OT Windows 10

[Ron]

Exactly! Always read the fine print!

[rbowman]

You can also opt out of most of the information MS wants to collect about your use of the machine. Savvy users will. The other 97% of the home users won't.

[mike]

Got a link to a tutorial on the subject? Not hard to find snippets on the web, but it would be nice to see a compilation in one spot. I anxiously await the utility that turns off all that crap in one click...and thwarts the updates.

[J0HNS0N]

All my W8.1 devices are Home and stock (no hacks) and up to date. This Asus T100 tablet is the only one that the W10 icon has shown up on the taskbar (so far). My HP Stream 7 tablet nada and my HP Pavilion x360 nada. Since the tablets are stunted in power I was surprised the icon showed up on one of them and not on the laptop with it having more power, RAM, and 15 times the storage.

[Ron]

Again, I have no clue about tablets, but a computer must have these updates installed to get the icon. Ram, storage, power, means nothing. Have you checked your laptop to make SURE you have the following updates? You can also DL the Win 10 ISO from here

For Windows 7 SP1:

KB3035583

KB2952664

For Windows 8.1 Update:

KB3035583

KB2976978

[Vic Smith]

You have to agree to allow MS to collect "some" data before you can use Cortana. I haven't done so. May not have actually "disabled" it, but I'll look into it as I tweak my system.

[Mayayana]

| > Do you really think MS is just going to give an OS away for free and not | > get anything out of it? Maybe it's just to build a huge farm of lab | > rats. The Enterprise edition is not a free upgrade and enterprises are | > where the real money is. The insider program was the explicit beta | > testers; now they've moved to the not so explicit beta tests. | | | I've read articles that have speculated that after the one year free | upgrade that you would have to pay a fee to continue to receive security | updates. It seems farfetched, but who knows. |

It's free for "the supported life of a device". But that's just something Microsoft made up. They support software, not devices. And that time span varies from

2-4 years. So basically they're saying it's free until it isn't. And they've told their investors they expect to recoup the losses in 3 years. Whether that's through subscriptions or projected services income is not clear.

Apple no longer charges for OS updates, but they also charge through the nose for devices and make over $1B/year on their iTunes racket alone. Not to mention their grossly overpriced phones made by slave labor in China, from which Apple also takes a 30% cut of all apps sales. And Apple customers are well known to be suckers who happily wait in line to pay at least full retail for stuff they don't need.

Microsoft doesn't have any of those options. They've been *trying* to copy Apple. They bought Nokia thinking they'd have a ready-made phone business. They made Metro to cash in on apps. They opened the Microsoft Store to go with that. But Microsoft is not Apple. They have no talent for products. They have great talent in writing software and they especially have talent for milking monopolies, which has historically been their only source of profits. (Windows and Office have been consistently the only businesses in the black. And they achieved that by ruthless monopoly maintenance.)

Also, as rbowman put so clearly and has been pointed out by various journalists, Microsoft make surprisingly little from Windows on PCs compared to corporate licenses. The number of people who actually buy upgrades is far smaller still. When Win95 came out people waited in line for it. Recent versions of Windows have had no credible update advantage. And PCs are relatively cheap. So people just get whatever Windows is on the PC they buy. Thus, MS can afford to experiment and try to get an "apps" and services business going. However it works out, they probably won't lose anywhere near what they're losing on search, phones and all their other failed branch businesses.

Full disclosure: I also write software. I love Windows. I think of Macs as a kiddie car with the hood welded shut. Apple is the AOL of the 21st century. I think of Linux as a do-it-yourself car kit with a few pieces missing. Interesting, but not nearly as rich and usable as Windows. (And life is just too short for typing in console windows. :)

Microsoft has made a very workable and flexible tool in the past, precisely because they've been catering to corporate customers. Microsoft has also bent over backward to maintain backward compatibility. Again because they need to support corporate customers. I can write software that runs on Win98 to Win10 with no extra support files needed. Linux "distros" go out of date every 6 months. Apple is the king of forced obsolescence. Only Microsoft supports their older products.

