Your Experience with Windows 10

[USAFRet]

Anybody concerned about privacy can turn everything off and can also run with local account.

Which brain damages W10 back to a functionality hardly any better than W7.
And how long do you expect MS to keep that option open for you? They gave the OS away "for free" with the expectation of gathering that data on you and selling it, of getting paid to serve ads to your PC, of making money off the analytics of all that data you were supposed to send to them, of being able to funnel you to their app store for more purchases.
If they can't do that, then they can't make their money off you. How long do you expect them to tolerate that? Eliminating any or all of those "options" is just one little update away.
The noose is already tightening.

And that same 'telemetry' is backported into 7 & 8.1:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2978239/windows/microsoft-slips-user-tracking-tools-into-windows-7-8-amidst-windows-10-privacy-storm.html
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/microsoft-accused-of-adding-spy-features-to-windows-7-8/
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/213183-once-more-with-tracking-microsoft-backports-privacy-invading-windows-10-features-to-windows-7-8

So you have no safe harbor there.

 

[orlbuckeye]

Anybody concerned about privacy can turn everything off and can also run with local account.

Which brain damages W10 back to a functionality hardly any better than W7.
And how long do you expect MS to keep that option open for you? They gave the OS away "for free" with the expectation of gathering that data on you and selling it, of getting paid to serve ads to your PC, of making money off the analytics of all that data you were supposed to send to them, of being able to funnel you to their app store for more purchases.
If they can't do that, then they can't make their money off you. How long do you expect them to tolerate that? Eliminating any or all of those "options" is just one little update away.
The noose is already tightening.

They haven't made much money on retail upgrades in years. The part they gave for free was 10% of revenues.

 

[jdlech]

That will change soon enough. Trust me.
You honestly think MS is a charity? You think they handed out 350M copies of a $110 OS out of the kindness of their hearts?
Please tell me you're not stupid.

MS is not stupid either. They had this planned out before they ever released W10. I seriously doubt they would have started releasing all these "free" copies of W10 and then tried to figure out how to make money off it. I think they pushed so hard to ram W10 down everyone's throats because their marketing model required at least a half billion working copies out there to make any money. If anything, their failure to reach their 1B goal will only make them more draconian about the stuff I mentioned earlier.
If any other software did what W10 is doing, we would call it malware. But since this is MS, and since it's mostly *voluntary*, we give them a pass. But how else is MS supposed to make money off of W10? They're committed to this.
But there's not going to be a "Sauron moment" that convinces everyone to take off their rings. This is going to happen slowly, probably over the course of 2 to 4 years, (considering everyone has 1 year from the time they upgraded to "take their ring off"). Instead, this will be the slow boil for us frogs. And I'm sure MS legal team has all their ducks lined up. There won't be another MS V. Netscape lawsuit when 3rd party companies find their product disabled or damaged by W10.

Edit 2: sorry for the update after your quote (I was typing & got interrupted).

 

[USAFRet]

That will change soon enough. Trust me.
You honestly think MS is a charity? You think they handed out 350M copies of a $110 OS out of the kindness of their hearts?
Please tell me you're not stupid.

Or, you can think of the 'free' Win 10 Upgrade just like the 'free' Upgrade from Win 8 to 8.1
Basically, a whole different OS. For free. Just trade in your old one.

Contrary to what you might see in here among the uber geeks, most people do not "buy" a new OS. They use whatever comes on their system, until that system is too old or too hosed up to continue. Then they buy a new system, and use whatever comes on it.

Of COURSE they're making money from other sources. Windows Store, Office, corporate installs, etc.
This free Win 10 was just a 1 year rollout. Win 7 is getting old, and they wanted to remove the taint of Win 8.
If they had charged for it, far fewer people would have upgraded to Win 10. This way, they get a larger market share, and continued lock-in.

This was just a new way of rolling out an Upgrade to their core OS. Apparently, it worked 300 million+ times.

 

[jdlech]

I just don't buy the "we're so embarrassed and sorry for the last OS that we're giving the next one away for free" argument. Can you imagine Ford or Exxon doing that? That's not how a company generates profits. MS corporate culture might be a bit liberal, but that sounds like the results of a pretty heavily weed induced weekend corporate retreat.

 

[CountMike]

It was just a limited time offer to upgrade existing windows and save them bunch of money and time for testing. It's in no terms "Free". XP users had few month to buy Vista for small change and Vista users to get W7. W7 to W8 cost only 14 bucks or so for limited time too. So MS was not at loss much if any. Not only they got over million of tester for free but also many more users that will pay full price in next years to come as soon as they have to switch computers.
Methinks that MS actually already made money even giving something for apparently free.

