JorgeA

Windows 10 reserved by "millions" according to Microsoft I have no doubt but that they know exactly how many people have reserved Windows 10. What I'm curious about is why they don't state just how many millions. Could it be that it's an embarrassing number? Just sayin'... --JorgeA P.S. Another possibility I can think of is that they actually have no idea how many people have reserved Win10, and that this bragging is total B.S.

Not to mention vests : Now, that's really "having confidence in your product"!! --JorgeA

Four weeks from RTM... Are you facing issues upgrading to Windows 10 build 10159? You're not alone Once Windows 10 rolls out to the masses... ...I can see one of those Windows Updates coming through, imploring Win10 users to please be patient and reboot their computers up to five times so that their wonderful new OS can stumble onto the right set of magic words necessary to finally complete the installation process. Progress, indeed. --JorgeA

Windows 7 share is now above 60%, according to NetMarketShare: Windows 8.1 has at long last managed to overtake XP as the second most widely used version of Windows. EDIT: One curious fact: if you compare the June stats to the May stats, you can see that Windows 8 went down ( 0.67%, from 3.57% to 2.9%) by more than Windows 8.1 went up (0.24%, 12.88% to 13.12%). Thus, remarkably, the overall share of Windows 8.x went down. Since XP dropped 2.62% and Vista fell 0.39% (for a total of -3.17%), while Windows 7 gained almost exactly the same amount those two OSes lost (3.22%), it's clear that Windows 7 is the version of choice when switching to a newer OS. And where did that drop in 8.x usage go? Well, Mac OS X rose by close to the same amount (0.34%) as Win8.x fell (0.43%). Of course, users as a whole switch to and from systems and OSes in any and every direction. But the trends are intriguing. --JorgeA

Yeah, I myself had wondered if Microsoft would go that far with Windows Updates. They've already admitted to linking one Update related to "up"grading to 10, to unspecified improvements in the Windows Update process. Well, acccording to the infamous srfreeman, it's already the case that your agreement to the terms and conditions of the Insiders forum (which includes the acceptance of cookies and tracking) means that you can't go on the Insiders forum to criticize Windows 10 privacy invasions. --JorgeA

Fantastic new thread in the Insiders forum. I could not have put it better: --JorgeA

Just imagine that sort of thing happening on a billion or so PCs over the next couple of years. I can hardly wait. And supposedly this forced-updates thing is to cut down on calls to tech support. Hah! --JorgeA

What's new in Windows 10 Insider Preview build 10158 Apparently, nothing much. Nothing much that interests me, anyway. They slightly improved the Start Menu by adding the ability to click on a letter in the All Apps alphabet, which will save on scrolling. But that's useful only if you know the name of the program you want, or the first letter. If you're not really sure, you'll still have to do a lot more scrolling up and down the menu to find the program, due to the menus's lower information density compared to the Vista/7 Start Menu "All Programs" list. There are some improvements to Edge, including the ability to set a proper home page. I suspect the lack of it in the early versions is an indication of the "mobile" model Microsoft is leaning toward: Android browsers, for example, don't seem to have a home page -- the browser in my Android phone just goes to the last page I had open when I closed the browser. Pain in the a$$; I have to take time hitting the back arrow repeatedly to make sure it's back on the search-engine page so it's ready for the next time I call it up. Edge still has a long way to go, though, to challenge IE or any other major browser in terms of functionality and usefulness. --JorgeA

Oh, sorry. I don't know, the picture looks weird with what look like bicycle bars emanating from his body. And what's that's pointy thing sticking out his upper back?? Not good photo design IMO. But then what can you expect, in terms of esthetics, from the company that brought us Metro flatness and then doubled down on it with Windows 10? --JorgeA

In @vinifera's screenshot, I'm looking at that button next to "Upgrade to Pro" that says simply 1.35 euros, without explanation. I can confirm @ralcool's experience trying to disable Windows Updates. You can change that setting but Windows 10 simply ignores what you did. --JorgeA

I guess that the next step after putting it in the foreground covering everything, is to make it the ONLY element accessible on the screen. No more Desktop, just all Metro. About direct injection into the brain -- that would give new meaning to the phrase "computer virus." --JorgeA

Speaking of T&Cs and such mumbo-jumbo, @NoelC might be pleased to know that his nemesis (1913 - 10 ) has been bounced out of the Insiders forum. The post listing those who have been banned appears to have been removed; good thing I get e-mail notifications of new posts. (Ahem, unlike MSFN anymore for me...) Also (maybe OT for this particular thread), check out the post by Techie007L comparing resource usage in Windows versions from XP to 10. Rats -- he had a nice-looking table but it's completely mangled by the forum software here. Had to do a lot of manual CR and LF and insertion of spaces just to bring it to a semblance of order. --JorgeA

The bottom line is... you can't be sure. But I guess that people who have neither children nor pets will be OK. Hmm, a loophole in the EULA -- gotta fire the lawyer who wrote that section! --JorgeA

^^ I'd even be willing to pay a premium price for a computer that came with such a Professional version installed, if it did away with the Metro tiles and the consumer crapps, didn't push the Microsoft Account in my face, and allowed me to select which updates to install. --JorgeA

And speaking of this stuff, here's a funny/frightening study about T&C's: The text I've put in boldface explains so much... --JorgeA

^^ Nice work! Putting it all together, it would not be surprising to learn that he's fully imbued with Silicon Valley techno-lust, where New is ipso facto Better, tech companies Lead the Way to the Future, and they can do no wrong. --JorgeA EDIT: typo

