[pwthornton]

I'm not advocating for using Windows for critical systems that store tons of user data, but I am advocating that if you do use it, you should use versions that are still supported and make sure you patch it ASAP.

But should Microsoft be expected to back port patches to old OSes in perpetuity?

[tgragnato]

Oh that's fair, if a product is unsupported, use it air-gapped or at least in a reasonably controlled environment...

Again, pretending and forcing upgrades is not the solution. The practise perpetrated by Microsoft has been described again and again as an "aggressive effort to push upgrades". https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/mar/15/windows-1...

The issue is not the upgrade per se, but the "imperfection" of the upgrade process (wanted euphemism) and the fact that many consider W10 a worse os if compared to W7.

Otherwise nobody would complain.

[pwthornton]

I would personally use an enterprise Linux distro for something like health records and other critical data, but you can Windows 10 similar to how you use Windows 7, and it's a faster OS. You just need to spend some time to get your settings in place.

I was in the same camp of you as Windows 10 vs 7 until I saw how much Windows 10 sped up an old machine of mine.