 

[krb1945]

Anybody concerned about privacy can turn everything off and can also run with local account.

Which brain damages W10 back to a functionality hardly any better than W7.
And how long do you expect MS to keep that option open for you? They gave the OS away "for free" with the expectation of gathering that data on you and selling it, of getting paid to serve ads to your PC, of making money off the analytics of all that data you were supposed to send to them, of being able to funnel you to their app store for more purchases.
If they can't do that, then they can't make their money off you. How long do you expect them to tolerate that? Eliminating any or all of those "options" is just one little update away.
The noose is already tightening.

 

[krb1945]

I run all of mine with MS data collection modules turned off, but with every thing being about the all mighty dollar, can we be sure they still aren't getting the data after we select off? That would be the question.

I use local accounts on my 6 systems. I suppose if we don't want our data out there somewhere, we have to unplug them and leave them off.

 

[CountMike]

Anybody concerned about privacy can turn everything off and can also run with local account.

Which brain damages W10 back to a functionality hardly any better than W7.
And how long do you expect MS to keep that option open for you? They gave the OS away "for free" with the expectation of gathering that data on you and selling it, of getting paid to serve ads to your PC, of making money off the analytics of all that data you were supposed to send to them, of being able to funnel you to their app store for more purchases.
If they can't do that, then they can't make their money off you. How long do you expect them to tolerate that? Eliminating any or all of those "options" is just one little update away.
The noose is already tightening.

They are just on same bandwagon with Google, Apple,Android etc. Nothing new, as matter of fact they are late. Besides, they are not charity organization and practically everybody is making money from others.
And please, stop with that "Free" stuff, it was not free, ever. It's a clear case of quid pro quo.

 

[mikeebb]

Agree - the upgrade is NOT Free - you pay with your personal information. I lock it down as far as I can go - settings, plus W10Privacy, plus Spybot Anti-Beacon. I know stuff is still going through, but it would be a pain to set up a separate router to control that so I live with it.

BTW, it's not really true that all the telemetry has been back-ported. Yes, it was if you had auto-updates and CEIP turned on, but if that was the case you were hosed into Win10 early. If you had updates properly under control (several ways to do that), Win7 stayed relatively clean; the only regular telemetry was at logon (checking if it's genuine Windows), checking for updates, and crash reports (which didn't always work). Doesn't mean that other software wasn't doing something - Google, Adobe, et al. were and are notorious. But MS itself didn't start getting truly obnoxious until late in the Win8 period and especially so with 10.

If 10 is reasonably locked down, it looks and works much like 7 with a dark theme and a funny start menu.

 

[CountMike]

Nobody had to "hose" me into anything, started from very beginning and explored every nook and cranny. With W7 many times I had to chase updates down and install them manually because if you missed one next ones would not work. This way I don't have to worry about them, it's been smooth sailing since day one. With latest upgrades you can set "Quiet time" when updates are not going to interrupt anything. There's also setting for metered internet so updates can happen only when you ask for them.
In some aspects W10 looks same as 7 but it's not same thing.
Don't kid yourself about no "telemetry" in W7, there's a lots of it in there. Just have to monitor your internet upload and see it communicating all the time.

 

[Colif]

I remember seeing quiet time when win 10 came out and tried to use it but even the options to change it weren't there. So took them one year to get it working, when will the multiple desktop feature remember your settings? Half built functions don't look real good.

 

[CountMike]

I remember seeing quiet time when win 10 came out and tried to use it but even the options to change it weren't there. So took them one year to get it working, when will the multiple desktop feature remember your settings? Half built functions don't look real good.

Unless they shmuck it up in next public anniversary edition, it works fine in 14383. Only problem is that it can't be set for all hours.

 

[perzy]

I miss the functions to adjust window border width and size. We now have mega-screens like 27" on our desktop but you have too find that tiny wheenie small little scroll-marker with the mouse just to scroll down.
Reminds me of OS/2 and the annoying -dubbleclick to Close window- that drove users mad, a hundred years ago, they also refused to adjust to customer demand and see what happened.

 

[Colif]

I miss the functions to adjust window border width and size. We now have mega-screens like 27" on our desktop but you have too find that tiny wheenie small little scroll-marker with the mouse just to scroll down.
Reminds me of OS/2 and the annoying -dubbleclick to Close window- that drove users mad, a hundred years ago, they also refused to adjust to customer demand and see what happened.

It can be fun on a 4k monitor but I just adjusted the size of everything to 150% so I can read the text, the only times it backfires is when the application doesn't adjust its size and then it can be a struggle to even bother to use it then. Most applications scale well.

 

[CountMike]

WinAero Tweaker can adjust things like that.

