JorgeA

IIRC they're reporting getting notifications that Win10 (tried and) failed to install? Interesting point about clogging up your drive maybe counting as computer sabotage. Hmm... it could certainly be construed as trespass, like in the case of a neighbor entering your property to dump trash on it. Here's a clever rhyme from the comments to that Inquirer post: --JorgeA

Amazing that Google had already cached it!! I'm glad you found it to preserve for posterity. On to reading it now... --JorgeA

Is KB3035583 behind this? If this is happening, it's Class Action Suit City. Think of the hundreds of millions of people out there who have no interest in Windows 10 and have made no provision to make the switchover, suddenly finding out that they have to reinstall their applications and reconstruct those applications' settings because Microsoft overrode their preferences and installed Win10 anyway. Whoa, I'd like to be the lead lawyer on that one. --JorgeA

I got a "Page not found" error when I clicked on that link. Did they delete your thread? Now, that would really fit your "1984" theme. I guess that's what "they have to say" about that. --JorgeA

But there's the thing. It's demonstrated that MOST people don't need or even want the product that gets things done. They don't need full on office suite applications or audio production apps, or heavy photo publshing apps. They just need small tailored apps to get quick things done. Tablets and phones are not toys, and their OSs (even though I care not for them) aren't toys either. They fit the bill perfectly for what MOST people want to do. The term "MOST" doesn't represent us on tech forums. We are quite the minority. You might want to think most people are feeling turned against by Microsoft going in this mobile direction. But the truth is, most just don't care. They ditched Windows long ago. To them, Windows is something they have to use at work, and they are just pining for the day that their boss lets them use an iPad instead. I've seen it in action. Now you might say, "Today's tablet and phone addicts used to use PCs and Windows XP religiously. How did we lose them?" Because in 2004, websites were still the norm. In 2005 and 2006, YouTube videos had to be watched on a PC web browser. And you had to use a PC to get all of those songs on your iPod. (Hear that I never mentioned a Word document or an Excel Spreadsheet?) Fast forward to 2015, and there are Android/iOS apps to view YouTube, and to post on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. No one downloads MP3s anymore. They just play songs on YouTube. And, if they really did need to see a work-related document or spreadsheet, they can open it with Google Docs. See? They have everything they ever needed or wanted, WITHOUT being tied down to a PC or some dumb product called Windows (by the way, I don't think that, I'm just echoing the mindset of a millenial. ) - but you need to hear it. The point I'm making is that Microsoft is jeopardizing its established and highly successful business in work/serious computing, for the fantasy of greater growth in the sorts of activities you described. Not only has the company consistently failed at it, but markets are already close to the saturation point: pretty much everyone who wants a phone or tablet already has one. We can of course talk about making mobile available to the developing world, and indeed the first company to figure out how to make a living by selling $25 smartphones with a $5 monthly subscription stands to dominate the market for people of modest means in Third World countries. But getting to that point implies that phones will have (to use economist jargon) become commoditized, and there's not much money in that -- recall it was at that point that IBM sold off its PC business. For better or worse, there's not a lot of money to be made from personalizing ads to people who don't have two nickels to rub together. The driving force, as Apple's experience has shown, is people who have dollars to burn (and not much sense IMHO). When the market is fully saturated, I expect the mobile craze to start slowly normalizing. Smartphones will become as cool and exciting as washing machines (which they're actually trying to connect to the Internet). And then Microsoft will be out at sea, having alienated its established market while making no appreciable dent in the new one. --JorgeA

Just beautiful, thank you!! --JorgeA

The way I see it, Microsoft has failed every time they've tried to enter the mobile market. Trying to shoehorn a mobile interface into their flagship, desktop OS has alienated millions and already led to one version of Windows (8/8.1) failing. Windows 10 might just finish the job. I'm sure I'm not the only one who views as Windows as the OS for getting things done, whereas Android and iOS are the toy OSes for trivial or, at best, limited and very specific purposes. That's one aspect of the understanding that I, as a customer, have historically had with Microsoft. The other aspect is that Windows is, again historically, the OS that you pay for in order to get serious things done, whereas Android and iOS are the OSes that you get for free to do ephemeral things. Hence the arrangement that Windows doesn't track and monitor you, because you already paid for it, while the price of using Android/iOS is giving up your privacy and getting tracked and monitored. Microsoft is trying to change this fundamental bargain it's had with its customers, turning it into another OS for trivia that keeps tabs on your activities and whereabouts. (Oh, and without even the "free" part.) This is why I am (as countless others are) dissatisfied with the direction Microsoft has been taking Windows. If I'm OK with giving up my privacy for the convenience of mobile functionality, I can get an Apple or Android phone. But I'm not OK with that, which is why I am on Windows. Now Microsoft is seeking to take away that choice by turning Windows into yet another mobile operating system. Microsoft is risking losing the market it dominates for the sake of markets where it has always failed. --JorgeA

My thoughts exactly. --JorgeA

Thanks for the link, xpclient. Verrrry interesting... For future reference, here's the key graphic from that post -- And the conclusion: --JorgeA

Will Windows 10's coming security features win over Windows 7 users? The commenters are decidedly underwhelmed: Etc., etc. --JorgeA EDIT: When I read that blog post, there were 30 comments on it. Not a single one was pro-Win10.

