Installing Win 10 pro on a XPS 8960 or new win 11 Dell EBT 2250 desktop

@ejn63​ Thank you for your input !

@redxps630​ Thank you for the useful input. Up until recently, I ran an old XPS 410 with Win XP - loved it. It readily accepted all my telecom engineering and mapping programs, as does Win 10 and 11. However, I've just heard too many horror stories about how slow 11 is, and have seen it on the new company laptop. I'm not overly concerned about lack of updates and support, since it will be standalone and isolated from other systems and even from extensive internet connection. I just want to make sure that if I invest in a new 2250, I'm not confined to win 11 by the hardware.

Any suggestions as to which hardware configurations/specs/brands that I should keep in mind for doing a clean win 10 install, and lessening the possibility of driver update issues ?

@redxps630​ That's very useful information. You've been a big help. Thanks !

@DellDirtDiver​ 

As mention previously, W10 is NOT out of Support... for a FEE MS will continue 'security fixes

 on it. I've see some people charged $30 for a SINGLE YEAR, will not go past it. Others purchased large size Cloud for I think $50 for a year, and in Europe, it is free, and some US users got it for free too. In all cases it is for ONE YEAR.

Check this out ---> https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/whats-new/extended-security-updates

I don't know why people just don't like W11? I've gone from Windows 3, 3.1 WinNT, OS/2, Win7, 8, 10, and 11.

Those mostly lately have been incremental changes, but have the same capability. 

Biggest problem I had going from 10 to 11 is that THINGS moved. However, operationally, basically the same.

My wife's old  PC, and XPS8500 had Win10 on it... and I did get her the EBT2250 tower... which of course has W11 installed.

Day one, I don't like it was her base complaint. I am running Win11 on my XPS8940 and I worked with her on what she didn't like. Once I was able to show her how to get to something or put and icon on the desktop for it, within 2 weeks she was perfectly fine with it. Biggest complain was lower left 'window' icon on the Taskbar. Once shown how to use it stopped complains about finding and doing things. Next up, the PERSONALIZATION that needed to be done... default settings she didn't like, like font size, and other issues... once I got her setup how she liked things, no further complaints.

May not be your case, but not everyone has/had a problem. 

Give it a try, and if you need help doing something, there are Windows forums for that.

You might find these links useful:

https://www.elevenforum.com/t/how-to-make-windows-11-look-like-windows-10-in-2-minutes.15518/

https://www.pcworld.com/article/541452/make-windows-11-look-like-windows-10.html

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/3900728/make-windows-11-look-and-behave-like-windows-10

https://www.computerworld.com/article/3832570/make-windows-11-work-like-windows-10.html

@ispalten​ Great info - thanks ! The main reason that I don't want win 11 is that just about everyone I've talked to says that it's much slower than win 10 - it's not just about locations of icons, etc. Co workers who were forced to upgraded to win 11 on company machines say they hate it for that very reason. redxps630 above said it's because of the larger files, etc. And like I mentioned above, I'm not overly concerned with the update issue - I've been running XP since 2007 and have taken great care to stay away from technical issues. I'm definitely going to go with a ebt2250 tower and, since it comes with win 11, will see how it goes. But I have win 10 on several different computers and am VERY pleased with win 10. However, the links you provided look promising - but like I said, system speed is VERY important to me.

BTW - I find it interesting that one of the links points me to "Make Win 11 look and behave like win 10" on a MS learning site. That tells me a lot about win 11 in and of itself.

@DellDirtDiver​ 

First of all, many people RESIST change... and it happens on a lot of OS's, especially with 'visual' changes.

The other point is as the OS evolves, it gets bigger, but then again, so does the h/w. The EBT2250 my wife has has an Intel 265Ultra i7 vs. my 11700I7 CPU, more cores and faster overall on the EBT2250 not to mention the faster RAM. Also a faster SSD.

With all that though, the 'feel' of using her PC vs. mine is about the same. Sure, her PC will load a program faster, but I can't 'feel' that.

What is important is the performance of the new OS on any h/w.

I didn't bother doing that as I know the EBT2250 would be faster, but those are base raw measurements. What really counts are the 'feel', usage and if you see a marked difference, which I do not.

Again, resisting change is normal, especially what it doesn't 'look' the same.

Give it a try, but even the 8960 might not perform as well as you think going back to W10. You can try, but with lack of Security support, is it really worth it?

Heck, if my wife can go from W10 to W11, and after some adjustments and 'personalization' she doesn't care, I'm sure a lot of people can do that.

@ispalten​ Thanks for all the feedback-this is great!

@DellDirtDiver​ 

Oh, I forget one little point.

See my XPS8940 came with W10, but shortly later Win11 was released. I upgraded...

Well, it 'felt' slow, like you had mentioned....

My 8940 came with a hard drive for C:... and I figured it was time to make the XPS work better. Wife's 8500 already had an SSD for C:, and well, it started faster and loaded programs faster.

So I got, at the time, a good SSD... marked improvement, but only in booting and loading 'some programs'.  My wife's PC only had 8GB's or RAM and seemed to perform better than my PC on W11. I had 16GB's of RAM...

Soooo I decided to upgrade to 32GB's of RAM... like night and day the performance improvement. No long using ALL RAM, and overall I didn't seem to SWAP at all? Minimum size of the Swap file never changed.

When I bought the EBT2250 it was with 32GB's, 2x16GB Dual Channel RAM DDR sticks.

So, maybe 16GB's might not be enough for good performance. 

When the 8940 came out, 16GB's was enough for most users, not today.

@ispalten​ good points- I’m planning on at least 32GB of RAM