1. Why upgrade? Windows 7 seems like a good, stable OS that stays out of my way and lets me get work done. Newer versions have these funky tiles and touch interface, neither of which I want or can even use.
2. I've heard if I let my Win 7 install "important Windows updates", one of the updates is nagware to persuade me to update to Win10. Can that be turned off? Will it violate my privacy?
3. The article says you get up to 31 days to try Win10 and still be able to roll back to your previous OS. Why only 31 days? Why not 60? Why not 10,000? Does some irrevocable change occur to the hard disk after 31 days that renders it incapable of supporting Windows 7?
4. Will it cost money to update to 10 after next year? I'm not necessarily opposed to paying for an upgrade if it's worth it -- it's a product that they spent millions of dollars developing, after all -- but I don't like feeling pressured. I'm just barely getting settled in with Win7, after all!
5. Are there any reasons to stay away from 10? I've heard the anti-privacy scare stories. Anything else? E.g. NSA back doors, or removed support for interacting with Linux, or some such?
[1] (Originally I bought the NUC to be a quiet, compact Linux server/workstation, but unfortunately the i5 model can't seem to run any of the Linux distros I threw at it, whereas Windows installed flawlessly. My main desktop has become a Mac Mini, actually :) [EDIT asterisks don't work :(]
2. I think there is an option to ignore individual updates. You could probably utilize that to get that to go away.
3. Windows 10 literally saves a copy of your whole system running Windows 7 on the hard disk. That is deleted after 31 days.
4. They claim that it will begin to cost money to upgrade starting next year. Whether or not that becomes reality could go either way. My guess is that yes, it will cost money just like a new Windows 10 build costs money now.
5. You can turn off a good portion of the privacy-invading settings, but it's still fairly invasive. Microsoft as a company has actually been ramping up their support for other platforms which is kind of cool. I haven't heard about any specific back doors in the Windows OS itself, but that doesn't mean they aren't there. The OS is closed source, so it's really anyone's guess.
And then they push it again:
http://www.addictivetips.com/windows-tips/you-need-to-stop-k...
"Updates that have been hidden can appear again if a new version of the same update is released. That’s the case with KB 3035583; not only has it received an update (thus unhiding it), it’s status as an ‘Optional’ update has been changed to ‘Important’."
This announcement today seems like they'll do it again, even stronger, with revenge.
"Early next year, we expect to be re-categorizing Windows 10 as a “Recommended Update”. Depending upon your Windows Update settings, this may cause the upgrade process to automatically initiate on your device"
Windows 10 strikes back.
> 3. Windows 10 literally saves a copy of your whole system running Windows 7 on the hard disk
And if you really try downgrade, it doesn't work:
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/80e4f83d-1...
"Task scheduler is broken after windows 10 downgrade"
YMMV. For me, Win10 totally destabilized a netbook that was previously running smoothly on Win7. And for some reason, the backlight control worked under 7 but not 10, locking the screen at a battery-draining 100% brightness. Wasted an hour or two on the phone with Microsoft just to learn that they have no idea of the cause or solution, despite web searches turning up plenty of reports of this issue. At least the revert function worked.
edit: Uh, yikes, apparently even that's a bit broken.
Windows is closed source but many thousands of people have actually read the code. This includes numerous governments (including the Russian government), US organizations, large companies, universities, and even amateurs (Microsoft MVPs).
If you want to read it, email source@microsoft.com or see Shared Source Initiative https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sharedsource/
You will need a good reason. I don't think "I want to look for backdoors" will work. They might point out that plenty of other people have already done that ;-)
3) OK I'll guess at this one. Space. If they are retaining a bunch of information it may take up a significant amount of space they can free by getting rid of it. But I don't know for sure. It might just be that 31 days is a standard tech return policy period and they can.
2/4) I think you can turn the notifications off. And if you are going to learn a new OS it makes sense to learn the one that you are going to be moving to no the one you are going to be moving from. http://winsupersite.com/windows-10/disabling-windows-10-upgr...
5) This is opinion and people disliking the new direction of Microsoft. You get new features (Like Cortana) but it costs you in privacy. How much is that cost? Only Microsoft really knows... But you can always set up a dual boot or something to address some of those issues. MANY Linux distros are almost easier to get used to than Windows 10 (from windows 7). And win 10 even stole some features from them.
<soapbox> I just want to let everyone know that anything you post here (on the internet) is already being gobbled up by the NSA, just about anything you do on your phone, and now anything you do on your pc (presumably). Lets focus on changing the law, because Linux is not a viable solution for 99% (that stat is made up) of people, which means that your parents, friends, and everyone else aren't protected even if you are.
