Comments Windows 10 After 6 Months (or 2 Days)

OK, I have exactly 2 days of working with Windows 10, but, after all these years of Windows and studying the OS, I feel I have earned the right to believe that I can see where MS has gone with 10 after this short time. BTW, I have never even booted a W8 PC, and all of my PCs are basically W7 Pro 64, other than a couple of XP Pro machines. I don't feel like I am biased, considering the upgrade is free, but here is what I would like to say:

All respect to all other opinions, but I have an opinion that is framed a little bit unusually. This is that I believe MS absolutely has accomplished one thing with W10. It is fully granny-proofed. I don't think granny will have a single complaint. IMO, this is a nice thing in a very important sense.

This looks 100% to me like a call to get out there and get mother and granny hooked up. It's Windows the granny edition, and I do like that aspect of the upgrade option.

This said, I would also like to say that I don't see the difference between this and Windows 7 under the wrapper, and I confess I don't know why MS would force anyone to upgrade who has W7. I really feel MS should add 5+ years to support for W7 for the sake of business machine owners who work on their PCs. Give IT time to learn everything there is to learn about W7 in corporate environments and give the OS a chance to pass the test of time. I think W7 can win and even with MS charging for it on new PCs. Make the W10 thing an option.

2 cents for anyone thinking of installing 10. My real review would be very critical of the OS in terms of work productivity (in a corp environment). I installed the Pro version, which should be set up straight out of the box for IT personnel and corporate users. It's not, and quite sneakily, under the hood, Windows 10 hides all the same tools that can be used so maliciously or inappropriately. By this I mean that it's unfortunate that PC users at work can be so lulled by this wrapper for W7 into forgetting about their responsibility to make sure their work station is secure. All the reminders are removed from W10. This is too easy a thing to forget with the new Windows and is dangerous with fresh out of college type employees, especially. And, yes, it is all still there, no matter how simplistic the wrapper appears. Worst of all, W10 bleeds data. What doesn't go straight to Microsoft, goes somewhere else and then to MS and then to who knows where (China/Libya/the NSA/the UN/the KGB/Wal-mart...seriously where doesn't this data go?). The out of the box impression of Windows is important for business machines, and the Pro version for work purposes is absolutely awful out of the box.

P.S.-I fear that Windows is still not grandpa-proof, not even W10 . C'mon grandpa...you gotta get in the game!

 

You need to look at the Enterprise version for business use rather than the Pro version. Never been quite sure myself just who the Pro version is intended for. With data you could turn off Bing and Cortana because that's how most of the stuff concerning YOU gets out, but that just leaves you in Google's tender hands. Fact of life - use the internet and your data will be gathered by someone.

 

The Pro version OS is only meant for small and medium businesses, and you would expect in that environment the staff would be very hands-on and more than capable of customising its use. The privacy issues are no different now to the last two OSs, and are very easily customisable both from within Windows 10 itself, and the use of a great program like O&O's free 'ShutUp10' programme.
But for sizeable businesses they wouldn't even be using Pro but Enterprise.

For a personal home user, I can't see any snags with 10 over 7 or 8 - it just requires simple customisation.

 

It took me a little time to find out that in the Privacy Settings there's a ton of things that can be turned off selectively and when I initially installed Win 10 instead of using the default setup scheme, I customized settings and turned off everything that sent info to MS (except the malware reporting/submission).

I'm running Pro AND Enterprise on separate drives. Enterprise has a few additional components in Windows Features that can be turned on (or not — like Embedded Logon [the word "Welcome" doesn't appear below the User name during logon and Configuring Updates — 35% Complete, etc doesn't appear if you install an update that requires a Restart]) but otherwise, I haven't noticed any difference between the way Pro and Enterprise work. Maybe it's just me.

I don't like the fact that Win 10 is going to be "pushed" onto Win 7, 8 and 8.1 users so I have installed the GWX Control Panel that plodr suggested in another thread on my Win 7 and 8.1 drives/partitions.

