Changing Stored Passwords in IE11

[Nick]

Win7 is supported  till at least 2012 and still being sold on decent Lenovo laptop. Better and more compatible than Win8 or Win10.
Even WINE on Linux is better than Win8 or Win10.

2012? Windows 7 ended mainstream support in January 2015; extended support  (only available for Windows 7 systems with SP1) ends in Jan 2020 - this covers only those security fixes that can be done given the architectural limitations of Windows 7... nb. Support for Windows 7 without SP1 ended in April 2013.

Windows 8 was a transitory release but Windows 10 has been excellent - extremely stable, more secure internal architecture than previous Microsoft desktop releases and better memory footprint than 8 - it was a free upgrade for a reason.

To state that "Even Wine on Linux is better than Win8 or Win10" is a bit strange - what metrics are you using to justify that statement? Wine is, by definition, not a Windows emulator - it's has no relation to Windows 7,8, 8.1, 10 or whatever but it does seek to track changes in the Windows API - it's an application compatibility layer that emulates Windows APIs and some DLLs to allow Windows apps to hopefully run on a Linux box - even WineHQ state in their FAQ that many modern Windows apps & games may have problems, though legacy apps mostly do OK.

Windows 10 is excellent and if you can upgrade (and it is an upgrade) you should. However remember that all things have a life-cycle and older peripherals may not have a current driver, so check first. Windows 10 also needs at least 2Gb of RAM, but RAM is cheap (if your machine can handle it!)... Best performance upgrade for your PC? Normally, just more RAM, then replace the hard drive with an SSD. All apps that run on 7 should do so on 10 .

We have about 200 Windows 10 systems - got rid of the last Windows 7 about 3 months ago - the 10s are all as stable as a rock.

Stick with 7 if you want or if you have to, but upgrade to 10 if you can.

We do a lot of security testing - external (and internal) penetration test audits shred Windows 7 systems and their presence guarantees us a fail due to known issues - at the moment, 10 is a whole lot better.

The tools for testing we use are a mix of internal and industry standard commercial frameworks, eg. Nessus & Metasploit - these are heavyweight tools, updated daily - Nessus alone has over 60,000 current exploits it uses (though these are not just for Windows- it tests everything - all operating systems, routers, switches, SANs etc etc.) and Metasploit is the serious hacker's framework of choice - my security team (& I) also use others...

Whilst it's difficult to defend against zero-day attacks or idiots, keeping your architecture up-to-date is a good start; burying your head in the sand is not!