The few times I tried 8.1, it looked just awful on my hardware. But, I never tried it with the driver I use on W10.. I'm out of HD space, but maybe I can clear out some stuff from the W7 partition to free up about 40 gigs or so, so I can see if 8.1 can work at all for me. W10 is heavier on my dual-core CPU, and I haven't been happy with the bugs MS keeps introducing into W10.

    Sunspark

    Maybe W10 LTSC 2021, when it is released in Nov alongside 21H2, will be perfect for you. Comes pre debloated courtesy of Microsoft, and will get updates for 5 years. I don't recommend 8.1 unless absolutely necessary since software is dropping support for it just like 7 (even though 8.1 technically has MS support until 2023, this hasn't been respected by developers).

        degen I’ve also just got an eye patch now since it was recommended to me here recently. Maybe it will help.

        Have you had time to test the eye patch?

            tfouto

            It should not be any different than W10 21H1 in that regard. For me, it probably won’t be so great.

              mike

              I seem to be able to tolerate otherwise intolerable software while using the eye patch. Also my concentration is better.

                  Windows 8.1 is so good to my eyes. Paper like.

                  12 days later

                  Sunspark I was looking at which files were changed in the latest 1507 LTSB KB (Nov 2021). Interestingly, the last time edits occurred to some display stuff like dwmapi.dll was 8 Jan 2021, the January cumulative update, as you mentioned.

                  Unfortunately MS has removed this update the December update from the Catalog.

                      degen Can one use this file dwmapi.dll from Windows 8.1 on latest version of Windows 10? Replace this file?

                        dev