Let's say legally. The reason I ask is that this srfreeman claims that by assenting to the one-line banner at the top of the Microsoft forum page ("By using this site you agree to the use of cookies for analytics, personalized content and ads"), you are giving Microsoft an unlimited right to collect data on you anywhere and everywhere. To my mind this is ridiculous on its face as the actual terms and conditions that you read when clicking on the "Learn more" button say no such thing. (He even goes on to assert that simply clicking on "Learn more" signifies consent! Uhh, NO -- it's simply to learn more about the terms. I doubt that an army of Microsoft lawyers could argue successfully for his viewpoint.) But let's assume that serfman (a deliberate typo) is correct and that by signing into a Microsoft service you're consenting to Microsoft's following you all around the web. In that case, would (1) signing out of the Microsoft service, and/or (2) closing your Microsoft account, put an end to this tracking and data collection? Or is it like the Hotel California, where "you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave"? --JorgeA P.S. The Insiders forum page is back up.

Funny, I had the page to that thread open on two different browsers, one logged in and the other not. I just went to refresh the page to see if there were any replies, and I'm getting a server error. "Problem loading page -- Server not found," reports Firefox, and "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage," says IE. It's either maintenance or they've removed the thread. I guess time will tell. About your account being blocked -- have you tried visiting the Insider forums without logging in? Finally, there definitely is an Orwellian quality about those Microsoft forums. Posts get edited out of all recognition (it's happened to me) or they get erased, users' identities get sent down the memory hole, threads are suddenly locked for no apparent reason. What do you think -- can Microsoft track people if they're not signed in to its services? --JorgeA

I, too, don't see XP's numbers falling dramatically any time soon. However, Win10 usage share might overtake that of XP, if only because a lot of unsuspecting Win7 users out there are going to let their systems downgrade to 10, either because they're curious or because they don't know that they don't have to accept it. --JorgeA

Speaking of legal mumbo-jumbo, have you seen this thread on the Insiders Forum? There's a guy there who seems to think that if you sign into any Microsoft service anywhere, not only are you signing your digital life away, but that's OK. You may as well sign into a Micrtosoft Account on Windows 10 instead of using a local account, it's a "mere formality." (See the final page or two of the thread.) Paticularly truculent is his assertion that, by opening a Microsoft Account to participate in that forum, you have no grounds for complaining about Microsoft's policies. This view, if accepted, would mean that it's impossible to criticize Microsoft's privacy policies on Microsoft-run forums. Nice trick if you can pull it off. Any suggestions for how to deal with the guy? He's pretty slippery. I'm leading up to making the point that the mere acceptance of Microsoft terms somewhere does not mean you are thereby subjected to them everywhere in cyberspace. Much as they might like to, Microsoft does not follow you everywhere you go on the Internet. For example, if I open a Microsoft Account to expose and criticize Microsoft's invasions of privacy, that does not mean than I am henceforth always and everywhere subjected (either technically or legally) to those invasions of privacy. If I have an account but don't use any MSFT services that require logging on (Skype, weather app, Office 365, etc.), then as far as I can tell from Microsoft's service agreement and privacy statement, Microsoft is not monitoring me. If I sign out of (or close) my Microsoft Account, I am no longer subjected to this tracking. Thus it does make a difference whether or not I sign into Windows 10, for if I did then I would be subject to such monitoring automatically, independently of what specific Microsoft services I might launch. Any flaws in this analysis? --JorgeA

jaclaz Well, that was enlightening: now I realize that the Microsoft folks are trying to imitate the Mac UI: same gray undifferentiated windows with hard-to-find controls and tons of wasted blank space in the application interface. About the only element missing is that garish dock thing. Of course, veterans might point out that Microsoft playing "monkey see monkey do" with an Apple UI is nothing new, but still that's no excuse. --JorgeA

Thanks, Noel, this will be a huge help! The theme atlas part is the concept I'm least famiiar with from that sequence of steps. Time to read up on it. This could grow to be a very popular thread come July 29 as people start getting surprised with their shiny dull new UI. --JorgeA

That's an interesting approach, although it does require a second (test) system and the dedication to run it. I was thinking in terms of, if you can stop Windows from updating itself with something like the Samsung application (or some other fix yielding the same result), then you could periodically visit selected forums and see what Updates have been released, plus read reports of what havoc those Updates might be causing. Then, you would manually visit the KB articles and individually download the specific updates that you want from those pages. Although this sounds like less work than running a test system in parallel, one possible drawback of my method is that the rolling release of new Windows (10) Updates will be less of an "event" than Patch Tuesday and therefore less newsworthy, garnering less coverage in cyberspace. So it could become difficult to even find out and keep track of what new updates are coming out. --JorgeA

I have yet to upgrade a system that came with an HDD to an SSD, so I can't speak on that. FWIW, the most dramatic performance improvements I've seen on various computers have come from (1) using ReadyBoost and (2) adding more RAM. This thread has been educational for me. In this day and age of multi-GB RAM systems, I didn't realize that there was any real point to RAMdisks, with however the real danger that whatever valuable stuff you had on the RAMdisk would go *POOF* if and when Windows crashed. --JorgeA

Beautiful. And thanks for putting all the components together in one post. Do you know if there is a comprehensive guide "under one roof" to putting all of these together? For example, which ones (if any) should be installed before others, potential stumbling blocks to watch out for, and such like. --JorgeA