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Windows 10 - Deeper Impressions


xper

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Perhaps we have different definitions of "domination"...

Have you read the services agreements?

Why do you think they would spend 26 billion dollars to buy the LinkedIn database and engine?

What is Skype doing right now, this minute?

Is it true that GWX is being delivered via Windows Update?

Know anyone who has had a worse experience with Windows Update on Win 7 or 8 lately?

Have you ever wondered why your system is trying to contact vortex.data.microsoft.com, vortex-win.data.microsoft.com, settings-win.data.microsoft.com, vo.msecnd.net, telemetry.microsoft.com, statsfe2.update.microsoft.com, and others?

Have you ever had a preference/setting reverted due to a Windows Update?

-Noel

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On 6/13/2016 at 7:28 PM, NoelC said:

Is it beyond reason to imagine them sitting around dreaming up changes to each and every component of the system to further their goals of world domination?

On 6/14/2016 at 7:19 AM, bookie32 said:

Are you absolutely sure about their goals of world domination:wacko:

On 6/14/2016 at 8:46 PM, NoelC said:

I can only answer that with - and I'm sorry if this seems a bit disrespectful - well duh!

23 hours ago, HarryTri said:

I don't think that Microsoft wants world domination, they just want more money in my opinion. The question is if they are "sharing" with (or selling to) their "telemetry" data with someone else and if yes who they are.

7 hours ago, NoelC said:

Perhaps we have different definitions of "domination"...

Have you read the services agreements?

Humm... isn't that somwhat off-topic in this thread?  I'm considering moving it to the "Deeper Impressions" where it'd belong. May I? :angel

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9 hours ago, NoelC said:

Promised to disrupt everything several times a year by releasing a new build.

Also using the "client" market info for better windows and use their traffic and don't reduce price for them.

high price of LSTB.

There should be Windows 10 pro LTSB for current price.

LTSB "users" get the same old stability and comforting with not upgrading each few months for high price

non-LTSB users same old price and no windows 7 stability and lots of upgrades threw the years.

Users with non-OEM hardware will have to use pirated windows because  few months of upgrades will not be stable for their hardware.

Edited by aviv00
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Let the games begin:  Win 10 Fast Insider:  [10 year old MacBook versus 10 year old Dell Laptop] : Update:  Both computers experienced the same problem when trying to use Settings-Privacy (Settings terminated) under 14361.  Both computers experienced a correction to this issue under 14366.  Score this inning:  0-0.  [The crowds at the Win 10 event were subdued]  Smiles all around.

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On 15.6.2016 at 11:28 PM, JorgeA said:

Here's another item to warm @Formfiller's heart:  :):angry:

Reader reports missing “Never check for updates” in Win7
 

Have they really sunk that low? After all the tricks and shenanigans I've seem them pull over the last year, I wouldn't put it past them. Still, I would like to see an actual screenshot of this.

--JorgeA

I have some fully updated W7 systems here (including GWX nag, but disabled through registry) and the never-update option is still here.

I wouldn't be surprised if NuMS would get this low though.

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21 hours ago, NoelC said:

Know anyone who has had a worse experience with Windows Update on Win 7 or 8 lately?

I am still not sure whether the update situation on W7 is malice or incompetence.

Breaking Windows Update on 7 could be just another form of “FU” to the userbase for not upgrading to 10, BUT, GWX is delivered through it and that’s something they obviously don’t want to break.

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How Windows 10 became malware
 

Quote

"... So let’s see: The Windows 10 upgrade downloads its bits to your PC without your knowledge. It changes your computer’s configuration. By default, Windows 10 collects advertising data and personal information. And if you try to stop the upgrade by doing what Microsoft tells you to do with every other application — click the X on its dialog box — it installs anyway.

Sounds like malware to me, malware that forces a Windows 10 upgrade ..."

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10 hours ago, BudwS said:

Let the games begin:  Win 10 Fast Insider:  [10 year old MacBook versus 10 year old Dell Laptop] : Update:  Both computers experienced the same problem when trying to use Settings-Privacy (Settings terminated) under 14361.  Both computers experienced a correction to this issue under 14366.  Score this inning:  0-0.  [The crowds at the Win 10 event were subdued]  Smiles all around.

Do you mean that when you would go into the Settings app and tried to view or change the privacy settings there, the Settings app would crash?

--JorgeA

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The mystery of the missing "never check for updates" option in Windows Update appears to have been solved.

The person reporting this remembered that he had used a program called Windows Update MiniTool. He writes,
 

Quote

Feeling more than a little embarrassed because late last night I suddenly remembered something that could be relevant to this discussion, and I *think* it may be the answer to what caused the problem.[...]

I’d never used Windows Update MiniTool until a couple of days before I noticed the change in Windows Update, but I did run it then (version 12.05.2016) – only on my computer – after reading about it, just to see all the updates that were installed on my computer. Didn’t make any changes to anything though; well, not intentionally at least.

This would fit with the fact that the Windows Update settings changed on my computer, but not on my wife’s, which is otherwise identical to mine.

