Official: Windows 10 has hit the 400 million device mark Microsoft’s self-installing Windows 10 operating system has reached the 400 million mark, the firm announced at its Ignite conference in Atlanta this week, up from the previous high of 350 million in August. This adoption rate means the firm’s self-imposed target of a billion devices by mid-2018 looks increasingly unlikely, …
>> businesses may be buying pc;s with win 10 on them, but i bet most of them get sent straight to the imaging machine for a lovely windows 7 repaint.
Its actually 400 million active devices, but nice try anyway.
No doubt when it hits 500m, 600m, 700m it will still be the unmitigated disaster, hated by all and only days away from the start of a rapid decline. I admire your tenacity in sticking to your rhetoric after being proven wrong time and time again - the adults that make the decisions just don't swallow your bullshit...
12% apparently...
https://blogs.which.co.uk/technology/promoted/one-month-left-should-you-upgrade-to-windows-10/
I guess that's only the ones that know how to, as there isn't an annoying popup telling you how to revert back. It's likely to be much higher if Microsoft nagged them after a month with "do you want to roll back"...
Linux users remind me of the lift/elevator doors in hitch hikers guide - They generate a sense of smug contentment and superiority at a job well done, while being oblivious to how annoying they can be. I like to poke their buttons and watch them go up, and watch them go down, in their little linear ruts. They're adorable.
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what about the 2D FLUGLY? what about the FORCED UPDATES? (and other irritating stuff, naturally).
there are SIGNIFICANT differences between 7 and 10 that exceed "just the start [thing]", MOST of them VERY irritating.
At least with PRO you can UPgrade it to 7 if you want, right???
2D? What 2D? All my windows appear 3D with shadows. My Start menu has an Aero type effect, as does the Notifications bar on the right. Looks great.
What about the forced updates? You can defer with the Pro version, but it's a good thing to make sure everyone is up to date.
I've not come across anything irritating in Windows 10. I've come across some sandal-wearing nerds who think it's rubbish and spout FUD about it, but that's about the only irritation I have encountered.
"What about the forced updates? You can defer with the Pro version, but it's a good thing to make sure everyone is up to date."
OK, tell me where you can defer the updates then, or even be notified that they're waiting? Right now, my Pro version has removed all options of whether I want the updates or not. The only thing I can do is set a (no greater than) 12 hour period each day where it promises it won't restart.
The only hacks I've seen are to disable Windows Update entirely (!), or set the connection to be a metered one, which only works if it's a wifi network, not ethernet.
I'm actually really pissed off with MS over this one. My machine is mostly running 24x7 doing large transcodes etc and I've twice had it reboot itself in the last month. Win 7 is going back on this weekend.
I hear your argument that it's good to make sure everyone is up to date. But I'm old and ugly enough to remember the crap patches that MS unleash on the world, and I'm cautious enough to want early adopters to find out if they work properly before they're allowed on my machine.
The only hacks I've seen are to disable Windows Update entirely (!), or set the connection to be a metered one, which only works if it's a wifi network, not ethernet.
How to set LAN as metered connection:
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-networking/how-to-set-an-ethernet-connection-as-metered-to/ecdaca08-d413-4a6a-9e33-b4afb337fc18?auth=1
Not sure whether Win10 times out after n days and demands to be connected to an unmetered connection. However, be warned if you connect the system to an unmetered connection expect it to crash as it attempts to do 6+ months of updates...
I agree, I thought I would give it a go. I had a dell laptop with windows 10. After three hours of scurrying through all the areas to turn off, like the advertising ID and the "default to" the cloud settings, and the "local account" please settings and the EDGE online marketing area that is stored in the cloud, and the security settings to basic (so they can't dial in) And Cortana's laughable breaks DPA if you use it setttings, and whatever else I could find.
I then had to unpick mirror.co.uk and candy crush that had been bundled to name a few.
THEN I wanted to add a windows feature (hyper V). Or rather check it was there. And I found myself in DISM, or powershell to the non windows users. That is when I realised after five hours of making the laptop mine (most time was spent hunting the internet) I realised that I was in an OS on a command line.
So it went back to the shop and I went back to Linux. Same experience without the hassles.
It is probably brilliant and anyone not caring about things like privacy or the law, it is fine and pretty. To everyone else is just a few headaches you don't need.
