right. speaking of updating I still do think its very important not least because wanna cry and spectre really drove some points home. So its nice that windows does have active hours and tries to respect those and will not bug you with updates. If you can get a hold of the group policy editor, (there is a batch file that enables it even on the most basic home versions) you can disable updates for drivers from there and this is good because sometimes sound drivers get updated and they can really screw up your sound. If you cannot find the file then copy and paste this into notepad, then save the file as, an in the type drop down combo box select all files, then add the extension  .bat at the end of the file name,  then run it as administrator (by pressing the applications key on it and selecting the option).
@echo off
pushd "%~dp0"

dir /b %SystemRoot%\servicing\Packages\Microsoft-Windows-GroupPolicy-ClientExtensions-Package~3*.mum >List.txt
dir /b %SystemRoot%\servicing\Packages\Microsoft-Windows-GroupPolicy-ClientTools-Package~3*.mum >>List.txt

for /f %%i in ('findstr /i . List.txt 2^>nul') do dism /online /norestart /add-package:"%SystemRoot%\servicing\Packages\%%i"
pause

Yeah I wouldn't recommend turning off UAc unless you enjoy the thought of programs elevating themselves to admin privileges without your knowledge, and running whatever they want to, including installing spyware, malware and viruses as well as rootkits and whatever else a malicious program will do.

When I first heard about the UAC and how much of a pain it could be, I thought I'd just turn the damn thing off if I ever upgraded to a version of Windows that had it. But now I wouldn't consider doing that, better safer than sorrier.

well I turn UAC off because it's a pain in the arse and when it pops up a message asking if you want it to allow something to run, you hit alt y. nice and simple and handy for us people that can't use a mouse. pretty sure since that system's been about for about 10 years now, the programmers of nasty software are aware of that too and either bypassing the uac or putting in an automatic thing to alt Y it when it pops up isn't exactly rocket science.

oh plus I have my firewall in eset security set on learning mode or which ever one it is. I can't remember off the top of my head. that tends to stop stuff installing if it's not meant to and will come up and ask if i'm installing something that's got other crap bundled with it I may not want. including google sodding tool bar. I've blocked that so it'll never try to install again. I hate google toolbar!

I have UAC off, for me too it's the first thing I do because of how much it bugs you when you're first setting up a new system, but I still get the access denied permissions dialog when transferring to and from my external HD.

When I was using Windows 7, I prefer to turn UAC off. But back when I using 10, I didn't have to turn the thing off.

Seriously? 15 to 20 seconds? That's unacceptable. I rest my case.

I never had any problems with the UAC being lag with screen reader. I used it with NVDA and when the UAC pops up, NVDA comes up and reads the prompt immediately

I find the permissions settings confusing as fuck. They make clicking the continue button every time seem not so bad. I'm sure I'll figure it out, but I don't want to just randomly start making alterations I don't properly understand. Edit... Turned out to be quite easy once I got the right page of the dialog. One other thing I'm noticing is that the screen reader focus is getting stuck a lot when on the start taskbar and tray area. After you exit something and try to tab, nothing happens, and you have to hit windows m or d to get focus back. Also there doesn't appear to be first letter navigation in the start menu where documents music etc appear. And I don't like the fact when I open a folder like music from the start menu, jaws doesn't say anything when it opens. In win 7 it speaks as soon as focus switches to the newly opened folder. I don't know how much of this is because it's an upgrade not a clean install, or how much is jaws and win 10, but it's just slightly less smooth than win 7. Win 7 is quicker to get going after boot, and seems just a bit smoother all round. At the moment 10 feels a tiny bit less responsive. I'm not connected to the net so I don't know if 10 is wondering why none of it's data gathering has an outlet lol.

At least I know now when I switch my main PC, it's not going to be painful. Win 10's narrator sounds great, and I'm sure there'll be other perks that make me not miss Win 7. At the moment, apart from the fact I can use the Zoom as an ASIO interface, it's just a slightly different environment. But it was well worth it just for the zoom thing. I'll have to seriously get to grips with Reaper as the CakeTalking scripts for sonar aren't compatible with 10. By the way, I've come round to the fact audacity can be a right pain in the arse compared to Reaper when doing certain tyeps of editing.

Can I perform a clean install of Windows 10 onto a Windows 7 computer and activate it with the OEM Windows 7 key? I'm thinking about doing this once Windows 7 reaches end of life or sooner. I despise Windows 7 and think 10 is much more streamlined. The constant improvements to Narrator are also extremely awesome.

Windows 10 isn't perfect either. I still want the simple user interface and program compatibility from Windows XP. However, it's much better than Windows 7 and is okay after I install several tweaks like Classic Shell.

I've never been particularly bothered by the permissions thing. I never use NTFS on external drives because I work with both macOS and Windows. The only annoyance is the dialog when copying to protected locations like Program Files(X86). I don't frequently copy data to that folder so it's a minor nuisance.

I think it should work. If not, it definitely will if you use the phone activation.