 

Thanks for the comments guys. I wish I had a way to take a look at the Enterprise version. Don't think I would have time, anyway.

I have seen mention of how users installing W10 have chosen the custom installation and then noticed that the settings were configured incorrectly upon completion of the install. I noticed this too, but I did manage to turn off and hide Cortana and Bing. I feel kind of sad that MS seems to have wrapped so much into using Bing with the Apps and what nots. Also, much of the functionality is in an ugly way dependent on an Outlook.com account. At any rate, I ran Spybot Anti-Beacon, and it blocked a good many Windows and Microsoft type connections and data gathering activities. Still have the nagging feeling that there is alot going on under the table with Windows, not just Windows 10.

Earthling, you are correct about Google, too. I remember when there was actually a debate about what Google should be allowed to gather, say back around 2000 or so. Google got so big so fast, and the debate ceased. Maybe now that MS is finished developing OSes, we can reopen the debate and really get serious about info grabbing. I hope so, because it leads to too many openings for cyber crime.

I was disappointed at the presentation on the start menu, which can be customized to a degree. Unfortunately, none of the configurations exactly hits the spot for me. I did manage to add Control Panel to the list of Apps and from there to the tiles menu. Settings seem to be kind of scattered about, but, after only a few days of looking things over, I guess they can all be reached from Control Panel still.

W10 does seem like a wrapper for W7 to me. I guess I would have thought that MS would be better off to have made the features in 8 and 10 in an app form that W7 users could add. MS could have made a bundle off that way of thinking, especially if the app catered to their phone OS. That confuses me a little bit, leaving me the impression that Microsoft is scared of money.

Many, many challenges of securing and safely operating a PC have been left on the table by MS with W10. It's their last OS, so I guess we will have to see what happens down the road. They can change it and all, but not sure how much of that they will be able to just simply "get away with" without hearing from people.

Generally, no complaints about 10, but I don't sense the need to change from 7, except that there is the deadline for support in place. I do think it's a mistake to end support for 7, especially. It's a very workable OS and and very enterprising. Otherwise, I would say that 10 does nothing to bury Linux, in the sense that once W10 is not free, anymore, the same old debates about Windows v Linux will reappear. Also, Linux will always be free, being open source, not to mention that development will continue with that project. Who knows where it will go or how refined it will become...

 

I'm pleased you started this debate AtlBo because it's got me thinking hard about what to do about both my main system and my wife's. Both run Win 7; both have been fine tuned over the years to give us exactly what we want from them; and both are imaged once a month so are completely secure. Yet July is now just 6 months away and it would be madness to turn our backs on the free upgrade only to end up at some point having to fork out £100 plus for each system to upgrade it to 10. The only upgrade I have done so far is to my laptop, and that wasn't great until I followed it up with a clean install, but since then it's been pretty well perfect - my boot of choice. But doing the same to my Win 7 system implies a significant time input to get it to its current operational state in Win 10, to say nothing of the possible cost of additional software licences after a clean install. My wife's system is not such a problem and can be left on 7 until 2020 by which time hopefully she will have mastered her smartphone and may not need a PC at all. The crunch is coming - and not just for me!

 

Interesting this discussion follows the path of many others. Is your time worth nothing?
The change from Win 7 to Win 10 takes your time in many ways. Is the benefit derived worth the effort put out?

 

Put as bluntly as that the answer has to be no, it isn't worth it. But there are other, less rational factors involved here, like why do I buy a new car every four years when there is absolutely nothing wrong with the present one? Or why do we swap mobile phones as often as we do when the old one does everything we want? It may not have a name but it's the human urge to move on that drives the world's economy and there would be mass unemployment and misery if it just died, and I'm as vulnerable to it as the next guy.