"So I can only assume that the W10 bashing here is by people that never, ever used the OS? I'm as guilty as the rest of you, I bashed W10 even though I never tried it. Now I've tried it. What's the big deal? Why all the objections if it's basically Windows 7 with a SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT start menu?"
- AC.
The big deal (apart from the privacy issues and things getting broken every Patch Tuesday) is that Windows 7 doesn't change all of it's settings back to MS defaults every time there's an update like 10 does.
And, yes, I have used Windows 10 - for a short time.
I expect when you don't care about privacy or updates or compatibility problems because it's a work machine and that's usually taken care of for you then it's great. The rest is more-or-less fixable except the UI which was last in the queue when they were handing out themes.
No, it's being bashed by people who know a hell of a lot more about operating systems than apparently you do.
Unless you buy the Enterprise version, you basically lose control of your own computer. You lose your privacy.
Furthermore, Microsoft has so heavily gimped Windows 10 that Windows 10 Home may as well be the equivalent of Windows 7 Starter edition. You can't even connect to a password protected network share with it, or do *anything* that requires authentication because they've completely disabled it. It's basically useless for anything more advanced that watching Netflix or playing Minesweeper.
Windows 10 Pro is the equivalent of Windows 7 Home, and Windows 10 Enterprise (which costs $400-ish, give or take) is what you need to settle on if you want to keep what you were used to with Windows 7 Pro.
And heaven forbid you update and the update destroys your install. Which happened to 1/3 of the people in our small test deployment.
I've used just about every OS microsoft has deployed since DOS 2.1, except MS-BOB and ME and I have to say that this one sucks the most. Plus, I was even less pro windows 10 once I received kb3185614. Once that sucker was pushed to my machine, I lost the ability to map any shared drives. The only way for me to recover was to remove that "fix" and disable automatic updates, because every time I rebooted, it took me 30 minutes or so to undo the damage it caused.
So, while you are certainly entitled to your opinion, I can't say I agree with your glowing approval and would very much love to punch MS's CEO and the pinhead manager/director in charge of this piss poor excuse for an operating system.
"Windows 10 is one of the very best recruiting tools for a Linux conversion that I can think of"
I would disagree, Linux is fine if you have time to spend working out how to do things, or if you want to fiddle with the OS but its still not quite there for the consumer market.
As an example, I have worked in IT for 15 years now mainly with windows, though I have also used linux/unix from time to time.
I decided to give linux another go a few weeks ago, I spent about 20 minutes doing an install of mint, then about 6 hours trying to get mono develop to install, when it did install there were bits missing, After some digging around online I found a decent guide to installing it from the command line, the guide offered little explination as to what the commands did or why to run them, it was pretty much,
1. Run this command,
2. Add this repo,
3. Run this command, ...
Got it all installed and running, nuget package manager doesn't work, all the settings are right but something somewhere must be missing...
I gave up on mint, and installed ubuntu, bit more luck there as it installed from the software manager.. All seemed good nuget worked, I could build a test console app.. Happy.
So, the kids will want to play minecraft, lets get that going... It needs JAVA, Java isnt in the SW manager... Look online, sun no longer supports it on this distribution so you have to use Open JVM or similar... Cant remember what the problem with that was but it caused me to go back to a similar guide as before.. add this repo, install this package... Then I hit a brick wall, the guidence online was to download and compile some module for open JVM.
You know what I did? I dropped back into windows, installed Xamarin studio (Basically Mono Develop), it took a double click and a few button presses. Minecraft was even easier.
Linux has its place, Its great if you have a specific task and its been configured to do that task, if you want to play with the OS, or you have time to spare to learn how to bend it to your will.
For me however, its not a suitable replacement, I'd much rather just get on with work rather than spending my life trying to get the machine configured correctly.
Im sure that someone who knows what they are doing could have sorted the above issues without any problem then im sure mint would have met my needs perfectly, however thats the problem.. it doesn't "just work" its more difficult to get started with than its competition so its always going to fall short in the eyes of consumers who just want to switch their PC on and do stuff.
@ d3vy
There are linux distros - e.g. Mint - that simply install and work (at least on the various machines that I've tried). On the other hand it takes time to "move in" to a new Windows 10 machine.
It is very strange to be in a situation where setting up Linux is less hassle than Windows.
