[SOLVED] Buying Windows 10 Pro 64X: OEM or retail?

[dg27]

I'm (reluctantly) planning to move from Win 7 Pro 64X to Win 10 Pro 64X. I don't want to go the "upgrade" route and will buy it. I don't want to limit myself in terms of hardware in the future (and don't want to buy this again).

My understanding is that the cheaper OEM versions are tied to the hardware and therefore I wouldn't be able to install using the same license on my next machine. Correct?

Does this mean that retail is the way to go? (It's usually about a $50 difference from what I've seen.)

 

[dg27]

Update installation has become much, much more user-controllable under Version 1903.

This is good to hear. Having it update and reboot without warning was never a tolerable situation for me. Thanks.

 

[britechguy]

I'm certainly not alone is my disdain for the tile concept and I want complete control of my desktop: I do not want notifications of any kind appearing on my desktop.

The Windows 10 Start Menu does use tiles, but you need not use those. The typical "stack of applications" appears at the left side of the Start Menu. The tiles are merely for convenience for rapid access of things you use really frequently. I almost never use the Start Menu to begin with, as I still favor desktop shortcuts and/or quick launch shortcuts.

I don't know how you think you're going to achieve no notifications. Notifications have been popping up, in one form or another, on Windows since Windows came on the scene. It's really no different in Windows 10 except that they slide out in the lower right hand corner and, if not interacted with relatively quickly, get shuttled to the Action Center for your review later.

If you wish to suspend all notifications for a set period of time you can use the Focus Assist feature, which is really nice.

 

[dg27]

I don't know how you think you're going to achieve no notifications. Notifications have been popping up, in one form or another, on Windows since Windows came on the scene. It's really no different in Windows 10 except that they slide out in the lower right hand corner and, if not interacted with relatively quickly, get shuttled to the Action Center for your review later.If you wish to suspend all notifications for a set period of time you can use the Focus Assist feature, which is really nice.

I was referring to things like new email notifications. I haven't used 10, so I'm basing my comments on what I have read in articles about features. (I think there were also things like news/weather updates: I want none of that.) Thanks.

 

[Colif]

So far cumulative updates under 1903 have been so laid back, if I hadn't looked in there last month I wonder when it would have actually installed them

you can turn off what notifications appear on desktop, so turning off all should be possible. If you use Chrome, you will also need to turn its off as well as they integrated into the win 10 system.

 

[britechguy]

The first thing that anyone new to Windows 10 should do once they have a system out of the box and running is to review the Privacy settings and tweak those as they desire, then to review the Apps settings, which is where all the notification-related stuff like which apps (if any) can give them are located.

Windows 10 is easily configurable and, at least to me, far more configurable than earlier versions of Windows were. The search feature in Settings also works remarkably well and Microsoft has done a good job of indexing to various settings based on the typical keywords your average user might enter in a search rather than only those keywords that follow the magic Microsoft jargon.

 

[dg27]

Thanks, Colif and britechguy for your informative replies. I've been dreading moving to 10 for a while.

Your comments and suggestions will make it easier.