While changing the law is ridiculously hard, if you are concerned about privacy mention it to friends and family so they know and evangelize. Microsoft is no more evil than anyone else. I presonally think that at their core they don't want to give this data to the NSA, they want it to figure out how users are using the OS (what every dev wants). So they've tooled it to the Nth degree and it's only a privacy issue because they aren't clear what they collect (but they let you turn it off) and we don't trust them to let us turn it off. </soapbox>
A philosophy teacher once told me "you are not what you think, but you are what you say and what you do".
Nobody cares what they or don't want, it's what they do that counts. And what they do is not pretty, in fact in think it's despicable.
And I'm not "one of those Linux guys". I'm a C# dev that would be perfectly fine with Microsoft products as they are now if they didn't fuck their efforts with "telemetry" updates.
I'm trying 3 Linux distro this week-end to see the one I can live with.
Now, what to do regarding Windows 10 ? If you're a fairly computer savvy person, for home usage, I'll say disable the updates, get an AV and a firewall and keep a weekly backup.
Updates loose any credibility if the vendor issuing them cannot be trusted and MS has shown with those tactics what the endgame is. Checking every update what it does and if it's safe to apply to the system takes more time and energy then keeping a weekly backup of the system and basic security. Now why should someone play hide and seek with MS and their dark patterns instead of using the system as is ?
I'd say that this is a pretty sad state of OS updates we're in regarding Windows, if not software generally.
So, Windows 10 actually does not complete against Linux or PC-BSD, it completes against previous versions of Windows without telemetry crap, i.e. Windows 7 and Vista. Exactly these operating systems with disabled updates will dominate for the next 20 years, not Linux or BSD.
Btw, this approach (disabling updates) also solves all well known problems with long time reboots, metered internet connections, tray nags about Windows 10, insufficient disk space to save old OS etc.
Q3: The 31 day deadline is to free-up space once a user has settled down with Win10. Advanced users can work around this [2].
I can’t answer all these questions unfortunately! Q1 and Q5 are fairly subjective - I think it's up to you to form your own opinion on those.
[1] http://www.howtogeek.com/218856/how-do-you-disable-the-get-w... [2] http://www.thewindowsclub.com/rollback-windows-10-after-30-d...
For the 31 days thing, I strongly suspect it's mostly just a marketing thing. "Try the newest Windows out for 31 days, risk free!". I could see it being an issue of storage on tablet devices with minimal storage or laptop/desktops with similar issues.
I've since wiped out my Win10 machine (by accident...oops) and went back to 8, since that's what I had a license and disc for. Not sure if I'll go back to 10. The privacy issues concern me greatly.
Windows.old directory gets purged after 31 days, so there's no going back.
I use 10 at work, honestly it's not bad. I haven't upgraded on my home machines though...
4. Yes, for 1 year the upgrade is free. After that point you have to pay for the upgrade, just like to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 8 you had to pay for an upgrade license.
5. Other than Microsoft's weird ideas on how they will push out updates that may affect your privacy it seems to work well enough in the industries I've tested it in. If you have any older 'expensive' software you may want to verify that it is compatible before migrating.
If this were like any other Windows OS upgrade in the past, I'd be OK with this. But... it's not. It adds a lot of tracking, reporting, and some (currently innocuous) uncontrollable communication back to Microsoft. I guess it really is time to do the cost/benefit analysis of a single company collecting all of this information from my gaming rig.
</horse>
I have a Windows 7 computer that I use mainly for gaming and having those notifications pop up randomly is infuriating, it behaves like some crappy adware that comes bundled with IE toolbars.
No option to turn it off either, you have to manually uninstall a bunch of updates if you want to get rid of it. And I almost believed the "but MS has changed" crowd. I really hope Valve manages to bring gaming on linux so that I never have to bother with this crappy OS anymore.
It was a stark reminder me how little control I have over my personal computers right now.
Same reason Chrome updates automatically in the background without your consent. It's just less invasive, because it's only a browser.
Not sure which games you play, but most of my favorites turned out to be available on Steam for Linux. I made the switch after W10's release and have hardly regretted it.
None of "get your free copy sign up now", none of the "do you want to upgrade".
This is without any ongoing fees but since it's a third party application, it does require the extra step of installing it. I never subscribed to their Plex Pass paid service but after installing the free Plex server and pointing it at my media directories on my desktop and NAS, it's worked great. The ability to transcode was particularly useful because the 360 wouldn't play some formats and it was easier to install Plex than to transcode them all.
Either way, this isn't meant to dismiss your legit complaint. Just hoping my experiences can be of use to you or others in the same situation. If you used WMC to handle OTA television viewing and recording, you may be better served by Kodi or some other application.