Unfortunately work is now issuing W10 laptops, but hey ho I'll only use mine to remote into the Linux box where I do my real work...
@AC
Its a slightly odd response to claim that Mint "Simply install(s) and work(s)" when d3vy relates a tale of attempting to get that same Mint to work. Its almost as if you didn't read his post, but that can't be. If it always has worked for you then great, but it hasn't done that for me (or him). Likewise windows often does install and work but sometimes it doesn't. The biggest source of problems, it seems to me, in both operating systems come from device drivers which isn't entirely down to the OS. Can't say I've noticed Linux being less hassle to install than windows. In my experience windows enjoys better driver support than Linux but that isn't Linux's fault.
@Anon.
"There are linux distros - e.g. Mint - that simply install and work (at least on the various machines that I've tried). On the other hand it takes time to "move in" to a new Windows 10 machine."
Have a look back at my comment, I was using Mint, and Ubuntu, two distros renowned for their ease of use.
My point exactly is that if I cant get a tool working in what is meant to be the easiest version of the OS without resorting to the command line then something somewhere has gone wrong. Dont get me wrong, I like linux, if I didnt need to do actual work and just wanted to play around and learn the OS I'd be using it full time, however because I need to work Im going to be on windows for the forseable - simply because everything I need works in windows without hours of configuration.
But then I got a new laptop at work, and against my wishes it has Windows 10 Pro installed.
...
So I can only assume that the W10 bashing here is by people that never, ever used the OS?
Whilst Win10 in desktop mode isn't too dissimilar to Win8, the big issue I've found is keeping it working, particularly with major build updates, such as Nov 2015's Cumulative update and July/Aug Anniversary update. For both of these updates, I've had clients with systems that had to have a full factory reset before they would update to a fully functional OS; only problem these systems had other applications that also needed to be reinstalled and reconfigured and user data that had to be saved and restored...
Whilst it isn't perfect (and yes you do need iTunes to backup some stuff that doesn't get sent to iCloud), I do think Apple got the whole update process a whole lot better with iOS.
Would any sane person actually PAY for something that is riddled with ads, is in permanent Alpha, Beta, whatever and lacks features from previous versions?
MS really need to have a think about this because as much as they wave figures around the only way is down for this rotten piece of adware, spyware, junk (delete as appropriate)
It's funny when you visit JL or Dixons and look at PCs. The assistant tries their best for a sale but as soon as you ask about Windows 10 they sort of back down and admit it's rubbish. There are some nice machines around just now but there's no way I would buy one with Windows 10 on it. Full stop.
Sky TV get away with charging a monthly subscription then adding advertisements. MS might not be so lucky.
> Only in Skype I think?
No - I get regular "notifications" asking me to try Office 365 for 30 days for free". Are these really notifications? I think not.
The start menu is littered with soft ads - Candy Crush, MS Solitaire Pack, and a few other doorways which lead to items for sale.
One may argue that I got Win10 for free, so MS are entitled to push ads. However the price of the laptop (or desktop etc) included the MS licence, and so is not really free at all.
If it were just ads - offered in a small quiet corner of the OS - I might, just might, go with it. But it's the data gathering that accompanies it that really bothers me, so I use Win10 as little as possible, and certainly avoid Cortana.
On a positive note, whilst I still prefer Win7, Win10 is miles better than Vista and 8.x.
I mostly use Linux OSs these days, but need the odd (virtualised) MS device for apps that only work that way. If it weren't for my work, these VMs would go too.
"What ads?"
Off the top of my head:
"You don't have the latest version of Office..." (the Get Office 365 app, that despite removing 3 times has reborn - I'm fine with my still-supported Office 2013 thanks...)
Candy Crush, Twitter, Minecraft and the fucking Daily Mirror appearing in the "life at a glance" section of the start menu
citation? theres not a wikipedia entry for it numb nuts. it happened to my customers, against my advice. do you think i am making this up?
if you have a sample size of 1 pc, and win 10 works, happy fucking days.
if you look after many hundreds of them day in day out, you might have a different opinion, like mine, which is based on what i see from a large number of pc's from individuals to companies with 30 odd machines in them.
@psychonaut
"citation? theres not a wikipedia entry for it numb nuts. it happened to my customers, against my advice. do you think i am making this up"
Not at all, I was wondering what Business crippling event happened as a result of an upgrade from an older version of windows to win 10.
