I briefly messed around with a similar setup.

zack4mac wrote:

Hello I know this is not a particular retro question but I use INTEL ATOM D525 with W7 and will soon be forced to switch, there seems to be hell of a lot of optons.

I have used Windows 10 and I dont see any benefit over Windows 7

On an old (for a modern PC), low power system like this, there aren't really any benefits. It's also not crazy to say there aren't any benefits on a powerful modern computer, too. For your little PC, I think Windows 10 will make it even slower. My D525 was quite responsive when using an SSD in Windows 7 though.

...I'm sure I readf that W10 does not suport floppy drives and I am sick of Microsoft who I'm sure once eeryone's switched to W10 will probably start forcing peiople to pay for use model and this is not my idea of computer fun! or perhaps I'm being unfair to Wndows 10 I dont know?

It probably doesn't support floppy drives but I can't see how this is an issue on a modern PC, even for retro gaming. I would have thought any software that needs to use floppies would be incompatible with Windows 10 or the modern Atom hardwarePC in some other way. My D525 didn't have any old school connectors. Do you have some bespoke software for it that needs floppies?

I seriously doubt MS will start charging people to use the version of Windows 10 we have now, the backlash would be immense from individuals, businesses and governments that all use it. I'm sure they get enough money through advertisements, their store and data collection to not need to charge to use the software beyond the initial purchase price. I'm sure they'll launch a direct, monthly charged "OS as a service" at somepoint with more features, or a "gaming" one or something. In a way, it already is OS as a service, it's just currently free at the point of use.

I have tried Linux Mint but found it a little slow allmost like running XP in a vitualmachine "this maybe more my low power ATOM", combersome and hard work when exchanging files via usb, although FTP maybe the answer.

can't really comment on this as I haven't used linux much at all.

I'm thinkng I should at least grab any Windows 7 updates available before judgment day! anyone done the same? […]
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I'm thinkng I should at least grab any Windows 7 updates available before judgment day! anyone done the same?

I dont like paying for cutting edge but would like to be able to run Windows 7 in a virtual machie without any lag. I dont plan on rendering 4K video but I like being able to drag video files arround quickly and maybe have a look at steam. I have allways built AMD but would be willing to go to INTEL mainly because my last AMD chip Phenom 1100T was heavy on power usage!

Any advice would be great, I'm a little out of touch with the latest hardware?

All the best

Depending on your usage I would just bite the bullet and "upgrade" to Windows 10. I used to hate it and switched back to 7. I then tried 10 again and it is much better than it was, and this was three years ago.

It sounds like your needs are fairly "normal use"; no gaming or retro gaming. Windows 10 is quite good for the 80% of people who don't know there way around computers or more advanced OS features in terms of its automation, but it's a bit frustrating for the 20% that are more savvy who have to fight our way through minimalist menu and three different ways to uninstall software to reach a setting we want. Considering this is your "everyday" PC I would be happier with the updates pushed through by MS.

If you're also asking about getting a new PC, the new AMD Ryzen CPUs are almost out (7th July), which means the gen before are getting End of Life and going cheap. Compared to your D525, a two year old AMD 2400G or 2600 won't so much "blow it out of the water" as "nuke it from orbit", several times. In the UK, the 2600 can be had for about £120. It's a 6 core CPU! You might find Windows 10 much more palletable on modern hardware.

if we are talking gaming Windows 10 supports DX12 which some titles use (and more will in the future),
also windowed gaming on windows 10 AFAIK is better, it offers some nice features for gameplay capture, access to exclusive games (like the windows store ones)

support for 7 also ends in less than a year, and a lot of current hardware have difficulties with it for installation and blocked updates,
I really don't see much of a reason for 7 unless you are using older hardware,

if you are using Intel IGPs without WDDM 1.1 drivers I highly recommend 7 over 10, because the CPU usage of wdm.exe kills the performance on 10 with that sort of hardware.

phenom II is from 2009, things have changed, Ryzen is very reasonable in terms of power an very fast, Ryzen 3000 series is looking great,
this is like not buying an A64 because your AMD 486 wasn't as good as Intel.

for retro gaming windows 10 will struggle with some stuff, but you can get pretty much any game working with the help of additional software.

as for floppy disks, are you sure it's not possible with a usb drive?!
recent motherboards don't support internal anyway.

Windows 10 works fine with floppy drives/disks.

However some of the GUI stuff, such as formatting floppy disks, doesn't work properly but it does work fine through the command prompt.

I've been using a USB floppy drive with windows 10 for a couple of years (to interface with very old machines). Works fine.

As for the old Atom D525 processors, uggh, I have never been a fan. I can appreciate the performance of an XT or a 286 for what it is, because it runs the age appropriate software properly and the rest of the hardware is of the same age period and general compatibility. But the Atom is a weird one, it is a very slow processor for the rest of the hardware it is teamed with, so it is difficult to use a lot of the software that would be appropriate for the machine's performance (like DOS or windows 98 in particular, or even windows XP really). Makes it hard to get good use out of it. It very quickly was too slow for modern software, and it's too modern to run old software.

Regarding the Windows 7 to 10 debate, just go with windows 10, but get a more modern machine to do it on, with an SSD.

Not sure what software you need but I’ve found the Atom decent on lightweight Linux distro’s like Tinycore.

you can spend around $100-150 on an ivy bridge laptop like a thinkpad T430 or elitebook 8470p and it will be miles better for 10 than that thing!

Cheers for the responses I have since bought a new i7 laptop and Windows 10 and it is GREAT! Its probably the first time I have said that about any recent Microsoft product 😁

Haha, I wouldn't call Windows 10 great ... but it is technically a pretty solid and robust system. ... but only took Microsoft the better part of 20 years to get it to a decent level of stability and robustness.

But you would have noticed a incredible uptick in performance over the old Atom CPU.