There seems to be general agreement that this tool is the cause of the missing option, although further testing might be necessary. Early versions of the WUMT are acknowledged to "lock" the Update settings (see here). "JT" reports that he was using version 12.05.2016 of the program, yet the locking of Updates settings was supposedly already fixed in version 25.12.2015.

At any rate, though, the program is described as:

Quote

just an advanced frontend for WU, anything that could changed/updated is caused by WU

...so it's not entirely clear what was going on with JT's computer.

All that said, this WUMT could turn out to be quite a development for Win10 users:
 

Quote

Can you pick and choose installing one update like Portable Update?

...Yes...

installed-windows-updates.jpg

[source]

I have not tried out this program, but from the looks of it it would seem that the program makes it possible for Windows 10 users to pick and choose the Windows Updates they want to install, rather than having to accept them and all as a bundle. That could potentially take care of one of the "Big Three" issues with Win10 (UI, telemetry, forced updates).

--JorgeA

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2 hours ago, TELVM said:

I saw a doctor yesterday and noticed that they were using Windows 10. At the end of my visit, I asked how he liked it. He said that he kept getting notices to upgrade to Windows 10 over and over and over again, and that he kept hitting "no" every time. And then one morning he came into the office and he couldn't use his PC for hours because it was installing Windows 10.

--JorgeA

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I've checked out that Windows Update MiniTool and here are my observations:

- Windows 10 still supports controlling Windows Update via APIs. It's only the default behavior that has been set to auto-download, hide download size, auto install updates. So the UI and end user control over it is crippled but programmatic control still remains.

- Windows Update MiniTool does precisely that. It doesn't download the updates itself, its tells the WU and Background Intelligent Transfer Service which start behaving themselves once the right API functions are called :P Nor does WU minitool have to maintain its own server or do any update checks on its own. It just calls the various APIs in Windows 10 to restore control to the end user. So if the Settings app in Windows 10 is showing that an update is being downloaded, WU MiniTool can easily interrupt it and stop it. You can see the size of updates once again, download selected updates as you want, install only a few ones, block the ones, hide some of them (which that Microsoft troubleshooter also lets you do because it uses the WU API).

- The left side UI of WU MiniTool is poor with only cryptic icons that don't make it easy to understand. I've requested its author to put text labels below the icon-only UI. Also, Windows Update MiniTool's UI is not as polished as the UI of the real WU in Windows 7/8.1 which shows the downloaded MB, shows which update it is installing etc etc.

- If you use Windows 10 Enterprise Edition for example and use WU MiniTool, then you should be able to gain full control of Windows Update once again. I don't know if you can turn off the annoying full screen notifications though that "Required updates need to be downloaded". :P 

- Telemetry can be completely turned off/defeated by modifying the hosts file yourself and using Windows Firewall or using tools like Spybot Anti-Beacon (and dozens of others) which not only block telemetry servers but also turns off the processes/services that collect this info.

- This doesn't change the fact that Windows 10 still:
-- Is a POS crap OS
-- Hardly delivers anything of value to serious users
-- Make the touch experience worse in some ways from even Windows 8
-- Has tons of regressions
-- Is constantly changing, like a beta, constantly under construction, constantly wasting the user's time, resetting tons of settings, app defaults, having to reconfigure everything all over again. it's essentially a waste of time, malware, nagware, annoyware, adware, everything s***ty rolled into one OS
-- Removes a lot of valuable functionality of Windows XP/7 and even 8
-- Has tons of bugs, serious broken issues and regressions which Microsoft will never fix
-- Even if you are a huge fan of Apps and App Stores, you will find Android does everything more intuitively
-- Completely ruins the desktop PC experience, and mars whatever little trust I had in Microsoft
-- Has a UI so awful that I feel like rage quitting computers :P 
-- Whatever features it has are poorly coded, very poorly done, of little value and consume a lot of memory, numerous unnecessary and extraneous processes.
-- Essentially by "upgrading" to Windows 10, you essentially concede all control back to Microsoft to abuse you and do whatever the hell they want with YOUR PC, going against the principle of opposing just a hostile and customer-screwing operating system :P

Still, in the worse case scenario, if Windows 10 is ever forced on you because everyone else was stupid enough to "upgrade" to this POS, then Windows Update MiniTool will take out the biggest pain point of Windows 10: forced updates. As for forced drivers, there is already a Group Policy introduced in Anniversary Update to turn off driver update via Windows Update: http://winaero.com/blog/how-to-turn-off-driver-updates-in-windows-update-in-windows-10/

However the argument remains - WHY should you have to do all this and still be at Microsoft's mercy when you can continue using the far more problem-free Windows 7, 8.1 or the venerable Windows XP? :)

Edited by xpclient
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28 minutes ago, xpclient said:

However the argument remains - WHY should you have to do all this and still be at Microsoft's mercy when you can continue using the far more problem-free Windows 7, 8.1 or the venerable Windows XP? :)

That about sums it up, agree with all of that, Windows 8.1 is just the way I like it now, it's a hybrid of Windows 7 and 8 and the customization is better then 7 in some ways, I will never upgrade to 10 unless there is a feature I could not live without.

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