My point was that I am not aware of anyone who has had problems with upgrades from windows 7/8/8.1 to 10.
Give some examples of the issues that you have encountered that are unique to or caused by windows 10.. I am genuinely interested.
OK, so I deleted as appropriate and ended up with this -
"MS really need to have a think about this because as much as they wave figures around the only way is down for this".
Not sure that makes any sense, since it appears to be going up in popularity, which reflects my experience in the work place (and outside of work). Not sure what all the fuss is about - I really like Windows 10 - much prefer it to Windows 7.
its not going up in popularity. its been force fed to johhny dickhead who has no idea how to stop it from installing, or where to buy a new machine that doesnt have it on.
its crippled several small businesses that i know of who against my advice decided to "upgrade". then they had to pay me lots of money to sort it out. dfor that read "reinstall win 7, redo all the networking and file permissions, reinstall the security that it had removed"
its a festering pile of shit,. the upgrade process is a joke and causes all sorts of headaches, the recent anniversary update also), file permissions, software, drivers... the inability to not have updates ....jesus, network drivers....theres a realtek nic that disconnects every 5 minutes on win 10. they only released a win 10 driver that doesnt fall over every 5 mins 2 months ago.
it might be fine if you go browsing and check your yahoo email and use MSE but if you do anything else, expect trouble.
cold dead hands win 7 middle of 2020 my
rearrange to make a slightly coherent sentence.
"As a professional software developer, I'm much happier using Windows 10 than Windows 7."
From a dev point of view I find very little different between the two, personally I use 10, some clients provide me with win7 machines to work from.
If you look up a few posts you'll see how well my foray into development on linux went...
"its crippled several small businesses"
Citation needed.
In what way has it crippled several businesses that you know of? Unless they have some software that requires win7* then I cant see why they would have an issue.
I have yet to find anything that I can do on windows 7 that I cant do on win 10**
* if they have and they still installed win 10 then that their fault.
** Anything that I actually want to do, Ill accept that if I wanted to stop updates etc Id struggle.
First up, It still amazes me that people are happy to pay a sub to sky and sit through adverts as well... but thats another matter.
As for adverts in windows, Ive not seen any and Ive been on 10 since release, there is a setting to allow the store to suggest apps for you, but it can be switched off (If I remember rightly it was part of the set up after the Anniversary update).
Ive said it before and I'm sure Ill say it again, Windows/Linux/OSx whatever you are using, its a tool, use what suits you/your task best all this fighting about which OS is better is a waste of everyones time.
If anyone really cares that much about what OS someone else uses they really have their priorities wrong.
I just think its crazy that people are still buying PC's and laptops with windows 7. Cmon people, choose W10, its far superior to 7. On the privacy issue, you have no problem giving facebook all your details, photos of your children and details of where you have been, where you are now and where you are going next week. Windows 10 tracking a few bits of your online habbits is hardly a big concern.
"On the privacy issue, you have no problem giving facebook all your details, photos of your children and details of where you have been, where you are now and where you are going next week."
I do, I don't even have Facebook or Twitter or whatever. So yeah, guess Win10 is only for the younger social-media generation? ;)
"On the privacy issue, you have no problem giving facebook all your details, photos of your children and details of where you have been, where you are now and where you are going next week. Windows 10 tracking a few bits of your online habbits is hardly a big concern."
I do. But then I do not have a Facebook account or use Windows.
I do use and host social media sites and have done pretty much since before the internet arrived in the UK without imparting any of that. Mr Zuckerberg neither invented social media nor sex. But don't tell anyone or I'll have you go viral.
"There is a lot of FUD being spouted about Windows 10, most of it by Microsoft-hating trolls, or people who are just stuck in the past."
no FUD, Win-10-nic is what it is, out there for everyone to see, complete with the 2D FLUGLY, the 'brickings' [mostly from updates], and not to forget those forced updates that REMOVE! YOUR! CUSTOMIZATIONS!, and so on. And the adware you can ALLEGEDLY turn off, but the spyware you can't shut off no matter how much Micro-shaft claims to the contrary.
It stinks on ice, sucks out of the box, etc.
nothing good to say about it at all, except that MAYBE the 'Pro' version LETS YOU upgrade to 7.
