JorgeA

Sorry, I thought the context was the wish to save $$$ due to limited resources. In any case, Windows 7 will become obsolete and/or insecure eventually, in some fashion that will operate analogously to the increasing trouble I'm having surfing the Web in IE8 and even 9. Those of us who aren't interested in moving to Windows 8 or 10 will need to make this choice sooner or later. --JorgeA

If Microsoft can "hard-code" its telemetry server URLs to hinder our attempts to block connections to them -- could they also hard-code URLs that they don't like to prevent users from connecting to them? For instance, the second one above. Even an "accidental" addition of that website to Windows Defender would prevent millions of trusting users from seeing it, but I'm wondering about a deeper sort of blocking that bypasses things such as AV, firewalls, the hosts file and so on. --JorgeA

E-mail notifications have suddenly started arriving again today. @xper, did you do anything to the Forum in the last few days that could have affected e-mail notifications? Whatever it is, it worked! --JorgeA

Our PCs are slowly being turned into dumb terminals right before our eyes. The saddest part is that so many people are actually cheering this on. --JorgeA

May I suggest Linux. If you have the time to invest in learning it, the monetary price can't be beat. BTW, there's no sarcasm meant here: I'm headed in that same direction ultimately, unless Microsoft mends its ways. --JorgeA

^^ That's a good way to look at it. The forecast is for torrential sh!t (forced updates, privacy intrusions, ads) raining down incessantly on Windows users. --JorgeA

Another interesting pair of UI discussions from Web design gurus, including this one... Long-Term Exposure to Flat Design: How the Trend Slowly Decreases User Efficiency ...which led me to this one: Mastery, Mystery, and Misery: The Ideologies of Web Design Some highlights: The relevance of all this to Windows 8 and 10 requires no elaboration. --JorgeA

Warning: Microsoft continues to force Windows 10 on people who don’t want it Many more of the gory details in the linked Computerworld article. Some highlights: Regarding the suspicious updates KB3112336 (Win8.1) and KB3112343 (Win7) that came in earlier this month: --JorgeA

So Outlook.com (Microsoft) knows if you're using an ad blocker. Thanks for the report. --JorgeA

In the deep blue sea, circumnavigating the world with Mr. Belfiore? I wouldn't mind if Joe found a nice tropical island (the more remote the better) and decided to stay there... and invited some of his cohorts in Redmond to join him. They might as well start a coconut water and fried fish parlor there... I bet it'd be more profitable than Windows Phones... LOL! --JorgeA

What were you doing when that notice showed up -- were you checking your (web)mail via your browser? --JorgeA

In the deep blue sea, circumnavigating the world with Mr. Belfiore? LOL I wouldn't mind if Joe found a nice tropical island (the more remote the better) and decided to stay there... and invited some of his cohorts in Redmond to join him. --JorgeA

Totally right. It is incredible, but Microsoft has achieved a whole success in the amazing feat of improving their products...backwards! That's a great phrase: backwards improvement!! --JorgeA

Microsoft introduces Office 365 E5 subscription Question: that E4 package -- do they mean that as of June 2016 it will no longer be sold to new customers, or does it mean that existing E4 customers will also be switched to E5? The answer is relevant to the issue of cloud computing, towards which Windows 10 is an attempt to drag users. If the answer is the former, then that means that customers retain some level of choice and control over what they're buying. But if it's the latter, then it means that the seller is claiming nearly total control of the situation and customers are left with little choice other than "take it or leave it." When software is sold as a discrete product rather than as a constantly changing "service," the customer retains full(er) control of the situation. I'm still on Office 2007, for example. I already paid for the product and I'm not subject to Microsoft's suddenly raising the price to keep using it. Anybody know how Office 365 subscriptions (for enterprise) work? --JorgeA

More -- and more tantalizing -- details about Steve Ballmer's performance at the Microsoft shareholders' meeting: Ballmer: Microsoft’s cloud revenue report is ‘bµ//sh!t’ [emphasis added] Interesting bit about the profitability of hardware and cloud vs. software. And which areas, therefore, have the wise men at MSFT chosen fo focus on? The blog author makes an insightful observation early on: Now why didn't we think of that? I mean, we've mentioned cloud computing here many times, but at least to me it never jumped out as the "theme" underlying what they're up to. Maybe it's because there so many things wrong to keep track of with Windows 10... --JorgeA

Windows 10's privacy invading features aren't gone in Threshold 2 --JorgeA

Meanwhile, in Palo Alto: Facebook will stop tracking Belgian web users who shun the social network [emphasis added!] A couple of years ago questions emerged as to whether this was going on, and IIRC Facebook said that it was some sort of coding error. (Yeah, right.) Now the tracking seems to be confirmed. facebook.com is in my Hosts file. --JorgeA

More reasons to turn Windows into a mobile OS: Tablets are doing worse than laptops Great comment down at the bottom: --JorgeA

Editorial: It's time to stop making excuses for Microsoft's mobile efforts Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer thinks universal app strategy 'won't work' IMO they should drop the whole effort to shoehorn a desktop OS into a mobile shell and leave Windows be. Ballmer is on to something here, but the right approach is to drop the mobile OS pretensions altogether and make apps for Android. --JorgeA

Thanks, den -- and you're welcome! I'm glad to help. Here's a question for you, for NoelC, and for anybody else who wishes to chime in: how would one talk to one's spouse about this idea of disabling Windows Updates to protect the spouse's PC from Windows 10? At least here at home, I can predict confidently that the reaction will follow this progression: . It's going to be an uphill battle as non-geek significant others are likely to buy into the official advice about keeping Windows up to date. --JorgeA

Looks like there are (or will soon be) two more Windows Updates to avoid installing: --JorgeA

That's ingenious, I love it!! --JorgeA

I echo pretty much everything @NoelC said in his reply... at a much lower level of expertise. Running Win10 basically to keep up with the latest outrages ideas Microsoft is pushing for Windows. --JorgeA

That's a great analogy! If I may modify it a little, you could say that Windows was a symphony orchestra and now they insist on playing kazoos and jaw harps. --JorgeA

Not really . That is - more or less - an application of Pareto's Principle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle it does have it merits. No question that the principle has its merits. As cited in the Wikipedia article, in the newsletter I used to publish many years ago I remember us commenting that 80% of the problems came from 20% of the subscribers. But I'm not sure that the Pareto principle is really what's going on in the case of what to put into Windows 10. The policy that Microsoft seems to be following is, "make an OS that includes only features that 'everyone' uses." So they start shedding features and capabilities that (they believe) are used by less than some undetermined threshold of users. But as the mathematical illustration suggests, the effort to make a complex product (Windows) that includes only features that "everyone" uses will ironically result in a product that disappoints or even outrages large segments of the using public. To borrow another well-known business principle, one-size-fits-all fits nobody in particular. The genius of Windows always was that it was enormously and easily customizable to suit the user's preferences. It included a ton of different things and there were multiple ways to accomplish the same task, and (as in your situation) anything that it didn't include could easily be added to it. This is becoming less and less the case as Microsoft seeks to channel users to its own one-size-fits-none preferences instead of catering to what the user wants. --JorgeA