Updates, Upgrades ... Sigh!

In addition to my old MacBook (early 2008), I have an old Presario running on Windows 7. I recently received intimation that Windows 10 Tech Preview could be downloaded and installed on a test machine, in order to help with development as an "Insider." This Preview should have been, by all accounts, installable on any machine capable of running Windows 7. Well, it wasn't.

Having downloaded the relevant ISO file, expanding it onto a boot USB and clicking "Setup" -- all as per instructions -- I got the error that it couldn't be installed because my processor did not support NX. This was after the Setup file had made some invisible changes to my Windows 7, apparently (though I didn't realize this at first.)

Puzzled, I did some research, which pointed me to a tool supplied by MS called "Coreinfo." This could only be run from a Command Prompt in Administrator mode. I downloaded this and ran it and guess what? My processor showed up as being capable of supporting all three features Windows 10 was seeking -- PAE, NX (No Execute) and SSE2. This, Coreinfo indicates by an "*" next to the relevant item in a long list. If it were not supportive, it would have a "-" instead. As a last resort before giving up, I posted my experience in the MS Forums.

I did get a helpful reply telling me that, in case Windows 10 Tech Preview didn't recognize the support-capability of my processor, I would have to turn on a switch in the BIOS settings. I eagerly booted into the Presario's BIOS, but, sadly, there was no switch. Which meant that it was too old a laptop to have it and, in order to get the switch probably, one would have to wait for the manufacturer to push out a new BIOS update. As the last such update from them was way back in 2010, I didn't see this happening in the near future, and decided to abandon Windows 10 Tech Preview.

Meanwhile, thanks to the invisible changes I mentioned earlier, I had to reinstall Windows 7 on my Presario, so that I could boot into it again and keep running it as a test machine on various Windows programs. (Sigh.)

I'd like to contrast the above experience with that of my MacBook (early 2008), on which I tried to install free updates and upgrades. The pictures (alongside and below) are self-explanatory. In short, I was told before I made the huge download (thus saving me bandwidth costs) that my good old MacBook wasn't made to install the updates. The only issue (a niggle, really) is that it would have been nice if the updates and upgrades didn't show up at all in my App Store when my Macbook wasn't capable of installing them. Something for Apple to think about?