@bombastic_bob - The deal breaker for me was when Slurp decided a W8.1 dual boot laptop (Linux Mint) had to have Winbloat10 aka the Abomination installation files downloaded. The download settings on 8.1 were generic. After that episode, Internet connections for all Winbloat installs has been disabled. This is the crap that malware uses not a supposedly reputable OS. This begs the question what else very dodgy if not illegal actions is Slurp doing with the Abomination.
Having used Windows 10, here are the advantages of it of Win7:
* It is faster
* DirectX 12
* Multiple desktops
Here are the disadvantages of Win10 over Win7:
* Pre-boot F8 disabled by default, the dumbest of the dumb decisions Microsoft ever made
* No option for Aero
* The ribbon interface is everywhere, where it should be nowhere except as an option (not requirement) in Office
* Mandatory updates: I currently have logged 23 Win7 updates that break a Microsoft program that I use every day; how can businesses block updates that ruin their expensive programs?
* The start menu is an illogical disaster
* Cortana cannot be turned off even when it is disabled
* Too much tracking
* No product key sticker on the computer in case the motherboard goes bad
* Free games are now replaced by advertising games
* It is a pain to change the default PDF viewer from the Edge browser
* Win10 blocks some programs "for your protection" with no clear instructions on how to run that program in case it is a false positive
My points in brackets:
Having used Windows 10, here are the advantages of it of Win7:
* It is faster (But XP is MUCH faster, with proper install /config)
* DirectX 12 (Marketing decision, not inherent)
* Multiple desktops (Available free as add on since at least 2002)
Sadly Win7 is only a bug fix of Vista, that's why Win10 is faster.
re: advantage/disadvantages of W10 vs W7
I never saw Win-10-nic as being, in ANY way 'faster'. in fact, some things are DEFINITELY slower. Some of the SSD drive owners say the opposite, though, so I'd guess that the kernel now favors SSDs over spinny-drives, so YMMV. Personally, I think a properly designed kernel would have been faster for ANY drive, and not waste a pile of time with paranoid re-re-reads of the registry [among other things].
Another factoid that's interesting: check out the latest 'statcounter'
http://gs.statcounter.com/#os-ww-weekly-201531-201639
it shows a DEFINITE DECLINE in Windows 10 usage, and a corresponding BUMP UP in Windows 7 usage. Coincidence? I don't think so... but it's early in the week, and the latest numbers will usually drop a bit by the following monday. we shall see, I bet!
it's not FUD. You may or may not remember a promise that MS made to us, as users, a long time ago, which was roughly to the effect of: We value your privacy and will work to ensure that is protected. Over the years they've done a complete 180 and they're forcing us to an OS that's nothing more than a user metrics gathering device. They force an OS on me then they make significant changes without full disclosure or my consent. Then if I have a question or attempt to contact them because one of their patches fouled up my machine, I have no recourse other than to pay for crap support that normally can't fix my problems to my satisfaction.
You may be comfortable with Microsoft's mediocrity and falling quality or be perfectly fine with them selling your info to whomever is willing to shell out the money for it, but I am not. And if it weren't for the fact that this one machine has to be fit with 10, so I can provide support to my customers, I'd kick it to the curb. It's not worth the aggravation and quite frankly I don't have the desire or the time to piss away on fixing something that THEY fucked up.
FUD about Win 10? My bank account from fixing Win 10 bricks says you are a shill.
The part I like best? Not being able to fix some of them no matter what. Except to roll them back to Win 7. If the user has the install. Often they don't. Not the Win 10 install either as it was installed over the Internet.
Oops. Here's my bill.
"On the privacy issue, you have no problem giving facebook all your details, photos of your children and details of where you have been, where you are now and where you are going next week."
I'd find that very difficult as I neither have a farcebook account nor any intention of getting one.
However I do have grandchildren. The older one got a W7 laptop for secondary school. The younger one is going to get a PiTop RSN which will, of course, be running Debian.
"A guy at work DJ's on the weekend, and was not able to play as his laptop started updating automatically. Locked it up for an hour. Had to play from his phone for the first hour."
Had he taken the time to set up the Active hours on his laptop this wouldn't have happened. *
He would also have received NUMEROUS warnings that the update was pending.
* Only once have I had an update cut short my work, it was when I was working late and had forgotten that I had a pending update that had been put back to out of active hours... Laptop warned me, updated and came back up and re-opened my work for me.