But MS have also shown themselves, time and again, to be sleazy and untrustworthy. And their Windows product is simply going downhill. I wish it weren't. I'd love to love the recent versions of Windows. But I can't. Frankly I think Microsoft is probably less sleazy than Google, Facebook, Adobe and certainly Apple. But I don't really use the products of those companies, so I don't criticize them as much. (And there's no sense arguing with an AppleSeed. One might just as well discuss salvation with a Jehovah's Witness or a Mormon. :)

[Mayayana]

| Quit spreading | >> FUD. | > | > | > | > | I read that earlier, all I can say is that it did not happen to me. |

There was a discussion about this on Slashdot. It seems that if you pick "custom install" you get to pick your options. Otherwise MS switches them. This is the oldest trick in the book when it comes to software. It's like putting settings behind a button marked "Advanced". (Which is how MS prevents nearly all IE users from blocking 3rd-party cookies, which by definition are spyware.) The settings options are there... for geeks and tweakers... but the vast majority of people will never know. So for all practical purposes Microsoft is switching people to Edge.

There are often strong feelings on both sides with issues like this, but I think "spreading FUD" would be difficult with Windows 10. It *is* a radically different system. The privacy policy lays claim to everything you do. They intend to show ads and push you to buy their services. People can say, "Oh, but I stopped the spyware and disabled Cortana along with all the other services." That might work. As long as they stay offline they might have privacy while still having functional Windows. (Though the new privacy policy explicitly says you can't stop Win10 calling home.) But for the vast majority of people there's a lot of information about this version of Windows that they *should* know about.

[trader_4]

More lies. First you imply that I'm a paid poster for MSFT. Now you're lying about "chicken little". I didn't try to scare anyone or tell anyone that they had to upgrade. All I did was point out that if you have Win 7 you have a year to upgrade for free. And if you don't, then you're left on an OS that MSFT already ended mainstream support for in Jan 2105. That means no more bug fixes, improvements, updates unless they are security related. If you want to stay in that environment, that's fine. But for me and I would think most users, the preferred path is to move over for free to the latest OS.

You claimed it made no difference, that Win7 will be fully supported, etc, all apps will run. I quickly answered that challenge with the simple example of Internet Explorer. When MSFT discontinued mainstream support for XP, new releases of IE would no longer install on XP and not long after that you started to have trouble with the older IE no longer being compatible with some websites. I know, because I went through that experience.

Your fundamental problem is you're one of the MSFT bashers, that just hates MSFT. If MSFT wasn't giving a free update, you'd be here bitching about that. If it's free, then it's no good either. Why don't you just use Linux and give up?

[trader_4]

Another tin hat MSFT basher.

Do you really, really, think MSFT is going to start charging Ed a fee to use Win10 that he just installed, 4 years from now? We should all forgo a free upgrade, just on some purely and highly speculative nonsense that you claim might happen? And if it does, it's going to happen anyway, because OS's don't last forever.

And they've told their investors they expect to

And an Apple basher too. Are you related to Ralph Nader? Bernie Sanders perhaps?

[Mayayana]

| >> disabled Cortana. | > | >Now, ask Cortana the weather - does it respond? | | You have to agree to allow MS to collect "some" data | before you can use Cortana. I haven't done so. | May not have actually "disabled" it, but I'll look into it as I tweak | my system.

Who would care about that, anyway? You can enable Cortana, ask the weather, and she'll probably say, "It's going to be a nice day, Vic. You should go to the beach! Do you want a coupon for 10% off sunscreen at the CVS 2 blocks from where you are now?" Or if you really want to know the weather you can get the real thing:

I'm continually surprised by how many people are still wowed by the latest gadgets, like children entranced by George Jetson. Siri and Cortana serve no relevant purpose aside from feeding futuristic fantasies and providing party conversation. Yet people persist in dreaming that some amazing, Edenic future is just around the corner. Maybe if they come out with a "space age" Cortana full size sex toy with "high tech silicone" organs, I might be curious to take it for a spin. On the other hand, I can't quite see Bill Gates and Satya Nadella having the right touch for such a product. :) Aside from that, in general I prefer that my computer not talk to me.

