Windows 10

[Merusk]

Change is evil

[Rendakor]

What Merusk said. Moving around UI bits for the sake of moving them around annoys me to no end. I still haven't pirated used MSOffice since they switched to that stupid Ribbon menu thing; switched to Open Office and never looked back.

[WayAbvPar]

I haven't made the leap yet, but I guess I will upgrade. Headed out of town Monday morning, so maybe I will kick off the upgrade before I leave so I can pick up the pieces when I come home 

[Azazel]

I might be unusual in that I appreciate advertisements targeted to my wants and needs.  Assuming I'm going to deal with advertisement anyway, which I am because I live in America.

I feel the same way, but didn't seem like it was worth mentioning against the, "OMG THEY"RE SELLING MY INFO" concern.

I'm happier getting ads targeted to my geeky, netflix-watching, candy-loving, Toyota-driving, metal-listening self than I am ads targeted to, "42 year old white male, married with kids... here's ads for Viagra, that new Rom-Com your wife's demo will like, and khakis on sale at Sears."

You assclowns can have your collective overblown idiot reaction to my post, but the simple fact is for a simple music player, Winamp works just fine. Of course there are targeted ads and user demographics bought and sold, then again -If you want to spread your personal info wider than it already is, then go right ahead. Post your email address on reddit and the chans. That should help you get some more useful ads because 'murica!  I appreciate an adblocker on my browser and slightly fewer unwanted or untargeted advertisements over more of them, so I'll continue to use the "2002" music player that still works just fine and does what I need, thankyaverymuch

[Yegolev]

wheee  lol

[Fabricated]

I don't really have any problems with Win10 so far. As for all of the "telemetry" stuff that has been patched into Win7 I think.

Also Europe is apparently opening a can on Microsoft over it so we'll get to see exactly what they take and how they use I think.

[Torinak]

I don't really have any problems with Win10 so far. As for all of the "telemetry" stuff that has been patched into Win7 I think.

Also Europe is apparently opening a can on Microsoft over it so we'll get to see exactly what they take and how they use I think.

A lot of the telemetry has been patched into Win7 (and later) but so far it's been delivered as non-critical (optional) upgrades, and is capable of being disabled.

[Sky]

What Merusk said. Moving around UI bits for the sake of moving them around annoys me to no end. I still haven't pirated used MSOffice since they switched to that stupid Ribbon menu thing; switched to Open Office and never looked back.

It's just the way it is. Be the rock in the river and let it flow around you.

The thing I tell people at work is, "This new interface you hate will be the one you wish you were still using when you get the next version in a couple years." It's completely true.

Only gripe I have about W10 is the DVD/BR thing. And that only because I lost my installer for whatever I was using for BR in W7 because even that OS was a dick about movies. *shrug* Currently booting into W7 for the 1 time I may need to watch a DVD/BR every couple months.

[eldaec]

The ribbon is now a decade old, and it is still terrible.

 

[calapine]

AFAIK at the moment it's only the french privacy authority.

Here are the points they are objecting to:

Irrelevant or excessive data collected:

The CNIL found that the company was collecting diagnostic and usage data via its telemetry service, which uses such data, among other things, to identify problems and to improve products. To this purpose, Microsoft Corporation processes, for instance, Windows app and Windows Store usage data, providing information, among other things, on all the apps downloaded and installed on the system by a user and the time spent on each one. Therefore, the company is collecting excessive data, as these data are not necessary for the operation of the service.

A lack of security:

The company allows users to choose a four characters PIN to authenticate themselves for all its on-line services, notably to access to their Microsoft account, which lists purchases made in the store and the payment instruments used, but the number of attempts to enter the PIN is not limited, which means that user data is not secure or confidential.

Lack of individual consent:

An advertising ID is activated by default when Windows 10 is installed, enabling Windows apps and other parties’ apps to monitor user browsing and to offer targeted advertising without obtaining users’ consent.

Lack of information and no option to block cookies:

The company puts advertising cookies on users’ terminals without properly informing them of this in advance or enabling them to oppose this.

https://www.cnil.fr/en/windows-10-cnil-publicly-serves-formal-notice-microsoft-corporation-comply-french-data-protection

Nothing earth shattering, but the the 4-digit PIN without limiting attempts is lol-worthy. I am surprised big companies keep making such mistakes.

[Raph]

I upgraded. It took some effort; the incompatibility warning was because LogMeIn was a video driver, and it decided it was incompatible. Then I also had to deal with upping the system partition, because it would fail due to lack of space even though there was plenty.