Plus, he plays from a laptop? hes not a DJ, he just presses play and queues track ups... winamp has a plugin that could replace him. ;)
I feel sorry for anyone who is just starting out into the world of PC's these days and their first experience is the horror of Windows 10, If I had a dollar for each one of all the WTF? moments worldwide since the release of W10 I'd probably be a multi millionaire by now.
I had enough difficulty dealing with Windows 98 Second Edition back in early 2001 when I started out but, looking back now, it was child's play compared with W10.
At least W98 didn't download updates every 5 minutes that broke more things than it was supposed to fix. And, you could find most of the settings easily in W98, unlike W10.
"And, you could find most of the settings easily in W98, unlike W10."
WHAT???!?!? have you actually looked, most of the control panel items are the same!
Also the search functionality is great in win 8/10 hit the windows key type what you want "Mouse" and it takes you to the mouse settings "Display" takes you to the display settings "Documents" takes you to your documents... "Downloads" for some F*cking reason takes you to the windows store unless you remember that the downloads folder is actually the second result.. other than that "quirk" with the store its all good.
I dont think Ive ever opened an application by browsing the start menu for it... didnt in windows 7 either come to think of it!
The last update but one took out my wife's sound card.
The last update bricked the entire computer, because it decided that the disk imaging system was not compatible, and so blocked it, making it impossible to so much as open a file or folder. You could also not uninstall the imaging program, even in safe mode, because the uninstaller was also deemed incompatible.
So far it takes about a morning every month to keep this POS operating, and we live in dread of what the next update will do. Meanwhile, my win7 computer just chugs along. I think I'd rather eat my own foot than 'upgrade'.
0.0.0.0 choice.microsoft.com
0.0.0.0 choice.microsoft.com.nstac.net
0.0.0.0 df.telemetry.microsoft.com
0.0.0.0 oca.telemetry.microsoft.com
0.0.0.0 oca.telemetry.microsoft.com.nsatc.net
0.0.0.0 redir.metaservices.microsoft.com
0.0.0.0 reports.wes.df.telemetry.microsoft.com
0.0.0.0 services.wes.df.telemetry.microsoft.com
0.0.0.0 settings-sandbox.data.microsoft.com
0.0.0.0 settings-win.data.microsoft.com
0.0.0.0 sqm.df.telemetry.microsoft.com
0.0.0.0 sqm.telemetry.microsoft.com
0.0.0.0 sqm.telemetry.microsoft.com.nsatc.net
0.0.0.0 telecommand.telemetry.microsoft.com
0.0.0.0 telecommand.telemetry.microsoft.com.nsatc.net
0.0.0.0 telemetry.appex.bing.net
0.0.0.0 telemetry.microsoft.com
0.0.0.0 telemetry.urs.microsoft.com
0.0.0.0 vortex-sandbox.data.microsoft.com
0.0.0.0 vortex-win.data.microsoft.com
0.0.0.0 vortex.data.microsoft.com
0.0.0.0 watson.telemetry.microsoft.com
0.0.0.0 watson.telemetry.microsoft.com.nsatc.net
0.0.0.0 watson.ppe.telemetry.microsoft.com
0.0.0.0 wes.df.telemetry.microsoft.com
0.0.0.0 vortex-bn2.metron.live.com.nsatc.net
0.0.0.0 vortex-cy2.metron.live.com.nsatc.net
0.0.0.0 watson.live.com
0.0.0.0 watson.microsoft.com
0.0.0.0 feedback.search.microsoft.com
0.0.0.0 feedback.windows.com
0.0.0.0 corp.sts.microsoft.com
0.0.0.0 diagnostics.support.microsoft.com
0.0.0.0 i1.services.social.microsoft.com
0.0.0.0 i1.services.social.microsoft.com.nsatc.net
0.0.0.0 vortex-bn2.metron.live.com.nsatc.net
0.0.0.0 vortex-cy2.metron.live.com.nsatc.net
THIS is one BIG reason we hate Windows 10.
External HW firewall? Obviously you're not trusting "your" HOSTS file to do that... Windows ☠ is, of course, hard-coded to ignore our HOSTS files in matters pertaining to our surveillance and enforced insertions. Furthermore, the Microsoft Corporation's DNS whitelist, embedded within dnsapi.dll, will be updated and amended in perpetuity, at its true owner's* sole discretion and convenience.
