I was quite disgusted when I saw that Windows 10's start menu contains adverts; maybe Microsoft realised that the average user would likely install adware themselves anyway, so they wanted to get into that industry too... all the evidence certainly supports that, including the now-well-known closing the upgrade window indicates consent shady behaviour common amongst malware/adware. It's clear that MS is really, really desperate to get as much users onto Win10 as they can.
To adopt a phrase MS originally used against Linux, "Windows 10 is a free upgrade only if your freedom and privacy are worth nothing."
I am not familiar with the technical details of XP, so these are mostly observations from a user and not developer perspective:
1. On my old Pentium 4 box with 256 MB of RAM any release after XP hardly met the OS requirements. Yes, hardware has come a long way since then, but IMHO there is no technical reason why a kernel with a bare bones desktop needs more than this amount. I never understood why Microsoft's recommendations for RAM went up to 1 GB and beyond. My pretty standard Arch Linux setup in 2016 does not take more than this right after boot.
2. XP had a rather long lifespan as an OS. It was only later that Microsoft got into the 2-4 year upgrade cycle, hoping customers would purchase a lot of the upgrades. What happened actually in many cases was a simple skip of alternate upgrades, concretely Vista and 8.
XP definitely had some pretty bad problems, like the fact that it was not really ready for the 64-bit era, manifested in things like the 2 GB limit on memory per process. I don't know about what they did with the 64 bit XP version; it looked a lot like a stop gap solution.
I used the EOL announced for Windows XP support as a nice excuse to get myself to use a GNU/Linux system. I have not looked back since then.
As an aside, there are still some holdouts of XP usage, such as some lab equipment software written many years back. In fact, Windows XP embedded was supported all the way till January 2016.
Maybe they got the idea from Ubuntu's funneling local search queries to online search engines?
There are hundreds[1] of distributions built around the Linux kernel, and Ubuntu was the only one to try (and be immediately condemned for) including Amazon results in local searches, which anyone who didn't want was free to disable or else try any of the many, many Debian or Ubuntu based distros without.
I don't know of another version of Windows 10 that I can install if I don't like some aspect of how it collects data or prevents me from administrating my system, but even if there were, how many users would know to set up WSUS servers to prevent errant update behaviors?
http://superuser.com/questions/958562/how-do-i-remove-candy-...
You will jump through these hoops every upgrade unless you go through and disable certain updates, which you will need to keep up with for the rest of your life.
You now have to pay a monthly fee to avoid 30 second videos in Solitaire.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11167964
http://betanews.com/2015/10/15/microsoft-now-uses-windows-10...
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-07/30/windows-10-pa...
I would be surprised to hear of Microsoft doing such a thing, and equally surprised to hear of a consumer OEM not doing it.
Are you sure it was Microsoft and not the manufacturer?
They don't really bother me enough to bother removing them but I can easily see how they'd be annoying to some.
+ another link: http://hexus.net/tech/news/software/92849-windows-10-anniver...
This is bullshit.
There have been many huge behind the scenes efficiency improvements plus security improvements.
Seriously, Microsoft has issues but this sort of tripe doesn't help the anti-Microsoft cause.
Are changes in tracking behavior detailed in patches?
It's one thing to read about and discuss the issues with Microsoft's overt push to migrate the world to Win10. It's admittedly a completely different experience to see it happen right before your eyes. Some time ago, I half-committed to never owning another computer with a Microsoft OS beyond Win7, reasoning that you just never know if a useful tool may pop up that's only available for Windows. After last night's surprise, that commitment became unwavering.
Even my tech-savvy coworker who didn't want to upgrade got caught out by this. Anyway, you can still roll back, and then install never10.
--
They didn't change it, it was always that way. People only realized just now that it does that.
Also, please do take a look at the window people X out of and then are surprised about: http://i.imgur.com/aWFX0vc.png It states clearly that it is going to happen, and when it is going happen, and how to cancel it. The only way a user would be surprised about that is if they didn't read the message in the first place.
Now with the moment coming closer and seeing what they do there, I'm pretty sure I'll play the win2k game one more time with my win7 and see what comes up next. Even if I'd have to pay for it.
2. Upgrade to Windows 10 (this associates your machine with a permanent license)
3. Restore your backup
If/when time comes to actually upgrade, you should be able to do so (or install from scratch) using the license you acquired in step 2.
In fact, I have to wonder if the reason why Ballmer was finally handed his walking papers by the board was that he was unwilling to greenlight these frog-marched upgrades to Windows 10.
Somebody very powerful at Microsoft, or perhaps elsewhere, wants everybody to accept this free update way, way too badly, and it's not clear why.
OP is having an AMA[1].
0.https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/4mcdon/i_live_i...
1.https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4mirin/i_am_the_accid...
I mean, I'm already playing Skyrim natively on an AMD GPU thanks to Gallium Nine. And that is only because there has been a lot of internal pressure in the community to have the best Windows only games running here. The more people we get to switch, the more market for businesses to make the process of switching easier.