It seems to have fixed my search service, my iCloud in Outlook, my Firefox acting up, and a bunch of other random shit that had piled up. So far so good.

[Merusk]

Nothing earth shattering, but the the 4-digit PIN without limiting attempts is lol-worthy. I am surprised big companies keep making such mistakes.

What you call a mistake they call a billion-dollar+ reduction in Customer Service calls when someone forgets their PIN and locks themselves out.

[Mandella]

Finally bit the bullet and finished upgrading all the units here that could be upgraded. Smooth, if lengthy, process in most cases. Also had to play with partitions in two units, and immediately had to deal with Windows insisting on installing its own broken device driver over the working one I already had. But other than that sort of thing, there were no issues so severe that I felt like I needed to nuke any drive and do a full re-install.

Got Spybot Anti-Beacon running, Cortina is lobotomized, active tiles are turned off or uninstalled if possible -- still having a problem with blocking updates. Even hacking the registry isn't working, so I think I'm just going to have to turn off the Windows Update service. Get's the job done I guess.

[Xuri]

13 hours and 23 minutes left to decide if I should bite the bullet and upgrade my two Windows 7 machines. Came close yesterday, until this happened: http://www.ghacks.net/2016/07/28/microsoft-removes-policies-windows-10-pro/

After that patch hits (on Aug 2nd) I will not - as a Win 10 Pro user - be able to disable the lockscreen (I want to go directly to login screen, thx), cannot turn off the Microsoft Consumer Experience to stop Candy Crush and other random stuff from automatically being pushed to my system (or appear as app suggestions in my Start Menu) on Microsoft's whim, and cannot disable Windows Tips & Tricks. These things can only be disabled in Enterprise editions after the patch. This annoys me. Time will tell if it annoys me too much to upgrade or not. Hm.

[Trippy]

You also won't be able to turn of Cortana in an upcoming update.

[Xuri]

Less of a problem for me since Cortana isn't available in Norway anyway
Fake edit: Hm but I installed English (US) as default system/interface language, so maybe they'll force-enable it for me? Who knows.

[Chimpy]

You also won't be able to turn of Cortana in an upcoming update.

Seriously? That is some fucked up shit right there. I don't want my computer to search Bing when I am doing a file search.

Good thing I will be mostly dealing with Enterprise when I deal with it for the foreseeable future.

[Trippy]

Ya srsly:

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/232522-cortana-cant-be-disabled-in-the-windows-10-anniversary-update

[Chimpy]

Ok, well it looks like maybe it is just like when Apple made "Sherlock" the default search app but you could turn off its ability to web search....maybe.

Still can't upgrade my PC to 10 as I have some hardware/software on it that is incompatible.

I was able to painlessly upgrade both of my parents' computers to it though, which was a plus.

[Sky]

Shit, I forgot to upgrade a couple public PCs to W10 to shut up some annoying patrons. Oh, well. The type of patron who runs XP at home because gubmint but bitches when we don't have 1000% up to date software on every computer.

They don't bother me, but for some reason a couple librarians still take them seriously.

[Mandella]

Ya srsly:

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/232522-cortana-cant-be-disabled-in-the-windows-10-anniversary-update

Kinda glad I waited until the last minute then. I can always roll back my main machines to Win 7 and 8, but I figure there will be third party "solutions" to whatever shenanigans Microsoft is about to pull pretty quick.

[Father mike]

You can turn off Cortana by killing her background process.  It will try to auto-restart in under 5 seconds, so you have to rename the folder it lives in.  See instructions here

https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/3fo738/how_to_completely_remove_cortana_background/

THIS WILL DISABLE ALL WINDOWS SEARCHES.

You can still search for specific files in the File Explorer, but the ability to hit the Start button, type in a word and get relevant functions is gone.  So good luck finding anything not on the Settings main page.

EDIT: Didn't read the article above about disabling policy edits before I posted.  That's way more disturbing than Cortana.

[Ceryse]

Really glad I waited to upgrade to Windows 10; decided to not do so. The policy change, among many others, really makes Windows 10 unappealing, especially since Windows 7 works perfectly fine (and will for a good while yet) and Windows 10 brings absolutely nothing to the table over Windows 7 for me -- especially given a few apps/games of mine either don't work, or are a big hassle to get working in Windows 10.

[WayAbvPar]

Tried to update 4 or 5 times. Even bought a cleanup/repair tool to try to unfuck Windows Update or whatever was not working. Still failed. At this point I am glad.