*Make no mistake: That sure as hell aint us!
https://www.petri.com/windows-10-ignoring-hosts-file-specific-name-resolution
I tried Windows 10. I even tried to like it; giving up on that, I tried to tolerate it.
Last October I ran the upgrade on a 7 Pro box. Spent hours turning off obnoxious ads and intrusive "features," configuring the Start menu tiles to reflect how I want to work, and so forth. Then the 1115 update came out and erased all of my changes, turned the ads back on, re-enabled Cortana, and re-enabled telemetry. So I went back to 7.
Then, in July, I thought "maybe I didn't give 10 a fair shake." So I downloaded the MCT and clean-installed 10 Pro. Spent hours turning off obnoxious ads and intrusive "features," configuring the Start menu tiles to reflect how I want to work, and so forth. Then the Anniversary update came out and erased all of my changes, turned the ads back on, re-enabled Cortana, and re-enabled telemetry.
I don't have time for this shit. It's not me, M$, it's you. I'll be riding 7 Pro into the ground for boxen that need Windows, and installing Linux Mint on the rest.
I haven't tuned out the ads/snoopware yet - mostly because it is a work-only machine and I refuse to put anything remotely private on Windows these days so I don't care overmuch if it snoops.
But your experience makes me wonder... can anyone recommend a configuration tool/script that reliably sets Windows privacy settings and can reapply them as needed when MS re-applies it preferred nosy configuration? Not necessarily something completely robust and able to manage a company's PC fleet. But something able to reapply your personal PC's configuration as needed, even if it needs a bit of user savvy to do so.
Seems like something a Chef or some modern declarative-based configuration engine might be able to do. Or something that could be done using Powershell.
Or, maybe even a set of registry entries, though that seems it would be brittle.
Preferably NOT a pure, opaque, executable - no need to trade MS's intrusive stupidity for what could possibly be a nice backdoor into your system.
can anyone recommend a configuration tool/script that reliably sets Windows privacy settings and can reapply them as needed when MS re-applies it preferred nosy configuration?
AntiSpy for Windows 10 wasn't bad, but it fails your opacity test.
Sadly, such programs only deals with the data slurp settings. It's still up to you to fix uninstalled or blocked programs, borked drivers, buggy updates, Windows Store ads, forced bloatware installs, a re-arranged start menu, and the many other Win10 "upgrade" annoyances.
Just wanted to pop in and say I've had no problems with Win10. Hardware support is great, the UI is clean and responsive, and it's been perfectly stable. I also have no idea what these "ads" are that people are talking about. My only complaint with recent versions of Windows is that Microsoft has made it impossible to migrate from one system to another with any out-of-the-box tools. Otherwise, it's working fine for me and, dare I say it, this may be the case for most of the people who are not angry, sock-and-sandal-wearing neckbeards.
"But there are signs that businesses and professional users at least are keen on Windows 10, with European IT market research outfit Context reporting that Windows 10 Pro adoption is on the rise."
Well, what alternative have you to run Sage, Outlook based Scheduling and other corporate Windows only stuff etc?
Bears in the woods, Pope Catholic etc.
Forced rather than keen.
"Well, what alternative have you to run Sage, Outlook based Scheduling and other corporate Windows only stuff etc?"
According to an email I received today from Sage, the Win10 adversary anniversary update is preventing some users from logging in to their copies of Sage 50 Accounts. For some, depending on the extent to which they use the software, this could be quite a problem - especially with the end of the month fast approaching.
I've been personally using Windows 10 since its official release last year. For the most part, I much prefer it to 8/8.1, but I don't like many parts as much as I liked Windows 7 Pro. For me, the sore points have mostly been the lack of privacy controls (or automatic default opt-ins for MS services), automatically forced updates/patches, and the idea that since Microsoft "gave away" the OS for free (for a time) we somehow exchanged our privacy and marketing information for a "free" OS and defaults you into their data gorging operations. I can almost tolerate the forced updates, but nowhere did I expect the OS to be so intrusive.
