Question about reverting Windows 10 back to 8.1

[Hammerskjold]

I preferred 7, as it seemed to perform better, but C'est la vie. I want patches and support,

Some of the negative reaction regarding 10 is not about -not- wanting patches and support. It's more to do with how MS handles it. IIRC in all versions of Win 7 (even in the older Vista), updates can be controlled and separated into essential\security, and features\optional updates etc.

This is not just a hypothetical problem, in one of my older but still useful machine, the latest driver for the GPU was not functioning correctly. I had to use an older version driver to get everything to work, if I used the "just update everything", it would have updated me back to the problematic newer GPU driver.

To get to the point, while I actually like many of the offline aspect of 10, their handling and general mindset on how to do updates, is not currently winning my confidence over.

so must get on the WINTEL cash cow train. I mean, how can I justify new faster hardware without a more bloated cow of an OS and apps?

Yep, it's designing and marketing software and hardware via the Harrison Bergeron method. If the figures are true, desktop hardware sales are stagnant. One area of growth can be found in mobile devices.

However I prefer another POV. Desktop hardware has largely reached a "good 'nuff" state for most people. Unless the user wants to run the latest 3D game, or use a high end 3D modelling software, or process super ne pas ultra high def video.

A desktop from 5 years ago can still do most of the average computing needs of most people. WINTEL is in a bind because not everyone is in a rush to upgrade desktop hardware every year. Especially enterprise level business, hell I know some companies who are still on XP level hardware, and still running XP(!?!).