Windows 10 does not take ten minutes to start. If it does on your
computer, it's almost certainly because of what programs you have
autostarting.
Moreover, my personal view is that the attention many people pay to
how long it takes to boot is usually unwarranted. Assuming that the
computer's speed is otherwise satisfactory, it is not generally worth
worrying about. Most people start their computers once a day or even
less frequently. In the overall scheme of things, even a few minutes
to start up isn't very important. Personally I power on my computer
when I get up in the morning, then go get my coffee. When I come back,
it's done booting. I don't know how long it took to boot and I don't
care.
>When I bought that
>computer it was really fast, but at some stage I made the mistake of
>installing Windows 10 on it. That made it really slow.
>
>Besides, Windows 10 introduced the concept of "widgets" and "apps" that
>are grossly inferior to decently designed software. Mostly I avoid them,
I always avoid them.
>but now and then I have to scan a document and then deal with the fact
>that the result then has to be retrieved from some obscure directory
>because there is no provision for me to specify where it really should go.
I don't know what scanning software you use, but I use CanoScan, and
I've never had that problem.
By no means do I think that any version of Windows has been perfect,
nor that all its "widgets" and "apps" are better than the
alternatives. If I were in charge, I would make many changes to
improve it.
However, although I can't change Windows itself, I *can* change the
way it works and make it much more to my liking, by making
configuration changes, by using third -party utility software, and by
choosing better programs than what comes with Windows (or which
Microsoft has for sale).
>If I had a choice, I would upgrade that computer from Windows 10 to
>Windows NT, which was the only member of the Windows family to be faster
>and more efficient than its predecessor.
I've run every version of Windows starting with 2.0. I've never found
any version to be slower than its predecessor. I've also found every
version to be better (better to me) than its predecessor with only two
exceptions: Me (not better, but also not worse) and 8 (much worse, but
that's the only example of that to me).
You didn't say what Windows version you ran on your laptop before 10,
but it might possibly have been a faster version than 10. It's not
uncommon for a newer version of any kind of software to be slower,
because it has improvements, and running those improvements takes
extra time.
However, it's also possible that 10 is not really slower than what you
were running before, but that the reason it was slower on your
computer that you hadn't configured it to run at the speed it's
capable of, and also perhaps that you were running some unneeded
autostarting background programs that slowed things down.
I can't know for sure, of course, but my guess is that it's very
likely that a Windows expert could retune it to make it as fast as it
used to be.