Windows 10 - Deeper Impressions

[NoelC]

Should be referred to as the "Hidden Cost Upgrade".

 

-Noel

[JorgeA]

Well consider it this way. When you get the free upgrade to Windows 10, you are then no longer using the OS that HP put on your computer. Even the recovery partition/software will no longer work. If the OS became un-usable, you'd still have to roll back to your previous version of Windows to run recovery. And if you can't (past 30 days, etc) then you're stuck. Even during my days at Sony (the 2nd time), if a customer had changed the OS they put on their VAIO, then the support was only limited to the hardware unless you were feeling nice/bored that day.

 

That's an excellent point!!    Wonder how long it'll be before average users out there start realizing that trusting Microsoft ended up voiding their warranties.

 

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

Windows 10 powers 132M PCs as growth again decelerates

 

Net Applications' Windows 10 user share data showed the same broad trend as another analytics developer, Ireland's StatCounter, which has also depicted the OS's growth as slowing for the second month running. By StatCounter's measurements, Windows 10 gained 1.4 percentage points of usage share -- an activity indicator, as it counts web page views -- in October. However, StatCounter's numbers indicated that Windows 10's usage share growth had decelerated more sharply than did Net Application's, as the former pegged September's gain at 2.4 percentage points, a full point larger than October's.

 

Net Applications' numbers could also be used to render the slight slowdown in a different way: During October, an average of 706,000 devices were added to Windows 10's rolls daily. In September, the average daily increase was approximately 794,000 devices.

 

 

--JorgeA

 

 

 

[sparkles]

Broken Trust with Windows Update

 

Many of us have grown to trust Windows Update. Maybe not blindly, particularly if we’re responsible for managing and maintaining an enterprise full of Windows machines. But even if we have automatic updates dialed back, we install most everything you send our way.

 

But lately...you’ve really blown it. When did the marketing department take over Windows Update? I’m talking, of course, about your attempts to push Windows 10 out to users via Windows Update the last few months. I keep a relatively clean desktop, free of icons that I don’t use regularly and notifications down to a manageable level of annoyance. So when that pushy Get Windows 10 icon appeared, I was appalled.

 

[...]

 

Making things worse, what’s with all the recommended Windows Update items that only update Windows Update to support updates to future operating system updates? I don’t need all that crap. Worst of all, you’ve forced me to not only have to carefully examine all updates, but reject and hide the frivolous ones. Keep in mind, I’m talking just about my personal workstation and laptop, not an ocean of machines where careful scrutiny of every update is mandatory.

 

 --JorgeA

 

This rant is straight out of Dilbert Season 1 "The Competition" (skip to about 14:30 to see what happens when a marketing department is mentioned)...

[NoelC]

Good lord, 700,000 people a day are discovering Microsoft's loss of integrity.

 

-Noel

[JorgeA]

Big Tech continues to try to force-march users into approved computing environments...

 

No more Chrome updates for Windows XP from April 2016

 

Anyone still desperately clinging to Windows XP only has another six months of updates for Chrome. Google has decided that the time has finally come to sever ties with the ancient operating system, and the same applies to Vista and OS X 10.6, 10.7, and 10.8.

 

...but, to judge from the comments section, the peasants aren't buying it:

 

Ah, good. The latest Chrome stopped me being able to access email (Virgin UK) due to them arbitrarily dropping SSL v3. If I can use old versions on XP, without fear of it being "updated" (broken) without my knowledge or consent, then I guess I'll be moving back to XP.

"Google says that using such old operating systems runs a far greater risk of virus and malware infection."

 

Yeah..not so much. This has been debunked for so long that its just sad their still spewing this tired old FUD. There are only a handful of vectors that can compromise fully updated XP with a top-tier security suite but which can't nail its successors. And those exploits are, to my knowledge, entirely dependent upon things like not having passwords set, leaving default shares enabled, connecting to Windows domain servers that lack certain upates and so on.

