Windows 10 Experience on W530 -- I went back to Win 7

[sbisel]

I upgraded my W530 from Win 7 Pro to Win 10 ... the lack UltraNav driver compatibility has driven me back to Win 7.

I did not mind the Win10 interface, the Start menu seems fine. The laptop seemed to perform better too. One thing I liked ... the fingerprint reader became active much sooner when boot in Win 10 than Win 7. In Win 7, the fingerprint reader took 30 seconds or so before it became active.

I installed the latest drivers and they showed that they supposed to be compatible with Win 10, but the UltraNav function was horrible. I missed the momentum function. After playing around, I decided to install the Win 7 UltraNav drivers. That restored the momentum ... but it was erratic. Sometimes the momentum was enabled and sometimes it was not. Other aspects of the UltraNav were also erratic. For example, sometimes the two-finger scroll worked and sometimes it did not. I also found that the scroll right and left was erratic ... on both the UltraNav touchpad and the red eraser button.

I used the Lenovo tools to then update all Lenovo drivers, etc to Win 10. After updating, the ThinkVantage button on the keyboard (the small button to the right of the microphone mute button) no longer functioned. It brought up some obtuse display in Win 10. Also the Fn-F5 button did not work either. Normally that brings up the Wireless Network window ... but after updating the Lenovo drivers it brought up something else. I did not have clue on how to make go back to what it should be.

Another aspect of Win10 that was strange ... the volume control bar instead of appearing in a large horizontal bar graph on the bottom of display, appeared as a small vertical bar graph in the upper left part of the screen, sandwiched between the first and second column of desktop icons.

I also found that after boot up or after waking up from sleep mode, that the three icons indicators for keyboard back light and over head light would come on and stay on ... they would not fade away after a few seconds. I had to use the Fn-Spacebar keys to go through them so that would fade away. Very annoying.

I did not like the fact that Win10 did not allow me to copy a menu folder on the desktop as a shortcut. Maybe I just did not know how to do that, but in Win 7, you can right click and drag to copy a folder as a shortcut.

Summarizing ... I have gone back to Win7 as there really are not compelling reason to use Win10 yet. I did not see any feature or function in Win 10 that I yearned for. Maybe sometime June 2016 I might try to upgrade to Win10 again ... before the free upgrade offer goes away. Maybe by that time the drivers will be stable and compatible.

Regards,

Steve

[Hexagonal]

Hi Sbisel,

I was wondering if anyone had done a W530 upgrade to Win 10. Thanks for posting your experience.

The things you speak about on the UI/UX, I'm familiar with already with Win 8.1, so they do not bother me.

That being said, if the scrolling and trackpad/trackpoint may be erratic...then I would like to try this myself.

My biggest question, though, is whether the drivers and performance of Optimus and the Quadro card kick in when needed. I use Premiere Pro for editing/grading video and I am hoping that Win 10 drivers would be mature enough to allow the machine to fully use its hardware resources.

Also, strangely enough, under Win 8.1, in order to have a working VGA monitor (with UXGA resolution) and a 2.5K 30" monitor plugged on DPort I need to disable Optimus on BIOS and run exclusively on NVIDIA graphics and switch to Optimus back again whenever I am going to run on battery mode so as to make sure I maximise battery life. I am hoping that Win 10 will solve this issue... hence another reason why I would like to try the upgrade.

[jedisurfer1]

How is the windows 10 experience 6 months later. Is there an easy upgrade path for this? I use it in a vm and find no improvement, probably going to stay with win7 for another 5 years. My uncle wants help going to win10 on his w530 when he visits this summer.