[Mayayana]

|

|

That's one of the first critical pieces I've seen. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out over the next month.

| I have no problem with trader_4 or Aunt Tilly upgrading to 10 if they so | choose. However, they can save their Chicken Little act

I suppose it's human nature that people want to feel they're making the right decision. We trust the flim flam man even more after we've paid him. That's the price of not being a fool. :)

[trader_4]

In my experience, when I've upgraded to a new MSFT OS it's always been a good thing. And this one is free for the next year for Win 7 users like me. You prefer to focus on all the theoretical, what ifs, assume the worst is going to happen. I've had 30 years experience now with MSFT and for me, that hasn't happened. I'm a satisfied customer and you look like the typical tin hat wearing MSFT basher to me. Why don't you just switch to Linux and stop worrying about what MSFT is doing?

[Ed Pawlowski]

That has good and bad sides to is. Going back to DOS and early Widows, if you worked on ten computers, there would be ten variations of updates or changes. Every program you bought has some tweak to it that made it "better" than original Windows and ended up causing crashes or other incompatibilities. Play this game and then reboot because it did something to the video or the like. Our accounting program must be exited by their menu, not the corner X or ALT F6. With mandatory updates, everyone should be closer to having the same core program and hopefully, less overall problems. That remains to be seen.

[Ed Pawlowski]

My car is capable of voice commands and I do use it while driving for a few things. It works, it makes sense. It allows me to keep eyes on traffic.

I don't want to sit at my desk and talk to the machine. Or in an airport with a laptop. Or any other circumstance. I can type and click a mouse button, thank you.

Keep me posted about the Beta test on toys though. I may volunteer to help, in the name of science.

[Vic Smith]

Jesus H. Christ, you should shut up before you dig yourself deeper. I don't hear any voices from Win 10, and I never used Cortana. But I don't begrudge those that do. It's entirely up to them.

[Vic Smith]

He's probably dual or triple booting machines with multiple OS's. Plenty of them out there. You should hold off as long as you can on Win 10 though. It's not exactly the cat's meow.

[Mayayana]

| Tell that to the Windows Media Center CableCARD users who have been kicked to the curb by Windows 10. | FWIW, Windows Media Center and Silicon Dust HDHomeRun Prime make an awesome whole-home DVR system. | | Oh well, I've got until Jan 2020 to find a replacement.

I'm afraid I don't know anything about Windows Media Center. I didn't realize they were leaving you in the lurch. I was just talking about the support for existing software. Microsoft does a lot to maintain the "API" functions that software uses because corporate customers tend to build custom software. If a new version of Windows breaks that software then the corporate customers won't buy it and Microsoft loses their biggest cash source.

[Mayayana]

| >| Which makes it the same as Win 7 as far as the internet is concerned. | >| Nowhere does it call it "spyware." | > | > Suit yourself. It is true that Microsoft doesn't | >call Win10 spyware. So I guess that settles that. :) | > | | Yep. Do you think they're illegally "spying" on users? |

You're twisting words. First you said the terms never mention spyware. Of course they don't! That's deceptive phrasing. Now you insert the qualifier "illegally". In Eurpoe it's probably illegal. In the US it almost certainly isn't. Privacy laws are now years behind the technology and it's unclear if or when they'll catch up. Google claims the right to rifle through your email and save copies after you've deleted them. Microsoft is now making the same claims, not only for their webmail but also for Windows. *They're conflating the terms for the two products.*

You either don't care about that or you don't want to know. I do care. It's spyware. They have no right by the laws of common decency. Whether they're acting legally according to the laws of our current American corporatocracy is not my basis for assessing Win10.

| You couldn't even view a photo somebody posted to a public site, | and I should listen to you? |

You weren't paying attention. I couldn't view the photo probably because I don't have script enabled and the poster didn't know how to post the image so that it could be easily viewed. You're using IE11 with script enabled. I pointed out that's highly risky. You don't want to know.

We both ended up seeing the picture, but I didn't risk security to do it.

[Mayayana]

| Jesus H. Christ, you should shut up before you dig yourself deeper. | I don't hear any voices from Win 10, and I never used Cortana.

I know that. I was posting in support of your position.