Dual boot system and partitions: does this setup make sense?

Thirith

I'm getting my wife a new laptop for Christmas. For reasons best left unexplained (because they don't make all that much sense to me either) she doesn't want a Windows 10-only computer, so I'm thinking of installing both W7 and W10 on it. Under these circumstances, does it make sense to create three partitions, one for W7 and programs, one for W10 and programs, and one for data/documents that can easily be accessed from either OS? Or am I overthinking things and two partitions are perfectly fine, as long as both OSes point to the same libraries?

bowen

I mean, it'll work, I guess.

TBH it'd be better just to pick one or the other. If someone hates windows 10 because it's filled with advertisements, garbage, spying shit.. you know, fair enough, just use windows 7.

Thirith

How future-proof is Windows 7, though? That's the thing I'm most worried about: setting up a nice W7 installation and then realising, less than a year down the road, that its individual parts stop functioning one by one.

bowen

The driver subsystem on both is roughly equivalent. Things that don't work well: newer intel CPUs, software that needs windows 10 (directX 12+).

If you don't need both of those things, windows 7 should work fine for the next 5+ years.

Microsoft is ending their extended support in the first quarter of 2020 if that matters to you.

Thirith

Cool, thanks, that does help.

wunderbar

actually, a word of warning, if the new laptop is running a kaby lake or newer intel processor (so 7xxx or higher) Windows 7 actually isn't supported on it. There are no windows updates for it after April 2017.

bowen

psh beat you too it wunderbar

Thirith

I didn't know that! Guess I'm lucky - it's a 6xxx processor.