Oh, god, Windows.

Inertia makes it hard to make the break, but once you do, it is such a relief to be free of all that crap 

I hope to god you're a Linux and Android user. Because if you're an Apple user that is the most ironic thing I've read in a long time .

Finally have the new motherboard running completely with Windows 10. Good lord it sucks to go to Windows 10. You can't just install Windows 10 if you get the free upgrade--they literally make it impossible even if you hang out on the phone with them for 2 hours (I tried).

You have to install your previous version of Windows, then likely you will have to get all of the latest updates (I had to this time, I didn't last), then you can install Windows 10 on top of it. What a pain. I guess this is how they're going to sell copies (make you give up after a few reinstalls).

Yes you can, and no you don't. I just did it on a friend's new W8.1 celery laptop. Use the media creation tool. Either just download it to do an in-place upgrade, or tell it that you want to install on a different machine if you plan to do the double install method in order to get a completely "clean" fresh install.

When you install the upgrade, it will convert your key to a Windows 10 key. You can look up this new key after the W10 upgrade is installed using something like Produkey, but you don't actually need to know what it is, just run the Windows User Experience thingy in the CP, and Windows will tie the W10 key to your system. If you don't care about having a totally clean install at that point you're done, but if you want to do that, you'll need to use the "install on a different machine" method and boot from that. Install without a serial number, you don't need one. After it's installed, run the User Experience thing again, it will recognize your hardware and that you already had a W10 key tied to it from your previous in-place upgrade install. Done.

Am I in the minority of loving Windows 10?

I hope to god you're a Linux and Android user. Because if you're an Apple user that is the most ironic thing I've read in a long time .

Relax! Your fears are unfounded 

The only time I recall actually working on an Apple computer, the job was to install some software so that it would talk to a Unix machine. Somehow, they have just never come my way, and, no, I never sought them out. I tried to help a friend with a new iPhone recently, but only because she was mostly new to any phone with the concept of "smart." No, I'm not an Apple person at all.

The only Apple thing I wish I'd bought is... shares 

I'd use Linux if my wife didn't use the same machine and I wasn't a gamer. I used to dual boot but stopped once I realized I was never bothering with Linux anymore.

My wife was given a Windows phone. By this time, she was used to her Android tablet, and soon wanted the same for her phone. We needed to replace the 10-yr-old laptop that she uses. I told her that the Ubuntu model was cheaper, and if she really hated it, I'd buy and install Windows. It has never been necessary. Even I discovered that Unity is not as horrible as I thought it was --- although I'd never choose it for my desktop... and there go Ubuntu, the MS way: your desktop is going to change because we say so. No thanks: MATE for me. We are a Microsoft-free household, at last!

(In the spirit of full disclosure, there is still an XP partition on my disk, but I expect its bits have all rusted up by now)

On the topic of Motherboards  ...

I do think that it would be a good idea if you people with Windows would run one of the DPC-Latency checkers on your board/system and publish the results. Never mind night-and-day (ie subtle ) differences, DPC latency can render a PC utterly useless for audio, and I do wonder if there are boards that suffer from it even without other added components.

I think that if people can test machines, post make, model and whether good, bad or ugly, Then google can find it, and it will be a service to the world.