Of course, we still need Ubuntu (or SteamOS) computers in stores. That would be a nice start. It is hard to get people to switch when they need someone with technical know-how to violate their warranties and give them no commercial support unless you have a small business IT shop like what I run in the evenings that will do it.
There are plenty of people being force-upgraded to 10 who never consented.
I just don't see how that makes it OK for microsoft to do the same.
And the BSD guys, and the GNU/Hurd guys, and the ReactOS guys, and the Haiku guys, etc, etc ;) More things in heaven and earth and all that...
PATENTLY false. Yes they shove the upgrade down your throat metaphorically pretty hard, it's going to appear on top of the App Store on OS X and all over the iOS one, and it will put a notification on your Settings app, but to my knowledge there is no way for iOS or OS X to initiate a system update on it's own. And we've looked into having our monitor box at work do that so we have one less thing to maintain, it isn't easy.
The one in the meeting room decided to upgrade and then break in the middle of a client presentation I was leading. I got my Mac and continued on, but it was embarrassing.
My colleague's machine upgraded itself overnight, and in the process deleted a bunch of files and corrupted creative suite.
I know having as many people as possible on the latest version is a good thing from a platform perspective, but in reality it's such an irresponsible thing to do. It just lets people know that Microsoft are quite happy to reach in and break their stuff at any point.
If anything it's persuaded the last few Windows holdouts in the office to switch to the Mac or Linux in short order.
Know that the upgrade is not unavoidable, and if you have friends who don't want it, tell them how they can avoid it.
> The windows boxes in our office have been upgrading themselves, much to everyone's dismay
Go around and ask which of your colleagues closed this window without actually reading it: http://i.imgur.com/aWFX0vc.png
It might be acceptable if Microsoft gave their product away for free: many free products (e.g. Sublime or Skype) include annoying autoupdate popups for non-paying users. But Windows is quite expensive software.
Microsoft's motives are just getting more paid services, getting more telemetry (for free! they do not pay for it) and maybe adding some kind of subscription in future. Recent Windows versions like 7 or 8 seem to be 'good enough' for most customers so they do not want to upgrade for free let alone buy newer versions.
And subscription is as bad as DRM.
I disagree. Linux is great as a desktop system precisely because you're in control, not some third-party. And in terms of desktop functionality there is no meaningful difference anymore.
Realistically, who reads and reasons about every line of code that their system runs? For the most part, people don't ever really consider software beyond just installing it. In that case, maintainers have control.
https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/4mcdon/i_live_i...
> if a forced upgrade happened and crashed our pc's while in the middle of coordinating rangers...
Our accounting team used Quickbooks Pro 2014 which worked on Windows 7. Then all our machines went to Windows 10, and Quickbooks no longer worked. Our accounting team basically did no work for a week while they did a combo of trying to figure out which software to migrate to (went with Quickbooks Online), recover any missing data, and make sure the data migrated successfully to the new accounting package.
The nice part of this forced migration is that Quickbooks online does not require Windows, so three less Windows boxes to support at our shop as we have moved the acct dept to Linux boxes.
The rule of unintended consequences in full effect.
In 2015 a lot of new (green) sock puppet and corporate accounts appeared that down vote comments and flag stories that share not their "nice vision". The worse situation around MS all started when Gates (who is apparently still a driving force) replaced Ballmer with Nadella, a marionette. I am viewing HN using a third party front end, and every time a unfavorable MS story appears it doesn't last long on HN until it gets flagged - no other company story is handled that negatively or flagged in any way that often. So there is a clear pattern behind it. To make my point clear, also this story quickly vanished from the HN frontpage. And I would have no chance to even know about it. HN used to be a better site :(
There have been a lot of unfavorable stories about MS on HN, including recently. We don't do anything special to penalize them, nor do we let users abuse flagging in the way you suggest. In fact the Windows 10 update nagware saga has appeared numerous times on HN's front page, including multiple stories about clicking 'x' on the dialog box, how it screwed some African satellite operators, etc. The current one fell suddenly off the front page because of software (it set off the flamewar detector).
If MS "infiltrated" HN, it's news to me and I'd like to know about it. It's our job to protect the integrity of this place for the community and we take it seriously. When we see gaming and manipulation we crack down on it hard. But actually the BigCos aren't the ones who do such things. They're (rightly) too risk-averse.
If you think you see evidence of manipulation you should email us at hn@ycombinator.com. When we get emails like that we always look into it.
What about "Unpatched Windows PC shuts down N instances of x,y or z due to worm/virus/malware," which is a headline far more common than this completely ridiculous headline.
This is the technological equivalent of that one person pontificating and whining on about someone who once knew someone who died in a car crash BECAUSE they WERE wearing their seat belt.
Back before updates were forced, users have proven themselves too clueless to manage their own PCs. I don't care what people do as long as they are not connected to the internet. It's a shared resource.
Updates or upgrades should only be forced when backwards compatibility is preserved.