As for ChromeOS, you are aware of what you're getting into from the beginning. In contrast, it wasn't always this way with Windows.
Second I know an elderly couple who doesn't know much about computers. When they got the prompt for upgrade, they didn't even think it was an operating system upgrade. They thought it was another windows update. Next morning they couldn't do anything as the start button wouldn't work, printers were gone, email settings were gone, critical error message when they click edge etc. Now for a tech savvy person, it wouldn't be a problem and you can easily fix these but they live far from city, like about a good 2 hour drive. Since I'm closest to them, this weekend I'll be making a trip there and fixing it wasting around 6-7 hours of my life just because of windows 10. Thanks Microsoft!
Say I just woke up, and I'm in a rush to boot up my computer, print out a paper, and get out the door. But--surprise! Windows Update ran in the background the night before, and now system startup is delayed half an hour or more to configure a new batch of patches.
On the one hand, from a security standpoint, I appreciate that the default is to keep users' systems up-to-date. On the other, it seems that Microsoft pushes this with little regard for their users' time or comfort.
Microsoft is far from the only offender of course (a PlayStation comes to mind, for example) but system designers really need to start using their brains on this.
By catering to both the masses and the experts, MS is caught between a rock and a hard place. Forced, automatic updates are extremely irritating. But, without them, the vast majority of Windows users would never update anything. Never. Windows would have a much worse reputation for security because tens of millions of users would be getting regularly owned by hacks that were patched 8 years ago.
>now system startup is delayed half an hour or more to configure a new batch of patches.
The default is that there is no configuration. The OS downloads the patches by default, installs them, then waits for the user to restart the computer to finalize things. The user can simply not restart the computer if they are in a hurry.
If it makes you feel any better: I went through this EXACT scenario yesterday. My grandfather accidentally installed Windows 10.
Fortunately, there's a button in Settings that lets you revert: http://www.howtogeek.com/220723/how-to-uninstall-windows-10-...
It worked perfectly and only took about 30 minutes. And the man uses his computer for a lot of stuff - personal bookkeeping, Word, Excel, Publisher, electronic document management, etc etc etc - and it's all 100% back to normal.
Have you checked the task scheduler?
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/80e4f83d-1...
Didn't work on my computer.
See also
http://au.pcmag.com/windows-10/39165/news/oops-update-glitch...
"These showed up on a plethora of my client's systems a few days ago after I had already removed them, unchecked them and hid them weeks earlier.
This is totally unethical, namely re-releasing KB3035583 after hundreds of thousands of people paid technicians to have these removed."
Microsoft are turning their back on a group of people who used to pay money upfront for premium products. How many of these users want a subscription service? Maybe they want a finished OS with high quality software pre-installed instead of some crappy app store.
It's hilarious because when my stepdad has a problem with his windows computer my mom tells him maybe he should install Linux. Not that Linux is some magic OS that fixes every problem but I do think it has come a long was is now much more user friendly than Windows is now.
Opposite problem with a notebook computer that my friend put Windows 8 on had a small ssd C drive and a big hard disk D drive. The prompt saying get ready for Windows 10 never showed up because the SSD didn't have enough space in it.
Losing settings shouldn't happen. Honestly, I'd have pushed harder requiring people to start fresh for those who want Windows 10.
I'd put (time-triggered?) big warning signs saying that Windows 7 ended mainstream support on January 14, 2020 and Windows 8 will end mainstream support on January 10, 2023 and that you should not use these products after this date unless you really know what you are doing. We are still more than four years away from that date though.
It would make a lot more sense to me for Microsoft to offer Windows 10 for free for a short time to everyone and say that regular prices will resume after this amnesty period.
The way they are putting Window 10 in Windows Update, it makes it seem like Windows 10 is a regular update to Windows. I don't understand this. I wanted to upgrade to Windows 10. The first thing I did when I got Windows 10 was to reset my computer. I am very happy to be able to say that I was able to reset my computer without an external drive. The process took less than two hours and didn't require me to enter a product key. (ymmv of course)
Maybe it is I who has changed and gotten busy/careless but this is the first time that I have gone to just using the computer and not really caring about Windows Update.
Google's Chromebooks did a lot to change my attitude towards computers.
I still obsess a little over some details like what is so important that is Onedrive writing constantly to C:\Users\[redacted]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\OneDrive\logs\Personal\TraceCurrent.6201.1019.etl at about 30000 Bps or why OneDrive seems to be constantly uploading things to a-0011.a-smedge.net at about 7 million bytes per second while reporting not nearly enough corresponding disk activity.
There is not much literature about this and the best I could find with a five second Google search was "TraceArchive.ETL and TraceCurrent.ETL are logging files which appear to contain the remnants of the smart folder feature in Windows 8.1." http://www.champlain.edu/Documents/LCDI/Windows%2010%20Foren... I guess I will attribute it to incompetence until I see some evidence of malevolence.