 

Great news. Every 'new' update in Chrome is worse than the old one. I've got some older versions stored somewhere, so as soon as the deadline occurs, then I can use the older versions on XP without fear of the 'update' happening.

 

--JorgeA

 

[rn10950]

Big Tech continues to try to force-march users into approved computing environments...

 

No more Chrome updates for Windows XP from April 2016

 

Anyone still desperately clinging to Windows XP only has another six months of updates for Chrome. Google has decided that the time has finally come to sever ties with the ancient operating system, and the same applies to Vista and OS X 10.6, 10.7, and 10.8.

 

...but, to judge from the comments section, the peasants aren't buying it:

 

Ah, good. The latest Chrome stopped me being able to access email (Virgin UK) due to them arbitrarily dropping SSL v3. If I can use old versions on XP, without fear of it being "updated" (broken) without my knowledge or consent, then I guess I'll be moving back to XP.

"Google says that using such old operating systems runs a far greater risk of virus and malware infection."

 

Yeah..not so much. This has been debunked for so long that its just sad their still spewing this tired old FUD. There are only a handful of vectors that can compromise fully updated XP with a top-tier security suite but which can't nail its successors. And those exploits are, to my knowledge, entirely dependent upon things like not having passwords set, leaving default shares enabled, connecting to Windows domain servers that lack certain upates and so on.

 

Great news. Every 'new' update in Chrome is worse than the old one. I've got some older versions stored somewhere, so as soon as the deadline occurs, then I can use the older versions on XP without fear of the 'update' happening.

 

--JorgeA

While some (most) of those issues can be remedied by not using Chrome and its automatic updates, it's great that people are finally realizing that using XP in this day and age isn't as bad as MS makes it out to be. As a user of XP, I'm personally not affected by this as I avoid Chrome and its descendants like the plague, using it only for websites that use the non-standard h.264 media format.

[helpdesk98]

I don't use XP much, however, I don't see a problem with using it, I used 98 for a great long time with no issues so why not XP. As long as you are careful aka "common sense" you should be alright. Long Live Windows XP!

[NoelC]

Big Tech continues to try to force-march users into approved computing environments...

 

Just for another perspective...  For a programmer, Vista and newer DO offer a lot of new features that never were available in XP.

 

Making code continue to work for XP is not trivial or free.  There may be things that can't even be conceived without the APIs available for only systems newer than XP.

 

Support in development tools for building for XP is waning too, though with some effort it can still be done.  That won't keep forever.

 

At the least continuing to support XP is more expensive, and at the worst it could block the ongoing development of new features the users want.

 

As a software product developer myself, I have dropped XP support in my new products as of a few months ago.  That's not a conspiracy, it's a recognition that products can actually work better on better systems.

 

Projecting forward...  If you want to list all the NEW features that systems newer than Vista have added that people can't live without.  That's a smaller list for sure.  Microsoft stopped improving Win32 quite a long time ago.

 

-Noel

[vinifera]

no they didn't, they just didn't document new changes in favor of using .net

XP still has Visual Studio 6 and (disgusting) .net 2.0 and 3.5 for use (dunno if 4 works on it)

[alacran]

no they didn't, they just didn't document new changes in favor of using .net

XP still has Visual Studio 6 and (disgusting) .net 2.0 and 3.5 for use (dunno if 4 works on it)

 

Yes, it does.

[jaclaz]

At the least continuing to support XP is more expensive, and at the worst it could block the ongoing development of new features the users want.

 

As a software product developer myself, I have dropped XP support in my new products as of a few months ago.  That's not a conspiracy, it's a recognition that products can actually work better on better systems.

 

Projecting forward...  If you want to list all the NEW features that systems newer than Vista have added that people can't live without.  That's a smaller list for sure.  Microsoft stopped improving Win32 quite a long time ago.

