Windows 10 - Deeper Impressions

[NoelC]

Want a Halloween scare?

 

The future of the computing world is in these hands.

 

-Noel

[Drugwash]

Darn right! But do think of the fact that it all depends on the point of view. From here, we see empty hands - from behind those glasses-like contraption they might see the whole Universe. Problem is, we all get what we see…

[intzepatorii]

1. I can't believe after so many builds I am still forced to use the task scheduler in order to auto connect the pppoe connection (startup no more available).

2. Event Viewer still reports the unknown partitions (HFS+ and ext 4) showing 2 warnings for every partition

3. I uninstalled cortana as it was not available in my region with an older build (why then install it by default??) and every boot I get some stupid 1000 (category 100) errors

4. I manually upgraded to the 10565 build and now the watermark reappeared. 10240 removed it but now I have it again.

 

Can you help with 4?

 

Where is the progress so far? In XP and 7 I rarely have errors and I can easily customize windows the way I want.

 

... Now a swearing should show up but I respect the readers.

Edited October 26, 2015 by intzepatorii

[JorgeA]

Charlie Demerjian really sticks it to Microsoft and Win10 PC makers:

 

Microsoft, Intel, Lenovo, Dell, and HP CMOs think you are an id!0t

 

A hard-hitting critique of the consortium's new "A PC does what?" ad campaign.

 

They keep talking about how people with older, 4-5 year old, PCs would not recognize a new one because of all the new innovation in PCs. What these ‘brilliant’ marketers don’t actually do is list any innovation that the users would actually want.

 

...This was followed by the claim of the best OS ever, you know the one Microsoft feels they can’t charge users for this time around. A lot of people say Windows X, err Windows 10 is better than it’s predecessors, but that isn’t a high hurdle. Most PC users would have to think about a choice between using Windows 8 and Ebola, the final tally could go either way.

 

 

About touch screen capability:

 

The PC CMOs can’t seem to grasp that forcing an awful but expensive feature on users who don’t want it is not a way to increase sales or win the proverbial hearts and minds. Like I said, three plus years into this id!0tic force-feeding of touch and other useless ‘features’, the people behind it are still ignorant id!0ts pretending to be confused about why their self-proclaimed awesome tech is still failing.

 

On Windows 10:

 

Things have gotten so bad that Microsoft has taken to giving away their OS. What used to be a $99 upgrade is now free. If you take the 110M activation count they just released at face value, that is over $10B in revenue lost. They were so afraid of users not upgrading in ways which would mirror the mass Windows 8.x avoidance that they have given up $10+B so far.

 

Lotta good stuff in there. He proposes a solution for the PC market's troubles in Part II, but that's hidden behind a paywall.

 

--JorgeA

 

 

 

 

 

EDIT: typo!

Edited October 27, 2015 by JorgeA

[JorgeA]

2. Event Viewer still reports the unknown partitions (HFS+ and ext 4) showing 2 warnings for every partition

 

 So, we see that Windows still can't make sense of Apple or Linux file systems.

 

 

3. I uninstalled cortana as it was not available in my region with an older build (why then install it by default??) and every boot I get some stupid 1000 (category 100) errors

4. I manually upgraded to the 10565 build and now the watermark reappeared. 10240 removed it but now I have it again.

 

Three months into the "launch" of Windows 10, and the cake is not fully baked even today. If this had happened with XP or 7, customers and the tech press would have been all over Microsoft for its incompetence. It did happen with Vista. But now with 10, Microsoft has spun public perceptions to get us us believe it's a perpetual "work in progress" so we have no reason, at any point in the process, to complain about its unfinished condition.

 

 

Can you help with 4?

 

Hopefully someone more technical will be able to handle that.

 

 

Where is the progress so far? In XP and 7 I rarely have errors and I can easily customize windows the way I want.

 

... Now a swearing should show up but I respect the readers.

 

LOL

 

I'm tempted to say, "Welcome to Windows 10, the OS that's never finished and works the way we (not you) want it to."

 

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

Here's another Win10 privacy and telemetry control tool. Ongoing discussion in the creator's forum here.

 

For those who have used other utilities to tame Win10's spying and chattiness -- how does this one compare?

 

Meanwhile, here's the paternalistic attitude Microsoft takes about the whole thing:

 

Microsoft doesn't see Windows 10's mandatory data collection as a privacy risk

 

"And in the case of knowing that our system that we've created is crashing, or is having serious performance problems, we view that as so helpful to the ecosystem, and so not an issue of personal privacy, that today, we collect that data so that we make that experience better for everyone," he said.

 

It's attitudes like that which make tools like Spybot Anti-Beacon necessary. But there is cause for hope from Redmond:

 

Belfiore emphasized that Microsoft is still working on Windows 10 and adapting its policies to meet users' needs. The company has already begun back-tracking on its hardline stance toward telemetry data when it comes to enterprise users. Windows and Devices Group head Terry Myerson said in a recent blog post that the company will allow Windows 10 Enterprise users to disable all data collection including telemetry data, though the company doesn't recommend users take that route.

 

--JorgeA

 

[NoelC]

^{"...our system..."}

 

Oops, someone's forgotten who owns the computer again.

