JorgeA

If it turns out that CPUs lacking the PREFETCHW instruction also cannot run Windows 10, maybe it's time to stock up on machines that rely on them! --JorgeA

A couple of months old, but in Windows Weekly 437 Paul Thurrott laid into Microsoft's failure to provide clear breakdowns of what's actually selling and what isn't in its October earnings report. The discussion starts at 50:40; Paul gets going at 51:30: The theme returns with Mary Jo Foley at 54:12: At 58:04, Paul takes up the subject of cryptic Windows Updates: Shades of 1984, where the government put out meaningless production statistics and Big Brother smiled and patted his beloved good little boys and girls on the head. --JorgeA

Yup, it was bound to happen somewhere. Years ago the EU complained about MSFT pushing a mere browser, let's see now what they do about a whole OS. And speaking of forced upgrades, read what is Betanews blogger Mark Wilson's probably hardest-hitting post yet on the subject: Microsoft wants you to upgrade to Windows 10... whether you like it or not He's so steamed, he's resorted to some untypically rough language: --JorgeA

^^ Heh, get ready for tires that don't work with your car, screwdrivers that won't drive uncertified screws, and toasters that won't toast white bread -- all for your health and safety, of course. --JorgeA

IIRC, OneCore is the nucleus of Windows that Microsoft hopes will give it entry into the wonderful world of the Internet of Things. (Tip of the hat to @jaclaz. ) --JorgeA

Yes, that WAS very good, and informative. The bottom line: --JorgeA

That's pretty funny. --JorgeA

This may be germane to the topic: Confusion and Control --JorgeA

You're right! Make that 4 out of 4 statements in that pop-up box that are questionable. --JorgeA

A couple questions: Were you trying to install another OS on the hard drive alongside Windows 10? Do I have it right that you were trying to boot from a DVD but Windows 10 was ignoring your choice? I'm not sure what you mean by Win10 "coming up trying to fix itself." Thanks! --JorgeA

I was wrong, your prayers have been heard, lucky you: Microsoft’s new Windows 10 upgrade options: ‘Upgrade now’ or ‘Upgrade tonight’ Man oh man. The writer said: The comparison to spammers and malware creators is apt. Check out my reaction to the news here. --JorgeA P.S. Microsoft is offering the "option" to "upgrade now" or "upgrade tonight." Precisely what I'd want to be dealing with a week before Christmas with holiday parties, family visits, traveling, shopping and cooking to deal with. Great timing, guys.

Here's the window The Register is reporting about: Deceptive, misleading advertising IMO. Comments on those four checked-off items: Your files will be right there where you left them Yeah, if I could actually open them, now that you nuked my applications when installing Win10. It's fast, familiar, and more secure Fast? NoelC's extensive performance testing suggests otherwise. Familiar? So why do my windows all look totally different -- flat, dull and opaque, with borders so thin I can't tell where one overlapping window ends and the one under it begins. And what's that monstrously large rectangle full of little squares that takes over most of my screen when I try to open the Start Menu? And, more secure? I dunno, we heard the same line of patter when Vista and 7 came out. It has built-in free anti-virus protection Oh yeah, that protection that all the test labs use as their baseline because it provides the least protection of all known AV applications. Putting MSE in place of my chosen professional security suite, goes a long way toward neutralizing whatever measures you just above said you had put into the new OS to make it "more secure." * * * About the lack of an obvious way to cancel the "up"grade, the article in The Register says: Microsoft is taking on more and more features of shady marketers and Windows 10 is the definition of a PUP. They're destroying that trust by exploiting it to foist on users an OS that countless numbers of them do not want and have no interest in. --JorgeA

Yes I know. Hence the thread title. But I figured if NoelC is running Windows 8.1 successfully without updates (so no telemetry BS), I'd basically be in the same boat as him, except I'd even get updates in to January 2016. Just was trying to rationalize moving to a newer version of Windows. I have had good experiences setting up 8.1 for friends. I wondered if I'd be equally happy with original Windows 8. Whoops -- I read the entire thread and then went back to reply to your post. By the time I got around to that, I'd forgotten the title of the thread! --JorgeA

If it's important to you, Microsoft stops supporting Windows 8.0 four weeks from now. --JorgeA

The dreaded KB3035583 reared its ugly head again tonight on my Windows 7 machine as a "recommended" update. --JorgeA

Sadly, the chances of Microsoft doing what you said, are much greater than the chances of them doing what I said. --JorgeA

This is maddening. Windows 10 (10586.29) keeps reinstalling the Realtek USB 2.0 Card Reader driver. Every day it downloads it and installs it, then the next day it finds it again and downloads and installs it. Yesterday I did a manual check for updates. It found the Realtek driver. As those who use Win10 know, if you do a manual update check the app makes another check for updates at the end of the update installation proeess. This time, it kept finding and installing the driver, over and over again, about six times within a few minutes. Closing the updates app didn't help: when I opened it to see if it had stopped, it was still downloading the Realtek driver. The loop continued until I applied the troubleshooter to hide updates and hid the Realtek driver. What if I didn't know about the troubleshooter? The thing would keep going and going. Microsoft has really got to integrate into the UI the ability for users to pick and choose updates. --JorgeA

@NoelC: Indeed there was an "immersive" Metro version of IE in Windows 8 that was almost completely useless, lacking in any but the most rudimentary controls. Pretty shocking the first time I launched IE in the Win8 Developer Preview and that was the default browser. Eewww!!! --JorgeA

The link somehow changed in the new browser tab when I clicked on it (removing everything after the 200), and took me to an earlier page in that thread. But once I found the specific post (#289) -- yes, it IS fantastic! I didn't know anything about that history. Recommended reading for all. --JorgeA P.S. @TELVM, sorry about your not getting properly credited for the quote up there. This is a sign that the board software is moving beyond IE8. I can't even see any controls (for smilies, hyperlinks, boldfacing, etc.) above the writing window here. This happened in the last few days.

Innocent question: what was evil about Itanium? Pretty much all I know about it is the name. Just wondering, thanks! --JorgeA

You can uninstall crapps with the latest version of Classic Shell for free. If you're on those unfortunate OSes (Windows 8/10) that is Best if you're on Windows 7. Although that tool is nice for removing apps using a GUI from a Windows WIM image. Cool, I didn't know one could remove crapps via Classic Shell. Shows you how much attention I've been paying to Universal/Metro/Modern apps. For the first couple of Win10 builds, I methodically went through removing them, but after a while it just got to be too tedious to keep doing over and over again. If it were my work PC, I'd be more diligent about it. --JorgeA

Score another one for forced Windows Updates: Beware Microsoft ­ KB 3119147 & driver incompatibilities --JorgeA

Someone has put together a GUI for uninstalling Windows 10 (and 8.x) apps. This should make it easier for non-techie Win10 users to clean their systems of Microsoft crappware. --JorgeA

Definitely an amateurish impression they've put forward. Maybe Microsoft commissioned the creation of that site in order to attract dissatisfied users into a black hole that will never actually file a lawsuit. Or maybe it was made with deliberate carelessness to discredit the very idea of a suit. --JorgeA

Speaking of IoT devices being all around us... Connected toys and the IoT could be the next weapons of mass surveillance I like the following observation down in the comments section: --JorgeA