android phone, the Samsung Galaxy J2. The main thing I am attempting to achieve is to get a phone that has more than 4 GB of onboard storage. In Android there are many apps, particularly the built in Google/Android ones, that can only install into the onboard storage. Since the Moto E running Lollipop can only make 2.2 GB available for installs, it has filled up all this space long since leaving me with only a few extra apps I can use and I run into problems every time I get an app upgrade or want to add some new app. Ideally of course 16 GB would guarantee no more problems ever but there is a big leap in price to 16 GB, the only models I can see are the Galaxy A3 at $549 which is way too dear. In other words I should have thought that the extra cost of the Galaxy J5 over the J2 would have brought more memory whereas in actuality Samsung has decided the extra $100 is to be expended on a bigger screen and 13 megapixel camera. It will be interesting to be buying a phone that has a front camera for the first time and the most annoying limitation of the Moto E phone has been its fixed focus which has often resulted in blurry photos. I have elected to buy the phone outright and not be locked into a contract for two years to pay for it as well as keeping the special terms of my current contract (a big data allowance) which was a one off special and is not currently available in general although in a practical sense there are similar plans at similar or slightly cheaper prices considering the amount of talk time and data I actually use on it.