 

Dropping XP support is a (perfectly respectable) choice of each developer, you took it that way and it's fine, but there is no need that you try to convince us that it was the "right" choice, or that there is something inherently "wrong" or potentially devastating the future of software development worldwide in taking the opposite choice and continuing to support it.

 

jaclaz

[JorgeA]

Downloaded and installed build 10586 last night. Here are some Deeper Impressions:

 

* Five applications got broken: bigmuscle's AeroGlass, 8GadgetPack, Classic Shell, Spybot Search & Destroy 1.6.2.46, and Heimdal Free. The Gadget Pack and Classic Shell repaired themselves, but Spybot was declared incompatible with Win10 and got removed from the Start Menu and its Desktop icon disappeared, while Heimdal issued a message saying that the "connection to service failed." The nice theme I had set up with Aero Glass and 3D Vista/7-style buttons is back to flat buttons and no window borders, although there is some translucency left (but this may be due to a native Win10 setting).

 

This may be the end of the line for the redoubtable Spybot 1.6.2, a program that had worked unmodified in every version of Windows since (at least) Windows 98 First Edition, up to and including build 10240. I'll see if I can reinstall it, but that had not been necessary after previous new builds.

 

* A number of privacy settings were changed from the way I had put them prior to the installation of 10586. In particular, every switch in "background apps" under Settings, every one of which I had set to OFF, was now turned ON. As Windows 10 spreads among the user base (like an infection), no doubt there will be a certain number of users who'll trust that, like their document files, their settings will remain unaffected by the installation of the new build, and won't think to verify that they didn't get changed. Microsoft is disrespecting users' explicit preferences.

 

* The "Get Office 365" app, which in 10240 had been annoying me with its notifications to the point where I uninstalled it, is now back with 10586. I flipped a switch to turn it off (rather than uninstalling it); we'll see if that works and for how long.

 

--JorgeA

 

UPDATE: Spybot 1.6.2.46 did reinstall fine. So it still works. But this leads to a new question: if it does work on build 10586, why did this new build claim that it was incompatible?

Edited November 13, 2015 by JorgeA

[Techie007]

UPDATE: Spybot 1.6.2.46 did reinstall fine. So it still works. But this leads to a new question: if it does work on build 10586, why did this new build claim that it was incompatible?

 

    Welcome to the New Age where Microsoft can remove any software they don't like on your PC every few months.

[Techie007]

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.

 

    Uninstalling and hiding that update is the wrong way to disable the Windows 10 upgrade, so of course it is not effective long term.  The correct way is to disable it via the registry while leaving GWX installed.  Here's a batch file I made that will fully disable the Windows 10 upgrade for you:

@echo offecho This tool will disable the GWX ^(Get Windows 10^) feature, advertisements, tray icon,echo and prevent Windows Update from downloading or installing Windows 10 in the future.echo.>nul 2>&1 "%systemroot%\system32\cacls.exe" "%systemroot%\system32\config\system"if '%errorlevel%' NEQ '0' (  pause  echo.  echo Requesting administrative privileges...  echo Set UAC = CreateObject^("Shell.Application"^) > "%temp%\GetAdmin.vbs"  echo UAC.ShellExecute "%~s0", "", "", "runas", 1 >> "%temp%\GetAdmin.vbs"  "%temp%\GetAdmin.vbs"  exit /B)if exist "%temp%\GetAdmin.vbs" ( del "%temp%\GetAdmin.vbs" )echo Disabling GWX...timeout 3reg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\GWX" /v "DisableGWX" /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /freg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate" /v "DisableOSUpgrade" /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /freg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\OSUpgrade" /v "AllowOSUpgrade" /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /freg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\OSUpgrade" /v "KickoffDownload" /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /freg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\OSUpgrade" /v "OSUpgradeInteractive" /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /freg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\OSUpgrade" /v "ReservationsAllowed" /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /fecho Finished!Pause

Edited November 16, 2015 by Techie007