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Windows 10 - First Impressions


dencorso

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Is the upgrade EULA even out yet? I want to read it and see if it is possible to reinstall 7 with your COA key.

 

I've just finished going through the Windows (10) license, and I saw no reference to that.

 

A couple of observations about the license terms, which are presented to the user right after the installation of build 10240 and before you can actually go into Windows:

 

The bright white scrollbar used to navigate through the license contrasts nicely with the blue background and is easy to find. instead of the light-gray scrollbar that they've adopted for their browsers and File Explorer, Windows developers should take the hint and create a scrollbar with such decent contrast.

 

OTOH, there are multiple references to other Microsoft terms, given in the format "aka.ms/xxxxxxx". The terms say that "You can review linked terms by pasting the (aka.ms/) link into a browser window." Considering that at this point in reading the terms, you are not yet in Windows, it's going to be a bit of a challenge to "paste" a link into a browser. Moreover, there is no way to highlight or otherwise select text, so you couldn't cut-and-paste it into a browser even if you could open a browser at this point. And of course, these "linked terms" (their phrase) don't actually link to anything, they're just URLs.

 

Customers for whom the machine they're looking at is their first or only Internet-capable device, will have a hard time following up on these additional terms (such as Privacy). To do that, they would have to use somebody else's machine, with all the associated effort and inconvenience. Maybe that's the idea.

 

--JorgeA

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Not yet AFAIK, but this lifecycle policy for Windows 10 was announced today. Note that Win10 is included there, which brings up the question: if Windows 10 is "the last version of Windows," as we've been told, then what comes after support for Windows 10 ends?

Ragnarok?  :ph34r::unsure:

 

 

Is this what you mean?  :ph34r:

 

--JorgeA

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Going through the settings options that show up once you agree to the license terms, if you accept the default ('Express") settings you will thereby set the following dandy setting:

 

"Automatically connect to suggested open hotspots." :w00t:  :crazy:

 

Only if you select the "Customize settings" option -- which is given in tiny print at the bottom of the "Get going fast" page -- will you realize that Microsoft is actually, really proposing to connect your machine to any random hotspot it comes across, without your knowledge or specific consent. What eedeeot at MSFT came up with this brilliant idea??

 

The custom setting for that option quietly notes that, "Not all networks are secure." You don't say! Of course, users who go along with Microsoft's recommended settings will not be seeing this little warning.

 

--JorgeA

 

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A couple of observations about the license terms, which are presented to the user right after the installation of build 10240 and before you can actually go into Windows:

 

The bright white scrollbar used to navigate through the license contrasts nicely with the blue background and is easy to find. instead of the light-gray scrollbar that they've adopted for their browsers and File Explorer, Windows developers should take the hint and create a scrollbar with such decent contrast.

 

    Apparently they want to make sure that people won't miss the scrollbar when reading the EULA, but they don't care about that issue with the rest of the OS.  “Our EULA, updates, and cheap visuals are very important; your work, not so much,” is a message Windows 10 sends loud and clear.

 

 

Going through the settings options that show up once you agree to the license terms, if you accept the default ('Express") settings you will thereby set the following dandy setting:

 

"Automatically connect to suggested open hotspots." :w00t:  :crazy:

 

Only if you select the "Customize settings" option -- which is given in tiny print at the bottom of the "Get going fast" page -- will you realize that Microsoft is actually, really proposing to connect your machine to any random hotspot it comes across, without your knowledge or specific consent. What eedeeot at MSFT came up with this brilliant idea??

 

The custom setting for that option quietly notes that, "Not all networks are secure." You don't say! Of course, users who go along with Microsoft's recommended settings will not be seeing this little warning.

 

    Not only that, but the default WiFi option will also "securely" (and secretly) share with all your contacts the WiFi passwords for every network your computer knows how to connect to.  So, your private home WiFi network, your sensitive protected work network, your friends' home networks—you name it, your contacts will be able to silently connect to them—by default.  For the first time, when build 10240 installed itself on my PC, I was presented with these options, and this was turned on.  I had previously turned it off, so I can confirm that the default is ON.

   Not to mention that Microsoft will have that information and who knows what they may do with it in the future.  (Techie007 envisions government agencies getting and hackers stealing that information from Microsoft and using it to hack into private networks people thought were protected by their router.  Once on your network, a man-in-the-middle attack is extremely easy to accomplish.  There are powerful WiFi antennas that would allow a hacker to attack pretty much any WiFi network from up to about a mile away.)

Edited by Techie007
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A couple of observations about the license terms, which are presented to the user right after the installation of build 10240 and before you can actually go into Windows:

 

The bright white scrollbar used to navigate through the license contrasts nicely with the blue background and is easy to find. instead of the light-gray scrollbar that they've adopted for their browsers and File Explorer, Windows developers should take the hint and create a scrollbar with such decent contrast.

 

    Apparently they want to make sure that people won't miss the scrollbar when reading the EULA, but they don't care about that issue with the rest of the OS.  “Our EULA, updates, and cheap visuals are very important; your work, not so much,” is a message Windows 10 sends loud and clear.