 

We know quite clearly now that Win 10 is the final Microsoft Operating System (for PCs and Laptops) of its kind that will ever appear again. It will be updated/upgraded/secured for free, for ever.
For existing owners of a freely upgradable system (from 7 or 8 excluding Enterprise) waiting until the last weeks of the free upgrade offer is fine.
But when the day comes that Win 7 and 8 are no longer supported, they will have to pay for what becomes of 10.
They wont get it free.
The difference, for a user, between 7/8 and Windows 10 is far more minimal than I expected it to be.
The upgrade was exceptionally quick, and making changes to get rid of Cortana and Bing, and using the excellent O&O free programme 'ShutUP10' to stop the leaking of data, was easy peasy and the lot took less than one hour.

 

It's definitely not exactly a seamless transition, especially going the clean installation direction. Time could really be becoming an issue for the upgrade.

I went with an in place upgrade install similar to the in place repair for Windows that leaves the Windows.old folder. It worked, and everything seems fine so far. The biggest headache of the whole thing is all of the backups. W7 backups are worthless after the month is expired and the transition to 10 final. They have to be sorted through for important files and then onto setting up new backups.

I guess that adds a little bit to my confusion over why MS went through with this (Windows 8 too). 10 is great for grandmothers and grandpas, but, otherwise it's privacy invasion gone wild, Facebook Hollywood, and Outlook/OneDrive overkill. It's constrictive in a number of ways with all of this to me, and I just wonder if MS' view of MS and what it will be to people or should be by peoples' individual definitions is misconstructed or errant.

All I want from MS, personally, is software. I don't want Hollywood or Facebook or MSN.com or Bing or Cortana. Just plain old Windows is what works for me. It stays out of my way, so that I can focus on opportunities.

Great for grandmother, but I really wish I could just keep Windows 7 without the hassles of having to worry about end of support or whatever else is looming down the road. I really get where DOA is coming from for sure...

 

They are all removable. You can easily and completely uninstall virtually every windows store app included. Iobit Uninstaller does that very well including shredding every left over file. You can disable every single MS element such as Cortana, Bing, One Drive, never use Microsoft Edge or IE, and you certainly don't need to use or enable 'Outlook'.
There hasn't been (not in over 15 years) a 'plain old windows'. It doesn't exist and it hasn't existed in contemporary computing times for non-business users. But it can all be ignored/disabled/not used.

Since that vision of Windows hasn't existed in a generation, and will never exist, you might as well just use LINUX.

 

And why not? So happens that last night, for the first time in a few months, I booted to Puppy Linux just to see how much of what I usually do in a day's computing I wouldn't be able to do in Puppy. And the answer turned out to be very little, the only significant exception being a Lotus 1-2-3 financial spreadsheet that I have maintained for 15 years which doesn't run in Wine, but of course I could maintain a Windows VM for that and the few other Windows things I find indispensable. It was food for thought, though undoubtedly would absorb even more of my time initially than converting to Win 10. But for those on Win 7 who just want a usable system that isn't constantly subject to enforced change it's a real option I guess.

 

A little late to this conversation, but Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB (Long Term Service Branch), does not contain the store, nor does it have Cortana. It won't get any new major features (I could be wrong on this point), just bug fixes. Before switching jobs, I suggested to my previous co-workers that this may be a viable solution for VDI for this year.

 

Thanks for the information on Enterprise. I think I would probably like it better . I guess I am stuck with Pro if anything...

 

I appreciate the discussions here in the MG forums about Win10 and I am trying to read everything posted here as well as a few other places about Win10
to prepare myself as best I can before the deadline for the free download.
I don't claim to be near as knowledgable as most of you are, never will be, and neither is the average user.
The main thing that I keep reading about is the invasion of privacy and how to secure the settings like turning off Cortana and Bling.
Funny or sad how ever you want to look at it, one well known tech site calls that "paranoid". Ha!
Anyway, the average pc user will not know how to do the things you are talking about doing to your settings and are most likely going to mess things up quickly.
Thankfully there is a place like Major Geeks for them to come to for help after they mess their new Win10 up.

