I might start a project to teach a couple of non-tech people how to work with computers at some point. I’d love to hook them up with Linux and libre/open office but the pragmatical reality is that they’re gonna need the Windows know-how for employment reasons at least at first.
Problem with that is that Windows is expensive (only in hardware. who buys Microsoft software?). They’re bloated and require progressively more advanced hardware to do the same thing they’ve done in the 90s. I’m trying to come up with ways to reduce costs to work with minimal hardware but my experience on that is only on the Linux front.
Does anybody have any experience with something like that, for example running some cracked Windows 7/XP, that could help?
Well you can use something like W10privacy to gut a lot of stuff out of Windows on Pro versions and above (Enterprise/Edu). You can disable lots of unnecessary services and features when you really dig in. Uninstall Cortana, various things like that.
There’s also Windows LTSC which is a special version of enterprise that’s stripped down and made for low power devices like embedded. You could use that. MAS supports it too.
But really if you’re dealing with very low resource devices it might be Linux or nothing.
Also as far as I know w10-11 are more efficient than win8. At least 10 can be. It shouldn’t be noticeably worse than Win7 after you make necessary privacy changes and uninstall system app crap.