Pre-anniversary Windows 10 is definitely... worse... than Windows 7. But not unusable ... for me. Might be for you.
Windows 10 Anniversary Edition
2 months later
Not sure what happened, but yesterday I used my Windows 10 LTSB 2015 for some time after some new upgrades had been installed, and afterwards I was pretty much dead the whole day. When I woke up, I had headaches and my eyes were dry and hurt.
15 days later
KM, I was afraid that would happen. Even in the LTSB they are sneaking in whatever changes they made to support composition spaces and the creator's update. 
3 months later
With Windows 7 support ending in 2020, and many of us ok under Windows 7 but not Windows 10 1607 and later. I've been thinking, may Windows 8.1 be OK to get some us by to 2023 (This case Microsoft doesn't fix Windows 10 by Windows 7 support end date)? I realize this doesn't help any of you at work but maybe for home users it might be worth looking at. I'm going to give it a shot myself because I am worried that MS will not fix this issue, and security updates until 2023 would be amazing.
I'll report my results in a few weeks.
degen
IIRC you should be able to use Win7 drivers in Win8 without any problems.
It seems the colour reproduction is 'off' in Windows 10 - it seems ever so slightly whiter than the usual milky white in Windows 7 and previous versions. In my work using Excel for approx 8 hours a day, switching from a W10 system to W7 was night and day difference. The black text and white contrast is much softer, maybe W10 renders fonts differently but the black on white is much more intense.
Hopefully by the time 2020 comes around new display types will start coming through. Until then in theory with more and more people using these problem devices, complaints due to dithering/PWM etc should gain ground.
- Edited
I noticed that legit licenses are back up for sale on Newegg for Windows 7 for $140 - $150. Last time I checked a few months ago they were basically sold out (I thought permanently) and if you wanted one you needed to spend $500+. Windows 8.1 on there as well.
If a new laptop comes with the latest Windows 10 version pre-installed, how does one "downgrade" to earlier versions?
I plan to downgrade or install version 1511 (or below), but not sure how do do this. Can I just download a new ISO or simply re-install Windows 10 from scratch? Would that install the first version of Windows 10, and I just download and install the updates from there? Or if I download Windows 10 from Microsoft's website, it will automatically comes with the latest version already, so there is no way to downgrade?
- Edited
Kray You can download any version of Windows, direct from MSFT, using these tools: https://forums.mydigitallife.net/threads/techbench-unlocked-download-all-msdn-isos-direct-from-msft.72165/
@mkuba50's Techbench DUMP is working best right now.
Looks like MSFT refreshed Threshold 2 (build 1511) ISO in April 2016.
End of life for build 1511 was apparently October 2017 (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/13853/windows-lifecycle-fact-sheet) however as of November 2 they are still issuing updates to it (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4052232).
If you laptop came new with a new build, you won't be able to downgrade to 1511, however you could clean install 1511.
However, I don't know enough about how licensing works to know if you will be able to activate it using your original license.
9 days later
3 months later
- Edited
I've been playing around with disabling desktop composition in Windows 7 to see if it affects my eyestrain at all (it is forced to always on in Windows 8 and higher), and one thing I noticed was that with it disabled scrolling in any browser and especially with smooth scrolling enabled becomes an absolute disaster with horizontal lines, screen shaking and jittery.
Despite reading I still fundamentally do not understand what a window manager or desktop composition is or how it could have these effects.
degen A window manager just manages to draw windows around programs (with borders and minimize/maximize/close buttons etc.). In OS's like Linux you have many choices.
A compositor pushes itself between programs and the final(?) screen output. It lets programs write to a buffer in the background and presents the final output on its own. Typically it's 3D accelerated but also no acceleration is possible (as you said not really under Windows 8+).
I have always noticed with my very old ATI cards (like Radeon X2300) that disabling Windows 7's 3D composition disables eye strain. And even further back in time, when there was no 3D desktop (Windows XP), the eye strain kicked in as soon as I changed my 3dfx Voodoo 3's brightness via the graphics driver tab or whenever I set the screen to rotate by 90 degrees (for monitor's pivot mode). All those modes must have something in common.
KM My suspicion is that the compositor is doing video-framebuffer-accelerated hijinks. In Anniversary Edition they changed the compositor to prepare hardware vendors for the changes in Creator's Update, which allowed hardware vendors to insert things like overlays and highlights and filters into the composition layer directly... so I suspect the compositor is using some flickery stupid painful mode now, instead of the nice stable framebuffer that was present in 2015 editions.
8 months later
Grrr.. I was upgraded at work today to a new laptop since I had mine for 3+ years. They gave me a Thinkpad T480. I am not celebrating. Once again (unbelievable) it's a 1366x768 screen (dull and lifeless to boot). Before they gave me the laptop I asked what build they were going to put on, they said LTSB 2015. So I was happy to hear that, also thinking I'd get the 1980x1024 version. They gave me LTSB 2016 instead. Other than the fact I hate the Windows 10 interface because I seem to have to hunt for everything (and the font rendering in all sorts of windows is a bit inconsistent which helps cement my opinion that Aero was the last properly done UI from MS.), it is not comfortable for me. I'm in the Power User group, so I am going to try and update to the latest video driver from Lenovo, but I doubt that this is going to resolve anything. So I will likely have to ask tomorrow if I can have my old HP with the HD 4000 on Windows 7 back or if they can wipe the T480 and put 2015 on it instead.
As a side complaint, the only video output port on the T480 is HDMI. Lenovo removed displayport too now. Trash.
Postscript: I've asked for different remedies today so I'll see what they say. In the short term, I have observed that the Thinkpad usb dock (shaped like a box, not a snap-in base) contains a displayport. Using that displayport output the video was subtly a little better than the hdmi output which doesn't really surprise me. The vga output on the box is terrible though.
The good news is that I'm pretty sure MS is aware of the issue - the latest versions of Windows 10 seem MUCH better than Anniversary edition. Not as good as 2015 releases, but getting there.