It would be very helpful if there was a Win10 guide here for privacy settings with the "what to do and how to do it" for those users to follow before they start messing
with things they really don't know how to do. Sure there may be such a guide already out there on other sites but we know we can trust MG.
Of course you may think if they don't know what they are doing they should no be doing it, but you know how that goes.

 

There is very little difference in privacy between Windows 8 and 10 but apart from a user just shutting off things individually, you can do it all with O&O's great free program 'ShutUp10':
http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/oo_shutup10.html

 

Yes, I saw ShutUp10 when it first became available here on MG. The average user still might know about the software or which settings to choose. They can click on each choice and read what it does and still may not know if they should do it or not. Getting people to read before they click has always been a problem. Hence the sentence I wrote "Of course you may think if they don't know what they are doing they should not be doing it, but you know how that goes." Just my thoughts anyway.

 

Yes I get that point. But the majority of users wont care one way or the other so it's not a big issue. Those who do will see that program has three levels of action - the first 'safest', then the two further levels and either they'll read the explanations and make a decision or not. People learn how to use quite complicated household goods. You simply can't cater for the totally IT phobic, and mostly they get help from friends.

 

That is one way of looking at it but many will show up in the Support Forum needing help with something they could of possibly avoided with a easy guide.
A perfect example of a great tutorials is Major Geek Tim Tibbetts YouTube Videos or the How To's here on MG http://www.majorgeeks.com/content/overview/how_to.html

 

I really get angry when I think about Microsoft's lack of transparency on security issues and information gathering. The fact that the settings in Windows 10 magically revert themselves after being changed in Windows and the fact that privacy choices on installation (which MS hides like an adware programmer) magically are not selected when the installation is finished obviously cause very well warranted trust issues. And with updates, MS has made Windows 7 almost as vulnerable. Microsoft has never done anything to prove that their information gathering choices in Windows are in the best interest of users. AND come on...MS lies with their settings. You KNOW they are lying about other things.

Trust is THING OF THE PAST with me and Microsoft. I seriously doubt that all of the security blocks in all of the blocker programs can really stop MS from illicitly gathering data and building user profiles. That said, I am sure someday someone is going to knock on the door and ask MS to step into the light of day when it comes to information gathering. It can't happen soon enough for me, but, until then, thanks to the programmers who help us have options that at least perhaps make MS work to spy...

 

I see no significant difference between MS, Apple, Google or Yahoo when it comes to privacy issues - they are all following in a contemporary culture that is part of the economy we live under. It's about information that can lead to selling. But it does seem to keep some peoples minds off that ever so slightly more worrying issue of privacy highlighted by the American now living in Moscow. Now that really is worth getting angry about because there is no 'ShutUp' program for that.

 

I can't get too worked up about it. While it's obvious MS are gathering mass information which, once assembled and analysed, is of significant value to marketing firms, I don't believe for a moment that any of it is traceable back to individuals, and even if it were MS would be risking the roof falling on their heads should they attempt to use it. MS have just released more info about what it is they are gathering which stresses the mass nature of the data. You don't have to believe it of course.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35251484

 

I don't either, but it doesn't have to be this way. Why should I need a program to shut up MS or Google or Yahoo or Apple? And I feel my anger is justified. MS is not a marketing firm...it's a software firm. Google is a search provider and Yahoo is an internet community. None of this has to have anything to do with marketing, and it has to stop. Seriously, it's off the charts.

Transparency is the key. MS is not 100% transparent to be help accountable for their gathering. The same is true for all major corporations and governments around the world. Honestly, I really believe it won't last. Something else we can differ on, but time only can prove this. However, I would like to reserve the right to say I told you so if I am right...

