By the way, there's a wake up call in this for everyone:

Now is the time to reconfigure Windows Updates to ask for your permission rather than just letting Microsoft install what they want, when they want.

-Noel

Now ...

Now???

LOL I've taken that approach for YEARS!

Cheers and Regards

haven't used WU since WinME days ... ouch !

Heh heh heh, you know I wasn't talking to you.

By the way, do you know about this handy little tool?

http://www.quppa.net/wunotify/

-Noel

Edited February 11, 201412 yr by NoelC

sure. This is a must have tool under Windows 8.x

By the way, there's a wake up call in this for everyone:

 

Now is the time to reconfigure Windows Updates to ask for your permission rather than just letting Microsoft install what they want, when they want.

 

-Noel

 

 

Loooks like Microslum took heed to your advice.

Actually, the time I mentioned above has passed.

 

NOW may be the time to disable Windows Updates entirely.  I haven't done so yet, but my Win 8.1 system is perfectly stable, and having to go through and try to read between the lines in the mostly undocumented update descriptions is just ridiculous.

 

I've come to realize that the more Microsoft wants it, the less I want it.

 

-Noel

Welcome to the light, Noel!  I'm just sorry that you had to spend so much time suffering on the dark side.  But better late than never.

 

I am very glad, though, that you documented all your testing for the benefit of the rest of us.  Now we'll have to find some other sucker brave soul to do that work.

 

Cheers and Regards, my friend.

On my newest system I have not run any MS updates (I have updated flash and java) since setup a good 3 months or so. All seems to be running fine so far with the exception of Windows Defender. 

Heh, I appreciate the thoughts and regards, bphlpt, though I've not made a particularly fundamental shift.  Don't forget who recommended suspicion of the New Microsoft back in February 2014 here.  :-)

 

Thing is, all us folks with some actual knowledge of the tech and the industry could see this coming.  And to be brutally honest I really don't like where I see it going!  Microsoft can no longer return to the straight and narrow, and so the future of computing is going to shift in ways that are hard to see.

 

Much as I have never loved Unix, it (and its derivatives) may ultimately win out and define the future.  Who knows, maybe Apple will rule the high tech world one day...  At least they've never left behind the "it needs to actually work" concept.

 

-Noel

Well, IIRR, one of the "best" motives MS used to give to coerce people into "upgrading" from XP was that there wouldn't be updates for it anymore... now, considering the best option is to deny all updates to avoid one's 7SP1 morphing into 10,    please do tell me what's the difference from keeping on XP until it becomes utterly untenable?

You're not supposed to notice stuff like that. 

 

-Noel