What fresh Windows hell am I in for?

iaresee

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Main SSD in the kid's rig died. Dead died. I swapped parts and now I'm re-installing Windows 10 from a DVD I have. I've got the product key that I used to register Windows 10 on the machine a few years ago. How screwed am I? Am I going to be able to re-use the product key or is Microsoft going to try and extract another $190 out of me for a new product key because the old one is forever tied to the hard drive that just went kaput?
 
Main SSD in the kid's rig died. Dead died. I swapped parts and now I'm re-installing Windows 10 from a DVD I have. I've got the product key that I used to register Windows 10 on the machine a few years ago. How screwed am I? Am I going to be able to re-use the product key or is Microsoft going to try and extract another $190 out of me for a new product key because the old one is forever tied to the hard drive that just went kaput?
You can buy a valid and legal windows 10 key for under 10 box anywhere on the web or eBay.
 
I clone my SSD as a backup. I can swap the disks with no issues so the W10 license is not tied to the disk. You should be OK. If not, contact Microsoft. They were very helpful on other occasions where I needed to move licenses from one PC to another.
 
Probably no issues other than Windows 10 being one of the worst operating systems ever created.

Other then its highly annoying feature of forced updating and the continued on trend that started with Win 7 to Applefy certain advanced features (as make in make them more limited) overall I'm not dissatisfied with Win 10. It's better then Win 8, which wasn't as bad as I was led to believe either. I reckon that having your expectations lowered in advance does help.

In the end its still lightyears ahead over OSX. To each his own but you couldn't pay me enough to use that.
 
My only gripe with Windows 10 is really the inconsistency of the settings/configuration experience. The so-called modern UX is not comprehensive for many things so you still need to fallback to the old Windows Control Panel stuff. Network settings are a very good example of this. The display settings are confusing too (and I used to be the dev lead that owned the display control panel years ago).

In terms of doing development work - the command line is better than ever with Powershell, file system IO is faster, the kernel level memory manager is faster, etc.

In terms of general usability of the shell. All the keyboard shortcuts are the same going back to Win 3x and Win 9x. Despite the tiles, navigating the Start Menu is the same as Win 7. The Explorer windows are pretty much the same as Win 7. Beyond that, it launches programs the same as it ever has.

One of the cool additions is the Xbox Game Bar. And I don't do any gaming. But it is a really handy way to do video capture of any app and it's a quicker way to get to multi-app audio mixing. Just hit Win+G and it's there.
 
I've been installing fresh Win 10 copies on multiple machines from the original DVD I burned during the "free" Windows period for a couple years. As long as you have a valid Product Key, you should be good to go. Of course, you'll have to reinstall all your apps. and then start the update process to bring it current. I would suggest, skipping the "check for new updates" option if it appears during the reinstall. That took forever. You can do this later.
On rare occasions, I've had to contact Microsoft to get a fresh Product Key. Sometimes when you install a new drive, it treats the laptop/PC as a different machine. Then you have to explain that the HDD failed and was replaced. Good luck!
 
Beyond that, it launches programs the same as it ever has.
Initial window drawing seems amazingly faster on the kid's Win10 machine than on my modern iMac. Launching something like Discord feels nearly instant on the Windows 10 box vs. a few seconds of wait on the iMac. That's impressive. Graphics are comparable between the machines.
 
Initial window drawing seems amazingly faster on the kid's Win10 machine than on my modern iMac. Launching something like Discord feels nearly instant on the Windows 10 box vs. a few seconds of wait on the iMac. That's impressive. Graphics are comparable between the machines.

My son just built an AMD based PC for about $1100. It's hilariously fast at gaming stuff. I'm not a gamer but I like to watch some of the stuff from time to time.

My dev machine at work really screams. I've got a pair of 4114 Xeons, 128GB RAM, and nothing but SSD drives. Not much of a graphics card though because I don't need it.
 
Probably no issues other than Windows 10 being one of the worst operating systems ever created.

I've been avoiding W10 forever... still on W7 on a boot camped 2013 13" Air. Longest I've ever had a computer. It's not super fast but it works!
 
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