 

[mikeebb]

Nobody had to "hose" me into anything, started from very beginning and explored every nook and cranny. With W7 many times I had to chase updates down and install them manually because if you missed one next ones would not work. This way I don't have to worry about them, it's been smooth sailing since day one. With latest upgrades you can set "Quiet time" when updates are not going to interrupt anything. There's also setting for metered internet so updates can happen only when you ask for them.
In some aspects W10 looks same as 7 but it's not same thing.
Don't kid yourself about no "telemetry" in W7, there's a lots of it in there. Just have to monitor your internet upload and see it communicating all the time.

I don't think I said there was no telemetry in earlier versions of Windows. Certainly there was some, all the way back to XP and 98. But it was generally documented and limited to what was needed for operating and maintenance/troubleshooting purposes unless somebody opted in to a program like CEIP or Windows Insider that was more aggressive. W10 collects far more data than that, and in many respects is indistinguishable from malware. That's unfortunate, because as an operating system it seems pretty good. Yes, I understand, it was "free" as in beer so it had to be paid for in some other way.

My comment about the looks WAS about the looks. Simply: somebody with an old desktop can in fact set it up so it looks and works in a familiar way.

Nobody "hosed" me into it either. After a brief episode, I removed and blocked W10-related updates in 7 until I was ready to make the move and properly prepared for it. Yes, there were some problems, since I have older hardware and software, but ultimately the upgrades worked out OK on all 4 computers in the house. Cute line I saw someplace: Only the Muggles had problems with the W10 upgrade...

 

[perzy]

WinAero Tweaker can adjust things like that.

Thanx, good to know. Some third-party developed a single-klick solution for OS/2 also, but IBM steadily moved along with double-klick. They thought they knew better than the user. Apparently, microsoft think they know better than you and me.

 

[CountMike]

WinAero Tweaker can adjust things like that.

Thanx, good to know. Some third-party developed a single-klick solution for OS/2 also, but IBM steadily moved along with double-klick. They thought they knew better than the user. Apparently, microsoft think they know better than you and me.

Well, nobody can cater to everybody's wishes or OS would be really huge. I have a lot of wishes for different things myself but had to learn to roll with punches.
There's also Ultimate Windows Tweaker 4.1.1 http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/ultimate_windows_tweaker_for_windows_10.html which also has many options for tweaking windows.
A lot of other programs to change looks and feel.

 

[Colif]

Since we already have this, think i write my 1st impressions of the new patch. I was expecting that black screen with the white circle like last install but it more user friendly this time and apart from the restarts could have looked like a normal update until you logon and get the set up screen.

Edge is pushy, I can't swap default browsers and it refuses to list anything apart from edge, if i do try it leaves the browser as blank. It prefers nothing to either Chrome or Firefox

I like the way settings is organised now. I never worried about the privacy stuff so I don't know what it changed. this is just a first impressions after all.

 

[TechyInAZ]

I just updated 4 of my computers to the latest 1601 build of windows. So far so good!

I did have a few hiccups, like restarts not going right or a little bit of jamming. However, once you restart your computer more than 5 times, the bugs go away and the windows boot up time actually goes faster. It's the first build of windows that I have not had to completely reinstall windows in order for it to work properly.

 

[Ed Chombeau]

Since we already have this, think i write my 1st impressions of the new patch. I was expecting that black screen with the white circle like last install but it more user friendly this time and apart from the restarts could have looked like a normal update until you logon and get the set up screen.

Edge is pushy, I can't swap default browsers and it refuses to list anything apart from edge, if i do try it leaves the browser as blank. It prefers nothing to either Chrome or Firefox

I like the way settings is organised now. I never worried about the privacy stuff so I don't know what it changed. this is just a first impressions after all.

 

[Ed Chombeau]

Load Internet Exoplorer and see if you can make that your default browser. If you cannot; you need to call the MS help desk.

 

[Colif]

Load Internet Exoplorer and see if you can make that your default browser. If you cannot; you need to call the MS help desk.

I might chase it up in a few days. it isn't a major problem. I tried IE and it was same, the page doesn't seem to refresh after I make a choice so need to go to another tab and return to see what happened. I wonder if SFC would fix it.

Think they getting enough questions now as I can't seem to access their forums now through Chrome (this started on weekend), and now the ISO page just comes up as blank. Not useful when trying to help people with problems.

 

[jimmysmitty]

Just an FYI, if you are using the tool to push the update and get error 0x80070057 I just found a fix. After it downloads the update and finishes verifying the update, turn off your network connection (i.e. disable your LAN or WAN on the system you are running it on). It will stick at 2% for a bit then it will actually work. I just left it be and it was at 74% all of the sudden.