 

Regarding the second quote...  Those bozos have once again failed to consider small business (using Windows Pro) in with Enterprise, as though small business doesn't matter, or even exist...

 

-Noel

Edited October 29, 2015 by NoelC

[JorgeA]

Paul Thurrott speaks out against ads in Windows 10. Discussion starts at 1:10:04. My transcription:

 

PT: We've talked about this. There's something very honest about that transaction: "We have this thing called Windows. We'd like you to buy it," and then you'd say, "Yes, I will buy it, I'll pay for it, and now it is mine." That sounds nice -- not really what it was, but. In Windows 8, of course, they introduced ads in some of the MSN apps -- they were called Bing apps at the time -- and I wrote an article at the time where I said this is a slippery slope, 'cause once you have -- you introduce ads into the operating system, where are they going to turn up next? I'm gonna do a network connection, and halfway through it it's going to say, "Hey, you know, if you bought a D-Link router, you'd have a much faster connection! Click Yes to go to the preferred payment method that's associated with your Microsoft account, you'll have this thing on your doorstop tomorrow courtesy of Microsoft Shipment." Or whatever...

 

--JorgeA

 

 

 

[Formfiller]

And yet again:

 

http://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2015/10/29/making-it-easier-to-upgrade-to-windows-10/

 

We will soon be publishing Windows 10 as an “Optional Update” in Windows Update for all Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 customers. Windows Update is the trusted, logical location for our most important updates, and adding Windows 10 here is another way we will make it easy for you to find your upgrade.

 

Early next year, we expect to be re-categorizing Windows 10 as a “Recommended Update”. Depending upon your Windows Update settings, this may cause the upgrade process to automatically initiate on your device. Before the upgrade changes the OS of your device, you will be clearly prompted to choose whether or not to continue. And of course, if you choose to upgrade (our recommendation!), then you will have 31 days to roll back to your previous Windows version if you don’t love it.

 

 

[NoelC]

How is that new news?  It's already been doing exactly that. 

 

Are they planting such press info so that moving forward, people bit by the GWX malware can be told, "you were warned"?

 

-Noel

[Formfiller]

How is that new news?  It's already been doing exactly that. 

 

 

Not exactly. GWX and stuff shows the "reserve your upgrade"-screen and the related icon in the taskbar.

 

The new approach will download Windows 10 automatically, apparently do some pre-processing and asks you just before it finally upgrades for a prompt. No more reservation stuff.

 

I am pretty sure those prompts will have some some "bugs" from time to time which will cause the abort-button to magically disappear. And without any doubt, this upgrade will re-appear every month on Windows Update when you hide it.

Edited October 30, 2015 by Formfiller

[Formfiller]

By the way, does anyone believe in their fairy-tale that Windows 10 won't be a free upgrade for 7 and 8.1 users in july 2016 anymore and thus these nags will stop?

 

No way.

Edited October 30, 2015 by Formfiller

[JorgeA]

And yet again:

 

 

@Formfiller, you beat me to it!

 

I was going to post the following:

 

Microsoft to users: You'll download Windows 10, and you'll like it

 

It's a particularly raw deal for people who are on metered Internet connections. Windows 8.1 users aren't in danger there, because that OS won't automatically download updates over a metered connection. But Windows 7 users will have to turn off automatic downloads of all recommended updates in order to avoid downloading multiple gigabytes worth of operating system.

 

I dunno about this move.   Millions of users have been taught to trust Mother Microsoft and to just download everything it sends down the pipe. How many people will be in the middle of a project, decide to pause to "do Windows Updates," click-click-click OK-OK-OK -- and all of a sudden realize they're in an alien environment and the program they were using for their project is gone?

 

BTW I wonder if that "accidental" downloading of Win10 to untold numbers of people a couple of weeks ago was actually a test to gauge the feasibility and/or public reaction to clogging up people's computers and bandwidth with Win10 bits.

 

--JorgeA

 

[JorgeA]

By the way, does anyone believe in their fairy-tale that Windows 10 won't be a free upgrade for 7 and 8.1 users in july 2016 anymore and thus these nags will stop?

 

No way.

 

I suspect that, free or not, the nags will continue forever.

 

And if you hide the notification, it will magically reappear just like so many other updates have been lately. The official reason for their popping back up seems to be that some change was made to the update, so that technically it's no longer "the same" file. Well, since we're told that Win10 will be an ongoing project, it will never be finished and it will always be changing -- and so Win7 users will always keep getting "invited" to download it no matter how many times they hide it.

 

--JorgeA

[Formfiller]

 

By the way, does anyone believe in their fairy-tale that Windows 10 won't be a free upgrade for 7 and 8.1 users in july 2016 anymore and thus these nags will stop?

 

No way.

 

I suspect that, free or not, the nags will continue forever.

 

Do you mean, even if W10 will becomes a paid-upgrade, the nags will continue?

 

Windows 10 installs automatically and then asks immediately for a credit-card or it deactivates itself. That's so crazy, it would fit NuMicrosoft perfectly.

Edited October 30, 2015 by Formfiller