[calapine]

You can turn off Cortana by killing her background process.  It will try to auto-restart in under 5 seconds, so you have to rename the folder it lives in.  See instructions here


THIS WILL DISABLE ALL WINDOWS SEARCHES.

That seems a bit drastic.

AFAIK

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Search

'AllowCortana' set to 0 will still work post-Anniversary update.

See spoiler:


Edit: Regarding Third-Party tools, I like O&O Shutup 10

Very granular settings (which it actually explains), Freeware

https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10



Anniversary Edit because apparently patching in unwanted stuff is en vogue now:

[Torinak]

Now that Microsoft has started force-enabling some of the most invasive aspects of Windows 10, it seems highly likely that they'll keep re-enabling them on a regular basis. They did that with the Windows 10 "free" upgrade notifications and some of the "telemetry" (invasive system monitoring) they back-ported to Windows 7 and 8/8.1--they kept re-publishing the old updates, or publishing them with new KB numbers to make them look like new ones, to try to catch people who blocked some of the older updates by their ID.

From now on, it'll be an arms race between third parties and users who just want to have some control over systems they own, versus Microsoft's desire to best Facebook in terms of invasive monitoring and data collection...a lot like the arms race between malware and anti-virus software, actually.

[calapine]

There will be some push-back. From users and EU ( + US ?) regulators.

Not sure what MS grand plan here is, or even if they have one. If we look at MS-Nokia debacle and the billions that got burned only for the entire smartphone division to be dumped again it doesn't look like a company that's on top of things.

I am guessing MS will try something similar to what openSUSE Tumbleweed (and others) are doing now: rolling release distro instead of big version increments.

[Mandella]

You can turn off Cortana by killing her background process.  It will try to auto-restart in under 5 seconds, so you have to rename the folder it lives in.  See instructions here


THIS WILL DISABLE ALL WINDOWS SEARCHES.

That seems a bit drastic.

AFAIK

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Search

'AllowCortana' set to 0 will still work post-Anniversary update.

See spoiler:


Edit: Regarding Third-Party tools, I like O&O Shutup 10

Very granular settings (which it actually explains), Freeware

https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10



Anniversary Edit because apparently patching in unwanted stuff is en vogue now:

Thanks for the heads up on O&O. That looks a lot more in depth than Spybot Anti-Beacon, and fixes my unwanted update problem. Going to slap this in before the Anniversary, then wait for that update until the third party guys catch up.

Jeeze Microsoft, is this really worth it? Nice to have a near monopoly I guess...

[calapine]

Thanks for the heads up on O&O. That looks a lot more in depth than Spybot Anti-Beacon, and fixes my unwanted update problem. Going to slap this in before the Anniversary, then wait for that update until the third party guys catch up.

Jeeze Microsoft, is this really worth it? Nice to have a near monopoly I guess...

Most welcome. Glad I could be of use! 

[Xuri]

Decided not to upgrade as well. Ultimately, I'm happy with Windows 7, and upgrading is more trouble than its worth. Besides... anyone can still upgrade to Win 10 for free as long as they're willing to lie about using "assistive technologies". What assistive technologies are those, you ask? Doesn't matter - Microsoft doesn't seem care! Anyone who think they are entitled to upgrade, CAN upgrade: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/accessibility/windows10upgrade

(Disclaimer: I have not tried to upgrade in this manner)

[calapine]

Decided not to upgrade as well. Ultimately, I'm happy with Windows 7, and upgrading is more trouble than its worth.

Pressure to upgrade is going to come via compatibility issues, mostly of third party software. For example both Spybot Anti-Beacon and O&O ShutUp10 have issues on Win7, lots of the features simply don't work. If you want to get the most of of those programmes you will need Windows 10.

MS is also pushing the boundary feature wise: Edge is introducing 'browser extensions' come the Anniversary update. That opens up possibilities such as using an addblocker, which could enhance your browsing experience.

[Rendakor]

I'm staying with Win 7 too. I have 10 on my laptop and don't really like it more than 7.

[apocrypha]

Funny how we all have different views on these things. I'm looking for a new tablet and I simply won't consider one that doesn't come with Windows 10 installed.

[Sky]

Ditto.

[Pennilenko]

I have windows 10 on everything. Three PCs and two laptops. Nobody bitches about it. We are rolling 10 out at work with our fresh hardware update. Even the old people don't give a shit about changing.