I guess tl;dr I agree with you. Upgrade to Windows 10 should not happen automatically. It should be a choice that the user (or device administrator) seeks.
I'd like to apologize for the shoddy writing because this part should read
> Windows 7 will end extended support on January 14, 2020 and Windows 8 will end extended support on January 10, 2023
as you can see in http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/lifecycle
It's in Czech, but packet dumps are language-agnostic and comments can be translated using, say, Google Translate, reasonably accurately.
Both error reporting and Windows Defender asked you if you want to upload additional information (e.g. memory dumps).
Not with many GNU/Linux distributions or the BSDs.
With BSDs and Linuxes at least, even those with desktop-integrated plugins that search 3rd parties, it's easy to disable everything you don't want/need.
As cert pinning becomes more common, we are rapidly losing the ability to do this. The only work around I know of for iOS/Android is to jailbreak/root your device and get a debugger attached to apps. I haven't seen a workaround for getting around cert pinned Metro apps.
Anyone knows if this is complete?
(I know, the horse has bolted long ago, no pointing harrassing this stable door. I will blame too many choccy biscuits after lunch...)
As in, "Let's memorialize the learns so we don't disrupt this value-add in the future."
"Early next year, we expect to be re-categorizing Windows 10 as a “Recommended Update”. Depending upon your Windows Update settings, this may cause the upgrade process to automatically initiate on your device."
> Depending upon your Windows Update settings, this may cause the upgrade process to automatically initiate on your device. Before the upgrade changes the OS of your device, you will be clearly prompted to choose whether or not to continue. And of course, if you choose to upgrade (our recommendation!), then you will have 31 days to roll back to your previous Windows version if you don’t love it.
Can I declare somehow my connection "metered" or is this something MSFT decides?
Windows 7 is a much better version of Windows than Windows 10 will ever be so my suggestion would be wait a few years.
Windows 3.x
Windows for Work Groups
Windows 95
Windows Me
Windows XP
Windows Vista
Windows 7
Windows 10
Everything has changed, nothing works like it once did, things that should would just don't work!
But wait, not everything is bad. It does boot really fast!!!
I purchased all new hardware and took Windows 10 as the $AUD 250.00 OS option.
I could have got Windows 7 as a cheaper option and should have done so......
If you are a PC gamer then install Windows 10 and use only a local account, disable all of its cloud integration, disable all the telemetry and logging and use a third party firewall to block anything else that the OS options do not let you disable.
Then use another machine with another operating system like Linux that doesn't behave like it owns you and your entire system, for all your other personal/professional computing needs.
I hope that OS updates eventually become like browser updates - they just happen and you don't notice. Seamlessly on the latest.
Oh great! Can't wait to get a million phone calls about this one.
It's much easier to install/update some Linux distributions, and I don't think that's in their best interest.
Not a "media creation tool", doesnt require windows. Just the ISO.
Also, it looks like for those like myself that have done this, it now appears to be a stand alone update with no KB identifier. You can do the same thing to this update; just Hide it! This work around will probably be overridden by some future update, but it will give you temporary respite from this windows 10 upgropalypse.
In other words, carefully check the updates. I had to hide it again several times already. I shouldn't have to do that :(
My computer didn't work with Windows 10, contrary to their claim that it would. The drivers I had on the notebook are "too old" and Intel doesn't support the devices for Windows 8 or 10 but MSFT claimed in their "Update to 10" nagware that it would work. It doesn't. I've discovered that only after two days of the immense number of the restarts of Windows 10, searching for the possible causes and finding the posts related to my hardware on the web forums.
And after I returned to Windows 7, it still presents "Upgrade to Windows 10" and to decline I had to uninstall more updates and put some registry entries which I had to search on the web (1). Far from easy to just say "it doesn't work please don't bother me or make the goddamn drivers."
Oh, and the return to Windows 7 from 10 actually didn't work too -- it screwed all the scheduled tasks (which were a part of the Windows 7 installation, not the tasks I've made!) (2)
---
1) This comment seemed to be the most useful: "This is totally unethical, namely re-releasing KB3035583 after hundreds of thousands of people paid technicians to have these removed."
http://au.pcmag.com/windows-10/39165/news/oops-update-glitch...
2) "Task scheduler is broken after windows 10 downgrade"
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/80e4f83d-1...
Cortana doesn't work in most countries (why? just why? I speak English ffs).
10 will know more about me than Facebook and Google combined (don't really care, but it's a bad thing imo).
No thanks, I'm happy with 7.
So it really is time to move to Linux.