 

 

Going through the settings options that show up once you agree to the license terms, if you accept the default ('Express") settings you will thereby set the following dandy setting:

 

"Automatically connect to suggested open hotspots." :w00t:  :crazy:

 

Only if you select the "Customize settings" option -- which is given in tiny print at the bottom of the "Get going fast" page -- will you realize that Microsoft is actually, really proposing to connect your machine to any random hotspot it comes across, without your knowledge or specific consent. What eedeeot at MSFT came up with this brilliant idea??

 

The custom setting for that option quietly notes that, "Not all networks are secure." You don't say! Of course, users who go along with Microsoft's recommended settings will not be seeing this little warning.

 

    Not only that, but the default WiFi option will also "securely" (and secretly) share with all your contacts the WiFi passwords for every network your computer knows how to connect to.  So, your private home WiFi network, your sensitive protected work network, your friends' home networks—you name it, your contacts will be able to silently connect to them—by default.  For the first time, when build 10240 installed itself on my PC, I was presented with these options, and this was turned on.  I had previously turned it off, so I can confirm that the default is ON.

   Not to mention that Microsoft will have that information and who knows what they may do with it in the future.  (Techie007 envisions government agencies getting and hackers stealing that information from Microsoft and using it to hack into private networks people thought were protected by their router.  Once on your network, a man-in-the-middle attack is extremely easy to accomplish.  There are powerful WiFi antennas that would allow a hacker to attack pretty much any WiFi network from up to about a mile away.)

 

 

It's getting to the point where I am considering barring all Windows 10 devices from my wireless network at home.

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Up until (but not including) build 10240, Spybot Search & Destroy 1.6.2.46 survived successive installations of new builds.

 

After installing build 10240, though, things were very different: the Spybot desktop icon was gone, the icon in the system tray was gone, and there was no Spybot listing in the Start Menu (in either the Metroized Start Menu or the Classic Shell Start Menu). Even the Spybot folders in C:\ProgramData and C:\Program Files (x86) were gone. It's as if Spybot had never been installed on this machine... except that it was still listed under "Currently installed programs" in Control Panel. That was the only trace of it left. Go figure.

 

I still had the installation .EXE for SS&D 1.6.2.46 in the downloads folder. It did install properly and it's now running, same as always, in 10240.

 

This remarkable little program has worked for me on every version of the OS since Windows 98FE. As far as I know it could even have worked on Windows 95. What a magnificent run.

 

--JorgeA

 

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if Windows 10 is "the last version of Windows," as we've been told, then what comes after support for Windows 10 ends?

Ragnarok?  :ph34r::unsure:

 

Is this what you mean?  :ph34r:

 

Yes. :unsure:

 

 

Well, what can we do then, except enjoy the time that we have left. :(

 

As the end of the 10-year Win10 support period approaches, I'll start playing Götterdämmerung on a loop day and night until the fateful hour.

 

--JorgeA

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Anybody here using Microsoft Edge, the new browser introduced with Windows 10?

 

I've been trying it out. There are claims that it's faster than other browsers, but I haven't noticed any difference in webpage loading speed (or in the speed of anything else, for that matter).

 

However, one area where Edge is significantly different from other browsers is in functionality. I can't find a way to download any kind of file except for images. In other browsers you can right-click over a link and select "save target as" or something similar; there seems to be no such option in Edge, at least none that I've found. If there is a way, the procedure is non-standard for browsers; that alone would count as a minus in my book.

 

In fact I had a somewhat funny experience while trying to figure out how to do downloads. I visited the page for Steve Gibson's Security Now! podcast to test the downloading of an MP3. I put the mouse pointer over one of the little "speaker" icons, which is what you do in IE or Firefox if you want to save the file to your PC, and right-clicked on it. Edge gave me an option to download the picture, but not the file itself. So I could download the speaker icon if I wished. Cooooool. :rolleyes:

 

In order to save a PDF, apparently you have to first open it and then you can right-click over the open document and do a "Save as." This is bass-ackwards: if I wanted to view the document before saving I would do that, but I don't necessarily -- there are times when I simply want to save the PDF for later viewing. Doing this in Edge requires additional steps. And if you have any amount of PDFs to save (from an archive, for example), that's all the more time and effort involved to accomplish what you need.

 

Far from a serious application, Microsoft Edge is a joke of a browser. I cannot believe that MSFT is pushing for it to replace IE.

 

--JorgeA

 

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Took me about 3 minutes to realize Edge / Project Spartan is inferior to or no better than Internet Explorer, from running things while minimized to the speed of display to compatibility.  But that almost certainly won't keep.  I imagine Microsoft will begin to systematically kill off Internet Explorer from the inside.

 

Darth Vader (in James Earl Jones' voice) comes to mind:  "Now Microsoft's failure is complete"

 

-Noel

 

 

P.S., I know you've seen the thread, Jorge, but others, see also:

 

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/173850-what-is-it-about-spartan-that-you-find-the-tiniest-bit-interesting/

Edited by NoelC
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Joining the tech-fascist trend, Twitter reportedly has removed users' ability to place custom backgrounds on their profile pages and replaced all of them with a uniform, bright white background.

 

--JorgeA

 

This is exactly why I love things like Greasemonkey and Firefox's userContent.css. On the Windows side, however, its 1,000,000x harder.

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