Fortunately, for the computing elite, there are ways to mitigate what I consider to be the more egregious aspects of Windows 10, at least for now. I've managed to stop Cortana's siphoning of data to god-knows-where (at the expense of the OS constantly vomiting into the Application and System logs), and can at least postpone forced OS service packs Updates until they've been thoroughly re-beta tested by those less fortunate or knowledgeable. Back in the good-old days of ordinary Patch Tuesday, I'd let other chumps download said patches first, scour the web for things that were pooched, and by Thursday would know whether I wanted in on the fun. Classic Shell even allows my Start menu to work and look as I've come to expect it. In short, I can get around my hangups in Win 10 with effort and knowledge, or the knowledge of others.
But for my Mom, and the remaining 90%+ of the computing consumers, things are not so simple. Mention gpedit, and you get a look that would not be out of place on a concussed kitten. These are the people that are baffled when their free subscription to Office 365 expires and they can no longer create "letters" even though it worked fine yesterday, it must be the new Virus they heard about on the news, just take a look at it, why are my pictures and screen saver not what they used to be... etc. They are also the people that seemingly don't care that their computer is hoovering up their personal info and habits and shipping it off to Redmond in the hopes that they'll click on the ad for discount airfare to Minneapolis, what a coincidence, they just did a search on their own computer for paper that included the words "Winter Carnival", don'tcha know, or are suddenly seeing ads for alcohol abuse treatments on every site they visit after researching "liver failure" in Bing, the default search engine on the default browser on the default OS.
More is the pity, as many of Win 10's underlying improvements are just that: Improvements. Features that benefit the computer and the end user, but are largely invisible, or, for those that know about them, overshadowed by the OS's stalker-like behavior. On my 5 year old hardware of my daily-driver system, Win 10 is as speedy and more reliable than Windows 7, no matter how much I liked it.
There are many of a technically inclined sort who advocate an alternate OS, particularly Linux. Linux, especially the more consumer-friendly forms like Ubuntu, are compelling. Linux could handle 90% of what I do under Windows, without most of the hassle, but there is the hassle right there- Performing a wholesale change of OS is itself a hassle, and trying to get the remaining 10% of what I need to do (which, when you can't do it seems like 100%) is impractical. Further, that does nothing to help the majority of consumer users who are not going to go so far, for love nor money; it was hard enough replacing my Mom's OS X iBook with a Windows 8 Dell Laptop!
"Why would you do such a thing? That's got to be the wrong direction surely."
A matter of perspective, surely. At that time it was getting on 9 years old, but what necessitated the replacement was that she literally vomited on it. She was experiencing end-stage kidney failure and became violently ill. A $400 Dell from Walmart was a quick, cheap replacement that kept her playing solitaire and checking emails without the wait and expense of a new MacBook. As an aside, she's still on dialysis now, waiting to get on the transplant list, but doing relatively well.
A matter of perspective, surely.
I would agree. However, in your situation, I would have given her a $200 iPad (iPad2's are readily available and will run the current version of iOS, but new versions with the lightning connector are better because the charging lead isn't keyed...)...
"However, Redmond cheesed off many business users earlier this year when it retroactively removed from Windows 10 Pro a feature that enabled admins to restrict access to the Windows Store, and thus control what apps users can install. The move was portrayed by many as an attempt to upsell businesses to the Windows 10 Enterprise edition, which is only available through volume licensing deals."
That does not come across as a long term smart move because businesses will try and cling on to Windows 7 for as long as possible and a significant fraction of them will then move over to one of the unices rather than pony up for the more expensive Enterprise edition.
Sorry, I don't see a challenge! If you buy a new PC(*) with Win10 preinstalled, the cost of the OS licence has been factored into the price; just as it was for all previous preinstalled versions of Windows.
Given the effort MS has put into GWX this last year, I suggest there are very few people with systems currently running Win7/8 who are looking to upgrade these systems to Win10, so not worth the marketing budget.
(*) I'm ignoring that until the end of October you can still buy PC's with Win7Pro preinstalled.
" it was hard enough replacing my Mom's OS X iBook with a Windows 8 Dell Laptop!!"
"But, not your dear Mother, surely?"
Installing Mint Linux along with a short 'introduction to Linux' session would fix it, yeah.
if you set Mint up properly your mother is probably already using the same software that you find pre-installed on Mint, like Libre Office, TBird, Firefox... and if she's used to a Mac, the bash shell and file system structure should ALSO be familiar on Mint!
I imagine that OSX to Mint (Cinnamon) is MUCH less of a shock than OSX to Windows "Ape" or Win-10-nic.
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