Yeah, it's like they've been hypnotized into memorizing some Official Party Line and then parroting it ceaselessly. BTW, kudos to @NoelC who's joined in the discussion there. --JorgeA

Paul goes on a rant against the Windows Store and the apps found there: And the Biggest Problem with Windows 10 Is … This ongoing weakness could eventually cripple Microsoft's efforts to convert Windows into a single, versatile platform: They've been at it for some four years now. How many more times do they need to bash their heads against the wall before they get the message? --JorgeA

IMHO it's more like Microsoft is stumbling forward relentlessly, like a zombie intent on eating your privacy. --JorgeA

A privacy-minded anti-malware vendor weighs in on Win10: The truth about Windows 10 spying on almost everything you do Among other things, they give this tip that I wasn't aware of (or had forgotten about): --JorgeA

A good question to ask the metrotards might be the following: Given that Microsoft is finally admitting the obvious failure of its mobile interface, what's the point anymore of adding mobile elements to Windows? Did Apple or Google get their employees secretly planted into top positions at Microsoft in order to ruin the company? --JorgeA

This led me to the following headline (that I of course could not pass up ): Windows 10: man updates PC, wakes up to find porn slideshow on repeat Now the thing I don't understand is how this Photos app tile managed to get itself displayed constantly and automatically. In Windows 10, the tiles are visible only when you launch the Start Menu. I thought maybe they were talking about the desktop slideshow, but the article clearly references tiles and the Photos app, and not the wallpaper. Something doesn't quite jibe here. Maybe what they call the "computer" in the article is actually a Surface? --JorgeA

I'll be interested to see how the Windows 7 curve does over the next two weeks. With last week's dip it looks like it's dropping steadily, but this was vacation season. If it flattens out or even climbs back up a bit, that will be a very bad sign for Windows 10. --JorgeA

+1 I use an Android phone too. I've seen Windows Phones at the store and the screens look every bit as garish as the Windows 8 Start Screen. --JorgeA

Score another one for human ingenuity... Microsoft's discontinued Media Center suite can now unofficially be installed on Windows 10 ...Just make sure not to fall for human ingenuousness -- AV-scan the h3!! out of that file if you do decide to download it. It will be interesting to see how MSFT reacts to this development, if at all, over the next few days/weeks. --JorgeA

@ahmedsalahais and @RandPC: Thanks for the replies. It's disappointing that we can't re-create the 3-D taskbar, but what can we do except make the best of what there is. --JorgeA P.S. If you look at other comments on that DeviantArt page, it sounds like the removal of the 3-D capability is a recent development. The images he gives for his theme show the convex taskbar and some people pointed it out, then he replied that it's not possible any more.

Not sure this is the right thread for my question, but it's the one that comes closest without starting a new thread. A prolific designer on DeviantArt says that, (Second comment from the top.) Is he correct? I was hoping to find and install a theme that featured a convex (3-D) Vista-like taskbar in Windows 10, --JorgeA

@dhjohns and @NoelC: How about getting these two posts moved over to the Deeper Impressions thread? There's plenty of scope for that kind of discussion over there. --JorgeA

A Paul Thurrott stunner: "Windows Phone has failed." In episode 266 of What the Tech, Paul and Andrew Zarian are discussing the fate of Windows Phone in the wake of Microsoft's announcement of a multibillion-dollar writedown from the Nokia acquisition. The discussion starts a few minutes before, but at just about the 38-minute mark, Paul states flatly: The subject takes up most of the rest of the episode. Well worth listening to. --JorgeA

A design expert takes Apple to task for an excessively minimalist UI: Apple's products are getting harder to use because they ignore principles of design. Norman notes that, "Google has caught the same disease in its Android designs"; the same of course can be said of Microsoft with its "Universal" apps. --JorgeA

Maybe he's just detecting the level of telemetry that was operational before he ever installed the update, which increases the telemetry gathering. I've never installed that update and I see plenty of attempts to connect. This isn't a new issue. What's new - not to put too fine a point on it - is that we no longer TRUST Microsoft to do what's good for us. -Noel I misread the guy's report to mean that diagtrackrunner.exe was (still) operating after he uninstalled that update, But it was still disturbing that his firewall caught it even though he's not in the CEIP and it's supposed to work only if the user participates in that program. Presumably, if diagtrackrunner.exe were already running before the update, his firewall would have caught it. (Maybe it was and he never noticed it.) --JorgeA