 

MS, just like every other company of its type on this planet, is a profit-making business and will do every single thing it can to make money. Businesses share valuable data trends in order to do that.
You post as if you haven't been around these past several decades as business has globalised. Earthling is right, the data is almost impossible to be identifiable to individual human beings. It is about meta data. I personally think obsessing about it - when any person who wishes to put the small effort and time into stopping most of the data flow can - is a bit pointless.
Do you use the Signal and Red Phone apps on your smart phone and only communicate with people who have them too? Do you use Tor and bridges on the net? Because if you don't you're literally peeing in the wind about MS data while much more detailed and potentially harmful privacy issues exist outside of your OS.

 

Never said MS's OS is the only privacy travesty. It all has to be stopped...phones, PCs, tablets, the internet...the whole thing. The problem with Windows is just as important as those problems, though. Just to note, you are saying yourself here that there is a problem. I agree with you.

By the way, you could look at it the other way around. That would be that until the issue is dealt with INSIDE Windows, there won't be any way to stop the global internet problem. Just saying.

This is no justification for invasion of privacy. There isn't one. There are proper ways to obtain information legally. Additionally, there is no oversight of the information gathering...NONE. You can't know what MS or Google or Yahoo! or any of the other information whores do with the information they grab. You can't even know what they are grabbing. Noone can know. All you can know is what they say they are grabbing...if you have time to read every EULA and publically issued document from every company on the planet. Good luck. Anyway, just making information available doesn't mean it's accessible or even understandable. MS and the internet ad cronies could give us this, but they choose not to, and it's wrong.

However, to make things worse, MS is vague on data collection in the first place. When one of Microsoft's programs asks me if I would like to share information with Microsoft (or anyone else), and I say no, I expect the information to stay on my PC, PERIOD. Even with Windows 7, the "Customer Experience Improvement" program changes its settings mysteriously, and choices during installation of Windows are ignored. You can tolerate MS' sleazy tactics and lies and choose to live in the dark if you want to, but I am not going to, I promise you that. I will stay on this issue as long as there is a me and as long as there aren't proper regulations for information gathering practices. "We dare defend our rights" is our motto in Alabama, where I am from. I take those words seriously.

You're really just dodging the issue. I'm saying there isn't proper oversight or regulation of information gathering. And yeah, Microsoft says the information can't be traced. But why should I believe Microsoft? I already know they lie. The settings in Windows are proof.

Anyway, what does globalization have to do with rights...or marketing? NOTHING. Again, there are proper ways to gather information and market products and people do have rights. Globalization didn't change any of that. All the last 30 years has shown us about marketing is why the illegal ways to do it are illegal and counterproductive. I have a marketing degree, and I promise you, this information gathering is being performed illegally the way it's being performed today...

MS and worldwide businesses and government are generally vague and non-transparent when it comes to information gathering. They are lying and practicing deceit in the dark...and not to market products. I have no idea why they do it, but it's foolish as hell long term. Again, I look forward to the day when illicit information gathering practices are stopped, and I believe it's coming...

 

Altbo

I agree with you that too much data is collected by default but Microsoft is not doing anything different to any other organisation which is to collect user data according to the laws that exist with opt outs for consumers, and in the case of an OS, there are programs that facilitate restricting that, just like xpAntiSpy that existed for Windows XP and Vista and worked on 7 and 8, and now O&O's ShutUp10.
If you think businesses do it for other reasons, separate from selling and profit, then you might be better lobbying your elected representatives but it is no more relevant to Windows 10 than it was to Windows XP.
Otherwise this line of argument sounds to me just as much a conspiracy theory as those about the murder of JFK or 9/11.

 

Actually, the best way to go is to just take all their money. MS is sure are leaving alot of it laying around in the form of half finished and poorly constructed programs.

Honestly, I think it's more straight stupidity than any sort of conspiracy. If I'm right, some people could end up going to jail, but there IS a trail of deceit at Microsoft, and alot of companies have gone along with the game, so to speak.